OF TWO MINDS

by Sheila Connolly

Lately I've been thinking about schizophrenia, a medical illness that by conservative estimates affects about one percent of the world population, which translates to at least two million Americans. The World Health Organization has called schizophrenia one of the most debilitating human diseases. So why am I interested? I don't mean to poach on Liz Zelvin's territory, but as a writer, a lot of the symptoms sound awfully familiar to me.


–delusions: strange beliefs not based in reality
–hallucinations: perceiving sensations that aren't real, including hearing voices
–disorganization: talking in sentences that do not make sense
–writing excessively but without meaning


We as writers spend a lot of time alone, staring at a piece of paper or a computer monitor, trying to string words together in some meaningful and coherent way. A lot of writers joke to each other about listening to the voices in their head when they write. Are we hallucinating?


Or take delusions. Mystery writers kill people–on paper. We are required to make these murders feel as real as possible (all those nice gory details about blood spatter and the like) to convince our readers. Otherwise they will write nasty emails telling us what we got wrong. So in effect, we are deliberately inducing a schizophrenic state, creating convincing alternative realities in our heads.


What about disorganization? When confronted with that blank page/screen, a lot of writers just start setting down whatever comes to them. Nora Roberts famously has called this a "vomit draft" because it just spews out. No way that is going to be organized or even logical. And that "writing excessively without meaning"–that's why we cringe when we start editing. It's no fun looking at your own words and asking your cat, why did I say that? What the heck did I mean?


There are other troubling aspects of schizophrenia that may also apply to writers:

–withdrawal from family, friends, and social activities ("but I have a deadline! I don't have time to talk to you!")

–forgetting or losing things (why am I standing in the kitchen?)

–poor hygiene and grooming (hey, these yoga pants are really comfortable, and the UPS delivery guy isn't going to care whether I've brushed my hair today)


Even more disturbing is the fact that a person who is suffering from schizophrenia may not even know it. Isn't reality whatever we perceive it to be?


Is it worse if you know you're schizophrenic? Years ago I knew a graduate student who had been given that diagnosis. When he was on his medications, he was a really nice guy. When he decided he was just fine and didn't need the meds, he was arrested for smashing car windshields with a crowbar. Do you think he believed that smashing windows was normal and reasonable behavior? But how do you know when you've slipped over the line?


Which leads to the question, where do writers fit in this spectrum? We deliberately set out to create stand-alone realities in our imagination. We have to fully believe in those realities in order to make them convincing to other people. And we do this over and over, building little mini-universes where we create the population and the rules. Does this make us abnormal?


Or does the fact that we share these characteristics with other people, and can not only talk about them but can laugh at them–and at ourselves–mean that we're normal?

Best Reads of 2010, Part 2

Elizabeth Zelvin

Going down the list I started last week, here are more of my personal favorites and why.

I’ve admired and enjoyed SJ Rozan’s work since reading her Edgar winner, Winter and Night, which put her on the short list of writers whose work I went out and bought in toto after the first dose. Last year’s Shanghai Moon got a lot of praise and attention, and I enjoyed it, but the one I loved was the new one, On the Line (2010).

Rozan’s books alternate the first-person point of view of her two interconnected PI protagonists, Bill Smith and Lydia Chin. That’s alternating books, not alternating chapters. If you ask me which of the two is my favorite, I’d say Lydia Chin—spunky female protagonist, of course I love her. Rozan herself says she first created Bill Smith as the quintessential world-weary but honorable tough American PI, and that when she needed another one, she deliberately came up with his antithesis. Thinking of this, I was wondering what, if anything, made Bill special, why I wouldn’t find another tough-guy PI boring. On the Line reminded me.

Bill is tough, but it’s a purely functional toughness: he can turn on the violence when needed, but he doesn’t revel in it. He’s decent, sensitive, and very smart—a quality I prize in fictional characters when it’s accompanied by heart. The cleverness with which he unravels the villain’s clues is impressive. And his motive is impeccable: Lydia’s in trouble, and he really, really cares about her. I’ve been on Bill’s side all along in the potential romance between these two. Lydia has good cultural reasons for pushing him away: the parental pressure on Asian American young people not to diversify when it comes to love is authentic. But I’m a romantic, at least as a reader. I’ve been wanting Lydia, or rather, Rozan, to unbend and give poor Bill a break.

Rozan’s prose, which doesn’t waste a word or suffer a weak verb to live, has always been a delight. On the Line had this quality, and in addition, the writing struck me as less literary, more immediate, than in any of her previous work. This serves both the pace of the narrative and the tech aspect of the story, which I hardly know whether to call theme, setting, or texture. I hope it’s not a spoiler to say the requisite chase scene takes place on Twitter, a fresh and brilliant twist that I thoroughly enjoyed.

