Progress

Sharon Wildwind

Progress is breaking up that old gang of mine.

Saturday I went to say good-bye to an old friend. The Currie Barracks Farmers’ Market is closing.

The building that houses the market started life as a hanger on a military airfield that was part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. During the war the sky over Calgary was filled with dozens of bright yellow Harvard training planes taking off and landing from that field.

After the war, the building became an indoor drill hall on the military establishment known as Currie Barricks, named for General Sir Arthur William Currie, commander of the Canadian Expeditionary Force on the Western Front during World War I. Later it became Canadian Forces Base Calgary.

CFB Calgary was decommissioned in 1998 to an outcry from local residents. This great hunk of unoccupied land was going to be an eyesore and a tax drain. The little shopping communities that had grown up around the base would wither.

None of this happen. Developers nibbled at the edges, first refurbishing former military housing and after those were all done, building new houses. The buildings on the base itself were temporarily leased to small businesses, private schools, the Calgary movie-making industry, and a farmers’ market. The terms of the leases were that as soon as the city figured out what to do with the land, the businesses had to leave.

If you want an example of swords into plowshares, here it is. The Currie Barracks Farmers’ Market is packed every weekend. About 90% of the space is leased to year-around tenants who sell food items (literally everything from soup to nuts) and non-food items (hand-blown glass jewelry and ostrich oil soap are two of my favorites).


Seasonal tenants lease the remaining 10% of the space. They sell local produce in the summer and fall; hand-made Christmas gifts and sheepskin rugs in the winter.

Some businesses like the fair-trade felted goods, made by a Nepalese co-op, started out as seasonal tenants and moved to permanent booths when they became available.

At the market, you could have a quick-sketch portrait done in charcoal or pastels, then pick up a flower arrangement for your party. It was THE PLACE to buy your pumpkin for jack-o-lantern carving.The staff wore rabbit ears at Easter and dressed in costume for Halloween. Throughout the year they provided space for non-profit groups to demonstrate green options such as how to service your bike or how to use a rain barrel. Every fall they held a food drive for the local food bank. There were decorated Christmas trees in December. Girl Guides sold cookies at the door in the spring. It was a place where you bought flats of blueberries or huge bags of corn-on-the-cob. It would dawn on you after you got home that maybe there wasn’t enough room in your freezer. Somehow you’d always make it fit.

By ordering from side-by-side booths in the food court, you could create a multi-cultural lunch of dim sum and cheese blintzes with applesauce. There were always at least two buskers playing: last Saturday there were an excellent hammered dulcimer player at the north end of the building and a balladeer with guitar at the south end.

Later this year, the Farmers’ Market lease expires, but the market itself will keep going. Some of the tenants will move to a new location in a different part of town. Some won’t. Some customers will be willing to drive to a new part of town; some won't, and I honestly don't know into which group I will fall. Just in case it's the "too far to drive" camp, this past week-end I went to say my good-byes to my favorite merchants, take some photographs, and buy a felted coin purse and bird-pin as souvenirs.

What will take the market's place?

A planned community of huge homes and condos, named Currie Barracks. For the military inclined among you, does calling a posh neighborhood anything "Barracks" conjure up warm home-like feelings from you. It doesn't for me. Would a little market research on name associations have been helpful? It's just a suggestion.

According to the artist's drawings, the new Currie Barricks will have tree-shaded walks and gathering places which the developer promotes as having the potential to become a world-class neighborhood, where neighbors will establish a sense of community, and interact on a level hitherto not experienced in Calgary. Does anyone but me see irony in this?
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Quote for the week:
Narrator: There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
~The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts by Douglas Adams

The Biggest Mysteries

by Julia Buckley
I suppose we all wonder, at one point or another, why people have to grow old and die. My father-in-law passed away this summer, and because we are still slowly emptying his apartment, we spent a good part of Sunday doing something that felt like an intrusion--going through the personal things of someone who is gone.

