Follow the Book Trail

Sharon Wildwind

It’s spring and time we had a talk about the birds and the bees—of book reproduction, that is. Have you ever wondered what happens to that physical object called “a book”? Where is it born, where does it live, and how does it die?

What I’m talking about today is the classic book: pages of printed paper, held together with a cover that is either slightly thicker and glossier than those pages—the paperback—or a lot thicker—the hardback. Books that are produce in print runs of anywhere from a few hundred copies to a million copies at a time.

Somewhere there is a room, usually with a specially reinforced floor, where a big printing press stands. A completed and edited manuscript is fed from a computer to that press to turn out page after page of printed text. The pages are cut, folded, and bound into a cover. If it’s is a hardback, a paper book jacket is usually added. Books are packed tightly into boxes and boxes put on pallets to go to temporary storage in the printshop warehouse.

The publisher does publicity. A warehouse or distributor hears about the book and decides to stock it. Boxes are put on a truck and driven from the print shop warehouse to their warehouse. Tony Burton (June 23, 2007) and Katheryn Wall (June 13, 2007) have both written excellent blogs on the current state of book distribution, and I refer you to them for more information about this stage of the process.

The book is now listed on web sites and in catalogues as available for purchase. Publicity happens and readers go looking for the book on-line or in bookstores and other venues. Stores—both on-line and bricks-and-mortar—decide to stock some copies.

They buy books on consignment from the warehouse or distributor. Buying on consignment means they don’t have to pay any money up front. They essentially get free books to have available for a period of time, say 30 days. The books are sent by mail, courier, or delivery service and eventually reach the store. The box is opened—releasing that wonderful new book smell, of course—and copies go on display on a table or shelf in the bookstore. Extra copies are kept in the back storage area, next to the coffee pot.

A person buys a book, takes it home, and does something with it. Hopefully reads it, or gives it to Aunt Ethel so she can read it, or tells their friends how wonderful the book is and encourages them to read it. A few very fortunate books find a permanent home. They go on a bookshelf and quietly settle in with the other hundreds or thousands of books that the reader loves.

However, many books are now ending up being quickly sold to second-hand stores, so that a second person buys it, reads it, sells it; then another, and another and so on. The problem is that the author gets money for the sale only the first time that book is sold.

Some copies are never sold. At the end of the consignment period—which may be only a few weeks—the vendor either has to pay for the books or return them for credit. Because books are heavy it’s not cost-effective to return the whole book, so the cover is torn off and that returned. Rather like sending in box tops for a decoder ring, in case you are old enough to remember that. Look on the back cover of a book. If there is a triangle, or a triangle with an “S” inside of it, that doesn’t mean this book is endorsed by Superman. It means the cover can be “stripped” and returned for credit.

Those stripped books are supposed to be tossed in the garbage, but check out any used bookstore and see how many books are there without covers. How they end up there is anyone’s guess.

The vendor gets to repeat this process. Order 10 books, sell and pay for 3, strip and return 7 covers; order 8 the next month, sell and pay for 2, strip and return 6 covers, etc. for as long as the vendor wants to play the game. Most of the time the vendor doesn’t want to play very long. Maybe 1 month, maybe 3; longer if the book generates terrific sales every month.

Unless a book is selling like hot-cakes, orders are always in decreasing numbers in subsequent months, and each vendor comes up with their own private formula for what the decrease will be. As an example, one vendor might make an order for X number of copies in the first month, order 50% of X the second month, and 50% of the second month’s order the third month. Unless the book is a consistent seller, most vendors reach a point at somewhere between 3 weeks and 3 months when it is no longer profitable to send in any order at all on this particular book, though they may order individual copies if a customer makes a special order and pays for it in advance.

Tax time rolls around. There may still be books on that print shop’s shelves; on the warehouse or distributor’s shelves, and on the vendor’s shelves, back by the coffee pot. In the United States, anyone with books on the shelves has to pay inventory tax on them, and they are taxed for every year that they are on the shelves. So the impetus is to clear out the stock after a year, or even better just before the year is up.

As we’ve seen, the vendors are already returning books rapidly. They might put a few copies out for a sidewalk sale, etc, but essentially their shelves are pretty clean. The warehouse or distributor returns all their copies to the print shop, who contacts the publisher and says, “We have Y number of copies of this book and tax time is coming. What shall we do with these books?”

The publisher will likely decide to send the book to remainders. Hopefully, they will first give the author a chance to purchase any or all remaining copies of the books, at a reduced price.

With smaller companies, what the author doesn’t want is packaged into remainder boxes. Employees go down the line and pick 3 copies of this book, 4 copies of the next book, 2 copies of the third book, until they can fill a box. The key here is how many books fit neatly into a box without regard for title, subject, or author. It is, if you will a grab bag, or in this case a grab box. The boxes are sealed and sold, closed, as is, with the buyers having no idea what they are getting.

Larger companies participate in remainder sales, like CIROBE (The Chicago International Remainder and Overstock Book Exposition). At these book expositions, books are sold, not by the box, but by the pallet or truck load.

The next time you see you see a big bin of books in your local grocery store, being bought as a remainder is how they got there. Authors get no royalties from the sale of remaindered books.

After a book goes to remainder, it’s dead. The only way for readers to get a copy is to borrow one, either from a friend or on inter-library loan, buy from the author who might have a few of those remainders sitting around, find it by accident in a remainder bin, go on-line or to a used bookstore and hope for the best.

Not all copies are sold, even as remainders. The rest are pulped, which is a fancy way of saying recycled into other paper products. Many people don’t know that, yes, you can put discarded books in the average household recycling, if you take them apart first. Get a sharp craft knife and slice the individual pages from the spine, then put those pages in paper recycling. It’s the covers and the glue that shouldn’t go in recycling.

The difference between the number of books printed and the number of books destroyed is called the through-put. Most publishers are happy at about a 45% through-put and ecstatic at a 55% through-put. That means for every two books printed, roughly one is sold and one is pulped. It’s a horribly wasteful system, and one unique in commerce. Can you imagine stores being allowed to destroy cars or washing machines or denim jackets and return a fragment of the original product for full credit?

Surely someone can come up with a better system.
------
A sad quote for the week. Thank goodness most book sellers don’t think like this:

A book is only a widget. The purpose of a bookstore is to sell units. ~District manager, large chain bookstore, reported by mystery writer Viccy Kemp

Adventure Film Festival

by Julia Buckley
Everyone would have a different list if I asked this question: what are the best suspense or adventure films of the last fifty or so years? The fun, though, is in compiling that list and remembering some truly fantastic films.

I was watching The Fugitive today with my sons and thinking what a well made, suspenseful flick it was, not to mention what great performances Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones delivered to ratchet up that suspense. I thought, if I had the time, that I would love to just sponsor my own mini-film festival for friends and family and show them the movies I think are great. Here's a list of what I think are the best, in order of release:

REBECCA (1940): It will surprise no one that my first four selections were all directed by Alfred Hitchcock. He dominated film and suspense in this time period, and Rebecca is still thrilling as the suspenseful tale of the woman who feels haunted by her husband's first wife. Joan Fontaine is fantastic and vulnerable as the new Mrs. DeWinter, and of course this is based on the novel by Daphne DuMaurier.



DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954): I was always a huge Grace Kelly fan (she appears in two movies in this list) and I never quite understood how Ray Milland, her husband in this movie, could plot to kill her when she is so obviously out of his league. :) But what fantastic suspense in this flick, directed by the great Alfred Hitchcock and backed by a score that has you squirming in your seat.

REAR WINDOW (1954): Is it possible that TWO men would ignore Grace Kelly? But in this classic Hitchcock suspense film (based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich), Jimmy Stewart's L.B. Jeffries has more on his mind than the flirtations of Lisa Fremont (Kelly), namely the murder the wheelchair-bound Jeffries thinks he witnessed across the street. Several homages have been made to this classic movie, the most recent of which is Disturbia.

NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959): Even if you've never seen the movie, you must have seen the legendary clip of Cary Grant running from the crop dusting plane in the middle of Midwestern nowhere. This movie is fun from start to finish, and Cary (whom my father for some reason always despised) was charming and sexy to me until the very end of us career (he only made six films after this one). This, too, is a Hitchcock film.

DIRTY HARRY (1971): This is in many ways still a shocking film, but it solidified Clint Eastwood's place in the echelon of action stars, and it's worth renting the flick just to see Harry Callahan take on a bank robber while eating a hot dog. And of course he says the now-famous words, "Do you feel lucky?"



THE STING (1973): This funny and stylish suspense film is set in 1930's Chicago, where two con men take on a mobster to avenge a mutual friend. Paul Newman and Robert Redford are fantastic here, and I love them even better as Hooker and Gondorf than I do as Butch and Sundance. The Sting is full of plot twists, and the first time I saw it I think my mouth was hanging open for most of the movie. (In amazement, that is).

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976): Considering that much of the action never leaves the 1970s-era newsroom, this is still a surprisingly suspenseful and well-acted drama in which Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffmann play Woodward and Bernstein in the time that they were investigating Watergate and the mysterious dealings of CREEP members (the Committee to Re-Elect the President, that is). Nixon was re-elected, but he didn't last long before Woodward and Bernstein's investigation blew the case wide open and even Nixon's right-hand men couldn't protect him.

STAR WARS (1977): Nothing can duplicate the experience of seeing this in the theater for the first time, and as one who was a kid in 1977, I can attest that no dramatic experience has ever really blown me away to the extent that this space adventure did back then. I can never totally duplicate it, since videos and DVDs today have been altered by George Lucas, and I actually far prefer the original. But it still wears well, and my sons grew up watching Luke, Leia and Han battle the evil Lord Vader.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981): This, too, I saw debut in theaters, and I think I held my breath through this whole amazing Spielberg movie. Harrison Ford is in three of the movies on this list, and he really does deserve the title of adventure movie king. It's hard to imagine, now, that anyone else could have played Indiana Jones, and Spielberg has a gift for never stopping the action--not for a moment.

THE FUGITIVE (1993): See above.

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN (2002): I've watched this movie several times since it came out, and it's still a pleasure. Leonardo DeCaprio was a surprise in this demanding role, playing real-life con man Jack Abagnale,Jr. who led FBI agents on a wild goose chase all over the world and writing bad checks all the way. Tom Hanks is loveable in his role as Agent Carl Hanratty, who never gives up, even when his colleagues have given up on him.

THE INCREDIBLES (2004): This computer-animated gem is surprisingly suspenseful and visually beautiful. Directed by Brad Bird, it is fun, funny, scary and breathtaking. The voice talent helps a lot, led by the great Craig T. Nelson and Holly Hunter. It's not just for kids, and if you haven't seen it you are in for a huge treat.


THE BOURNE SERIES (2002-2007): Matt Damon became the new action star with this fantastic series of movies based loosely on the Robert Ludlum novels. They are stylish nailbiters with a hero who is loveable despite his robotic persona. He starts out as The Terminator but ends up as fragile and human as everyone else. The final movie left a chance for a fourth . . . let's hope.

Okay--that was a long list, but of course I've missed some great movies--I mean, we're looking at a seventy-year span here. So tell me: what are the great suspense films I haven't listed? Or which of the ones on this list are your favorites, too?

Caught in the Web(site)

Janet Koch is an engineering designer, a writer, a web products creator through her company, Deepwater Design and a pretty decent water-skier. Today she’s talking about website design. Next month Janet will be back to talk about book trailers.

PDD: This one always seems to come up: Does an unpublished writer need a website?

JK: Primary cautionary note: the following answers are my opinion and my opinion only. Secondary cautionary note: as I am only a budding web designer and book trailer producer, my opinions are not exactly being sought after by the new administration.

Does an unpublished writer need a website? As in I’m-gonna-kill-my-writing-career-before-it-starts-if-I-don’t-have-a-website? Nah. But there are reasons to go ahead and get started, even if you’re uncontracted and/or unagented.

First, becoming familiar with the whole business of creating a website is valuable. Whether you do it yourself or hire a designer, there’s a lot to learn. Waiting until two months before your publication date to get a site going isn’t a good idea.

Next, it’s an opportunity to get your name out there. Take Jeri Westerson. Long before her debut novel, Veil of Lies, was published, she’d established a web presence with a blog focusing on medieval history. By the time the book came out she’d already established a solid base of potential readers. Sure, that’s a blog, not a website, but the same principles apply.

Next, having a website provides instant credibility. Maybe only a teensy bit, but when dealing with the cold, cruel world of publishing, writers can use all the help they can get.

Last – it’s fun!

There are, of course, a couple of reasons for an unpublished writer NOT to have a website. If you can’t see the value of expending all that energy on putting together a site when you’re not even close to being published, don’t bother. And if the cost just flat out doesn’t fit into your budget, don’t worry about it. But I do advise spending ten bucks or so a year and reserving a URL in your name.

PDD: If someone doesn’t want a website now, but wants to be able to use their name as a URL someday. What should they do?

JK: Someday is now. For about ten bucks a year you can stake out your domain name claim with any number of registrars. Google “domain name registration” and you’ll be inundated with options. Go Daddy is popular. When you’re ready to pull the trigger, ask around for what your friends use. Just don’t forget to renew that domain name every year.

Fun fact: a URL (uniform resource locator) is the complete web address: http://www.yourname.com while a domain name is the www.yourname.com part.

PDD: What makes a good website, aside from content? What design elements entice visitors to look around?

