Teen love triangles: seen one, seen ’em all—or not?

Elizabeth Zelvin

Midlist writers like me and many of my friends tend to have a love-hate relationship with wildly successful authors. The ignoble feeling that creeps in when they get rich and famous and we don’t is envy, which I believe is an amalgam of self-pity and resentment. Do they deserve it? Are they such good writers? Why not us? Sad to relate, some of those with the most extreme opinions have not in fact read the books that arouse this hostility.

Let’s talk about Young Adult novels, which are going great guns these days. The Harry Potter series led to an outpouring of fantasy, the Twilight books to a craze for vampires, and the Hunger Games trilogy to a robust subgenre of dystopian speculative fiction.

Full disclosure here: I’ve read J.K. Rowling’s seven-book Potter series more than once and seen all the movies. I’ve read Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games and both sequels and seen the movie. I confess the high school angst of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight irritated me enough to skip the sequels, though I’ve seen all of the movies so far in the privacy of my bedroom, thanks to Movies on Demand. I want to talk about love triangles, so we’ll skip Harry Potter. These are middle grade books, and Harry, Hermione, and Ron a trio of friends. In fact, I give Harry and Hermione (or Rowling) credit for not spoiling their friendship with an adolescent romance.

But Meyer’s and Collins’s work is about and aimed at teens, and I think there’s an enormous difference between them. It’s the difference between shallow characterization and characterization of depth and complexity. It’s the difference between two-dimensional relationships and relationships with nuance and ambiguity, like those in real life. In short, it’s the difference between bad writing and good, and I think it’s why I bet a lot more adults read all three of the Hunger Games books than the whole Twilight saga.

Can anyone out there tell me what Bella Swan is like? I can’t. She’s a generic high school girl. In the beginning, she’s interested in prototypical high school things. But then she hooks up with this vampire. Why? Because he’s cute. There’s this other guy, the werewolf, who’s also cute, especially in the movie, where he runs around without a shirt. She loves him as a friend, but she loves the vampire more. Why? Well, she fell for him first. What’s he like? Hard to say—but he must be nice, because unlike other vampires, he doesn’t eat people. Why do they both fall for her so hard? It baffles me. They must think she’s cute too. If the two guys weren’t a vampire and a werewolf, this trio would be dead boring.

It’s quite otherwise with Katniss in The Hunger Games and her two swains, Gale and Peeta. The movie did pretty well with the book, but it missed a lot of the richness and subtlety of the relationships, motivations, and ideas in the novels. First of all, Katniss is a very interesting young woman. She’s resourceful, protective, loving, brave, and willing to question the conditions of the society she’s grown up in. At the beginning, Gale is not her boyfriend, but a true friend, someone she can be honest with, someone she knows has her back. It hasn’t occurred to her, or perhaps is just beginning to occur to her, that she could feel deeper emotions for him—age appropriate for a sixteen-year-old who is struggling to survive.

The relationship with Peeta, who is catapulted into her life by being chosen with her for the Games, is complicated too. They have to rely on each other, but according to the premise of the Games, they may have to kill each other. She remembers an old act of kindness, but they’ve never been friends, never even spoken. Can she trust him? The answer can’t possibly be a simple yes or no, and it’s not. In the book, an important aspect of Peeta’s character is that he has a gift for public relations, for telling people what they want to hear. So when he says he’s in love with her, she doesn’t know whether it’s true or whether he’s manipulating her and all the people who have the power of life and death over them and everyone they love.

As for Gale, when she goes back home (and without committing any egregious spoilers for those who’ve only read the first book or seen the movie), it’s not a simple matter of which of them she thinks is cuter. Gale changes as he is drawn into the rebellion, while she feels ambivalent. He’s responding to a cause, while she’s trying to survive and protect the people she loves. Now, that’s not boring.

The Story Behind the Story: Beginning

Sandra Parshall

When I speak to groups of readers, someone usually asks me to describe  my “process” – how I go about writing a book. I can understand why other writers would be interested, but I always want to tell readers that a novel is like sausage: just enjoy it; you don’t want to know how it’s made.