Dick lived a very pared-down lifestyle, so most of the things we found were practical: clothes hung neatly on hangers, divided by season. Umbrellas on a high shelf, ready to be clasped in one hand while he grabbed his all-weather hat with the other. Luggage, canes, comforters in plastic bags. Books to be boxed and papers to be sorted.

But some things were more painful to contemplate. First, the thousands of albums and cds--all jazz--that bulged out of every available space. These will be sorted by more knowledgeable hands than ours, when the time comes. Dick loved jazz, was a noted jazz announcer in Chicago, and to see his music sitting there in a silent apartment felt like being thrust into a void; it is in that void that the questions arise. Where is he now? Does a part of him linger here, near his beloved music and the family who walks through his empty rooms?
Or has he gladly moved on, to an unknown realm where his beloved wife was waiting?

There were pictures of his wife, many framed photos from the time they married. She was only twenty-one, and he was ten years older. Still, because of Alzheimer's Disease, she died before him, and he never quite adapted to life without her. My husband prefers the younger pictures of his mother--the ones in which you can see the spark of life and mischief in her eyes. But Dick had a large and prominently placed photograph of her in the midst of her disease--her gaze unfocused, her face blurred. He liked the photo, perhaps because he was a realist. It was how she looked in the present, and it was the way he loved her at that time.

There are pictures of him, too--some of them poster-sized, given to him as gifts along with plaques of honor by all sorts of people in the jazz world. Most of these will be passed down to my sons, who are aware and slightly in awe of their grandfather's legacy in the music world. They, too, are aware of his absence as they help to inventory the little things that made up his life: a drawer full of batteries, all sizes. A neat packet of manuals for various mechanical things. Pots and pans, dishes and cups, all in amounts suitable for a bachelor, which is what he was in the end.

It's a real mystery, walking through the empty rooms of someone who is inexplicably gone. My biggest philosophical question, the more that I experience death in my life, is how gone are they? How much of them remains behind like a blessing or a positive emotion? And is there a small essence of them in each little thing they leave behind?

I watch as my husband puts on his father's hat and leaves with a bag of items, bound for the car. From behind he is a shorter version of his father, the man whose memory towers over us still.

Three Traits of Compelling Characters

by Kathleen Ernst

I’m grateful to all of Poe’s Deadly Daughters for allowing me to be a guest today. And I’m grateful to readers! I love my work, and I’d be nowhere without you. Leave a comment here, and your name will go into a drawing for one free book. The winner can choose any of my sixteen titles. Old World Murder, one of my American Girl mysteries, a Civil War novel—the choice will be yours!

I enjoy a good stand-alone as much as anyone…but my greatest reading pleasure comes from discovering a wonderful series. And the best part about that is getting to know the protagonist. I want to go for a long ride; to see her grow and change not only within a single book, but over the arc of the series. I want to settle in and spend time with characters I truly care about.

Old World Murder is the first book in my new adult series, and I hope readers will feel that way about protagonist Chloe Ellefson.

My previous novels have been for teens and kids, but the challenge remains the same. Over the years, as both a writer and a reader, I’ve distilled what I consider the most important aspects of a compelling main character into three main traits.

1. Compelling protagonists have inner strength. Call it spunk, call it sass, call it spirit—great characters have it. It may be buried deep inside, but it has to be there. The characters I care most about are people I can admire, even if deeply flawed. And I don’t want to wait too long to find evidence of it. Who wants to go on a long ride with a total wimp?

Chloe Ellefson is starting a new job as curator of collections at a large historic site when Old World Murder opens. Although there are hints that she’s dealing with a troubled past on page one, we also see her stand up to an overbearing co-worker in the first chapter. Yes, she’s in some emotional pain—but that doesn’t mean she’s going to be pushed around.

2. Compelling protagonists are also vulnerable. I will admire a character who shows supreme strength every day, every hour. I probably won’t care about her on a personal level, though, because I can’t relate to her. When I discover what makes a character vulnerable, I keep reading to make sure she’s OK in the end.

I thought a lot about Chloe’s backstory as I developed Old World Murder. The full story is revealed gradually, but when the book opens she is recovering from a bad breakup, a lost job, and a bout of clinical depression. And that raises the stakes as troubles and threats begin to multiply.