JK: Um, you said aside from content, but in my opinion content is king. You must offer your users something of value. With that opinion out of the way ... getting people to look around means having good content. Oops. Said I was done with content, didn’t I? Sorry.

I’m not sure any particular design element is universally attractive. Jake over there might think a background grunge graphic with hidden links is way cool, but his mother might wince and make a mental note to avoid the site. A site designed with light pastel colors might appeal to Heather, but her boyfriend Tony wouldn’t be caught dead with that site on his laptop. Moral of the story? Know your audience.

No matter how you assemble your website, functionality is key. A user shows up at your site for a reason, so when designing a site you need to guess at all those possible reasons and make it easy for users to accomplish their goals. Steve Krug, website consultant, titled his classic book on web usability Don’t Make Me Think. And that kind of says it all.

But there’s no denying the Cool Factor. If you come up with something cool, people will flock to your site. The CF is that indefinable thing that makes you say, “Hey, that’s cool,” and pass the link to ten friends. Cool can vary from a slick animated Flash production to historic photos to a laugh-out-loud essay. Unfortunately, you can’t predict what’s going to be cool. I mean, post-1980, who would have guessed that bell-bottoms would ever again be considered cool?

PPD: You said, "You must offer your users something of value." What kinds of things can writers offer aside from book excerpts?

JK: The simplest offering is content that might be of interest to other writers. Essays are always good. Talk about the funny thing that happened when you started researching the history of chimneys. Talk about your original goals, your revised goals, your accomplished goals. Lists of links are good – links to your favorite conferences, links to helpful research sites, links to inspirational sites, a list of the blogs you read. Have a page listing your favorite novels. Have a page featuring your favorite writing books. Add reviews.

A better idea is to offer things of interest to the complete strangers out there who might become your readers. If your writing tends to feature Great Danes, add a page about Great Danes. If your manuscripts always seem to include an exploding house, add something about that. Post interesting facts about the setting for your WIP. Post photos you’ve taken for your Work In Progress. And keep adding information on a regular basis. New information draws new readers.

Bottom line: offering content of interest to writers is good, but offering good content to the greater world is even better. Build name recognition everywhere! And don’t be shy about adding a page about your chia pets. Anything you happen to be interested in, some other people are, too.

PDD: What things don't work on a website other than my personal pet peeve--red type on black background?

JK: If you Google “Website mistakes” you’ll find lists that include things like: slow-loading pages, low contrast pages, broken links, bad fonts, bad content, browser incompatibility, etc. Almost every item on these lists is saying the same thing: don’t design a webpage that annoys users.

What’s the most annoying? The biggest mistake of all -- making your website hard to use. I once came across a website that included a link to instructions on how to use the site. Please. How many people are going to take the time to read that? If a site doesn’t make itself clear about its purpose in life, users won’t hang around.

Second biggest mistake? Not providing the information users want. If someone is, say, trying to find your photo to paste into a conference brochure, having those photos buried at the bottom of your Pets page isn’t going to make that someone happy. Along those same lines, not providing contact information is a slow form of web-death.

Everyone has their pet peeves regarding websites. Some people hate music. Some people hate clever little animations. Some people can’t stand red type on black background. Just as there’s no book that every person on the planet likes, there’s no website design that everyone likes. What can you do? Get familiar with your target audience and make your site easy to use.

PPD: Do you have any examples of mystery writer websites that you think are particularly effective or well done?

JK: Joe Konrath’s site does a great job of presenting a tremendous amount of information in an orderly and easy to navigate way. Jenny Cruise’s site design perfectly presents the personality of her books. I love the photos of Paris that Cara Black has on her site, Isabel Allende’s home page is beautiful, and ... are you going to stop me or can I keep going?

PDD: When a writer--or anyone else--is looking for a website or book trailer designer what kinds of questions should they ask?

JK: First thing is to determine your budget. Falling in love with the designs of a firm that charges $2000 a site isn’t going to work out very well if $400 is the most you want to spend. Designer’s websites usually give at least a ballpark indication of the price range the firm typically charges.

(Have I said lately that everything I’m saying is opinion and opinion only? Yes? Good.)

Next, check the design firm’s portfolio of work, which should also be on their website. Poke around and, if you like what you see, try contacting a client or two. Ask if they’d mind if you ask a couple questions. If they don’t mind, see if you can get a feel for how happy they were with the firm, the design process, and the final product.

Other than that, I’d turn your question around. To get the website of your dreams, I think what’s more important than the questions you ask a designer are the questions a designer asks you, the potential client. There are probably an infinite number of ways for a designer to get at your dreams and I wouldn’t presume to say which way is best. But I do think a designer should spend time learning your likes, dislikes, preferences, tastes, and something about your personality. If you dress in, say, city black and wear hard-soled shoes that click-click-click, you’re probably not going to be happy with a site that, say, includes sidebar images of decorated outhouses.

One last piece of opinion: before you start looking for the perfect designer, spending some time thinking. Think about what you want to accomplish with your site. Think about who is going to visit your site and what they’ll want from it. Make some notes. Think some more. Your future website designer will bless you.

Thanks Janet. Join us next month (April 25) when Janet returns to talk about book trailers.

Spring has sprung??? Life and writing and other stuff . . .

By Lonnie Cruse


Way back in high school (when dinosaurs still roamed the earth) my friend Sandy would quote this little ditty to me every spring:

Spring has sprung
the flowers is riz
I wonder where
the birdies iz.

In spite of that, we stay in touch. Where was I? Oh, yeah, spring. And growing things.

Having flexed her mythical muscles in February with a huge ice storm that kept our area literally in the dark for anywhere from three days to three weeks, Mother Nature is now demonstrating how quickly she recovers. Rebounds. Whatever.

The neighbor a few houses up the road from us has a stand of Bradford Pear trees that were practically destroyed by the recent ice storm. Bradford Pear trees are notorious for splitting down the middle in ice storms and/or high winds, dropping both heavy and light branches in a circle on the ground. Personally, if you gave me a free Bradford Pear tree and hired someone to plant it, I'd have to politely (or possibly not so politely) decline. Did I mention they are notorious for splitting and dropping heavy limbs everywhere, in ice or wind? Anyhow, things have warmed up around here and the neighbor apparently hasn't found time to clean up yet, so when you drive by his place right now you see dead limbs in circles around his trees and the few pitiful branches that did survive are covered in beautiful white spring blooms. Spring is sprunging out all over as I type.

These Bradford Pear trees are VERY common in our area, and I have to admit, despite the major damage they seem to suffer every winter, they do their best to recover. Gotta love their spirit.

Several years ago, as spring was doing its annual sprunging, I spotted a large abandoned farm truck in the middle of a field. Vines had grown around and through openings in the truck, trapping it in the spot where someone parked and left it, who knows how long ago. The truck is held in place by something much smaller, but when the vines work together, they overcome.

That set me to wondering. How often are we, as writers or wannabe writers, held in place, kept from doing our jobs, writing our stories, by things much smaller, working together to stop us? Fear? Indecision? Procrastination? Laziness? Lack of faith in our abilities? Lack of focus? Life? And dare I type it? Old age?

Which brings me to my next point. Late bloomers. If you are "of a certain age" do you remember when you thought thirty was OLD? Sigh. But with so many Baby Boomers recently crossing the line from late fifties to early sixties, we now pretty nearly outnumber the "younger generation." And lest you be fooled by our complaints of aches and pains coupled with "I sure can't do the things I used to" trust me, we've learned to adjust, and you younger folks need to watch out for us.

I recently went into a local large discount store to shop and had to leap to safety in a side aisle when a fellow senior citizen whizzed by me in a motorized chair/shopping cart. And she wasn't the only person using that shopping method. I had to keep one eye on my shopping list and the other on the aisles due to multiple speeding seniors using motorized carts. And whose idea were those dangerous things, anyhow? Mercy! Okay, so I'm thinking of limping into the store so I can try one, myself. Hehehe.

So what is the ratio of older writers out there in the published world, anyhow? A member of Sisters In Crime recently asked on a discussion list who among the authors there were "late bloomers" in the area of writing and publishing their work. An amazing number of mystery writers appear to be, umm beyond our first blush of spring, so to speak. FYI, many of the writers you read and love (who have young sounding names, I might add) are near or at Social Security age. Receiving it, that is, not paying it in.

These are the folks who probably spent the last thirty or so years raising the next generation, working to feed and house said generation, and putting their own dreams on hold. Now we are retired, with much more time. Or at the very least, empty nesters with no little ones to care for 24/7. So we try things we haven't had time to do in decades, like ride a bike, play golf, take long walks, and write down our thoughts. Some of our thoughts are funny and some are downright scary. My hubby, for instance, is used to being asked if he sleeps with one eye open. Yeah. He is.

Have you always loved reading other people's writing but thought you couldn't write? Afraid the "journalism police" would kick in your front door and drag you off to jail? I was. Think you're too old? I did.

If you have a story to tell, then tell it. Then find a good critique group and let them help you get it ready to publish. Then send it out. Don't be afraid. You didn't get to be this age by being timid, did you? So take time out of that whizzing cart and write. And please, watch out for me when you're racing around in the store. I'm not as fast as I used to be. Jumping to safety on a spinning clothing rack can be difficult at this time of my life.

And if you'd rather stick to reading stories than writing them, please DO keep on reading. We writers NEED you.

As spring is sprunging into your area, I trust you are forging on, blooming in spite of damage the winter around you did to your psyche? Whatever your age or situation in life, don't let yourself be held in place by new vines shooting out from the old, ever wrapping themselves around you, paralyzing you in place. Just a few thoughts, about spring and about writing, or perhaps not writing.

May I just add that the daffodils were an extremely welcome sight this year, after the difficult winter we had? Hubby has pretty much cleaned up all the downed trees and limbs out back, and we can finally see our little sitting area where a couple of benches are located near the creek. We do, however, both need to learn our physical limits. We dug up and moved five VERY LARGE hostas to a better area last week, dividing them so they will spread out. And I dug up a few tiger lillys that were down near the creek where no one could see and/or enjoy them except the rabbits and deer and re-planted them up near the bench area so we can enjoy them. And, yes, I left plenty for the rabbits and deer. But by the time we were done relocating these plants, it was all I could do to get up three steps, into the house. The spirit is still willing, but the flesh is mighty weak. Whew. Wonder how one of those motorized shopping carts would work in our back yard? I'll get back to you on that. I hope.

Happy spring, everyone. Hope it's sprung where you are. Anyone seen the hummers yet?

Covers of 2008, Part 2

Here are some more covers from mysteries published in 2008. We put out a call for authors who loved their covers and got a great response. If you're eligible to vote for the Anthonys nominees (including the cover art category), you have a ballot that asks for your picks by author and title and also book format (hardback, trade paper, or mass market paperback). Authors can add format information as a comment at the end of this post. Or folks who want to vote for them to be nominated can check Amazon for the format. If you didn't see the first batch (Covers of 2008) last Thursday, March 19, you can find that post via the search box or scrolling down on the blog. Again, we're not connected in any way with the Anthonys--just giving as many covers as we can wider circulation.

Donna Andrews, Cockatiels at Seven and Six Geese A-Slaying



Rhys Bowen, A Royal Pain and Tell Me, Pretty Maiden



Libby Fischer Hellman, Easy Innocence


Sheila Connolly, One Bad Apple


Karen Olson, Shot Girl


Toni Kelner, Without Mercy


JL Wilson, Autographs, Abductions, and A-List Authors and Candy, Corpses, and Classified Ads



Leann Sweeney, Pushing Up Bluebonnets


Barbara Colley, Wash and Die


Charlotte Phillips, Hacksaw


CM Albrecht, Music


Franklin Levy, Die, Decorator, Die


Charlaine Harris & Toni Kelner, Wolfsbane and Mistletoe


Leslie Klinger, The New Annotated Dracula


Lois Carroll, Just A Memory


Maggie Bishop, Perfect for Framing


Marion Hill, Death Books A Return


Maryann Miller, One Small Victory


Nix Winter, The Silver Comb


Tony Wolfmont, Dying in a Winter Wonderland


Joanna Campbell Slan, Paper, Scissors, Death


Michelle Gagnon, Boneyard


RJ McDonnell, Rock & Roll Homicide


Larry Karp, The King of Ragtime


Deb Baker, Murder Talks Turkey (trade paperback)


LJ Sellers, The Sex Club


Michael Stanley, A Carrion Death



Mary Ellen Hughes, Paper-Thin Alibi


Elizabeth Zelvin, Death Will Get You Sober

Thank You

To Kaye Barley, who presented us with a Blog Sisterhood Award today (see our sidebar). We appreciate it, Kaye!

Mysteries with Extras

The winners of the free books are Sobaka, Margaret Franson, Sandra, Daryl a.k.a Avery, Kim, Lesa Holstine, and Gail Hueting. Please send your mailing address to sandraparshall@yahoo.com. Congratulations, and I hope you enjoy the books!


Sandra Parshall

When did mystery writers begin including recipes and/or useful tips for readers in their novels? These extras are so common now that it’s hard to pinpoint when the trend started.

Food has always been a favorite means of delivering poison, but it also figures prominently in traditional mysteries because this type of story usually has a domestic setting. Characters often drink tea, gnosh on cake or cookies, and sort out the facts of the case. What's different now is that readers expect to be given the full recipe for any food consumed in the book.

