Canada Calling: Phyllis Smallman

Phyllis Smallman’s first mystery, Margarita Nights, won the 2007 Crime Writers of Canada Unhanged Arthur award for best unpublished novel. Margarita Nights was also short listed by the CWC for Best First Novel of 2008. The second book in the Sherri Travis series, Sex in a Sidecar, came out in 2009. Two more books, A Brewski for the Old Man and Champagne for Buzzards, are waiting in the wings.

PDD: Tell us a little about how you started writing.

Phyllis:

A bad case of insomnia led to my taking up writing. It was a time of big changes in my life. My kids were in university and, wide awake at three in the morning, I didn't want to think about what they were up to—ditto with the guy snoring beside me—and my own life was so boring there was nothing in it to think about, so I went back to a habit I had as a child, telling myself stories. When a friend asked what I was going to do with the rest of my life, I said, "I want to write." This was a long held dream and one I'd never spoken out loud before. My friend, bless her, thought writing was a perfectly normal thing to do. She even thought I might be capable of it.

PDD: It must be interesting to win an award before you’ve been published. You were short-listed for UK Debut Dagger in 2004 and won the Crime Writers of Canada Unhanged Arthur in 2007. How did those awards change your career?

Phyllis:

What career? All I had was a drawer full of rejects—so many rejects I made a papier-mâché bowl out of them. Winning the Arthur Ellis award led directly to being published - as part of the Arthur Ellis award my manuscript was read by McArthur Publishing Company. It went to them in early June. In August I called to see if it had really arrived. “Oh, yes,” they assured me, “It’s in a box here somewhere. We’ll read it by September and get back to you.” In November I called again. “Oh, we’re going to publish it,” I was told. “It will be out in

the spring.” Welcome to the wonderful world of publishing. But I'm truly grateful to be published and grateful to the CWC for that award.

PDD: Publishing and marketing are changing so fast. What advice would you give a new author who is just starting out?

Phyllis:

First let me say that I’m the wrong person to ask this question because my only view of publishing came from the movies and newspapers. I really knew nothing about the real publishing business and still don’t. For instance, I had no idea I would have to write my own blurbs for the books. I suppose I thought there was an editor somewhere responsible for bios and blurbs. I had about 24 hours to turn in my

first one and went totally blank so I called my friend who was my writing partner for Margarita Nights. In the middle of cooking his dinner he came up with most of that first blurb.

I think if new writers knew what awaits them many would drop out of the process. Only the truly perverse and committed would continue. Perhaps that’s true of all of the arts. I think of teenagers with garage bands. What are the chances of them making a decent living playing music? Or think of a teenage girl who wants to become an actress...too scary. Do it because you must, not because you want to have a career or make a living.

It's a huge ocean we are swimming in and right now I feel a little overwhelmed by it all so this is what I've decided works for me. I write for myself...well, and maybe the Vicar and the Duchess, two very odd friends, but mainly I write books that I would like to read. Marketing and publishing are outside my ability to control and it only gives me the heebie-jeebies when I try. Looking at sales numbers, praying for reviews and worrying about what others are doing adds nothing to the story between the covers.

I feel each new book is better than the last and that's where I want to spend my energy. I'm writing book number 6 now and have number 7 outlined. Will I see them published? I don't know. In that way I'm no different from any unpublished author. Should I stop writing because they might not be published? Not likely!

Today none of us know if our next book will make it into print. Best to just keep on writing, let the publishers do their jobs, the reviewers do their jobs and we’ll do ours. The rest is out of our control.

PDD: Tell us about your Sherri Travis series.

Phyllis:

Sherri Travis is a bartender in an upscale beach bar in Jacaranda, Florida. Secrets have a way of unraveling over drinks and letting the truth seep out. Sherri pours the drinks and listens to the stories, trying to make sense of it all...an ordinary person coping with what life sends through laughter and tears. A bar, a beach and murder, does life get any better?

For more about Phyllis and her books, visit her website.

Home Alone . . . but not like in the movie

The winner of yesterday’s drawing for a copy of THE GIFT OF MURDER is Frankenpsych. We need your name and address so we can send you the book. Please e-mail the information to lizatelizabethzelvin.com.

By Lonnie Cruse

Are you someone who doesn't like the sounds of silence? Someone who has to have people around or music blasting from the stereo or the television flashing picture after picture or whatever you use to keep you company?

