The Unsinkable Charles De Gaulle

by Julia Buckley
Last night we watched The Day of the Jackal, the 1973 movie based on Frederick Forsythe's novel in which an assassin (the Jackal) is hired to kill French President Charles de Gaulle.

I remember watching this movie as a youngster and feeling unbearable suspense, wondering if the Jackal (who happened to be a handsome, ascot-wearing Englishman with a jaunty walk and impeccable style) would be caught before he could do his heinous work. Since I really didn't understand which side was which, I was of course rooting for the Jackal.

These days I am more interested in the political machinations on both sides. De Gaulle was a frequent target for assassinations because, for one thing, he favored independence for French Algeria. A variety of sources suggest that there were at least thirty attempts made on De Gaulle's life, and that De Gaulle had a surprisingly cavalier attitude about them.

In one 1962 attempt, which is portrayed at the beginning of Jackal, "gunmen attacked a motorcade carrying De Gaulle and his wife. De Gaulle's car was raked with gunfire; tires were punctured and the rear window shattered, but the de Gaulles were unhurt. After the car had rolled safely to a stop, de Gaulle climbed out and made the famous remark, "They really are bad shots." (Source:Almost Assassinated;

A previous attempt to kill De Gaulle occurred in 1961 in the Pont-Sur-Seine District, in which plastic explosives were stuffed into a propane container and hidden in a sandpile. According to this source, "De Gaulle's car (a Citroen Deesse) sped toward the sandpile at 70 mph, driven by his favorite chauffeur, Francis Marroux. As it came abreast, the sand exploded, causing the Deesse to lurch sharply and throwing a sheet of flame across the roadway.

De Gaulle ordered Marroux to drive straight through the flames. "Faster!" he commanded, as the car plunged straight for the inferno. "Faster!"

Neither the De Gaulles nor Marroux was hurt. They continued on their way, merely stopping to change cars at a military barracks nearby."

A 1973 TIME Magazine article referenced both the Forsythe novel and the attempts on De Gaulle, and pointed out that one of the reasons why so many of the plots failed is that so many of them were stupid.

"One zany plot called for poisoning the Communion Hosts at the village church in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, where De Gaulle attended Mass. The idea was discarded after the plotters realized that the first person to receive a Host would keel over dead and give the scheme away. And there was no way to guarantee that De Gaulle would be first at the Communion rail.

Equally harebrained was a scheme for a kamikaze pilot to crash a small private plane into the French President's helicopter. While circling over Algeria's Blida Airport in anticipation of De Gaulle's departure, the pilot was dismayed to see that a swarm of helicopters had taken off at once. There was no way of knowing which one De Gaulle was in (French security forces routinely used dummy planes and juggled limousines as a precaution)." (link to this Time article from 1973).

Ironically, Charles De Gaulle did not die by any sort of violence; he died suddenly, of a heart attack, at the age of 79. He was sitting in a chair in his own living room, watching television.

By his request, he received no promotions or commendations after his death, and his tombstone bears only his name and the dates of his birth and death.

Mary Anna Evans: Turning a Fresh Eye on New Orleans

By Mary Anna Evans (guest blogger)

My new book, Floodgates (Poisoned Pen Press, July 2009), is set in New Orleans, and The Big Easy is as big a part of the plot as any of the human characters. When a writer's dealing with something as sprawling and messy and charismatic and lovable and raunchy and ethereal as New Orleans, sometimes that writer's gotta get out of the way and let the city speak.

My editor, Barbara, who is also charismatic, lovable, and ethereal but to whom those less desirable adjectives do not apply, did not want me to do this book. She said that New Orleans had already been done. She suggested that I consider Baton Rouge or, if I wanted to do something with Katrina, that I might think of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Baton Rouge makes me think of a government city ringed by oil refineries. because that's what it is. (It's a wonderful place filled with lovely people, and my sister lived there for years, but it's not where I wanted to set this book. Maybe another book, but not this one.)

I grew up 60 miles from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and I may write a book set there someday, too, but not this one. I decided to try again to explain my thinking to Barbara.

I told her that New Orleans is not like the other places punished by Katrina, nor by any other hurricane. Elsewhere, the storm blew in and swept everything away. In New Orleans, the flooding has left a situation that is very interesting to an archaeologist like my character Faye Longchamp. You can't dig in most part of New Orleans, ever again, without going through a layer of history laid down in 2005. It's not old, but it's still history, just like the layer of scorched stones archaeologists encounter when they excavate at Troy.

Barbara liked that notion, so I kept trying. I told her that I was the person to write one more New Orleans story because, yes, New Orleans has been "done," but I don't think it has been done by a trained engineer who just might have something to say about the levee failures.

She let me do the book.

Then I became properly terrified, as I always do when I start a book. The first time I wrote a book set in a real place, Effigies, I sent the first few chapters to a former resident of the setting, Neshoba County, Mississippi. Her response, "This is real nice, Sugar, but Neshoba County's dry."

I said, "Now, I know in my heart of hearts that they drink at the Neshoba County Fair."

She said, "Just because you can't buy it don't mean that you can't drink it."

I fixed the offending passage, then I made several trips to Neshoba County to acquire myself some verisimilitude.

I've spent quite a bit of time in New Orleans over the years, so I was able to limit myself to one research trip, but it was a heckuva research trip...a week in the French Quarter, including copious culinary research. Many oysters died on my behalf that week. My, how I suffer for my art.

