Taking the Long View

By Sheila Connolly

Conventional wisdom in the writing business is that it takes five years to land a contract, and I hit that mark--barely. Now I realize it's been almost exactly five years since I received "The Call." Things move slowly in the print universe, although obviously ebooks are changing the playing field, and both sellers and buyers can achieve instant gratification.

But I guess that makes me the last of the old pre-Internet generation, when things moved at a leisurely pace. I can live with that. But what I wanted to write about was my orchard.

Okay, six trees does not an orchard make. But when I started the Orchard Mystery series, I thought I should get up close and personal with the real thing. Much as I love driving around New England visiting orchards, both old and new, I always seem to miss that magic moment when they start blooming, or arrive a week after they've picked the heirloom varieties. The only way I could really follow the seasons in an orchard would be to plant my own.

Small problem: our property is a quarter-acre, and much of that is taken up with a house and a former barn and a driveway. Half of what's left is heavily shaded, and apple trees like sunlight. That left me with a narrow strip smack in front of the house. Okay, the neighbors were going to think I was a little weird, but I started planting apple trees.

It's not as silly as it sounds: most apple trees these days are grafted onto dwarf stock, so it's not like there will be a forty-foot tree in the front yard any time soon. But I also wanted to add to the challenge. I didn't want to plant the easy stuff like Macintosh; I wanted to plant heirloom varieties, trees either native to New England or with historical value. Those you have to hunt for.

My orchard

My first tree was a Northern Spy. I shouldn't have started with that, because they're notoriously slow to produce fruit. Was I prepared to wait five years or more to see an apple? But I'm stubborn, and that was what I wanted, because they're good all-around apples, useful for both eating and cooking. I even found a nice eight-foot tree--near where my daughter was in college (which happens to be near where I set my series). That presented a problem: how to haul it across the state? In the end my daughter did manage to cram it into one of our older cars and carried it home, and I planted it.

Hudson's--yes, they're golden

The second tree was a Cortland that I did find at a local nursery. Cortlands are nice dependable producers, and I wanted something that I was pretty sure would actually yield apples. That went in next to the Northern Spy. After that I started getting a little crazy: an Esopus Spitzenberg, because it was Thomas Jefferson's favorite apple; a Hudson's Golden Gem, because my daughter liked the catalog description; and this year I added a Newtown Pippin and a Roxbury Russet, both old and well-established varieties (I've read that the Roxbury Russet was the first apple produced in this country, and Roxbury is not far from where I live).

Along the way I learned that apples produce only on second-year growth, so I couldn't expect much from my new plantings (which arrive looking like three-foot sticks with some roots attached--not convincing). Last year the Northern Spy and the Cortland produced blooms (you have to have two trees to cross-fertilize), but there was a March freeze, and...no apples, not a one.

Let me add that the Orchard series is set in a real place built by an ancestor of mine, and like all old New England homes, it once had an orchard--of which all of two trees remained. One of those succumbed to a winter storm a couple of years ago, and I cut a lot of grafts from it and brought them home--and read about how to graft, because I had never done it. I diligently followed instructions, and grafted a dozen or so bits of the old family tree (a joke there) to my established trees, and crossed my fingers. One and only one took, but that was better than nothing.

My grafted branch!

This year the spring went well, with plenty of blossoms. And then I started inspecting the trees daily (like every time I walked by) and saying encouraging things to them (yes, out loud). And...the four elder trees have apples this year. Yes, even the reluctant Northern Spy and the grafted branch. All right, maybe it's only a couple of apples each (save for the Cortland, which is going gangbusters), but it worked!

Cortland

Maybe it seems silly to get so excited about a natural process that's been going on for millennia, but they're my first apples, and I feel like a proud mother. I still go out and talk to them. It's going to be a challenge to wait until they're truly ripe (and that Northern Spy is one of the late ones).