When I asked on internet mystery lists if anyone knew when recipes began appearing in novels, I received a lot of guesses and approximations but no definite answers. Several people said Dianne Mott Davidson was among the first to include recipes and that she had to talk her publisher into allowing it. Liz Zelvin and a couple of others pointed out that Virginia Rich included recipes in the front and back of her mysteries, which debuted with The Cooking School Murders in 1982. Nero Wolfe was a gourmand, and Rex Stout’s novels have a lot of food in them. The Nero Wolfe Cookbook, giving recipes for dishes featured in the novels, was published in 1973 and remains a favorite of many cooks, but the recipes were not included in the novels.

As for craft cozies with patterns, one avid mystery reader said that Crewel World by Monica Ferris, published in 1999, was the first novel she remembered seeing that included a needlework pattern. All craft cozies now feature patterns or tips, and the trend has expanded to include cleaning and decorating tips and advice of every kind. If a protagonist has a special skill, she must share it with readers.

Why? It’s a marketing ploy, of course, and primarily an American one. (Although the cozy was born in Britain, few mysteries of that type are produced by British authors now. M.C. Beaton writes cozies, but she doesn’t include recipes in her Agatha Raisin books. Considering Aggie’s ineptitude in the kitchen, that’s probably just as well.) Mystery lovers buy books for the stories and characters, but in a crowded market, the extras may entice readers and persuade them that they’re getting more than a good mystery for their money.

Here are a few recent cozies that have distinctive characters and settings but follow the trend toward giving readers something extra.

Turn Up the Heat (hardcover 2008, paperback 2009) by Jessica Conant-Park and Susan Conant, is part of the Gourmet Girl series and has 22 pages of recipes, some of them contributed by professional chefs. The heroine, Chloe Carter, is helping her chef boyfriend get his new Boston restaurant off to a good start when one of the waitresses is found dead in a fish truck. Booklist recommends Turn Up the Heat to “fans of foodie crime” and Publishers Weekly, in the language typically inspired by this kind of mystery, calls it a “delectable dish of detection.”

Death Takes the Cake, in the Della Cooks series by Melinda Wells, has 14 pages of recipes, most of them for cakes that sound delicious and look easy. Della Carmichael is owner of a cooking school and star of a new cable cooking show. In an attempt to boost her ratings, Della enters a televised cake competition sponsored by Reggi-Mixx, which happens to be owned by Della’s old college nemesis. When people warn her that competitive pastry-making is a blood sport, they’re not kidding, as Della discovers when someone is drowned in a bowl of cake batter. Because a friend’s husband is suspected, Della is determined to solve the crime and clear his name.

Fatal Flip is the March 2009 entry in Peg Marberg’s Interior Design Mysteries. No recipes here, but at the back of the book you’ll get tips on living in an old Victorian house and decorating a house to make it more attractive to buyers. The whole book is an education in “flipping” – the business of purchasing fixer-uppers, restoring them, and selling them. Marberg’s heroine, Jean Hastings, is a small-town decorator who is recruited by the local Fast Flippers to decorate one of their projects. Soon enough, one of the Flippers turns up dead and Jean sets out to find the culprit.


In Corked by Cabernet (2009) and A Vintage Murder (2008), author Michele Scott includes recipes between chapters as well as at the end of the books, and recommends wines to go with the dishes. The heroine, a former actress named Nikki Sands, is manager of a Napa Valley vineyard, and the reader learns something about wine-making while Nikki is solving some inconvenient murders.

Eggs in Purgatory (December 2008) by Laura Childs is the first book in the Cackleberry Club series by an author already popular for her tea shop and scrapbooking mysteries. The Cackleberry Club is a cozy café created by friends Suzanne, Toni, and Petra after they all lose their husbands to either death or divorce. Not long after the café opens, Suzanne’s lawyer is found murdered out back. The murder exposes a scandalous secret involving Suzanne’s late husband and brings a refugee from a cult into her life. At the back of the book you’ll find recipes for the dishes Suzanne serves her customers while she’s trying to find the link between her dead husband and the cult.

Suzanne Price's Notoriously Neat (April 2009), third in the Grime Solvers series, contains the kind of tips I desperately need but am too lazy to use. The protagonist, Sky Taylor, is a professional cleaner in the town of Pigeon Cove, and throughout the book excerpts from Sky Taylor's Grime Solvers Blog offer advice for cleaning up all those nasty little messes that clutter our lives. The plot centers on the murder of Dr. Gail Pilsner, a popular Pigeon Cove veterinarian, and Sky's efforts to clear the animal hospital lab tech she believes is innocent.

If you’d like to enter a drawing for a free copy of one of these books, post your answers to the questions below in the comments section. If you have a strong preference for one or two of the books, let me know. Come back tomorrow and you’ll find the names of the winners posted at the top of this blog entry in red. After you look over the 2008 covers Liz will post tomorrow, scroll on down to find this entry.

Now my questions for you:

1. Does the inclusion of recipes or tips of various kinds make a cozy more attractive to you?

2. Do you look at the recipes and/or tips before you buy a book?

3. Have you ever bought a book because you wanted a particular recipe? If so, share! What recipe was it? And did you enjoy the mystery too?

Be on the Lookout

Sharon Wildwind

Think of this blog as a puddle-jumper, one of those little airplanes that “hops” from place-to-place in very short flights. Several decades ago I was on one of those flights: take-off, land, take-off, land, get air sick—only time I’ve ever been airsick—take-off, land at final destination, all in under an hour-and-a-half. Today, we’re going to try to skip the air sick part.

Monday morning is when I check in with places I visit on the Internet weekly. One is 43 folders, a site run by the techie, lets-get-real-creative-work done guy, Merlin Mann.

This week Mann featured a poster, which I didn’t quite get, and a reference to an article, entitled What Crisis?, in The Guardian, a British newspaper.

First stop on our flight, the article. According to the author, Jon Henley, something old has surfaced again in Britain. Just before the beginning of World War II, some British civil servants were tasked with developing propaganda slogans to stiffen British reserve if Germany invaded England.

The first two posters in the series were rather ho-hum, but the third in the series was held-back for the worst-case scenario. The message to be distributed after the invasion? Keep Calm and Carry On.

Obviously, the invasion never happened and thousands of copies of that third poster went to the dump. Literally. Today, hopefully, it would go to recycling bins.

About ten years ago the slogan surfaced again, courtesy of two booksellers, and it has become a not-so-mini industry of posters, T-shirt, mugs, even baby wear. A blast from the past that speaks to the tensions of today.

Second stop on our mini-trip: Matt Jones. I’m still a little confused about who Jones is, but he seems to be another techie, who is creative and well-liked. On his Flicker site I found—in multiple sizes suitable for downloading—the poster I’d originally seen on Merlin Mann’s site. Just so none of us will confuse Jones’s work with the original one from Britain, this new one has a green instead of a red background, a fanciful crown instead of a regal one, and a counter-saying to keeping calm and carrying on.



Here’s the third stop on our flight, a site called Creative Commons. They want to promote digital creativity, mixes, reproductions, all those cool things you can do with a computer, but are often hampered by legal paraphernalia and paranoia. This is the part where I’m the tiniest bit hazy, or perhaps I’m just air sick again. Discussion of digital management rights or DMRs tends to make me queasy.

What I think I’ve read is that I can display Matt Jones poster in this blog, as long as I give Matt credit for it. He did it, folks, all by his lonesome self, with a little help from his computer. And I can’t make money off of it—no worries there. And I have to mention the creative common license, which I did above.

Having cleared the legal hurdle as we made our last take-off, let’s get to our final destination. I am SO in favor of what that poster says. Yes, things are bad out there, and no, being a Pollyanna won’t help. But I do truly believe that two things will help: focused excitement and creativity.

Creativity doesn't necessarily mean that we produce a book or a play or a symphony, though those things would be nice. It means that we pay attention, that we live in the details, and that we try to make things better. We are smart people; we are creative people. We can make a future that is better than what we have today.

So I’m hoping that Matt Jones’s poster becomes as popular on this side of the Atlantic as the World War II poster has become in Britain. I’m going to be on the look out for it, and I hope you’ll join me. And when we see it—on a poster or a screen-saver, on a mug or T-shirt—I think we should give each other some sort of creative high five sign. A right on, sister; an I’m with you, brother.

Now let’s get out there and create.
_______
Quote for the week
Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth. ~Madeline L'Engle, writer

Shakespeare: 444 and Ever in The News

by Julia Buckley

Why has Shakespeare remained so powerful, so relevant, after 444 years? Why is it that his words, written in a long-ago era, still prove so prescient and true? Why is it that every time I read one of his plays I actually fall in love with his language--and more deeply as I grow older?

My crush on Shakespeare used to be based on his work alone, but it has intensified since the Sanders Portrait has come back into the news. This portrait, thought to be the only one done of Shakespeare while he was living, depicts him in his thirties as a far more attractive fellow than his other famous paintings do.

Today I learned what many people probably already knew--that Helen Mirren has been cast as the lead in THE TEMPEST, a film which might come out in 2009.

I teach THE TEMPEST twice a year, so this is very important news. The play, as all of Will's fans know, is about Prospero, The Duke of Milan, who is supplanted from his throne by his evil brother Antonio. Prospero is cast adrift with his nearly three-year-old daughter Miranda in the Mediterranean Sea. Antonio expects his brother to die, but instead Prospero and his daughter land on a magical island inhabited only by a monstrous creature (Caliban) and a creature of air (Ariel).

Prospero, a genius of the Humanities, had been immersed in his studies in Italy, but on this magical island he finds that he can tap into magical power with his intellectual power and become a great sorcerer--something he achieves over a period of twelve years.

By the end of the play, Prospero must decide whether or not he will use his power to get revenge against his perfidious brother and his two co-conspirators, who in a twist of fate are shipwrecked on the very island on which they marooned Prospero.

For Mirren, the new film has been changed so that the main character is named Prospera. She too has a daughter named Miranda, and she too will encounter the same creatures on the island.

I am intrigued by the idea of a female Prospero. The original Tempest is very patriarchal, and Miranda's virtue is discussed by the male characters almost as a piece of property to be protected. She is "given" to her fiancee as a gift, but of course Prospero's behavior is reflective of his culture.

This new film, as I see it, is a chance to discuss Prospero's dilemma in a more universal sense. By making Prospero female, the director can remove the oppressive dynamic of a father and fiancee dominating Miranda's life and future, and enrich the discussion of human power and its limits. Mirren can become a Gaia of the island--a woman who creates herself through the power of art, and then must face the limitations of humanity.

The Tempest may be one of my favorite Shakespearean plays. It contains so much beautiful language, perhaps most famously Prospero's line "We are the stuff that dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."

Dreaming is a theme of The Tempest--the notion that much of our experience is illusion. I look forward to the newest interpretation of this play and what beautiful visuals can be created in homage to a genius that never died.

What's your favorite Shakespearean play?


art link here

Canada Calling: Vivian Arend

Vivian Arend is a Canadian author who loves the outdoors and incorporates her wilderness experiences into her writing.

PDD: You write in fantasy/urban fantasy settings, and different worlds require different rules. How much time do you spend developing rules for your worlds?

VA:
As much time as it takes! When I started on my first werewolf shifter story I read as many other shifters as I could over a two-month period. There were certain themes I found common in many of them- the full moon, biting, possessiveness, lifelong mates. In some places the authors had added variety. I choose the folklore I wanted in my world and started creating rules from there, for example, I wanted the predestined mates but the not the idea of being influenced by the moon.

When I decided to write a water shifter I couldn’t find more than one other novel to read, and that author had taken a very different tack than I wanted to attempt. So I started from scratch, asking myself questions about how I thought merfolk could fit into our world and stay hidden. I found an incredible illustration of a woman wading in an ocean cavern surrounded by iridescent St. Elmo’s fire and it inspired me to start the book. It was about a week’s worth of planning. If you’d like to see the picture I’ve got it on my blog.

PDD: Do you do this all before you begin the writing or does the world evolve as the book does?

VA:
I write off the cuff for the most part, so the world definitely evolves the farther into the story I go. Sometimes changes come from questions other characters raise and I realize I need clarity in an area. I’ve also found having good critique partners help immensely because there are times when I get too close to the story to realize I haven’t explained an issue. I –know- what’s happening, I just haven’t said it yet!

PDD:What kinds of things do you consider in world building?

VA:
For straight fantasy I need a list of the character types (elves, etc.) but the most important things for me turn out to be the history of the world prior to where my story starts and a map.

To produce the first I do two things: I write an ‘Epic Prologue’, which is NOT included in the final story, and I have one character tell a story the others. It is amazing how clearly writing in a traditional Homeric fashion produces an outline of history. And making a character recite what they consider a well-known and loved tale is like hearing someone quote ‘It was the Night Before Christmas’. It gives insight into the world and who lives there at the time in history.

And a map- I have a little talent in drawing, and adding the contours of the world makes it far easier to write scenes, especially if there is any kind of journey involved in the tale.

For the urban fantasy I’ve been writing I’m trying to really consider HOW the fantasy could fit into what we know as reality. If werewolves exist, how have they survived and remained hidden? How is the ability to change forms passed onto their children? It’s these questions that can be answered in new ways to make what I write different from any other authors.

PDD: You’ve said you’re concerned about genre wars. How did that concern come about?

VA:
One of the strangest conversations I heard this past year happened at a writer’s conference. As an avid reader of all genres I was surprised to overhear a couple of authors rudely criticizing other kinds of novels for their “lack of intelligence”.

As an author this concerned me. While I agree a poorly written book or a weakly edited book, which manages to reach publication, makes me cringe, rating the value of a book based on its genre alone seems to be counterproductive.