3. Compelling protagonists want or need something, badly. Often this personal, inner plotline works against the external events of the mystery investigation. The mounting obstacles that get between the character and her goals keep me turning pages.

In Old World Murder, Chloe’s new job at the historic site gives her an opportunity to make a fresh start both personally and professionally. On her first day on the job, Chloe meets an elderly woman who begs her to find a valuable family artifact. The woman dies minutes later, but when Chloe tries to discover the whereabouts of the missing object, the search quickly turns dangerous. And when Chloe’s new boss orders her to stop looking, she may have to choose between finding the truth and keeping the job she so desperately needs.

How does that list compare with your own? I’d love to hear what traits you find important!

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Kathleen Ernst is celebrating the publication of her first adult mystery, Old World Murder (Midnight Ink). She has also written eight mysteries for young readers. Several have been finalists for Edgar or Agatha awards. For more information see her website, http://www.kathleenernst.com, or her blog, http://sitesandstories.wordpress.com.

THE LONG GOODBYE

by Sheila Connolly


Mitchell Heisman killed himself on September 18th. He put on a white tuxedo, white shoes, a white tie and white socks, walked into Harvard Yard, and shot himself in the head with a revolver he had bought a few years earlier. He was 35. To all outward appearances he was educated, intelligent, attractive, and healthy. He had completed college and held down various jobs. None of the people who knew him well—family or friends—thought he was suicidal.

But he was, and he had been for a long time. I didn’t know Mitchell Heisman, and I dismissed the original news reports with a “that’s too bad” kind of response and forgot about it. But this week there was an article in the Boston Globe by staffer David Abel whose headline caught my eye: “What he left behind: A 1,905-page suicide note.” What Mitchell left was, in fact, a document of 1,905 pages, with 1,433 footnotes and a 20-page bibliography. In the hours before his death, he scheduled a blast email with his completed work attached to hundreds of people, to be posted after his death; to others he sent a CD copy in the mail.

It took Mitchell five years to write his suicide note, and after five years of intense research, he concluded that life is meaningless.

As I writer, I had several immediate responses to this. The first was, two thousand pages? How many of us manage that much, even over a writing career?

My second was more complicated. Clearly Mitchell was obsessed with his subject. He was very focused, living a Spartan life in order to concentrate on his opus. He was analytical, even of himself and his own motivations.

Was he depressed? I have no training in psychology, but I would guess that if someone is depressed to the point of taking his own life, it would be in the throes of depression, when everything looks bleakest. I find it hard to imagine that anyone could actively nurture his depression by concentrating on such a grim subject as the total pointlessness of existence—for five years.

Was Mitchell insane? Is anyone who takes his own life by definition insane? Can one who is insane write a cogent and persuasive document?

But one thing I think we can say is that Mitchell was a writer. He wanted to communicate his views to other people—but not until he was ready, on his own terms. Maybe all writers are just a little bit mad. We hear voices in our head. Sometimes we have difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality—and in choosing which we prefer. That much we share with him.

But there’s another aspect: writing his book kept Mitchell Heisman alive for an extra five years. While we might disagree with his conclusions, working them out and setting them down gave his life purpose and direction. His mother said he was happy when he finished the book. He took his life when he had nothing left to say.

Maybe that’s the lesson we can take from Mitchell Heisman’s death: we live to write, and we write to live. May we never run out of words!

Are you listening?

Elizabeth Zelvin

I spent the summer writing my first historical novel. My protagonist is Diego, the young Marrano sailor on Columbus’s voyages who made his first appearance in “The Green Cross” in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (August 2010). I did minimal research for the story, but when I decided to write more about Diego, I started to do my homework, and I learned a lot about Columbus and what radical historian Kirkpatrick Sale called “the conquest of Paradise.”

As a shrink (my other “hat”), I’m very aware of the importance of listening, not only in therapy but in all kinds of relationships. Something I came across in my research on Columbus’s voyages struck me as a perfect example of inability to listen.

