BETRAYAL

by Sheila Connolly


We’ve been together for a long time. Oh, things were a little unsteady at the beginning, when we were just getting to know each other, but we worked through that together. We went along smoothly for years. We did things together, traveled to wonderful places, went hiking, skiing, ice-skating. We enjoyed each other’s company. More important, we trusted each other, and you supported me in whatever I wanted to do. You were always there for me.

Then you betrayed me. I never saw it coming. I thought we understood each other, respected each other. I never asked you to do anything that wasn’t right for you. I accepted your limitations. I believed that you were strong and dependable. I was wrong.

And now I don’t trust you. How can I? My faith is shattered, and I don’t know how to rebuild the trust that I’ve lost. I know, you’re still there, waiting for me. Even I can see you don’t look good—you’ve lost weight, and your skin has lost its color. But you brought it on yourself, letting me down when I needed you. You’re going to have to earn my trust again, one day at a time.

I’m talking about my leg.

Funny how one little accident can make you reconsider a whole lot of things. One minute you’re going about your business; the next, you’re on the floor, wondering what the heck happened.

You get to consider all sorts of unexpected things. Like the sound of a breaking bone. We read thrillers where people pummel each other, accompanied by the snap, crackle, pop, and crunch of breaking bones. Now I have firsthand experience.

You learn interesting details about health care systems, and that’s before you get the bills.

You find out how your body reacts to anesthesia (I’ve had no side effects, even with morphine) and heavy-duty drugs (extremely boring—I fall asleep).

You realize that you’re a lot clumsier and less flexible than you used to be, and you have to readjust your mental image of yourself as lithe and supple (well, that was kind of overdue anyway).

You discover just how many things are difficult to do while balancing on one leg and holding on to something to support yourself with one hand. I’ll leave that to your imagination, but suffice it to say, you reconsider your clothing options. Stretchy is good; elastic is your friend.

You realize how many horror stories there are on the Internet about your particular problem, and you devoutly hope that it’s only the whiners who post.

You realize the garden isn’t going to get planted this year because it’s hard to dig with only one usable leg (I refuse to till the whole patch sitting down!).

You realize how many steps there are in the world, and how hard it is to get up and down them. That includes your own home.

You realize you need to ask for help, and you need to thank people for helping you, even while you resent your lack of independence. Most people are happy to help.

You realized how much worse things could have been. Bones heal, life goes on. Things will go back to normal—won’t they?


Can you win back my trust, dear leg? Only time will tell.

The problem with Facebook

Elizabeth Zelvin

I recently rescued my Facebook page from a sneaky little trick the gremlins that control the site had slipped in: adding a default option in which I don’t see all my friends’ posts (except those I’ve chosen to hide, which includes any games or generic silliness), but only those I had interacted most frequently. All of a sudden, what I had to read when I went onto Facebook went way, way down, and I’m afraid that all the friends I’ve collected because I want them to see my posts think I’ve disappeared too—or worse, not even miss me. It’s only by chance that I spotted the “Options” menu way down at the bottom and was able to restore the full range of news and status posts from my Facebook friends.

I understand Facebook a lot better since watching the movie Social Network twice. I’m a great admirer of Aaron Sorkin (creator of West Wing), who wrote the screenplay, and I trust him to have gotten it right. Facebook was created by college kids for other college kids, who do want to know when their friends have a hot date, eat the whole box of brownies, or pop a pimple. No wonder grownup writers and other adults have trouble replicating and maintaining the Facebook tone.

My problem finding the right thing to say frequently enough to keep my Facebook presence active is complicated by the fact that in my “other hat,” I’m a therapist, and moreover, one who works online with clients all over the world. I don’t know if any of them has found my Facebook page. But they might at any moment. So I can’t put anything on the social network (or any other public area of cyberspace) that I wouldn’t want even one of my clients to read. I’m not a psychoanalytic therapist, and I do make the occasional benign disclosure. But even therapists with traditonal office practices have to maintain rigorous boundaries, and it’s a clinical and ethical disaster when they don’t. So there go the hot dates and the pimples. (For the record, I have neither.)