Considering the variety of styles and voices of authors, even with a genre, I think there is room for the different categories out there without people finger pointing and assuming that books along one shelf at the library are ‘better’ than another.

PDD: What would make peace between the different factions?

VA:
Over the years I’ve enjoyed classics, mysteries, thrillers, romance, fantasy, sci-fi, young adult, historical, war stories. The only thing I have difficulties reading is horror because my brain can’t take it—far too scary for me!

Just like there are different seasons to our lives in terms of what we have the time, energy and interest in pursuing, I think there are valid reasons to read different genres. When I had two children under the age of three I wasn’t looking for books that required deep concentration! I was sleep deprived. I wanted easier reads that still made my heart and soul happy. As my life situation has changed so have my reading habits. It’s still eclectic, but there are definitely genres that catch my eye and they will always be my first choice to read.

If part of the cattiness stemmed from the concern that in this day of decreased discretionary spending that one genre will steal sales from another I think we need to remember that readers have preferences they gravitate toward. You might write the best horror novels around, but I’m never going to read your work. But I promise to respect you for improving your craft, and continuing to put out the best books you possibly can that will thrill your readers to death.

Ultimately, isn’t that why writers, write? To touch people where they need to be touched? Whether it is a horror that makes their blood chill, a sci-fi that leads their minds into future worlds, a mystery that puzzles the mind or a romance that stirs the heart.

PDD: How does it feel to be not only a new writer, but a successful new writer?

VA:
I have been extremely fortunate, selling my first story so quickly. But I have also worked hard at what I’ve done. While I’ve written for a short time I’ve read reams of books over the years with a critical eye. That alone helped me emulate authors I admire while developing my own voice as a writer. I’ll be the first to admit that when I submitted I was woefully ignorant of the process. For example, I needed a synopsis to submit with my manuscript. I had no idea what that was. Wrote one out in a couple hours and submitted.

But –after- that first time I’ve learned so much. I’ve asked people I admire for suggestions. I’ve found out what a synopsis should look like. Now when I write one up and compare with my first effort, I have improved greatly.

The bottom line through out the whole process has been the –why- I’ve written. I didn’t feel a great yearning to write since I was young. I wanted to write a book. Period. It sounded like an entertaining activity to attempt and as I wrote I found enjoyed every minute of it.

Every step brings a smile to my face. Finding characters, fixing plot holes. Editing the word ‘over’ out of my most recent manuscript for the 200th time (seriously, I’m having major issues with repetition. I need to talk to my muse…) Getting to see the cover art for a story for the first time. Having someone email me that they are excited about reading my story because the heroine is deaf. The entire shindig has been a HOOT, and I’m so glad I decided to try and play.

PDD: Why don't writers have more fun? Or maybe another way to ask it—which is really a different question—is why do writers take themselves so seriously?

VA:
I don’t think there is anything wrong with taking writing seriously. For some, it’s their career; it’s consistent, demanding work, especially with deadlines to meet. But there’s a difference between taking your writing seriously and taking life too seriously. Any job I’ve done I throw my heart and soul into it and try to find the enjoyable parts.

If I want to be writing for a long time I need to be excited to go back into my current work in progress. I need to want to chat with readers groups. I keep thinking back to that bumper sticker that says ‘Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.’ I’m going to be a multi-published author, and there’s a whole lot about the industry I still don’t know. If I’d waited until I knew all the answers I would have missed a whole lot of grinning.

PDD: That ties in with this topic… Watching other writers agonize over the details
Why is it that we do this? Is this a stumbling block that many writers can't get past (the forest for the trees kind of idea)?

VA:
As I’ve gotten to know more people within the writing community I’ve discovered there are many styles of writing. I have my method—fast and furious. It’s not better than other methods, but it’s the right one for me.

Still, I have to admit I think the quote attributed to Nora Roberts is completely correct. She said, “I can edit a bad page. I can’t edit a blank page.” Writers who stop and agonize over whether the wall behind the villain was gray or ash- they’re losing momentum. Tell the story, get the page filled, and edit the details later. I love my thesaurus, I really do, but I pull it out after I’ve written ‘The End’.

In case you are wondering what I’m talking about, an example I pulled off a writer’s chat room this past week… “I am stuck on finding this one word for a sentence in my story. It begins, I'm pretty sure, with a p, and means to speak very pretentiously. I can't find it on thesaurus or anywhere and it's driving me nuts. Please help!”

I wonder how long that poor soul had been searching for the word ‘pontificate’? The search for the perfect word stopped the flow of creativity for this individual and produced frustration. I shudder to think what will happen if down the road they sell the story and the editor asks them to remove ‘the word’. Perhaps they have simply made a note *p something* and continued to paint the broader picture with less accurate words, to enjoy the experience of creating.

When we were little and playing games of make believe, we didn’t make sure we all had our lines memorized before starting. We stepped into character and lived in the nursery as pirates and princesses and fairies at tea.

I think sometimes we need to remember the gift of childhood and just start playing.

Vivian’s first novel, Wolf Signs, releases March 24. She has two other books contracted for 2009 release. To learn more about Vivian and her books, visit her web site.

Interview with author June Shaw

By Lonnie Cruse

Today I'm pleased to have author June Shaw join me at PDD for an interview. I met June several years ago on the Internet in a writer's group and read her first manuscript. I knew she had a winner. Now she's got two books in print.

PDD: Why did you defer writing your first book for so long?

JS: Goodness, that seems like such a funny question. I'd wanted to be a writer since ninth grade but never tried and married my high school sweetheart right out of school. He was four years older. Within the next six years, I gave birth to five children. "Are you a sex fiend or good Catholic?" people asked me. "Both," I replied. I kept rather busy with the kids' events, and when they were aged five to eleven, my husband died.

Once my mind worked a little, I knew I needed to provide the sole income. I wanted to write. My silly kids wanted to wear shoes and eat and such, so I didn't have time to read a novel, much less try to write one. I completed my college degree, taught English to great ninth grade students, and finally started writing and selling small pieces: essays, stories, one-act plays and a short screenplay produced on the New Orleans channel for the arts. Finally--time to read and try writing novels.

I retired after twenty years of teaching. Soon afterward, I sold a novel, RELATIVE DANGER, which has received great reviews. My children and eight grandchildren are so proud of me. It took so many years--but I'm finally fulfilling my childhood dream. Love it!

PDD: Well deserved kudos, June. How long did it take you to write that book and get it published?

JS: Ten years? Actually, I'm not sure, but when I was writing screenplays, I wrote one called Spunky Lady that I considered similar to Karate Kid. It didn't sell but received great comments. The spunky lady, whom I loved, years later became Cealie Gunther, the amateur sleuth in my series. Her granddaughter who played an important role was a high school senior in the script. Still a senior, she became a major player who could become a victim in RELATIVE DANGER.

It took me quite awhile to learn to write mysteries, but I love them. I've also added a love interest in this series, Cealie's hunky sometimes-ex-lover that she wants to avoid so she can rediscover herself. But he opens Cajun restaurants in all the places she travels - and she is so bad at avoiding tempting dishes and men. These books are fun and romantic and suspenseful murder mysteries. I've been surprised and thrilled at all of the great reviews they've received.

PDD: How have your real life experiences helped in writing your books?

JS: Wow, my hunk is a terrific Cajun cook. I ask for some of his best recipes to include in the books. Of course, he's obliging when I need research for a romance scene : ) Family is most important to Cealie, just as it is to me.

In RELATIVE DANGER a custodian died at school: accident? Or murder? Graduation might not take place. Cealie can't let that happen and pushes in to substitute teach a couple of days to straighten things out and makes matters much worse. Her grandchild could become a next victim unless Cealie determines who did what.

In KILLER COUSINS Cealie's cousin belongs to a stop smoking group that decided "quit day" is the day Cealie shows up, and a member of the group is found dead. Is Cealie's cousin involved? A possible next victim -- or murderer? I smoked most of my life, tried so many ways to quit, joined a stop-smoking group, and finally five years ago quit. Yea!

At my last class reunion four years ago, I studied people that I once thought I knew, some I had known well. The majority of us had gotten caught up with our own lives and families and not kept in touch. I watched them and wondered -- Who are they now? What are they really like? Suppose... What if... And then I knew. I would be writing a mystery in which a small group of former friends who hadn't seen each other in years would get together for a reunion. One female that was popular would have a major problem for them to help solve. Later I cruised in Alaska, remembered my classmates and knew the group would have to meet on that ship. (Boy, sometimes research gets really tough: )

PDD: Bawhahaha, yes, I can see how tough *some* of your research has been! Aspiring writers always want to know how published writers found their publishers. How did you find yours?

JS: I read positive things about Five Star by one of their authors on Sisters in Crime. I'd had some success with other areas of writing, selling essays and stories. Two one-act plays I wrote were produced Off-Off Broadway. A short screenplay I wrote appeared on a Channel for the Arts in New Orleans. I contacted an editor at Five Star about my novel, sent it, and received a contract! Loved it!

After Five Star published RELATIVE DANGER, which received great reviews and sold really well, Harlequin bought reprint rights. They reprinted my book and quickly sold out. Now Five Star just published KILLER COUSINS, my second book in the series. Harlequin is considering it for reprint. And I'm working on the third book in the series. This is so much fun!











PDD: Yes, indeedy! What is your typical writing day like?

JS: I get up around 7, read my Daily Word, get coffee and head for the computer -- unless I am taking care of little grandkids, which I offer to do about once a week, or if I'm going somewhere else. Life is a great adventure now. I was so confined for years with teaching English and raising my five children alone. Now I write and I play and travel.

PDD: Dare I ask? Okay, I will. How do you research your books? Do you always travel to a location before using it in your writing?

JS: Okay, Lonnie, in early December I had to do research for my third Cealie book, which takes place on a cruise ship. The ship's captain and purser and doctor and lots of other staff members gave me so much information. I have lots of pictures hugging them on the Lido deck. I love asking them where's a good place to find a body and such. In the third book, Cealie will go on the cruise to meet her female buddies from high school that she hasn't seen since then. One has a major problem. One has to die. Cealie's hunk has to show up. The ship's doctor gave me lots of info and then asked, "You're sure this is fiction, right?"

Yes, Cealie travels a lot, and I need to check out she's going next. RELATIVE DANGER takes place in Chicago, where I had a great time. KILLER COUSINS is set in Gatlinburg, TN, an area I love. I'm also really fond of cruises. I need to check each place out to make sure I can get Cealie out of the trouble she will definitely get herself in.

PDD: Have you given up wearing control top pantyhose, like your character, Cealie?

JS: Absolutely! Although I think I only tried some with control tops a couple of times, then decided I did not want to impress anyone enough to be squeezing myself into so much control. Now even the stockings are normally goners. Love it.

PDD: One of your non-writing activities listed on your website is fishing. Do you bait your own hooks? How successful are you at catching fish and what kind do you go after? I'm asking because I adore bass fishing but refuse to bait my own hooks.

JS: I'm good at fishing, and I'll teach you how to bait your hooks. Last week four of us went to a pond with worms late in the afternoon and caught 34 perch (called bream elsewhere, I think) and one nice bass - mine. During the summer I often go down to my squeeze's camp/summer home at Grand Isle, Louisiana, an island about ninety miles south from where I live. We go in his boat in areas around the Gulf of Mexico and catch lots of speckled trout. The bait we like best is artificial worms.

PDD: Is there anything else you'd like us to know about June Shaw or your books?

JS: Yes, please visit my Web site, www.juneshaw.com. There you can register for my changing contests, read more about my books, and see great pictures, like of my mom dancing at her 100th party. KILLER COUSINS is dedicated to her; it came out at the end of January, the day before she died, so we were able to read the dedication to her. We were so blessed. She was 102 and still coming to line dance classes with me. Last fall I received a call from a producer of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno who'd read about that and invited us to be on the show. We declined because Mom was almost blind from macular degeneration. She thought it was great fun being invited. We had so much great lively music at her funeral that our mayor, as the guest speaker on a radio talk show the next day, told everyone he'd been to the most fun funeral for her. At line dance class the next day, they dedicated the Freeze, Mom's favorite, to her.

Although my main character, Cealie, is nowhere near Mom's age, she has Mom's spunk. Cealie is who I want to be. I'm again working on Cealie's third book, which is set on that cruise ship. Mmm, gotta go check out the pictures again of me hugging on those hunks on the staff: )

PDD: Thanks, June for a fun interview. Any chance you need an "assistant" on your next fun research trip? Just asking.

Cover Art of 2008

At this year's Bouchercon in Indianapolis in October, an Anthony award will be given for the first time for the best cover art of 2008. Authors agonize about their covers, which can make such an impact on the book buyer or reader, for good or ill. The bigger the publisher, the less likely it is that the author will have any say about the cover. We've all heard horror stories. And sometimes we strike it lucky, and an artist, photographer, and/or designer captures a perfect and memorable illustration of the author's vision. I've invited any and all authors who loved their 2008 covers to display them here. Note that we are not connected with the Anthonys in any way, just giving as many 2008 covers as we can a little wider circulation.

If you registered early for Bouchercon and therefore have a ballot to vote for nominees (not winners) for the Anthonys, note that you have to include the format (hardcover, trade paper, or mass market paperback) for your picks. If you don't have the books, you can get that info on Amazon. Sorry, authors, I forgot to ask you to include it--you can add it in a comment on this post.

An unexpected number of authors did love their 2008 covers. Here's a big batch of those covers, and I'll post more next Thursday. I'll start with mine.