If there's a message for writers buried in here somewhere, it's that things don't happen fast, and that's the way it is. But with patience and perseverance and luck, you'll get a harvest eventually.  In my case, I've got both books and apples!

I [heart] my iPhone

Elizabeth Zelvin

If I’m so smart, how come it took me this long to get my first smartphone? Well, I’m of the generation that didn’t ingest the new technology with its mother’s milk. (In fact, I’m of the generation that got its milk from a warmed and sterilized bottle of formula. When I was born, I think Margaret Mead was the only woman in America who believed in breastfeeding. But that’s another story.) I was a complete technophobe until, let’s see, 1998, when my husband got a new computer that operated on Windows instead of DOS. I can remember my First Contact with this alien way of communicating: I poked at a key and squeaked in alarm when it produced a letter on the screen. I’m no longer technophobic. I’m online all day long, and I have two websites: my author site, elizabethzelvin.com and my online therapy site, LZcybershrink.com. But each new piece of technology is still a very, very big deal.

Kids today have all these skills hardwired in. I hear them talking on the subway about switching phones and plans as casually as they buy a pair of earrings whenever a new one catches their eye. We had that first PC with Windows till 2003, and we still have the desktop that replaced it. I’m writing this on a laptop that I bought in 2004. And I got a lightweight little netbook a couple of years ago, not realizing that book tours involving physical travel were about to become obsolete.

Until a few weeks ago, I had a very simple cell phone that I’d been using for years. It was usually turned off. I seldom checked my messages, and few people even had the number. I used it mostly for car emergencies and keeping track of my husband in a crowd (“Honey, I’m in hardware—meet me at the front of the store in ten minutes.”) Everybody else’s iPods and iPhones looked like fun, but who had time for the learning curve? Also, cellphonistas who cross streets in a daze and babble all their secrets on the bus annoy me greatly. I had no desire to be one of them. So how did it happen that I finally took the plunge?

One factor was the small fortune we’ve been paying every month for our land lines. Another was finding I had trouble answering the question, “What do you want for your birthday?” I had to think outside the box—the box being mysterious but deeply rooted notions about what I “need.” So I asked for an iPhone, which meant I had to commit to taking the time to learn how to use it.

First good omen: the salesman’s name tag said “Elvis.” And Elvis was a winner: knowledgeable, patient, and informative. When I expressed my concern about learning enough to take advantage of all the phone’s features, he offered what I’m finding a terrific method of approaching daunting technology. “You never have to be frustrated,” Elvis said. “When you get it home, start playing with it. Every time you do something, write it down. Take notes of what you can do and how, so you can do it again. If you get stuck, stop. Take notes, write down what didn’t work and all your questions. Then walk away from the phone for a while, and then try doing something else. When you have a training session, you can get all your questions answered.” Both Verizon, where I bought the phone (we got rid of a land line and got its number switched to my new mobile), and Apple offer lots of free training. In fact, I’m finding that as time goes on, I’m answering a lot of my own questions without assistance.

Yep, I love my iPhone. I’m using the hands-free earpiece and texting for the first time. I’m googling on the beach and putting my songs on the iPod feature. I’ve downloaded apps for my bank and my online therapy chat room and buying movie tickets. I don’t call anyone while I’m walking down the street or carry on a phone conversation when I’m physically with someone else. But I have become one of those people you might see schmoozing to an invisible companion on the beach or texting on the bus. Now that I'm mastering an Apple in manageable bites, maybe my next laptop will be an iPad. And by the time my four-year-old granddaughter is a teenager, I might even be able to thumb almost as fast as she does.

Does your car look like you?

Sandra Parshall

Does your car smile at everybody? Or does it return all glances with a don’t-mess-with-me glare?

Look at the front of your vehicle. Forgetting for the moment that it’s made of metal and glass, what do you see?

A face.
 