Writers on Facebook are under a lot of pressure to keep the majority of their posts out of the realm of BSP (blatant self-promotion). The two topics that most of them draw on most frequently are pets and food. Unfortunately, neither of these topics works for me. I don’t have a dog or cat for good reasons. I’m severely allergic to cats, and I live in Manhattan, so getting a dog would involve scooping poop daily for the next fifteen years, a price I’m unwilling to pay. Yet animal people love to write about their pets and hear about the pets of others. On Valentine’s Day, one of my Facebook friends shared that her husband demonstrated his love by cleaning up dog vomit (her very words) without being asked. The animal lovers were happy to hear it, and nobody seemed to find it at all unromantic.

So what’s wrong with food? Everybody talks about food. Some publishers insist their authors put actual recipes in their books. Blogs like Mystery Lovers Kitchen, whose bloggers include our own Sheila Connolly and my friends Krista Davis, Avery Aames, and MJ Maffini, are immensely popular. Everybody talks about bodies too, their own and those of others. Most Americans have absolutely no boundaries on this topic. They comment freely on who’s gained or lost weight and disparage their own too-much or not-enough body parts not only to their intimate friends but as publicly as TV award shows. Last time I went to a stand-up comedy club, the performers made as many jokes about bodies, mostly their own, as they did about drug use.

As the author of Death Will Get You Sober, I’m already barred from making ho-ho-ho jokes about drinking and drunkenness or blogging about margaritas or martinis. My next book, Death Will Extend Your Vacation, tackles the sensitive topic of eating disorders and compulsive overeating, a group of illnesses that is even more misunderstood than alcoholism. My protagonist Bruce and his friends take shares in a lethal clean and sober group house in the Hamptons. When they’re not dropping dead, their housemates are acting out with food. Eating disorders are the source of deep, deep shame and are as hard to overcome as any other addiction. And they’re killers, not only anorexia and compulsive eating with obesity, but bulimia, which doesn’t show on the body people see but can be even more extreme. So no, I’m not going to make jokes about chocolate being better than therapy or share how I pigged out on Thanksgiving and can't close the button on my pants. And that’s why sometimes I open Facebook, stare at that blinking cursor inviting me to share, and have nothing to say.

Charlotte Hinger's Mysterious Kansas

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall


Charlotte Hinger grew up on a farm in Lone Elm, Kansas, and recalls a childhood spent “listening to the world-class story-tellers and natural born liars who populated this tiny community.” She began writing mystery short stories in fifth grade and has since published a number of stories in mystery magazines and anthologies. Her first published novel, Come Spring, was mainstream historical fiction, and she has published nonfiction books and numerous articles on the history of Kansas. Her Lottie Albright mystery series began in 2009 with Deadly Descent. The second in the series, Lethal Lineage, has just been published. After lifetime in Kansas, Charlotte now makes her home in Colorado. Visit her website at http://www.charlottehinger.com.

SP: Would you tell us a bit about Lethal Lineage?

CH: I’m relieved that Lethal Lineage has gotten excellent reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal and Booklist because this is basically a locked room mystery. This sub-genre is particularly difficult to pull off. It begins with the first service in a newly built Episcopal church in Western Kansas when a sinister bishop shows up to confirm the niece of Undersheriff Lottie Albright and shocks the congregation with his vicious fire and brimstone sermon. The “locked room” aspect begins when the Rev. Mary Farnsworth drops the chalice during the Eucharist and her body is found in the ante-room immediately following the service. I consulted four priests to get the historical and contemporary Catholic and Episcopal Church usage right. 


Family stories and buried secrets are at the heart of the Western Kansas series as Lottie is a historian and in charge of the county history books. Her twin, Josie Albright, is a psychologist, who invariably gets entangled in the investigations. As with the first book in the series, Deadly Descent, Lethal Lineage is both a whodunit and suspense.

SP: Which came first for you, your protagonist or the concept for the series?

CH: The concept came first. The creation of Lottie Albright evolved from the necessity of having a very conflicted character whose own family struggles would contribute to the tension. Lottie walks a tightrope professionally and personally.

SP: Are your protagonist and setting entirely fictional? Does Lottie share some of your personal traits?

CH: Lottie is fictional and so are Gateway City and Carlton County, Kansas. I contributed to several county history books and edited the Sheridan County, Kansas books, which gave me the idea for the series. People would give me their submissions for the book, and then pull me aside to tell me stories that never made it into print. They were mesmerizing and often contained dark secrets. My husband was once undersheriff in Anderson County, Kansas, so I understand the limitations of law enforcement resources in sparsely populated areas. The trait I “own” is the Albright sisters’ love of music. It’s a family obsession.