Okay, I confess that after my last chick flew the nest, headed off to kindergarten lo those many years ago, I usually turned on Captain Kangaroo every morning . . . just for the noise, for the company. And for the memories. I eventually outgrew the Captain.

Today we live in a world of constant noise and activity. Sometimes we need a break. We need to be home . . . alone. Without people, without noise, without anything but ourselves and the sounds of silence. Time to think. Time to plan. Time to find out where we are. And more importantly, time to find out where we're going.

When we moved into the modern age with all the modern appliances, somewhere back in the thirties or forties, we lost our aloneness, maybe forever. Young people today probably don't even know what that is. We're constantly with others either in person, on the cell phone, or by watching/listening to the television/radio. We don't even seem to be able to shop at the local grocery store without chatting on the cell phone to someone. It's hard for us to to think, much less plan. Drivers who chat on cell phone are so numerous and so distracted from simply thinking, thus causing accidents, that states everywhere are passing laws against it. That should tell us something. We can't even tolerate being alone in the car.

Women who stayed home back in the day had that alone time, at least when their children were in school. So did the men, if they worked on a farm or other outdoor jobs. We've lost a lot of that alone time with this brand new world. That's not always a good thing.

We need time to sit down and be with ourselves. By ourselves. Time to ask ourselves tough questions. Where am I going? What's next in my life? Where do I want to be in the next five years? In ten years? Because those days will be here before we know it, whether we plan for them or not.

And we need time to find ourselves. We can get swept up into the current of life and wind up in places we never wanted nor planned to be. And it happens if we don't take time alone.

Today's world is busier than ever. Noise and activity are a constant fact of life. When is the last time you took some time for yourself? It's not selfish. Really it isn't. It's necessary so you can focus, make some decisions, and ultimately wind up where you want to be, not just where life pushed you. The clock is ticking!

The Gift of Murder Makes A Great Present

The winner of yesterday’s drawing for a copy of THE GIFT OF MURDER is SignLady217. We need your name and address so we can send you the book. Please e-mail the information to sandraparshall@yahoo.com. Everyone else, please note that we’re giving away a second copy today! Leave a comment on Liz’s blog and you’ll be entered in the drawing.


Elizabeth Zelvin

If we weren’t all mystery lovers, you might think that I was offering to whack your wife for Chanukah. Off your ex for Xmas. Kill a cousin for Kwanzaa (preferably the rich old cousin who’s about to take you out of his will). Thin out your in-laws for a more cheerful and less contentious holiday season. But no, you’ve already figured it out: The Gift of Murder is a book, and not just any book. It’s this year’s holiday crime anthology from Tony Burton of Wolfmont Press, all profits to benefit a worthy charity, Toys for Tots. This is the fourth annual such anthology, and it’s proven popular with both mystery writers hungry for good markets for their stories and readers happy to plunk down $15 for the combination of a good cause and a satisfying read.

Toys for Tots is a charitable program of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve that collects new, unwrapped toys for needy children in communities throughout the country, backed by a not-for-profit foundation that channels monetary donations to support the local programs. At least one author in this year’s anthology is getting the local Marines involved in an event to publicize and sell the book. All the authors, including me, are looking for creative ways to get the anthology out there between now and the holidays. The project raised more than $6,600 for the Toys for Tots Foundation in its first three years, and Tony Burton is hoping to push the cumulative figure up over $10,000 with sales of The Gift of Murder. Last year’s anthology made the 2008 bestseller list of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association (IMBA), and I, for one, would be thrilled if it happened again this year.

My story, “Death Will Trim Your Tree,” had already been written when the call for submissions went out. My series protagonist, recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler, does what he pleases in my head and tells me what to do about it. In this case, he ordered me to write about his first sober Christmas, which had its ups and downs. Bruce starts out sitting on his friends Barbara and Jimmy’s living room floor disentangling those pesky strands of Christmas lights and cursing, while Jimmy supervises from behind his computer and Barbara, who likes to mix her holidays, makes latkes. And that’s before the murder. In the first draft, I’m afraid Bruce was using the F word—justifiably, as anyone who’s had to get those strings of lights up will agree, I’m sure. But after reading the submission guidelines, I revised it for a family audience.

This year’s editor is John Floyd, a versatile and prolific writer with 300 published short stories in the fifteen years since he retired from his day job. And I’m in great company, with twenty-one authors including Austin Camacho, Bill Crider, Peg Herring, Anita Page, Kris Neri, Randy Rawls, Barb Goffman, Gail Farrelly, and Earl Staggs, among others.