Some part of us wants to see faces similar to our own wherever we look, and vehicle manufacturers cater to that desire by giving specific “expressions” to the front ends of their products. The effect on buyers may be subconscious, but it’s real. We’ll choose a car that has an expression we like.

In an article in Scientific American Mind, Professor Helmut Leder says there’s a sound reason to believe that putting a “face” on a vehicle will help sell it. He and colleagues at the University of Vienna, Austria, discovered in a study that people observe the front end of a car with the same eye movements they use to register the features of a face: first they look at the headlights/eyes, then the grille/nose, followed by the lower air inlets/mouth. The sideview mirrors, of course, correspond to human ears. Because the eyes draw our attention first, some car designers are making headlights look as much like human eyes as possible.

It’s not just the “expression” on a car’s “face” that makes us like it. As in all things, most people are profoundly attracted to overall symmetry and rounded shapes. Scientists studying human preferences have discovered that sharp-edged objects activate neurons in the brain’s “fear hub” more strongly than rounded forms do. (Is it any wonder that cars with sharp, high fins didn’t last long?) Our love of symmetry shows up in everything we do, from the way we design and decorate our houses to the beauty contestants we crown. Symmetry may be bland, but it’s familiar and comforting. So are cars with faces that reflect our own personalities.

What kind of car do you drive? How would you describe the expression on its face?

Writers as Map Makers

Sharon Wildwind

When was the last time you drew a map?

Earlier this year I set out, with the help of Google Earth, to revisit all of the houses in which I’d lived. All but two were still standing. One had been renovated so much that it took me three Google “drives” down the street before I recognized it. The rest were in remarkably good shape, meaning that they were easy to spot and conformed almost perfectly to my memories.

I was especially interested in the neighborhood where I lived as a child. As I sketched the street using the image on my computer as a guide, I was surprised to discover that the street curved slightly, almost directly in front of my house.

Instinctively, I knew about the curve as a child because when we played softball in the front yard, the person playing outfielder stood in the neighbor’s yard across the street. His/her job was not only to catch fly balls, but to watch for cars and send up the cry of “Car” so that we stopped playing until it had passed. You couldn’t see both ends of the street from one place. You had to check one end of the street, and then move a couple of steps to the right to see the other end. I see now that was because the street curved.

I filled in the names of my playmates who lived on the street and discovered interesting relationships. All of the houses with children were grouped in the middle one-third of the street. There were long stretches on each end where only adults lived. Families with children were likely the second wave to move into that neighborhood. Why we new arrivals, those with school-aged children, grouped ourselves in the middle of the block remains a mystery.

I was reminded once again that I was the odd child out. There were far boys than girls, and all of the girls were either a few years older or a few years younger than I was, so I had no real peer group. This is probably why I grew up playing more boy games than girl games. The new insight I gained was how homogenous the names were: except for one slightly French name—Dorine (Her family, like mine, was part Cajun)—all of us had solid English names. There was, to my regret now as an adult, not much cultural diversity. Catholic or Protestant was as adventurous as we got.

In some reading I did recently, the author described writers as map makers. As writers we are often ahead of other people. We go exploring the intersections. Sometimes we fall off the edge of the world.

We look for connections and paths that other people might miss. We pay attention to where the known world ends and the world of our own creation begins. The better we get as writers, the better we can blur the map so that real life fades imperceptibly into fiction.

On Sunday, because I had several projects on the go at one time, I crossed from non-fiction into fiction and back again so often that, at one point I stared at what I’d written and had no idea if it was truth or fiction.

Here’s what I know about map-making that also applies to writing.

You must always know where North is or you can’t orient yourself properly in the story. North represents the true compass heading of what you’re trying to say. Without knowing where that is, the story gets itself turned around.

You need to keep a sense of scale and proportion. When I mapped out the distance from my street to my grammar school, I was astonished to discover that it was almost, for an adult, walking distance. To a six-year-old who took a city bus to get there, school seemed to be in a far distant land. Scale and proportion tell us how far we’re into the story, how fast our pace should be, and if we should quicken or slow that pace.