SP: What draws you to the crime fiction genre? What does a mystery offer to a writer that mainstream fiction doesn’t?

CH: It’s an old cliché but I honestly was addicted to Nancy Drew, then Wonder Woman, as a child. My attraction to crime fiction is due to the incredible diversity of the genre. The very best mysteries and the finest mainstream novels should have similar components. In a nutshell, however, memorable characters are identified with mainstream and suspenseful stories with mysteries. If mysteries contain both elements, they often become classics. Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a mystery. So are Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Contemporary mystery writers must master structure and mainstream authors should!

SP: What is appealing about Kansas and its people that makes it a great setting for crime fiction?

CH: Sandy, you walked right into this one. I have a flaming state loyalty and could fill pages with my observations about Kansas. We’re a state of extremes and amazingly resilient people. It’s a state with a bloody beginning because of the role it played in the debate over slavery before the Civil War. Before that time, the western part of the state was dissed by early explorers as being uninhabitable. During the border wars, the New York magazine Harpers Weekly became intrigued with “Bleeding Kansas.” It’s still a state of contrasts—an extremely high literacy rate, low unemployment, and persons who put a high premium on individualism coupled with contempt for fools and slackers.

SP: Kansas is such an integral part of all your writing. Why did you leave to live in Colorado? Does the distance from your setting make the writing easier or more difficult?

CH: My husband died in 2007 and I have three daughters scattered along the Front Range of Colorado. I hated leaving Kansas, but knew I would be happier living closer to my family. A friend pointed out that Colorado used to be part of Kansas and I didn’t need a passport to go back. In some ways, it’s more difficult to write from here because I adore the Kansas State Historical Society. Forsyth Library at Fort Hays is a government document depository and I like to prowl around the archives of various historical societies.

SP: Do you write nonfiction at the same time you’re working on a novel? If so, do you think this helps or hinders your mystery writing?

CH: Yes! And it both helps and hinders. Timewise, this is all a mess. But non-fiction tidbits inevitably find their way into the mystery. This greatly enriches plots and complications. For instance, in Lethal Lineage, earlier work I did on the frontier Catholic Church, and my fascination with the picture of a severe pioneer bishop helped with the characterization of the book’s bishop, The Right Reverend Ignatius P. Talesbury.

SP: How would you compare the experiences of being published by a major NY house and a smaller independent press?

CH: When Simon and Schuster published Come Spring as hardcover mainstream I was absolutely floored and so extremely thrilled. I’m still floored and thrilled when a book is published. New York publishers have a long arm and the money for types of distribution that aren’t possible for smaller publishers. Since then, the market has changed so dramatically that I’m not in a position to evaluate the differences. A common denominator of both right now is the expectation that writers will actively promote through social networking.

SP: What writers – of any genre – have influenced you? Who are some of your favorite crime fiction authors?

CH: I have always read anything and everything; F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, Elizabeth Goudge, Taylor Caldwell, Walter Stegner, Paul Horgan, and a fabulous Kansas historical novelist, Paul Wellman. Please note that all these persons write books with solid plots! As to contemporary crime fiction: Tana French, Anne-Marie McDonald, John Hart, Louise Penny, Craig Johnson, Elizabeth George, and Jeffery Deaver.

SP: What are you working on now?

CH: This sounds like fantasy, but I’m working with five editors. This is an incredible situation. I have an academic article titled “The Harlem Renaissance in Helena, MT and Laramie, WY” coming out this fall in an anthology published by Routledge, a historical novel on the 1980’s bank failures in Kansas for a university press, an academic book on 19th century African American politicians in Kansas and their effect on the settlement of the west, three articles for BlackPast.org, and a new mystery, Hidden Heritage. It’s a walk on the wild side and my goal is to complete my obligations and stay sane. After I work my way out of this, I want to focus on mysteries.

Stealing From Art

Sharon Wildwind

Some of you know that I use art to relax from writing. This week we’re going in reverse and use art to energize writing. This all started back in September 2009 when I read a Cloth Paper Scissors article by the Portland, Oregon artist Robin Olsen. In “Spontaneous Combustion: Using Prompts to Spark Design,” Robin wrote about using prompts to take her quilting in new directions.