The primary sources, ie the excerpts from Columbus’s own log book that have been preserved, the biography of his life written by his son, and other contemporary accounts of the European discovery of what he thought by the Indies all agree that the discoverers, who were eager to convert the indigenous Taino to Christianity, were certain, even after prolonged contact, that the Taino had no religion of their own.

Samuel Eliot Morison, who wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Columbus in 1942, tells us that on the second voyage, when settlements meant to be permanent were founded on the island of Hispaniola, “It was not until September 21, 1496, that the first Indian was baptized in Hispaniola by Fray Ramon Pane.” That’s four years after first contact between the Christians and the Taino. Elsewhere, Morison says that Fray Pane “is remembered for having compiled the first collection of Indian folklore.”

Morison doesn’t interpret the juxtaposition of these two statements. But to me, it’s a no-brainer what must have happened. When the Taino told him what he took to be charming folk tales, they were trying to tell him all about their religion. But he wasn’t listening.

In the world of mystery and romantic suspense, the epitome of the character who doesn’t listen is the woman—it’s almost always a woman—who mystery aficionados dub TSTL: “too stupid to live.” (We’ll get to men who don’t listen soon; they’re found in abundance in real life.) She’s the gal who goes down into the dark cellar without a flashlight or cell phone when she’s been told there’s a killer on the loose and she finds the door of the deserted house unlocked. One of my favorite authors, Ariana Franklin, disappointed me in the fourth book in her Mistress of the Art of Death series by having her highly intelligent protagonist, Adelia, manage not to listen over a period of months as every person that she trusts tells her over and over that there’s ample evidence that someone is stalking her and her life is in danger. Of course, the book’s climax is a confrontation with the murderer (whom I guessed way earlier in the book, having experience with Franklin’s plotting methods), in which she narrowly escapes being killed. TSTL, and unworthy of this particular heroine.

The quintessential man who doesn’t listen, I’m afraid, is far worse than the TSTL heroine. He’s the date rapist or the marital rapist. There’s a popular expression that says it all: “What part of no don’t you understand?”

Life with search & rescue dogs

Interview by Sandra Parshall

My guest today is Rayanne Chamberlain, who works as a first responder with her local fire department and trains and works with search and rescue dogs.

As a member of a wilderness search team, she works an airscent dog, looking for missing people. She has been involved in about 200 missing persons searches, both as a dog handler and in other capacities, such as providing field support for canine teams and manning the base of operations.

Rayanne is also a member of the Michigan Urban Task Force (MI-TF1), working a disaster specialist dog, which searches for live victims in natural or man-made disasters. MI-TF1 is a state disaster response team, set up much like FEMA teams, but working under agreements for state-to-state assistance. For the past two years Rayanne has also been a member of OH-TF1 (Ohio Task Force One), a FEMA disaster response team.

She is now training her fourth disaster response dog and will soon retire her wilderness/airscent dog and begin training his understudy. All training is done on her own time, at her own expense. For disaster work, dog handlers are paid a daily rate when officially deployed. Wilderness work is always volunteer and unpaid. The wilderness search team Rayanne works with is financed by donations and the proceeds of fund-raising activities.

Q. How long have you been training and working with search and rescue dogs?

A. I've been a search and rescue dog handler for about 14 years.

Q. How did you get into this work? What are the qualifications?

A. Search and rescue is a volunteer activity in the US and most of the western world. The only qualifications are a desire to do the job and the commitment to spend hours every week honing your dog's skills and your own. I got into it about the time I turned 40. It was something I'd always wanted to do and I knew if I didn't do it then, I never would.


Q. Do you work with a single dog or several?

A. I currently have two dogs. One is a 92-year-old wilderness dog [Cota]. Wilderness dogs search for missing individuals B lost hunters, Alzheimer's patients, children. They will locate these people whether they are alive or deceased. My other dog is a 2-year-old disaster dog in training [Bristol]. The disaster dog specializes in locating only living persons who are inaccessible and often trapped under rubble.