You can buy the anthology directly from the publisher at http://www.wolfmont.com, on Amazon, and wherever the individual authors have signings or can place it. Buy one for everybody on your holiday list: the ones you love, the ones who love reading, and the ones you’ve felt like killing at least once since last year or expect to feel like killing by the time the holidays are over.

The Joy of Control

By Barb Goffman, guest blogger

Hi. My name is Barb, and I have control issues.

This might be a problem for some people, but I’ve found ways to turn it to my advantage. For instance, I’m now in my second year as program chair of Malice Domestic, one of the biggest annual conventions for fans of the traditional mystery. My job involves promoting the conference, enticing authors to attend, coming up with panel ideas, and doing all the scheduling.

Most people would run away screaming at the very proposition. I embraced it.
About a year ago, I was chatting on the phone about Malice Domestic with author Pari Noskin Taichert. The conference was four months away, and I think I heard her jaw actually drop onto the floor (bam!) when I told her that I was nearly done with the programming. When Pari finally wrapped her mind around my statement and reattached her jaw, she said something profound along the lines of, “Huh?”

I smiled and shared my secret. I’m a control freak. I love coming up with panel ideas and figuring which authors will sit on which ones. “Donna Andrews, not only will you talk about how being pregnant affects a character’s ability to sleuth, but you’ll do it on a panel on Saturday at 2 p.m.” I have spoken!

This upcoming year at Malice Domestic will be even better. I’ll get to order around folks like our guest of honor, Parnell Hall, our toastmaster, Rhys Bowen, and our lifetime achievement award winner, Mary Higgins Clark. (Okay, fine, nobody orders Mary Higgins Clark around. Give me my little fantasy, will ya?) And we have a lot of other biggies in the traditional mystery community coming, too, including Margaret Maron, Dorothy Cannell, Charles Todd, Nancy Pickard, and Katherine Hall Page. And I have power over them all. Bwah hah hah!!!

Since becoming Malice program chair, I’ve learned that conferences sometimes have a hard time getting people to agree to do the programming, much less get it done early. (Or in my case, extra early.) I find this bizarre. All you conference organizers out there, you’re definitely not looking in the right place for your program chairs. Find your local meeting of Control Freaks Anonymous and go to town. (If you’re not sure if you’re in the right place, look for me. Believe me, I’ll be there. Taking attendance.)

Can’t find a meeting? Here’s another way to look for control freaks. In books. Sometimes they’re hiding in plain sight.

My most recent short story, “The Worst Noel,” provides a perfect example. In it a woman with an overbearing mother finally breaks and decides to get her revenge against her mom and her sister during Christmas Eve dinner. (Ah, yes, crime at the holidays. So festive!) Does the mother deserve it? Well, she does have massive control issues. Did I get those details right by accident? Nope. I wrote what I knew. (Some people wonder if the mother in the story is based on my mom; unfortunately, I think she’s in part based on me!) So if you read a spot-on story or novel involving a control freak, you might have to go no farther than the author’s page to find your next conference program chair.

Even as I type these words, I find it difficult to know that I have no control over you, dear reader. I can’t force you to attend Malice Domestic, even though I know you’d love it. (C’mon, you know it, too.) And I can’t force you to buy The Gift of Murder either—that’s the anthology in which my Christmas Eve-dinner story appears. (Go to The Gift of Murder to learn more.)

But, thankfully, I still have a few tricks up my sleeve.

If you register for Malice at www.malicedomestic.org before January 1st, you’ll be eligible to nominate books and stories published in 2009 for the prestigious Agatha Award. (Everybody’s nominations are tallied by the Agatha Committee, and the top vote-getters become the official nominees, which are announced in February.) By registering early, you’ll also get a discount. And if you’re an author I know—or want to know— by registering early, you’ll save yourself from being hounded by me. Good, I see you registering right now.

And you, reluctant readers. You’re curious about my Christmas Eve story. I can feel it. But your pile of unread books is already teetering precariously, and you fear you can’t add one more book to the pile.

Hogwash!

Especially with me telling you that all 19 short stories in The Gift of Murder are set at the holiday season, that all 19 authors donated their stories, and that the publisher, Tony Burton of Wolfmont Press, is donating all the profits to Toys for Tots. Crime stories that benefit needy children! Have I tugged enough at your heart yet? Excellent, excellent. I see you dialing up your favorite indie bookstore at this very moment. Some of you are downloading it onto your Kindle, too.

