It's A Small World

Elizabeth Zelvin

I love small world stories. I’ve been collecting them for most of my life. I live in New York, a city of 8 million residents plus 44 million visitors per year. It constantly amazes me how people who are connected to people I’m connected to pop up in unexpected places. The Internet has made the world much smaller, exponentially increasing the connections. But I’ve found I don’t have to go online to find those one and two and three degrees of separation that are so much fun to discover.

If I exchange emails with a fellow mystery reader from DorothyL about a book we both loved as children, then run into her at the Edgars in April and Malice Domestic in May, that’s not a small world story. In what I call a genuine small world story, the connections must be complicated and not too obvious—in fact, the more tortuous the better.

One of the emerging mystery writers I see the most of is Meredith Cole.
I live in Manhattan, she lives in Brooklyn, and we both attend the monthly meetings of the local chapters of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. We’ve both volunteered at the registration desk at the Edgars Symposium and have had stories accepted for the anthology Murder New York Style by members of SinC. We’re also both Guppies, so we meet online there and on other mystery e-lists. I think we're friends, and I hope she does too. None of that makes this a small world story.

Last fall, the legendary Ruth Cavin accepted my first mystery for publication by St. Martin’s. This spring, Meredith won the Malice Domestic Best First Novel contest. Ruth Cavin picks the winner, which is published by St. Martin’s. So Meredith and I have the same editor and will have our first books out at around the same time, next spring. Ruth even took us out to dinner at the Malice Domestic convention. And of course I whooped and hollered when they made the formal announcement of Meredith’s win during the Agatha awards banquet. So far, this is still not a small world story.

At the June meeting of MWA New York, during the schmoozing hour before dinner, someone mentioned Swarthmore College in conversation. I think it had to do with a discussion of funny names on the Guppies e-list. I didn’t attend Swarthmore, but my older sister did. I said so when someone mentioned Peter Gram Swing, founder and longtime chair of Swarthmore’s music department, who indeed had a great name for a musician. Meredith overheard me. “Swarthmore!” she said. “My mother just went to a Swarthmore reunion.” I meant to ask how old her mother was, but it was time for dinner, and the moment passed.

Fast forward to the following weekend. My husband and I drive to a cousin’s home in New Jersey for my Aunt Hilda’s 95th birthday party, for which she’s flown in from Seattle. Her actual birthday was back in April. She spent it playing tennis and going out dancing with her boyfriend. But now the East Coast friends and relatives are celebrating. (My Aunt Hilda isn’t part of the chain of coincidence, but the exquisite flavor of a small world story is in the details.) My sister, who lives in Boston, is present. She tells us that she attended her 45th college reunion the weekend before. I know that colleges schedule reunions by multiples of 5. I wonder when Meredith’s mom graduated. For her, it might have been the 40th or even the 35th, since Meredith is in her 30s. I don’t ask my sister if she knew her, since I don’t even know Meredith’s maiden name, no less her mother’s.

The next day, my sister emails to tell me that, driving to Swarthmore
(near Philadelphia) from Boston, she made a detour through Brooklyn to pick up a classmate who was staying with her daughter so they could travel together to the reunion. She even met the daughter. Yep, you guessed it. The daughter was Meredith Cole! Now, that’s a small world story.

Donna Andrews

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall

Donna Andrews is the award-winning author of the humorous Meg Langslow mystery series, featuring a female blacksmith from Virginia, and the Turing Hopper series about a virtual sleuth. Her career as a mystery author began when Murder with Peacocks won the St. Martin’s Press contest for the best unpublished mystery novel. The latest book in the Meg series, The Penguin Who Knew Too Much, will be published by St. Martin’s in early August. Donna lives in Northern Virginia, where she indulges her love of gardening when she isn’t meeting her 1,000-words-a-day writing quota.

Have you always wanted to make people laugh? Were you the class clown when you were a kid, and did it ever get you in trouble?

I wasn't the class clown as a kid--actually, during my childhood and adolescence, I was rather shy and retiring. I was that little kid with thick glasses who always had a book in front of her face. But I began writing humor early.

When I was third grade, my father, who was a marine biologist, brought a salt-water aquarium in for Miss Gregory, our teacher, to use in science lessons. One of the clams died, and Miss Gregory washed out the shell and gave it to me--I presume she intended for me to take it home as a subtle hint to Dad to bring in a replacement clam, but that's not what happened. I made a hinge for the shell with some strips of white first-aid tape, drew eyes on one side with an indelible marker, and named it Winifred H. Clam. (I have no idea what the H. stood for.) And I began writing stories about Winifred's adventures as she walked around the world on the ocean floor.

The Winifred stories actually produced my first tangible reward for writing--my teacher shared them with a friend, and her friend liked them so much that she sent me a small gift--a gold-colored clam charm. I lost the charm at some time over the intervening years, but the association had been made--you wrote funny stories, and people rewarded you. It took a few decades for it to happen again, with the publication of Murder with Peacocks, but I like to think that early success helped me keep going during the long dry stretch that followed.

