Getting A Second Chance

Elizabeth Zelvin

Any day now, my first mystery, Death Will Get You Sober, will be available in a new e-edition from Edgar-winning mystery author Julie Smith’s booksBnimble Press. The book was first published by St. Martin’s in 2008, after a long quest involving 125 agent queries, 35 publisher queries, and several rewrites over a six-year period. I did most of my learning about both the craft and the business of writing fiction during that period. But since then, the learning curve has continued.

It’s not that I didn’t hear everything I needed to know long before the book was published. When I started networking with other mystery writers by joining Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America as well as various e-lists from DorothyL to Murder Must Advertise, I got plenty of good advice, from “lose the adverbs” to “kill your darlings” to “don’t burn through your agent list with a first draft—get critique before you send out.” But my ability to hear these things has unfolded gradually over a long period—the same period in which the publishing industry has been tumbling through space looking for a place to land and not quite sure it will ever find one.

St. Martin’s published the book in hardcover, and when the e-book market exploded, they put it and the next book, Death Will Help You Leave Him, out in e-editions as well. But when they stopped marketing the books and I sought reversion of the rights, they pulled the e-book editions off the Internet. Now these books are getting a second chance.

My e-publisher was pleased when I offered to send the final version of the manuscript of Death Will Get You Sober for formatting, rather than having the printed text of the hardcover scanned. I did this because I had been stewing about errors that had crept in during the publishing process ever since I spotted them five years ago, when the book first came out. Rather than perpetuating them, we could start with a clean manuscript and offer readers an error-free product.

I had long since corrected the errors in the print book in my Death Will Get You Sober-current-ms Word document. Going over it slowly and carefully, I found a handful of small errors that we hadn’t caught. But more important, I discovered that I have become a better fiction writer and editor in the past five years than I was when the book came out, even after all the revision and editing that I’d done back then. Redundancies and awkward phrases leaped out at me, along with lines that could benefit from tightening to improve the pace. With my new publisher’s blessing, I cut about a thousand words—many of them, I confess, adverbs.

This second chance provided me with an even more satisfying opportunity. The main victim in Death Will Get You Sober is Godfrey Brandon Kettleworth III, a déclassé Park Avenue aristocrat who ends up along with my protagonist, Bruce Kohler, in detox on the Bowery. Godfrey is, as he says himself before his untimely death, an arrogant sonofabitch who calls himself God. “Hi, I’m God, I’m an alcoholic.” I thought this was funny. So did everybody who read the manuscript—except my legendary editor, who thought it was a funny-once at best and insisted that I change it. I tried three times to change her mind. Nothing doing. Even at age 90, Ruth Cavin won her editorial battles.

So I figured out a work-around. I gave God a younger sister who had mispronounced his name as Guffy when she was little. And I made the nun in the detox forbid him to call himself God. So he became Guff, and that’s how readers of Death Will Get You Sober have known him—until now.

For five years, I’ve found it impossible to think of him as Guff. All this time, I’ve been saying “the victim” whenever I mention him. When I asked my publisher if I could take the opportunity to give God back his real name, I expected her to say no. Instead, she said, and I quote, “Well, this is the beauty of ebooks! You get a second chance. If that character thinks he's God (and so do you), then he's God. (Fiat God?) And so it will come to pass.” Bless her heart!

So God he’ll be to e-book readers. I hope those who’ve read the book before won’t be too jolted. I hope the devout won’t be offended but take it in the spirit of fun in which it’s meant. For me, a wrong has been righted. And isn’t that what mysteries are all about?

When Men Write for Women

By Sandra Parshall

Women buy more books than men do. Women read more than men do. Those are facts, supported by market studies. At least some male writers of crime fiction are paying attention and consciously tailoring their work for a female audience.

