Season's Greetings

May this day be filled with family, friends, love, and good tidings to all. We'll be back tomorrow.

Thank you so much for your support and kindness this year. We appreciate it more than we can express.

Poe's Deadly Daughters

The Mystery of the Mind

Dear PDD Readers,

Today I was busy with my son's thirteenth birthday party, and we are also busy with the sad arrangements for a death in the family. I hope you won't mind if I post an essay I wrote about that second topic; I posted it earlier on Mysterious Musings.

We heard yesterday that my husband's mother had died, after years of suffering with Alzheimer's Disease. It would be inappropriate to say she "battled" the illness, because any weapons one might use against that gradual decline are taken from the beginning, along with memory and the particular dignity that memory brings.

My mother-in-law had early onset Alzheimer's; she was only in her early sixties when she began to show signs of forgetfulness, of repeating herself, of putting things in odd places, or losing things entirely. But she had always been smart, a sharp mind, and she found all sorts of elaborate ways to "cover" for the fact that she would forget things--even, sometimes, her children's names. She was a happy person who loved to laugh, who loved babies, particularly her three grandchildren. The cruelest trick of this disease was that it convinced her, eventually, that she did not know them when they came to see her: she, who had loved them so passionately all their lives, would look at them quizzically and say, "These little boys think I'm their grandmother."

Alzheimer's is the thief who takes everything: one's disposition, one's memory, one's sense of self. At the end, it even takes one's awareness of her own existence. In this case, it was life that was cruel and death which was a mercy. Even the evils of cancer might allow one the luxury of goodbyes at death. Alzheimer's makes a person drift away day by day, year by year, until nothing of them is left but the frail shell that breathes delicately in the bed.

At that moment of death, then, that moment when the soul is freed from the cage of the body, from the useless mind, there is a certain beauty. But for the family, there is that rush of grief that has been held suspended in a five-year death. Grief for loss, anger at what was endured.

And then the memories, cobwebbed, come drifting down. They are exquisitely painful, but someday they will be beautiful, comforting. And they are the only revenge: that her memory was taken, but ours was not.

We will remember her.

The Shennong Stream

Margaret Mendel (Guest Blogger)

About a year and a half ago I began writing a novel based in Asia. The ideas started to bubble up. I had no idea what the Orient was like. An aspect of my novel takes place in southern China and an area along the Yangtze River. So, my husband and I decided to take a look at this part of the world.

One of the side trips we took while traveling the Yangtze River was to the Shennong Stream. I had no idea what to expect when we got there. A sampan ride through a minor gorge was all that we had been told.

So, after breakfast we disembarked from our cruise ship, clambered onto a ferry and headed down a rather large stream at the mouth of the Wu Gorge and away from the Yangtze River. Though the water voyage so far had been quiet and peaceful we soon entered another level of silence. The limestone cliffs shot up higher and the river became narrow. The soft, almost furry looking hills soon became craggy mountains with huge fields of thick brush that looked sharp and unfriendly.

The journey to a place called Dadong took about an hour. Our ferry glided up to a wooden shack moored on the riverbank. We stepped out onto a rickety old dock. We were herded through a gift shop and out a door to where 20 or 30 sampans were waiting.
The men waiting in the sampans were farmers who had been displaced by the rising water of the Three Gorges Dam. Now they are ‘boat trackers’ and they take tourists on rides up the Shennong Stream. Once everyone had settled into a sampan and life jackets were securely fastened, we set off up stream. As we glided along the water was so clear at times that I could count the pebbles passing under the sampan.

These riverbanks have been inhabited since the Han Dynasty and the primary ethnic group of this river valley has always been the Thuja people. But much of this area is soon going to disappear. Since the beginning of the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the water level has risen approximately 155 meters at the mouth of the Shennong Stream. Much of the previously scenic vertical gorge is now submerged. By the completion of the dam construction in 2009, a further 20 meters of the gorge will be under water.