That’s the last of the 2010 novels that sank in deep enough to make my list. I love Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone, but I preferred Locked In (2009), which I read last January, to the more recent Coming Back. Like Lois McMaster Bujold in Cryoburn (see last week’s blog), Muller made sure longtime readers got a glimpse of all their favorite characters, but unlike Bujold, she didn’t pull it off in Coming Back. I found the new book slight, and I suspect readers new to Sharon and her family and friends wondered what all the fuss, ie Muller’s reputation, was about. Locked In, on the other hand, was a real mystery with a fresh plot device—McCone’s medical condition, in which she can think clearly but not move or speak—and plenty of opportunity to display this beloved character’s intelligence and determination.

A New Voice from England: Erin Kelly

 Interviewed by Sandra Parshall

Erin Kelly’s first novel, a psychological thriller titled The Poison Tree, was released to rave reviews in Britain last summer and has just come out in the U.S. to a similarly positive reception. The tale of a strait-laced student named Karen, whose involvement with glamorous, bohemian Biba and her enigmatic brother culminates in murder, has been described as compelling, twisted, and wonderfully evocative. Erin is making several appearances in the U.S. this week. Visit her website at http://www.erinkelly.co.uk for a list of her bookstore stops.

Erin was born in London in 1976 and grew up in Essex. She has worked as a journalist since 1998, writing for newspapers including The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Express and various magazines. She lives in London with her husband and daughter.

Q. The Poison Tree has had an extraordinary reception from reviewers and readers. Were you prepared for this, or has all the attention taken you by surprise?

A. It would feel like tempting fate to prepare myself for anything! But it’s great to know the book is finding its way onto people’s shelves.

Q. An obvious question: What – or who – inspired the story? Can you tell us briefly how and when the story and characters took root in your imagination and how they evolved into the finished novel?

A. There’s no single inspiration behind the novel. Although I wrote it quickly, it had a very long gestation period. While I daydreamed characters, plots and locations, a few themes and ideas kept recurring. I love coming-of-age novels, especially when the narrative is from the perspective of middle age. And I wanted to write about the glorious irresponsibility of that time between college and real-life. I wanted to write a London novel, because that’s the city I know better than any other. When I decided to set the action in Highwater, a leafy, wealthy neighborhood in the north of the city, everything came together.
I’m often asked who Biba is based on. She’s actually a composite of various people I’ve met over the years, although in some of these cases I’ve actually toned her behavior down. That doesn’t stop my friends being convinced they ‘know who she is’, though.

Q. Was this an easy book to sell, or did you face a few rejections along the way?

A. The first time my British agent shared the book with publishers in London, there was some initial interest but nothing came of it; publishers were concerned that it was difficult to pigeonhole – was it women’s fiction, crime or commercial?- they were worried about how to sell it. A few of them expressed doubts about the original ending, which was quite ambiguous; they said that part of the appeal of mystery and suspense fiction is that you close the deal with the readers.

So I went away for a few months and polished the book, reworking the ending to make it more conclusive, and I’m so pleased that I did: the ‘new’ ending feels absolutely right for the novel. This time the straddling of different genres was seen as a positive and publishers called it crossover fiction. It went to a four-way auction, which was fantastic after the initial rejection. In the US, things were much more straightforward; I was picked up by my editor at Viking within a few days of her receiving the manuscript.

Q. Have you written other, unpublished novels? Have you always wanted to be a novelist or is this a recent ambition?

A. I don’t have any novels gathering dust in my desk drawer, no. But I have always wanted to write. I became a journalist largely because I heard that once you had a track record in print, it was easier to get a book deal. Then I got rather seduced and distracted by the job, and it wasn’t until I got pregnant in spring 2008 that I decided it was time to actually sit down and write the novel I’d been thinking and talking about for years.

Q. Daphne du Maurier, Ruth Rendell – does comparison to those legendary writers intimidate you at all? Do you feel your work fits the same mold as theirs?

A. Of course I’m hugely flattered. You don’t have to be a sleuth to spot that both Rendell and du Maurier have greatly influenced my own work. Both writers create a strong sense of place and deal with themes that appeal to me, such as the past intruding on the present. I’ve read Rebecca at least once a year since I was fourteen. I love the way du Maurier marries nail-biting suspense with unabashed romance.