About the bird theme to the Meg Langslow books: Have you ever had a moment of regret that you started that, or has it made planning the books easier? What comes first, the bird or the plot -- do you come up with a plot and decide on a bird that will fit, or is it the other way around?

I haven't really regretted the bird theme, because it's not that hard to work birds into the books. Birds are all around us, one way or another. And whether the bird or the plot comes first varies from book to book.

With Peacocks, putting the bird in the title was almost an afterthought. I was about to send the manuscript in for the St. Martin's contest and needed a good title. I called up a friend and asked her to help me brainstorm. "Which book is this?" the friend asked, since she knew I had several projects in the works. "The murder mystery with the peacocks in it?" Bingo!

With The Penguin Who Knew Too Much, the book that comes out in August, the penguins came first. I'd wanted to use penguins for a book, because they feel inherently funny, but didn't think it would work to take Meg to Antarctica--half the humor comes from Meg's interaction with her family, and I couldn't see the entire clan packing up and trekking
across the ice floes.

So I back-burnered the idea of using penguins until I was attending Mayhem in the Midlands and saw penguins at the Omaha Zoo. Eureka! I didn't need to take Meg to the penguins--I could bring them to her, courtesy of a zoo and her nature-loving father. And once I had invented a zoo for Meg's new fictional home town of Caerphilly, it seemed logical to bring all sorts of other creatures into the mix. In addition to the title bird, the cast of Penguins includes llamas, camels, sloths, lemurs, wolves, hyenas, naked mole rats, accouchis, and a few large cats.

With the book I'm writing now, whose working title is Cockatiels at Seven, the title came first. Someone suggested it, and I knew I had to find a way to use it. I'd tell how, but--that would be a spoiler.

Many mystery writers said they had trouble writing after 9/11. Was it hard for you to get back to writing a humorous book at such an awful time, or did you see the world of your book as a refuge from the real world?

It was hard, yes. I didn't write on 9/11--I spent time online with my friends--Laura Lippman wrote a wonderful article on how the Internet kept a group of us in contact that day: http://tinyurl.com/yvolpc. I spent the day tidying my apartment, chatting with those friends online, and trying to feed people.

But on September 12, I sat down to write again. Didn't much feel like it, but I had quit my day job in June of 2001, and I figured that was what writers do during difficult times. They write. It might have been easier if I'd been working on one of my Turing Hopper books, which are darker than the Meg series. But the book I was working on--the book I had a deadline for--was the book that eventually became Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon. That was the other problem--not only did I not feel much like writing, I certainly didn't feel very funny.

But since I outline, I knew that there was a place near the end of the book where Meg and some other characters would be held at gunpoint by the villain. And I knew Meg would make a wisecrack--I had no idea what. I figured I'd fill that in later, when my sense of humor returned. But I knew what happened after Meg's wisecrack, and here's the first small bit of writing I was able to do after 9/11:

"What kind of heartless cynic are you?" Rico exclaimed. "How can you make jokes at a time like this? This is serious!"

"Very serious," I said. "Or at least way too solemn."

Which seemed to baffle him. He stared at me, and looking back, I could see that I was doing so from the other side of a gap--in fact, an uncrossable chasm. The chasm between people who take life very seriously and those of us who laugh to keep from crying. The people who stand around lugubriously at funerals saying things like, "At least he didn't suffer" or "Doesn't she look lifelike?" and those of us who want to tell tall tales about what a wonderful old reprobate he was and imagine how she'd laugh if she could see the sideshow. The people who sob long-neglected prayers on the steps of the guillotine and those of us who know God will forgive us if we have to banter with the executioner to keep our courage up, as if laughter were a gauntlet we could throw in the face of death.

Or maybe I'm just a heartless cynic. "Sorry," I said. "Just ignore me. It's how I cope."

I wasn't even sure when I wrote that whether it would fit into the final book. But I know it got me writing again. When I went back again to write more, I was able to write some of what came after that moment, and what led up to it, and eventually I got back into the groove and finished the book.

Do you have any plans to write a serious stand-alone mystery or suspense novel?

I have several ideas for stand-alones rattling around in my head--some serious, some humorous. I think St. Martins would be happier if I did a humorous stand-alone--something that would bring additional readers back to the Meg series. But I also have a couple of darker ideas. And I've assured them that if I ever do write a dark, violent, gory book, I won't do it under my real name. I have the pen name I'll use all ready--Lee Child gave it to me during a conversation we had this year at the Virginia Festival of the Book: Andrew Donner. Has a ring to it, don't you think?

One thing I like about short stories is that you can experiment with different voices in them. The first short story I had published, "The Unkindness of Ravens," in The Mysterious North, an anthology edited by Dana Stabenow, was not humorous at all--it was dark, with a little bit of woo-woo. And another story coming out this year--"A Rat's Tail," in the September-October issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine--has some humor in it, but is noticeably darker than the Meg books. Doing different things helps you go back to a series refreshed and re-energized.