Q. Does the dog you work with always live with you? Is he, or she, treated as a pet when not working?

A. Yes, my dogs always live with me and to a certain extent they are treated as pets when they are not working. Their daily lives are more regimented than the average pet, but they have a pretty good life. This is my personal preference. A lot of handlers maintain their dogs in kennel situations, bringing them out only to work. There are very good working dogs who live in both environments.

Q. What breed do you prefer to work with?

A. I have always worked Dobermans. They are considered a non-traditional breed for search work, although there is a network of Doberman handlers around the country. Labradors, Golden Retrievers, Border Collies and German Shepherds are the breeds most often seen in search work. All dogs have an excellent sense of smell, but very small breeds and giant breeds aren't usually found in search work.

Q. How often do you and your dog work? How do you keep the dog's skills sharp between jobs?

A. My older wilderness dog does not require daily training sessions although he enjoys every session and I train with him 2-3 times a week. My younger disaster dog gets some kind of work every day. The skills required for a disaster dog are many and in order to maintain a solid disaster dog, even an experienced dog must be worked 3-5 times per week.

Q. I've read novels that portrayed rescue dogs as feeling depressed or upset about failing to find people in time to save them. Is there any truth to this, or is it pure fiction?

A. There is no truth to this. For the dogs, this is a game -- like a dog that chases a Frisbee or a dog that participates in agility trials. As long as the dog receives his reward (usually a toy or food) upon completion of the job, he’s happy.

Q. What kind of situation are you usually called to work in? Would you tell us about some of the most memorable jobs you and your dogs have had?

A. I'm in Michigan, so we respond for quite a few drowning situations. Our other big call-out is for missing Alzheimer's patients. Probably my most memorable search happened 6 or 7 years ago when we were called in to search for 3 children (ages 3, 5 and 7). We arrived on scene about 8 p.m. and deployed our dogs. By 1 a.m. local law enforcement had decided that there was a good chance the children had been abducted. At 2 a.m. our teams located all three, still together. Their core body temperatures had dropped to 96 degrees, but after a quick visit to the local hospital for warming up they were as good as new -- although I have a feeling they are still grounded.

The disaster dogs probably train the hardest and get deployed the least often. They are deployed either by the state in which they live or through FEMA and only when a disaster occurs.

My wilderness dog utilizes his skills when searching for a missing person and when a building or a junkyard needs to be searched. Disaster dogs are trained in all types of environments so are comfortable searching in situations that might be dangerous for the wilderness dog.

Q. Is there a limit to the number of days or the number of hours in a day a dog can work on a job?

A. That is very dependent on the weather and the environment we're searching in. My wilderness dog and I have worked up to three days straight, 8 hours a day in the woods when the temperature has been moderate.

When it's hot and the sun is beating down on rubble, a disaster dog can effectively work 20-30 minutes.

Q. Rescue dogs are obviously trained to find people who are still alive. Can the dog tell the difference between a live person and one who has just died? Have you ever been on a search in which the "rescued" person proved to be dead?

A. Yes, dogs can tell the difference between people who are still breathing and those who have stopped. This is particularly important for the disaster dog that must ignore the odor of deceased individuals and focus solely on the scent emanating from those who are still alive. If you look at the devastation in Haiti earlier this year, if the dogs had not been trained to ignore the odor of the dead and focus on the living, many lives might not have been saved.

Unfortunately, I think two-thirds of our wilderness finds are of deceased individuals. Every time we head out for a search, we hope that the person will be found alive, but it is comforting to know that we've been able to bring closure to a family even when we find the person dead.

Q. The training of dogs to find live people must be very different from the training of cadaver dogs. Are you familiar with the way those animals are trained? Are they exposed to human cadavers?

A. Yes, I work closely with several human remains specialist handlers and canines. These dogs are trained more along the lines of drug dogs. They offer a passive alert (meaning they sit or lay down at the source of the odor). Everyone I work with trains only on real human material. The specialist dogs, though, also train on much older material. They help reconstruct old cemeteries, they work cold cases and they can locate very small pieces following events like plane crashes.