Elizabeth Zelvin, Death Will Get You Sober (hardcover)


Jeffrey Marks, Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography


Jeff Cohen, It Happened One Knife



Eric Stone, Flight of the Hornbill


Julie Kramer, Stalking Susan


Deborah Shlian, Rabbit in the Moon


Laura Elvebak, Less Dead


Betty Webb, Desert Cut


Kathy Lynn Emerson, How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries


Betty Sullivan LaPierre, The Lure of the Witch


C.J. Lyons, Lifelines (paperback original)


Lou Allin, And On the Surface Die


Jeri Westerson, Veil of Lies (hardcover)


Louise Ure, The Fault Tree (hardcover)


Vicki Lane, In A Dark Season (mass market paperback original)


Roberta Isleib, Asking For Murder (paperback original)


Elaine Viets, Clubbed to Death (hardcover)


Marilyn Meredith, Kindred Spirits


Mary Jane Maffini, The Cluttered Corpse


Baron Birtcher, Angels Fall (hardcover)


Clare Langley-Hawthorne, The Serpent and the Scorpion


Renée Gardner, And the Dog Took the Cat


I.J. Parker, The Hell Screen


Linda Richards, Death Was the Other Woman


Chester Campbell, The Marathon Murders (hardcover & trade paper)


Pat Browning, Absinthe of Malice (trade paperback)


Mary Reed and Eric Mayer, Seven for a Secret


Deborah Sharp, Mama Does Time


James R. Benn, Blood Alone


Visit again next Thursday, March 26, for more 2008 covers the authors loved.

Kerry Greenwood & the Fabulous Phryne Fisher

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall

Kerry Greenwood, a major crime fiction writer in her native Australia, has also gained an enthusiastic following in the U.S. for her mysteries set in the 1920s and starring the fabulously wealthy, always fashionable Phryne Fisher. After a false start with another U.S. publisher, the Phryne (pronounced Fry-knee, rhymes with briny) novels have been published in quick succession by Poisoned Pen Press, complete with the dazzling original covers from the Allan & Unwin editions in Australia. The latest is Murder in the Dark, released this month. Next is Murder on a Midsummer Night, out this summer. PPP also publishes Kerry’s new contemporary series featuring Corinna Chapman.

Kerry was born in Footscray, a suburb of Melbourne, and lives there today. Although she had always aspired to be a writer, she earned a law degree from Melbourne University and continues to work one day a week for Victorian Legal Aid. She lives with three cats (Attilla, Belladonna, and Ashe), a collection of 7,000 books, and a registered wizard. In her spare time she has jumped out of planes in an attempt to cure her fear of heights, but only succeeded in giving herself a fear of jumping out of planes. She says she can detect bookshops from blocks away, and the size of her book collection lends credence to the claim.


Q. How did your arrangement with Poisoned Pen Press come about? Had you ever been published in the US before PPP picked up your books?

A. In the dim and distant past, i.e. 1991, Ballantine picked up the first two Phryne books, renamed Cocaine Blues [to] Death by Misadventure and they failed to sell. Then PPP contacted my Aus publisher and this time I caught the public taste, it appears. Thank you, public!

Q. Your covers are gorgeous – and so are the gowns Phryne wears. Who designs the gowns and who creates the covers?

A. My mother and I design the gowns and the amazing Beth Norling does the pictures. She sketches first then does a pastel. They are wonderful and so very actually 1928.

Q. Phryne seems ideally suited to her time. Why did you choose the 1920s? Could you write a character like Phryne in a 21st century setting?

A. Not really. Phryne is the product of the losses of the Great War, the sudden elevation of women because there were few men, and she is bold but not impossible for that period. It's not as easy as it used to be to be bold in the 21st century...

I picked 1928 initially because I did a thesis length essay on the 1928 strike for Legal History, and I over-researched it, interviewed all the old men who were on the wharf, read all the newspapers, fell in love with original research. My father was a wharfie so I could and did get into the Waterside Workers Federation archives. So when I was looking for a historical period I naturally thought of 1928.

Q. Does Phryne have qualities, or attitudes, that you consider distinctly Australian? Or would she be equally at home in 1920s America or Britain?

A. That is a really good question. I suppose her Aus qualities are a certain contempt for authority and perhaps her appetite for a good time. But she would fit in wherever she was - or rather, stand out. In England at the time she would be a Bright Young Thing and considered outrageous enough not to be invited to certain events - she would not get to meet the King, for example. In the USA at the time she would be overbold - and no one then would accept a Chinese lover, though it would have been worse if Lin was black. In fact, it would be illegal.

Q. Like many mystery heroines, Phryne is larger than life, an idealized woman. Is she someone you’d like to have as a friend? Other than lots of money, does she have anything that you wish you had?

A. Oh, that total uninterest in what anyone else thinks - I would love to have that. Her style. Her taste. Her hats! I would be delighted if she was my friend. In fact, she is. She sits on the corner of my desk and tells me stories.

Q. Tell us about the life of a writer in Australia. Are literary agents vital there, as they are in the US? Is it possible to find a publisher and have a writing career without an agent? I also wonder if you feel the same pressure American writers feel to get out in public, do bookstore signings, interviews, everything you possibly can to sell books. How much promotion do you do for your books?

A. I had an agent when I began, and I think an agent is a good thing, but not essential, in Australia. I used to do a great deal of publicity, tours, signings, radio and TV etc. When I was younger I thought it was great fun. Then I got older and menopause ran over me like a big black truck and I got too sick and exhausted to do any but the main interviews. My publisher does not press me to do more than I think is wise, because they want me to continue to write books...

Q. What attracted you to the mystery genre? What can you do in a mystery that you couldn’t do in mainstream fiction?

A. You can provide a story which everyone wants to read right through to the end. The trouble with lit fiction is that post-modernism has disjuncted (is that a word? It ought to be) or perhaps I mean dislocated the narrative, so you can't read it in bed. Mysteries are one of the few forms of fiction left that demand a story, and I am a story teller. I am in good company. Dickens, for a start.

Q. Have you ever studied writing, or have you learned on the job, so to speak? Do you believe formal instruction in writing gives an author an advantage?

A. Never studied writing, just wrote a lot of books, and when I was a child I used to read dictionaries and cornflakes packets and everything I could get my hands on. I did do a university degree in arts, though, including English, which sharpens the mind and broadens the horizons. I read, for example, Mrs. Gaskell, whom otherwise I might not have met. A writing class can teach grammar and spelling and sentence construction and they are all good things, because without them the story is not told in its most effective form. Depends on the person...

Q. You’re incredibly prolific. How long does it take you to write a book? Are you already thinking about the next one as you write? Do you take a break between books or just dive into a new one right away? Do you write every day?

A. I can only think of one book at a time and I think and research for about three months and then I write the book when it demands to be written. In its extreme form, a novel takes three weeks with no time out for sleep and a staggering intake of coffee. Now that I am supervised firmly by my cat Belladonna, who hits the caps lock when I have been typing for more than three hours, a novel takes a couple of months. And what you see is what you get. I have no drafts. I just describe what I can see in front of my eyes, like a film. Insane, I know, but it works and now, after fifty novels, I trust it.

Q. Would you tell us a bit about your new series? This doesn’t mean the end of Phryne, does it?

A. No, Phryne continues. The new series is a cosy set in the present about Corinna Chapman, who is the same size as me (fat) and is a baker in the city of Melbourne. She has several cats, a lover called Daniel, and she lives in an eccentric apartment house called Insula. Unlike Phyrne, Corinna is not a hero. She makes mistakes. She gets things wrong. She's refreshing to write about...

Q. What current crime fiction writers do you admire?

A. Love that Janet Ivanovich. Read Kathy Reichs (though I prefer the character in Bones, perhaps because she gets to work with David Boreanz). Admire Susan Wittig Albert, Donna Leon, Tony Hillerman.

Q. I read somewhere that you have a collection of more than 7,000 books. I’m unspeakably envious, but at the same time I want to ask the same question people asked the woman who gave birth to octuplets: Did you plan this, or did it just happen? What’s in your collection? Have you read all of them? If you wanted a particular book, could you find it easily?

A. They accreted, like a coral reef. Gradually. I haven't moved house for a long time, which may explain it. I know where everything is because the poetry is all in one place, as is the history, the male and female biogs, the detective stories, the science fiction, the research books. I have certainly read all of them, the collection is the books I read and decided I wanted to read again. Every now and again I have a huge purge, give away armloads, and when I look back I still have just as many books and no space in the shelves... there may be something magical in this.

Q. You have many fans in the United States. Do you think you’ll ever come over for a visit and meet some of them?

A. At the moment I have an affliction of the middle ear which makes it impossible for me to fly long distances. If this gets better or someone offers me a cruise, I would love to come to America.

Visit the author's website at www.phrynefisher.com

Wearing of the Green

Sharon Wildwind

Dia’s Muire agus Padraic duit.

Of course I’m jumping the gun by starting a conversation with that sentence. According to my Buntús Cainte: a first step in spoken Irish, the first person to speak simply invokes God’s blessing, “Dia duit.” The second person takes it up a notch with “Dia’s Muire duit.” The third person builds to, “Dia’s Muire agus Padraic duit.” I think—don’t quote me on this—there is a fourth form, which invokes not only God, Mary, and St. Patrick, but St. Columba as well. Perhaps Bishop Blackie Ryan would know.

Anyway, you get the idea: each person speaking has to add a little, not only to get the last word, but to make sure that each response tops, ever so slightly, what the previous speaker said.

Sure and could I be doing a St. Patrick’s day blog without mentioning the green? Only I’m not going to write about any of those forty shades that supposedly dot the Emerald Isle. Let’s talk about that green-eyed . . . monster. Jealousy.

I spend a lot of time being jealous of fellow writers. There is a high correspondence between who I’ve just finished reading, or am currently reading, and the jealousy quotient. Except some time the jealousy lingers far after I’ve scarfed down everything a writer has to offer.

Take Stephen Booth. He was one of the authors I picked to read in 2007 and two years later, I’m still green-pea jealous about his skill in making geography and atmosphere characters in his novels. I can’t say that his books made me immediately want to book the next flight to Great Britain’s Peak District, but that’s not what he’s after. He’s writing terrific police procedurals, not travelogs.

Ditto on the jealous side for Margaret Maron and Vicki Lane. Their geography is North Carolina: the Piedmont for Maron and western North Carolina for Lane. They not only have that the land down pat, but the culture and the rapidly-disappearing historic speech patterns.

Traveling in time rather than space, I put Anne Parker and Jana G. Oliver at the top of my people to envy list. Parker sets her books in the Leadville, Colorado of 1879-1880. I confess that I’m a real historical novel snob. If I know something about a historical period, and the writer gets details even a little wrong, it diminishes the book’s pleasure for me. I haven’t caught Parker out yet and I don’t expect to. Oliver anchors her time-travel mysteries with one end in 2057 and the other in 1888 London. I feel as though I am watching her characters flit from the future to the past and back again like a spectator watching world-class tennis at Wimbledon. Game, set, and match.

My husband and his friends who compete in western martial arts have a saying, “On any given day.” What it means is that, on any given day—usually o-dark-thirty on a Saturday—when packing to leave for an event, a competitor know that today’s outcome will be decided, in part, by today being a spectacular day for him or a rotten day for the other guy.

When I think about all of these writers, I know—on any given day—that I’m just as good as they are. I can turn out a line, a paragraph, sometimes even a whole chapter that could proudly stand beside one of theirs. I’m jealous because I want to be, all the time—every line, every paragraph, every book—as good as they are. I want other people to read something I’ve written and say with a groan, “I wish I’d written that.”

Isn't it lovely the way writers are always pushing the quality of the writing up a notch, playing off of the strengths of other writers!
_______
Quote for the week:
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?
~Robert Browning, poet
______



May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Psychic Moments, Soothsayers, and Computerized Mind-Reading

by Julia Buckley
I wrote to my friend John Dandola this weekend saying that I dreamed I went to his anniversary party, and that he had three sons (he doesn't) who sang for him and his wife at the celebration. There was more bizarre detail, and I mostly e-mailed him because it was funny. He then wrote back that it was odd I'd contacted him just then, because he'd been thinking about me a great deal, and this last week in particular.

Moments like these send me back to my questions about the human brain and its potential for mind-melding. Have you ever had those moments where you are about to call someone, and your phone rings, and it's that person?

The best example I have of the mindreading thing goes back to my early days of teaching, when I was fresh out of the wrapper and working in a Catholic school. The little old nun in charge of the AV equipment was named Sister Theresa Rose, and she was very sweet. I once went into the AV lab to sign out a VCR for my class. I had lately been plagued by some unexpected and severe back pain, and I was worried about it, since I was only twenty-something and not prone to this sort of thing. However, I hadn't really told anyone about it. When I entered her domain on this day, Sister Theresa Rose looked at me and said, "Oh, Julia, I've been thinking about you! I had a dream that you were suffering from sciatica."

That's just one example, of course, but it's always stayed with me because I believed at the time that she, a spiritual person, had tapped into something in me.

Interestingly, scientists believe that mind-reading is something that can be done even by computer, and in fact it is being used more and more in the detection of crime. There are Orwellian implications of this, but it certainly would go far to answer some of the mysteries that have, in the past, remained unsolved. According to this Newsweek article, when a witness is being 'read,' "The detective is careful not to mention the murder weapon. Once the suspect has conjured up the scene, the detective asks him to envision the weapon. Pay dirt: his pattern of brain activity screams "hammer" as loud and clear as if he had blurted it out."