Does your sense of humor save you from life's embarrassing moments? Would you tell us about an experience that mortified you at the time but which now makes you laugh?

I'm not sure it saves me from the embarrassing moments, but at least having a sense of humor makes them less painful to think about afterwards. And writing humorous books gives me the opportunity to distill those embarrassing moments into fiction.

One example from my college days: the guy I was dating asked me out to dinner. Somehow he failed to mention that this wasn't just an ordinary dinner, at the Arby's where he worked to help pay for his tuition or someplace with an equally relaxed atmosphere. His roommate was taking his girlfriend to dinner for her birthday, and we were tagging along.

They were a little nonplussed when they showed up at my dorm and I was wearing jeans--quite a contrast with the rather formal dress the roommate's date was wearing. But they were running late, and there was no time for me to change. At least I was wearing a nice blouse. And when we arrived at--horror of horrors, Charlottesville's fanciest steak house!--I tried to look nonchalant as we strolled through the dining room, but in reality, I was mortified. I knew I'd feel tons better as soon as I could hide my jeans under the tablecloth. So when we reached our table, I slid into my chair and--boom!

The waiter had pulled out my chair with such a flourish that he'd pulled it completely clear of where I was starting to sit, and I landed in a heap on the floor.

I'd almost recovered from this embarrassment, and was telling an amusing story while we ate our steaks. The story was going quite well; I was acting it out with facial expressions and gestures--

Unfortunately, I was gesturing with my fork, and when the chair-stealing waiter bent solicitously over my shoulder to ask if madam was enjoying her meal, I whacked him in the nose with a bite of steak.

I don't think we ever went back to that steak house. But several decades later, after retelling that story to friends when we were driving through Charlottesville, I realized that the chair episode was the perfect thing to happen to Meg in the book I'm currently writing (working title: Cockatiels at Seven). Nothing is ever wasted; it's all fodder.

Visit Donna’s web site at www.donnaandrews.com.

Passion ReDux

Sharon Wildwind

Let's try this again.

Writing forces a passion, squeezes out a life of its own. It has to because the externals—money, fame, maybe even good common sense—are often not there. I've lost count of the number of books in which the author ends the acknowledgments by thanking her family for putting up with dirty laundry, too many pizza take-outs, and weeks of being somewhere else, a.k.a. lost in an imaginary world.

Mystery writers who are fortunate live in families who somehow comprehend that wandering through the house at 1:00 in the morning, asking anyone still awake how to spell "marmalade" is normal; that stabbing a raw chicken with a stiletto to see how much pressure it takes to puncture the skin is a perfectly rational act, and they don’t fret too much about where we acquired a stiletto in the first place. They become accustomed to seeing e-mail lying around with subject lines such as “My thoughts on exotic poisons,” or “10 basic rules of car-jacking.” They accept imaginary characters at dinner, as log as those characters don’t insist on recounting detail-by-detail autopsies between the soup and the main course.

Loving family members go to great lengths to encourage our writing. When I declared that I wanted to turn writing from a serious hobby into a business, the first thing my husband did was take a cooking class called, “Men Get a Life: Learn to Cook.” He now proudly boasts, “I can cook supper. I’ve had special training.”

I propose that we, as writers, should have an annual Writers Celebrate Their Families day. On that day we should shut down our word processors and do something nice for those wonderfully supportive people with whom we live. Unless, of course, we are on deadline, in which case, it will have to wait, but we’ll get to it just as soon as we surface. Promise.

I think July 12 would be a good day for WCTF. Why July 12? Because on July 12, 1965 Snoopy dragged a portable typewriter to his dog house for the first time, sat down, and typed those immortal words, “It was a dark and stormy night. . .”

I’ve got a writing quote this week, but not a source to attribute it to because my list of quotes, like the rest of my life, is on my now-defunct hard drive. The quote is, “I loved the time when my husband, a writer, came out of his office and asked, ‘Have we had Easter yet?’ It was July at the time.” Just as soon as I get my new computer and my salvaged hard drive back—which should be some time at the end of this week or the beginning of next—I’ll be able to attribute that quote to the person who said it.

Wimbledon Titles and Tennis Greats

by Julia Buckley
I am an Anglophile, although I've never been to England. I love British mysteries, pictures of little English towns and those wonderful English accents that I hear regularly on PBS and NPR. Oh, and I really love Wimbledon. Tennis is the one sport I find exciting to watch, and Wimbledon is the culminating event, the July treat.

This year Roger Federer took the men's title, and along with it he tied a couple of records--he is the first man since Bjorn Borg to win five consecutive Wimbledon Singles Titles. Borg was there in the stands when Federer played, waiting to see if he would tie Borg's own amazing title, which has lasted for close to thirty years (Borg won Wimbledon from 1976-1980).