Clearly they do want to know, however, and I’m flattered by their curiosity. I fumble my way through an answer, trying to convey the various stages of creating a mystery, and the shifting states of terror, confusion, elation, disappointment, and satisfaction I experience.

As with any wrenching ordeal, though, the memories tend to fade. When I’m several months removed from that moment in the early part of a book when I considered jumping off a bridge to get out of writing the rest, I’ll recall hitting a rough spot but I might not remember what the precise problem was. I may also forget the days when the writing flowed like clear water and I loved every word I produced. You see, when I reread the manuscript during editing, I can’t tell the difference between the parts that came easily and the parts that I had to pry out of my head with a crowbar.

Some authors keep writing diaries, recording at the end of each day how the writing went, what problems they had, what made them happy and what made them miserable. I don’t do that. When I’ve finished working for the day, I don’t want to write about writing. If I did keep a diary, I wouldn’t share it.

Instead, I’ve decided to do this: for the dubious entertainment of any reader who wants to take the journey with me, I will periodically report on the process of writing my sixth book. This is the first installment of the story behind the story.

My fifth Rachel Goddard novel, Bleeding Through, will be out in September. (Here’s a preliminary version of the cover.) As usual, I finished it with the feeling that I had barely scraped by, that it was a mess and everyone who read it would hate it. I proofread the galley, and while it was a mess in one way (so many typos!), the story seemed surprisingly coherent and I was reasonably happy with it. But, again as usual, I felt sure I could never do it again. I’d hit bottom. I had no more stories in me. I was drained of the inner resources necessary to produce a long made-up tale filled with imaginary people.

That feeling lasted until I settled on the basic concept for a new book. As with all my novels, that concept will provide the surface action, but the hidden story of the characters’ secret motivations and deeds is what matters most. The hidden story will drive the plot.

Where do I get my ideas? That’s another frequent question from readers, and my answer is always, “From the world around me.” That doesn’t mean I look through the newspaper and lift a situation whole and transplant it to a novel. Events in the real world provide inspiration, not blueprints. In the case of Book #6, I was also inspired by my disappointment with a novel by a favorite writer. I thought he wasted a good concept by never taking the story beyond the surface. I didn’t steal his plot, by any means. But it reminded me of a controversy years ago in my own state, and from there I developed a plot I could use.

Any idea has to be tailored to my protagonists, veterinarian Rachel Goddard and Sheriff’s Deputy Tom Bridger, and my rural mountain setting in southwest Virginia. I can’t write a story that could take place anywhere.

Once I knew what Rachel and Tom would be dealing with, I started filling out the cast. Rachel’s friend Joanna McKendrick, who owns a horse farm, will be an important part of this novel, as will the people whose land surrounds hers. As the surface story plays out, the characters’ secrets will be uncovered, and the hidden story will rise to the surface in bits and pieces, gradually forming a complete picture. I have to know what those secrets are before I can write them, but I seldom know everything when I start. I fill in a lot of details during the writing.

Do I outline? Not in a rigid way. I know the ending I’m aiming for. I always know who the killer is, and that keeps me on track. Everything has to lead toward exposure of the villain, but I can’t plan each scene, each chapter, in advance. I also can’t plan the rhythm of the story, the suspenseful highs, the action scenes, the quieter moments. I feel my way along, sensing when the rhythm is off and making adjustments. Alternating between Rachel’s point of view and Tom’s is a great help with that.

I could spend forever in preparation, and the temptation to procrastinate is always present, but eventually I find myself constructing a template for the new book, setting the line spacing, creating the header with page numbers. This time, I settled on a title I love before I started writing (no, I won’t share it quite yet), and I felt a little thrill when I typed it onto the title page.

It was time to begin.