And if none of that has worked, here’s my secret weapon: You’re all invited to comment below, sharing either your favorite memory of attending Malice Domestic or your funniest holiday memory. Everyone who shares one or the other before midnight tonight will have their names thrown in a hat, and I’ll send a signed copy of The Gift of Murder to the person whose name I pull out. Who could resist that? No one, surely. So now I know you’ll do as I say. Ahh, the joy of control.

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Barb Goffman is an Agatha Award-nominated author who toils as a lawyer by day to pay the vet bills at night for her miracle dog, Scout. (He had cancer three times, but now he’s cured!) She grew up on Long Island but figures she must have been Southern in another life because half the voices she hears in her head—oops, sorry, half the characters she creates—are Southern. In addition to the short story mentioned above, Barb has had stories published in the second and third volumes of the Chesapeake Crimes anthology series, and she will have a new story coming out this spring in the fourth: Chesapeake Crimes: They Had It Comin’, a wonderful book with twenty tales of murder and revenge. Barb’s website is www.barbgoffman.com.

The Old Gray Ad Ain’t What She Used To Be

Sharon Wildwind

I’m mixing and mashing two icons here: the 1956 movie about public relations, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, which starred Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones, and a traditional song about an old gray mare. That’s nothing compared to the mixing and mashing going on in a current advertising campaign.

In case you turned in late, Kimberly-Clark is following up last year’s “let it out” campaign, where tough types let out all of their emotions on camera and mopped up their tears with the company’s product.

This year the same company is offering a choice of moms for the cold and flu season. There are two TV spots, one featuring a young man and one a young woman, with kids, who “try out” moms to find the one they like. If you’d like to do the same, you can visit the mom site where 8 stereotypical moms vie for your vote as the person you’d most like around when you get sick.

The most-picked mom so far is apparently the friend-mom, who looks way too young to have grown kids. If you’re sick, her solution is to bring you Chinese take-out and gossip, dissing on all your mutual friends, or discussing shoes. The least picked is the workaholic mom who tells you that you look just fine so get out of bed and get back to work because people are counting on you.

Okay, all of us can name advertising campaigns that prospered with even shakier premises.

But the ads are only the beginning. You’re encouraged to follow your chosen mom on Twitter or be her fan on Facebook. By registering your e-mail address and/or phone number on the web site, you can get personal e-mails and/or phone calls from your virtual mom. The messages range from sympathetic and inspirational mini-love taps, to tips on how to care for your kids when they are sick, to the best Southern comfort food to eat when you feel miserable.

I don’t need a phone message for this one because I already know, sick on not, that grits are my favorite Southern comfort food.

It’s not a coincidence that Twitter, Facebook, virtual messages, and the friend-mom favorite have come together in this campaign. All are aimed at the heart of the 18-to-35 year old, female marketing demographic.

Technorati, one of the leading researchers in on-line and blogging research, said that in 2008, 346 million people worldwide routinely read blogs. That is a huge number of people, but if you compare it to the world population base (something close 6.7 billion people in 2008), it means that only 5% of the world’s population is reading blogs so by focusing their ad campaigns on electronic media, companies have eliminated a huge section of potential customers.

Be that as it may, here are some differences that recent research has indicated about marketing to women in the 18-to-35 and the over-35 age groups. The comments were culled from a number of reports and resources.

The woman over 35 wants an easy-to-find, and easy-to-read site. Easy-to-find means that a friend gives her the address, or she reads it in a print ad, or it comes up on a basic Google search. The site loads quickly on both dial-in and cable hook-ups. There is no video introduction, just bang, straight into the site, which is clear and straight-forward. “To learn more about the author, click here” or “To see a list of the author’s books, click here” type of instructions. Text is text and graphics are graphics and they stay out of each others way. What the viewer wants most is a personal connection, things like a private e-mail response from the author or feeling that she knows the author better by having visited her site. Supplemental material, like maps and character biographies are favorites.

The 18-to-35 viewer values a different interaction. She’s willing to make the leap from one site to another and more likely to visit a site by accident or by following links from other sites. The more bling the better: background music, photo montages, a video introduction that plays before she actually enters the site. The book is only a starting place. She doesn’t want to read a character biography, she wants to discuss the character with other people who are reading or have read the book, maybe write her own version of how the character’s biography should read, maybe write some fan fiction. What she wants most is for the author to provide entertainment. The book is secondary, at most a spring board for a shared social experience on-line.

