"But you can't do that!"

By Donna Andrews
Author of Some Like It Hawk

 

Sometimes I miss Leo.

Leo was a member of the first critique group I joined after getting serious about my writing. It was an open group--meaning anyone who heard about it and wanted to show up was welcome. I went on to form a smaller, closed critique group with some of the writers I met in the open group. Some of them are friends to this day. Others . . . well, a few I was just as happy not to see every week when I moved on to the new group.

And then there was Leo. He was elderly, and had taken up writing after he retired. Not the best writer in the group, but not the worst, either. But we didn't write or read the any of the same genres, and he was always having to break it to me, gently, that I just couldn't do what I'd done in the piece I'd brought for the group to critique.

For example, when I read an excerpt from a humorous fantasy story that featured dwarves and dragons, his face took on an all-too-familiar pained look. After hemming and hawing a bit, he finally spoke up.

"You can't do that," he said. "You're going to have to change it. They don't want to be called dwarves any more--they prefer the term 'little people.'"

Bless his heart--I don't think he ever understood my explanation, because he didn't read Tolkien or listen to Wagner. Somewhere in that great critique group in the sky where he's reading these days, Leo is still shaking his head over my faux pas.

After I read the group the first few chapters of what eventually became Murder with Peacocks, Leo's face again took on that pained look. I could tell he was trying to bring himself to break some bad news to me.

"This is funny!" he said--at long last, and to my immense relief.

"Thank you!" I said.

"But you can't make it funny," he said. "It's a murder mystery."

By this time, I didn't even try to explain. Didn't mention Robert Barnard or Donald Westlake or Charlotte MacLeod or Elizabeth Peters or Joan Hess or Anne George or . . . well, you get the idea.
"I'll think about that," I told Leo.

I'm always running up against the stuff you can't do in a mystery. Or in a cozy. Or in a humorous mystery. My agent once told me that I couldn't use pornography as a possible plot twist in one of my Turing Hopper mysteries.

"Why not?" I said. "I used it in a Meg book, and the Turing books are a lot darker."

Took me a while to convince her I wasn't hallucinating--I think I had to read her the passage from Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon:
My screen went black. Had my battery suddenly given out? No; it was the website's background. Suddenly, the words, "HOT! HORNY! XXXXXXXX!!!" began flashing in red on my screen, accompanied by several grainy pictures of women doing things better left undescribed. . . . I finally had to turn the laptop off to end the barrage, and sat there looking at it, fighting an irrational urge to spray the keys of my laptop with disinfectant before I touched them again.

My agent, considerably more savvy than Leo, agreed that yes, apparently I was capable of using pornography in a humorous cozy.

It's not that I go out looking for unsuitable topics to feature in each book, but quite often I stumble over them. While I was writing Some Like It Hawk, for example, I originally described a group called Molly in Chains as doing Morris dancing "dressed in fetish gear." Can't remember if it was my critique partners, my agent, or my editor who expressed concern that this might be unsuitable for a PG rated book. So in the final it reads, "They do Morris dancing in red stiletto heels and skin-tight black leather body suits decorated with a lot of chains and spikes." It's actually a lot more descriptive, and anyone who wants to can figure out what's going on, but it seemed to solve the PG problem.

Some of the early books in the Meg series were set in my hometown of Yorktown, Virginia. But I realized early on that if I kept setting them there, I'd have a lot of tough decisions to make about real places and people. Many mystery writers use real towns or neighborhoods, but invent any locations in which bad things happen. I decided to follow the even more drastic course of inventing a whole town. (Drastic, but far from uncommon--think Metropolis, Bayport, Isola, Arkham, and Santa Teresa.) I've decided it's a good thing I created my fictitious Virginia town of Caerphilly, since lately a lot of my plots seem to include real or suspected malfeasance by government officials and other public figures. If I wrote too many books featuring political or economic corruption in a real place, it might be my publisher's legal department, not Leo, saying, "You can't do that."