Beachhead of Integrity

Sharon Wildwind

Last Wednesday—June 6th—we didn’t watch The Longest Day, as we sometimes do, but my husband and I talked about the landing and what establishing beachheads on Gold, Sword, Juno, Omaha, and Normandy beaches meant.

I might have a tenuous connection to the landing. When I was in high school, the principal boasted that some of the planning sessions for the D-Day landing were held in our school auditorium. I’m dubious, but it made a nice story.

My husband knows an even better story. A U.S. Naval officer reported for duty in England, and needing to find him something to do, his commanding officer had him driven to a secret location. Military Police verified his identification and then locked him in a room with hundreds of binders. Every day he read binders for hours on end and at the end of each day, he’d pound on the door and the Military Police would let him out.

That room contained the entire plan for Operation Overlord, which had been drawn up by hundreds of people, some of them possibly in the same auditorium where I sat every Wednesday morning for general assembly.

The officer’s job was to find what everyone else had missed, the one overlooked thing that could cause the invasion to fail. He found it.

One thing that the planners had correctly assumed was that after the initial invasion, the beaches would be in ruins. Artificial docks would be needed to provide a place for supply ships to land. Concrete docks were built in England and then sunk. What better place to hide them than underwater?

Once the invasion had succeeded, the water would be pumped out of the docks, they would pop to the surface, ready to be towed across the English Channel.

The problem the officer discovered was that the pumps intended to drain and raise those docks were nowhere near strong enough to do the job. Someone had confused two types of marine pumps and selected the wrong one. The officer, having worked in marine salvage before the war, spotted this right off. The problem was, he couldn’t get anyone in the chain of command to listen to him.

After futile, frustrating attempts to get senior officers to realize that the invasion was headed for disaster, as a last resort, he took a piece of paper from his wallet and called the phone number written there.

Back in World War I, this officer had been seconded to the British Navy and had become friends with a British Naval officer called Bertie. Bertie had given the officer his home phone number and told him if he was ever back in England, to look him up. In the intervening years, Bertie had become George VI, By the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas King, Defender of the Faith.

The phone number in his wallet was for Buckingham Palace. Within a few minutes the officer was talking to someone who did listen and who promptly set in motion getting the right pumps. The rest, as they say, is history.

Serendipitously, I came across the following quote a couple of days before the D-Day anniversary.

As artists we must work to express our inner imperatives and not just filling the form provided by the marketplace. Integrity comes from the root word integer, meaning whole, unfragmented by doubt or discomfort. A positive list [about why we are a writer] goes a long way toward establishing a beachhead of integrity.

~Julia Cameron, Walking in This World

I fell in love with the phrase establishing a beachhead of integrity. A writing career means establishing a series of beachheads. It’s what each of us does when she makes the decision to turn pro. It’s what we do when we move to a new publisher, or establish ourselves in a new genre, or commit to a new way of publishing. We might be hanging on by our fingernails, but by golly we’re in this writing thing for keeps and we intend to stay here.

One of the nicest things about being part of the mystery community is that other writers are willing to help us get off the beach once we’ve landed. I’ve heard, “How can I help”? far more than, “Go away and don’t bother me.” That to me is integrity.

________

Military factoid for the week:

Men who were U. S. military nurses went ashore on June 6, 1944 with the initial landing. Female nurses waded ashore with the 91st and 128th Evacuation Hospitals on July 10, 1944. A memorial plaque to those two hospitals was unveiled last week, on June 8, 2012, in Boutteville, Normandy. Link to the article about the plaque. At the bottom of that short article is another link to some still photos and training films made during World War II about the operation of evacuation hospitals.

Those Memorable Musicals

I watched the Tony Awards last night--my only chance each year to see some excerpts of those wonderful New York musicals.  The performances inspired me so much that I thought I'd reminisce about some of my favorite songs in musicals, specifically those that were televised, and therefore made up the movies whose soundtracks I sang all through my childhood.  These examples only scratch the surface of my list of favorites, but maybe you'll enjoy reminiscing, too.