I was already going crazy figuring out to market on-line in general. Now it appears that I have to do vastly different things to appeal to two halves of the demographics. It sounds like one of those situations when a woman should phone her mom for advice.

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Quote for the week:

Every fiction story has a non-fiction story behind it. Push the non-fiction connection as your brand and platform.

~David Morrell, fantasy writer, October 2008

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This week I get to blog twice, once here today and once at Jungle Red tomorrow. So if you’re out surfing—the Internet that is—on November 18, you might pop in here.

The Winter Holidays Loom

by Julia Buckley
The holidays create a yearly paradox for me: I anticipate their arrival with both happiness and dread.

There's no doubt that the holidays bring many good things, starting with Thanksgiving and the chance it offers to gather with family, to share a fine meal, to catch one's breath and relax after stepping off of the work-a-day treadmill.

Christmas, too, brings the beauty of tradition and the comfort of family, as well as many pleasing sights and sounds. If someone tried to make me stop celebrating Christmas, I would protest heartily for a variety of reasons.

However, the holidays are like any other time of year in respect to the rapidity of life these days. Is it my middle-aged perspective, or were holidays once celebrated at a slower pace, one that allowed for all of the preparations and festivities without the mandatory nervous breakdown?

Perhaps part of the pressure I feel is that my mother always created beautiful holidays. The house was perfect and she baked German breads, cakes and cookies for weeks beforehand so that they could all be put out on festive trays on Christmas Eve and given to guests and neighbors on Christmas Day. There was always time to go cut our own Christmas tree and eat cherry cobbler and drink hot chocolate at a little diner on the way home--one of our family traditions. There was time to decorate and to wrap presents for our whole seven-member family. There was time to attend Midnight Mass in our best attire. There was even time to sit and watch the snow fall.

Perhaps the biggest difference between then and now was that my mother did not work, and I do. Eight hours of my day is spent outside of the home (nine-and-a-half, if you count all of the dropping off and picking up), and yet I still want to create the same sort of Thanksgiving, the same sort of Christmas for my children that my parents created for me. This, I have found, is a mighty tall order.

When my children were young I would actually take the day off on St. Nicholas' Day (December 6th), so that I could wrap little presents and fill tiny boots with candy, and then watch my sons' faces when they stumbled downstairs in their footy pajamas and saw that St. Nick had been there. One year my husband and I actually stayed up late trying to create authentic St. Nick footprints on the floor (which should have been rather terrifying, but always ended up being wonderful instead).

These were some of my successes, but I often find that I have failed to live up to my own image of what the holidays should be, perhaps because my image of holidays past is rooted in illusion. Or perhaps things were just different then.

My sister and I often commiserate about our failure to create near-perfect holidays. We'll find ourselves on the phone after a long workday (she is a teacher, too), contemplating our messy houses with their big cat-hair tumbleweeds and the kid handprints on the glass, saying "Mom would have had the house sparkling; she would have done the floors and had us get to work polishing the silverware." Yes, polishing the silverware! My mother also ironed things--something I've rarely done in twenty-one years of married life.

In any case, the holidays are coming whether I'm ready or not. I'll have my yearly compromise of time off with family, but a bag of research papers hidden under a side table, casting a pall of obligation over my fun.

I think the key will be to do something differently this year: to start a new tradition that our family will look forward to for every winter holiday to come. Perhaps you'll share some with me so that I can embrace this holiday season, its joys and its obligations, as the best ever.

Writing Without a Net

By Vicki Delany, guest blogger

Every writer has a different approach to how to structure their novel. Some outline extensively; some do almost nothing in terms of planning. Some concentrate on plot, and the characters follow along; for some character is almost all they have.

Me, I build a story this way: setting-characters-plot. That is, I decide where to set the book, who’s going to be the main character or characters and then come up with a plot. Now that I’m working on a series, steps one and two are pretty much defined before I even begin.

My newest novel is titled Winter of Secrets, and is the third in the Constable Molly Smith series, from by Poisoned Pen Press. This book was a total departure from my usual style of writing, and I’d like to tell you about it.

For most of my adult life I was a computer programmer and then a systems analyst. I write books like I designed computer systems. I start at the end – I know who did it and why – and then I go to the beginning and create an outline that will, hopefully, chart a course to get me to that end. Like designing computer systems: you really should know what you want to achieve (i.e. is this programme going to credit the client’s account or debit it?) before you begin. I have met some computer programmes that I don’t think were ever intended to achieve anything, but that’s another matter.