While I admire Federer and enjoyed watching him play this year, it is Borg who won my heart back in the seventies as a young phenom, and it's Borg who I still think of as the greatest today.
I think that people forget that when the great Bjorn Borg retired, he was only twenty-six years old. He had won eleven Grand Slam Singles (Federer has also tied this record with his latest win).

I suppose my love for Borg is based in nostalgia, but there was something special about him--he was suave and European and had that wonderful mane of hair, and he had a controlled strength on the court that gave him dignity. The man who finally sent him into retirement, John McEnroe, looked like a boor by comparison (although I think the two men have maintained a friendship).

When I think of the quintessential female tennis player, I think Billie Jean King. Perhaps I am fixated on the seventies, after all. Because when I think of the great male tennis player, I don't think Pete Sampras or Andre Agassi--I think Bjorn Borg. And his yearly visits to Wimbledon back in my childhood years made an impression on me--and the world.

(pictures: yahoo images).

Inspiration from a Unique Setting

Hailey Lind (Guest Blogger)
Sisters Carolyn & Julie

Writing our third book, Brush with Death (published July 3), proved to be easier for us than writing the first two (Feint of Art and Shooting Gallery). It’s good to know that experience helps the process! We got the idea for the book one summer when Carolyn was visiting Julie in Oakland, California.

Oakland’s a bit of an ugly stepsister to San Francisco, but in truth it’s a beautiful city in its own right: poised right across the bay and rimmed by mountains, it is a shining example of Art Deco architecture and a lively port that date back to the days before the Bay Bridge was built, when Oakland served as the East Bay’s major city. We had driven past the Chapel of the Chimes Columbarium for years, en route to other places, and finally stopped to check it out.

The Columbarium’s original architect, Julia Morgan, stood four feet eleven inches tall but was by all accounts a real dynamo. According to legend, she came from a well-to-do Berkeley family, and lobbied for years to gain admittance to Paris’s lofty Ecole des Beaux Arts, which in her day did not accept women. But after winning several national architecture awards in France, she was finally allowed in.

Morgan went on to design buildings all over San Francisco and the East Bay, though her most famous is Hearst Castle, on the central coast of California. If you haven’t been, it’s well worth a special trip. Newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst spared no expense to create an ornate, over-the-top wonder in the hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Whatever Julia Morgan couldn’t find locally she imported from Europe – and we’re not just talking dining room tables or armoires, but entire rooms (walls, fireplaces, and ceilings) from old European estates. She designed the castle around these features, mimicking and embellishing them to create a seamless architecture. It’s really quite stunning.

In the 1920s Morgan turned her attention to converting a tram terminal at the end of Oakland’s Piedmont Avenue into a columbarium. She used leftovers from Hearst castle and incorporated items specifically purchased for the columbarium to create a labyrinthine, mosaic-encrusted, mural-coated eternal resting place. It is almost impossible not to get lost when wandering the corridors – some of which are dead ends (no pun intended) while others lead further into the building.

What writer could wander those convoluted halls and not think of murder and mystery? When Carolyn and I were walking through, we immediately thought: Annie Kincaid would love this place! And out came the ever-present notepad. The rooms have great names: Chapel of Serendipity and Slumber; Gregorian Hall; the Garden of Repose. The ceilings are made of beautiful glass tiles, above which is a crawl space. Some ceilings are skylights that slide open to let in fresh air and sun. Canaries chirp in cages, fountains tinkle, sunlight gleams through elaborate stained glass. We were enthralled.

Next door is a cemetery that is not connected to the Columbarium but is historic and amazing in its own right. Designed by Fredrick Law Olmstead, the man who designed Central Park in New York City, the cemetery’s steep hills offer some of the best views to be found of Oakland, Berkeley, the bay, San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. The higher on the hill one goes, the grander and more expensive are the tombs. Some are so large and impressive they seem more like public monuments than private family markers. Some of the illustrious residents include the Ghirardellis, of San Francisco chocolate fame, as well as Julia Morgan herself, though her name is inscribed in a simple granite block, eschewing the fancy buildings and stained glass.


In Brush with Death this setting inspired all kinds of possibilities, and soon the ideas took shape: encountering a ghoul in the graveyard, something creepy involving the crypts, a chase through the twisting halls of the Columbarium. And it had to be at night, of course. The scenes unfolded in our minds like a movie: Annie trying to scale a long bank of niches but falling to the ground; Annie getting locked in a small toilet (we didn’t go so far as to ask someone to lock us in – that would have seemed weird – but we did shut the door while we plotted Annie’s escape), Annie encountering Michael and getting lost. We also sat at the summit of the cemetery and marveled at the view, as Annie does in the novel with the fictional accountant, Manny.