I begin with my favorite: Julie Andrews. There is no one better. I saw her in concert once and experienced her immense talent live--what a wonderful experience that was. But I first fell in love with her as Mary Poppins and Maria Von Trapp. Her five-octave range and sweet vulnerable face made her a hit throughout the world. Here's one of her great performances from THE SOUND OF MUSIC. I loved everything that the lovely Shirley Jones appeared in, from OKLAHOMA! to CAROUSEL; this is a favorite of mine from THE MUSIC MAN--one of the most romantic of the musical ballads. Ever since I saw Mitzi Gaynor play Nelly Forbush in SOUTH PACIFIC, I can't really see anyone else in the role, nor have I heard the man who can outsing Rossano Brazzi from the 1958 version of the musical. I couldn't even find Rossano Brazzi on youtube, but I did find this gorgeous clip of his voice, singing my one of my all-time favorite songs. (Have you figured out that I am a chronic romantic?) This performance by Ted Neely is still my favorite version of JESUS from Andrew Lloyd Webber's JESUS CHRIST, SUPERSTAR (1973).  His high reedy voice sweetly captured the vulnerability and strength of Christ. My sister and I both loved the 1956 movie BUNDLE OF JOY. Back before Eddie Fisher left Debbie Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor (a barely-remembered scandal), they had quite a nice chemistry together, as you can see here. My sister and I can sing this song in harmony. :) And another classic: Audrey Hepburn in MY FAIR LADY. She famously didn't sing her own part, but this clip is her own voice before the overdub. Not always on key, but very sweet. What is it about musicals that makes me so happy (mind you, the rest of my family left the room while the Tonys were on). What are your favorites?

View from Preikestolen

by Jeanne Matthews

In the early ‘80s, my husband and I fell in love with cross-country skiing.  We lived in Colorado then and there were lots of tracks to explore.  But we dreamed of going to Norway where the word “ski” was invented (from the Old Norse “skid,” meaning a piece of split wood).  We drooled over photos of Norway’s rugged, snow-capped mountains and spectacular fjords.  But for one reason or another, we never made it. 

Thirty years later, as I began to think about a setting for the third book in my Dinah Pelerin international mystery series, the idea of visiting the Land of the Midnight Sun resurfaced.  I had become fascinated by the Svalbard “Doomsday” Seed Vault in Longyearbyen, Norway and submitted a proposal and the first hundred pages of the manuscript to my publisher.  I settled on an itinerary that combined sightseeing with research and bought the tickets.  We were to depart on July 23, 2011.

On July 22, Anders Behring Breivik, a blue-eyed Norwegian with a hatred of immigrants and all those who advocate on their behalf, detonated a massive bomb in the heart of Oslo, killing eight and critically injuring ten more.  While the police and emergency units rushed to secure the downtown area and tend to the dead and wounded, Breivik boarded a ferry and proceeded to the island of Utoya where a number of children of the immigration-friendly Labor Party were attending a summer camp.  Disguised in the uniform of a policeman, he hunted down and shot to death sixty-nine more people, mostly teenagers.  It was the deadliest attack by a single gunman in recorded history and the worst violence to hit Norway since World War II. 

When we arrived in Oslo two days later, the grief was palpable.  Crowds of mourners poured nonstop into the churches.  Every public space was blanketed with flowers and candles and miniature Norwegian flags and pictures of the dead.  Many of the bouquets and wreaths bore messages of condolence and gratitude from immigrant groups the Norwegians have welcomed into their country. The city looked like a war zone.  The concussion from the explosion destroyed the government headquarters and shattered the windows of buildings for blocks around.  Workers nailed plywood over the gaping holes and erected chain link fences to seal off the cratered buildings.

We took a bus from Oslo to Bergen and as we passed by Utoya, our driver choked up.  When we reached Bergen and checked into our hotel, we found the receptionist in tears.  The whole nation seemed to have succumbed to grief.  It was heart-wrenching.  Sitting in my hotel room and watching that grief unfold on TV, I cried, too.  And then I opened my e-mail.  “Congratulations,” said a message from my publisher.  “Your book will be published next June.  You need to finish it fast.”