Q. What other authors have influenced your writing, and in what way? Which current writers are on your must-read list?

A. I like beautifully-written page-turners and all of the following make me want to raise my game: Kate Atkinson and William Boyd both prove that suspense and plotting can co-exist alongside great writing. Tana French writes dialogue that’s second to none. I admire Kazuo Ishiguro and Josephine Hart for their restraint – I don’t know how they do it. Going further back, I love Patricia Highsmith, Jean Rhys, Graham Greene, Wilkie Collins, Dickens and – yes! – Edgar Allan Poe.

Q. Your next book, coming out in the UK later this year, is titled The Sick Rose. You seem to have something of a nasty horticultural theme going. Is that intentional – or had it even occurred to you before I asked you about it?

A. Both books take their titles from William Blake poems. The Poison Tree had a dozen working titles, while I knew what The Sick Rose was going to be called before I wrote a word. My friend and proofreader Helen suggested The Poison Tree as it was a good companion to The Sick Rose. Green places do inspire me: The Sick Rose is set in an ancient garden, while the city wood is central to The Poison Tree. I like the idea of using another Blake quote for my third book, but I think I’m done with nasty horticulture for now!

Q. What draws you to psychological suspense, as opposed to murder mysteries or conventional thrillers? What can you do in a psychological suspense novel that you might not be able to do in a different type of crime story?

A. The stories that have most inspired me are those of ordinary people out of their depth, which is a good definition of a psychological thriller. I’m interested in the other side of the traditional murder mystery – it’s what happens before the cops turn up that interests me. I love finding the dramatic and the gothic in the ostensibly mundane.

Besides, most conventional, or procedural, thrillers require a recurring protagonist, usually someone whose line of work means they repeatedly come into contact with crime. I shy away from this for two reasons: firstly, research is my least favourite part of the writing process as no matter how thoroughly I do it I’m always terrified I’ve omitted some vital detail, and it would be picked up! So many writers do this so well, and crime readers are so switched-on. Secondly, while I love to watch characters grow and develop over a series of novels – I’m thinking in particular of Kate Atkinson’s private eye Jackson Brodie, who’s a brilliant, real, compelling character – I don’t like the idea of committing to the same character book after book. I like to know that I can kill off whoever I want when I’m writing with no repercussions for future novels!

Q. Do you plan to continue working as a journalist, or do you want to concentrate on fiction full-time?

A. I’m enjoying concentrating on fiction now. I hope I’ll always be able to do both, but it’s hard to juggle the two professions as they require opposite mindsets. To work well as a journalist you have to be constantly switched-on, reading all the newspapers, on top of the trends, always checking your email and within arm’s reach of your phone. To write good fiction I find the opposite is necessary: the more disconnected and uninterrupted the better.

Q. In addition to your current appearances in the U.S., will we see you at any of the big mystery conventions, like Bouchercon?

A. No plans in place at the moment, but I do love meeting readers and other writers. They’re the best place to find out about new authors – I always come home with a long shopping list!

Become the Arrow

Sharon Wildwind

Scientists are watching brains in action while humans do all sorts of things, from playing chess to drinking through a straw. Here’s the setup for one experiment.

The test subject touches a wall with his or her finger. That’s the whole experiment: walk over and touch the wall. When the finger contacts the wall parts of the brain that have to do with proprioception (the spacial relationship of the the finger to the wall), temperature, pressure, and squishiness are activated. Squishiness isn’t a great scientific term but we can relate to the idea that touching a metal plate feels different than touching a marshmallow.

Have the person repeat the movement several times and the brain’s “got it.” It has figured out where fingertip ends and wall begins and is well on it’s way to building a memory of, “This is what it felt like to touch the lab wall with my fingertip.”

Now give the person a tool, something as simple as a stick, and ask them to touch the wall again using the end of the stick instead of their fingertip.

At first, things don’t feel right. Proprioception, pressure, and squishiness are different and temperature is completely absent. After practicing the task the brain figures out, “This is what it feels like to touch the lab wall with a stick instead of with my finger.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The end of the stick literally becomes an extension of the finger. With practice, the exact parts of the brain that activated when the finger touched the wall activate when the end of the stick touches the wall. The person’s boundaries, where finger end and the wall begins, has expanded to include the tool.

This goes a long way toward explaining why athletes and musicians develop a fondness for one particular tennis racket or instrument, and why pilots, jockeys, and NASCAR drivers can tell that their plane, horse, or car isn’t “right” on a given day.

If I were an archer, I’d imagine this extension of my fingers like my favorite ever (so far) movie special effect, the water tentacle in the 1989 film The Abyss. (“So raise your hand if you think that was a Russian water-tentacle.”)