I also took the Katrina bus tour, walked the Quarter for hours, toured the War of 1812 battlefield at Chalmette, and got two gypsies to tell my fortune. (I wonder what the IRS is going to think of those last two deductions.)

I did my typical wide-ranging reading for this book, including the 600-page (!) independent study on the levee failures, a minute-by-minute account of the events of the week of Katrina, and a detailed guide to voodoo. Such is the magic of the city that the climax of the book morphed under my hands as I wrote it to include the lyrics to both Basin Street Blues and to a song praising an avenging voodoo goddess.

I had buckets of fun doing this book, but then, I always do.

************************************

Mary Anna is the author of the award-winning Faye Longchamp archaeological mysteries: ARTIFACTS, RELICS, EFFIGIES, FINDINGS, and FLOODGATES. She's hard at work on the sixth in the series, STRANGERS. She's a chemical engineer by training and license, with a degree in engineering physics thrown in for spice, but she loves reading about history and writing about an archaeologist. Truth be told, she's a little jealous of Faye and her archaeological adventures. Mary Anna enjoys reading, writing, gardening, spending time with her family, cooking, and playing her 7-and-a-half-foot-long monster of a grand piano. Her cat helps her write, so she should probably put his name on her books.

Her mysteries have won the Benjamin Franklin Award, the Patrick D. Smith Florida Literature Award, and a Florida Book Awards Bronze Medal. They've been nominated twice for the SIBA Book Award, and EFFIGIES was a finalist for ForeWord Magazine's Book-of-the-Year. The latest installment, FLOODGATES, received a starred review from Booklist, which called it "fascinating."

The "Idea Store" is where I get them . . .

By Lonnie Cruse

This weekend, at a family reunion, someone asked me where I get my ideas for my stories and how I come up with my characters. Writers get this question all the time. Most of us don't always know where we get our ideas, so we're honest about it. Other authors say they get them at the "Idea Store." Don't believe them.

I suppose for writers there is a little computer humming along in the back of our heads at all times. We see something and it sets us off. And sends us running to our real computers. For instance, last weekend we stayed on a farm in the beautiful rolling hills of Kentucky. The house is quite a distance from the road and the house directly across is also far back off the road, so you can see it, but at a distance. It's a REALLY old house, and quite beautiful, as is the place where we stayed. In the afternoons, I sat on the porch and looked across those hills and dreamed about that house. What's it like inside? What are the owners like? What is their story? As it happens, I know most of that particular story because I asked my host, but any writer could speculate and come up with a terrific mystery, or romance, or historical novel without knowing anything about the history of the old house. Whatever interests you. Or me.

My point is that if you are struggling for ideas to write about, stop and look around you. See any interesting houses, old or new? Other buildings? Cars? People? I don't have a picture to post about that farm, but I've got a couple of other pictures for you to look at. See any stories there?

Below is a reproduction of Fort Massac, on the site of a fort that existed here in the 1700's. Imagine the stories there? The other is a picture of a very old house not far from where I live. What's the story behind that house?




What about characters? How can you write believable characters that come alive on your pages? By watching the very real people around you. Incidentally, it's not always a good idea to totally base a character who is less than perfect on someone you know and who might recognize themselves in your story. And who then might want to sue or take a swing at you, neither being good possibilities. Instead, use a mixture of several people you've observed when creating a character. Build a whole new person in your head, then introduce that person to the world.

Quite honestly, I'm not totally sure how I create characters except that I'm a people watcher. I try not to judge people's motives, because I'm usually off the mark, but I like to watch mannerisms and behaviours and incorporate them into stories.

My characters do become real to me, and they often won't do what I want them to. Most writers will tell you that, and most readers are boggled by that information. After all, we created that character, why can't we make him/her do whatever we want? Probably that little internal computer again, instinctively telling us what a character will or won't do, based on our mind's eye vision of that character.

I know I get a lot of ideas from observations in real life and from keeping an eye on news stories. I know I get ideas from looking at homes or other unusual structures. How do I put them into the story? Not sure except visualizing the scenes as they would appear to my character, like a director in a movie would do. Watching the characters move around, seeing what they want to do, then letting them do it.

And I visit the Idea Store fairly often.

“The End” Is Just the Beginning, Part II of Four: Two writers talk about editing, critique, and craft

Elizabeth Zelvin & Sharon Wildwind

How important are the mechanics of writing: spelling, grammar, syntax?

Sharon: Absolutely, one-hundred percent, ground-zero critical. Poor word-and-sentence-crafting skills are like saying that a concert musician can ignore finger exercises, or a painter doesn’t have to know the differences between acrylics and watercolors. Writers profit by losing the myth that an editor will fix all of that tawdry stuff once the publisher buys a manuscript.

Of the three, spelling without reference and without error is being replaced by an ability to use a spellchecker, but that’s like needing basic arithmetic skills to use a calculator. I may not remember that 6 x 7 = 42, but I need to know that the answer to 6 x 7 falls somewhere between 40 and 50, so that when my calculator misfires and tells me that the answer is 167, my brain goes, “Wait a minute.” It’s the same with spelling. If I have a choice between two closely-spelled words, I have to know which one to choose.

Unfortunately, there aren’t yet any grammar and syntax programs that can be as bang-on as spell checkers. With lots of writers, me included, the banging that goes on is me hitting my head in frustration when the computer, for the 137th time, corrects a grammar usage that I’ve intentionally chosen.