You must map the dangers along the way. The writer is the pathfinder. Others are coming after us and we must leave a clear trail for them to follow.

The most interesting stories are found just off the edge of the map, in the places marked “Here be Dragons.” There are times you have to discard the perfectly-drawn map and just take the next step. Often that is the most interesting step.
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Quote for the week:
The artist is a cartographer; she maps the world. As artists, we explore the territory of the human heart, braving the dark woods to report to our human tribe that a trail can be found, and we will survive. For this reason, artists must have courage, even heroism, to state what they see and hear.
~ Julia Cameron, Walking in the World: The Practical Art of Creativity

The Mystery of Birthday Clusters

by Julia Buckley

Long ago my school friend Lydia suggested to me that she believed in a phenomenon which she called "birthday clusters." Basically this was the idea that we are somehow drawn to, or at least brought together with, people who have birthdays around the same time.

It's easy to poo-poo this idea until I apply it to my own life: first, the August cluster: August 5th was my mother's birthday, but August also marks birthdays for my father (who turns 80 on the 11th), my brother, my son, my godson, my grandfather, my father-in-law, and several of my friends.

Then there is the December cluster: I was born in December, as was my college roommate, both of my next-door neighbors, my sister-in-law. And most interesting of all, when I became pregnant for the first time, I was given a due date of my own birthday. My son was born a week early, so we celebrate our December birthdays one week apart.

I've met many women who gave birth to children on their own birthdays--a phenomenon I always considered fascinating, considering that they had 364 other possible days on which to birth a child.

My husband tells me this is mere coincidence, and it may well be--or perhaps are we drawn to people who make their imprint on the world at a certain time, in certain months? Do any of you have birthday clusters in your lives?

And happy birthday to all members of the August cluster. :)

A New Library Spurs Optimism in Oklahoma

Marion Moore Hill (Guest Blogger)

Like most writers, and others who love to read, I adore libraries. Lately I’ve been hearing about such facilities shutting their doors, or reducing hours and services for lack of funds, and that saddens me.

But I’m feeling much more upbeat about the future—for readers, for writers, and for libraries—than I was a year ago.

What’s different? My town has a brand new $8-million library (and community center)! Such “miracles” can happen even in 2011.

I live in Durant, Oklahoma, a town of about 17-18,000. During most of the 40-plus years I’ve lived here, the library was in a white stone building, stately and beautiful but “land-locked” (no room to expand) and seriously decrepit (leaky roof; bathrooms outmoded, at times unusable). Obviously a whole new building was needed, but how to get one with the city already strapped paying for day-to-day operations costs?

Fortunately, my fellow citizens refused to settle for the status quo. The librarian and many library patrons kept agitating for a new facility, until finally our state legislators wangled $1 million in earmarked funds from the Oklahoma legislature to buy an appropriate site. The city then hired an architect and drew up plans, but the project languished for lack of construction funds.

Then the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation of Las Vegas, NV, got involved. Reynolds had owned Donrey Media, a chain of media outlets (newspapers, radio and TV stations, and cable entities) in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Nevada, including at one time the Durant Daily Democrat. The foundation he set up and endowed in 1954 has built many community-focused buildings in those three states since it began.

I was on the publicity committee for the dedication of the Donald W. Reynolds Community Center and Library, so my time for several weeks was taken up with historical research, writing articles for a special newspaper supplement, collecting photos, and scheduling TV interviews for the librarian, all to get the word out about what a special facility the town now had. Like many volunteer jobs, it turned out to be much more time-consuming than I’d expected.

But also like many volunteer jobs, it’s been worth the effort. The library dedication attracted a standing-room-only crowd of citizens nearly bursting with pride. Use of the library is way up, hundreds of new library cards have been issued, and everywhere in town people have been talking with amazed pride about “our new library!” Not even the opening of a new sports complex a few months ago sparked such enthusiasm.