That shimmery, watery liquid would flow from my fingertips and around the bow, but my question is, does it cover the arrow, too? If it did, would that coating travel all the way to the target or would the wind friction wear it off so that, by the time it reached the target, it was a plain arrow again?

Yeah, I know, that’s the kind of metaphysical question that makes people, including me, want to lie down in a dark room.

But wouldn’t it be neat if that shimmery, watery liquid flowed out of my fingertips, around my keyboard and mouse, up through the connecting cables, and gradually filled my computer from the bottom until the entire machine and saturated the work inside? It would be even neater if when I sent writing out into the world, there would be this shimmery coating all over the writing, which would flow off the page and into the readers’ fingertips and make them all shimmery, too. Maybe that’s what writing is in its finest form.
----
Quote for the week:
In the case of archery, the hitter and the hit are no longer two opposing objects, but are one reality.
~Eugen Herrigel (1884-1955), German philosopher and archer, in Zen in the Art of Archery

The Daughters Spend a Day with Poe

 
In honor of Edgar Allan Poe's birthday on Wednesday, we daughters thought we'd envision how we'd spend a day with the great man, were he to visit us in 2011.


Julia Buckley

I find, when I meet Poe, that I am needy for his approval (although I realize this need for approbation is rare among writers in general). :)

So after taking the poor thin man to a breakfast bistro and buying him some bacon and eggs to consume with his morning coffee, I hand him a little sheet of scribblings inspired by "The Raven."

"Once upon a keyboard dreary, while I slaved over a query
Which I’d send to many an agent in the hopes of being loved,
While I tried out various phrasings, paired with chocolate-peanut grazings,
And repeated small appraisings of the words upon my screen—
Suddenly there came a dawning, in a spurt of endless yawning
That my query sounded fawning—those damned words upon the screen—
“Sycophant,” I grumbled, giving up and feeling mean.

Oh, how clearly I’m recalling that sad query, most appalling
Of all queries fearless feckless fools had ever fawned before;
While I sat, bereft and quaking, all my soul within me aching—
Knowing I would not be staking my profession on a query such as this . . .
Then I came to my decision—this required vast revision,
And significant excision! So I grabbed my bowl of peanuts
And I sat upon the floor . . .
Eating fast and eating faster, nearing gluttonous disaster
I consumed my chocolate comrades and ignored the evil screen.

To this day you can still find me, with some Fannie Mae and Chablis
On the padded carpet under the computer in my room
And the words continue mocking, in an endless writer’s blocking
And my brain continues knocking in my head amidst the gloom—
And I never shall be freed
Unless—perhaps a nom de plume?"

"What do you think?" I ask Poe, who has gone right off his eggs and is staring at me with slightly bulging eyes.

"I think that, perhaps," he says gently, reaching out to touch my hand, "You should consider keeping your present employment."

"What? Keep my day job? Et tu, Poe?"

Poe continues to drink his coffee with a thoughtful air, but I notice that he pushes my notebook back toward me.


Lonnie Cruse

I'd take Poe to lunch at some lovely gothic-ie (hopefully haunted) vintage mansion-turned-restaurant where we'd have tea and scones and salad (he didn't get that lithe figure by eating double-burgers, folks) and discuss his "dark side." Why he wrote what he wrote, where did he get the ideas for, say, "The Telltale Heart" among other of his writings, stuff like that. I'd also want to know if he knows who leaves a rose on his grave every year. And I'd watch his face whenever others around us rudely chatted on their cell phones. I'd even consider taking him on a research trip to Wal-Mart, but no use causing him a second death . . . from shock. Speaking of which, I'd ask him what it's like where he resides now. In other words, I'd bug him with questions. LOTS of questions. Hey, I'm paying for lunch, I'm entitled.

Sandra Parshall

Like Lonnie, I would have a million questions for this maginificent writer. But first impulse would be to feed him a nutritious meal. A visit to the tiny, three-room Poe House in Baltimore made me realize what dire poverty he lived in for most of his adult life. This is the little garret room where he slept and composed some of his greatest works. (I hope he actually had a mattress on the bed!)
 
 


And these are the narrow stairs he used to reach it.

 As we said goodbye, I would thank him for persevering and producing timeless stories and poetry despite poverty, illness, and very little recognition and reward in his own lifetime.

Sharon Wildwind

I'd do something about that poor man's clothes. Some decent linen for a start, like a shirt and new neck cloth. Don't know if that rumpled black suit is salvageable. At least it needs a good cleaning and brushing, or maybe he just needs a whole new suit. And I would ask him what the dickens happened to his clothes and why was he wearing someone else's clothes when he was found on the street?