Q. When does a rescue dog usually retire? What happens to the dog then?

A. A search and rescue dog tells us when it needs to retire. Some retire when they are 6 years old; others continue working until they are 12 or 13. Arthritis and other health concerns usually influence their retirement. As long as dogs remain healthy, they love the search game and are unwilling to give it up. When they do retire, they live out their lives in comfort. With our team, even those dogs that have retired are set simple problems at training. The dogs are like the ex-baseball player reliving the glory days. To them, that person hidden behind a tree 100 feet away is as fulfilling as the person it took them 6 miles and 3 hours to find in the old days.

Energy shifts

Sharon Wildwind

I had a great time over the weekend. So why do I feel so rotten?

On Saturday I went to a workshop on editing. Because it was held locally, there was none of the airport—customs—strange hotel bed—weird meals—time zone disorientation. The chairs in the meeting room were reasonably comfortable; the lunch was delightful; the weather outside was a spectacular fall day; and I hadn’t even joined people in the bar for a drink afterwards.

Sunday I woke up excited. I spent yesterday and today eliminating about 10,000 words from what had been a horribly bloated and—I had feared—completely irretrievable manuscript.

I should be ecstatic. I’m not.

I am in such a bad mood. I should have stayed home and gotten things done around the house. Our living room is a mess; it even smells bad. My office is falling apart. I can’t focus. I’m angry at everyone and everything.

Somehow it is up to me to make all of this right. I have to do the undone things. Make order out of chaos. Make everything all right in the world. Fix everything before I can get back to writing. It’s my fault that the whole world is out of balance; bringing it back to balance rests entirely on my shoulders.

I am tempted to
pick a fight
give up
rage at the living room
get angry
stop writing completely until I clean every room from top to bottom
spend time on anything but writing
lose myself in reading for 8 or 12 or 15 hours
piddle and piffle

I’ve blogged several times about going through Julia Cameron’s The Artist Way. I’ve completed the 12 weeks of exercises, but since it dawned on me at about week 10 or 11 that I hadn’t made that much progress, I decided to repeat the 12 weeks.

Something about my irrational feelings sounded strangely familiar. I thought I'd seen them in the past 12 weeks. Sure enough— Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity. I was having an energy shift.

Which got me thinking about coming back from conventions and workshops. People frequently write about getting ready for a convention or what to do at a convention, but I don’t think I’ve seen many tips for coming back from an convention.

It seems to me that there are three layers in this process.

The first layer is recovering from choices we made. These choices usually involve staying up late, and putting more food and possibly alcohol in our bodies than we should have. We know the drill: drink lots of water, get some sleep, do some exercise, take hot baths or showers, detoxify, get a massage, stick to green and orange vegetables, multi-grain carbohydrates, and lean protein for a few days. In other words, get the body back on track.

The second layer is getting back in the routine. Yes, the job is waiting. Yes, it’s likely in a mess. Yes, you have eleventy-zillion e-mail messages to wade through. Yes, traffic is worse than you remember it. Yes, laundry and dishes and vacuuming and errands and dental appointments and check book balancing need doing. Yes, you can and will deal with all of this, though you’re likely to grumble while you’re doing it. Grumbling is permitted.

For the third layer, prepare yourself for an energy shift that has nothing to do with either of the first two layers. Something has moved in your creative process. I am convinced that creativity is a split creature, like Captain Kirk in The Enemy Within. Creativity-1 can do wonderful things, such as bid farewell to 10,000 extra words and turn an amorphous mass into something resembling a book.

Creativity-2 hates change. She rages. She decides that she has to stop everything to focus on why the living room smells bad. She has to make change the whole world right now. She has to read for hours to the exclusion of getting anything else done. She has to reorganize her entire life before she can possibly touch any creative endeavor. In short, she has to do everything in her power to keep you from changing because she likes things the way they were, thank you very much.

My three suggestions for getting through the third layer after you come back from a convention or workshop are

Limit your reading and/or TV/DVD watching for at least the first week. I have nothing scientific on which to base this, but I had to start somewhere, so I picked a 3:1 ratio. After I’ve done something creative for 3 hours, I’ll allow myself to read or watch DVDs for 1 hour.