I’ve interviewed male thriller writers who freely admitted that they’ve started writing female protagonists because they want to appeal to the people who buy and read the most books. The move may not be necessary – while a lot of men won’t read books about women written by women, female readers are more than willing to read novels by men and about men – but those writers believe the switch to women protagonists will increase their chances of success. “I’m writing to the market,” one author told me, “and the market is women.”

The cover copy on Andrew Gross’s new thriller, No Way Back (out April 2), doesn’t leave any doubt about the audience he and his publisher are seeking. The story description mentions common thriller ingredients: a deadly secret... driven into hiding... a dangerous odyssey to find the truth...a desperate hunt... a nefarious web of treachery, lies, and deception. The same general description could be used on countless thriller jackets. But from the first sentence, the summary is aimed at women: “Wendy Gould is an attractive, happy suburban mom, and an experienced ex-cop.” (Some men won’t get past the first eight words of that sentence before putting the book back on the shelf.) It concludes with, “A breathtaking tale featuring two strong, sympathetic women who must rely on each other to take down powerful, lethal forces.”

I read a lot of thrillers with female protagonists, and I’ve concluded that the inclusion of a child or children is fast becoming obligatory. Female writers understand that children are a powerful presence in most women’s lives. Having children changes a woman, and it certainly alters her priorities. A man who gets that will earn the loyalty of female readers.

Women relying on each other is also an appealing theme for female readers, but only a few male writers have caught on so far. Typically, the female protagonist will be assisted by a man. In some cases, the author allows the unforgivable to happen: the man has to rescue the woman from harm. And then they kiss. Two women working together to beat the bad guys sounds fresh and different.

But do male writers always create believable women characters? I think Gross does, but certain other male authors make me cringe when they try to write from a woman’s point of view. “Write what you know” would be good advice for them. They obviously know nothing about women (except, perhaps, their book-buying habits). In the worst cases, the female characters come across as men in women’s bodies, especially if the characters are cops: hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, inclined to fall into bed with strangers, and utterly insensitive to the feelings of others. Do real women like that exist? Of course. But they are seldom appealing, or even interesting, in fiction, and I hear a lot of female readers complain about them. The alcoholic, boorish cop has become a cliche in crime fiction, and my general sense is that readers are tired of such characters. Changing the gender makes matters worse, not better. If a child is involved, a female character like that becomes cringe-worthy – a mother we want to report to Child Services, not read about.

All authors who want to write from the opposite sex’s point of view would do well to keep up with ongoing research into the differences between the sexes.

In the early days of the feminist movement, leaders such as Gloria Steinem heatedly denounced the idea that men and women are inherently different. They blamed nurture, not nature, for any perceived variance in abilities and interests. Now neuroscientists are discovering, with both brain scans and simple tests, that the genders are indeed wired differently. Each sex has its strengths and its weaknesses. The division isn’t uniform – some women have “male” traits and abilities, and vice versa – but it is common enough to be acknowledged as the norm.

One neuroscientist has demonstrated that the visual centers of male and female brains don’t work the same way. We look at the same things but don’t see the same things. For example, men and women perceive colors in different ways, which probably explains why couples have so much trouble agreeing on how to paint the living room walls. Women are better able to distinguish shades of colors. Men have their talents too: greater sensitivity to fine detail and rapidly moving stimuli. Differences in male and female emotions have been documented with scans that show which parts of the brain “light up” in response to stimuli.

In the next few years we will learn more than we’ve ever dreamed of about the human brain (including why it stays awake and dreams while the body rests). If they’re paying attention, even the most stubborn writers will have to realize that a “strong” woman isn’t merely a man in a skirt.

But here’s the big question for writers: Will realistic portrayals of women drive more male readers away from books written by and/or about women? Are writers who want to reach a male audience better off sticking with the cliches and the man-in-a-skirt version of a strong woman?

Which male writers do you think are good at creating believable women characters? What are your pet peeves about the way men portray women? Or the way women portray men?

Snow Storms and Brainstorms

Is it snowing where you are? It’s snowing here.

