It's official: Animals have personalities!

by Sandra Parshall

Anybody who has lived with animals and observed them closely knows they are individuals with distinct personalities. But to science, that is "anecdotal" information, tainted by emotion -- anthropomorphism -- and proof of nothing. It’s nice, then, that researchers are now doing scientifically conducted studies of animal personalities.

Virginia Morrell reports on these studies in an article in the February issue of Psychology Today. Morrell points out that until only a few years ago scientists in general ridiculed the notion that nonhuman animals had personalities. When the great primatologist Jane Goodall discussed the individual temperaments and personalities of the chimpanzees she observed, she was criticized for her unscientific approach. Goodall also expressed the belief that chimps experienced – gasp! – emotions. Imagine such a thing!

Graybeard male chimp at San Francisco Zoo, listening
attentively as I talked to him.

If you live with a cat or a dog or both, you’re rolling your eyes by now. Of course they have personalities. Of course they feel emotion. (How many of us have seen surviving pets grieve to the point of illness following the death of a companion?) Pets  aren’t reflecting what their owners project onto them. Every truly caring pet owner allows an animal to be itself. We can mistreat them and force them into doing things they don't want to do, into hiding their true natures, but relief from a bad situation will almost always bring a cat's or dog’s natural personality back to the surface.

The two cats that share our home couldn’t be more different. Gabriel, an Abyssinian, is forward, friendly toward everyone, a greeter at the door. Emma dashes for cover when the doorbell rings, and although women don’t frighten her the way men do, she’s likely to stay hidden until any intruder departs. Gabriel is compliant about such things as claw-clipping and medication. Emma is a holy terror. Yet they live in the same house and receive equal attention and love. They are what they are, not what we have made them.

Mammals aren’t the only animals with distinct personal natures. Such diverse creatures as octopuses, crabs, fish and insects have demonstrated individual differences in the way they respond to the world. But despite evidence presented occasionally by reputable researchers such as Goodall, scientists were reluctant until recently to admit that nonhumans could possess the same traits we see in our own species. This branch of animal studies didn’t really take off until the late 1990s. Now it’s turning up fascinating information about the other living beings that share our world.

Not surprisingly, researchers have confirmed that humans share many traits with our primate cousins, but some differences have also been found. For example, chimpanzees – who live in families and complex communities as humans do – also possess what is called the “conscientiousness factor,” which involves the ability to plan and to behave in predictable ways that contribute to social order. However, the largely solitary orangutan lacks this trait. Humans differ from all other primates in the way we compete for and display dominance – at least in civilized societies.

Across many different species, researchers have found that an agreeable personality with a low level of neuroticism is directly tied to a strong immune system and a longer life. This is equally true of humans, monkeys, great apes, house cats, and probably demonstrates a genetic link between health and personality. (Yes, we all know mean dogs and nasty humans who have lived into old age, but we're talking majorities and generalities here.)

Now that science has finally recognized the possibility that other animals have personalities, just as humans do, maybe we can move toward a recognition that they also have some of the same rights we have. 

Parting Words

Sharon Wildwind

I've thought a lot in the past few weeks about how to condense seven years of Daughters' blogs. Was there one thing I learned from all of you? I think this is it.

It has been such a privilege to share thoughts on writing with you. All the best to each one of you. I hope we run into each other in some other writing space.

If you'd like a .jpg image to use as a screensaver or print or something, go here to download the image.

A great big hug to all of you,

Sharon

Saving Mr. Banks and The Writer's Love for a Character

by Julia Buckley

My sister treated me to a showing of SAVING MR. BANKS this past weekend, and I loved the movie.  I am continuing to ponder a couple of themes that relate specifically to writers, since the premise of the film was that P.L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins books, was reluctant to give up the rights to Walt Disney, who ultimately made the film which starred Julie Andrews.  Two things came to the forefront in the film: that writers love their characters "like family," and that one's intellectual property is, when it comes down to it, one's most precious possession.