I was spending Christmas 2007 in my favourite place in the world, Nelson, B.C., the inspiration for the fictional town of Trafalgar. It was snowing, quite heavily, but as is the norm in those mountains, there wasn’t any wind and the snow was falling straight down and not drifting. This, I thought, would be a mess if they had winds like we get in Ontario. And then the opening scene popped into my head.

What a great idea, thinks I. I started writing the first chapter and carried on typing frantically away from there. I knew who died, but I didn’t know who killed him, or why, or even if anyone did! It was quite a strange feeling; a pure leap of hope, that I would find some inspiration down the line.

I was nearing the climax – I knew what I wanted to happen there – but I was still unsure between two possible candidates for the role of villain. Over the course of the writing, I had several people in mind, but as it evolved only two were good prospects. I felt sort of like a real Constable Molly Smith, judging the suspects and juggling clues until, with a burst of inspiration, I solved the crime!

My second drafts are usually a lot of work, but with this book, it was even more so. Because I didn’t know that X was the guilty party, I had to go back and make X know more than they seemed to and Y know less. The personality of X didn’t change much throughout the book, but it had to be tweaked a bit to make the crime more plausible, and to drop a few clues here and there. And all the clues that pointed to Y had to be toned down.

It was a fun way to go about it. Will I do that again? No. It worked because I had a very definite idea for the opening of the book and I was prepared to work my way forward from there. But all in all, I prefer to have a good outline before beginning. When I started working on the next book in the series, Negative Image, I put that net up first.

Visit the author's web site at www.vickidelany.com.

I'm addicted to colorful paper clips (among other things)

By Lonnie Cruse

Hello. My name is Lonnie and I'm addicted to colorful paper clips. And anything else office or desk related.

I wore a black armband for weeks after Office Max closed their doors forever in Paducah, KY. I have to limit my visits to Office Depot. The office aisle in Wal Mart calls out to me, even when I'm taking milk out of the milk case at the back of the store. I really need a twelve step program for this. I may have to start one since there don't seem to be any around. Why? Because I'm addicted. Obsessed. And it's only getting worse.

I recently searched the office aisle in Wal-Mart until I found the colored paper clips. No plain metal paper clips for me, thank you very much. It's the same for bulletin board pins.

Notebooks? I adore them. I have them everywhere, for every use, grocery lists, to-do lists, sermon notes, notes to hubby, notes to friends, notes about notes. I even have a couple of tiny three-ring binders to hold notes.

Plain vanilla file folders? Surely you jest? Mine are all different colors, depending on the subject in that file. And if I teach a class or workshop on a particular subject, complete with handouts, the handouts are printed on color copy paper with matching file folders. Addicted? Obsessed? Yes.

If I happen to sashay by the journal aisle in ANY store, I'm in big trouble. I can't resist a pretty journal. Yes, I do use them, but I also have a stash in my closet . . . just in case. Meaning just in case I need one and haven't bought one in the last day or so. When I say journal, I mean those empty books with pretty covers that usually cost way too much.

One such journal holds my pictures of old barns (because I use those pictures as inspiration for my pencil drawings, which, of course, are kept in another blank artist's journal.) Another journal holds the dried flowers and leaves gathered from my nature walks, which are then glued to the blank pages with notes about where I gathered them. Another is my prayer/thoughts journal. Two journals contain memories of our adventures with our grandsons (one for each boy, of course) which I will give to them when they are too old for further adventures with Grandma and Grandpa. A large vintage journal was used to write down memories of my father and my father-in-law and the wonderful stories they told. It also has memories of our boys growing up. My eldest son loves to read that journal. I also have a writing journal (where I keep notes of ideas for future books, short stories, or articles I want to write, and notes from writing classes or workshops I've either taken or taught) and last but not least is a life journal where I jot notes about my life. I did warn you that I'm obsessed. I've even taught a workshop on journaling. And then there are all the beautiful but blank journals I'm storing for future use.

Nowadays, walking into Office Depot or Wal-Mart has become even more difficult. Suddenly ALL file folders are beautifully multi-colored. Ditto for folders with flaps and closures to carry important papers in. And I am now the proud owner of a green (with multi-colored polka dots) project planner. Yes, I *could* plan my projects on plain paper in a plain notebook, but this thing jumped into my shopping cart and refused to leave. I have the matching file folders but somehow managed not to buy the matching mouse pad. I hope it's still there, in the store, waiting for me. And the matching purse-sized notebooks.