I’m reminded of a line from the Lou Grant pilot. Two journalists, who grew up in Minnesota, but moved to California, agree that Santa Claus in Bermuda shorts doesn’t do it for them. One of them says, “I never minded white Christmases. It was white Easters I grew to hate.”

Officially spring arrives in Calgary tomorrow morning at 5:02 AM Daylight Savings Time. Except it doesn’t really. I’m fond of the Celtic calendar, which says that spring arrived on February 2, known as Imbolic or St. Bridget’s Day. Tomorrow morning, to my way of thinking, is mid-spring.

I have a lot of funny ideas about holidays. Going with that same Celtic calendar, summer starts May 1; fall August 2; and the new year October 31. Halloween decorations and candy should never be allowed in stores until after the school supplies have been cleared. Why do we  have to have the Christmas shopping season every year? Every two years would be plenty. In our house we celebrate Christmas for twelve days, from December 25 to January 6, and birthdays for an entire week.

Which means if you put me in a brainstorming group focusing on holiday celebrations, I’d be a disaster. Or would I?

In the late nineteen-forties, Alex Osborn, an ad man, promoted brainstorming. He said the best way to be creative was to have a bunch of people throw out ideas at random to be captured on a blackboard (This was before white boards). No pressure. No criticism. Quantity over quality. Once the blackboard was filled, the cream would naturally rise to the top and the group would profit from their collective wisdom. Almost seventy years later, decades of research show that brainstorming doesn’t work.

What does work?

Debate

Polite criticism

Exposure to unfamiliar perspectives

Getting past the first layer of predictability

The power of dissent

The power of surprise

Social networks with some, not too many interconnections. Too many repeat relationships stifles creativity.

Mix old friends and newbies who are comfortable but not too comfortable together.

Put people to work within ten meters of each other.

Practice asking why.

Hold two competing things in your head: what you wish to be true, and what looks like the actual truth.

Try things you don’t like.

Pretend you have unlimited resources. Often we discount solutions because we think we can’t afford them. When you know a solution is the right one, it’s amazing how the resources come.

Do it, don’t think about doing it.

Get wet: a surprising number of ideas happen when we are in the shower or bath or have our hands in dish water.

Develop new relationships among what you already have on hand and know or can access.

Instead of writing a description of what you’ve come up with, create an icon.

Where did I get this list? One of those serendipitous chain of circumstances that I didn’t know was coming.

An article on why brainstorming doesn’t work led me to a book called The Red Thread and an article on problem solving.  By a round-about way I worked myself around to another article on why brainstorming doesn’t work which nicely completed the circle.

This little journey kept me from going bananas as I contemplated the never-ending snow and the potential for a white Easter. Even if it’s not snowing where you are, I recommend you take a jaunt around this circle. Or maybe you might like to send these links to your boss the next time she suggests a brainstorming meeting.

_____

Quote for the week

To show your true ability is always, in a sense, to surpass the limits of your ability, to go a little beyond them. To dare, to seek, to invent, it is at such a moment that new talents are revealed, discovered, and realized.

~Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), existentialist, writer and social essayist

Book winner

The winner of a free copy of FEAR OF BEAUTY by Susan Frietschel is Leslie Budewitz. Congratulations to Leslie and thanks to everyone who left a comment.

Choosing the Best Detective

by Julia Buckley

A blogger named August Wainwright has proposed a "March Madness" sort of competition, but instead of relating to sports, his relates to fictional detectives, whom he is pitting against one another in order to allow readers to vote for their favorite or, in essence, the best.

I chatted with Mr. Wainwright online and suggested that, if I were to play the devil's advocate, I could find certain problems with his list.  He noted that there were several other detectives he wanted to include, but that they did not make the final cut.