Every writer might dream of seeing his or her work on the big screen, but along with that dream would go the dread that something might go wrong. The ill-fated movie V.I. Warshawski did no justice to Sara Paretsky's elegant and exciting novels, but crammed the books' plots together in a way that was not satisfying to her loyal readers. Sue Grafton has famously refused to ever let Kinsey Millhone become a character on the screen, and has told her children that they may not allow it, either.

It's not a surprise that writers are fiercely loyal to their characters. First of all, these literary people are born from the author's mind, as Athena sprang from the head of Zeus. JK Rowling says that Harry Potter was fully formed when he came to her, and on her website she writes that "I had never been so excited about an idea before." And there's the crux of the matter: writers fall in love with the act of creation, which is itself a mystery, and each character becomes a new love affair.  To betray that character is to betray a loved one, which is the dilemma of P.L. Travers in the movie.  Walt Disney even says he understands, since he once faced the same conundrum with Mickey Mouse.

So why sell out at all?  Well--for money. Writers struggle just as all artists struggle. Everyone knows that JK Rowling is the exception, not the rule, and even she couldn't have anticipated just how well Harry would do in the literary world.  In the case of P.L. Travers, she muses "I would like to keep my house," as a reason that she might consider going to the dreaded Los Angeles to meet with people she is sure she will not like.

But I think many writers would agree that the dream of money is only a dream which would allow them to write in peace (and perhaps luxury) for the rest of their lives.  Writers like to write, and the world often doesn't want to let them do so, since the world demands that people work to pay their bills.

Walt Disney, as portrayed by Tom Hanks, is weirdly benevolent and never angry, which I don't believe for a second,  and of course P.L. Travers is represented as an odd crank who needs to just get along. Luckily Emma Thompson gives her dimension, which makes the film a moving examination of the writer/producer relationship.

Hollywood may be the dream that many writers have for their novels today, but I doubt much has changed in the way authors feel about their characters. Those people on the page are intimately known to their creators, and their creators won't entrust them to just anyone lightly.

Poe's Deadly Daughters to Say Goodbye on Poe's Birthday

After seven years of stimulating and enjoyable dialogue with each other and you, our readers, Poe's Deadly Daughters have decided to stop writing the blog and devote our attention to our many other projects. We published our first post on Poe's 198th birthday, January 19, 2007, having chosen our name to honor the father of the detective story.

On our first anniversary, we wrote, "What a year it's been!" Of the founding Daughters who have stuck around to post a new piece weekly for the whole seven years, Sandy won an Agatha for Best First Novel, Julia and Liz published their first short stories in anthologies, and the third book in Sharon's series came out. We were named "one of eight top mystery blogs" in Library Journal and praised as "schmooze-worthy" by J. Kingston Pierce of The Rap Sheet and January Magazine. "Most of all," we wrote, "we've had fun!"

We've never stopped having fun, and the pleasure of interacting with our readers has played an enormous part in that. But as 21st-century life gets more and more hectic, reading a favorite blog daily or even weekly has become harder for even the most devoted followers. And writing a 500-800 word post that's entertaining, informative, and polished every week for seven years--well, do the math: 52 x 7 = 364 posts from each of us. And 364 x 700 words (let's be conservative and use an estimated average) = 254,800 words per blogger, or the equivalent of 3½ novels apiece.

We've also interviewed a host of mystery luminaries and welcomed a dazzling array of guest bloggers, far too many to name but ranging from bestsellers to debut authors. For several years, Sharon hosted a Canadian mystery author every month. All those posts, along with ours, will remain available to all in our archives.

Please don't quit now, because we'll still be here till January 19th, Poe's 205th birthday, for another two rounds of blogging, including guest posts from our Deadly Daughters emerita. Here's the full roster of blog sisters, past and present:

Julia Buckley
Sharon Wildwind
Sandra Parshall
Elizabeth Zelvin
Sheila Connolly
Jeri Westerson
Darlene Ryan (aka Sofie Kelly)
Lonnie Cruse

Before we say goodbye, we'll give you full information about our other projects and links to our websites, books, and, in some cases, blogs to which we'll still be contributing. All that information will remain visible when you click on http://poesdeadlydaughters.blogspot.com

It's been fun!

