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

Sharon Wildwind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Quote for the week:

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

~David Morrell, fantasy writer, October 2008

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

The Winter Holidays Loom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Writing Without a Net

By Vicki Delany, guest blogger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Lonnie Cruse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elizabeth Zelvin

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

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

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

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

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

Characters Who Haunt Us

Sandra Parshall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here be Dragons

Sharon Wildwind

A while ago, say 2002, being a new and naive mystery writer, I thought I had a handle on mysteries. So confident was I that I reduced the mystery spectrum to a simple diagram.

I listed authors under each category, but I’ll let you add your own.

My basic premise was that each category was fairly clean and could be identified by how much blood, violence and gore appeared on-stage; what emotion drove the plot; and how likely a reader was to laugh verses need anti-depressant therapy after having read extensively in a given category.

Recently, preparing for a talk at a local library, I revisited my original diagram. The mystery world has changed in the past seven years.

For a while we’ve had to deal with the mystery/thriller split, and periodic discussions over when does a mystery become a thriller and vice versa. “Mystery” and “Thriller” are, of course, marketing terms. We writers joke among ourselves that the definition of “thriller” is “we want you to buy this book.”

What surprised me is how polarized the second chart is. We’ve lost something in the middle ground, something I’ve called “here be dragons” after the markings on old maps.

Be that as it may, we’re stuck with those two terms, and often asked to explain the the differences to readers. I usually start my explanation with the two definitions in the above chart.

Personal disclosure: most of what I read falls along the procedural/traditional/funny axis in the older chart and solidly in the mystery corner of the newer chart. So I had no difficulty assembling a possible reading list of those kinds of books.

Reluctantly, in the spirit of inclusiveness and fair play, I grudgingly decided to explore that dark (and mostly unknown to me) corner, thrillers. Boy, did I get my eyes opened.

The first thing I discovered was that thriller writers seem to be incredibly prolific. Many have at least two series, sometimes three in active productions. The prolific champion so far was Dennis Lynds (1924 – 2005), who not only wrote literary books and short stories under his own name, but fiction under the pen names of Michael Collins, William Arden, Mark Sadler, John Crowe, Maxwell Grant, and Carl Dekker. His lifetime output was 80 novels and 200 short stories.

The second thing was that the gender discussion is not an issue. The old saw that women write traditional mysteries and men write thrillers is dead. And about time.

The final thing was just how dark some of these books have gotten. Talk about angst and the darker side of human nature. Here’s my take on the plot spectrum for thrillers. What they share in common is that none of them pull any punches; everything is on stage.

Disgraced professional or a professional who is trying not to be overcome by the dark side: criminalist; doctor; FBI agent, profiler, counter-terrorist; hard-boiled detective; high placed officers of multi-million dollar corporations; lawyer; military; police officer; politician; reporter; scientist or spy

End of the world as we know it: biological disaster; creation of super soldiers; ecological disaster; natural phenomena (often helped along by men meddling where no man should go); nuclear disaster; race against time to save the world; or scientific doomsday

Urban rot: America’s dispossessed; drug dealing; missing women; the underside of modern city life or vigilante

Myths, legends, and the paranormal: ancient symbols and myths; paranormal beings, such as vampires, demons, angels, or ghosts; or the use of science fiction/fantasy settings

Damaged people: children in jeopardy; childhood traumas resurface in adulthood; deeply disturbed young women trying to survive; people haunted by their pasts; ordinary people in extraordinary situations; serial killers; woman in jeopardy; or woman in jeopardy in a rural setting—the woman must not only outsmart the serial killer, but battle the elements as well

It was the children who surprised me most. The other old saw that is unfortunately dead is harm no child. There are many books out there now where childhood traumas surface after decades, and books where very bad things are done to children, or where children, whom adults and society have failed, must solve crimes and dispense vigilante justice and/or retribution themselves.

I think that is the saddest note of all.

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Quote for the week:

The break in private eye novels started with Michael Collins [pen name for Dennis Lynds]. At the end of the 1960s, he gave the form something new, a human touch needed for years. His novels are much more than entertainment. There is a philosophy behind the detective, and in each book we take a look at a special section of American society. ~Crime Literature Association of West Germany

Scary Movies and The Unconscious

by Julia Buckley


























I don't watch horror movies as a rule. I have no particular desire to be consciously afraid--at least any more afraid than I already am. I know I am in the minority in this, and that plenty of people love horror movies for the pure adrenaline rush that the fear brings them.