A perusal of the list reveals that certain key detectives seem to be missing, many of them women.  Therefore, like all lists, this one merely reflects the (perhaps unavoidable) preferences of its compiler.  In addition, he has mixed fictional sleuths, television sleuths, and young adult sleuths, which I see as three distinct genres.  I might find it easier to vote if, say, the list only dealt with detectives from mystery literature, since my criteria would be different for television sleuths.  In a competition with adult sleuths, Nancy Drew would not even be on my radar.  But if I were looking only at YA influences, she would be right up there with the best.

So the potpourri gives the list a random feel--but perhaps this is better for the voting?

What's your take on the list?  Will you vote on Wainright's March Madness?  If so, for whom would you vote overall?  Who would you ADD to the list of choices that is not represented right now?  Is there a best detective you would vote for that he does not have in the running?

For me, there are several, but I don't want to name them until I hear from mystery aficionados. Who absolutely belongs on this list?  Or do you think the list is okay as it stands?

And August Wainright, feel free to chime in!

(Pictured: Joan Hickson as Miss Marple; one of the many women to play Marple on the PBS televised series, and possibly my favorite.  Image link here).

Mystery in Afghanistan

by Susan Froetschel

Leave a comment for Susan this weekend and you'll have a chance to win a free signed copy of Fear of Beauty.

Why a mystery novel set in Afghanistan? 

It’s the first question from so many friends and readers. The old advice is write what you know, but I’d say write what you care about, especially when you’re surprised by how much you care.

Afghanistan tugged at my imagination long before the US invaded in late 2001. Before news emerged of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist-training camps or the Taliban government blew up the giant Buddha statues of Bamiyan. 

I had thoughts of traveling to the country years before. During an early job in New York, my husband was good friends with a young man who had hiked and hitchhiked throughout Asia. His descriptions decades ago of Afghanistan -- productive farms, delicious food, stunning scenery and hospitable people always ready to provide assistance to a stranger, even an impulsive young man from the United States -- were rhapsodic.

Then many years later, we had dinner with good friends from Bangladesh, soon to become American citizens. Our boys had fallen asleep, and the conversation took a turn to travel plans for the following summer. Why couldn’t the four of us take our boys and go on a road trip across Asia, following old Silk Road routes from Istanbul and detour off to Dhaka? We gathered around the atlas with excitement, calculating mileages -- a little more than 100 hours of driving -- and selecting cities for stops in Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Our imaginations and plans ran wild late into the night.

The conversation seemed silly the next day, war broke out not long afterward, and I never got to travel to Afghanistan. 

But that didn’t stop my curiosity about a country with numerous layers and years of conflict. Afghanistan is the setting for our country’s longest war, now winding down, but still in its 12th year. The place is home to 30 million people, according to the CIA World Factbook. Most troubling is a literacy rate described as 43 percent among males and 13 percent among females.
Perhaps it was such a handful of facts combined with my own dreams of travel that made it difficult to understand others’ fear about Muslims.

On March 8, 2009, President Barack Obama admitted that the US was not handily winning the war in Afghanistan and that a reconciliation process might be useful, similar to reconciliation with Sunni insurgents in Iraq.  "The situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex," Obama said, as reported by The New York Times. "You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes. Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, and so figuring all that out is going to be much more of a challenge."

A flurry of articles attacked the plan, and many shared a theme: There is no such thing as a moderate Taliban. 

My reaction was visceral. Half the people are women. Half the people are under the age of 18. Languages are many, with half speaking Dari and the rest relying on other languages and dialects. About a quarter of the population lives in urban areas, and education is minimal elsewhere.  How could most Afghan people know of plots underway within their borders against targets on the other side of the world? How could families react to an invasion, while fighting extremism and many other pressures? I knew there had to be some moderates, especially in a country where politics and allegiances are so fluid.

I also wondered exactly how many Taliban are there? Working for YaleGlobal Online, I realized that articles rarely include such a statistic. One 2009 report warned that the Taliban had a significant presence across the nation. Another report suggested that only 20 percent of the Taliban could be described as hard-core. And a 2012 report suggested that the Taliban has 25,000 fighters.