She printed about fifty prompts, cut the page into small pieces, folded the papers, and threw them in a bowl. When she wanted to stretch herself to try something new, she drew a prompt, did it, drew another, did it, and so on until she felt the piece was finished. Sometimes she used only a few prompts, sometimes as many as ten. She also used a single prompt when she felt stuck about what to do next about a piece.

I loved the idea, but no way were folded pieces of paper going to work in my office. I’d lose them or they would disappear amid the mounds of paper I collect.

What I did instead was print prompts on tissue paper and glue the strips to colored popsicle sticks. The jar in the photo started life as a vitamin bottle, before it was covered with paper clay and painted. I’m on the look-out for another vitamin bottle so I can have a can of writing prompts as well as these art prompts. Since we’re doing writing today instead of art, you don’t have to go to that length (unless you really want to).

You can also number your prompts, print them on a single piece of paper, and role dice to generate numbers randomly for which prompts to use.

The first thing you’ll need is a list of prompts. To start you off, I’ve given you twenty-five, but I’m sure you can thing of a lot more. Feel free to copy-and-paste this starter to a word processing document so you can print them out. As you think of a new one, write it on a piece of paper and toss it in your bowl or add it to your list. I've found that quirky or funny premises work better for quick exercises than dark serious stuff, but as they say in the ads, your mileage may vary.

The setting is a place you’ve visited, but didn’t like.

No more than 5% of the words can be “the.”

The protagonist comes from a ethnic background different from yours. (Yes, research will be involved here.)

Two characters communicate an important message without words.

The protagonist is a fish out of water.

A mini-story of 100 words.

The heroine gets what she wants but it turns out not to be what she wants.

A betrayal.

A page of dialog filled with technical jargon.

Missing an opportunity turns into disaster. Then turn it around: taking advantage of the same opportunity turns into disaster.

Characters go on a road trip.

An unlikely male thinks of himself as a dark and dangerous hero.

An unlikely female thinks of herself as a dark and dangerous heroine.

A character thinks up a quirky cover story that has unexpected consequences.

Phone sex, and it’s a wrong number.

A package is passed from character to character and each one thinks he/she know what’s inside, but all are wrong.

A familiar fairy tale told from an odd perspective (Cinderella from a feminist perspective or Jack and the Beanstalk as told by a corporate executive, etc.)

Being nibbled to death by ducks. The protagonists are out to save the world, but mundane details of daily life get in their way.

Kidnappers discover they have the wrong person for the right reasons or the right person for the wrong reasons.

The first person you see tomorrow after walking out your front door becomes the protagonist.

Rip a story from today’s headlines.

It’s a “one day we’ll laugh over this” story.

A story composed entirely of cliches.

Welcoming someone home goes terribly wrong, but is funny at the same time.

How to use prompts for writing exercises:
1. Start with the blank page.
2. Draw or randomly roll dice to select at least 3 to 5 prompts.
3. Weave them together into a scene or story.

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Quote for the week:
Creativity likes constraints and specifics. … it is both beautiful and ironic that constraints can actually give you more freedom. They activate your imagination.
~Bert Dodson, painter, teacher, author and illustrator, Keys to Drawing with Imagination

The Many Levels of Luck

Do you believe in luck?

Wikipedia defines it as "good or bad fortune in life caused by accident or chance, and attributed by some to reasons of faith or superstition, which happens beyond a person's control."

It is then classified into a few different categories, including cultural views of luck (and the Roman belief in Fortuna), luck as lack of control, luck as a logical fallacy, luck as an essence, and luck as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The "luck" perceived as out of our control would include things like where and to whom we are born, what we look like, whether or not we are sick or healthy, etcetera. In this respect, I must consider myself very lucky, as I love my family and I am, in general, a healthy person.

The rationalist argument about luck is that it is merely a term for those who want to avoid reality and take refuge in wishful thinking: that one can possess "good" or "bad" luck.

"To a rationalist, a believer in luck who asserts that something has influenced his or her luck commits the "post hoc ergo propter hoc" logical fallacy: that because two events are connected sequentially, they are connected causally as well. In general:

A happens (luck-attracting event or action) and then B happens;
Therefore, A influenced B." (wikipedia).