Do not do major cleaning right now. This is not a good time to rearrange all the furniture in your office or to clean out your closets. Creativity-2 is trying to get you to do this so that you will be so tired that you can’t focus on change.

Create. Start something new. Revisit something old. Work in a different medium for a little while. Give yourself permission to play and see where it takes you.

Just in case someone is curious about how I got rid of all those words, I had my writing program compile a list of how often a word was used in the manuscript. I use Scrivener, which is a Macintosh program, but there are probably other programs out there that do the same thing.

I compared the number of times a word was used to the number of pages in the book. In my case the count was about 300, so I focused on words that had been used over 300 times because that meant they were likely to show up more than once on a page.

I didn’t bother with words like the, a, to, and, in, if, her, she, was, I, that, you, had, and he, each of which appeared over 1,000 times. I figured those would sort themselves out as I made other corrections.

Then I used the “find” feature to locate each time a word had been used and tried to eliminate that word by rewriting the sentence. The first word I went through “as” originally appeared 426 times. By the time I finished finding and changing, I had 21 appearances left. I’ve also done the following words: yes, no, make, thought, think, and there.

These are the words I still plan to check:

Quibbling words (words that have a tendency to weaken meaning in a sentence): only, any, just, still, might, yet.
[She still might go to the carnival on Saturday, only she hadn't made up her mind yet. For gosh sakes, have that woman make a decision! ]

Words that tend to represent weak actions: look, took, put, turn, told, tell, smile
[He turned to look at her and smiled as he put his hat on the table. Even though actions—turning, smiling, and putting a hat on the table—are described, this is not an action sentence.]
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Quote for the week:

I wonder if our creative calling is sometimes something we fear, avoid, and, if we're lucky, end up being pulled into in spite of ourselves.
~Susan Wooldridge, author Poemcrazy and Foolsgold

Cold Weather Reading

by Julia Buckley
This was the first cold week in Chicago, and I couldn't be happier. I come alive in fall, and I feel as though I get twice as many things done (including more writing) when the air is brisk.

I also enjoy reading things that are set in fall and winter. The first Martha Grimes book that I ever read, THE OLD SILENT, was captivating to me, especially the way that Grimes wove in a particular Robert Frost poem which contained the line "Goodbye, and keep cold." The book prompted me to read everything in the Grimes collection, and several of her mysteries were set in a mysterious and poetic winter backdrop.

Some fictional detectives live in cold climates, and so their authors set all of their mysteries in the cold.

I found this list while searching for cold-weather mysteries, compiled by "Leah Smith, librarian and avid reader." It's a terrific list, and I've read at least half of the books that Smith recommends, and can therefore agree to them.

I've always wanted to read Smilla's Sense of Snow simply because of the wonderful title, but I have not yet done it. Like many other readers, I sometimes feel crushed by the weight of all the books I want to read versus the amount of time I find to read them in. Still, it is a luxury, the thought of all those books . . . .

And now I'll be looking for the ones set in the cold. Something about that frigid air, and the delicious warm food that seems so much more appealing now than it did in July, makes me ready to embrace the news season, in life and in fiction.

What's your favorite cold-weather mystery?

(Photo by Julia Buckley: a hill-top in Sinsinawa, Wisconsin, 2006).

FASTER, PLEASE!

by Sheila Connolly

A couple of weeks ago I was ready to throw my laptop at a wall. It was doing everything v..e..r..y.....s..l..o..w..l..y, from booting up to shutting down, and everything in between. Okay, it's three years old--not exactly new, but not ancient either. Having overloaded computers in the past with non-essential programs, I've been careful in choosing what to download to this one, so there was plenty of disk space available. I had even added RAM, a year or so after I bought it. So why was it dragging its figurative heels?

I did everything a semi-intelligent computer owner should. I defragged. I ran Check Disk. I dumped my recycle bin and cleared my temporary files. I ran scans up one side and down the other, for all those evil invaders that might have crept in from cyberspace. Didn't make a bit of difference.