Liz: I was brought up to believe that correct spelling was not optional. I know today that spelling is not necessarily proof of intelligence—or vice versa—but I didn’t learn that from my family. We were all demon Scrabble players. I can still remember my feeling of triumph at the age of nine when I insisted—correctly—that “exhilarating” was spelled with an “a” in the middle, while my mother said it was an “i” and my father voted for “e.” To this day I don’t know if they were just giving me an easy win. My mother always said “It is I” and put “whom” in all the right places. I know where it should be, but I don’t do it in casual conversation. And I don’t mind ending a sentence with a preposition.

Do you have any particular bees in your bonnet about the use of language?

Liz: My pet peeve is the split infinitive. The Star Trek slogan—“to boldly go”—drives me nuts. So does “to better understand.” I don’t know why people think that it’s okay to split the infinitive when the word in the middle is “better.” You can write or speak a perfectly smooth sentence in which you say that you want “to understand [something] better.” Thinking “to better understand” is a better locution is like thinking it’s more aristocratic to stick out your pinky when you hold a teacup—something I’ve read enough Golden Age English novels to know no true aristocrat would do.

Sharon: Carelessness, such as split infinitives. Damn it, Jim, it’s either “to go boldly” or “boldly, to go.”

“Point in time.” The action has either reached a point (a place) or a time (a when), but not both at the same time.

Business jargon. “Uniquely recapitualize leveraged web-readiness vis-a-vis out-of-the-box information,” works fine in a Dilbert cartoon, but has no place in the real world. As an aside, if you run a Macintosh system that uses widgets, download Corporate Ipsum. You can have tons of fun with the business jargon it generates.

My biggest gripe is format.


There, I feel a lot better.

Coming on Tuesday July 14: Part III, on critique groups

A Conversation with Ann Parker

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall

Ann Parker has deep family roots in Colorado, the setting of her acclaimed Silver Rush historical mystery series – her ancestors include a great-grandfather who was a blacksmith in the silver boomtown of Leadville, a grandmother who worked at the bindery of Leadville's Herald Democrat newspaper, a grandfather who was a Colorado School of Mines professor, and another grandfather who worked as a gandy dancer on the Colorado railroads. When she decided to write mystery novels, her family history made Leadville a natural choice for her setting.

Ann’s first novel, Silver Lies, won the Willa Award for Historical Fiction and the Colorado Gold Award. The second in the series, Iron Ties, won the Colorado Book Award. Both books were short-listed for other awards and appeared on various best-of-the-year lists. Leaden Skies, out this month, is already receiving rave reviews.

Ann writes fiction at night and spends her days earning a living as a science, technical, and corporate writer. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

Q. Tell us about Leaden Skies.

A. With pleasure! Leaden Skies is the third in the Silver Rush historical mystery series; it picks up just about where Iron Ties (the second book) leaves off.

It's July 22, 1880, and Ulysses S. Grant—former president and Civil War general—has just arrived in Leadville for a five-day visit. He's in town to visit the silver mines, with an eye to investment, to meet with the city's Union veterans, and be feted by Leadville's upper crust. As his visit commences, Inez Stannert, part-owner of Leadville's Silver Queen Saloon, strikes a backroom deal with upscale brothel madam Frisco Flo. The deal turns deadly when one of Flo's women turns up dead and Inez discovers that Flo has a secret third business partner. Meanwhile, some folks are "playing politics"—at the local level and much higher—and some are playing for keeps. The title refers not only to the darker atmosphere that permeates the book, but the weather as well. According to historical records, the weather during Grant's visit was truly nasty for those five days: lots of rain, some hail, and unusually cold for late July.

Q. It seems like a big leap from writing about science to writing mystery fiction. Had you tried to write fiction before? Were you an avid reader of mystery novels?

A. I've always been a reader since those synapses "clicked" in first grade. I can still remember reading the word "morning" and having some amazing switch flip in my mind. After that, there was no stopping me. I read anything and everything—including an entire set of children's encyclopedias bought one volume at a time from the grocery store. I recall I was a big and early fan of Edgar Allen Poe and Sherlock Holmes. I wrote my first novel when I was about 12 years old. It was a pseudo-Western, strangely enough, featuring a woman physician, circa 1880, set in … of all places … Maine. (I guess Maine sounded pretty exotic to a kid who'd never been further east than Colorado!) I didn't turn my hand to fiction again until I was in my forties.

Q. What prompted you to write historical mysteries? Were you already a history buff? And why did you choose Leadville, Colorado, as your setting?

A. I've read all over the map throughout my life, including historicals. (I recall with great fondness the "We Were There…" series as a youngster, particularly "We Were There on the Oregon Trail.") I wasn't a history buff per se, although I loved digging in the trunks full of old photographs, letters, clothes, hats, fans, etc., in my maternal and paternal grandparents' basements in Colorado.

I came to writing mysteries set in Leadville through my family history, actually. When I was about 45 years old, there was a family reunion in Colorado (my grandparents on both sides were Coloradans of various degrees). At the reunion, my Uncle Walt told me that my paternal grandmother—the original Inez Stannert—had been raised in Leadville. Now, Granny had NEVER talked about Leadville, although I'd heard plenty of stories about Denver. Surprised, I asked Uncle Walt, "What the heck is Leadville?" He got very excited and told me a bit about Leadville's silver-boom and mining history, then said, "Ann, I know you've been thinking about writing a book. I think you should research Leadville and set your novel there."