I don’t write tragedies.  My books fall on the lighter side of the crime fiction spectrum.  In Bergen, I didn’t see how I could write anything light ever again.  At least, not in or about Norway.

I had always wanted to hike to the top of Preikestolen, one of the most jaw-dropping, ya-gotta-see-this-to-believe-it pinnacles in the world and an iconic image of Norway.  Preikestolen (Pulpit Rock in English) looks like the prow of a monstrous ship.  

On three sides, sheer granite cliffs plunge 2,000 feet to the cobalt waters of the Lysefjord below.  There are no fences, no rails, nothing between you and the abyss.  Just looking at the photographs made an acrophobe like me feel queasy.  But we might never be so close again and the lure of adventure outweighed fear.  On August 3, we hopped a ferry to Stavanger and set out to conquer The Big Rock.

 

The sun was shining for the first time in a week and there were hundreds of people on the trail, all of them climbing faster than us.  After an hour of scrambling over boulders the size of SUVs, we stopped to catch our breath beside a small lake and struck up a conversation with a Norwegian family from Oslo.  They expressed sadness over the massacre, but spoke with pride about Norway’s history of tolerance and equality for all.  They and all Norwegians place great value on their open and inclusive way of life and they refuse to be intimidated by the hateful acts of a bigot.   

The confidence and resilience of those people, not to mention the way they vaulted over chest-high boulders and leapt from precarious ledge to ledge, reminded me that Norwegians are descended from the Vikings, some of the bravest, toughest people who ever walked the planet.  They will endure and, as their national motto says, remain “united until the mountains crumble.”  I decided I could finish my book and even end it on a triumphant note.  We scored the view from the top.  And I modeled the Sami policeman who helps Dinah solve the mystery on a Norwegian Good Samaritan who helped my husband make the descent down the mountain after he fell and broke his arm.
 
Jeanne’s latest Poisoned Pen Press novel is Bonereapers. Visit her website for more information.

The H-Word

by Sheila Connolly

On Memorial Day the Boston Globe ran an interesting article by Billy Baker, titled "Not easy for Harvard grads to say they went there." Front page, no less.

It was a surprisingly lengthy article, about why Harvard grads are reluctant to tell people they actually went to Harvard.  They stutter and stumble when asked where they attended college, and end up saying strangled things like, "uh, Boston," or "in Cambridge."

The thing is, a Harvard affiliation comes with baggage.  People who are generally friendly and open-minded immediately jump to conclusions:  you're smart and you're a snob (i.e., not like them).  You are branded with the Harvard brand.  People expect you to say and do important things, and when you turn out to be a normal, average person, they're disappointed—or they think you're being condescending.

As a result, many graduates manage to avoid saying anything at all about it. They don't wear the sweatshirts in public, literally and figuratively.

I suppose it's Harvard's own fault, since Harvard graduates been running the country for decades, if not centuries.  It is the premier Old Boys Club.  Oh, sure they let the girls have a corner several blocks away (from the seat of power), and only reluctantly did they let them in as of 1999.  It must really gall some of those Old Boys that Harvard has a woman president now.

All right, I'll come right out and admit it:  I have a Ph.D. from Harvard.

Does that make you read my posts in a different way?  Do you know, when I wrote that sentence, I wanted to start adding qualifiers—oh, but I haven't used it in years (it's parked in the garage); they took a lot of people that year (which was true in my department, but it shouldn't imply that we were inferior stock).  I plead guilty to avoiding mentioning it.

But those Harvard folk (no! not me!) are not like other people.  I remember years ago receiving one of those begging letters asking for contributions (excuse me, but you have a bigger budget and endowment than many countries, and you're asking me for money?), and the information sheet I was supposed to include with my generous gift offered me titles such as "Your Lordship," Ambassador, or Archbishop to check off.