The new facility boasts a computer lab with a rotating schedule of free computer classes, community meeting rooms, special sections for genealogy, children and teens, a black-box theater, and even a café. This truly is a venue that enriches lives in our community.

The book is not dead, folks, nor is the library. Just as e-books haven’t caused the death of printed books—they only offer another choice—libraries are evolving to meet modern patrons’ needs and wants. You can still study or do research in Durant’s library, can still discover a great new author or a fun beach read, but you can also become computer literate, gather in groups, participate in distance learning from a far-off college, do video-conferencing, put on a play, or relax with snacks and a buddy.

To help launch the new venue, I had to put aside the writing of the new mystery in my Scrappy Librarian series. But I’m back at my computer again, with a renewed appreciation of the relationship between libraries and their communities. Our new facility isn’t exactly what a library used to be. But it’s what libraries are coming to be in the 21st century.

Marion Moore Hill is the author of two mystery series, the Scrappy Librarian mysteries, featuring intrepid Oklahoma librarian Juanita Wills, and the Deadly Past series, in which history buff Millie Kirchner investigates crimes involving American history.

Sound and Fury

by Sheila Connolly

My, what a week Congress has had!  Quite the drama, eh?  Impassioned speeches, nail-biting waits, posturing and preening for the cameras. 

I wish I were better informed about this country's political history, because I'm pretty sure there's nothing new about this pageant.  Maybe I could point to William Jennings Bryan's famous "Cross of Gold" speech in 1896 (in case you've forgotten, the issue then was whether to endorse the free coinage of silver at a ratio of silver to gold of 16 to 1, an inflationary measure aimed at increasing the amount of money in circulation and aiding cash-poor and debt-burdened farmers--yes, I had to look it up).  You know it must be important when it shows up as a Jeopardy answer.

I contend that most of the rhetoric this week was aimed at impressing each Senator's and Representatives's constituency back home, because, sadly, most people haven't got a clue about what they were talking about.  How many people had ever given the "debt ceiling" a moment's thought before this summer?  Show of hands, please.  Uh-huh, I thought so.

I'm not just venting.  I actually have some qualifications to discuss this, because I used to work as a municipal finance consultant, and I was part of the team that kept the City of Philadelphia from bankruptcy in the 1980s.  I attended meetings at Standard and Poor's and Moody's, so I know what a rating agency is, and how a rating affects the cost of borrowing money.  I was also a staff member for a senatorial campaign in the 1990s, so I know something about what it takes to elect a candidate.

But I also know that many politicians don't communicate effectively.  Sure, they trot out doom and gloom scenarios--and I won't say they aren't real possibilities--but I think the single biggest failing across the board, regardly of party affiliation, is the inability to translate the impact of federal policies on the individual voter.  Maybe they did a better job than usual this time around, threatening that interest rates on just about everything would go up.  But that doesn't mean that people understood why the U.S. government borrows money in the first place--and that you can't just stop paying the bills for money you've already spent.

Just this week I turned in a manuscript to my editor that features a Congressional race by a political newcomer; it will be published next August, in the thick of the political season.  I do not identify the candidate's party affiliation, nor is he modeled on any real individual.  I wrote about this because I wanted to explore why anyone chooses to run for office--and how far her or she, or his/her followers, will go to win an election.  As we have seen this week, there is a lot of passion involved in politics, and a lot of conflict.  What better subject for a book?

But in the real world, it gets harder and harder to find qualified candidates who are willing to put themselves through the relentless meat grinder of running for office and holding office.  That's unfortunate, because, like it or hate it, this is the system we have in place.  And what's more, we need a balanced mix of insiders and new blood to make it work.