Again, this is in a country of 30 million people.

For this avid reader, illiteracy and bullying are the stuff of nightmares. Sometimes the illiterate do the bullying, but more often they are the victims. Education opened doors in my life, the ability to become a freelance writer and adjunct college instructor. As a writing teacher, I've witnessed how writing empowers students -- the absolute joy at presenting ideas -- whether the purpose is for essays in applying for fellowships, graduate school or scholarships; opinion essays on political or business topics; analysis for framing arguments or planning life; or letters that comfort family and friends.

I had so many strong ideas in 2009 about religion, extremism, women's rights, literacy, parenting, our troops -- how could I not set a book in Afghanistan? And as a writer, I realized that I didn’t need that many details other than the gut feeling that the parallels and connections between my country and Afghanistan are many. 

I can’t say it enough. Literacy is about power. And those who belittle education and reading would deny others power.  

Leave a comment for Susan this weekend and you'll have a chance to win a free signed copy of Fear of Beauty.

By USAF Staff Sgt. Samuel Morse

Susan Froetschel is the author of Fear of Beauty and three earlier mysteries, and co-author with Nayan Chanda of A World Connected: Globalization in the 21st Century. Set in Afghanistan, Fear of Beauty is the story of a woman who is desperate to learn how to read in secret and discover the truth behind the suspicious death of her young son. Froetschel taught writing at Yale University and literary journalism and magazine writing at Southern Connecticut State University for a decade before joining YaleGlobal Online, a cyber magazine that explores globalization, in 2005. 

Libraries Past and Present

by Sheila Connolly

I wanted a new author photo, so I got in touch with the photographer who has done all of mine (not only does she take great pictures, and not just people, but she is also a woman who had made some wild leaps between careers, not unlike I have).  The last batch I had done, a couple of years ago, we took in an orchard near where I live, but at the moment all the trees are bare and we'd have to slog through leftover snow and/or mud, so not the best way to approach a portrait.

For an appropriate setting she suggested a place nearby:  the former library the next town over, now a combination coffee house and used bookstore, with the occasional music performance.  It's a Carnegie library, completed in 1914, so it's a sturdy stone building with some delightful features.  We agreed that it would be perfect.

Much to my embarrassment, I had to admit I didn't know much about Carnegie libraries.  I could have given you a one-line summary, but that was all, and that didn't seem right.  Here's the mid-length version, thanks to a quick Internet search.

Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andre Carnegie donated funds for the construction of over 2500 libraries between 1883 and 1929, some public, some part of university systems.  Nearly 1700 were built in the United States.  When the last grant was made in 1919, there were about 3500 libraries in this country; nearly half of them had been funded by Carnegie.

They were built in a variety of styles (there was no single Carnegie blueprint), but one common feature was a broad and welcoming doorway.  The buildings were usually solidly built and imposing, though they weren't always large, at least not by current standards.

I wasn't thinking about any of this consciously when we trekked over to the place looking for nice backdrops.  The library was converted to a coffee shop when the town built a larger new one across the street—all very nice, shiny and modern.  The old library, on the other hand, has charm.  There's a fireplace straight ahead as you enter, flanked by cozy seating.  There are plenty of windows around the perimeter, over the remaining bookshelves (if you stop to think about it, that was probably hard on the library books, but definitely people-friendly).  It was and is a warm and welcoming place. 

Plus now it combines books and food.  What more can you ask for?  There are tables with chairs scattered around, and plush sofas around the perimeter.  People aren't required to buy anything, but can come in, sit at a table, and read or do a crossword puzzle.  Two or three people can hold a meeting.  Various local vendors display their wares, from pottery to knits and quilts. 

The place is open from six a.m. until four p.m.  My photographer friend tells me that it does a booming breakfast business.