Vacations

by Sheila Connolly

Earlier this week the top headline (above the fold on the front page) in the Boston Globe read, “For majority of workers, vacation days go unused.”

I laughed.  What’s a vacation?

All right, I’ll admit that I actually took a vacation this year—two weeks in Italy.  But I felt so guilty that I had to write a book about it (Reunion with Death, released in November).

I also spent two weeks in Ireland recently—but that was work.

I love my work! I don't need—or want—a vacation, because it feels like my entire life is a vacation.

When I started writing, I had just been fired from what I thought was the perfect job. I was angry and hurt, so I said something like “I’ll show them,” and I started writing. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I had something to prove, and I knew I had started late, so I was trying to catch up. In the end I spewed out roughly a million words before I slowed down. Okay, maybe a lot of them were not good words—the writing was sloppy, the plots were weak, and I kind of dwelt on dark crimes. Yes, now I write cozies, so I must have gotten all that anger out of my system. I also learned a lot about writing along the way.

And I loved it.  Once I’d purged that bile, I wanted to keep going. I never went back to a day job, so I had something else to prove:  that I might be able to make a living with writing.  Took a while (close to ten years), but it finally worked out.  Beginners, do not try this without an outside income source! Partner, trust fund, lottery win—all will do just fine.

Nowadays I have found that almost everything I do feeds into my writing.  I can’t go to a store without watching other people and wondering, what if they were planning a crime? What secrets do they have? I can’t admire a pretty landscape without looking for places to hide a body, or picturing a corpse washing ashore. Everything becomes fodder for some future book (the ex-government administrative employee who is now raising alpacas on a farm in western Massachusetts is definitely going to show up—I met her at a tag sale). 

 

The trip to Ireland was certainly work:  I talked to quite a few pub owners and employees, including the woman who owns what used to be the pub that is the model for Sullivan’s in my County Cork books. I got an impromptu lesson on Irish whiskey from a liquor distributor who also happened to be the evening’s entertainment at a Dublin pub. I talked to one bar maid who wants to go back to school to become a forensic analyst, and a nice young man who was planning to go abroad to teach English as a second language. I talked to yet another pub owner about the food service regulations imposed on establishments by the European Union.

In the past I’ve traveled just to see things, and I loved it then. Now I “see” things through a different lens, and it’s still wonderful.  Plus writing gives me a reason to go places and talk to people, which is always a good thing since being a writer means spending a lot of time glued to a chair in front of a keyboard and talking to the cats.

I love being a writer.

 Coming February 4th!

 

Another New Year

Elizabeth Zelvin

This year, 2014, will mark 69 years since the end of World War II; 51 years since Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique; 46 since Dr. King's assassination; 45 since Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, 42 since the founding of Ms. Magazine, 28 since the Challenger disaster, 13 since 911, and 6 since the election of the first African-American President of the United States.

It's the year in which I'll turn 70, nowadays considered the new 39 but more traditionally the threshold of old age, the year at which we need to remember we must die, according to British novelist Muriel Spark, author of Memento Mori. This year, I'll attend my 50th college reunion and a Girl Scout camp reunion celebrating an aspect of my childhood that helped shape who I am from my first experience 61 years ago. I'll celebrate 10 years as a mystery writer, 30 as a psychotherapist, 33 years of marriage (my second), and 38 from when my husband and I first started dating. I'll have lived in my New York City apartment building for 47 years and my current apartment for 44, which, not coincidentally, is the age my son will reach this year.

My granddaughters will turn 10 and 7, moving all too quickly from little-girlhood toward preteen status. This may be the year that someone, perhaps another child, challenges their belief in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. The older one is already a delight to have a serious conversation with, and the little one recently complained that her first-grade homework is too easy.

This year, my husband and I will celebrate my birthday by traveling, visiting Europe for the first time in ten years. We're spending a week each in Amsterdam and Toulouse, both places where we're lucky to have friends lending us their apartments. I've always dreamed of seeing tulip season in the Netherlands, so that's high on our agenda. I'm also looking forward to the superb museums. The Rijksmuseum has recently reopened after a renovation that was already in progress when we were there a decade ago. In Toulouse, we plan to settle in and do a minimum of touring. We'll be staying within walking distance of some of the city's beautiful rose-brick medieval churches. There'll be cafés to sit in and markets to shop in. My stepdaughter and her husband, who live in London, will come and visit for a few days.