Of course there's going to be a lot of head-butting, because what these elected representatives are talking about on the national stage affects all of us, whether we recognize it or not. And now the impact goes beyond our geographic boundaries, because we are part of a global economy.  Of course we should care--and we should vote.  I truly hope that those of each party who defend strong and polarizing positions do so out of conviction and a sincere desire to represent their constituents rather than an ego-driven need to be in the public spotlight.

I hope you recognized the title of this post as a part of a longer quote:  "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."  It's from Shakespeare's Macbeth.  Let's hope that what our elected Congress accomplishes in the next few months comes out a little better than that.

Flying

Elizabeth Zelvin

Who hasn’t dreamed of flying? To oversimplify the classic interpretations of flying dreams, Freud saw them as symbolic of sexuality, while for Jung, they signified freedom and transcendence. We live in an era in which sexuality is out in the open, while freedom and transcendence are still hard to come by. Although I’m a shrink as well as a writer, what interests me most about dreams is how they feel: gloriously exhilarating and utterly convincing, so that I wake thinking that maybe, just maybe, I could fly in waking life.

My favorite fictional descriptions of flying appear in Sharon Shinn’s Samaria series, which appears in the first book to be fantasy but is revealed over the course of the series as science fiction, albeit brilliantly character driven and superbly plotted. The beings who share the planet Samaria with humans are known as angels. They have powerful wings that allow them to fly to great heights from which they use their glorious singing voices to intercede with the god on behalf of the people.

He ascended effortlessly into the opalescent whiteness of the cloudless morning sky. Higher and higher, aiming straight for the zenith of the heavens, so high that even to his superheated blood the air seemed cool; so high that beyond the blank blueness of the sky he could sense an eternal, waiting night….Aloft in the icy air…Gabriel flung his arms wide and began to sing. He could hear every sound, this high up: the rhythmic stroking of his great wings, the brief catch and intake of his own breath, the faint sluicing of blood through the canals of his ears. – Sharon Shinn, Archangel

Because of the rain, she had flown in low, and now she spiraled upward over the broken mountain. The air was treacly, clinging to her wings with actual malice; she had to fight her way higher to get as far above the storm as possible. Even after she cleared the worst of the rain, the air about her felt dense and unforgiving…. Usually, this far above the earth, the air currents felt alive; even before she started singing, she would hear the echoes of her wingbeats batted from star to star. – Sharon Shinn, Jovah’s Angel

She flung herself aloft…and beat her wings against the sullen air….It felt good to fly, to unfurl her clenched wings and feel the thick, viscous ocean air lay its cushions under her feathers. – Sharon Shinn, The Alleluia Files

She…drove her wings in short hard sweeps against the air…She was aware of the steady, rhythmic beating of her wings, the tensing and relaxing of the sinews across her back, but nonetheless she felt like she was floating through the air. She…drifted peacefully across the broken terrain, silent and light as milkweed, circled once over the rocky margin of the shore, and settled easily a few yards from the sea. – Sharon Shinn, The Alleluia Files

I’d be happy to tell you that in my dreams, I soar high into the sky like Samaria’s angels. But I don’t. In my most consistent recurring dream about flying, I hover about three feet from the ground and have to push at the air with my hands in a kind of dog-paddle to stay up. When I try to remember more, the image that springs to my mind is the sidewalk in front of my parents’ house in Queens. My interpretation: I started having this dream when I was so young that I wasn’t allowed to cross the street. But you know what? It still gives me an enormous sense of freedom—the phrase “ability to escape” floats into my mind as I write this, and you’re welcome to interpret that however you like—and I’d be thrilled if I could really do it. I wake from this dream thinking, “How hard could it be? If I just push against the air....”

What are your dreams of flying like?

Racing into the Mystery World

Tammy Kaehler Interviewed by Sandra Parshall


A day job in corporate hospitality introduced Tammy Kaehler to the world of car racing, and her fascination with the exciting and dangerous sport resulted in a mystery series featuring a female driver. Her debut novel, Dead Man’s Switch, has just been published by Poisoned Pen Press. These days Tammy fits book promotion and writing around her work as a technical writer in Los Angeles.

