Why it took my series protagonist three books to get a girlfriend

Elizabeth Zelvin

I’m a sucker for romance. While I don’t read straight romances, my favorite reads tend to include a satisfying love story along with great writing, smooth storytelling, and—a crucial element for me—endearing characters of depth and complexity. At the top of my list is Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga, started with a great love story (Cordelia and Aral Vorkosigan) and then took a leisurely arc of seven or eight books and more than a decade in fictional time to find Miles the perfect mate. Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series and Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond series are on the list: complex historicals brimming with excitement and a touch of magic, both with extraordinarily charismatic heroes who find (immediately or eventually) a larger-than-life Big Love. In the Dunnett books, the ultimate heroine is only ten years old when she and the hero first meet. In mysteries, I’m particularly fond of Julia Spencer-Fleming’s Rev. Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne and Margaret Maron’s Judge Deborah Knott and Dwight Bryant (both brilliant examples of the traditional amateur sleuth with a law enforcement partner). In the first case, it’s love at first sight and obstacles to overcome in book after book. In the other, Maron herself has said when she started the series, she had no idea that Deborah and Dwight would fall in love.

In the past, I’ve said that it’s ironic that though I love romantic stories, I didn’t write one. Now, reviewing my literary role models, I can see that I was instinctively falling into the pattern of allowing the protagonist’s love story to unfold slowly over the course of a series arc. In the case of my protagonist, recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler, it was not a matter of building the tension, peak after peak, in one evolving relationship, as Julia Spencer-Fleming does so brilliantly. Rather, like Miles Vorkosigan (if I dare to mention my own work and the dazzling Bujold’s in the same breath), Bruce has a lot of growing up to do before he can choose the right mate.

The theme of my mystery series, recovery from alcoholism, codependency, and other addictions and compulsions, gave Bruce some very good reasons not to have a girlfriend. The first book, Death Will Get You Sober, started with Bruce hitting bottom in a detox on the Bowery.

I’ve worked with a lot of homeless alcoholics, and believe me, most of them are not thinking about romance. Survival and getting the next drink takes all their attention. When Bruce gets to AA, he hears, along with “Don’t drink and go to meetings,” that he’s supposed to have “No relationships for the first year.” (I have had clients who had the illusion that meant that one-night stands were okay, as long as they didn’t get emotionally involved. But that’s another story.)

The secondary theme and subplot of the series, Bruce’s friendship with his two sleuthing sidekicks, his best friend Jimmy and Jimmy’s girlfriend Barbara, also supported Bruce’s lack of a love interest in the first book. Bruce has deeply disappointed Jimmy and Barbara, and a big part of his motivation for staying sober and solving the murders is to give the friendship a second chance. There’s a lot of love in this triumvirate, and some readers noticed a teeny bit of sexual tension between Bruce and Barbara, though it was essential to the story I wanted to tell that this would be resolved harmlessly at the end of the first book.

Bruce actually had a girlfriend in the manuscript I intended to be the second book of the series, which was rejected by my publisher at the time. Bruce is still fairly new in sobriety. Jimmy and Barbara are taking a weekend couples workshop, and Bruce tags along. The obnoxious relationship guru is murdered, and Bruce promptly falls for his widow. But this relationship has nowhere to go, and it’s apparent throughout the story.

This left Bruce free to get a crush on another murder suspect, the girlfriend of the drug dealer victim, in Death Will Help You Leave Him. He also had to break free from his crazy ex-wife, which meant dealing with the destructiveness of their relationship and his own codependency issues, love issues, rescue fantasies, or whatever you’d like to call them.

In the new book, Death Will Extend Your Vacation, Bruce and his friends take shares in a clean and sober group house in the Hamptons.