The article also suggests, though, that people's mind patterns are remarkably similar: "If what your brain does when it thinks about an igloo is almost identical to what mine does, that suggests the possibility of a universal mind-reading dictionary, in which brain-activity pattern x means thought y in most people." This, then, would allow a computer to read minds by noting brain activity on a brain scan. But is it also what allows people to "read" each other's minds? Or must we believe that every time we have seemingly psychic moments, they are coincidental?

There is, after all, the concept of intuition, which has always existed. How did ancient people define it? In honor of the date, I'll reference Shakespeare's famous soothsayer in Julius Caesar, who warned Caesar to "Beware the Ides of March." Was he acting on intuition? Shakespeare called him a "seer," and many ancient Greek plays reference this idea. How then, did the seers get their ability? Can anyone tap into this phenomenon?

And my final question for the day (geez, all prompted by one innocent e-mail!) is: What have been your experiences with "psychic" moments?

Winner!

Karen Brees won the drawing for a free copy of one of my books. Karen, I've emailed you, so let me know which book you want and where to send. Lonnie

The Dreaded Book Tour

By Vicki Delany, guest blogger


Before I became a writer I imagined the book tour as follows:

· T day minus one month – Receive schedule of appearances from publisher.
· T Day minus three weeks – Receive airline tickets and hotel reservations from publisher.
· T Day minus two weeks – Shop for suitable clothes for appearances.
· T Day minus two weeks – Send receipts for new clothes to publisher.
· T Day minus one week – Receive list of newspaper and radio interviews from publisher.
· T Day minus two days – Check ink levels in good pen.
· T Day minus one day – Pack suitcase and go to bed early.
· T Day – Be ready on time for limo pickup for drive to airport.
· Duration of Book Tour: Have fun, meet people and talk about books and writing.

Now that I am a writer, I know that the book tour goes as follows:

· T Day minus 6 months - Send introductory e-mail to every bookstore and library in target area.
· T Day minus 5.5 months – Follow up every e-mail with telephone call.
· T Day minus 5.5 months to T-Day minus 1 month -- Follow up phone call with another phone call. Repeat.
· T Day minus 3 months – Notice that book store A is 8 hours drive from book store B, and the signing at bookstore A finishes one half hour before the signing at book store B begins.
· T Day minus 3 months – Juggle appearances on three days surrounding screw-up mentioned above.
· T Day minus 1 month – Write date and time on postcards for bookstores to hand out.
· T Day minus 2 weeks – Go on Internet to arrange car rental. Be shocked at the cost.
· T Day minus 1 week – See doctor for hand cramp caused by all that writing on postcards.
· T Day minus 6 days – Go to bank to withdraw cash for trip.
· T Day minus 6 days – PANIC.
· T Day minus 5 days – Receive notice from airline that flight has been rescheduled. It now leaves at 3:45 AM.
· T Day minus 2 days – Try on suitable clothes for being centre of attention. Suck in belly. Sigh heavily.
· T Day – Get up early; drive to airport; pay enormous amount for long-term parking; wait hours to board plane; wait more hours for plane to depart.
· Duration of Book Tour: Have fun, meet people and talk about books and writing.

Vicki and Deborah Turrell Atkinson are visiting Hawaii and the western U.S. to promote their new mysteries, Valley of the Lost and Pleasing the Dead. Details can be found at Booktour (www.booktour.com/author/vicki_delany) Vicki’s trailer for Valley of the Lost is on Youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOJ4m391LZQ

Your face on . . .

By Lonnie Cruse

Is your face on Facebook? Mine is. Well, okay, my book cover is. As well as MySpace, Squidoo, Crimespace, and Shelfari. And others. Are you there? Are we friends?

This weekend I saw a warning on the Internet that some of these public Internet spaces, particularly Facebook, are under attack by hackers. They somehow manage to take the profile of one person, and using that person's "friend's list" send emails to those friends urging them to click a fake YouTube link. IF you click on the link, you receive a warning that your FLASH abilities need to be updated and to click this link. DO NOT click on any links like this. It installs a worm or virus on your computer and to date there is NO cure for this virus.

Given the economy and the cost of promoting any author's books, the Internet is currently the best and cheapest way to promote our books and for readers to find/connect with us. Practically every author I know puts up information on these types of websites. And then they connect with other authors to become "friends." But doing so puts us all at great risk for damaging and disabling the very computers we depend on to do business, be it selling books, ordering items, or paying our bills. Scary. Dangerous. But, sigh, necessary.

So, do you subscribe to any of the above social networks? And if so, how do you protect yourself? Please share with us, we'd love to hear from you.

Incidentally, I'm in a mood to celebrate. I've just signed a contract with Five Star to publish the second Kitty Bloodworth mystery, FIFTY-SEVEN TRAVELING, due out July 2010. Share your thoughts on keeping us all safe on the Internet, and particularly on these social networks, and I'll draw a name from the comments section tomorrow morning and send the winner a free copy of my first in the series, FIFTY-SEVEN HEAVEN. OR if you happen to have that book already, I'll send you a copy of any of the four books in my first series, the Metropolis Mystery series. If you are named as winner, please be sure to email me your address. Click the email link on my homepage, http://www.lonniecruse.com

The Voice in the Author’s Head

Elizabeth Zelvin

In my alternate persona as a therapist, I was trained to ask, when a client claimed he (or she) kept hearing voices, “Do the voices come from inside or outside your head?” If the voices came from outside, chances were the client had a thought disorder, such as schizophrenia. (Obviously, I got my training well before the cell phone era began.) So I wasn’t too terribly freaked out when, having developed my series protagonist, recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler, I began to hear his voice at odd moments on the inside of my head. The more I wrote about Bruce (four novels and four short stories so far, though not all are published yet), the more distinctive his voice became.

I’ve just opened at random the notebook I keep on my night table, along with a self-illuminating pen, to write down those middle-of-the-night thoughts. Here’s the first entry that caught my eye.

Bruce: X’s supercilious expression would have looked good on a camel.

I don’t know who X is. I’ve never transcribed the line to a computer file or used it in a manuscript. But it sure is something I know that Bruce would say.

Now, here’s a passage that never made it into Death Will Help You Leave Him, the book that will come out in the fall. I forgot about it once I’d written it down in the middle of the night. Bruce and his ex-wife Laura are breaking into her boyfriend’s apartment. Bruce has been complaining that Laura has no sense of irony.

I hoped we weren’t going to end up in jail over this little expedition.

“What’s the sense of giving up jumping turnstiles if you have me breaking into apartments?”

“You pay the fare now? Oh, Bruce, that’s funny.” Laura’s deep laugh rang out.

Okay, so she did have a sense of irony.

Are you beginning to get the hang of Bruce? He sure doesn’t sound like me—and to me, that’s the miracle of “voice” in fiction. Here are some lines from that scene that did make it into the book. They’re climbing up the fire escape to get into the apartment.

I needed a smoke. A guy’s gotta do something with the anxiety. Prayers to my Higher Power for guidance in breaking and entering didn’t seem quite appropriate.

A little later on, he says, “I don’t recommend breaking and entering sober.”

Fellow author Susan Froetschel described the process very well in an interview on Poe's Deadly Daughters a while back. She said: “The conversation comes naturally, just spills out, and I often must use a heavy hand to cut the dialogue. And as the story unfolds, the characters can surprise even me with what they say and do. Once I get to know them, their reactions just pop into my head.”

That’s it precisely. Recently I revised a manuscript that I hope will become the third book in the series. Bruce and his friends Barbara and Jimmy are at an elegant party in the Hamptons. Barbara can get a little too earnest about recovery, and as a world-class codependent, she can always think of a way to fix or improve someone else. Jimmy has been in AA a long time and takes its principles and slogans very seriously. Bruce, on the other hand, tends to maintain a certain level of skepticism.

It had been a while since I’d read over the first draft of this manuscript. I couldn’t quite remember how the scene went, but, pen in hand, I read this passage at the bottom of a page.

“He couldn’t shake hands,” Barbara said, “because he had a bottle of Veuve Cliquot in one hand and a flute in the other. And now he’s moved on to whiskey. I don’t suppose you or Jimmy could twelve-step him?”

“The program is for those who want it, not for those who need it,” Jimmy said as he came up behind us. “Attraction, not promotion.”

I read those AA catch phrases (completely in character for Jimmy at that moment), and I thought, I know exactly what Bruce would say: “Yeah, yeah.”

I turned the page, and there was the next line, in Bruce’s narrative voice:

Yeah, yeah.

As Susan Froetschel puts it, his reaction popped into my head, as it had when I wrote the first draft. In this case, it wasn’t clever or complicated, but I’m absolutely sure it’s what Bruce would have said in the circumstances. And in revision, what she says about cutting the dialogue, heavily if necessary, is true for me too. In the first draft, I need to pour it all out without censoring myself. Not every writer works this way, but many do. In revision, I have to “kill my darlings.” It’s taken me a long time to learn not to cling to every well-turned phrase. But it’s become a lot easier since I learned to recognize Bruce’s voice. No matter how much I loved a line when I wrote it, if it’s Not Bruce, I cut it.

Tweet!

Sandra Parshall

What would Ernest Hemingway have said if he had tweeted?

What topics would Edgar Allan Poe have blogged about?

What would James M. Cain’s Facebook page have looked like?

It's difficult to imagine how writers managed to sell books in the pre-computer era. How did they get by without web sites? And weren't they awfully lonely without the internet?

The social networking and online marketing made possible by computers and the internet have become so much a part of the writing life that many of us feel we can’t have a career at all if we aren’t plugged in, tweeting, blogging, and constantly updating readers. Writers are everywhere on the internet, blabbing about ourselves. This has a definite downside. We’re like the movie stars who appear on public streets with torn jeans, two-day beards, and dirty hair.

The mystery is gone.

We have no secrets left because we’ve used them to fill the insatiable maw of the blog machine. We’ve written about our bad habits, our phobias, our food fetishes, our pets (alive and dead), our siblings, our parents, our spouses, our kids, the bully who beat us up in sixth grade, the teacher-nun who humiliated us in eighth grade, the waiter who served us with lukewarm coffee and a bad attitude, the drycleaner who ruined our favorite coat, our hangnails. If there’s anything left that our fans don’t know about our lives, all they have to do is wait. Eventually it will all become blog material.

And we complain, incessantly, that we don’t have enough time to write.

How easy the writing life was before the internet existed. Sit down at a typewriter and write – that was it. No e-mail to answer, no Twitter followers to connect with, no blog to produce, no web site or MySpace page to update. I can’t help wondering how certain writers from those pre-internet days would have coped with the demands made on 21st century writers.

Hemingway would have been a natural for Twitter. A limit of 140 characters per tweet? No problem for Papa. And he could have blogged about his six-toed cats. (Hey, I’ve blogged about Hemingway’s cats – see note below – so why wouldn’t he?) William Faulkner would have had a little more trouble with Twitter.

Truman Capote was born to blog – but born too early, alas. Imagine the feuds that inveterate gossip could have ignited, and kept going indefinitely, if he’d written a daily blog. Give Norman Mailer a blog at the same time and we’d really have something interesting going on.

What writers from the past do you think would have embraced today’s online promotional opportunities? Who would have fled in horror from the mere suggestion of blogging and tweeting?

If Agatha Christie had been addicted to blogging, would she have kept in touch during her mysterious 10-day disappearance?

Was Raymond Chandler a MySpace kind of guy, or would he have preferred Facebook?

Would Arthur Conan Doyle have named his blog for himself, or would he have called it holmesmysteries.com?

And what would Hemingway have said if he’d tweeted?

****************************
NOTE: I wrote a while back about the USDA’s efforts to remove the 50 or so cats from the Hemingway property, now a museum, on Key West. (Please don’t ask how the Department of Agriculture became involved. I’m as baffled as you undoubtedly are.) If you haven’t read about the resolution already, you might like to know that the five-year battle ended with construction of a fence to keep the felines from wandering off the grounds. Most of the cats are descendants of Snowball, a six-toed cat Hemingway received as a gift in 1935. The USDA concluded that they are healthy, happy, and well cared for by the museum staff.

Is This Book Necessary?

Sharon Wildwind

Recently I read a long interview that Jofie Ferrari-Adler, an editor at Grove/Atlantic, conducted with four young editors. This was published on the web site, Poets and Writers.

Here’s part of the response that Eric Chinski gave to a question about what besides the written page or the author’s skill or her obsession compels an editor to purchase a manuscript. Mr. Chinski is vice-president and editor-in-chief of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, a long-time publisher known for its literary fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and children’s literature.

“The word necessary always comes to mind for me. Beyond a good story, beyond good writing, does the novel feel necessary? . . . the ones I tend to be drawn to are the ones that either feel personally necessary or globally necessary in some vague way that’s hard to define. And that should be at the sentence level, too. People who can write really well sometimes get carried away by their own writing and forget what’s actually necessary on the page. . . . Sometimes you feel like an author is just writing for the sake of writing, and that is a big turnoff. It’s got to feel necessary at every level.”

Huckleberry Finn was a necessary book. To Kill a Mockingbird. The Grapes of Wrath. I’m not sure about Moby Dick, though, no doubt, generations of high school English teachers could argue me to a stand-still on that one.