Well, I followed Uncle Walt's advice and that's what led to the Silver Rush series. I was simply seduced by Leadville's stories and history and, later, by the physical beauty and depth of the place itself.


Q. Did you visit Leadville before you started writing? Were any of your characters inspired by your research?

A. I wrote about half of Silver Lies before I finally visited Leadville… and boy, am I glad I finally did! Even though I had photographs and maps, it turns out I had formed an entirely erroneous mental picture of the topography. Just goes to show, all the paper research in the world can't supplant being "on the ground."

As for the characters, I certainly drew on bits and pieces of the people I read about. I very much admired Mary Hallock Foote and her writings. Many of the women who came early to Colorado had fascinating stories and amazing resilience: Dr. Susan Anderson ("Doc Susie"), Isabella Bird, and others. Malinda Jenkins (whose story is told in Gambler's Wife) was quite the tough, resourceful woman. My fictional city marshal Bart Hollis has many similarities to real-life Mart Duggan, who was Leadville's city marshal in 1879. Other characters are similarly an amalgam of real folks and my imagination. And I was inspired to add a few "real people" here and there as a result of all that research. In Silver Lies, Bat Masterson makes an appearance as does Denver madam Mattie Silks. In Iron Ties, the chief engineer of the Denver & Rio Grande Railway, J.A. McMurtrie, wanders through. Ulysses S. Grant is much in evidence throughout Leaden Skies. I take my character inspirations wherever I find them…

Q. You set a daunting task for yourself – not just writing a novel for the first time, but making it a mystery with all the demands of the genre, plus giving it a historical setting that required extensive research. Which has been most challenging for you: learning to write fiction after a career as a science writer, mastering the mystery form, or transporting yourself imaginatively to a different time? Which has been the most fun?

A. Actually, science writing uses many of the same writing tools and mindset as fiction writing, only in a different venue. As a science writer, I had to quickly come up to speed on new scientific or technical subjects to the point where I could write articles that were accurate and engaging to a general audience. I learned early in the profession to interview experts, listen closely to what they say, and look for that "hook" that will bring the topic to life. As for imagination, well, I've always been a daydreamer (check the reports from my first-grade teacher Mrs. Kildebeck…), so transporting myself mentally to a different time and place is no problem. Probably the most difficult part of the whole writing process for me is getting the clues right (not too many, not too few, not too obvious, not too obscure) and making sure the mystery—the "who done it and why"—holds up under scrutiny. It's a learning process with each book.

What's the most fun? Entering that magic state where the scenes, dialogue, and action are rolling through my brain faster than my fingers can type. I love being in "the zone." And I've come to enjoy my interactions with readers. It's fun to hear what they get out of the books. Creating a story is like creating a painting or any other work of art: the artist may have one thing in mind during the creation; the observer/reader brings his/her own interpretation to the finished piece.

Q. Your protagonist, Inez Stannert, is a saloonkeeper who’s having a secret affair with the town’s preacher. Why did you develop this type of main character instead of using, for example, the wife of a Leadville prospector or businessman (or the preacher)? What possibilities does a character like Inez open up that you wouldn’t have with a more conventional woman of that era?

A. There are always, of course, many choices when starting something like this. I knew from the start that I wanted a protagonist who was a woman in a "man's world." (In the 1880 Leadville census, three women were listed as saloonkeeper/bartenders, whereas 288 men laid claim to that occupation.) I initially considered having Inez be a member of the "fourth estate," working on or perhaps publishing a small newspaper, rather like Serena Clatchworthy in Leaden Skies. (This would have also fit my initial criteria, as there were 30 male journalists to the single female inkslinger in town, per the census.)

I finally decided I wanted a female protagonist who, while originally from a higher social strata, had easy access to the "seedier" side of town and could also be, in some ways, "invisible" to a large swatch of society while still in their midst (think of what people say as they drink and how much attention they pay to the person behind the bar…). I wanted my sleuth to be morally ambiguous, sometimes leaning toward the light, sometimes shifting toward the dark. In some ways, Inez is much like the Silver Queen Saloon itself, which stands at the intersection of Leadville's red-light and business districts. I have plenty of precedent: the heady atmosphere of a boomtown in boom times encourages folks to believe that anyone—including themselves—can become rich overnight. People take chances and gamble on long shots that they might not even consider under more sober circumstances.

Q. What does your research tell you about law enforcement in the time and place you write about? Did the real Leadville have a functioning justice system, or was it pretty much anything goes?

A. Certainly at the beginning, it was "anything goes." Fortune seekers flooded in from all parts of the world: Leadville was the place to be in the 1879, 1880 time frame. Leadville had a police force and a justice system—how well it functioned is another story … there were many instances of corruption. Police and the appointed city collector collected fines. There was an interesting relationship between the law, the justice system, and the prostitution "industry," for instance. Basically, prostitutes and the madams paid monthly "fines" and the law looked the other way (unless things got too rambunctious). Another strange thing: Gambling was, technically, illegal in Colorado, but it went on, every hour of the day, in Leadville. There was also a "Vigilantes Committee," 700 strong, who took justice into their own hands more than once, so apparently a number of locals felt that the law wasn't doing its job.