Brush with Death brings back characters from the first two novels – Annie’s assistant, Mary; Brian, Annie’s devoted but over-the-top friend; Evangeline, from Shooting Gallery; Pete – of course! – and Samantha. Inspector Annette Crawford makes an appearance during a picnic-gone-awry, when Annie’s friends find themselves in the middle of a Goth Naval Battle (this being San Francisco, after all). Annie makes a new friend, and a few new foes, and her on-again, off-again flirtation with Frank heats up even while Michael keeps dropping in to tease and tempt her. And, naturally, Grandfather is a constant presence, giving Annie advice and complicating her life yet again.

It was fun to draw our inspiration for Brush with Death from a real setting. Luckily, the events coordinator at the Chapel of the Chimes, Allison Rodman, was excited about the book and gave us special access to the building. She even invited us to have our Brush with Death release party there –if you happen to be in town, join us! It will be held on Friday the 13th (how appropriate!) of July, at the Chapel of the Chimes on Piedmont Avenue, Oakland, from 7-10 p.m. Details are on our website, www.haileylind.com. We hope you can join us for a celebration in a fascinating, beautiful, real-life setting!

Interview with Carolyn Haines...

By Lonnie Cruse





Today's interview is with author Carolyn Haines. I first met Carolyn when I was president of the SINC-IC chapter and she joined. I hornswog--er talked her into a volunteer job fairly quickly. We also appeared on a panel together at the Southern Festival of Books. Fun gal!


LC: I love reading your popular Mississippi Delta series. How did you come up with the idea for the series?



CH: I just finished writing Touched, a novel set in 1926 Mississippi and based a good bit on my mother and grandmother's very strong love for each other and the way things can go horribly wrong in a place where prejudice rules common sense, and I was sitting at my computer thinking of what I might do next. This is the best time for a writer--that moment when all ideas are pure potential and anything seems possible. I'd thought up several stories I wanted to write, and I also wanted to try my hand at humor. So I was sitting, staring out the window at my beautiful horses, and all of a sudden I heard Jitty and Sarah Booth going at it. Jitty was bossing her up one side and down the other. Sarah Booth was giving it back pretty good, but as you know Jitty fights dirty. I simply sat there and listened to them bicker until I began to get a clear picture of what they looked like and who they were. I saw Dahlia House, and I saw the cotton fields out the window and the long front porch just perfect for sippin' a little Jack Daniels--and I put my fingers over the keys and started writing. Once I had the characters on the page, then I had to stop and figure out what the story was about.


LC: Wow, I love that! How do you keep the series fresh? And will you keep the series going? Fanatic readers (like me) wanna know!


CH: Yes, Ham Bones was released this week (June 26) and next summer Wishbones will be out, but with a new publisher, St. Martin's, where I have my darker historical mysteries. I think the characters are so much like my friends, that when I write, it's like getting all involved in the traumas that my friends go through. And to be honest, I have no real control of Sarah Booth and the gang. I know the mystery, but the emotional turmoil is something they sometimes generate themselves. Like I never planned that Tinkie would become Sarah Booth's partner. Suddenly, I was just writing that--and it was the perfect thing to happen.


LC: You write stand-alones as well as the Mississippi Delta series. How do you juggle them all? Writing one at a time, or are you able to work on more than one?


CH: I can write more than one thing at a time--but time is a real problem. I have a full time teaching job at the University of South Alabama where I teach the grad and under-grad fiction classes. I meant to teach for one year, while the school did a major search for a teacher, but I fell in love with the job. I have such talented students, and it is such a pleasure to see them grow and learn. Several of my students are about to sign with literary agents, and that is immensely satisfying to me. And I have 21 animals, 8 of them horses, that I take care of on a 25-acre farm. During the summer the farm kicks my butt! All those fence lines and pastures to be bush-hogged. All those hooves to be cleaned! Some of the horses are rescue, so we're also gentle breaking them to ride, and I'm lucky to have two gal friends who help me with the critters. Aleta and I ride, but Ginny is far more talented at easing an unbroken horse along. The 8 cats and 5 dogs are all rescue animals, and I adore them. I lost two of my older pets this year, my most beloved Maybelline, who is posed with the sunglasses and the scarf in some of my pub shots. She was 17. And Gumbo, a feral cat that I trapped and who became the most loving of felines. She passed away at age 18 this month. It just breaks my heart, and there is nothing to replace the loss of such a good friend. But that's a long, long answer to a simple question. I write multiple things simultaneously, including screenplays, which I'm branching out into. Just because it's such a challenge!



LC: MY MOTHER'S WITNESS was your first published non-fiction book, and it tells the story of someone close to you. I imagine that was far more difficult than writing the fiction mysteries. Would you tell us how you went about it?