I tried to think of a globally-necessary mystery. The one that came to mind was Tess Gerritsen’s The Apprentice. With apologies to Dr. Gerritsen, it was a book that made me tremendously uncomfortable. I finished it with all of the morbid fascination people display gawking at fatality traffic accidents, which is exactly the point one of the characters makes. I saw qualities in that character’s assessment of people’s relationship to torture and death that I didn’t like recognizing in myself. It cut so close to the bone that I had more than a moment’s pause as to whether I should turn myself in for a bit of psychotherapeutic tune-up.

As writers, we have a standard list of why we read/write/enjoy mysteries. Justice is done. Crime does not pay. Murder will out. The world can be put back into alignment through the actions and sacrifice of the hero/heroine. The bigger the sacrifice, the bigger the wrong that can be righted. These ideas are embedded in culture. In countries where justice—or the lack of it—and the roles of police officers are different from the United States, Canada and Great Britain, mystery “truths” look very different.

I suspect, however, that the majority of us are writing personally-necessary stories. Each of us has a particular mix of stories and characters that won’t let us alone. They intrude during the day when we’re standing at the photocopier or doing dishes. They invade our dreams. They keep coming back until, in desperate self-defense, we have to put those stories on paper. I really hope that is what Mr. Chinski meant by a “personally-necessary” story because I think it's as close as I'm going to come to meeting the necessary criteria.

What makes a mystery necessary to you?
_____
Quote for the week:

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.
~Anne Morrow Lindbergh, author and aviator (1906-2001)

Stress and the Wisdom of Children

by Julia Buckley
A nostalgic look at my sons, back when they were my chief advisors.


Despite the fact that I write books about people who can survive all sorts of tension and intrigue, I have found that I myself am terrible under pressure.

Saturday, for example, I got a notice from my mortgage company telling me that my payment was overdue. I immediately went into high-stress mode, tearing through my records and trying to contact my debtors by phone (naturally, they were closed). I then tried some of the online options, none of which worked because they kept detouring me to a “late payment” page, while I was convinced that they had lost my check.

During this problem-solving stage, I basically threw a fit, snapping at my sons, who had stopped goofing around to loiter around the computer and ask me what was wrong. Eventually I managed to solve it (I hope) via electronic means. Then I thought about how rotten I am at dealing with stress.

I was reminded of a similar occasion about ten years ago, when I was trying to transition back into the workplace after spending a couple of years with my children. I had gone on an interview at a local high school and met with both the principal and the English department chair. They had given me some forms to fill out and return to them the following day.

I came home with my forms and promptly lost them–I have a tendency to lose very important things in a way that would interest Sigmund Freud. Under stress I become a fool; I throw away checks, recycle tax forms, spill food on crucial documents.

On this particular day, my sons (one still in a diaper) sat watching me as I tore around the house, raging about my lost paper. Ian, my oldest, tried to counsel me through my panic attack. Graham, a baby, sat in his high chair and played with a plastic toy.

“What did you lose, Mom?”

“A really important paper!”

“Did you put it on the table?”

“I thought so, but it’s not there! I put it right here, and now it’s gone!”

“You’ll find it. Just keep looking,” he advised.

“Do you know how bad this will look?” I yelled. “They just interviewed me, and now I’ll have to tell them that I lost the papers they just gave me! Do you know how unprofessional that will seem?” I was beyond the point at which I might notice the irony or the inappropriateness of sharing this problem with a little boy and a baby.

My son came forward and put a calming hand on my arm. Back then they had skinny little bodies and large round heads, like Charlie Brown characters or Precious Moments figurines. Ian’s pudgy face was serious as could be as he said, “Mom, everyone loses things. All you have to do is go to them and say ‘I’m sorry, but I lost the form, and I wonder if I could have another one.’”
Of course. It was true, but coming from a four-year-old it seemed especially wise.

“You’re right,” I said, hugging him. I could feel my tension level ebbing as I let go of the notion that I had to find those forms.

Naturally, once I ceased freaking out, I found the missing papers within the hour.

This is still pretty much the way I deal with stress. When I write mysteries, I tend to give my characters far more stressors than I’ve ever had to deal with, but I also make them much stronger than myself. I suppose this is one of the many ways that writing is wish fulfillment for me. I wish I were as strong as the people in the pages of my books, but at least I have sturdy young men who can tell me when I’m having one of my episodes and put things in perspective for me.

The mortgage crisis averted, my sons returned to their toys–-computer and army guys, respectively–and are none the worse for wear. I'm hoping their ability to deal with my "episodes" will help them in their careers one day.

Maybe they'll end up being air traffic controllers or crisis counselors. :)

How do you respond to stress?

Women of Mystery Quiz

by Darlene Ryan

Can you name the authors? These 16 women were chosen for no other reason than I like their books. Everyone who comments, no matter how well or how badly you do on the quiz, will have a chance to win the mystery anthology, Dangerous Women, edited by Otto Penzler. If tests give you a headache then just say "Hello" in comments. That will enter you in the draw as well. Good luck. Come back for the answers and the winner's name Sunday evening. We got out the lucky Law & Order hat and the winner is Iasa. Iasa send your snail mail address to darlene at darleneryan dot com and I'll get your book in the mail to you. Thanks everyone for trying our quiz. The answers are below.

1. Her alphabetized series is up to the letter T. Sue Grafton

2. This Edgar award-winning author wrote a series featuring journalist Molly Cates. Mary Willis Walker

3. This mother-daughter team combined their names to create their pseudonym. They are the authors of the Monkeewrench mysteries. PJ Tracy

4. This grand dame of mystery writers created Mr. Parker Pyne, detective, but is better known for her other two sleuths--one male and one female. Agatha Christie

5. Her red-headed sleuth is a former cop turned detective who also drives a cab on the side, acts a "big sister" to a drug lord's daughter and has a mobster boyfriend. Linda Barnes

6. This "diva" author, a past guest of the Deadly Daughters, named the cat in her series after her own cat, Mochie. Krista Davis

7. Her amateur sleuth, Tricia Miles, is the owner of a bookstore-Haven't Got a Clue--in the Bookstown mystery series. Under one of her two aliases she also writes the Jeff Resnick psychological suspense series. Lorna Barrett

8. This Agatha-award winner is one of the Deadly Daughters. Our own Sandra Parshall. (You all knew that, didn't you?)

9. Both her husband, Jonathan and her son, Jesse are writers. Faye Kellerman

10. When her on-going series began in 1977 her main character was an investigator for All Souls Legal Co-operative. Now the character runs her own investigative firm. Marcia Muller

11. She won the Anthony, the Edgar, the Agatha and the MacAvity awards for the first in her series about a Colleton County judge Margaret Maron

12. Her best-selling mystery series, set in Boston, features two female protagonists--one a police detective and the other a medical examiner. Tess Gerrittsen

13. This author is up to 14 in her numbered series about a Jersey bounty hunter. Janet Evanovich

14. Her sleuth's first name is Victoria but most people call her V.I. Sara Paretsky

15. This writer's characters include a witch, a pixie and a vampire whose company is called Vampiric Charms. The book titles are all parodies of Clint Eastwood movies Kim Harrison

16. She writes about the all female law firm of Rosato and Associates. Lisa Scottoline

So? How did you do?

That's NOT how I would've written it . . .

By Lonnie Cruse

A decade or so ago, I was an avid reader but not a published writer, unless you count newsletter articles for various publications, a family history for my children, and a really cute (at least I thought so, and the parents agreed) play written by me and performed by my cub scouts, Den 23, back in the seventies. The play centered around the adventures of a sock lost in the washing machine that eventually found himself in the land of lost socks. We even had a cardboard box turned washing machine as a character. Unfortunately, that particular literary treasure was lost to posterity, probably stuffed somewhere in my files ages ago. Where was I?

As a lone reader, snuggled up in my favorite chair with my favorite cup of tea nearby but no one to discuss my favorite books with, plot holes and other author errors sometimes bothered me. Most often I didn't know why. Most of my friends didn't read the same books.

When I started writing and connecting on the Internet and at conferences with other readers, writers, and reviewers, I began to hear discussions about what worked and what didn't in various books. I began to understand the difference between authors who skillfully wove in clues so that at the end of the book you smacked yourself on the forehead and said: "I shoulda spotted that one," and authors who out and out cheated the reader by holding back important clues and/or dropped a totally unrelated solution in at the end of the book. Ever hear a reader/reviewer say that she/he loved the book right up to the ending, whereupon it looked like the author had gone out to lunch and never come back?

I finished a book last night which shall remain title-less because I don't want a law suit, and I didn't like the ending. I'll give you the gist. Subject appears to be an uninterested stranger. Subject finds dead body in the home of the victim (subject entered vic's home unannounced in order to ask for assistance.) Police dismiss subject as a suspect because he IS a stranger. Another suspect (who proves to be innocent eventually but who threatens others with a weapon) is accidentally killed by authorities. Authorities assume this is the end of the case.

Several suspects confess to subject/stranger that he/she *could* be the killer because no one liked the victim, but no one wants anyone else to go to the slammer for it. One of those "he got what he deserved" victims. Even though the now-dead suspect would be perfect to pin it on, they can't seem to leave it like that. Hello?

End of book, stranger/subject confesses to a relative of victim that he is the real killer and why. Relative, NOT rushing out to find the cops and report subject, instead begs subject to stay. Subject knows it would be impossible to have a relationship and leaves. Meaning leaves forever. I stare at the words, THE END. Say what?

First: if I knocked at the home of a stranger in order to get help, and NO one answered, IF it wasn't a true medical emergency, I just needed help for a car out of commission, I wouldn't then enter that home, unannounced. Subject did. That bothered me. I'd find another home to get help, even in a remote area.

Second: Subject immediately agreed to help someone he'd never met before cover up what really happened to the victim, so that cops would suspect a wandering stranger, and not that particular rather beautiful family member. Uh huh. Second red flag.

Third: Cops so quickly dismissed subject as a suspect because he was a stranger. I mean, really! The person who finds the body is second only to the spouse as a suspect in a murder case.

I'd have made the cops more suspicious of the subject, eventually discovering the truth. And I wouldn't have allowed the subject to simply walk into a stranger's home, or two suspects to fall in love with each other within seconds of meeting, with a dead body slumped between them. Sigh.

Sooo, do you ever spend hours/days after closing a book, figuring out how YOU would have written it? Ever throw a book across the room?

Personally, I'm not a book thrower. I was raised--by an elementary school teacher, mind you--to have far too much respect for a book to ever throw it. Rather, I slide it carefully into the tote bag of books-to-be-donated-or-sold-as-long-as-they-are-out-of-my-sight. And try to forget it. Sigh.

My favorite reads in other genres

Elizabeth Zelvin

While mystery makes up the bulk of my reading for pleasure, I do pick up books in other genres now and then. Some of them are even among my all-time favorites. Very few of them are literary fiction—been there, done that as an undergraduate English major many years ago. Even fewer are commercial fiction, much of which is plot driven and lacking in character development for my taste. I don’t read hard science fiction or straight romance. So what’s left? Character-driven novels with elements of fantasy, speculative fiction (a term I prefer to “science fiction” because it’s about the “what if” of storytelling rather than the hardware), historical fiction, and yes, mystery and romance. Genre benders. Brilliantly written genre benders about characters I want to take home with me—same as my criteria for mysteries.

At the top of my list is Lois McMaster Bujold, author of the Vorkosigan saga. The books take place in a galactic setting, but they focus on the conflict between a science-fiction kind of universe and a planet that has recently emerged from a low-tech Time of Isolation, complete with horses and a feudal aristocracy. The stories are engrossing (several are mysteries), the world-building impressive, wit and ideas and moral dilemmas abound. And the characters—oh, the characters! Miles Vorkosigan and his friends and family are as real to me as any fictional characters I’ve ever encountered. My favorite book (in all genres, including literary fiction and classics) is A Civil Campaign. Bujold crosses galactic space opera with comedy of manners and comes up with a complex, intensely satisfying, and laugh-out-loud funny read. She dedicates the book to Jane, Charlotte, Georgette, and Dorothy—and I think Austen, Bronte, Heyer, and Sayers, once they adjusted to the premises of the genre, would all love it.

Another wonderful writer who takes a science-fiction premise and embeds it in a low-tech world is Sharon Shinn, whose Samaria books I reread almost as often as Bujold’s. Samaria is a world where humans are protected and guided by angels who perform their intercessions with the god Jovah through glorious singing. The first book, Archangel, reads like fantasy. But as the series unfolds, the reader gradually learns that things on Samaria are not what they seem. Each book is a stand-alone with different protagonists. Each displays Shinn’s utter mastery of the arc of story and romance. The conflict and resolution is sheer perfection every time. And the characters, both human and angel, with their vivid and distinctive personalities, have very real flaws, virtues, and dilemmas.

Kate Elliott is another writer whose first series, the Jaran books, is my favorite. Again, she takes a galactic premise—in this case, humans have been conquered by a mysterious and powerful alien race and have to live as a subject people—and pits it against a freshly imagined horse culture on a world so primitive that the Jaran don’t even know that inhabited planets and space travel exist. There’s a heroic romance in the first book, Jaran, and the sequels follow its protagonists and add others. Elliott turned to other projects after the fourth book, so long ago that at least one subplot has become outdated (as Internet addiction has emerged in our present). But I wish she’d go back to the Jaran universe. That alien race is still a mystery.

This is Part I of a series, as there are other authors I’d love to talk about: Sheri S. Tepper, Diana Gabaldon, and Dorothy Dunnett, among others. Who are your favorite non-mystery authors and series, and why?