I receive the alumni magazine, and have for decades.  I have moved several times, across multiple states—and still they find me, in case I have a few million dollars to leave them (keep dreaming, boys).  I have never sent them either money or a change-of-address form.  Big Crimson Brother is watching me.

Maybe this reluctance is a recent phenomenon.  When my daughter was in elementary school (she's 27 now), I was on the PTA board of her school, and there was much concern voiced about fostering the children's self-esteem.  Something went wrong in there:  prizes were awarded for perfect attendance and nicest smile, while students who stood out academically were told it was rude to boast—it might make the less-talented feel bad.  Competition and excelling were discouraged.  How sad is that?

And that's the generation that is graduating from "that school near Boston" and can't talk about it.

My diploma hangs on my wall.  It's in Latin, and I can't read it. See?  I'm still apologizing.

What's a New York series doing in the Hamptons?

Elizabeth Zelvin


In today’s market-driven publishing industry, editors can sometimes get a bit narrow-minded about where a mystery series is set. If it’s a South Florida series, by gum, they want every book to take place in South Florida. If it’s a Las Vegas series...well, what’s set in Las Vegas had darn well better stay in Las Vegas. The Big Six publishers in particular are wary of anything that might be labeled “regional” or as appealing only to a “niche” market, in spite of plenty of evidence to the contrary. “No one wants to read about Canada” (cf Louise Penny) or “No one wants to read about Italy” (cf Donna Leon), for example. On the other hand, I’ve heard of a New York series set in the music world being dismissed as “niche” by a prestigious smaller publisher located in another part of the country.


The more popular the author, the more latitude in this regard. For example, Laurie King’s Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes get to San Francisco; Margaret Maron’s Judge Deborah Knott gets to Manhattan. But midlist writers like me are expected to keep a New York series firmly within New York. I didn’t know this going in. I originally envisioned my series about recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler and his friends, world-class codependent Barbara and computer genius Jimmy, alternating between books set in the city (as we New Yorkers call it, as if no other existed) and books set “out of town” (as we characterize all other places from Boston to LA and mountains, lakes, and prairies from sea to shining sea). My editor at St. Martin’s, the late Ruth Cavin, nixed that right away.


I didn’t win that battle (or any others) with the legendary Ruth. But I maintain that “out of town” is an essential part of the New York experience. How do you think those of us who live in the Big Apple stand it but by getting out of it once in a while? I adore my city with its rainbow population, 24-hour energy, and kaleidoscopically innumerable, bright, and constantly shifting little worlds. But sometimes I hunger for fresh air, quiet, and more green leaves and blue water than Central Park provides. I leave exhausted, and I come back refreshed and ready to plunge in again.


The Hamptons in particular are to some extent an outpost of New York City. The locals who have been there for generations may resent it, and there are perennial battles between the Bonackers and baymen on one hand and the summer people on the other, some of which provided fodder for my new book, Death Will Extend Your Vacation, set in an imaginary Hampton called Deadhampton (Dedhampton on the tax map), where Bruce and his friends take shares in a lethal clean and sober group house that turns out to be brimming with secrets. Unlike such authors as James Patterson, Nelson DeMille, and Susan Isaacs, whose Hamptons books pit the locals against the celebrities and rich folks south of the highway whose lifestyle you probably picture when you hear the term “the Hamptons,” I focus on the ordinary people who get away to the more modest area north of the highway.


My own country house in Springs is an 800 square foot (yes, that’s two zeroes) cheaply built ranch that a wolf with good lungs could blow down, soil that’s not rich from three hundred years of potato farming but a mix of inorganic sand and rocks (“For this my ancestors left Ireland?” my husband asked when he tried to dig a garden, right after we bought the place twenty years ago), and scraggly oaks rather than the giant elms of the Hamptons that get into the movies. But I love the beach, the birdsong, the flowers, the clean air, and the relative peace and quiet (no murders in my neighborhood so far), and so do Bruce, Barbara, and Jimmy.