I contend that there's no subject matter that's untouchable, even in a humorous cozy. But there are quite a few things I haven't yet figured out how to handle within Meg's world. For example, I would love to do a book that highlights the excellent work done by equine rescue groups. It would fit in with the animal welfare work that Meg's grandfather and father do. But I'm just not sure how to work starving and abused horses into a comedy. And while I usually try to put Meg in mortal peril in the grand finale of each book, I'm not sure I'd ever have one of my villains threaten her twin sons. Not sure the reader wants to see that, and I'm pretty sure the reader doesn't want to see Meg tear said villain limb from limb, which is what she'd want to do as soon as she got the upper hand.

Besides--what would Leo think?

Any thoughts on subjects I should avoid to keep my fictional world cozy enough? Or any subjects I should get over my squeamishness about and tackle?

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Donna Andrews is the award-winning author of the Meg Langslow mysteries and the Turing Hopper series. The latest Meg book, Some Like It Hawk, is in stores now.
You can find Donna at her website: http://donnaandrews.com/
On the Femmes Fatales blog:
http://femmesfatales.typepad.com/
Or on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/DonnaAndrewsBooks

Rules were made to be broken???

By Lonnie Cruse

Lately I've been reading a collection of Mary Roberts Rinehart's books on my Kindle, and I'm enjoying the variety. I love her style, her humor, her characters, her . . . well, just about her everything. However, when reading her work, I can't help noticing how she wrote things back then that might earn her a huge smack-down from today's writers and critiquers. Like the "had I but known" syndrome. She uses it in nearly every chapter, yet today it's a "no no." Or so I'm told.

Which got me wondering, just WHEN did these rules came into play? Obviously not in Rinehart's day, or she wouldn't have been so popular. Would she?

As readers, we don't seem to care much about the "rules of writing" so long as the story is good and keeps us turning the pages to see what happens next. As writers, when we join critique groups or other writers' groups, we are told what works today and what does not. What the "rules of writing" are. And if we cross that line, somebody usually shoves us back across it with a stern warning. "No publisher will buy it if you write stuff like that! No one will read it if you put that in your book!" What am I talking about? Stuff like prologues, had-I-but-knowns, etc. And yet, modern-day writers sometimes break those rules, too, and get away with it.

So I'm wondering if it isn't at least somewhat up to the reader's taste? Rules are made, rules are broken, in writing. Readers notice and quit reading, or they don't notice/don't know the rules/don't even care, because the writing is so good, and they keep on reading. Rinehart's writing is that good for me.

Are you, as a reader, aware of the rules of writing? If you are, how do they affect you when reading? Do you toss the book or stick with it? And as a writer, how much attention do you pay to the "rules of writing?" A lot? A little? Not at all? And how does it affect you in getting published? Writerly minds wanna know.

As always, thanks for stopping by! Oh, and by the way, what ARE you currently reading? Modern day? Vintage? Both? Neither?

I'm also reading Donna Andrews' SWAN FOR THE MONEY. That woman could break every rule in the book and I'd still read her. I do have to be careful not to fall out of bed once I start laughing. Sigh.

Falling in love with Raymond Chandler . . . wait, isn't he, um, dead?

By Lonnie Cruse

As a reader, I love mysteries best of all, followed loosely by science fiction, followed slowly by romance, depending on the romance. And I read a lot of non-fic, but this is about fiction.

There are authors I only buy in hardback, regardless of the room they take up on my book shelves. There are authors I buy only in paperback, and I'm willing to part with some of them when I'm done. Others I keep. Sadly, sometimes my fave author's latest work only come in paperback, sigh. Hardbacks are so nice to hold. But I digress.

I buy mostly new mysteries, but I'll by vintage versions if I come across an interesting looking one at an antique shop or hear about it online. (Tip: IF you are looking for an old book you read years ago or heard about, try an Internet search. Much quicker than antique stores.)