Q. Did you ever watch the HBO series Deadwood? What did you think of it? Was it historically accurate?

A. I loved Deadwood! I think it presents a different side of the "Old West" that counters what we saw on TV in the 50s and 60s. If I were to draw a spectrum, the older, squeaky-clean, morally black-and-white Westerns would be at one end, with "spaghetti Westerns" (sometimes called anti-Westerns or revisionist Westerns) of the mid-1960s and early 1970s claiming the morally ambiguous middle ground, what with their anti-heroes and more cynical view of law and the West. Deadwood is the antithesis of the early Westerns, occupying even darker regions still. Was it historically accurate? Heck if I know. The producer claims so. Some of the things I've read about and researched have me believing that the language used in the series was probably authentic (although I don't know about the frequency and ease with which it was bandied about).

Q. Poisoned Pen Press has a well-deserved reputation for publishing superior books that, for one reason or another, the big New York publishers thought were too risky to take a chance on. Was that the case with your series? Did you try the NY route first, or did you approach PPP without submitting to the bigger houses? What do you feel are the advantages of being published by PPP?

A. I did indeed try to break into New York first. I had an agent who submitted to the major houses—they all passed. (However, I do have some very encouraging, nicely worded rejections on fancy letterhead in my files!) Then, my agent went out of the agenting business! I was faced with either 1) putting Silver Lies aside and moving onto the next or 2) trying to find a home for it myself. I tried to "move on," but my heart wasn't in it. So, I researched smaller presses, asking those I knew in the mystery field what publishers they'd recommend. Poisoned Pen Press was always at the top of everyone's list. When I saw they were located in Arizona, I thought, well, maybe they'll understand this book. I went through the submittal process, and boy, was I thrilled when I got that great email from Barbara Peters, saying, "Yes, we want Silver Lies. Are you working on a sequel?"

I love the sense of camaraderie and community among the Poisoned Pen Press authors, as well as the accessibility to the folks who run the company. Some more tangible advantages: the backlist doesn't go out of print, so it's always possible for a reader to start at the beginning of a series, and PPP is always trying new things, such as offering books on Kindle and audio and so on. Plus, my editor is Barbara Peters … I count myself lucky in that regard: editors don't get any better or more insightful than Barbara!

Q. Are you still working as a science writer? How much time are you able to devote to fiction writing? Do you have a writing routine, or do you fit it in whenever you can?

A. I'm still working as a "word slinger," although I'm now a contractor/consultant with my own business. In this particular incarnation, I'll tackle anything to do with words: employee handbooks, patents, web content, science or technical writing and/or editing … you name it, I'll do it. That's what 30 years of writing and editing experience provides, and believe me, these days, I don't complain in the least. You could say that, instead of having one employer or client, I now have several that I need to juggle along with everything else. The time I can devote to fiction varies greatly. I usually end up writing late at night … right about now, actually. (It's 11 p.m. and here I am, still cranking out the words).

Q. What do you see as your greatest strengths as a writer? Are there any aspects of craft that you’re still trying to master?

A. Hmmm. I'm not certain I have the right perspective to answer this. It's rather like trying to perform surgery on oneself. I'd have to fall back on what reviewers and others say are my strengths: bringing the time and place "alive," and creating convincing characters. The thing I need to work on: writing faster!

Q. Mystery authors whose books are set in the present day have to worry about getting police procedure and forensic details right so their stories will be believable and they won’t face the wrath of sharp-eyed readers. Does setting your books in the past free you from such worries, or do you still have to deal with a certain amount of crime scene and forensic detail?

A. It's true I don't have to worry about sending DNA samples out for analysis. But the details still need to be correct. Inez may not know about "blood splatter pattern," but if we're looking at a scene through her eyes, it's nice to get that part right, just so the scene is more or less "real." I also try to keep in mind other, simple things, such as not sending a character reeling backwards when shot with a Colt 45 (or some such). Doesn't happen; the bullet doesn't have that much momentum. (Don't believe me? Check out Mythbusters Episode 25 http://mythbustersresults.com/episode25 ).

Q. What fiction writers, in any genre, have inspired you and taught you by example? Whose mysteries do you rush to read as soon as they’re published?

A. Picking favorites is difficult, given that I read so widely and voraciously. I was a big fan of the Lord of the Rings epic fantasy … loved the world that J.R.R. Tolkien created (I wasn't big on The Hobbit, though). I very much enjoyed Dianne Day's Fremont Jones historical mystery series. One current-day mystery writer I admire greatly is Martin Cruz Smith—I'll drop everything to grab a new one by him!

Q. Do you hope to continue the Leadville series indefinitely, or do you have a plan for concluding it after a certain number of books?

A. I don't have a specific number of Inez books in mind. But there are certainly "variations on the theme" that might be fun to explore, such as taking a secondary character from the series and creating a story around him/her.

Q. Are you working on a new book now? Can you give us a hint of what it’s about?

A. I'm stepping into the shallows of the fourth book … haven't started swimming yet. It's hard to provide a hint without giving away spoilers about Leaden Skies!

Q. Where can readers find information about your signings and conference appearances?

A. My website has all that at http://www.annparker.net/app.htm.

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

A. If you are aspiring to write, my first bit of advice is: Read. Read the kinds of books you want to write. Silly, I know, but I've run into plenty of folks who want to be writers but … don't read.

Second bit for writers: Write the story that you feel passionate about. And then be willing to revise and "kill your darlings."

If you are aspiring to be published and you have the writing part of the job wired, my advice is: Learn all you can about marketing, promoting, branding … all those things that published authors these days must do in addition to writing a great story. If you have a background in marketing, PR, advertising, you already have an advantage. (Many pre-published hopefuls hate to hear this, but … sorry! It's true!)