When we arrived at a small rapid the boat trackers jumped into the water. Each man threw a harness like contraption over his shoulder and they began to pull the sampan through the quickly moving water.
It was all a bit thrilling but not dangerous. They hauled us through the water until we reached a section of the stream that was too shallow for a boat to go any further. It was time for lunch. Most of us shared our food with the boat trackers who had brought nothing to eat. We sat in the middle of this very ancient place in the wilds of China eating boiled eggs and fresh fruit.

Told that we could not get out of the boats, we were treated to gifts of pebbles that the boat trackers gathered from the stream bottom. Then as abruptly as we had stopped for lunch the boatmen grabbed up their harnesses and pulled us back out into the deeper water.

Headed back to the tour boat our guide pointed out ‘hanging coffins’. These coffins stowed in caves and crevices on the high vertical limestone cliffs are evidence of the early settlements in this area.
The coffins were carved from a single section of a tree trunk, with some coffins measuring 90 centimeters in diameter. The coffins are typically located 30 to 150 meters from the top of the bluff and 25 to 70 meters above the river surface. Most commonly a coffin is placed on two sturdy hewn poles that have been wedged within the limestone cleft or cave to form a level platform for the coffin to rest.

The Three Gorges Dam construction has destroyed many of these coffins, though some are being retrieved for cultural presentation and archeological study. One such coffin has been preserved and now sits on display at the White Emperor’s Palace, within an historical Taoist Temple situated high above the inundated level along the Yangtze River.

The Three Gorges Dam has covered countless acres of farmland and has displaced millions of families forcing them to find new ways of earning a living. I still have my pebble from the Shennong Stream, a simple white stone with black spots. I remember the man who gave it to me. His hands were coarse and weather worn. They were farmer’s hands.

Margaret Mendel has a Masters in Psychology and an MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She has published stories in Global City Review, ReflectionsEdge.com, and the anthology MURDER NEW YORK STYLE. She has won two awards from the Bronx Council on the Arts.

What to write, what to write???

I've been putting off writing a new book for quite some time now. I've finished the second in the Kitty Bloodworth series but Five Star won't consider contracting that book until they see how the sales numbers go for the first book, FIFTY-SEVEN HEAVEN, which just came out last week. But, boy howdy, am I ready to fire book number two off to them when they are ready to receive.

The next book in my first series, the Metropolis Mystery series, is finished and ready to publish in 2008. Except I've decided not to release it then. I want to spend 2008 promoting FIFTY-SEVEN HEAVEN, so the next Dalton won't come out until 2009, or at least that's the plan for now.

With two books completed in two different series, and pretty much ready to go, I couldn't seem to get into writing a new one. I kept saying I'd start in January. But when I begin a new book, I always have the first scene in my head and I'm IN the scene with the characters. Seeing it. Feeling it. Hearing it. So I kept seeing the beginning scene of the third book in the Kitty Bloodworth series, in my head. It's kind of a fun scene. Still I procrastinated writing it.

Luckily, I'm a huge fan of Holly Lisle and her website. I frequently mention her index card method for plotting when I'm giving a talk about writing. And I belong to an email group she hosts. So when she offered free outline tips for plotting in PDF format, I signed up. The file arrived in my inbox soon after and I dived in, doing the exercises. Sooo, I now have a VERY rough outline for the book and maybe two-three pages written in chapter one. Whew. Now, to write two-three hundred more pages. Piece of cake. Cough.

But back to being in the scene. The second book in the Kitty Bloodworth series takes place in Pigeon Forge, TN, where Kitty and Jack Bloodworth are attending a car show/contest and looking for another antique car to buy . . . this one for Kitty to drive. One of those hulking, beautiful Thirties models, sigh, just the kind of car I dream about.

We've traveled to the Pigeon Forge area several times and I love it there, so writing that book was like being there . . . every single day. I get lost in the setting when I write, and I enjoy standing next to my characters, watching what happens to them, how they react to it, and wondering what they'll do next. And I could see the Smokies with their lovely fall colors, the river streams running over the huge rocks, the vapor sliding over the mountain tops. When I stop writing for the day, it's like waking up from a sound nap. I have to "shake it off" and come back into the present. Even editing, tough as it is, brings me to that "place."