The biggest problem with vintage mysteries is how much tastes have changed over the decades, so some are difficult to read, for several reasons. Political correctness is probably the biggest change. Things that could be said or terms that could be used in the thirties and forties certainly can not be said/used in modern-day writing. And often the talent is lacking, except for the legends like Chandler, Hammett, and Agatha Christie. Well, okay, that's still true today, sometimes talent is lacking, sometimes it's so powerful it blows the reader away. Still buying/reading a vintage book can be chancy. Which brings me back to Raymond Chandler.

I've loved the movie THE BIG SLEEP since I first watched it, and I pull it out at least once a year. Bogart/Bacall. Who can beat that combo? Add to the mix one Peggy Knudsen who plays the part of Eddie Mars' blonde wife and who gives me four degrees of separation from Bogart/Bacall. Stick with me here. Bogart/Bacall play the leads, Knudsen plays a minor part, her mother, Mrs. Knudsen (mercifully I can't remember her first name, IF I was every allowed to know it) taught seventh grade at Fifth Street Elementary School in Las Vegas, Nevada in the 1950's, and I, sadly was not her favorite student. Not even close. Still, four degrees of separation, no? And I think we heard about "my daughter, the movie actress" at least once a day either before math or after spelling. But again, I digress. I'm good at that.

Recently I read a discussion of Raymond Chandler's works on the DorothyL mystery discussion list. Intrigued, I broke down and searched the Net for his books. Lucked onto THE RAYMOND CHANDLER OMNIBUS, published in 1964. It includes The Big Sleep, (1939) Farewell, My Lovely, ( 1940) The High Window, (1942) The Lady In The Lake (1943.)

I started reading with Lady In The Lake, at the back of the book, because it's been made into a rather a silly movie with Robert Young and Audrey Totter, but it's set at Christmas. I'd been warned that the actual book was set in warm weather and the movie very loosely followed it. Chandler's writing immediately engrossed me. And, yes, the book was far better than the movie.

From there I moved to reading The Big Sleep. Ahhh, how the man can turn a phrase. I particularly love Chandler's descriptions. Rarely does he simply describe a character's clothing. Generally he says what it is, then compares it to something surprising, creating a wonderful word picture not only of the clothing but of the character who wore it. Below are two of my favorites:

After describing his own wardrobe choice for the morning, powder-blue suit, blue shirt, blue tie, etc. Marlow says: I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. (Chapter 1 para 1) That got a laugh out of me.

In chapter 11 para 1 Marlow describes the clothing of Vivian Regan. The last sentence of the paragraph reads: Her black hair was glossy under a brown Robin Hood hat that might have cost fifty dollars and looked as if you could have made it with one hand out of a desk blotter. One hand? A desk blotter? Wahahahah!

Okay, maybe I'm easy to please, but the descriptions the man used blow me away. Often better than in books written this decade.

I don't know about Chandler's day but in this day and time, newbie authors are taught pretty quickly the do's and don'ts of writing. Don't use words ending in "ly", don't start a sentence like this: Crossing the room, she saw . . . . Punctuation rules, argh, some have changed over time, and what hasn't changed I forgot before Mrs. Knudson ever turned me loose on the unsuspecting reading world. Vintage mysteries often break these rules, mostly because the rules didn't exist back then. Writers like Chandler do it, get away with it, and make you like it. Their writing is timeless, wonderful in the thirties and forties, still wonderful seven decades or so later.

IF you've not read anything by Raymond Chandler, or IF you think you know his writing from the movies, don't kid yourself and don't cheat yourself out of a wonderful read. Get a copy of one of his books (or luck onto an omnibus, ABE books online carries them and they are nice ones) and start reading. You won't be sorry.

Thankfully, I still have two more in the omnibus to read, along with THE PENGUIN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH by Donna Andrews, among other reads. Sigh, so much time, so many books.