Judi McCoy Finds the Mystery in Dog-walking

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall

The winner of a free copy of Judi's book is Annette. Send your snail mail address to me at sandraparshall@yahoo.com and I'll put it into the mail. Congratulations!

Judi McCoy has been a successful romance novelist for more than fifteen years, garnering many four-star reviews for her work. Now she’s turning her talents to mystery with a humorous series featuring New York City dog-walker Ellie Engleman, who has a telepathic connection with her canine charges. The first in the series is Hounding the Pavement, published this week. A starred review in Publishers Weekly said, “Somehow managing to avoid every talking animal mystery cliche, McCoy fills this delightful story with humor, quirky characters, and delicious hints of romance.”

Judi is also a veteran women’s gymnastics judge and enjoys gardening and raising orchids in her spare time. She lives on Virginia’s eastern shore with her husband and three dogs. Visit her web site at www.judimccoy.com.

Everyone who leaves a comment today will be entered in a drawing for a free copy of Hounding the Pavement. Check back tomorrow to find out if you won – the winner’s name will be posted at the top of this blog entry.


Q. You’ve written a number of romances. Why did you cross over to the dark side and start writing mysteries? What is it about mysteries that appeals to you?

A. The crossover seemed natural. I’d run out of ideas for a ‘straight’ romance and came up with a character. My agent liked the idea and so did my sister, and they both encouraged me to take the idea and run. I liked the idea of getting the reader involved in the story (who did it, why, how?). Writing the books just seemed the next step in my career.

Q. Are you writing a series?

A. Yes, it’s a series (I’d like to do 12 books). My heroine is a New York City dog walker. If you don’t know about the dog walker business in NY, you’re in for a surprise. Most of them make $100,000+ every year, not counting tips and money for pet sitting. They also have keys to all the apartments they visit. (They’re bonded and insured.) The accessability to mystery was huge.

Q. What was the inspiration for your mystery protagonist and her adventures?

A. I love dogs and always wanted to be a dog walker. Unfortunately, I never lived anywhere I could do it. The idea for a romance about the profession had simmered in the back of my mind for a long time. When I had the chance to do a story, I decided to make the series work.

Q. Have you found that you have to do more research for a mystery than for a romance?

A. I certainly did for this one. I spent several days in NY, sitting on a bench on Fifth Avenue and Central Park just soaking up the atmosphere. Then I got brave and talked to dog walkers, doormen, anyone who was walking a single dog, too. I also called the Central Park East precinct and spoke to a CRM. He allowed me to come in and spend a couple of hours with a detective, an invaluable opportunity.

Q. Was this the first time you’d tried writing mysteries? Was selling the first one easier than you expected, or harder?

A. Avon, my romance publisher, rejected the book(s) without even reading them. That made my agent determined. She knew they were great and she planned to show them how foolish they were to refuse them. It only took her a month to sell the first three books.

Q. Why did you decide to give your profit from the first mystery to a humane organization? How important are animals in your life?

A. Best Friends is an amazing animal rescue charity. I’ve admired them for years, but I never realized how much they did until I watched their series, Dogtown, on the National Geographic channel. Once I saw the show, I was hooked. I also knew I had to do some crazy promoting to get my name and the books ‘out there’ so I came up with the royalty giveaway. Once I thought up the idea, there was never a doubt in my mind that I had to see it through. Even my husband agreed. I’ve had several wonderful discussions with people at Best Friends and they’re thrilled.

Q. Do you write full-time? Do you outline and stick to a writing routine, or do you wing it?

A. I write full-time, every day. I’m up at 6:30, walk my three small dogs, have breakfast and plan my day. I usually get to my computer by 8:30
and I’m there until 1. Then I take my lunch break and it’s back to my office until 5:30. My husband also works from home, so we’re together yet separate all day. If I have errands (groceries, hair cut, etc) I plan my time to do it all in one trip on one day.

Q. What do you believe are your greatest strengths as a writer? What aspects of craft are you still trying to master?

A. My greatest strength? I had to think hard about that one, because I’m not sure I have one. How about my sense of humor? I try to impart joy and fun into every book I write. No one gets murdered [onstage] in my books. Ellie finds the body, and along with her dog Rudy, solves the mystery, much to the dismay of her love interest, Sam, a detective. The hook is: Ellie talks to her dog and those she walks and they talk back to her. She hears them clearly in her mind, and oftentimes gets caught holding a conversation with them. That adds to the fun.

Q. What writers have inspired you and taught you by example? Whose books do you rush to read as soon as they’re published?

A. I love the Stephanie Plum series and I’ve used it as the basis for 12 books and no more. People have complained lately that the series is dragging on too long. Stephanie needs to make a choice between Joe and Ranger and decide if the bounty hunting business is really for her. I never want that said about Ellie and Sam. I’ll wrap up all the loose ends and make it work in 12 books. I also love Cleo Coyle and her coffee mysteries and Joanna Carl and the chocolate mysteries.

Q. What’s in the future for you? Will you continue writing mysteries exclusively, or do you plan to divide your time between mystery and romance?

A. The books/characters have been optioned for a weekly television series already, so I’d like to try my hand at script writing, or working with a writer to transfer some of the books to shows. Unless I get a great romance idea, I doubt I’ll go back to that genre. In reality, the dog walker books are very romantic. Ellie and Sam go to bed in book one, and there’s a regular romantic sex scene, just like I’ve written in my earlier books.

Q. Where can readers can meet you?

A. I plan to travel to quite a few states. I’ll be in the East Brunswick area for a signing, and probably the DC area later. In the beginning of April, I’ll be in Charlotte, NC, for a conference and signing, middle of the month in the Dallas area, and at the end I’ll be at Romantic Times in Orlando signing.
The first weekend in May is Malice Domestic, and I hope to travel to Pittsburgh to do the big mystery signing there [the Oakmont Mystery Festival on the Monday following Malice]. I’m out of breath just thinking about it, but that’s as far as I’ve planned.

Q. In parting, do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

A. I teach a two-day aspiring author course every year at RT (this year in Orlando) and the first thing I tell the newbies is, “Writers write. They don’t talk about writing or tell everyone they want to write. They put their butt in a chair EVERY day and they write.” That’s probably the most important thing a new author will ever hear.

Monster Lit

Sharon Wildwind

Is it my imagination, or is the world getting weirder?

What brought on this particular weirdness fit was the discovery that, later this year, there will be a movie in production called Pride and Predator. In it, the characters from Jane Austen’s book—including that British regiment who so conveniently camp on the front lawn—must deal with an alien invasion.

Welcome to the new sub-genre (or is it cross-genre) of monster lit. It’s all the rage in England and is rapidly slouching its way to Hollywood, waiting to be born.

What’s already in the monster lit pipeline besides tea and terror?

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a novel by Jane Austin and Seth Grahame-Smith. [Jane Austin plus, well, zombies]

Shades of Milk and Honey, Jane Austin and Mary Robinette Kowal [Jane Austin plus magic]

Jane Bites Back, Jane Austin and Michael Thomas Ford [Jane Austin plus vampires. A natural. Why hasn’t someone thought of this before?]

A paranormal series featuring Mr. and Mrs Darcy, [Jane Austin and Carrie Bebris]

A Wuthering Heights sequel in which Catherine returns as a ghost.

Mill on the Floss combined with human sacrifice.

Here’s the formula for monster-lit:
1. Hijack a classic.
2. Add a quirky.
3. Hook, mix, twist, and blurb.

Monster Lit aside, I first encountered the idea of hook, mix, twist, and blurb, as a serious writing technique, from a wonderful on-line workshop I took from the romance writer, Suzanne McMinn. If you ever get a chance to take one of her classes about hooking, mixing, and twisting, by all means do so. She has a terrific list of 70 classic hooks.

The basic idea is that you mix two disparate ideas, twist them together—rather like pulling salt water taffy—until you come up with a new story line, then write a 100-word blurb. The only limitation is that the blurb should be exactly 100 words, not 99, not 102. 100. It’s an exercise in discipline, okay?

This is a good exercise if you want to warm up your creative juices. It’s also a fun way to answer the question, “Where do you get your ideas?”

If you have access to Suzanne’s list of hooks, use it. Or make up a list of your own, using a goodly number (at least 50) story hooks. Write the numbers for each item on slips of paper and draw two at random. Or if you’re using it in a workshop or a question-and-answer session, have participants give you two numbers at random.

27 + 34 = (according to Suzanne’s list) Fish out of water + lies (by commission or omission)

Hook, mix, twist, and blurb for You Goat Girl—the eternal triangle of a girl, a boy, and a goat:

Sibyl Freeman didn’t mean to get the job. Using her sister’s resume was a lark. Now Cold Farm Quarterly has an assistant editor who can’t tell a rooster from a roto-tiller. So far her in-your-face attitude and frantic Internet searches have kept her afloat. Jonas Barkley, the magazine’s editor, has promised to be her slave forever, if she can help him prove to his family that he’s not the lack-a-daisy dreamer they consider him. Can a city girl, a goat, and a country boy find love, meet their deadlines, and keep the office livestock alive?

And, the next time you’re sitting around with a bunch of other mystery writers and/or readers, see if you can capture a place in the monster/mystery lit fusion market. Here’s your challenge:

1. Hijack a classic mystery.
2. Add a quirky: alien invasions, vampires and werewolves, magic, paranormal psychology, fairies and elves, genetic manipulation, virtual reality á la The Matrix, super-heroes, etc.
3. Hook, mix, and twist.
4. Write a 100-word blurb.

When my husband heard about this idea, he took it and ran with it. Here’s his blurb:

The Maltese Raven
In this pastiche of the Maltese Falcon, a detective escapes criminal intrigues by uncovering a nightmarish threat: the crooks want to possess a Maltese Raven statue, but the black bird is a living, intelligent trickster that beguiles all who hear it speak.

San Francisco’s 1930 streets hold no terror greater than this game of survival, with unwritten rules and ever-shifting alliances. The black bird is both prize and most dangerous player, as its whispers unmask each person’s fears and desires, bending them to its own, unknown ends.

“This is the stuff dreams are made of,” quothe the Raven.
-----
Writing quote for the week:

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
~Jack London, novelist, journalist, short story writer and essayist

Try Not To Envy My Weekend

It's so cold in Chicago this weekend that I'm typing this while wrapped in a blanket. But it's nice to take a little break and reflect on my day--a day which I have poutingly concluded contained no free time at all. Why weekends are glamourized as down time, I don't know.

I started well enough--up early to try to do that pesky grad school reading that is so difficult I have to read it out loud to myself in hopes of understanding it. My professor gave me tantalizing B-pluses on my last two response papers, gently suggesting that I "challenge more of the assumptions" in the theory that I'm reading. So I finished perusing the text and moved to the computer room, challenging away to the tune of a five-page paper. This was my fourth paper in four weeks of class, and it was getting pretty exhausting. I had spent three hours of my precious day off just catching up with my homework.

As I finished, my sons came barreling downstairs, all bluster and bellow. They wanted food. They were kind enough to go in the attic and watch Pirates of the Caribbean while I wrote my paper, but they finally set themselves free and launched themselves at me. There is no such thing as personal time when growing boys are around; to complicate matters, my husband called from work and said he forgot his lunch. So out we went, the boys and I, into the windy cold and off to Burger King, where we got lunch for four. We drove my husband's burger to him and he lent me his sunglasses, since the sun put in a surprise appearance today.

Then it was off to the hairdresser's, since my fourteen-year-old's mane needed taming before school the next day. He sulked over to the barber's chair; neither of my sons like haircuts; they treat them as a barely necessary evil.

After the haircut I dropped the boys off at home so that I could do the week's grocery shopping. I pushed my cart around the store in a daze, re-writing my theory paper in my mind and wondering which items I would forget to buy. I drove back home, got my sons to carry the groceries in, and unpacked them all.

Then it was time for my next exciting activity: grading essays. My sophomore class took their first test, on The Scarlet Letter, and the accompanying essays needed work, to put it mildly. Some of the students barely made an effort. Several of them misspelled Nathaniel Hawthorne, even though they were allowed to have the text in front of them. One of them spelled the title word "Scarlett." With many sighs I spent another hour marking them, comment after comment in the margins like an eternal sea.

By the time I finished it was five o'clock. I couldn't believe it! Where had the day gone? Then it was time to make the boys some dinner.

(My oldest keeps following me around with his copy of Watchmen, the graphic novel that has taken America by storm, especially now that it is about to debut as an exciting new (and R-rated) movie. My sons (for my sins) have both read it, and they persist in trying to get me to read it. "How far are you?" asks my eldest at all times of day.)

He asked it now. "How far are you in Watchmen?"

I was doing the dishes. "Uh--I don't know. I think I just read the part about the guy who is fascinated by owls."

"Oh. You didn't have to read that part. That's just symbolism," he said.

"Well then I do have to read it."

"Read the next chapter! It gets really good after that."

"I still have grading to do! Do you want to help me grade some quizzes?" I asked, at which point he disappeared, mumbling something about a phone call he had to make.

I generally only have time to read Watchmen at night, in bed, when I read one or two pages and then fall asleep. This frustrates my sons, who want to discuss it with me.

Tonight I'll have to take it to bed again because I won't have free time until then--and my son will probably be disappointed in the morning. It's not that Watchmen isn't good. It's quite interesting. It's just that Mom is tired.

So that's my exciting Sunday; I'll bet you can top it, at least in terms of excitement.

Once I finish Watchmen I'll let you know how I liked it. :)