Sheila Connolly

Funny how everyone wants to take care of poor Edgar--feed him, get him to a doctor, clean up his wardrobe.  But what makes me most curious is why he spent his life moving around so much.  Certainly in his early years he had no control over that, but as an adult he kept it up.  Boston, Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York--and don't forget England and Scotland, plus the army.  All this in forty short years--and he never stopped writing.  You have to admire his focus.  But I'd love to ask him, are you running from something or toward something?

Elizabeth Zelvin

I start out by telling Poe how successful he became after his death, how greatly admired his work still is. I then explain how much we have learned since his time about alcoholism, that it is now considered a treatable disease rather than a form of depravity, and offer to help him get sober so he can live a longer, healthier life and write more effectively, as he will when his brain is no longer befuddled. Of course, he doesn’t believe me. Even today, denial is the hallmark symptom of the disease. So I take him to an AA meeting, which must be a real eye-opener for him. I offer to do a thorough professional assessment of his alcohol and drug use, and I hope he’ll agree.

Wikipedia claims that “it is now known he was not a drug addict,” but I would want to do my own evaluation. So if Poe had gotten clean and sober, would he still have died at 40? I don’t know. I might have to slip him a supply of modern antidepressants, and 19th century diseases still might kill him. But wouldn’t it be wonderful to read the work of an 80-year-old Poe?


From all your deadly daughters... 

 

Rest in peace, Eddie. 

Canada Calling: Strange Canadian Crimes

Since a lot of us are stuck indoors this weekend due to winter weather, here's a short quiz about notorious Canadian crimes to wile away the time. Some of these are stranger than you can possibly imagine. As promised, I've added the answers.

Ezra Allen Miner, an American criminal, moved to British Columbia at the beginning of the 1900s. In 1904 he committed a crime that had been committed only once before in Canada. What was that crime?
A. Bank robbery
B. Train robbery
C. Forging a Canadian $20 bill
D. Blowing up a government building

Ezra was better known as Bill Miner. Reputed to be a very polite robber, he’s credited with the phrase, “Hands up.” The usual previous admonishment, at least by British highwaymen was, “Stand and deliver.” For a long time it was thought that Miner’s 1904 train robbery was the first in Canada. Recent scholarship has uncovered a previous train robbery thirty years earlier in Ontario. Miner escaped from jail in British Columbia and made it back across the U. S. border. He died in Georgia.
-----

Between January 14 and February 17, 1932, a posse of Royal Canadian Mountain Police officers, Inuit and Gwich’in guides, and a World War I pilot name Wop May pursued a man named Albert Johnson through the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. News of the pursuit and Johnson’s eventual death went around the world by radio. What name did the media give Johnson?
A. The Angel of the North
B. The American Jessie James
C. The Snow Ghost
D. The Mad Trapper

Albert Johnson remains a mystery. No one knows if that was his real name or an alias and even recent DNA examination hasn’t shed any light on where he came from. Throughout the multiple confrontations with police and the extended manhunt, Johnson never spoke a word. He critically wounded two men and killed an R.C.M.P. constable before being fatally shot.
----

The Canadian play, Blood on the Moon by Ottawa actor/playwright Pierre Brault dramatizes what trial?
A. A civil lawsuit brought by Irish navvies against the Canadian Pacific Railroad for unsafe working conditions.
B. A class action suit, brought by the Chinese Friendship Society of Greater Vancouver to strike down the law that required Chinese men to pay a head tax in order to bring their wives to Canada.
C. Of Patrick J. Whelen, for the murder of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, a member of the Canadian parliament.
D. Of Paul Rose, for the murder of Minister Pierre LaPorte during the October 1970 FLQ crisis in Quebec.

McGee and Whelen were both Irish Catholics, but their views on Irish independence and the Fenians differed. McGee was shot by an unknown assailant on the night of April 7, 1868. Whelan was arrested; the evidence against him was circumstantial, centering around a hand gun that he owned, but he was convicted and hung. His was the last public hanging in Canada and was viewed by about 5,000 people.
-----

What unfortunate incident happened to the writer Robert Service while he was composing The Shooting of Dan McGrew?
A. His entire manuscript, his notes, and his lunch was stolen. Service is quoted as saying he regretted the missing lunch most of all.
B. He was sued by a Whitehorse clergyman name D. N. McGrew, who felt that the poem was about him and that Service had impugned his character.
C. Since he had a habit of walking down the street and not paying attention while writing, he fell in a large hole and broke his arm.
D. He was shot at by the guard in the bank where he worked because the guard, hearing Service reciting under his breath about guns and shooting, thought he was robbing the bank.