My second bit of advice to those who want to be published: Persevere. It's not easy to find an agent or publisher in the best of times, and these are definitely not the best of times. Be prepared to collect a stack of rejections, and remember: Every "no" you get brings you closer to "yes."

Ann wants to alert readers that an Author's Note which should have appeared at the end of Leaden Skies sadly went astray in the printing process. Those who are curious about the story behind the novel (and what's real and what's not) can download a copy of the mysteriously missing Author's Note at www.annparker.net/book.htm.

"The End" Is Just the Beginning, Part I of Four: Two writers talk about editing, critique, and craft

Sharon Wildwind & Elizabeth Zelvin

Where, when, and how did you first learn about editing?

Liz: I literally learned to edit at my mother’s knee. She graduated from law school in 1924, when it was hard for women lawyers to get a job, and eventually made a niche for herself as a legal writer and editor at a major publisher. She left to raise a family, but went back to work as a home-based freelancer when I was 10. In those days, the publisher would pay extra for the author to create her own index. She would type each index item on, yep, an index card, a white 3x5, and I would alphabetize them for her, laying them out on the dining room table like a deck of cards for solitaire. My mother did a contributed book, an encyclopedia of real estate appraisal (a topic on which she knew nothing when she started), that became a long-term bestseller, paying royalties for decades. She left nothing to chance with the real estate experts who were her contributing authors. She sent each of them a well-planned outline, hounded them to stick to it and turn in their manuscripts on time, and in many cases then rewrote each chapter from scratch.

Sharon: I had one technical writing course back in dim mists of university, and I did business writing for a number of years. That gave me a good grounding in the nuts and bolts. My fiction editing was strictly on-the-job training, exchanging on-line critiques with a number of people. Of course, I have the requisite Strunk and White on my reference shelf, along with both of Karen Elizabeth Gordon’s books—The Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed and The Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed—and most recently a second-hand copy of Eats Shoots and Leaves.

At what point do you invite critique on a manuscript?

Sharon: As soon as I get the itch to share. I send out my first chapter, to a select group, as soon as possible. My accompanying questions are “Did the story grab you? If so, on what page? Why or why not? Where do you hope the story is heading?

My husband reads every word of every draft as soon as it comes out of the printer. We’ve agreed that he’ll make general comments, like “This is a funny chapter,” or “There’s not a lot of tension here. You might want to rethink it,” unless I ask him specific questions. Poor man, by the end of the book he can’t remember what’s been included and what dropped, which I suppose is a good thing, because when the advanced reading copy arrives, he’s as surprised as anyone.

I also ask for critique when I’m about a third of the way through the first draft; when I’ve included technical information in an area outside of my personal experience; or when I’m stuck and the plot seems dead. Finally, I have a small group of dear friends and gentle people from whom I pick one to read the entire next-to-final draft before I do the final tidying.

Liz: I don’t show anybody the first draft. I don’t outline, so I’m telling myself the story, creating plot and characters as I go, and I can’t afford to feel inhibited or self-conscious. When I have the whole novel on the computer, I print it out and read it through with pen in hand. I put the first set of revisions on the computer, print it out again, and then either make more revisions or ask a trusted critique partner to take a look.

The only time I broke the full-first-draft rule was recently, when I sent Sharon (my gold standard for critique!) 60 pages of a manuscript I didn’t think was working. She didn’t think it was necessarily hopeless, and she had some excellent suggestions. But she asked a great question: “If your publisher went bankrupt tomorrow, would you still want to write this story?” The answer was “No,” so I put it aside and started a different story.

On Thursday July 9: Part II, on spelling, grammar, and the use of language

Baby Richard and Crimes of Omission

by Julia Buckley
I recently wrote about a perceived injustice in the Chicago legal system (perceived by an angry public, that is), in which a Chicago police officer who beat up a female bartender for not serving him more alcohol walked away from his trial with no jail time. (That post, and its related video evidence, is here).

Writing about that verdict reminded me of the last time I felt irate over a Chicago-area legal decision: the Baby Richard Case.

Even if you're not from Chicago you probably remember Baby Richard (whose real name is Danny Kirchner). He was a baby born to Daniella Janikova in 1991; she willingly gave him up, and he was adopted by the Warburton family, who already had one natural-born son. Janikova told her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Otakar Kirchner, that their child had died. When Kirchner found out that he had a living son and that he'd been adopted, he sought to intervene in the adoption. The Warburtons fought him.

The case was in the courts for four years; in that time Baby Richard bonded with his adoptive parents--the only parents he'd ever known--and his brother. Otakar Kirchner and his girlfriend married, and, united, they appealed to the courts to let them reclaim their son.

In June of 1994, in a decision that shocked Chicagoland, Justice James Heiple ruled that the boy should be returned to his biological father. With news cameras rolling, the crying four-year-old child was pried out of his mother's arms and handed to a man that he did not know.

Even fifteen years later I think of Baby Richard often. I talk about him to my students, who are about the age he would be now. I think about how much of an identity a child forms by the age of four, and reflect about how much damage might have been done when the boy was transferred to new parents--and given a new name. Rather than let him keep the name the Warburtons had given him, the Kirchners gave him the name they wanted for him: Danny.

Added to that, little "Richard" was separated from his older brother. Although the Kirchners had promised that the boys could still see each other, that never happened. Both boys lost a brother that day. When I think of my own two sons and of the bond they have shared since the little one's infancy, I find this part of the case to be particularly heartbreaking.