On the writing front, after managing to stay afloat on the turbulent seas of the publishing industry for the six years since my first novel came out, I hope to do reasonably well with Voyage of Strangers, my novel about what really happened when Columbus discovered America. I released it last month as an e-book after 150 tries and near-misses, so I can say I left no stone unturned in my hunt for an agent or publisher willing to take a chance on a historical novel that's not a mystery, though it's the sequel to two short stories that appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and not in one of the hot young-adult genres, though its main characters are in their teens. The protagonist is Diego, the young marrano sailor from the Agatha-nominated story "The Green Cross." It takes place on Columbus's second voyage, a period marked by the aftermath of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and the genocide of the Taino in the Caribbean. Diego and his sister Rachel (a new character I hope my readers will fall in love with, as I did) struggle with divided loyalties as they come of age in a doomed paradise.

Discover this book!

by Sandra Parshall

Book bloggers and publishing analysts all over the internet are busily telling us this week what a crazy year 2013 was.

Major publishers that were anguishing not too long ago about ebooks putting them out of business are making lots and lots of money – from ebooks.

The writers who started the self-publishing boom often found their books  being pushed aside by digital versions of print bestsellers, as readers decided they were willing to pay higher prices after all for ebooks by their longtime favorites. But digital prices have been up and down for months and nobody seems to know what the most enticing figure is. Even free doesn’t satisfy some readers. Give them a free short story and they’ll post a nasty “review” complaining that it isn’t a full-length novel.

Print hasn’t gone away, but the weekly sales reports in Publishers Weekly aren’t encouraging. Juvenile nonfiction and board books for kids are the only formats not losing sales, and mass market paperbacks continue to take the biggest hit – down another 9% for the year, after staggering losses in the preceding years.

But writers, traditionally published and self-published, keep writing. We hear a lot about search engine optimization and metadata and careful selection of keywords, all of it adding up to discoverability. That doesn’t even sound like it should be a word, but it’s the concept that rules writers’ lives in the internet era. Readers have to be able to discover our books. And most of the responsibility for that falls directly on the authors.

We end up shouting with joy: “I have a new book coming out!”

...and simultaneously moaning with dread: “I have a new book coming out.”

Once people start reading it, and saying nice things about it, the dread fades and the satisfaction of accomplishment returns, but still we know that success or failure depends on our ability to get the word out, to help readers discover the story we’ve worked on for such a long time.

So... Guess what?

I have a new book coming out!

If you’re my friend on Facebook, you’ve no doubt heard about it already, but let me tell you again. Poisoned Ground is number 6 in the Rachel Goddard series. She’s now married to Tom Bridger, the recently elected sheriff of Mason County, Virginia. Rachel is close to her sister Michelle again. Life couldn’t be much better.

Then a big predatory development company decides to build a sprawling mountain resort in little Mason County, and company reps promise jobs galore and plenty of money pouring into a place that badly needs it. The only problem is that the company wants to build its resort on the McKendrick Horse Farm, owned by Rachel’s good friend Joanna, and the smaller properties that border it. Joanna and some of her neighbors have no intention of giving up their land. When an elderly husband and wife are gunned down on the farm they refused to sell, a small-scale civil war erupts in the county. If you know Rachel, you know she’s right in the middle of it.

The violence escalates – but is it all due to disagreement over the resort plans? Or has the development issue only served to stir up old enmities, open deep wounds and bring back memories of betrayal that have lain dormant in the poisoned ground beneath Mason County’s bucolic surface?

Poisoned Ground has some new characters I enjoyed writing and hope you’ll find entertaining – especially the eccentric Jones sisters, three unmarried women of a certain age named Winter, Spring, and Summer. A fourth sister named Autumn is no more than a photo on the mantel and a sad memory...

Poisoned Ground comes out March 4. I hope you’ll discover it.

Happy new year from all of Poe's Deadly Daughters!