They’ve just arrived when they find the body of one of their housemates on the beach. It takes two more murders and the whole summer for them to figure out whodunit. In the meantime, Bruce is very much attracted to one of his housemates, the self-reliant and enigmatic Cindy. He’s ready now, but things keep getting in the way. It’s also a new experience to negotiate the landmines of an attraction in sobriety. In recovery, not drinking is just the beginning. After that, you have to change your whole life, and that includes refraining from doing anything you’ll be ashamed of in the morning. Do he and Cindy get to first base by Labor Day? Or home? I’m not telling—and don’t you dare read the last page first!

Durable Literature: The Great American Novel

Elizabeth Zelvin


When I was a kid, boys (not girls, in those prehistoric times) dreamed of being the first man on the moon. Once Neil Armstrong took that one small step in 1969, the dream became superfluous. Boys, again, used to talk about growing up to be President of the United States. That’s a dream that’s still available but has surely lost a great deal of its luster. With the paradigm shift in the book industry and the proliferation of electronic words, I doubt that young writers are dreaming about writing the Great American Novel. Besides, it’s already been written—more than once.


According to Wikipedia, “the phrase [Great American Novel] derives from the title of an essay by American Civil War novelist John William DeForest, published in The Nation on January 9, 1868.” As an old English major, I know that much of American literature, even in the early 20th century, looked to English literature for its role models and heroes. Henry James is probably the best example of an American novelist inspired by Europe. His settings, his vision of society, and his leisurely, tortuous sentences evoked the Old World, not the vigorous frontier.


The Great American Novel had to be set in America as seen by Americans, not through the filter of British or European attitudes. Its American characters had to demonstrate American values: individualism, social and economic mobility, a robust egalitarianism. They had to tell stories that could only happen in America in some version of the American language.


Here’s my list of the novels I think deserve the title:


1. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The least debatable and still delightfully readable Great American Novel. Set in the heartland, with the Mississippi River as its central metaphor, it’s a great example of the always popular coming of age novel. It tackles the core American issues of freedom vs slavery and independence vs conformity. Furthermore, Mark Twain made brilliant use of the American language—more than most modern readers realize—by rendering the subtleties of local dialect at each point along the river as Huck’s raft floated down it. I read the book aloud to my son when he was 8, and it held up marvelously as a masterpiece of storytelling with suspense, compassion, and humor.


2. Moby Dick by Herman Melville. The unreadable Great American Novel. It’s the mighty story of man against whale, in a ponderous poetry that some people might still tackle for pleasure, but tough going for most modern readers. I had to laugh when someone on DorothyL complained about mysteries that bore us by telling more than we want to know about fishing. Melville devoted hundreds of pages to how to catch, cut up, and cook the whale. He also gave us the ultimate vision of the New England whaler.


3. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The 20th century Great American Novel. It’s about secrets and justice and childhood (a girl’s, this time, though a sturdy tomboy of a girl) and race relations and small town life—American as apple pie.


4. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. The unsung Great American Novel, my personal pick and the only one on my list that Wikipedia doesn’t mention in its article on the topic. I believe it’s disregarded because it’s for and about and read by girls and women. Yet the language is as fresh and everyday today as it was in 1868. It’s probably never been out of print, it’s been adapted many times for stage and screen, and I’m one of many thousands, perhaps millions, of women who know this beloved book practically by heart, who return to it time and again for another visit with the March girls, who still cry when Beth dies, and whom Jo inspired to become writers.


It’s probably a shame that there will be no more Great American Novels. Kathryn Stockett’s The Help would be a grand contender, but who can tell if people will still be reading it even half a century from now? And what about graphic novels? Are they meant to be cherished and reread or scrolled through and deleted? Would the first Superman comic book or the first Spiderman be a candidate for Great American Graphic Novel?


True confession: I was crying over one of Louisa May Alcott’s books on my Kindle in the subway the other day. (Okay, I’ll tell you which one: Rose in Bloom, the sequel to Eight Cousins. When I was a kid, we used to call it “the Jewish Alcott book.” Rosenblum—get it?) When I reached my stop, I sat down on one of the benches in the station to finish the chapter (which I’d read umpteen times before) before I went out into the sunshine and had to put away the Kindle. I bet some women readers can guess which chapter, too. Now, that’s what I call durable literature!