And I hope you, dear reader, are not one of those people who was taught to clean your plate and read every page in a book, whether you like the book or not. Life is too short. If you hate the book, skip to the end, IF you have to know the end, then put it down and pick up something you know you'll enjoy. IF your to-be-read (TBR) pile begins to shrink, there is bound to be a new book somewhere by one of your favorite authors to read. Personally, I'm three and a half books behind on reading Donna Andrews, at least one by Bill Crider, and I daren't even look at my Anne Perry or Dorothy Cannell list. Sigh.

Kill me, but don't misspell my name

Sandra Parshall

Mystery fans are the only people I know who will happily pay somebody to murder them. If they can’t find anyone willing to bump them off, they’ll settle for being turned into dogs or hookers.

At every big mystery convention – Bouchercon, Malice Domestic, Left Coast Crime, etc. – an auction of items donated by writers raises thousands of dollars for charity. The biggest chunk of money goes for “items” that cost the authors nothing and can’t be carried home in a suitcase: the chance to have their names given to characters in future novels.

I don’t know whether it’s sheer love of the genre, the desire for a kind of immortality, or latent masochism, but the bidding for this honor can be fierce. At the first Malice Domestic I attended a few years ago, I looked on in open-mouthed wonder as someone paid $800 to have her name in a Donna Andrews novel. At Bouchercon in Baltimore this year, the highest bid of the auction was $1,500 for naming rights in a Laurie R. King book.

Reviewer Andi Shechter and librarian/writer Gary Warren Niebuhr, great friends to the genre, have both bought “appearances” in several books. Short, dark-haired Andi got a kick out of being a tall, blonde hooker in an S.J. Rozan mystery, and Gary got a three-in-one deal in Rozan’s Winter and Night: a major character is named Gary, another character’s last name is Niebuhr, and the setting is a town called Warrenton.

Of course, writers have always enjoyed slipping the names of real friends and relatives – and their pets – into fiction, free of charge. (I don’t think the real Spike paid to be immortalized as the lovably disagreeable terrier in Donna Andrews’s Meg Langslow series.) Everything I write includes at least a couple of characters named for friends. But character-naming isn’t always done out of affection. There’s a lot of truth in the warning that you shouldn’t antagonize a mystery writer because you might end up dead or serving a long prison sentence – in the pages of a book.

Honoring friends and getting even with enemies are private pleasures for the writer, usually not shared with readers, but some writers use the lure of naming rights in future books to promote a current release. Karin Slaughter’s recurring Get Slaughtered contest is always deluged with entries. Lisa Gardner named a murder victim in Gone for a contest winner.

Contest and auction winners usually see their names attached to characters who appear in only one book, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Tess Gerritsen’s medical examiner, Dr. Maura Isles, got her name through an auction and was intended as a one-book character, but the fictional Maura grabbed a permanent role as co-protagonist, with Detective Jane Rizzoli, in a best-selling series.

At Malice Domestic this year, I decided, with some trepidation, to try my luck at raising money for charity by donating naming rights to a character. Because I’m not well-known and haven’t published a lot of books, I was afraid no one would be interested. I crept into the room as the auction started and sat near the door so I could creep out again, mortified, if nobody wanted to be in my book. Angie Hogancamp saved me from disgrace. She’ll be one of the good people in my next novel.

For the Bouchercon auction this year, I donated animal naming rights, figuring people would pay even more to immortalize their pets than they would to see their own names in print. The bidding was under way for the right to name a dog, and I’d already offered to throw in naming rights for a cat to raise the ante, when a woman in the audience said that if I would add a guinea pig, she would pay $900 for all three. Sold! Look for Maggie, Lisa Marie, and Mr. Piggles in my next book. Many thanks to Meg Born for her amazing donation to the Enoch Pratt Free Library and Viva House, a mission for the poor and homeless in Baltimore.

I also came away from Bouchercon a winner, after an incredibly thoughtful friend won naming rights for a character in a Thomas H. Cook novel and gave the prize to me because Cook is my favorite writer. So now I'm going to find out how it feels to see a character on the page bearing my name. I'm pretty sure it will feel fantastic.