The Biggest Risk a Writer Can Take

by Sandra Parshall

I picked up the book automatically because it was written by one of my favorite authors. I didn’t look at the jacket copy. I hadn’t read any reviews. All that mattered was the author’s name.

I didn’t realize until I got home that this book wasn’t another of the insightful, character-driven “domestic thrillers” I’ve come to expect from the writer. This one was about terrorism and a government conspiracy, and part of it was set in Iraq. Not the sort of book I usually enjoy.

I was more than disappointed. I felt cheated. I felt, melodramatic though it sounds, betrayed. My reader self whined, How dare one of my favorite authors write a book I won’t enjoy? At the same time, my writer self argued that an author is entitled to write whatever he chooses and shouldn’t let disappointed readers interfere.
 
However, my rational self (I do have one, although it’s not always on display) knows that any author is taking a big chance when he or she shifts gears and produces a book that doesn’t meet established reader expectations. A popular cozy author who publishes a bloody, action-filled thriller will discover that her cozy readers aren’t as gentle and polite as their book preferences might indicate.

It’s likely, in fact, that an editor will stomp on the thriller notion before it gets past the discussion stage. Your fans won’t follow you, the editor will say, and they’ll be mad at you too. In most cases, the editor will be right. The author who achieves success in one subgenre and switches to something radically different will essentially be starting over, aiming at a new audience. If the publisher goes along with the change, in the hope that the author will break out of a narrow category and find general success, the writer may be asked to use a pseudonym to avoid confusion with the earlier books.

Even a change in tone in an established series will leave readers angry. We’ve seen this happen recently to Nevada Barr, with Burn and The Rope. I’ve read all of Barr’s Anna Pigeon books, and I noticed the tone had gradually darkened in the later ones. The series was never cozy, and Anna’s drinking problem is troubling, but cozy lovers can enjoy the earlier books because they aren’t particularly graphic and they overflow with lovely descriptions of the natural settings I which Anna, a federal park ranger, works. The violence in the later books, especially the violence aimed at Anna herself, is more vivid and prolonged, and her emotional turmoil is acute. With Burn, which got away from the park settings entirely and focused unflinchingly on sexual exploitation of children, a lot of readers said they couldn’t read Barr anymore. I’ve heard complaints about the depressing tone of the latest book, a prequel titled The Rope, although it seems no darker to me than the books that came before Burn. Barr still has enough fans to put her books on bestseller lists, and as both a reader and a writer I’m curious to see what she’ll do next.

Ending a popular series can be as difficult as switching subgenres. Success, and the expectations of fans, can create a golden cage that a writer might never break out of. While the author yearns to move on to fresh material, fans still love the familiar characters and are still willing to pay for the books, and the publisher is happy with a sure thing. Starting a second series is an option, and a lot of writers now produce two (or more) books a year in different series. But kill off a series that’s selling well? It doesn’t happen often.

As for the new book that seemed uninviting to me although it was written by a favorite author, I grudgingly gave it a chance. I discovered that everything I loved about the author’s work is there: the complex characters, the thoughtful dissection of motives and emotions, the tangled relationships. No, I don’t enjoy the descriptions of people being blown up and gunned down in Iraq, but fortunately those scenes don’t dominate the story. I’ll finish it. And I’ll look forward to his next book, which (judging from the description) will get back to what I enjoy most: portrayals of ordinary people forced to work their way out of horrific situations.

Have you ever been disappointed when a writer went in a new direction? Do you think writers should stick with what they do best and what their fans love to read?

Summertime and the writing is . . .

Sharon Wildwind

. . . the same as it is the other three seasons of the year.

A few days ago I had lunch with fellow writers, the last time we would get together before fall. We got to talking about the good old writing days.

You remember, summers when the publishing world shut down June, July, and August. Especially August when every agent and publisher in New York City—and the publishing world was New York City—was reputed to leave town not to return until after the Labor Day weekend. When if you hadn’t sent off a submission by the middle of July, you knew there was no sense worrying about it until at least the middle of September.