The All-Important Cover

Elizabeth Zelvin

The cover of my new mystery, Death Will Extend Your Vacation, due out in April, is a collaboration between me and my publisher’s book designer.

When the book was accepted for publication, I was about to set off for Malice Domestic, which is one of the best places for an author of traditional mysteries to hand out bookmarks. Since it would be months until my manuscript reached the cover design stage, I did my own provisional cover and slapped it on a thousand bookmarks. Later, when I found this publisher invited authors to submit a possible image, I sent it along and was pleased when they used it. Not being a professional graphic designer, I never would have thought of using the fonts and colors of the text that they added to my photograph. Appropriately, it gives the impression of an old-fashioned postcard that you might buy at some beach boardwalk.


I’ve been creating images to represent my books and stories since the first time I needed a provisional bookmark. They’ve also come in handy to circulate an anthologized story in standalone chapbook form. I’ve given out hundreds at library conventions (ALA and PLA) and many more at fan conventions where I’ve had a story nominated for an award. When the advent of e-books created an ongoing need for covers supplied by the author, I already had a running head start.


Let’s talk about that severed hand on the cover of Death Will Extend Your Vacation. (You did notice it, I hope.) This is not the hand’s first starring role.

When I needed a cover for my short story, “Death Will Trim Your Tree,” I had a bright idea that sent me to my desktop to google “bloody hand.” You can buy anything on the Internet. I would have been happy with a whole arm, but I chose this severed hand because it looked realistic and the price was right. (The severed end is kind of disgusting, but I omit it from my photos. However, if I ever take to writing horror....)

It also works with my newest story, “Death Will Tank Your Fish.” I couldn’t work it into “Death Will Tie Your Kangaroo Down,” but for that I googled “kangaroo on couch” and found the perfect photo on the website of an animal refuge center in Australia, from which I received emailed permission to use it within an hour or two.

When I first started sending out my work and hobnobbing with published writers, I heard a lot about how important a good cover was to sales of a book and therefore to an author’s career. I also heard about publishers who changed book titles and provided hideous covers over the author’s dead bodies. The most memorable of these was a woman whose publisher threw a Halloween reference into the title—no Halloween in the book—and smacked a grinning orange pumpkin on the front, to the author’s horror when she saw the book in print. I heard a senior editor at the same publisher’s describe their cozy line as books of which “you can put a puppy or kitten on the cover, even if there are no puppies or kittens in the book.”


I was lucky to have my first publisher assign its top art director to my first two books.

David Rotstein (look at the back flap of any hardcover from Minotaur and you’ll probably see his name) had resources I don’t, as I learned when he told me he achieved the effect of a whiskey glass shattered by a bullet not through CGI, but by shooting an actual bullet at the glass and recording the impact with high-speed film. His cover for Death Will Get You Sober was nominated for an Anthony award, though it lost out to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as most award nominees did that year.


Now I have the rights back, I can’t use the original cover if I want to offer the book for e-readers. I don’t have a gun, so can’t shoot myself up a glass—and don’t really want to find out the hard way whether an imitating another image violates copyright. But I could lay a glass on its side with whiskey spilling out of it. Not real whiskey, since I couldn’t make it puddle. But maybe honey....

Succumbing to Kindle

Elizabeth Zelvin

I hope I won’t regret admitting publicly that I got a Kindle for Christmas. Or was it Chanukah? As a reader, I look forward to traveling without pounds of books in my backpack or luggage and never running out of reading matter. As a writer, I feel more ambivalent. Amazon’s world-changing e-reader has permanently debased the price of books (and therefore author earnings) and cut radically into the business of the independent booksellers and librarians who are the best friends of midlist writers like me. On the other hand, it provides opportunities that didn’t exist before to share my work with readers, and affordably, at that. I don’t want to add to the millions of words on the subject of the changing publishing industry that are already floating around the Internet. Instead, let’s talk about me as a reader with my first electronic reading device.