In 1997, more than two years after Baby Richard, aka Danny, was transferred from one set of parents to another, his real father, Otakar Kirchner, moved out. The boy lives with his mother Daniela, the woman who originally gave him up for adoption.

A book defending the Kirchners was written by Karen Moriarty, a therapist who observed the transfer of the little boy, and who reported that he had adjusted well.

Defenders of the Warburtons, however, suggested that not only had they built a happy and stable home for their adopted son, but that they were cheated out of any further meetings with a child that they had loved. Judge Heiple was criticized for never meeting with Otakar Kirchner before making his decision; he claimed that the decision was based on Illinois law, and that he had to follow it.

But the overwhelming feeling in Chicagoland was that Heiple and the legal system in general failed to take the child's happiness into account, and that they had therefore committed a crime of omission by following outmoded adoption laws rather than examining the realities of the relationships in front of them.

Photo link here (and thank you to Jonathan Quist for the link!)

Poe's Deadly Daughters Celebrate Summer

Happy Fourth of July to all our visitors! We're taking the opportunity to celebrate summer in words and pictures.

Elizabeth Zelvin:
I've already had the high point of my summer, a visit by my granddaughters, ages 2 and 5, to our summer home at the, er, modest end of East Hampton. I now understand why they say it takes a village to raise a child! I needed a three-and-a-half-hour nap when they left. But I wouldn't have missed a minute. I had a revelation about the nature of the shrill cries of children at the beach: my younger granddaughter stood at the edge of the ocean shrieking with sheer delight every time a breaker reached her feet. My other favorite summer thing is fireworks. I like to sit close, where the sound of each explosion thumps in my chest and the bursts of color appear to break right over my head. The spectacular fireworks on the beach at East Hampton no longer take place on the Fourth of July, because that's when the piping plovers are nesting on the sand. By Labor Day weekend, the fledglings have all flown away, so that's when we get the fireworks.

Sharon Wildwind
Knitted vests? This is a summer blog, right. What is that crazy Canadian woman thinking? She’s thinking that so far, in Calgary, it’s been a cold, wet summer. Last time I checked, my single brave cucumber plant was knitting herself a scarf and the tomato plants had installed a sauna. I have a passion for variegated yarn and unfortunately, the more enticing the variegation the more expensive the yarn, so I buy a skein or two instead of enough to make a whole vest. Those little two-ball stashes had grown to the point that I was having trouble closing the wool stash box lid. And I need some new clothes for fall. So, Before the hot weather sets in—if it’s coming at all—I am spending evenings doing two of my favorite things: designing and knitting vests and watching British cop dramas. John Thaw and yummy Mexican yarn. Or maybe that’s yummy John Thaw and Mexican yarn. Whatever. That’s my idea of summer. Have a good one, everyone.

Lonnie Cruse
Up until last week, the spring/summer was extremely enjoyable. Then it became extremely hot. A friend of ours owns a car wash on a major street in Paducah. We passed it on a recent Sunday night, and his huge digital thermomitor registered a whopping 100 degrees at six o'clock at night! PUUUlease. 100? When the sun was nearly down?


Folks here complained about the heat, then we exhanged guilty looks, realizing that while we were hot, we did have electricity again, and food, and we weren't wearing layers of clothing to keep warm, and we were able to travel about our area without fear of ice-leaden tree limbs falling without warning (several residents were injured or killed a few months back by them) and no fear of slippery roads. So right now, we're mostly thankful that winter is over and we can be out and about, enjoying life beyond our heating elements. And the heat wave passed, again, on a Sunday.

Summer, to me, is gathering with friends, good food, good chatter, lots of laughter, soft breezes, beautiful sunsets. Early mornings, watering the flowers and whatever vegetables or herbs I have. Sitting on my porch, watching the birds fight at the feeders, raising their babies, surviving. And the freedom to enjoy all this, hard won for us by our troups over the long decades of this country.

May your summer be full of warm days and cold ice cream!

Julia Buckley
For me, summer and my American Dream take the form of finding the time, at last, to enjoy what I have. It's nice to have those summer days when I can wake up to the joy of having no pressing obligations.

I can lie there and contemplate the graceful movements of a tree outside my window; I can plan family outings, like the one pictured, where we took the boys for a picnic at an old water mill (which used to be a stop in the Underground Railroad). I can clean my house and in the process I can declutter what is not needed or re-discover all of the possessions that I had forgotten in my work-absorbed existence.

Summer brings relaxation, and that brings a return to sanity. It also allows me the luxury of nostalgia for all summers past: little boys having lemonade sales on sweltering days; bunches of cousins sharing ice cream on a park bench; my husband and I taking a rare meandering walk together, talking about things that aren't chore lists. But for this summer, I look forward to summer days in which I can mow my lawn and inhale the fragrance of fresh-cut grass, then enjoy a cherry coke at my patio table. I look forward to summer nights in our cool front porch, festooned with party lights, where we can plot our futures while the day goes on forever.

Sandra Parshall
I hate winter with a passion that probably seems comical to some people. I view it as an aberration to be endured until the world returns to normal. From the moment leaves begin to color in autumn, my mantra is, “I want summer back, I want summer back.” Others may wax rhapsodic about fresh snow piled on the tree branches, but I’d rather look up into a tree and see something like this fledgling robin I snapped recently as he energetically plucked out what remained of his baby down. The world is reborn in every new life.