I must admit that I've been guilty of this illogical thinking, but so has anyone who has ever felt remotely superstitious or practiced a 'just in case' philosophy about something that is said to be good or bad luck. (Ever passed on one of those e-mails just to cover your bases? Or knocked on wood when you realized a long streak of health?)

Luck as essence suggests that one's belief in luck is determined by one's faith or belief system, and the idea that luck is influenced by actions, rituals, prayers--depending on one's philosophy.

The most common ways that we as people incorporate the notion of luck into our lives are:

--With games/gambling. We recently played a dice game on vacation, and it was impossible, when the goal was to roll two ones and some people simply couldn't do it, not to think that somehow the dice "liked" some rollers and not others. An odd phenomenon, but a common one.

--Lotteries. Who among us has not bought a lottery ticket at least once? And in what frame of mind does one buy that ticket?

--Decisions. "Leaving it to chance," according to Wikipedia, is often a way for people to resolve issues--for example, the flipping of a coin.

--Numerology. Many cultures embrace the idea of "lucky" and "unlucky" numbers. What's your lucky number? Why? Do you consider any numbers unlucky?

Luck is a fascinating concept to me, both in its largeness and its vagueness and also in its cultural persistence.

For example, when I have a manuscript floating out there in various offices, I often tend to think the results will be less about my talent and more about the way the universe works. It will be luck.

What's your philosophy about luck, or the lack thereof?

(Photo: by me, 2008, near my home. A "lucky" shot of the sunset).

Racing for Inspiration

Sasscer Hill

Horse racing is my inspiration – the risk, the beauty, the speed, the endless opportunities for skulduggery, and the extraordinary “Upstairs Downstairs” quality of the characters who inhabit the life.

Picture the winner’s circle: a poverty-level groom holds a hundred-thousand-dollar horse for a trainer who may be living large, or only hand-to-mouth. With them stands the rich or possibly almost-broke-owner who may also be a white-collar-crook. Or he might enjoy a golden life of lofty social status. I’ve seen them all.

Following the Triple Crown trail three years ago, I was fascinated by the stories surrounding Derby favorite, Recapture the Glory. The horse was owned by wealthy New Orleans Ford dealer Ronnie Lemarque, a showman who liked to sing and dance.

Back In 1988, Lemarque and his trainer, Louis Roussel, came close to winning the Triple Crown with a horse named Risen Star who won two legs of the famous series. When the horse annihilated his Preakness competition, Lemarque snatched the microphone from the TV host and belted out, “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans.” There was no stopping him.

Twenty years later Roussel and Lemarque got their hands on another talented colt, naming him “Recapture the Glory.”

In the middle of the fanfare surrounding this 2008 comeback, Lemarque’s wife hired a hit man to murder her husband, and did it while under the microscope of the sports paparazzi. Maybe she was tired of him singing. Maybe LeMarque was two-timing her. Whatever the reason, the press crawled over this story like bees on a beignet.

Watch Lemarque sing and dance.

In the end, the horse failed to win the crown, the murder plot was discovered in time, and the wife was convicted and imprisoned. It’s hard to make up a plot better than this!

But since I have to try, here is how I might use a memory from the track and morph it into a murder mystery.

One day at Laurel Park racetrack, the stubborn child in me was determined to catch a brown hen that pecked for grain outside my horse’s stall. A number of trainers raise hens in their barns at Laurel, and I’ve been fond of chickens since I kept them as a child on the family farm.

After chasing the hen into an empty stall, I asked a buddy to close the top and bottom doors so I could catch the hen before she escaped. I caught the bird, stroked her smooth feathers, and thoroughly enjoyed myself, just like a six-year-old.

Of course, I couldn’t stand around holding a
chicken all day, so I pushed against the doors and discovered my buddy had fastened the latches on the outside. I called out and waited for him to come back. He didn’t. After a while, still holding the chicken under one arm, I stuck my hand through a hole between the doors where some anxious racer had gnawed the wood. I waved and yelled for someone to come and let me out.

A woman I’d never seen before did. She opened the door and said, “What are you doing in there with that chicken?”