Don't even get me started on all those lovely day planners. What to choose, what to choose? Day at a glance, week at a glance, or month at a glance? I actually prefer to be able to glance at a whole month at once before committing to anything on my calendar, so I know how busy that entire month is and I can shift things if need be. Did you ever see so many choices as to size, not to mention cover? Eeeek!

Antique stores can also pose a danger to the office obsessed. I have a huge metal bulletin board on the wall beside my desk that advertises Scotch O Lass Dried Molasses. It's vintage and it has clips to hold pictures and it lists the days of the week. It's huge, ugly, and I can't live without it. I also have a small Freedent display rack that holds small notebooks on my desk, a larger Dentyne version that holds various sized envelopes, and a VERY large Campbell's soup display rack that sits beside my desk and holds copy paper, large Manila envelopes, photo paper, empty file folders, etc. All purchased from an antique store at a very reasonable price. All in use every single day.

So, dear reader, is your desk colorful and color coordinated? Do your paper clips match your file folders? Does your day planner or your journal sparkle with sequins? If not, why not?

And if you need a twelve-step program for your obsession, just e-mail me. I'll set up a meeting for the first of next month. I'll bring the color coded notebooks. You bring the color coded cookies.

Pet Peeve #37: Self-fulfilling prophecies about the loss of culture

Elizabeth Zelvin

The 37 is a random number, meant to suggest that I’m holding a lot of pet peeves in reserve for possible future blog posts. The title is my best shot at avoiding the term “dumbing down,” which might seem insulting to just about anybody. But there is indeed a trend in our culture, especially in its literature, to assume that Americans, in particular, will not understand sophisticated or even mildly historical cultural references. The current solution is to change those references to something that whoever is in charge of these decisions believes will be comprehensible even to illiterate cultural ignoramuses. (I told you it was insulting—that’s why I’m peeved about it.) And the consequence of these changes is that as new generations arise, they have never heard of the terms or bits of history that they’ve been protected from exposure to. Any part of “self-fulfilling prophecy” you don’t understand?

Let’s start with the universally popular Harry Potter series, written for kids but apparently enjoyed by adults across a broad spectrum of reading tastes from don’t-usually-read-at-all to highly literate (that would be us). In England, the first volume was entitled Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. If you’ve heard of the Philosopher’s Stone, raise your hand. Keep your hand raised if you learned about it by reading a book. The Philosopher’s Stone has been around since at least the 8th century. Well, not around, or alchemists, philosophers, and early scientists (including Sir Isaac Newton, John Dee, Paracelsus, and even perhaps St Thomas Aquinas) wouldn’t have tried so hard over hundreds of years to find or fabricate this legendary substance that was believed to turn base materials into gold and maybe confer rejuvenation or even immortality. I bet school kids even nowadays are told at least once in the course of their education who Newton was. Would it have been so hard to explain the Philosopher’s Stone? Yet thanks to a publishing decision, the millions of American kids who read and loved Harry Potter have never heard of the Philosopher’s Stone. The “Sorcerer’s Stone” they’ve read about is just a thing, a fictional magical object like the “Horcrux” in the later books, without cultural resonance outside the world of Harry Potter and easily forgotten.

Here’s another example from children’s literature, the source of many mystery writers’ and adult readers’ lifelong love of the genre: the Nancy Drew series, first published in 1930. The original Nancy was feisty and independent. She drove a roadster and always had a pocket full of tools (rope, flashlight, sewing kit) to get her out of the tight spots her love of adventure and desire for justice invariably got her into. Reading them in the 1950s, I didn’t know what a roadster was. But did it matter? A brave and active heroine of the 21st century, with a cell phone and a hybrid car, is nothing special. But against the cultural backdrop of less feminist times, Nancy shines. I recently found my ten-year-old cousin Emily reading one of the books. When I asked which version she had, she said she thought they were the originals. But when I asked her what Nancy drove, she said, “A convertible.” All that cultural texture is unavailable to Emily and her generation.