Do you enter character naming contests? Do you bid for naming rights at conference auctions? Have you ever won, and were you happy with the character that got your name? (I know one cat owner who was miffed when she paid to have her feline in a novel and his name was given to a human.) Why do you think people enjoy this so much?

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Whatever your choices, get out and VOTE on November 4!

Fraidy-cat, fraidy-cat . . .

By Lonnie Cruse



My name is Lonnie and I'm a frady-cat. There, I've said it. Outloud.

What am I afraid of? Writing a mystery novel. Yes, I know, I have four books in print in the Metropolis Mystery series and one in the Kitty Bloodworth, '57 Chevy series. I've gotten good reviews. I have readers who e-mail me to demand I finish the next one right now so they can read it. Doesn't help.

Every time I start a book, I'm afraid I can't write another whole book. Afraid I can't get the story out of my head and into the computer. Afraid I'll overlook something important. Afraid I won't be able to come up with enough words to meet my publisher's minimum word requirement. Afraid my readers will show up on my doorstep and demand their money back. Sigh.

So what to do? Well, I know a lot of writers who say they don't read anything by other authors while writing a book for fear of absorbing that writer's style or theme into theirs. But I love to read, and since it takes me a year to write a rough draft, polish it several hundred times, run it through my friendly readers (non-writers who are terrific at catching errors) my critique group (writers who are terrific at catching errors) re-write again, and submit it to the publisher for edit, then start another book, if I didn't read while I wrote, I would, um, never get to read anything. So I read and learn from other mystery writers. What works for them, and what doesn't. But back to my problem.

After taking time off from writing over the holidays (okay, I was scared to start a new book, sigh) I finally decided to start typing in the idea that I'd been kicking around for months. And the fear came back. But as luck would have it, I was reading a mystery by Donna Andrews, CROUCHING BUZZARD, LEAPING LOON. And it is a hoot! Andrews knows how to turn a phrase. No information dumps or long descriptions that take the reader out of the story. Every page makes me want to keep going. And I love her humor. If only I could write that well.

So what did I learn from reading Donna Andrews? Well, one thing I generally shy away from is giving my favorite characters too tough a time in their private lives. Let the perp shoot at them? Run them off the road? Chase them with leathal weapons? No problem? But interfere with something my characters really want out of life? Frustrate them? Big problem. Maybe I'm afraid of my characters? Possibly.

But Andrews lets things happen to her characters that has me rolling in the floor, laughing myself sick. So, hey, maybe it's time my characters faced an obstacle or two not related to the murder? Yes, indeedy, it is. I'm now about ten chapters into the new book and a new character I've created is driving my regular characters nuts. My lead character is trying to think of a way to bump her off and not get caught. In the scene I'm writing this week the new character totally disrupted a very important family gathering. I can't wait to see what she gets into next.

I won't ever be able to write like Andrews because she has a unique voice, as do all writers. But I do enjoy writing a story with humor in it. I happened to read an interview with Andrews recently on a blog. So all this exposure to Donna Andrews and her writing got me thinking. She sits down every day (maybe weekends off, I can't remember what she said about that) and WRITES! And the job gets done. And I suddenly realized that the longer I stay away from a story, the harder it is for me to get back into it. To just write it. Because the fear builds by the day. But if I write each day, it's much easier. So that's what I'm doing. Writing each week day, no matter what else is going on. And I leave off in mid-chapter so I have somewhere to go, or somewhere to start the next day. And it seems to be working.

Is there a point to all of this? Possibly. If you are a first time writer, don't be a fraidy-cat. Just sit down and write it. If you are a twentyth time writer, don't be a fraidy-cat, just sit down and write it. You can do it, we can all do it. FDR is attributed with saying "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." I think that pretty well sums it up.

Hmmm, I wonder if my new character has any experience with explosives. Excuse me, I have a scene to write.