CH: Peggy Morgan contacted me and asked me to write her life story. I told her that I'd given up non-fiction when I quit being a news reporter. I really didn't want to get embroiled in a "true" story. But Peggy persisted, and at last I went to talk to her--just to hear her out. By the time she finished, three-hours later, telling me the highlights of her life, I was hooked. I didn't know if I could write a non-fiction book that would sell, so I told Peggy I would write her life story for her. I would take the facts and put it into creative non-fiction form. But I made no guarantees. It took me two years of going to her house and sitting at her kitchen table while she told me, beginning with the stories she'd been told about her birth. And I wrote it all down in notes, and then put it into story form. It took a long time, but I think that for Peggy and me both, a lot of good things happened. Sharing those intensely personal moments with her was gut-wrenching, and there were many afternoons that I would cry as I wrote the things she'd endured. Then, magically, River City Publishing wanted to publish the book and they did a fine job.



LC: Assuming there is such a thing, what is your typical writing day like? And how do you manage it along with caring for your animals?



CH: I get up early and attend to e-mail and start writing, then feed the horses, run errands such as going to get feed and such, then write more, then do more chores, then write more. The pattern repeats itself until I fall over from exhaustion. If I have to teach, then I add that in, along with thesis consultations and things, and if I'm promoting a book, then the book signings and appearances have to be put in. I am very busy. Perhaps too busy, but I feel that my career is finally starting to move forward at a significant pace.


LC: Your character, Sarah Booth Delaney, claims you let your dreams control your writing. Is she right? How so?



CH: I've been told that I have an "open door" to my subconscious. I work out a lot of my writing problems while I'm asleep. I'll wake up and know how to fix whatever is wrong with my story. I also see and hear my characters very clearly, and there are moments when I'm writing (these are the blissful, incredibly powerful moments) that I am living the story. I am no longer aware of the computer or the room or anything else. I am transported. And the characters are so fully alive that they carry the story for me--doing what comes naturally to them. These are the moments all writers live for. The rest is amazingly hard, solitary work--but this hard work is what pays off. Blissful moments are lovely, but that doesn't make a writer. It's the hard work, the writing when it isn't bliss, when it's really torture--those are the moments that make a writer.


LC: How tough is it for you to switch gears between writing thrillers and Sarah Booth Delaney?


CH: Most of the times it's easy. I read different kinds of things, and sometimes I read several books at once. So I can pick up a thriller and love it, and then the next time I grab a book, it's something lighter and more fun. I have no trouble moving around when reading, and it's the same with writing. I love the darker stories. I'm drawn there to explore those emotions that are more troublesome and disquieting. But I like to end my writing day with Sarah Booth and her friends. When the light fades from the sky, I like to be in Zinnia, where I feel right at home.


LC: Your background was journalism and you list some mighty interesting experiences on your website. Do you miss those days, or is writing full time where it's at for you?


CH: I miss a lot of things about journalism--the camaraderie and the newsroom and the editors and the pace. It was an adrenalin trip to be on deadline on a big story. And I also felt that I served the community by digging for the truth. Journalism isn't like that today. It's an entertainment industry, not always a place where the truth is sought. Now there are fine journalists who are working, and who tell the truth. But I think it's a sad commentary on the state of the Fourth Estate when I watch Comedy Central to get my daily dose of the news from Jon Stewart rather than one of the network news shows. It's unfortunate for the serious journalists working today, but many newspapers and broadcasts are owned by huge conglomerates that dictate editorial policy. So what I miss about journalism doesn't even exist any longer. I miss what was, not what is. But I do miss it. Yet I feel I can tell more truth in my fiction. I tell emotional truth in my books. There is no factual basis to any of my stories other than Peggy's book. The other books are a mix of lore, legend, and my wild imagination--but they are emotionally truthful.


LC: Anything else you'd like us to know about you or your writing?


CH: Ham Bones just hit the shelves today! I'm excited about that. And I'm moving to a new genre Aug. 28--a thriller set on the Mississippi Coast pre-Katrina. And it is about a journalist, Carson Lynch, who is drainking heavily to try to kill the pain from the murder of her daughter. Carson's national career is over because of her drinking, and she's back on the Gulf Coast hanging to a newspaper job by a thread. When five bodies, all buried with bridal veils and missing ring fingers, are uncovered beneath the parking lot of a notorious Biloxi nightclub, Carson gets the story. She thinks she's working a cold case murder until two young women are murdered and found with their throats cut and wearing only a bridal veil. Has the murderer returned after a 25-year hiatus, or is this a copy cat killer? Carson has to find out before more innocent people die. This is a new publisher for me, MIRA, which is the mainstream imprint of my old friend, Harlequin. It's a mass market book rather than hardcover, and I'm eager to see what happens next. My loyal readers have followed me into the past for my darker thrillers, and now this is a contemporary thriller. So I'm eager to see it on the shelves--great cover. That's about it for now. Anyone who wants to check in can do so at http://www.carolynhaines.com/ I'm giving away some books and collecting some wedding stories for my website. I'm also trying to set up a blog. (I am hopeless at computer stuff!). And you can sign up for my newsletter by just dropping me an email at cehaines@mindspring.com Thanks so much, Lonnie.