Can the reader be separated from the writer who inhabits the same brain and body? Maybe not. My very first download was my own story, “Navidad,” currently enjoying new life as an e-story on Untreed Reads, after originally appearing in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. As I write this, it occurs to me that if I actually read the thing, I’ll have a better idea of how this e-publisher presents its material. I’ve only thought of this because I noticed flaws in the formatting of the first e-book I did read: Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the very first Hercule Poirot mystery.


I know that HarperCollins plans to publish new editions of all 80 of Agatha Christie’s mysteries. Now, there would be a grand project for a Kindle reader, if it’s not prohibitively expensive. (I can’t imagine going out and buying 80 new print novels that I’ve already read, not to mention giving them shelf space. Can you?) But what’s available now for free or close to it consists of two novels, the first Poirot and the first Tommy and Tuppence, The Secret Adversary, which I also downloaded.


The Christies were not the first. My first visit to the Kindle store (which was not involved in the acquisition of my own short story) took me to two longtime favorite authors of whom I’ve read most but not quite everything in my lifetime: in order of acquisition, Louisa May Alcott and Jane Austen. My hardcover copies of Little Women (“special contents of this edition,” presumably the foreword and full-color illustrations, copyright 1946) and Jo’s Boys (Goldsmith Publishing Company, Chicago, no copyright information whatever) are falling apart. The spine of Little Women flaps precariously; the brittle brown pages of Jo’s Boys flake off as I turn them, trying to find a date. I still re-read them, and yes, I still cry every single time Beth dies. Um, is crying on a Kindle as bad as spilling coffee on a computer keyboard? If so, I might be in trouble.


I know I have my Pride and Prejudice somewhere, though I haven’t opened it in a while. It’s a trade paperback I got for an English lit class in college, which means it’s close to fifty years old. I don’t really need to re-read it to remember more than enough to enjoy P.D. James’s Death Comes to Pemberley. Yep, I treated myself to a $12.99 current read I might otherwise have reserved at the library. P.D. James is not one of the hundreds of mystery authors I know personally, so I won’t pretend I would have bought the hardcover. But I certainly wouldn’t have failed to read it, no matter what. Anyhow, as Amazon assiduously tells readers, “This price was set by the publishers.” And there I go down the primrose path, buying books again.




























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The Elephants of Chiang Mai

Elizabeth Zelvin

I was fascinated to hear about a highlight of a friend’s recent trip to Thailand: a visit to the elephants of Chang Mai. These evidently world-famous elephants do a lot more than giving rides to tourists. (Not that I didn’t envy my friend who got to do it. I’ve always wanted to ride an elephant!) But these remarkable elephants play soccer.

They even do a happy dance when they score a goal.


This raised a lot of questions for me. For example, do elephants have team spirit?

Does the whole team do the happy dance when one elephant scores a goal? I learned that they perform individually with the ball, but don’t play an actual game. This suggests that elephants have community, but not competitive team spirit. Sports fans may disagree, but I think this is a good thing. Do people have to teach successive generations to play soccer, or do mothers teach the babies? I don’t know the answer to that one.


Even more remarkable, some of these elephants are painters. Yes, I said painters, producing some amazing works of art.

This raises more questions. For example, are they all creative artists, or are some of them critics? When their paintings are praised, even sold, are they happy for each other?

Again, I wonder if they are free of competitiveness and embrace the concept of a personal best for every elephant. I’d like to believe that the elephants of Chiang Mai excel in their ability to enjoy each other’s successes—just like mystery writers.

When I Grow Up

Elizabeth Zelvin

Writer Patricia Harrington says she “was told once by a psychologist: Ask a woman what she wanted to be when she was nine years old, and for a boy what he wanted to be when he was twelve years old. There will be elements of that desire or avocation later in life.”