Still, I watched Paranormal Activity yesterday because all three of the men in my house assured me that it "wasn't that scary." And it wasn't, at the beginning. I watched the very normal-seeming young couple and their video diary with a sense of trepidation, of holding my breath. And like a coward, I continually asked, in whispered tones, what was going to happen in the next scene. (My husband and sons read spoilers).

So throughout the movie I was saying things like "Is that guy going to die?" and "Is she going to be okay?" and demanding that, in fact, they tell me the worst before I saw it. I was managing my fear by demanding information, and that's the only way you can drag me into a horror movie.

When the movie ended I was shaken, perhaps because I have a very good imagination, and much of horror is in what you don't see. A friend of mine dismissed the movie as "So boring! I fell asleep." I didn't find it boring. I tried to put it out of my mind, though, as we went home to watch Saturday Night Live and to indulge in the laughter and relaxation that is the opposite of fear.

My brave sons ended up sleeping on our floor last night; the elder said it was for his brother's sake, while the younger insisted that it was the elder who was "a little freaked out." They continued to assure me, though, that it hadn't been a scary movie.

So we all went to sleep.

I woke up at two in the morning in my darkened room. This is the setting for much of Paranormal Activity: a darkened bedroom, captured on video. I realized that I needed to go downstairs for an allergy pill; I also realized that I was too afraid to go, especially when I heard a noise coming from the other bedroom. Normally I would attribute any noise to our rambunctious cats and their nocturnal playground. This time, thanks to my horror template, the sounds seemed much more sinister.

I woke my husband, who had been snoring peacefully. "I need an allergy pill," I said. "But I'm afraid to go downstairs."

He started to get up without a word. "No," I said. "I have to go down anyway to use the bathroom. But I'm scared."

"I'll go with you," he said generously. "But then you have to wait for me."

Yes, even my husband, lover of all things horror, didn't want to go downstairs alone.

We made our way down the stairs, turning on lights as we went, and the normalcy of the scene, and the fact that our cats were, in fact, making all sorts of noise, allayed our fears.

Interestingly, I hadn't known that my fears were still there. I'd moved on to new thoughts by the time I went to bed. Waking in the darkness, though, brought up all that I'd stowed into my subconscious.

People who dismiss horror movies as "unscary" don't realize, perhaps, the way that those terrifying images embed themselves in the unconscious mind.

Great Writing Where You Least Expect It

By Mark Arsenault, guest blogger

One of the tragedies of the decline of American newspapers is the decline of the obituary. The classic obit—treated as a news story and written by a member of the newspaper’s staff—is all but dead. In its place, many newspapers are selling obituaries as advertisements. So when Uncle Elmo passes, the five-grand price tag on the funeral may include about seven hundred bucks for obit space in the newspaper.

I wrote a zillion obituaries throughout my 20-year journalism career, and I’ve come to appreciate that obits are the most important part of the newspaper because every death changes a community, forever. That’s why the protagonist in my current mystery series, the world-weary Billy Povich, is not a hotshot investigative reporter, but a lowly obituary writer. Billy’s occupation helps set the tone for the story and defines Billy’s character—he believes a well-researched obituary is a way to pay respect for the dead. He goes out of his way to find the telling details about people he never met. As he says in the book, “The dead do not complain, but who says they don’t appreciate good service?”

In real life, guys like Billy are going out of business.

I cut my teeth in the newspaper business believing that every person should be mentioned in the newspaper at least three times: at birth, marriage and death. (When you’re hatched, matched and dispatched.)

One of the most important contributions to the national psyche after 9/11 were the obits of the victims that ran for months in the New York Times. These obits were so beautifully crafted; it was hard to read them without getting choked up.

A well-crafted obit also contains valuable lessons for writers. The ability to render a person in three dimensions with just a few words is a tremendous skill, and something every fiction writer has to learn.

I love this paragraph from an award-winning 2007 obit of a carnival performer named Don Leslie:

“He had gotten his first tattoo not long after running away from home. Many more would come. His chest displayed three horse heads surrounded by a lariat and flanked by draping American flags, while his back depicted a shipwrecked damsel shown before a setting sun and an oversized stone cross bearing the words ROCK OF AGES. Each elbow sported a spider’s web, while a panoply of cherubs, hula girls, and elephants adorned whatever bare skin was left.”

When I read that incredible description, the character bursts into my mind. I see him as clearly as my most recent memory of my morning waffles. I’m inspired by the writing, and by the research that went into assembling that paragraph.