But suppose I’d been in there with a dead body? Or suppose a man with a long serrated knife had opened the door. What then? What would my protagonist Nikki do? No doubt Nikki would launch the hen, flapping and squawking into the face of the man with the knife, then run for her life. But who was this man, she’d ask. Why did he carry that wicked knife? Hadn’t the wife of a trainer been knifed to death some months back? And a mystery story begins.

I've never wanted to write the great American novel. I believe my job is to entertain with stories about chasing a dream, fighting the odds, and helping the helpless. I want to create a world that’s a bit scary, sometimes funny, always informative, and a reliable destination for escape.

Photos: Sasscer Hill; Sasscer, pretending to live large with racehorse owner George Strawbridge and his hall of fame trainer, Jonathan Sheppard. Keeneland races, Kentucky, October 2010; Full Mortality; Sasscer living it real on her Maryland farm in January, 2011.

Sasscer Hill lives on a Maryland farm and has bred racehorses for many years. A rider and winner in amateur steeplechase events, she is author of the Agatha Best First Novel nominee, FULL MORTALITY. Several of her short stories appear in the Chesapeake Crimes anthology series, and her articles have appeared in numerous magazines.

BACK TO THE BOOKS

by Sheila Connolly

If there's any upside to this broken limb, it's that I finally get to catch up on my reading.  It seems odd that a writer doesn't have time to read, but it's true.  I mean reading for my own pleasure.  Over the past couple of years I've read for two contests, and that meant I looked at some or all of a couple of hundred books (and tossed a few at the wall with some choice comments, the kindest of which was, "why is this piece of @#% in print at all?").

And all the while I was collecting books, to read "someday."  Books that other people recommended, books that sounded interesting, books I stumbled over on a shelf in a musty used bookstore somewhere.  Books that I need for research (I have not one but two very useful books on how to raise dairy cattle). Books I might need for research someday.  The end result was that my To Be Read piles (plural) had long since passed three feet high--each.  But now that I'm spending a lot of time sliding around on my bottom half has enabled me to reacquaint myself with all those hopeful, patient acquisitions.

Disaster was narrowly averted when The Break happened.  Of course I had carried enough reading material with me to see me through two very long plane trips, and I planned to acquire more in Ireland--one of my worst fears is to be caught somewhere with nothing to read.  (Sorry, I haven't yet obtained any form of ereader, which under the circumstances would have been very handy.)  Let me tell you, small, crowded bookstores and clumsy crutches don't mix well.  Which explains why I found myself reading Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer, something I had successfully avoided since it came out (missed all the movies, too).  But there it was, abandoned by some former occupant of our rented cottage, and what's more, it was nice and fat.  I enjoyed it more than I expected, but then, I couldn't afford not to, since all the other books were a lot skinnier and wouldn't last as long. 

I scraped together enough reading matter to survive the trip, namely by sending my husband into the bookstores with specific instructions.  He came up with some good stuff, including a few Irish writers I requested.  And then we came back.

Now, having received strict instructions to keep all weight off the injured leg for six weeks (arrgghhh), I can't cook, wash dishes, clean house, do laundry, or even go up and down stairs easily--all of which suddenly opened up vast swathes of time to (gasp) read!  Whatever I wanted! Heaven!

Deciding what to read, when you have multiple choices, is always an interesting process.  Am I in the mood for something noirish and grim?  Or something light and fluffy?  Do I really want to read another mystery, or is there something else that appeals?  Funny or intense?  Long or short?

Actually I started with Jonathan Franzen's Freedom.  I've read everything else he's written, and this was getting soooo much media attention, so I bought it and...it languished on the pile.  Suddenly had the time to read it, all whatever-hundred pages of it.  It's easy to describe it as "dysfunctional family" and leave it at that, but that somehow doesn't explain why each and every character is both peculiar and believable and you just can't stop reading.  I think I know at least two of the people.

Then Brunonia Barry's second book The Map of True Places.  I loved The Lace Reader, and I wanted to see if the second one lived up to it.  Pretty close.  Oh, look, another dysfunctional family.  Maybe there's a thread here and I didn't even notice:  I want to read about other people's problems, to distract me from my own?