Some revisions are bowdlerizations, playing to our supposed prudishness rather than our supposed ignorance. As a kid in the 1950s, I learned a lot of history from Elswyth Thane’s popular Williamsburg series of historical novels. The Day, Sprague, and Murray families (from the Revolutionary War in Virginia to World War II in England) were probably, for me, the first fictional characters so well developed and likable that they felt like family. A few years ago I found them in library editions that took a kind of Victorian attitude toward certain cultural references. In one book, the fortyish male companion of the rather demi-mondaine seventy-year-old Cousin Sally, mysterious and unexplained in the original, is described as a “doctor” in the library edition, presumably so readers won’t be shocked that they are clearly intimates. (No sex scenes, but he sits at her bedside reading aloud. Horrors!) Elsewhere, references to champagne—a metaphor for a refined hedonism, life’s fizziness as opposed to its earnest Puritanism—are amended to “wine.” On the last reread I found one I’d missed—this one more of a dumbing down. A character in London in 1896 refers to his solicitor and business manager, saying, “I’ll refer the matter (the character’s divorce) to my man Partridge.” Nobody who’s ever read an English novel would have trouble with this, surely. But in the American library edition, Partridge has become a “handyman.” Ouch!

Finally, let me share a query I got recently from a young editor, passing on a query from the final proofreader before my new book, Death Will Help You Leave Him, went to press. It’s a scene in which two characters are brought to an office building on Wall Street after hours. The night security man at the desk in the lobby says, “Now stand on that spot for ten seconds, please. State your name and who you got the apperntment with for the camera.” The proofreader, and apparently the young editor as well, wanted to know, “Should this be ‘appointment’?” When I’d recovered from the shock, I wrote back that the passage was correct as it stood, and “apperntment” was “what used to be called Brooklynese.” I’m glad they asked. Otherwise, it would have been another nail driven in the coffin of American culture.

Characters Who Haunt Us

Sandra Parshall

I can’t get the girl out of my mind. I worry about her. I want to know what happened to her after the book ended.

Throughout most of Elizabeth George’s Missing Joseph, I found the 13-year-old character Maggie Spence exasperating in the way a lot of teens are. Lying to her mother, sneaking out to rendezvous with a boy she was forbidden to see, engaging in sex long before she was capable of dealing with it emotionally. I wanted to shake some sense into her.

As the story threads came together, though, and I saw the full horror of this girl’s situation, I began to fear for her. How on earth could she emerge whole and healthy from the tangle of deceit created by the adults in her life? She couldn’t. My last glimpse of her in the book was one of the most heart-wrenching scenes I’ve ever read. George made the girl so real, her predicament so disastrous and her emotional response so raw that I will never forget her.

I want Elizabeth George to bring her back in another book and tell me what has happened to her. I suspect the news wouldn’t be good, but I still want to know. This character will haunt me until I learn her ultimate fate.

It may be a form of torture, but I have to applaud writers who can make me care so much about their fictional characters that I worry about them after the books end or mourn the loss when they’re killed off. I can’t help contrasting my feelings for the girl with my reaction when Helen, wife of George’s detective Tommy Lynley, was shot and killed. For some reason, Helen never seemed quite real to me, and I never liked her. I was, frankly, glad to see her go. Helen’s ghost, in designer shoes, does not haunt me.

Another character who won’t let go of my imagination is also a teenager, but several years older than the girl in Missing Joseph. Her name is Reggie, she’s an orphan who pretends her mother is still alive so she can maintain her freedom and self-reliance, and she is the emotional center of Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News? Reggie’s stoic perseverance in the face of catastrophe, and her determination to find out what has become of the woman doctor she’s been working for as a child-minder, drive the story, and Reggie all by herself kept me turning the pages. At the end, her fate is uncertain. I know what I want to see in her future, but even if I’m guessing wrong I hope Atkinson will bring Reggie back and let readers share her life.

I’ve wondered many times what became of Boo Radley after he broke out of his sad, self-imposed isolation to save Scout’s life in To Kill a Mockingbird, but I have no hope at all that Harper Lee will write another book.

I’ve created one character of my own who haunts me: Rachel’s mother, Judith Goddard, in The Heat of the Moon. I gave her a terrible background and more pain than anyone should have to bear. A lot of readers have told me they hated her, and my impulse every time has been to defend her. I’m grateful when someone says they felt sympathy for her and understood why she clung so fiercely to Rachel and her sister and tried so hard to remain in control. Her awful childhood, and the heartbreak she endured as an adult, are very real to me and so is her emotional distress. Although I wouldn’t have had a story without all those events, I find myself wishing I could have made life a little easier for her.

The legacy of a haunting character is something I take away from very few novels, but every book offers the possibility of encountering memorable characters. That’s the reason I read fiction. The characters, not the plot details and certainly not the blood and gore of murder, make a book memorable.

What characters have continued to haunt you long after you finished reading the books? Do you want the authors to produce sequels that will show you what has become of those characters -- even if the news is bad -- or would you rather go on wondering?