But much as I enjoy it, I always have a tough time getting into writing a new book. It's that old "Can I do this again?" "What if THIS book fails?" "What if no one reads it?" New book jitters. I get them ever time. So does most every other writer I know. But once I settle into the chair and start writing, I'm in that world.

Right now, I'm in Jack Bloodworth's barn where he stores his beautiful '57 Chevy, Sadie, along with her trophies and necessary replacement parts. And I can see that someone is hiding up in the hay loft. Uh oh! Excuse me, my character is in danger. I need to see what will happen. Meanwhile, you all have a wonderful holiday season and thanks so much for hanging out with us at Poe's Deadly Daughters!

An Anniversary: Me and My New York Building

Elizabeth Zelvin

Tomorrow, December 21, is an anniversary for me: forty years since I moved into my apartment building on the Upper West Side in Manhattan.
It’s also the anniversary of my long-ago marriage to my first husband. We spent our wedding night in the spacious one-bedroom apartment he’d been renting for $120 a month. The honeymoon consisted of a long weekend knocking out walls so we could expand the kitchen and sweeping up the resulting homosote crumbs. He was that kind of guy.

I remember looking at myself in the lobby mirror as I waited for him to park the car. I thought, This is who I’ll be for the rest of my life. Oy, was I mistaken. I have reinvented myself several times along the way. We changed apartments, to a $190 two-bedroom one floor up and one door over, when my son was born. We got divorced, he moved out, I remarried, my son grew up and moved out too. And the rent, rent control notwithstanding, has gone up and up and up. But until they throw out rent control altogether—as the landlords keep trying to do—I’m not moving out of the building. No way.

Gradually, the old guard has died off or gone to nursing homes. Only a handful are left. The yuppies who move in stay until they find a mate or have a second baby, and then they move on. And the rent goes up again. The apartment next door to me—directly above that first apartment—is vacant. I’ve been watching—and hearing—them sand floors and paint and renovate. The building staff swear they’re not told the rent, but I pounced on a couple of prospective tenants looking it over and asked how much it was going for. My old $120 nest now rents for $2,800 a month.

I’ve been thinking of throwing a party. I’ve thought about sticking a sign up in the elevator or the lobby: “Forty years in the building—time to meet the neighbors.” New Yorkers guard their personal space fiercely. Down the hall from me, the ladies in the D and E apartments, whose doors faced each other, used to chat in their bathrobes and curlers as if the narrow hall were a backyard fence. I don’t think they ever entered each other’s homes.

I say hello to the more longstanding residents in the elevator and on the street. But we never invite them in, nor they us. I probably know more of the building’s dogs by name than the newer tenants. Harry, the aging Sharpei with his worried wrinkly face, is everybody’s favorite. Maybe he’s worrying about the rent going up again and where we’ll all live if they manage to kill rent regulation altogether. Not in Manhattan, I’m afraid.

In the meantime, I love my building with its thick walls and ceilings. Barring the occasional loud party or especially vituperative marital squabble, the only neighbor I’ve heard in forty years was Marmaduke, the Great Dane in the apartment directly overhead. Until we met him, we hated our unseen noisy neighbors. We thought they must be moving furniture every night. But once we knew, our rancor melted: we understood that a Great Dane plays whenever he wants to.

Genre Identity Confusion

Sandra Parshall

You’d think writers, of all people, would be able to define what it is they’re writing. In the crime fiction world, though, we have so many subgenres and offshoots and blendings that even the authors are confused at times.

Is it “traditional” or is it “cozy” – or are the two terms interchangeable? Is it woo woo, with a psychic sleuth? Or chick lit, with a man-crazy heroine? Is it a pet cozy with talking and crime-solving cats and dogs? Is it a culinary mystery, with recipes and entertaining tips thrown in among the bodies? A knitting cozy, a bookseller cozy, a scrapbooking cozy? The variations are endless. The traditional/cozy label usually applies to an amateur sleuth story, but even mysteries featuring police detectives may be called cozies if the tone and content are mild enough. M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth series is a good example.

I was surprised when The Heat of the Moon was nominated for an Agatha Award, and even more startled when it won, because I had always thought the book was psychological suspense – and while it has plenty of domestic malice, there’s nothing “cozy” about it. I am told, though, that it meets the criteria for traditional mystery, so I tend to think traditional and cozy are different subgenres.