Service would work on his poetry at the bank during his lunch break. A guard mistook Service reading aloud for a bank robbery in progress and fired a shot at Service. Fortunately he missed and Service went on to finish writing his poem.
----

Ferdinand W. Demara committed what crime involving the Canadian military?
A. He impersonated a military trauma surgeon on His Majesty’s Canadian Ship Cayuga, including performing successful operations.
B. He stole a tank from Canadian Forces Base Gagetown and attempted to run over his ex-brother-in-law.
C. He embezzled over a million dollars through fake government contracts supposedly awarded by the Department of National Defense.
D. He forged a Victoria Cross, supposedly awarded to his father during World War II, and sold the fake through Sotherby’s Auction House.

Ferdinand Demara was a man of many talents, at least in his own mind. He stepped into a new role at will, impersonating a civil engineer, a sheriff's deputy, an assistant prison warden, a doctor of applied psychology, a hospital orderly, a lawyer, a child-care expert, a Benedictine monk, a Trappist monk, an editor, a cancer researcher, and a teacher.

During the Korean War he impersonated Canadian surgeon Joseph C. Cyr. A speed reader with a photographic memory, Demara read through surgical texts immediately before he performed surgery. All of his patients lived.

His career as “Dr. Cyr” ended with Cyr’s mother read a newspaper article that mentioned her son. She knew that he had been working in New Brunswick at the time the article said he was on the Cayuga. She immediately contacted the Canadian Navy. Strangely enough, the Navy did not press charges and Demara went back to the U.S., where he continued other impersonations for years. He finally became a hospital chaplain with real credentials from an Oregon bible college. In his role as chaplain he administered last rites to his friend, the actor Steve McQueen.

Thomas Scott’s death (March 4, 1870) prompted what response by the government of Canada?
A. Private police officers for the Canadian Pacific Railway were authorized to carry guns for the first time.
B. Prime Minister John A. MacDonald dispatched the Wolseley Expedition to quell the Red River Rebellion.
C. The Northwest Mounted Police were founded.
D. The Ottawa City Police were required to fire any constabulary officer who came to work intoxicated.

Louis Riel was Métis (a person of mixed First Nations and European parentage) from the Red River Settlement (now Manitoba). He opposed the influx of Anglophone Protestants into the Red River, which had historically belonged to First Nations people and French-speaking, Catholic Métis. Riel created a provisional government with equal representation from both French and English communities.

Thomas Scott was a Protestant Orangeman who opposed that government. Scott threatened to kill Riel. For that Riel’s provisional government tried him. Riel gave the order for him to be executed by firing squad.

In response the government of Canada sent Colonel Garnet Wolseley with a military force to put down the Red River Rebellion. Fifteen years after Scott died, Riel was arrested, tried, and hung for treason. Many contended that his death was payback for having given the order to execute Scott.

Working Hours

by Sheila Connolly

Like many areas of the country, Massachusetts is digging out from another blizzard or nor'easter or whatever we're calling it this week, the second within a month. Save your pity for all those other states which are totally unprepared to deal with more than an inch of snow. We Yankees are used to it.

Cats nap, er...cat naps?

But blizzards make me glad I'm a writer. I can sit at home in my grubbies and labor over the Work in Progress (or these days, more often two WIPs). If the power goes out? I've got edits to do–on paper. I can outline the next book–on paper. Or (gasp!) I could read a book. I have plenty of flashlights, plus a 1900 oil lamp that works, so I won't be left in the dark, and there are plenty of books waiting for me.

But... Over the past few years, when my days have been my own, my daily activities not dictated by bosses or train schedules, I have learned a lot about how my brain works–or doesn't work.

My father was a morning person, up early and out of the house by the time I got up (and I finished his pot of tea and read the paper he left). My mother? No way. She was a night owl, and prying her out of bed in the morning was a monumental effort, one which I often abandoned as hopeless. I ended up walking to school in the rain a lot.

My mother's mother was a morning person. She would be up, showered, fully dressed and sitting in the kitchen with a cup of tea before anyone else in the household stumbled down the stairs. My mother's second husband was also a morning person. He was involved in building power plants for a time, so he followed construction schedules (and he also liked to go out for breakfast and hang out with the other morning people, while my mother slept on...).

All in all, I was very aware of diurnal or circadian rhythms from an early age. If there's a genetic component to daily patterns, the odds were good that I would be a morning person, and so it happened. Once I wake up (thank you, hungry cats), my brain starts churning, and I write mental lists of all the things I'm supposed to be doing during the day, and all the things I've put off, and all the things that will need to be done in the next week or month or year. Forget about going back to sleep–it's not happening.