Thank you! I love hearing how other authors tackle the job of writing, and I know other writers do too. Not to mention readers. Appreciate you dropping by to chat.

The Gift of "Oops!"

Elizabeth Zelvin

As a lifelong writer and a psychotherapist with many years experience, I found the perfect way to practice my profession a number of years ago: “seeing” clients online via chat and email on my website at LZcybershrink.com. One thing led to another, and I found myself a member of several online communities of mental health professionals from around the world. My home-based career allowed me time to write the murder mystery I had been carrying around in my head for quite a while. Once I had completed the first draft of Death Will Get You Sober, I discovered the online communities of writers and mystery lovers who would help me hone my craft and market my manuscript. By the time I got an offer from a publisher, I knew the Internet would be crucial to my efforts to promote my book—essential to my dream of continuing to write and publish further books in the series.

So now I’m blogging with Poe’s Deadly Daughters, accumulating Friends on MySpace, hanging out on CrimeSpace, launching my second website, elizabethzelvin.com—and still treating clients by chat and email, IMing with potential clients on LZcybershrink.com, training other clinicians in online practice skills in my group chat room, sharing cases with colleagues in a message board format, and gabbing away on e-lists with my mental health peers as well as the mystery communities of Sisters in Crime, Guppies, Mystery Writers of America, DorothyL, and Murder Must Advertise.

In short, I talk to an awful lot of people every day from the comfort of my seat at the keyboard. Sometimes I even multitask. So with all this cybercommunication going on, how do I keep from putting my virtual foot in my mouth? Without claiming a perfect record, I do pretty well thanks to a couple of features of texting: one, the time delay that allows me to delete before sending if I think better of what I’ve just typed; and two, the magic word “Oops!”

As a therapist, I am committed to the principle that it’s okay to make a mistake. It’s one of the tenets of emotional health. As a neurotic like everybody else, I’m embarrassed and mad at myself when I goof in any way. And as one of many who struggle with codependency, I’m devastated when I say the wrong thing. I hate to hurt anybody’s feelings. Nor do I enjoy having anyone mad at me. In real life, when we say something hasty or tactless, we don’t always get a chance to backpedal or apologize. But on the Internet, the adolescent geniuses who I assume (correct me if I’m wrong) dreamed up the smileys and emoticons, acronyms and buzz words that we use online have handed us a simple way to take back what we wish we hadn’t said.

Take the classic gaffe of inadvertently putting the letter in the wrong envelope: the guy who mails his boss the kvetching meant for a sympathetic buddy, the woman who sends her husband the steamy missive meant for a lover. Once the damage is done, the situation might be hard to retrieve. But if I send an email thanking the agent who’s rejected me for requesting the full manuscript—or get my time zones mixed up and schedule an appointment for a client’s 3:00 AM—it’s simply mended: I send a follow-up email with “Oops!” as the subject line. In fact, if I catch my error immediately, they may see it and know it’s a mistake before they even read the first email. The body of the “Oops!” email, of course, corrects the error and apologizes or explains as needed.

I imagine almost everyone has experienced a situation in which the ability to say “Oops!” saved the day. Or am I the only one? If so—oops!

The Mysterious Uses of Weather

Sandra Parshall


It was a dark and stormy night.

Laugh, if you must, at this classic example of bad writing, but I sort of like it. For me, nothing creates atmosphere as effectively as weather. I always appreciate a writer who knows how to use the natural world to enhance a novel, and I’m disappointed when a writer’s story seems to take place in a hermetically sealed chamber, with no mention of what might be going on outside. Characters who never experience weather are not living in a world I recognize.

The first question I ask myself when I begin planning a book is, What season is it? I need to know the temperature, the appearance, the feel of the world my characters will move through. When I say that I want to make my characters sweat or shiver, I mean it literally.

Maybe I’m hyper-aware of weather because I’ve lived for many years in the Washington, DC, area, where residents seem absolutely obsessed with what Mother Nature is up to at all times. In summer it’s the tropical heat, the humidity, the violent thunderstorms that leave tens of thousands without electricity -- or, alternatively, the drought that leaves dead lawns and gardens in its wake. In winter, we're terrified that it might start snowing at any moment. If a single flake wafts from the heavens, all the schools close and half a million federal workers claim liberal leave and head for home. Everybody knows that once our streets are covered with snow, they’re going to stay that way for a while. A few inches of white stuff can trap people in their homes for days as they wait in vain for a plow to rescue them. People who spent the first thirty years of their lives in Maine somehow forget how to deal with snow when they move to Washington, and everyone is endlessly amazed by the inability of the District and surrounding counties to clear the streets in a timely manner.