Procedural mysteries occupy their own category, and these days the label covers not only novels featuring police detectives and FBI agents but also investigative journalists and prosecuting attorneys. I was a little startled the first time I read a review that described a book as a “journalist procedural” but I’ve grown used to it.

The polar opposite of the cozy is noir mystery. As the name suggests, this kind of story is dark in every way and takes a bleak attitude toward humanity and the world. A happy ending should never be expected. But it’s still a mystery: a crime has been committed and a sleuth sets out to solve it.

If it’s not a straight mystery, is it “suspense” or is it a “thriller” – and once you’ve decided that, which sub-subgenre does it fall into? Romantic suspense? Psychological suspense? A psychic, political, international, medical, legal or eco thriller? The ever-popular gory-beyond-belief serial killer thriller? Or perhaps it’s a supernatural thriller, which until recently would have been labeled horror and given no space whatever under the crime fiction umbrella.

I’ve always believed that a mystery was a story driven by the effort to solve a crime, and a thriller was driven by danger and the effort to prevent something awful from happening. But the old definitions don’t hold up anymore. Many authors now borrow elements from two or three subgenres and combine them, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, in a single book.

Everyone seems to be clambering onto the suspense/thriller bandwagon. Look at the bestseller lists and you’ll see why: thrillers and suspense novels are the top sellers in crime fiction. Books that once would have been labeled police procedural mysteries now appear with “A Novel of Suspense” on the cover below the title – even if the stories are clearly mysteries, with detectives plodding through interviews and gathering clues and eventually catching the killer. That’s just false advertising and it probably irritates a lot of readers. What we see more often these days are traditional mysteries being amped up with additional murders (remember when one murder was enough to drive a whole book?), threats to the protagonists, crude language, and a dash of sex.

What’s happening here? Television and films are, undeniably, influencing the way novels are written. Some readers flee from the violent, fast-paced content of movies and TV shows and seek refuge in super-cozy books with cats that solve crimes and murders that rarely leave a bloodstain, much less a lingering nasty odor. But many more readers seem to want novels to keep up with filmed entertainment. More forensic evidence, please: we see it on CSI, and we’ve begun to believe no crime story is complete without a generous dose of it. More blood and agony: we’ve watched The Sopranos and we know people are seldom murdered gently.

I’m not complaining. I can enjoy a talking, crime-solving cat occasionally – although I am profoundly grateful that my own Emma and Gabriel can’t talk and have no interest in the activities of humans beyond our talent for opening cans -- but on the whole I think the trend toward realism is a good thing. The role of forensics in solving real killings is less important than TV would have us believe, but murder is a brutal, world-altering act and I appreciate writers who acknowledge that. Blood on the page serves as a reality check.

Cozies will probably always have a place on the bookshelf for readers seeking escape and relaxation, but people are so aware of crime these days, they see so much of it on the news and in entertainment, that non-cozy novelists will inevitably be forced to portray it realistically in fiction. At the same time, the fast pace of movies and TV pushes novelists to provide the same quick shocks and thrills to readers.

At some point we may have to drop most of the confusing labels on crime fiction and use only two: cozy mystery and... what? Suspense? Thriller? Some completely new term? What will we call our books when all the barriers between subgenres have come down?

POP QUIZ! Quickly – don’t stop to mull it over – how would you label these books?

What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman

In a Dry Season by Peter Robinson

The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz

Monkeewrench by P.J. Tracy

City of Bones by Michael Connelly

Double Indemnity

Sharon Wildwind

No, this blog isn’t about the 1944 noir movie, which starred Fred McMurray, Barbara Stanwick, and Edward G. Robinson, but rather about a discussion that surfaced this week on one of the mystery lists.

The rumor is out there that to survive in the mystery genre, publishers will expect the average writer to finish at least two books a year. As I said, it’s a rumor, but what I found most interesting—and a little scary—is that when the rumor came up, the first responders didn’t laugh themselves silly.