I'd pre-ordered Sara Henry's new first book, Learning to Swim, and forgotten entirely until it showed up in my mailbox.  That was after the New York Times review appeared (unknown writer!  First book!).  Confession:  Sara and I bonded during a long and convoluted evening at Bouchercon in Baltimore a couple of years ago, and I've been looking forward to the book every since.  It does not disappoint.

I treated myself to The Rope That Strings the Hangman's Bag, since I enjoyed The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  I think Flavia has become some sort of national reader litmus test:  you either love her or find her wildly improbable.  I love her, and identify with her.

I'm sitting on not one but two John Connolly books, but I want to be in the right mood to read them, because there are some dark corners in his mind.  I've also got two books by Susan Cheever, about Concord and Louisa May Alcott, that I've been hoarding for a special occasion.  Is this the time?

I could go on, but I'm sure you don't want to hear the entire roster of my stacks of books.  But since I've been looking for silver linings, the freedom to read as much as I want is a true luxury, and I'm going to take advantage of it.

The Magic of Writing

Elizabeth Zelvin

I want to write about the magic of writing because it’s something I always forget. When I don’t have a single idea in my head and I’d do anything but sit down and write, because I’m sure that I can’t do it again, no matter how many times I’ve done it before; when I’m crawling through a first draft that doesn’t want to come to life, and it’s pure torture to put even a few hundred new words on the page; when I reread what I’ve written and think it’s pure dreck, not a publishable sentence in it; when I’ve finished a project and think, no matter how good the manuscript is, “Thank goodness! It’s done! I don’t have to do that any more!”—those are the times when I need to remember what magic there is in writing and how absolutely wonderful it feels when it’s going well.

I am not alone in this. I’ve heard many writers admit to going through all of this, whether they’re trying to break in or have a long string of bestsellers behind them: the “I can’t,” the “this is torture,” the “this is dreck,” the “thank goodness it’s over”—almost every writer has been there at some time, if not perennially.

But I also know that other writers hear a character’s distinctive voice in their heads, saying things that are unexpected and far more clever or moving than the author had imagined. They know that feeling of waking up in the middle of the night—or lying in bed before or after sleeping—with an idea knocking on their brain so insistently that they must get up and write it down. I’ve had it happen while driving, swimming in the ocean, running, in the shower, and in this too, I’m not alone. And most of all, we writers experience the joy of those moments when it comes pouring out of us, so that our fingers race across the keyboard and we forget to get up and stretch or eat a meal, order our loved ones to go away, and marvel, when we read over the day’s work, at the miracle of what we have created, breathing such life into our imaginings that others will experience them as real.

All writers have some aspect of the creative process that we never stop struggling with. And we get to know our strengths as well. Here’s what I’m proud of. It seems like magic that I have somehow created characters who have taken on a life of their own. Each has his or her own distinctive voice. They have authentic feelings, connect profoundly with each other, and make readers laugh and cry. So far, I’ve brought half a dozen of them to life: Bruce, Barbara, and Jimmy in my Death Will series; Diego, the young marrano sailor with Columbus in my stories “The Green Cross” and “Navidad”; and two readers haven’t met yet. One of these is Diego’s sister Rachel, with whom I’ve fallen in love myself, she’s so full of enthusiasm, wit, and passion. The other is Amy Greenstein, aka Emerald Love, a nice Jewish girl who’s a rising country music star and a shapeshifter. Actually, I love all these characters, and when I contemplate how very real they are, I realize I’ve been given the gift of writer’s magic.

What makes a great beginning?

Sandra Parshall

You have to hook the reader with the opening lines.

Writers hear that so often it’s a wonder any of us makes it past the first sentences of a book. As it is, most authors probably revisit those first lines more times than we’d care to admit before we declare a book finished. Wouldn’t we all love to come up with something that would lift our openings into “Call me Ishmael” territory? An opening that would let no reader put down the book, that any sentient being would find compelling, intriguing, unforgettable?

Yeah, well. We try.

The opening lines of a book have to carry a heavy burden. They must tell the reader what kind of book this is, they must set the mood and/or the scene. They must intrigue. They must make people believe that reading this book will be a worthwhile investment of a few hours out of their lives.

Will I give up on a book if the first line doesn’t sing? Not necessarily. Some of my favorite writers have committed dull openings. But I trust them enough to hang in there. Because I know the caliber of the writer, I am confident the book will rise above its weak opening. Usually it does. Sometimes the reverse happens: the beginning shines but the book as a whole disappoints. A terrific opening followed by a terrific story – that’s what writers aim for and readers demand. 