By turning obituaries into a revenue source, newspapers gave up quality control over what goes in them—you don’t tell your advertisers what to write. That has led to some oddities. At one of the newspapers I worked for, a customer bought an official obit-ad for Pope John Paul II, which dutifully ran in the paper under “Out-of-Town Obituaries.” The paper’s policy was to run nicknames in quotes, so the departed pontiff became “Pope” John Paul.

And I’ve noticed that a new trend among these obit-ads is to avoid the verb “died.” Instead of dying, the deceased has “moved on to receive his eternal reward.”

That just sounds a little cocky to me.

There are still a few places to find good obituaries, and I’ll keep mining them for nuggets of great writing, and for inspiration.

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Mark Arsenault is a Shamus-nominated mystery writer, a journalist, a runner, hiker, political junkie and eBay fanatic who collects memorabilia from the 1939 New York World’s Fair. His new novel is Loot the Moon, the second book in the Billy Povich series that began with Gravewriter, a noir thriller praised for a fusion of suspense, humor and human tenderness. With 20 years of experience as a print reporter, Arsenault is one of those weird cranks who still prefers to read the news on paper. His Web site is www.markarsenault.net.

E-book reader wars . . .

By Lonnie Cruse

In case you missed it, there's a war going on. An e-book reader war that involves various devices manufactured and sold by various companies. I think it started with Sony bringing out a device that readers could use to download and read e-books. Around that same time Amazon had its original Kindle e-book reader as well. Kindle was more expensive than Sony, but Kindle fans believed it had more capability than the Sony. Of course, Sony owners didn't necessarily agree. Some readers are so fond of the devices that they own both a Sony and a Kindle.

Just this year Kindle has introduced three new models, Kindle 2, Kindle DX, and this month, a Kindle 2 that could be used outside of the United States to download books directly to the unit without using a computer. The first three Kindles could only download books directly to the unit while inside the U. S. The Whispernet used to download didn't then reach outside the U.S.

Things really heated up in this war of the devices when Amazon cut the price dramatically on the original Kindle 2. In other words, Kindle was competing not only with Sony but with itself, bringing out newer products very quickly to entice new owners, but sometimes irritating those who had already bought a device, not knowing a newer model was just around the corner or that the price was about to drop. The drop in price particularly irritated those who bought Kindle 2 within this year. A one hundred dollar price drop. It didn't irritate me, mind you. Like many others, I believe I've gotten my money's worth on the difference I paid in January to what Kindle 2 is selling for now because the Kindle books are generally cheaper than a hard copy, so I've saved on what I've downloaded as opposed to what I used to buy at the book store. And I'm not good at waiting.

This month Barnes and Noble introduced its very own e-book reader device into the battle. It's called a Nook. Like the Kindle, B & N's books can be ordered to download directly to the unit via Whispernet, without using a computer. And they can be paid for that way (purchases are automatically charged to your account.) According to the B & N website, these e-books can be shared with and/or loaned to other device owners, as easily as me loaning you a hard copy of a book I enjoyed. And this is a perk not currently available from Amazon.

However, Amazon has tons of free e-books available to download to a Kindle. Some of these books are classics, no longer under copyright, like Jane Austin's books. Or a Sherlock Holmes series. And many modern-day publishers offer their current authors' books for free, at least for a short time, in order to entice new readers. And these aren't unknown authors, but some of the big names in the business. I didn't see a mention of free books on the B & N website, but maybe I missed it. Often these Amazon freebies last only a few days, then the books become full price, and those of us who were on the alert and managed to nab said freebie tend to look down our cyber noses on those who hesitated . . . and lost.

Word on the Internet is that more companies will be coming out with their version of an e-reader in the near future. It's the wave of the future. Yes, there are many people who love the feel of a real book in their hands. I'm one of them. But I'm also someone who owns multiple bookcases FULL of books. I'm out of room. My e-book reading Kindle allows me to read books that I want to enjoy but not keep forever. And I don't have to take them to the used bookstore or donate them somewhere when I'm done. Might sound selfish, but it also means fewer trees destroyed in order for me to continue reading.

Right now the number one item on the wish list for e-book reader owners is FOLDERS! We all want folders on our units so we can drop books that have been read into one folder, keep new, unread books in another folder, keep samples in yet another. (And did I mention that you can download samples of books on most of these readers for free, much the same as reading a chapter or two while standing in a book store?) Another item on our e-reader wish list is the ability to swap books with friends like we can do with hard copy books. We'd love cheaper prices for the units and the books, more freebie books, stuff like that.

So, dear book reader, do you think you will ever become an e-book reader owner? Which side of the war are you on?