I came away with the feeling that the library, or at least its essential spirit, lives on in its new incarnation.  It's about books, and reading, in a comfortable, welcoming setting.  It's warm and intimate, as well as aesthetically pleasing. Isn't that everything a library should be?

And I think we got some great pictures.

Is it okay not to win?

Elizabeth Zelvin

In American culture, we have a peculiarly ambivalent attitude about being good at something. We adore those with talents and accomplishments, but we expect them to disavow at least some of the pride and pleasure they may feel in their success. And in recent years, we’ve been encouraged to idolize “celebrities” whose visibility has nothing to do with merit or achievement, but rests solely on the accident of their attracting media attention.

I fall somewhere in the middle along that vast continuum between humble, self-effacing saints and narcissists in love with their own importance. For better or worse, I care what people think. In the many years I spent as an unpublished writer, I didn’t exactly doubt my own abilities, but I feared that others would conclude my writing wasn’t good enough.

I learned many valuable life lessons from my mother, an energetic high achiever who went to law school in 1921. My mother faced the world with confidence, no matter what, because she could always say, “I am a lawyer.” Yet she didn’t practice law successfully. Like most of the handful of women lawyers of her generation, she had to find a niche on the sidelines, in her case writing and editing legal books. But so powerful was the illusion created by her sense of her own identity that she was always “my mother the lawyer” to me.

My father, a lawyer too, was one of those crossword puzzle demons who did the Sunday New York Times puzzle in ink every week. When I asked what something meant, he would say, “Look it up.” In those days, this meant not a quick romp through Google but dusting off the Webster’s Unabridged or worse, plodding down the wooden stairs to the cold basement to consult the multi-volume encyclopedia.

In seventh grade, I became a spelling bee champ. We were all natural spellers who played fierce family games of Scrabble when it first came out. I still remember the sense of triumph I felt—I must have been nine or ten—when I gave the correct spelling of “exhilarated” after my mother insisted that middle “a” was an “i” and my dad thought it was an “e.” We settled the argument by looking it up, and I felt—exhilarated.

At my junior high in Queens, we were invited to participate in the National Spelling Bee. It was a big deal back then and is still an annual event that’s covered by the media. Nowadays, they even televise the finals.

I had never had a significant failure in those days. I got high grades on tests and was praised by teachers, and I did well enough in sports to please my intellectual family. I easily won the seventh grade spelling bee and then the whole school’s, competing against older kids in the eighth and ninth grades. I remember studying long lists of abstruse words with more pleasure than anxiety. Spelling came easily to me: if I’d seen it, I could spell it. I instinctively fell into the pattern of spelling with pauses between syllables to break each word down into manageable parts.

I remember my class breaking into spontaneous applause as I returned to the classroom after winning the schoolwide bee. It had been announced on the PA system. They did the same when I won the competition for the whole school district. Overhauling my paper files, I recently found the newspaper article in which my name was listed—one of only five kids in Queens who qualified—as a participant in the citywide bee. I was proud of my achievement. Why shouldn’t I be?

Then came the New York City bee. Alas, I lost it. I fell afoul of not one of the difficult words I’d studied but a simple one I’d never heard before: “intermittent.” I got that second “e” right, but I failed to double the “t,” and that was it. No trip to Washington DC to compete in the national finals against kids from all over the country. And no applause when I slunk back into the classroom that afternoon.

I’ve never misspelled “intermittent” again.

Since then, life has provided plenty of disappointments and only occasional applause. As a culture, we still love a winner, whether the arena is the Super Bowl, the Oscars, the Edgars, or the Agathas. There’s even a certain cachet in being nominated for an award or making the finals of a competition. But with so many others clamoring for attention, we’re in trouble if we can’t find self-esteem and validation from within.