Donna Andrews

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall

Donna Andrews is the award-winning author of the humorous Meg Langslow mystery series, featuring a female blacksmith from Virginia, and the Turing Hopper series about a virtual sleuth. Her career as a mystery author began when Murder with Peacocks won the St. Martin’s Press contest for the best unpublished mystery novel. The latest book in the Meg series, The Penguin Who Knew Too Much, will be published by St. Martin’s in early August. Donna lives in Northern Virginia, where she indulges her love of gardening when she isn’t meeting her 1,000-words-a-day writing quota.

Have you always wanted to make people laugh? Were you the class clown when you were a kid, and did it ever get you in trouble?

I wasn't the class clown as a kid--actually, during my childhood and adolescence, I was rather shy and retiring. I was that little kid with thick glasses who always had a book in front of her face. But I began writing humor early.

When I was third grade, my father, who was a marine biologist, brought a salt-water aquarium in for Miss Gregory, our teacher, to use in science lessons. One of the clams died, and Miss Gregory washed out the shell and gave it to me--I presume she intended for me to take it home as a subtle hint to Dad to bring in a replacement clam, but that's not what happened. I made a hinge for the shell with some strips of white first-aid tape, drew eyes on one side with an indelible marker, and named it Winifred H. Clam. (I have no idea what the H. stood for.) And I began writing stories about Winifred's adventures as she walked around the world on the ocean floor.

The Winifred stories actually produced my first tangible reward for writing--my teacher shared them with a friend, and her friend liked them so much that she sent me a small gift--a gold-colored clam charm. I lost the charm at some time over the intervening years, but the association had been made--you wrote funny stories, and people rewarded you. It took a few decades for it to happen again, with the publication of Murder with Peacocks, but I like to think that early success helped me keep going during the long dry stretch that followed.

About the bird theme to the Meg Langslow books: Have you ever had a moment of regret that you started that, or has it made planning the books easier? What comes first, the bird or the plot -- do you come up with a plot and decide on a bird that will fit, or is it the other way around?

I haven't really regretted the bird theme, because it's not that hard to work birds into the books. Birds are all around us, one way or another. And whether the bird or the plot comes first varies from book to book.

With Peacocks, putting the bird in the title was almost an afterthought. I was about to send the manuscript in for the St. Martin's contest and needed a good title. I called up a friend and asked her to help me brainstorm. "Which book is this?" the friend asked, since she knew I had several projects in the works. "The murder mystery with the peacocks in it?" Bingo!

With The Penguin Who Knew Too Much, the book that comes out in August, the penguins came first. I'd wanted to use penguins for a book, because they feel inherently funny, but didn't think it would work to take Meg to Antarctica--half the humor comes from Meg's interaction with her family, and I couldn't see the entire clan packing up and trekking
across the ice floes.

So I back-burnered the idea of using penguins until I was attending Mayhem in the Midlands and saw penguins at the Omaha Zoo. Eureka! I didn't need to take Meg to the penguins--I could bring them to her, courtesy of a zoo and her nature-loving father. And once I had invented a zoo for Meg's new fictional home town of Caerphilly, it seemed logical to bring all sorts of other creatures into the mix. In addition to the title bird, the cast of Penguins includes llamas, camels, sloths, lemurs, wolves, hyenas, naked mole rats, accouchis, and a few large cats.

With the book I'm writing now, whose working title is Cockatiels at Seven, the title came first. Someone suggested it, and I knew I had to find a way to use it. I'd tell how, but--that would be a spoiler.

Many mystery writers said they had trouble writing after 9/11. Was it hard for you to get back to writing a humorous book at such an awful time, or did you see the world of your book as a refuge from the real world?

It was hard, yes. I didn't write on 9/11--I spent time online with my friends--Laura Lippman wrote a wonderful article on how the Internet kept a group of us in contact that day: http://tinyurl.com/yvolpc. I spent the day tidying my apartment, chatting with those friends online, and trying to feed people.