I was getting desperate. I mean, I couldn't even log on to Facebook for more than a few minutes. It was freezing when I wanted to add more than a few friends. Who was this piece of machinery to dictate who my friends should be?

So finally, at the end of my patience, I contacted the Geek Squad. No, this is not a paid endorsement. But I've used them before, for a variety of computer problems, including the total meltdown of my daughter's hard drive. They have always been up front about what they can and cannot do, and they deliver on their promises. So what the heck? I needed help.

There's a physical Geek Squad near here, but being lazy/thrifty/impatient, I logged onto their website and contacted a real live person. At least I think he was live, but who can tell these days? He said his name was Jason. Sure. But I'll call you anything you want, as long as you can speed up my computer. Please.

I gave him (gulp) permission to peer into the inner working of the laptop, remotely. Good thing I hid that international money-laundering scheme on a different computer. Oops, never mind. He poked and prodded, and came back with this evaluation: there's nothing actually wrong with the computer, but apparently my assorted virus protections (all recommended by various knowledgeable people, including a U.S. government IT employee) were warring with each other, making it increasingly difficult for anything to open, much less operate. The cure? Let the Geek Squad run their basic clean-up program. Could it make anything worse? I pulled out my credit card and said "go."

And then came the fascinating part. Someone, somewhere took over control of my computer. I know, we've all seen this in numerous movies and television shows. But I'd never seen it on my computer. The cursor darted; windows opened and shut. Decisions were made. Software was removed and installed. All this happened very fast--faster than any human could work? Was Jason human? Heck, for all I know he was working on four different computers at once. Or eating lunch at the same time.

The whole process still took three hours, even with Jason performing at warp speed. I could do nothing but sit and marvel. In the end the machine was purged and polished--and it works a whole lot better now.

But as I watched this happen, I had to remember that I grew up in a pre-computer world. When I was in high school, we took a field trip to Bell Labs in New Jersey, where we were awed by their cutting-edge technology. I took the first "computer science" class my high school offeredBand there wasn't even a computer at the school, so we had to travel to a nearby college to spend a couple of hours a week, mostly waiting for our turn to use the keypunch machine, and if we were lucky, to get one run of our program. The "textbook" was a mimographed copy, unbound (and I still have it, an antique now).

And here I was whining that my home computer is a little sluggish accessing a few million people and websites. What a world we live in!

Switching Places . . .

By Lonnie Cruse

Today marks my last regular Friday post on Poe's Deadly Daughters. I'll still be here, but I'm switching places whith Sheila Connolly who posts on PDD once a month on the fourth Saturday. Sheila will post every Friday and I will post on her once-a-month day. I know you all will enjoy seeing more of Sheila's posts!

Why the change? Because nowadays I'm mostly writing non-fiction study booklets for women rather than mystery, so it didn't seem fair for me to hog a weekly spot while Sheila had only a once-a-month slot. And I've pretty much said about all I can about mystery writing/reading. Of course, mystery is, and always will be, my reading of choice. And I'm RARELY at a loss for words.

Blogging is something (at least for me, and maybe you, too?) fairly new to the mystery world, meaning withing the last decade. It gives readers a chance to get to know their favorite authors much better and even interact by posting in the comments area. That interaction between writer and reader wasn't as easy when authors only had web pages.

There are zillions of blogs out there on the Net, and it isn't easy to keep up with all of them. We at Poe's Deadly Daughters are VERY grateful for our readers. Without you there would be no need for the blog! So thanks for hanging around, reading what we have to say, and commenting when you feel comfy to do that. And we'd REALLY love to hear more of your comments, so feel free to click on that link below each post whenever you like.

I'll still be here, posting, reading, commenting, seeing what the rest of you have to say. We want to know what's going on with you as much as you want to know what's going on with us!

I also want to thank my fellow Poe sisters. Their support, help, and friendship mean the world to me. We have really gotten to know each other, behind the scenes, while keeping the blog going.

But remember, we created this mystery blog for you. So, with many thanks and hugs to each of you, that's it for this Friday.