How far will you go to save a pet?

by Sandra Parshall

Pet owners come in several varieties: those who ignore an animal’s illness and let it die; those who respond to illness by telling the vet to euthanize the pet, then promptly get another to replace it; those who willingly pay vet bills to help a sick pet, but stop when the expense begins to strain the family budget; and those who will do whatever it takes and spend any amount of money to save an animal or make its last days comfortable.

I don’t understand people in the first two groups. I understand the third, and I sympathize, especially when those people have children to support. I am the fourth type, and so are many of my friends. I would probably go bankrupt before I would give up on an animal that had some chance of pulling through.

When I began writing about Dr. Rachel Goddard, a fictional veterinarian, I knew I had to make her capable of doing things I could never do, such as euthanizing sick animals. She’s a professional, and she has to be tough enough to do her job, even though she shares my willingness to go to any lengths to help an animal in need. I’ve avoided difficult scenes with animals in most of my books because Rachel’s day to day veterinary work must necessarily come a distant second to her involvement in crime solving. Her connection with people through their pets, though, gives her the opportunity to get information and make connections that might elude Deputy Tom Bridger, chief investigator for the Sheriff’s Department.

The only book in the series that brings animals to the foreground of the action is Under the Dog Star, in which Rachel fights to save a pack of feral dogs and a collection of dogs that have been used for fighting. I was a little afraid that readers would be put off by Rachel’s zealousness, her willingness to take dangerous risks to help a bunch of pathetic animals, but the reaction from dog lovers was overwhelmingly positive. I can tell that many readers who love that book are the type of pet owners who would go to any lengths and spare no expense to help a sick or injured pet. They are people like me.

I don’t mind admitting that we’ve spent many thousands of dollars over the years on our cats' health care.

Sammy

We took Sam in when his previous owners moved and left him behind. He was barely more than a kitten then, and perfectly healthy. As he aged, he developed heart disease. We took him to a veterinary cardiologist regularly and gave him prescribed medications every day for the rest of his life.
 
Our Abyssinian cat Gabriel has asthma and a life-threatening condition called chronic cholangiohepatitis. When he was two years old he almost died a couple of times from liver failure, and since then he has been on a regimen of expensive drugs that he will need for the rest of his life. He also gets puffs from a steroid inhaler twice a day, delivered through a device called the AeroKat. 

Gabriel, I’m happy to say, is a cooperative patient – after we catch him. He knows we’ll find him, and he never fights us, but he makes a ritual of disappearing while I’m preparing his meds.

Gabriel the escape artist

Nicholas, our previous Aby, also had a lot of health problems, including asthma and later on, diabetes. 

Nicky

Injections and pills were part of daily life, and treatment kept Nicky alive and happy to the age of 13. When we made the painful decision to let him go, it was because his quality of life had suddenly deteriorated drastically and we had no hope that he would recover. The last time I held him, minutes before he died, he purred and licked my cheek. Putting him back down on the table so the vet could euthanize him was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life.

My wonderful Simon kept me company when I wrote. He was my true soulmate. We even had the same birthday. Simon (who grew up with Nicky) was robustly healthy through most of his nearly 18 years, but in the end he developed both cancer and kidney disease. We took him to an oncologist, administered chemotherapy and fluids, and we bought a couple of years of high-quality life that he wouldn’t have had if we’d left him untreated. Once when we were in the oncologist’s waiting room, a young man who had brought in his little mutt told us he'd spent thousands of dollars he couldn’t afford on his dog’s treatment, but would not give up: “He needed the surgery and he needs the medication. I can’t just let him die.” We felt the same way about Simon.

Simon

I know some people would look at what we’ve spent on our cats’ medical treatment and tell us we should be ashamed to waste money on cats when human beings are going hungry and lack medical care. The same people are probably outraged when a wealthy person leaves millions of dollars in trust for the care of a pet. But we love those who are close to us, those who return our love and make us happy. We don’t abandon them when they need us most. And we don’t owe the world an apology or explanation if our most beloved companions happen not to be human.