Looking around the room I’m sitting in and grabbing books at random, I came up with these openings that I like a lot. Can you tell what kind of books they are just from the first lines?

From Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin, my very favorite book of 2010:
"The Rutherford girl had been missing for eight days when Larry Ott returned home and found a monster waiting in his house."

Lies of the Heart by Michelle Boyajian (2010):
"It’s one of those surreal moments in life, sitting there in the courtroom and staring into the eyes of her husband’s killer."

Fourth Day by Zoe Sharp (2011):
"Nothing brings home a sense of your own mortality like being locked up alone in the dark.
Which was, of course, precisely why they’d done it."

A Hard Day’s Fright by Casey Daniels (2011):
"Here’s the thing people didn’t get about Lucy Pasternak, I mean people who never met her: Lucy sparkled."

If Books Could Kill by Kate Carlisle (2010):
"If my life were a book, I would have masking tape holding my hinges together. My pages would be loose, my edges tattered and my boards exposed, the front flyleaf torn and the leather mottled and moth-eaten. I’d have to take myself apart and put myself back together, as any good book restoration expert would do."

Breakheart Hill by Thomas H. Cook (1995), one of my all-time favorite novels:
"This is the darkest story that I ever heard, and all my life I have labored not to tell it."

Hearts and Bones by Margaret Lawrence (1996), another lasting favorite:
"Whatever they thought when they found her was bound to be wrong."

What first lines have you come across lately that instantly caught your interest? Quote them in the comments section, with the book titles and authors’ names so others will know what to look for if they’re also intrigued.

For those of you who are writers: Please feel free to show off the opening lines of your latest books! And tell us how much time and thought went into crafting them. 

Rare Birds

Sharon Wildwind

It’s incredibly difficult to be next in line the day after what Julia’s posted yesterday.

I was casting around for a lead into this week’s blog and remembered a (perhaps apocryphal) story of a middle-aged woman in England during World War II. The woman volunteered at a military convalescent hospital. She had been assigned to the patients’ library with the task of gluing cardboard covers onto paperback books to make them last longer.

A British general came around to jolly along the patients and staff. When he and the hospital commandant reached the library, the general commended the woman for how straight she was gluing on the covers and said jovially, “Maybe one day you’ll write a book yourself, eh what?”

“Maybe one day I will,” the woman replied.

In the background, the hospital commandant was close to apoplexy. You’re probably ahead of me on this. The woman was, of course, Agatha Christie.

I’m sure soldiers in that hospital appreciated the sturdy book covers. They might even have noticed that they were glued on straight. But I also know that the books Christie wrote have comforted a lot more people in a lot more difficult situations. There is a statistical probability that someone in a Fukushima Prefecture shelter is reading one of her books right now.

We forget sometimes what wonderful rare birds we are as authors. Meaning no disrespect to anyone who hasn’t crossed the line yet, we also forget that we are more wonderful and rarer as published authors. We lose sight of that because we live shoulder-to-shoulder with other writers.

Public use photo from the Tazzone.

Pick your favorite public venue. I’ve chosen the Scotiabank Saddledome. Scotiabank is obviously a bank and the Saddledome is where the Calgary Flames play hockey. Imagine the Saddledome tomorrow night, 7:30 PM. Flames versus the Anaheim Ducks. Seating capacity, a little over 19,000, and since it’s near the end of the season, most of those seats will be filled. The majority of those 19,000 people not only don’t know anyone who has written and published a book, but never in their lives have known a published author, and never expect to.

There is more relief needed in the world all the time and I fear it’s going to get worse. Whatever else we choose to do in our other life: contributing to charities; doing volunteer work; working for peace, social, economic or ecological justice, the most important thing we can do every day is to sit down and write.

Lots of people can do rescue work. Lots of people can staff shelters. Lots of people can clean up gosh-awful messes. But writers are among the few who can tell stories that mobilize, that entertain, and that comfort. We may not think about it very often, but writers are those rare birds in the business of hope.

Goodness knows that the world needs more of that.

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Quote for the week:

There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you’re writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.
~Dame Agatha Christie, DBE (1890 – 1976)