Q. Tell us a little about Dead Man’s Switch.

A. Dead Man’s Switch is the story of an aspiring racecar driver named Kate Reilly who goes looking for her first big break in racing—but stumbles over a dead driver instead. When she takes that driver’s job hours later, she also snags pole position on the list of suspects in his murder. Suddenly Kate’s in the hot seat: she’s got two days to get ready to go flat out in a Corvette … and even less time to clear her name. 


Q. What inspired you to combine murder and racing in a novel? Did you have a longstanding ambition to write mysteries? What made the racing world seem like the perfect setting?

A. I’d always been a reader and always loved mysteries more than anything—especially horseracing mysteries by Dick Francis, because I wanted to be friends with his characters and I felt like I learned something from his books. As for writing … to be honest, the desire to write fiction came out of nowhere about eight years ago with a marginal idea that got me started writing. Shortly after that, I was immersed in the sportscar racing world because of my day job. It wasn’t long before I realized I had access that most people don’t have—and a perspective most can’t get. I thought perhaps I could share my view of the racing world with people via my favorite medium, a mystery.

Q. You've said that you researched the sport by attending racing school. What does that involve? What kind of people were the other students? Did the instructors know you were there to research a book, not because you wanted to race cars?

A. Racing school was three days long, and the participants represented a very, very broad spectrum. At one end was me—and yes, I introduced myself saying I was there for research because I was writing a book. At the other end were three young men, recent finalists in a reality TV competition for drivers, who’d all been signed by a top NASCAR team and who were looking to brush up on their road racing (i.e., non-oval track) skills. The instructors at the school were kind enough to do as much hand-holding as I needed during the school—while absolutely NOT putting me on track in the same practice group as the NASCAR kids! 

We went through three days of driving exercises, plus some bits of classroom work and discussion. We started in a street car on a skid pad (wet concrete), moved to a small autocross course, learned to heel-and-toe downshift in the racecars, and so on. By the end of day two we were doing laps on our own around the racetrack. By far, the highlight of the school was when an instructor—a professional driver who subsequently helped me get my racing details right—took me around the track in the racecar I’d been driving. That was the best rollercoaster ride I’ve ever had—and worth the entire price of admission!

Q. Are there many women race car drivers? Do you think there’s a bias against women – or is it simply a sport few women are interested in? Has your character, Kate, faced any hazing or more subtle discrimination?

A. There are a small number of female racecar drivers in every major category of motorsports, and there are more young women climbing the junior ranks every day. I think there’s less bias in the racing world today than in the past, and certainly there are fewer restrictions. One woman who raced in the 1950s, Denise McCluggage, was never allowed to compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, though she had a deal to be on a team running one of the first Corvette racecars. At the time, the (French) organizers of the race refused to let women compete, for fear they might be injured. Can you imagine that discrimination happening today? Kate has mostly been met with shrugs about her gender, though occasionally she’s surprised by a discriminatory attitude on the part of a fellow driver, team member, or even fan.

Q. How does a driver make it into a major race? What kind of racing background did Kate need to get that far?

A. To even hold your own in a major race, a driver has to put in a lot of hours and miles behind the wheel. Amateur or “gentlemen” drivers can make their way into some levels of racing with middling experience and a big checkbook, but they won’t last long there if their performance isn’t up to par. Professionals, those who are paid to drive, not paying for the privilege, have often been racing since they were old enough to reach the pedals of a go-kart, and in building Kate’s background, I drew from the stories of a number of pros. Kate started racing go-karts or “karts” at eight and won local, state, and national karting titles for different age groups. At 18, she moved up to open-wheel “formula” cars, and at 24 we find her in Dead Man’s Switch, getting her first big break in a top-level series.

Q. Since you’re not a racer yourself, how do you get into the right frame of mind to write a racing scene? Do you call on any experiences that you found frightening and exhilarating?