Pat herself is a professional grant writer and mystery writer. She uses the idea that childhood aspirations mirror in some way, if they don’t duplicate, what people do become to develop characters in her mysteries. She says she “asked an Episcopalian bishop what he wanted to be at twelve. He answered, ‘a baseball player, and to play second base.’” She thinks his status as a suffragan bishop (“an assistant or subordinate bishop of a diocese” according to thefreedictionary.com) echoes the childhood dream.

Pat says she asked a public housing tenant “what she wanted to be at nine, and she said, ‘a hooker’. Made me wonder....” In fact, I’m less shocked, however saddened, by that response, than many would be because of my years working with alcoholics and drug addicts who ran the socioeconomic gamut from homeless to rich and privileged. The premise did make me want to know more about what people wanted to be when they grew up. So I asked the question on Facebook. It turned out to be more popular than many of my posts, but most the responses it drew were not quite what I expected. In retrospect, I was hoping for discrepancy rather than correspondence, along the lines of “wanted to be an astronaut...became a lion tamer.”(Come to think of it, there is a common thread in that pair: a tolerance for high risk.)

Some of the kids’ ambitions were imaginative:

“An opera singer & surgeon. At the same time.”

“All I wanted was to be a teenager like the girl down the street who I thought looked just like Annette Funicello.”

“I wanted to meet Roy Rogers & Dale Evans and have them come to the Bronx with their horses.”

“I wanted to be Dallas QB Roger Staubach. The only thing we had in common was I had concussions too.”

From a woman: “I wanted to be President of the U.S. I’ve since regained my senses.”

“At 9: mother of 12 kids. At 13: truck driver.”

Sounds like this last woman also regained her senses. I can’t tell you what she does today, because all the information on her Facebook page is in Finnish, a language that is known for bearing no resemblance to any other language (except Hungarian and Estonian; Basque is the language with no living relatives at all).

Many of my Facebook friends are writers, along with mystery-loving librarians and other readers, and that probably skewed the results. But quite a number of the writers have wanted to be writers since childhood. Of course, in today’s economy and publishing climate, many of the writers have other jobs as well. Mystery author Vicki Lane, for example, wanted to be an archaeologist as a kid; besides teaching and writing, she’s been a farmer for the past 36 years. Digging in the dirt...digging in the dirt. Makes perfect sense to me.

I’m one of those who wanted to be a writer from well below the age of 9. Of course, my plan was to become a published novelist at 24, not at 64. But luckily, writing is an occupation in which ability is not confined to any particular age group. In a creative residency I participated in a few years ago, all the composers of postmodern music were in their early twenties, the visual artists mostly in their thirties; the writers ranged from 20 to 62.

The Chanukah Bush and Other Soothing Lies

Elizabeth Zelvin

For most people, the winter holidays bring a certain nostalgia—or post-traumatic memories, depending on what kind of childhood you had. I’m lucky to have had wonderful parents, but some of their quirks and crotchets, which appeared perfectly normal to me as a kid, appear in a different light from my adult perspective.

My family was Jewish, so you might imagine we always celebrated Chanukah. Wrong. My mother later denied this, but the way I remember it (the annual event and the later explanation), my parents realized that Christmas was a lot more fun than Chanukah: stockings stuffed with presents, a glittering tree with ornaments, a pile of presents, and, of course, Santa Claus.

In fact, I know I was a believer, because one of my earliest memories—at four? five? six?—is not of my father blowing the gaff, but of the moment just afterward: my mother saying, “Oh, Joe, don’t spoil her Santa Claus!” Anyway, we always had a Christmas tree, and I don’t think we started calling it a Chanukah bush until we were old enough to appreciate facetiousness.

In fact, the Chanukah bush was and probably still is a fairly common tradition among secular New York Jews with kids.

Our tree was a classic 1950s tabletop aluminum tree, which we decorated with the kind of ornaments you’ll now find in fleamarkets and yard sales and also making a comeback as modern reproductions.