Keep the Channel Open

Transition spaces and times fascinate me. They are a little of this, a little of that, and there is always a crucial pivot point where life might go one way or the other.

Here we are on transition day. Bye-bye, 2013. Hi there, 2014. I see you peeking around the door. Come on in, I’ve got the tea on. Here’s my wish for all of us as writers in the coming year.

Last quote of 2013

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.

The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. … No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

~ Martha Graham (1894 – 1991), American modern dancer and choreographer

Happy New Year from Poe's Daughters

Appreciating the Past

Hello, Faithful PDD Readers.

Today is my birthday; I always find, perhaps because of its proximity to the New Year, that my birthday brings all sorts of reflection and contemplation.

Sometimes that leads me to make resolutions early.  Sometimes those resolutions are realistic, and sometimes they are not (although they are always made with earnest intention).

So this year I decided to reflect instead on what was good about the year I have just completed.  Like all of you, I appreciate my family and friends; my warm house on this very cold day (it's about 5 degrees here in Chicago); my current job, which I have held for fifteen years and from which I have learned much; my pets, all five of them, who bring joy each day.

I'm also grateful for, in no particular order:

--chocolate
--puppies and kittens on YouTube
--the magical Internet
--libraries
--books, print and electronic
--authors, living and dead
--my ancestors
--the homelands of my parents and grandparents
--fuzzy slippers
--my car
--music, all kinds
--my cd player (no, I have not yet graduated to an Ipod)
--exercise (even though I don't appreciate it ENOUGH, if you know what I mean)
--my new agent!
--Shakespeare
--the birds at my feeder (and the squirrels, the bunny, and the mouse)
--money--I don't have a lot, but I'm glad I have some
--memories
--babies (especially mine, but all babies)
--remembered birthdays past (48 of them)
--my parents
--my town
--snail mail
--e-mail
--good movies
--Cary Grant
--Hugh Grant
--MY FELLOW DEADLY DAUGHTERS!!

Happy New Year to you all!  May you pursue your wildest dreams.

Typeology

By Jeri Westerson

You know you’re old when you remember what it was like to type on a typewriter. Kids today. They just don’t know the trouble it was. Hammering away at those keys to ensure you’d made contact from ink ribbon to paper. Reaching the end of the line with a ting of the bell, and then flinging the carriage back for another go at the next line. Typing too far when you’ve really got going and the paper runs out only to end up typing on the roller. Changing ribbons. Using carbon paper. Do I miss it? Hell no. Typing a manuscript on a typewriter would never have been viable for me. I make too many mistakes. And it’s glorious to cut and paste without literally having to do it with scissors and Scotch tape.

But I do like the look of typewriters. I have a modest collection of them from the twenties, thirties, and forties. I look at typewriters like some collectors gravitate toward clocks. The mechanisms are far

more interesting than their actual purpose. The little bell signaling you’ve come to the end of the page. The way the ribbon moves. The keys themselves, like a tiny print shop at your finger tips. And remember, this is movable type at its best. Once you’ve typed onto paper, you can actually feel the impression of the letters because there were these little metal sculptures literally banged into the page. Altogether visceral. If you’d like to relive those wonderful days of yesteryear, you might want to pick up a copy of the book by Darren Wershler-Henry, “The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting.” He will tell you when typewriters were finally commercially developed (1830s seemed to be the time they were finally looking like a typewriter, though variations had been invented prior to that time.)

And did you know, for instance, that the only reason the keyboard is laid out as it is (even on our current PCs) was so that the most commonly used letters wouldn’t get the machine stuck (those of you old enough will remember having to reach into the open area in front of the paper and release the hopelessly tangled arms when we went too fast with too many fingers pushing too hard)?

And if collecting the whole typewriter isn’t your bag, you can always wear bits of it.

Today, typewriters remain an oddity of another era. A Forerunner of what we use all the time (as you are using now). Kids don't even take typing classes in school anymore. They simply learn by doing since grammar school. No more quick brown foxes jumping over lazy dogs. Type, delete, type again, and print. Thank God.

*The above photos are part of my own collection.