But over the last few years, I've learned more about how my brain works. First and foremost, I know I'm most creative in the morning, so that's when I write (after I've cleared emails and read my favorite blogs and all that stuff). Ideas comes, details click, words flow. I take a short lunch break, then I'm back at it, until...sometime in the afternoon something shuts down. My brain turns to sludge, the flow dries up. Nothing is happening upstairs.

It's like a mini-episode of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Decreased energy and concentration; carbohydrate cravings (those cookies are calling to me); increased sleep (I've started taking naps, which I never used to do). But it's gone the next morning. Maybe I need a new word for it, like ADD (Afternoon Affective Disorder).

Of course, sometimes the outside world doesn't allow me the luxury of slipping into a zombie state. There are edits and copyedits, and they come with deadlines. The publisher wants that manuscript by a fixed date, because there's this whole production queue waiting for it, even if the pub date is still over a year away. As a result, I jealously hoard that precious early-day time, saving it for the new book, the short story, the emails about important details for which I have to communicate coherently to other people. By late afternoon, I read the incoming emails but usually put them aside for more intelligent thought. And I read.

I know there are writers who are reluctant to read other people's work while they're working on something of their own, for fear that their style will be compromised. Not me. There are writers whose work I love, and I dearly wish some of their style would rub off on me, but so far no luck. There are other books that I read and say, I'd never do that. But maybe I need to clear my head of my own words in order to focus on someone else's, because late afternoon is my best reading time. Maybe I'm less analytical then, and more easily drawn into a story.

What about you? When do you work best? When can't you string together a coherent sentence for love or money?

Best Reads of 2010

Elizabeth Zelvin

This is the time when we get to tally up and share with others our favorite reads of the preceding year. This year, I started making my list way back in January 2010, when I was still reading a few of the highly praised mysteries of 2009. I’ve been adding to it and winnowing it throughout 2010, and I think I’ve distilled it to the handful of books I absolutely loved reading. In one case, I got the hardcover by a favorite author the day it was published, read it straight through, then turned back to the beginning and read the whole thing again with equal relish. In another, a book and author I came upon by chance, I thought it was so exceptional that I devoted a whole blog to it.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about readers in my years in the mystery community, it’s that every individual’s taste is different. You may hate the books I love, and vice versa. My own husband and I are yin and yang in this regard. Even with the narrow range of books that we may both pick up—a certain kind of high-quality historical and fantasy fiction—I get bored if the battles go on too long, while he gets bored if the relationships and feelings go on too long. (Same with movies, but that’s another story.) But my list is my list, and I want to write about why I think these particular books are so wonderful.

As I said, I wrote a whole blog about Michael Gruber’s The Book of Air and Shadows (2007), so I’ll repeat here only that it had all three elements of great novel writing: storytelling, writing, and characterization.

The same can be said of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Cryoburn (2010), the long-awaited new volume of the Vorkosigan saga, which I insist in including on my mystery list because one aspect of Bujold’s genius is the deft mixing of genres. Cryoburn is science fiction, mystery, galactic political thriller, and immensely satisfying character-driven novel all at once. Miles Vorkosigan and his family and friends are the kind of people readers like me fall in love with, wish they could meet and befriend, and hunger to hear more about. They are endearing, smart, and funny—intensely real, achingly delicious. I can read about characters like these till the cows come home, over and over.

Margaret Maron’s Christmas Mourning (2010), and her Judge Deborah Knott series in general, shares that characteristic, at a less intense and charismatic level, of endearing characters, of a world of family and friends that the reader would be delighted to belong to. Every time the Knotts sit around playing music, I wish I had been born into a family that did that. In this one, the mystery is neatly done and the personal elements enough to satisfy someone like me who (dare I admit this?) is really reading the book primarily for the relationships.

Also on my list is Sara Paretsky’s latest, Body Work (2010). Paretsky, just named a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America and the chief founding mother of Sisters in Crime, writes a protagonist, V.I. Warshawski, who is a different kind of smart from either Miles Vorkosigan or Judge Deborah and a more abrasive kind of endearing. I have to reread Paretsky’s books just to make sure I can follow the more brainy aspects of the plot, which often have to do with business or politics. I don’t exactly long to know V.I. personally, but I care about her and the circle of friends and supporters she’s gathered around herself. I admire her doggedness—she’s as persistent as, hmm, Rocky, in coming back after a knockout—I like the way she cares about her mother’s memory (and those last ruby glasses, or are we down to one?), and I adore her overt feminism. In the case of this new book, after reading the beginning, I settled into this meaty read with a sigh of satisfaction. Yes! Paretsky is still at the height of her powers; neither the tight plotting nor the development of this installment of the series character arc is going to let me down.