The trees themselves have become collectibles, which you can find on eBay and elsewhere if you google “vintage aluminum trees.” Here are a few, none exactly the squat, bushy model, excellent for hanging ornaments, that lives on in my memory.

I believe I was eight or so when my parents decided it was important to pass on their Jewish heritage by having a menorah and lighting the Chanukah candles. The best part for kids, besides the fun of candles themselves, was the fact that it lasted eight nights, on each of which we got a present. Chanukah was a minor holiday in Judaism until the modern American frenzy of Christmas buying and decorating spurred Jewish families to turn it into something that could at least attempt to compete.

We had stockings, big woolen ones otherwise used for ice skating, until I went off to college at the age of 16, as well as presents on December 25 in addition to Chanukah.

By the time I married my Irish Catholic husband thirty years ago, my mother was denying that any of this had ever occurred. In her conveniently faulty memory, we had always celebrated Chanukah. My husband’s position was clearly stated from the start: “I don’t care what your mother thinks—we’re having a Christmas tree.”

And so we do, along with lighting the candles, eating pot roast and latkes, singing carols (music is another area in which Christmas beats Chanukah hands down), and opening the presents under the tree. My granddaughters, Jewish on my son’s side but being raised Catholic like their mom, will do all those things this year—on Boxing Day. That’s December 26, a holiday we don’t celebrate in America, but it comes in handy when the kids have three sets of grandparents. And on Christmas Day, we’ll probably follow another New York secular Jewish tradition: Chinese food for Christmas.

Heaven in the Hamptons: Round Swamp Farm

Elizabeth Zelvin

An unassuming exterior

From the first pat on the shoulder from matriarch Carolyn Lester Snyder (“How are you today, honey?”) to the smile from sisters Dianna and Claire as they ring up my luscious purchases faster than the speed of light (“Put your basket right up here, honey”), the ladies of Round Swamp Farm in East Hampton, the best farm market and then some on Long Island or maybe anywhere, make their customers feel right at home.

Liz at Round Swamp Farm

When I told Carolyn I was blogging about her, she wouldn’t let me take her picture but insisted on snapping one of me.

The family has been on their land for more than three hundred years, and those babies everyone is cooing over are the twelfth generation of “farmers of land and sea.” The three or four next latest generations are the bustling, cheerful flock of mostly redheads who prepare, arrange, and sell the perfect fruits and vegetables, today’s catch of fish and seafood and corn picked only an hour or two ago, delectable baked goods, and ever increasing variety of delicious prepared dishes for summer people who are too blissed out to cook when they get back from the beach. Just walking in there makes me feel cheerful, even when it’s hours till mealtime and a chance to taste all this gorgeous food.

A sumptuous display inside

The impact of weather shows the produce is really home grown.

The Round Swamp folks don’t need a plug from me. Martha Stewart has featured the market on TV. Hillary Clinton wrote them a warm letter after she visited. One day I heard Carolyn telling whoever had answered the phone that she didn’t have time to talk to The New York Times about an article or interview. “We get all the business we need by word of mouth,” Carolyn told me. Word of mouth indeed. The phrase is apt, because I’m only one of many loyal customers—I keep wanting to say “visitors”—who can’t say enough about Round Swamp’s poems for the mouth: their lobster salad, their crabcakes, and their New England clam chowder, to name only a few of the perfect 10s and not to mention the cookies, muffins, and pies, which I spend a lot of energy resisting. Their breads are so good I’ve been known to freeze some for the winter, when they’re closed. Their quiche, their granola, and their cheese sticks are the best I’ve ever tasted. In the last couple of years, they’ve had great success with more ambitious main dishes, such as firepit barbecue pulled pork and buttermilk fried chicken breasts.

In the fall (they’re open through Thanksgiving weekend), it’s time for whipped sweet potatoes, pecan and pumpkin pies, ginger snaps, and split pea and pumpkin soups as well as the superb chowders. But what keeps folks like me coming back, even if I can only get there on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, when (especially between Memorial Day and Labor Day) there’s a line of shoppers that winds through the store and sometimes out the door, is the way Carolyn and her relatives and staff make me feel like part of the family. I love being called “honey.”