But on September 12, I sat down to write again. Didn't much feel like it, but I had quit my day job in June of 2001, and I figured that was what writers do during difficult times. They write. It might have been easier if I'd been working on one of my Turing Hopper books, which are darker than the Meg series. But the book I was working on--the book I had a deadline for--was the book that eventually became Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon. That was the other problem--not only did I not feel much like writing, I certainly didn't feel very funny.

But since I outline, I knew that there was a place near the end of the book where Meg and some other characters would be held at gunpoint by the villain. And I knew Meg would make a wisecrack--I had no idea what. I figured I'd fill that in later, when my sense of humor returned. But I knew what happened after Meg's wisecrack, and here's the first small bit of writing I was able to do after 9/11:

"What kind of heartless cynic are you?" Rico exclaimed. "How can you make jokes at a time like this? This is serious!"

"Very serious," I said. "Or at least way too solemn."

Which seemed to baffle him. He stared at me, and looking back, I could see that I was doing so from the other side of a gap--in fact, an uncrossable chasm. The chasm between people who take life very seriously and those of us who laugh to keep from crying. The people who stand around lugubriously at funerals saying things like, "At least he didn't suffer" or "Doesn't she look lifelike?" and those of us who want to tell tall tales about what a wonderful old reprobate he was and imagine how she'd laugh if she could see the sideshow. The people who sob long-neglected prayers on the steps of the guillotine and those of us who know God will forgive us if we have to banter with the executioner to keep our courage up, as if laughter were a gauntlet we could throw in the face of death.

Or maybe I'm just a heartless cynic. "Sorry," I said. "Just ignore me. It's how I cope."

I wasn't even sure when I wrote that whether it would fit into the final book. But I know it got me writing again. When I went back again to write more, I was able to write some of what came after that moment, and what led up to it, and eventually I got back into the groove and finished the book.

Do you have any plans to write a serious stand-alone mystery or suspense novel?

I have several ideas for stand-alones rattling around in my head--some serious, some humorous. I think St. Martins would be happier if I did a humorous stand-alone--something that would bring additional readers back to the Meg series. But I also have a couple of darker ideas. And I've assured them that if I ever do write a dark, violent, gory book, I won't do it under my real name. I have the pen name I'll use all ready--Lee Child gave it to me during a conversation we had this year at the Virginia Festival of the Book: Andrew Donner. Has a ring to it, don't you think?

One thing I like about short stories is that you can experiment with different voices in them. The first short story I had published, "The Unkindness of Ravens," in The Mysterious North, an anthology edited by Dana Stabenow, was not humorous at all--it was dark, with a little bit of woo-woo. And another story coming out this year--"A Rat's Tail," in the September-October issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine--has some humor in it, but is noticeably darker than the Meg books. Doing different things helps you go back to a series refreshed and re-energized.

Does your sense of humor save you from life's embarrassing moments? Would you tell us about an experience that mortified you at the time but which now makes you laugh?

I'm not sure it saves me from the embarrassing moments, but at least having a sense of humor makes them less painful to think about afterwards. And writing humorous books gives me the opportunity to distill those embarrassing moments into fiction.

One example from my college days: the guy I was dating asked me out to dinner. Somehow he failed to mention that this wasn't just an ordinary dinner, at the Arby's where he worked to help pay for his tuition or someplace with an equally relaxed atmosphere. His roommate was taking his girlfriend to dinner for her birthday, and we were tagging along.

They were a little nonplussed when they showed up at my dorm and I was wearing jeans--quite a contrast with the rather formal dress the roommate's date was wearing. But they were running late, and there was no time for me to change. At least I was wearing a nice blouse. And when we arrived at--horror of horrors, Charlottesville's fanciest steak house!--I tried to look nonchalant as we strolled through the dining room, but in reality, I was mortified. I knew I'd feel tons better as soon as I could hide my jeans under the tablecloth. So when we reached our table, I slid into my chair and--boom!

The waiter had pulled out my chair with such a flourish that he'd pulled it completely clear of where I was starting to sit, and I landed in a heap on the floor.