Having grown up in the south, I’ve never seen the necessity for winter, and I despise snow only slightly less than ice storms. (That's my garden in the photo above.) When I wanted to create a menacing atmosphere in my second book, Disturbing the Dead, snow was the obvious weather choice. The book begins in a snowstorm, as Deputy Tom Bridger and his men are collecting the scattered bones of a missing woman on a southwestern Virginia mountaintop. Snow is ever-present in the book, cold on the skin and slippery underfoot, wrapping this little world in a veil of white. But my characters are not wimpy Washingtonians. They’re mountain people, and for them life goes on despite the weather -- until it’s brought to an end by a bullet or knife.

My first published novel, The Heat of the Moon, takes place in the Washington area during a typically blistering summer. The story begins with a thunderstorm, and a long-ago storm plays a key role in the plot, but as the story goes on drought sets in. Although I don’t make a big point of the weather in that book, the increasingly parched landscape, the shriveling vegetation along the roads, mirror my character Rachel’s desperation and the absence of emotional nourishment in the home she shares with her sister and her manipulative mother.

Some writers are brilliant in their use of weather to create atmosphere. Edna Buchanan can always make me feel the stifling heat and humidity of Miami. Giles Blunt’s Ontario in winter chills me to the bone. Julia Spencer-Fleming is also adept at building tension and a sense of danger with the use of weather, and I would read Dana Stabenow’s Alaska mysteries and James Lee Burke’s Louisiana mysteries for the weather alone. In Breathtaker, Alice Blanchard created a serial killer who struck only during tornados and used the storms to cover his crimes.

Often, when a book has good characters and a good plot but still seems to lack something, I realize that the missing ingredient is sensory perception of the natural world. So bring on the dark and stormy night, the raging wind and the withering heat. I want to know whether the characters are sunburned or frostbitten, drenched or parched, I want to hear autumn leaves crunching under their feet and see the summer butterflies flitting from flower to flower nearby. Only then will the characters, and the world they inhabit, come alive for me.

Passion

Sharon Wildwind

Writing forces a passion, squeezes out a life of its own. It has to because the externals—money, fame, maybe even good common sense—are often not there. I’ve lost count of the number of books in which the author ends the acknowledgments by thanking her family for putting up with dirty laundry, too many pizza take-outs, and weeks of being somewhere else a.k.a. lost in an imaginary world.

Writers who are fortunate live in families who somehow comprehend that wandering through the house at 1:00 in the morning, asking if anyone still awake how to spell marmalade ; that stabbing a raw chicken with a stiletto to see how much pressure it takes to puncture the skin to a perfectly normal act, and don’t fret too much about where found a stiletto in the first place. They become accustomed to imaginary characters at dinner, as long as those characters don’t insist on recounting detail-by-detail autopsies between the soup and the main course.

Sorry for abruptly ending here. My computer is having a major meltdown and I’ve managed to recover only bits of the blog I was posting. More next time, I promise. Go read a book, preferably a mystery.

(LATER) My computer indeed did have a major meltdown. It's now a dark, cold lump on my desk, though my teckie guy thinks he can save the hard drive, which is, apparently, a little like doing a brain transplant. In any case, I'm off-line for approximately two weeks. I'll still be able to post my blog next week, using a friend's computer, but not check my e-mail. I should be up and running by July 15.

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Writing quote for the week:
It takes great passion and great energy to do anything creative...You have to care so much that you can't sleep, you can't eat, you can't talk to people. It's just got to be right. You can't do it without that passion. ~Agnes DeMille, actress

The Mystery of Dancing Horses

by Julia Buckley
Someone sent me an e-mail with a link to this dancing horse. I was entranced. What a remarkable feat! I had never heard of horses being able to do this. Or had I?

Then I remembered the wonderful Mary Stewart novel called Airs Above the Ground, a title which describes the way that the world-famous Lippizaner Stallions seem to "fly" in the course of their show, and how they are trained to perform these airs above the ground as a part of their breeding. The horses are majestic, powerful, beautiful.

In the mystery, a woman goes to Austria pursuing something else, but ends up embroiled in a suspense story involving these stallions, her missing husband, and a seventeen-year-old boy named Timothy, who has unexpectedly accompanied her on the journey.

It's one of Stewart's later novels, and one of my favorites. Here's a description from Stewart's biographer, Lenemaja Freedman:

"Mary Stewart seems to love animals, and she obviously knows a great deal about horses and riding. This talent is apparent in The Ivy Tree in Annabel's ability to handle horses and is even more apparent in Stewart's choice of Austria and the Lippizan Stallions as the background for Airs Above the Ground (1965). Her visits to Vienna and to the Spanish Riding School were the inspiration for the plot . . . . Its protagonist is Vanessa March, a young veterinarian who has treated horses . . . ."

If you haven't tried Mary Stewart, you should read Airs, especially if you like horses. If you've read her, this is a great book to rediscover on a summer evening.

And how about that dancing horse!

(image:http://www.michaela-maurer.de/paintings/das_pferd_in_der_kunst_gemaelde/005-dancing_horse_0015.jpg)