The Brooklyn Book Festival

Elizabeth Zelvin

I spent last Sunday at the Brooklyn Book Festival, an ambitious annual event that describes itself as follows:

The Brooklyn Book Festival is the largest free literary event in New York City presenting an array of literary stars and emerging authors who represent the exciting world of literature today. One of America’s premier book festivals, this hip, smart, diverse gathering attracts thousands of book lovers of all ages.

This year’s luminaries included Larry McMurtry, Terry McMillan, Jennifer Egan, John Sayles, Joyce Carol Oates, Walter Mosley, Jean Valentine, Jules Feiffer, and Pete Hamill. But I didn’t hear any of them speak. The New York chapters of both Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime had tables. Between the two, I was on my feet for several hours, schmoozing with both the passing book lovers and my fellow writers. I handed out at least a hundred bookmarks for Death Will Extend Your Vacation, my new book, which won’t be out till next spring. I even sold a decent number of my already published books.

Typically, given New York’s increasingly fickle weather (global warming doesn’t mean it’s always hot—it increases extremes), the day started out gray and blustery and gradually became one of those clear, sparkling fall afternoons for which New York is famous.

At the Sisters in Crime booth, the hot ticket item was Murder New York Style: Fresh Slices, an anthology of crime stories by chapter members, each set in a part of New York City (within the five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island) that probably doesn’t appear in any tourist guide. My story’s setting, the church basements of AA throughout the city, certainly doesn’t. Though a lifelong New Yorker, I had never heard of the Morbid Anatomy Library. One formerly well-kept secret, the High Line, is rapidly becoming a tourist attraction. Since its stunning renovation as a block-wide “mile-and-a-half-long elevated park, running through the West Side neighborhoods of the Meatpacking District, West Chelsea and Clinton/Hell's Kitchen,” it’s rapidly becoming a favorite of both locals and visitors. Every guest I’ve had from out of town or another country in the past year has been eager to see it. Anyhow, the settings have quite a range, and the anthology, which actually debuted at the Festival, sold briskly at a special event price.

Rock bottom bargains were the order of the day at the MWA table too, where my fellow authors included Rosemary Harris, Charles Salzberg, and Sheila York. There’s no doubt in my mind that thanks to Amazon, the amount people will pay for a book, especially a hardcover, has been permanently lowered. But as veteran self-promoting authors (and that means all of us) know, selling books is not necessarily the most important item on the agenda at a book event. We’re building readership every time we hand out a bookmark or encourage someone who says, “I’ll get it at the library” or “I’ll get it for my Kindle.” I had a chance to catch up with author Grace F. Edwards, who I wish still came regularly to MWA and SinC meetings. Rosemary had a productive chat on behalf of MWA with the author of the book publishing guide on About.com. Sheila got to meet a fan who squealed with delight to find that she could finally read the sequel to the first book in Sheila’s series, which she adored. That’s a peak experience for any author, on top of the pleasure of an afternoon in the sun, schmoozing with fellow writers and people who love books.

Larry McMurtry, Susan Isaacs, and me
I just learned this morning that my picture appears in illustrious company in an article about the Festival on About.com.

The Agatha Nominees: Best Short Stories of 2009

Elizabeth Zelvin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Joy of Reunion

Elizabeth Zelvin

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Bar at Bouchercon

Elizabeth Zelvin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Wildlife in My Yard

Elizabeth Zelvin

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shrink to Shrink: Roberta Isleib Interviewed by Elizabeth Zelvin

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seven Years Ago

Elizabeth Zelvin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Tall Towers
(Click to hear the song)

Beaches

Elizabeth Zelvin

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

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

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

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

Wrapping Up the Book Tour

Elizabeth Zelvin

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

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

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

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

Salman Rushdie and Me

Elizabeth Zelvin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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