In fact, they agreed. Said they had friends who were already laboring under this requirement or had heard other mystery writers say that their publisher was leaning in this direction.

It is possible to do two books a year.

Word goal: 90,000 (the average mystery these days)

Page goal: 360 (assuming the usual 250 words per page)

Scene goal: 30 (assuming 12 pages/scene. Your mileage may differ.)

By writing only 6 pages (1/2 scene) every day, an author can turn out the first draft in about 9 weeks.

Since each subsequent draft should take about half the time of the previous draft:
Second draft: finished 4 1/2 weeks later
Third draft: finished 2+ weeks after that
Fourth and final draft: finished 1 week later, and ready to go to the publisher

So for four drafts, let’s say 16 to 17 weeks of working 6-8 hours per day, every day will produced a finished book. That gives the author a generous margin of about 9 to 10 weeks for real life to happen. Real life being, of course, the need to research the book; allowing for computer failures; finding an agent and publisher; publicizing the books already in print; probably having a day job; and taking care of self, family, friends, and pets. Then we’re at week 26, and it’s time to start the process over again for the second book.

By now you’re either laughing yourself silly or are in danger of throwing a blunt instrument through your computer screen. Let me tell you that I first learned that formula several years ago from a romance writer who said that she knew of a publisher where this was the expectation.

I tried to follow the formula, and I couldn’t do it. The best I’ve ever done on a book is 11 months, start to finish, and that was cheating a little because (1) I’d already done most of the research and (2) the book never sold. On average, it takes me 12 to 13 months to finish a book, and I think I’m doing darn good by doing it in that length of time.

So, if you had to write two books in a year, how would you do it?

------
This week I’m using one of my own favorite quotes:

You can’t knead bread dough or writing into submission. ~Sharon Wildwind, mystery writer

On Snow and Good Writing

by Julia Buckley
Well, everyone from the Midwest to the Northeast has felt the brunt of this latest snowstorm, and naturally, we all want to talk about the weather! But I've been enjoying literature, too, and pulling out some of my favorite poets' words about snow and winter. I set a mystery in winter once, and there is a special poetry about that season. For example:

NIGHT

Stars over snow,
and in the west a planet
Swinging below a star--
Look for a lovely thing and you will find it,
It is not far--
It never will be far.

That is one of my ALL TIME favorites by Sara Teasdale. Now compare it to Lilian Moore's "Winter Dark."

Winter dark comes early
mixing afternoon
and night.
Soon
there's a comma of a moon,

and each street light
along the
way
puts its period
to the end of the day.

Now
a neon sign
punctuates the
dark with a bright blinking
breathless
exclamation mark!

And finally, a Japanese poem, unattributed, but printed in Winter Poems by Barbara Rogasky:

MOON

The moon hangs up at night;
Her beams are cold and bright;
Seeing her shadow low
The water's frozen now.

Enjoy the beautiful words and the beautiful frozen weather! It's a great time for all of us to stay in and do a bit of writing. :)

It's that time of year???

By Lonnie Cruse


The Holiday Season. Shopping. Parties. Family and Friends. Cookies. Fudge. Decorating. Fighting the Cold Weather. Fighting the Cold in Your Nose. Fighting the Crowds. Wrapping. Baking. Cooking. EATING.

Writing? When??? Tough time of year for writers. If you are writing a manuscript, when do you find time? How do you find the concentration? How can you write the tough, gritty scenes, the tear-jerking scenes, when all around you are celebrating and enjoying the season?

Or you've written a manuscript but you can't submit it anywhere now because most agents, editors, or publishers take December off to, um, enjoy the season. How do you handle that? Even the printers take time off, so getting books for your events in December can be tricky. And even though books are a popular gift, sales do tend to drop off around now. Sigh.

What if, like me, you have a book coming out this month? How do you promote it, write another, and do all the seasonal stuff? It isn't easy. And it's not a lot of fun.

To date, I've written not a word since, uh, well, I can't remember when. Not a syllable on the next book. I'm soooo far behind, I'm ahead. Well, I did get a manuscript critiqued, polished, and ready for submission early next year (eeeek, can next year really be less than 30 days away???) But I'm not writing. Or promoting my series in print. I'm promoting the daylights out of my new book that came out this week, Fifty-Seven Heaven. Crossing my fingers and praying that it sells well. But I'm not writing. Well, not on paper.