When you might be lucky enough to take a writing workshop at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop or the Whidbey Island Writers Conference. Supposedly you were going there to write, but you going as much for what the Irish call craic, the fun and enjoyment of like-minded companions sharing talk, gossip, and perhaps a little wine around a campfire or on a deck overlooking a lake.

Or you’d pack your journal and perhaps the portable typewriter inherited from your great-aunt, fully intending to get into serious writing at the cottage or on the houseboat. Two weeks later you’d come home with maybe six pages of your journal filled.

Man, those were the days.

Back before there were year-around deadlines, 24/7 e-mail and social media, and a publishing world that never, ever sleeps.

I sometimes blog about how to find the motivation, time, and energy to keep writing. This week I suggest that you stop writing this summer. If you must write, do it as play.

Write in a different way than you usually do. If you’re usually banging on the keyboard, try writing in longhand in a journal.

Write stuff that makes you laugh, whether it’s a skit for the kids to perform at the family reunion or limericks, you can get a lot of healthy mileage out of writing AND laughing.

Take one photo everyday for 7 days. At the end of the week, download those 7 photos to your computer and use them to make up a short story.

If you quilt or sew, create some story-based fabric. Get yourself some light-colored fabric, freezer paper, and fabric markers. Iron the wrong side of the fabric to the waxy side of the freezer paper. Write with the markers all over the fabric, then quilt it into a purse, pillow, or small quilt. If you don’t quilt, find a quilting friend. You write and he or she quilts.

If you’re stuck with a deadline this summer and have to keep the serious stuff going, at least wear a funny hat while you write. I’m planning to wear my Mini Mouse Ears. 

And, I’m taking my own advice and doing two things for fun writing this summer. 

First, I’m joining two other local writers to inspire one another to turn out a complete first draft between June 27 and September 29. No pressure here just a lot of sharing and fun. We might even get in some of that crac on a deck overlooking a lake.

Second, I’m ignoring all deadlines, e-mail, and social media for three weeks. I’m sure I’ll be writing during those three weeks, but I hope all of it will be playful writing. I might even make a word quilt.

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Quote for the week

Vacations are seen as an antidote to work. They are medicine, a remedy for counteracting the effects of labor.... Vacations allow us to be away from the job, to change the patterns of our day, to alter our routine, to reconfigure our actions and habits, to rediscover ourselves.

~Dr. Al Gini, ethicist, teacher, and writer in The Importance of Being Lazy

What You Should Know About Tomorrow's Transit of Venus

by Julia Buckley

By now you've certainly heard of the Transit of Venus, which will be viewable tomorrow, June 5, "around 6:04 p.m. EDT until sunset."  It will be the last Transit of Venus in our lifetimes.

Venus will pass directly between the earth and the sun, and it will be visible (as pictured on Wikipedia, at left) as a small black dot on the sun.  You can check out some interesting historical facts about previous transits at the Transit of Venus website.

Here are some interesting selected facts about the Transit of Venus on Tuesday, June 5th:

--You can see a live broadcast of the event (which will last about six hours) at www.slooh.com.  Check out this amazing space camera for a calendar of viewing in your area.

--You can check out the memoir of Jeremiah Horrocks, the twenty-one-year-old English minister who predicted the Transit of Venus in 1639 in Hoole, England, here.

--There are several theories about the "Black Drop Effect"--that is, that when the planet Venus reaches the edge of the sun, it appears to elongate.  You can read about them here.

--For six safe ways to view the transit, click here.

--For Transit of Venus merchandise, shop here.

--For some neat cultural connections, including a Transit of Venus soundtrack, check out this page.

--Why are transits of Venus so rare?  Find the answer here.

Whether you watch the event online, through the safety of an appropriate viewing apparatus, or on the news after the event, you will surely appreciate this rare and wonderful happening in the solar system, one of the few viewable with the naked eye (sort of).

Enjoy the moment!