I'd almost recovered from this embarrassment, and was telling an amusing story while we ate our steaks. The story was going quite well; I was acting it out with facial expressions and gestures--

Unfortunately, I was gesturing with my fork, and when the chair-stealing waiter bent solicitously over my shoulder to ask if madam was enjoying her meal, I whacked him in the nose with a bite of steak.

I don't think we ever went back to that steak house. But several decades later, after retelling that story to friends when we were driving through Charlottesville, I realized that the chair episode was the perfect thing to happen to Meg in the book I'm currently writing (working title: Cockatiels at Seven). Nothing is ever wasted; it's all fodder.

Visit Donna’s web site at www.donnaandrews.com.

Book Lust

Sandra Parshall

At a recent book signing, I met a couple who live in a four-room apartment with 8,000 books.

I cannot tell you how deeply I envy them. Our home is bigger than theirs, and we don’t have 8,000 books. I’ll bet we don’t have more than 3,000. But it’s not from lack of trying -- or buying, I should say. I can’t go into a bookstore without wanting to own every volume in it. What in this world is more wondrous, magical, intriguing, alluring than a book? An entire world contained between two covers!

It’s not the content alone that I love. I enjoy the feel of a book in my hands, I admire a sturdy spine, I appreciate an attractive cover and an elegant design. I’m a type junky and always check to see whether the book includes a note about the type. I’m disappointed when I don’t find that information. (My favorite typeface, at least for the moment, is Sabon, which is used in Stephen Booth’s British editions.)

Once I own a book, I never want to let it go. When we moved, about 15 years ago, from one Washington, DC suburb to another, we decided it was a good time to thin our book collection. We went through them all and filled box after box to donate to the Arlington County Central Library’s used book room. As soon as they were gone, I began to suffer the most agonizing remorse. How could I have them go? How could I live without them? For a long time after we moved to the county next door, I made regular trips to the Arlington Library, where -- yes -- I gradually bought back a fair number of the books we had donated. They’re mine. They belong at home with me, not with strangers.

I’m constantly adding new ones, but that doesn’t mean I’ll dump the old ones to make room. We have a Modern Library edition of The Grapes of Wrath with a $1.65 price on the cover. We have one of the early editions of To Kill a Mockingbird, which I consider the greatest American novel ever written. We have a 1910 edition of David Balfour by Robert Louis Stevenson and a copy of Middlemarch that is so old the pages have turned dark brown and I'm almost afraid to handle it.

I’ll admit that I never look inside most books after I’ve read them. I just like to see them on the shelf. A few, though, call me back again and again. Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass still enthrall me after many readings, and make me homesick for a romantic, idealized East Africa that I’ve never seen and which, in truth, probably never existed. It doesn’t have to be real; I can go there anytime I want to by opening a book. I also reread passages from Thomas H. Cook’s psychological suspense novels when I feel as if I’ve forgotten how to write (a dismayingly frequent occurrence). Cook shows me the way. Dinesen’s memoirs, plus To Kill a Mockingbird and one or two of Cook’s novels, are the books I never want to be without.

Occasionally I get the notion that I should reduce the glut of books in our house. But how to do it with minimal trauma? I could try the method I once heard Donna Andrews describe. She has plastic bins in her garage where she places books she’s decided to give away. This gets them out of the house proper without the agony of a sudden, final parting. They’re still there in the garage if she changes her mind. When she’s used to the idea of parting with them, they’re finally donated. Yes, I could try this approach. But I know myself too well. Regardless of where I donated books, if they remained accessible to me I might try to get them back before long, even if I had to pay for them.

But enough about my passion for books. Let’s talk about yours.

How many books do you own?

How many have you bought in the last year?

What is the oldest book you own?

What is the one book you will never part with?

Which book do you reread (in part or in full) most often?

How many books do you own but have never read?

How many books do you give away in an average year?

Do you ask friends and family to buy you books as gifts? Do they -- or do they insist on giving you “something more personal”? (And don’t you just hate that?)