Others may welcome the crispness of winter air, but I want the heat. I want it to hit me in the face when I step out the door. I want to hear cicadas in the trees and watch fireflies winking across the lawn at night. I want to see my garden transformed from a barren stretch of winter mulch to a glorious jumble of color. We have to apply a noxious potion called “Not Tonite, Deer” to the daylilies if we want to see any blossoms, but they’re worth the trouble.


Warm weather was late in coming this year. Cold, wet days dragged on through spring, cheating us out of what is normally a gorgeous, although brief, season in the Washington, DC, area. But summer is here now, a real Washington summer that's hot and muggy and fragrant. Red fox kits and raccoon cubs chase each other around the back yard late at night, discovering the world in their first months of existence. The garden is abloom and the battle against browsing deer is in full swing. Life is good again. Get out there and enjoy it!

Things books and/or movies make you want to do . . .

By Lonnie Cruse

When I was a young girl, a friend and I walked several blocks to downtown Las Vegas to see a movie. It might have been WHITE CHRISTMAS, but I'm not sure. Anyhow, by the time the movie ended, I wanted to be just like actress Vera Ellen. I wanted to lounge around in pajama tops like she did in one scene. I wanted to eat green apples and drink buttermilk, just like she did. So I talked my step-mom into getting the apples and buttermilk for me. The apples I loved. The buttermilk? Not so much. Reading Nancy Drew stirred my desire to solve crime. Reading my way through Mom's grown-up fiction made me want to be Amber in FOREVER AMBER, or the other heroines.

Recently I've fallen off the mystery reading bandwagon, having immersed myself in reading and/or listening to the ELM CREEK QUILT series by Jennifer Chiaverini. And reading PRAYERS FOR SALE by Sandra Dallas. Both authors feature characters who love to quilt. And now my fingers are itching to quilt. To sift through beautiful fabrics. To mark and cut out the pieces. To piece them together. To admire the blocks and decide how to place them. To pin the layers together and quilt them. To see the finished quilt spread out on a bed or hanging on a quilt rack. Below is a quilt I pieced using my fabrics and fabrics my friend gave me. She also taught me the pattern for this one, House and Garden.

If a book features wonderful recipes, I want to try making them, not to mention eating them. If a movie features wonderful scenery, I want to visit there. If I love a book, I want to be the characters IN the book. Sigh, I'm so easily led.

Do books or movies inspire you to take up activities you haven't tried in a while or to try new ones? And if so, have you actually given in to the temptation and dived in? Did you ever try to become like a favorite character? Care to share with me what book or character that was?

As soon as I finish my current cross-stitch project, I plan to piece a quilt top together or at the very least, quilt a one that I already have on hand. But, as easily led as I am to try new things, to imitate fictional characters, I suppose I might oughta skip watching TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. You think?

Where do you think?

Elizabeth Zelvin

We writers spend a lot of time doing what many folks would call daydreaming…woolgathering…staring into space. We prefer to call it thinking. Where does it all come from: those characters who appear so real that readers can passionately love or hate them, those heart-pounding, twisty plots, that snappy dialogue, so much wittier and more moving that most of us achieve in real life? The human brain is like a computer with lots and lots of storage. (This is literally true: 99 percent of the human mind is unconscious.) All the life experience that a novelist brings to the page, all the potential stories, all the imaginary worlds we can enter only in our dreams are packed away inside our heads, waiting for retrieval. And to retrieve them, writers have to do exactly what we do with electronic computer files: sit there staring at the screen, waiting more or less patiently for them to come up.

In fact, for me, staring at a blank computer screen or an empty page on a lined yellow pad is not the optimal method of thinking myself into a story or the next chapter of my current novel in progress. It’s not a matter of sharpening my real or virtual pencil and announcing to my brain that now it’s time to think. Rather, creativity frequently arises when I’m relaxed enough for a diffuse mist in my head to swirl around and gradually shape itself into a coherent pattern. Then it’s my job to get to that computer—or in a pinch, that little notebook or digital recorder—and get it down before it dissipates.

I’ve found that certain places and activities lend themselves to creative thought. One is lying in bed in the morning. When I first wake up, my eyelids keep drooping, and I might still be able to drift back into a dream that hasn’t quite faded. That’s not it. It’s after my eyes pop open and stay open, and before I can summon the motivation to sit up and roll out of bed, or at least to start my daily stretches. It may be as short a period as ten minutes, or as long as an hour. On a good day, it culminates in a sense of urgency that overpowers my physical needs and catapults me out of bed to rush to the computer or the yellow pad to get the ideas or lines of narrative or dialogue down before I lose them. My husband knows not to press me if I clutch at my head and wave him away when he tries to talk to me. “It’s like I’m carrying a basket of eggs in there,” I told him recently. “If anybody jostles them before I can set them down, they’ll shatter.”

I also find the shower especially conducive to thinking. I can’t count the number of times I’ve charged out of the bathroom scantily clad in a towel and dripping wet because the perfect twist for the end of a story or motive for a villain came to me as I soaped myself up, and I’m afraid if I don’t record it right away, I’ll forget it. Even more inconvenient are the ideas that bubble up as I do my three-mile run. I can’t get to a computer. I usually have at least a tiny pad and pen, but I don’t want to stop running to use them. At times, I’ve carried a digital recorder. Its biggest drawback is that when I play back what I’ve recorded later, so I can write it down, it’s sometimes hard to decipher what I said over the panting breath and slap of my feet on the track.

Where do you think best?