A. I watch a lot of racing, mostly on broadcast television. But I’ll also search out the in-car shots from the track or car I’m writing about, so I can see the exact view out of the car that Kate would have. It also helps to attend races in person at least a couple times a year, because the feeling of the paddock during a race—buzzing with tension, excitement, hope, and fear—is what I’m trying to capture in those scenes.

Q. Would you tell us about your road to publication? Was it harder or easier than you expected to sell this book?

A. It seemed like it took forever to go from finished manuscript to published book, but I know that my journey wasn’t as long as it might have been. I also realize I’m lucky that the first book I submitted was actually published. That said, the journey was harder than I expected.

The first draft of Dead Man’s Switch took about a year and a half to write and polish. I sent out queries to agents and got one, Lucienne Diver, in just a few short weeks. Of course, at that point, I had stars in my eyes and unreasonable expectations in my head! Lucienne made the rounds of the major publishers, who all passed—frequently offering competing likes and dislikes as feedback, so there was nothing I could pinpoint to fix. After many years of searching for a home for Kate, Poisoned Pen Press expressed interest, and a year later, here we are!

Q. Has anything about publishing surprised or disappointed you? What have you learned that you wish you’d known a couple of years ago?

A. If you’d asked me before I got the publication contract, I’d have said, “Yes, sure, I understand, authors have to do their own promotion.” But I didn’t REALLY understand all the different facets of promotion, marketing, PR, in-person appearances, social networking, guest blogging, and so on that “promotion” could encompass. It took me three or four months of feeling like I was drinking from the firehose just to get my arms around what was possible, normal, doable, and comfortable given my personality and preferences. So that was certainly a surprise and something I wish I’d understood better—though at the same time, it might be something you have to experience to fully comprehend. I can’t say I have any disappointments … I’m still just happy to be here!

Q. Where will Kate’s next adventure take place?
A. Kate’s next adventure is going to take place at two tracks in two different states. It’ll start with Kate in a race at Road America, an historic racetrack in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. After a little trouble there and at one of the racing world’s favorite watering holes, Siebken’s Tavern, Kate will head to Atlanta for a week of sponsor activities, family drama, mystery solving, and of course, Petit Le Mans, the season-ending 10-hour endurance race.

Visit Tammy's website at http://www.tammykaehler.com.

Lazy, Hazy Days of Summer

Sharon Wildwind

Let me tell you what kind of a week it has been.

Last weekend I went to the Calgary Folk Festival and took pictures of . . .

the backs of people’s head, and of that small woman, center photo, partially hidden by a microphone. In case a name doesn’t immediately spring to mind, that Buffy St. Marie, 70-years old and still belting out political songs in a voice that rings the rafters. Assuming that a tent has rafters to ring.

Today I went to the zoo and took pictures of . . .

Butterflies? Well, it was safer than standing around the tiger enclosure, which had a sign on the fence that said tigers mark their territory by spraying, and that they could spray up to 2 meters (6 1/2 feet). The sign suggested that if a tiger turned its back toward you, you should step away from the fence. I moved along quickly toward the butterfly house.

Afterwards I went to the Fringe Festival, which is 10-days chock-a-block full of avant-garde plays, and took pictures of . . .

a paper-mache mask in the Mexican restaurant where I had lunch.

Can you tell I’m having trouble focusing?

I think I’ve reached my annual summer melt down. I can’t think of one thing to blog about writing. Not one. The most helpful writing thing I did in the last week was to spend a morning trolling the Internet in search of photos of why my new characters might look like. Got something that would do for all of them, except two middle-aged, gray-haired women.

Then today a link to a wonderful site fell into my lap. So this week, instead of a quote, I’m sharing the link for Silver: A State of Mind. Wonderful faces of older women. Faces that would make superb characters. Enjoy those photos and I’ll try to cool off, refocus, and come up with something about writing for next week.