Are you caring for a chronically ill pet? Does anyone ever criticize you for spending so much money and effort on an animal? How far do you believe pet owners should go before they allow a pet to die?

"Compassion, in which ethics takes root, does not assume its true proportions until it embraces not only man but every living being."
– Albert Schweitzer, in his speech accepting the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize

Author Needs Information

Sharon Wildwind

Most people love to talk about what they do, which is a good thing because, as authors, we’re likely to need information all the way through the alphabet from archeologists to zoo keepers, with a heavy emphasis on first responders—police, firefighters, emergency medical technicians—and people throughout the justice system.

E-mail Requests

It’s a Google/e-mail/linked world out there. I’m a big fan of using e-mail exchanges in place of in-person interviews. Having an e-mail conversation gives the person being interviewed more freedom as to when and how to answer questions.

Often reaching an expert is as simple as looking up contact information on their web site and sending an e-mail. The subject line I use is Writer Needs Information. I send a short message saying that for my current work in progress I need information about raising ducks and geese, the prison system in Tennessee, how an arson investigation is conducted or whatever my particular bugbear is at the moment. Would they be willing to answer a few question via e-mail?

Under my signature I put my a link to my website. If they have any question that I’m on the up and up, they can always go to my website to check me out.

I’ve found university faculty to be wonderful, often overlooked, resources. Administrative Assistants are as helpful as resource librarians. I’ve written many e-mails to AAs, explaining what I need and asking them to forward the message to whomever in their department might be knowledgable in that area.

Sometimes nothing beats talking to people face-to-face.

In-Person Interviews

Save time by going to the right person. Call or e-mail first to find out the name and address of the best person to contact to request an interview.

Write them a letter or e-mail asking three to five specific questions. Avoid shotgun phrases like “I don’t know anything about archeology, and I’m hoping you can tell me everything you know.”

At the end of the letter, ask for an 30-minute interview. Some interviews pan out, some don’t. You’ll know in 30 minutes if you’ve found a gold mine or not. If you’ve hit the mother load, ask for a second, longer interview. Keep in mind that many of the people you interview get paid, sometimes big bucks, for sharing their time, so even a 30-minute interview is a gift.

Establish a clear understanding of protocol. At the beginning of the interview, ask if it is all right to record the conversation. Ask if you need to get permission from anyone to use the material that will be discussed; and, if you do, how do you get that permission?

Avoid giving your interviewee a plot summary or a lengthy discussion about the characters you love. They are technical consultants, not editors. It’s okay to lay out a simple overview, such as, “An FBI agent is found dead in a downtown hotel. The office he works out of is in another state; he was on vacation at the time he died. Whose responsibility is it to investigate his death, the local police or the FBI?”

Avoid putting the person on the spot with questions like, “Do you think my plot will work?” You’re the author, you’ll make it work. What you really want to know is “If this happened in real life, what would your response be?”

When you’re fortunate enough to find an interested person, build on the relationship. What can they do for you? More interviews. A tour of where they work. Opening doors for you, like arranging for you to see something the public usually doesn’t see. E-mail correspondence. Reading some chapters for accuracy. Recommending books, journals, web sites that might be helpful. A good contact can do this and more.

What can you do for them? Give them a chance to explain how challenging and interesting their work is. Let them tell their stories. Value their contributions.

After the interviews

Send a thank-you note. As the book progresses, send an occasional a follow-up note or e-mail to let the person know how the writing is going. If you decide to not go ahead with the book, let them know this, too, and thank them for what they contributed to the project.

Include them in the book’s acknowledgments. Ask if they wish to be mentioned by name or not. If they made a significant contribution, send them a copy of the book when it come out.

Above all, keep a grateful heart. One of the perks of writing is the wonderful people who help us along the way.

Quote for the week

The way I work, the interview never becomes larger than the person being interviewed.

~Ken Burns, American director and documentary film producer

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