So what's my point. I have one around here somewhere. Let me look . . . oh, there it is.

The holiday season is tough on writers. Did I mention that already? Tough to focus. Tough to hang in there. But we do hang in there, and eventually we focus again. And we write again. I said I wasn't writing, not on paper. But I'm writing in my head. Laying the story out. So when I'm done overdosing on peanut butter fudge and sugar cookies, I can come out of my stupor and write the story. I've already hit one snag in my head, trying to figure out how I can have my amateur sleuth call the cops without having her meet with the law enforcement character from my other series (both are set in the same town.) I know some authors have their characters from separate series meet to solve crimes together. Mine refuse to work together. Puts them in a snit if I even contemplate it. So I'm working that out. Meanwhile, I think I'll have another chocolate covered pretzel and think some more.

Anyone else having this problem? If so, how are you handling it? Sugar overloaded minds want to know.

In Praise of Libraries

Elizabeth Zelvin

I was very disappointed to learn recently that my local branch of the New York Public Library, the St. Agnes Branch on the Upper West Side, is closed for renovation for the next two years. I had gotten out of the library habit—ordering books online is so easy, and schmoozing with booksellers, especially mystery booksellers, so much fun—but I’d planned to get back in. I not only have a new library card, complete with bar code and pin number, but I’ve even been carrying the mini version of my library card on my key chain. I had a date with myself to try the 21st century method of ordering the books I want online and picking them up at my local branch. So now I’ll have to work a little harder than I hoped at getting library books home.

When I was a kid, my father used to take my sister and me to the library. I lived in Queens, halfway between Flushing and Jamaica. Come to think of it, when I was very young, the nearest branch of the Queensborough Public Library was in Flushing, a bus ride away. Eventually, they built a branch within walking distance, around the back of the bank where I had my very first savings account. But before that, we took the bus. That and going to the movies were my father’s two allotted parenting tasks. We were each allowed to take home seven books. Sometimes, my father went to the library alone. When he came back, if you asked him, “What did you get?” he always said, “Seven books.” They were usually novels. My parents’ house was filled with books, but most of them seemed pretty boring. Some of them sat there for fifty years without once tempting me to read them. Buying novels was considered an extravagance. Why bother, when you could get them from the library?

In those days, as far as I know, libraries didn’t sell off their books. If you’d taken them out and read them, you could count on finding them when you wanted to read them again. The two children’s books I took out most frequently and remember most vividly were a book of Russian fairy tales and a collection of biographies. The fairy tales—folk tales would probably be a more accurate term—always had a hero named Prince Ivan and a princess named Vassilisa. The villain was usually the witch Baba Yaga, who had a magic cauldron and lived in the woods in a hut that stood on giant chicken legs. The legs allowed the hut to move around, and I think it could fly as well.

The biographies were about a different kind of hero (and a heroine or two): Marie and Pierre Curie, Livingston and Stanley, Sun Yat Sen, and Ghandi, among others. I still remember all sorts of details from those biographies. Did you know that Ghandi’s first name was Mohandas? And that he was married, by parental arrangement, at 13? In a discussion of how they don’t make copy editors the way they used to, Ruth Cavin, my editor at St. Martin’s, told me about what she considered the worst copy editorial faux pas that had come her way: a manuscript made a reference to Dr. Sun Yat Sen, and the copy editor didn’t understand why the character needed medical care. (“What kind of doctor was he?”) Thanks to my childhood reading from the library, I got the point.

As of September 2007, the American Library Association had 64,979 members. That’s a lot of librarians. Rosemary Harris, who is organizing an expedition to the January ALA meeting in Philadelphia for members of Mystery Writers of America/ New York, said recently, “You never know where a librarian may be lurking.” I agree. Librarians founded the great mystery e-list DorothyL. There are loads of them on MySpace. My brother-in-law in Ohio is a librarian. Librarians have my enthusiastic vote of thanks for keeping readers reading—and writers writing.