That’s not the whole list—more another time. What’s on your Best of 2010 list, and why?

What makes you a "real" writer?

Sandra Parshall

This is a dangerous period, when I’ve just finished and turned in one novel, haven’t started another yet, and have far too much time to think.

One thought is inevitable: Do I really want to do this again? Do I want to spend another year of my life with people who exist only in my head?

And that leads to: Is this work, or just an extraordinarily time-consuming hobby? There’s no shortage of people who will say that because I don’t make enough money to fully support myself by writing, it’s a hobby, not a career. Never mind the starred reviews. Never mind the Agatha Award. Never mind the books on library shelves. To some people, only money counts, and I don’t make enough money from writing to be considered a real writer. I’m not working; I’m just amusing myself.

The thing is, when I’m sitting here tearing my hair out because I can’t get a scene to go the way I want it, or writing madly to meet a deadline, it sure does feel like work.

The knowledge that I won’t make a ton of money and see my name on the New York Times bestseller list doesn’t lessen my desire to write the absolute best book I can. I’ve published three books that received fabulous reviews I will always treasure, and I don’t want to produce one that will be dismissed as weak and boring. The relatively few people who buy my books, and the far greater number who borrow them from libraries, deserve the best I can give them.

I’m hardly alone. Only a small percentage of writers earn enough to live on. Those with families to support often work at other jobs and write in their off-hours. It’s a foolish writer who quits his day job when his first book sells reasonably well. The second book might tank, and it’s best to hold on to a steady source of non-writing income. Midlist writers are losing their contracts and moving to small presses or being offered far smaller advances than they’ve received in the past. Is writing no more than a hobby to these people?

Publishing is a scary world these days. The profession of gentlemen has become the enterprise of cutthroats. If you’re published by a major imprint and don’t sell as many copies as they expect, you’ll be dumped long before you have a chance to build an audience. If you’re with a small press, you’ll have much more security because small publishers, while they want and need to make money, aren’t driven by the quest for blockbusters. They want to publish good books that will earn some money for both author and publisher. But it will never be a lot. You may have to cope with people (including other writers) who don’t consider you a “real” author because your big advance wasn’t announced in the press.

And you may reach the point I reach after finishing a book, the “Is this work, or just a hobby?” point. Knowing the mental labor that’s involved, knowing how little respect some people have for your efforts, you may ask yourself if it’s worthwhile to do it all again.

You might feel a bit like Tinkerbell, losing your sparkle as you fade away. I hope you – and I – will find people willing to clap if they believe in us, and keep on clapping until we’re swinging through the air again, high above the doubts and fears.

Stand Up and Pay Attention

Sharon Wildwind

Here’s a short quiz for you.

Thirty minutes of vigorous physical activity offsets the effects of how many minutes sitting at a computer?
A. Five minutes
B. Thirty minutes
C. One hour
D. None at all

Which is healthier?
A. Watching a movie on DVD
B. Watching the same movie on commercial television
C. There is no difference

Allowing for an 8-hour sleep at night (a lot of people get lots less), how much of the remaining 16 hours out of each 24 does the average North Americans spend sitting?
A. 70%
B. 50%
C. 30%
D. 25%

Taking a lazy afternoon to lie down and read a book has what affect on health?
A. None at all
B. Contributes to worse health
C. Contributes to better health
D. Is so individual that no general statement can be made

I didn’t like the answers. You may not either. The bottom line: sitting kills.

Studies done both in Canada and Australia and summarized in a recent Scientific American showed a link between sitting and increased death rate. Even when factors such as age, gender, smoking, physical activity, alcohol intake, waist circumference, and body weight were taken into consideration, sitting raised the death rate in each category by somewhere between 11 and 50%. If you are sitting for long periods every day, being physically active for the recommended 60 minutes a day may do other good things for your body, but it does not reverse the effects of sitting. So the answer to the first question is D, no amount of physical activity offsets the effects of sitting.

You think sitting it bad? Try sitting and food, and I’m not talking about having a bag of chips during the football game or a bowl of ice cream while watching a movie. One of the unhealthiest activities appears to be watching food commercials. Six hours a day of commercial television (with commercials) increased children's calorie intake almost 200 calories a day. Children who watched the same amount of television, but all of it non-commercial stations or DVDs did not have the increased calorie intake. So the answer to the second question is that watching a DVD is apparently healthier than commercial television.

The answer to the third question is a walloping 50%. Eight hours allotted out of every twenty-four for sleep, eight hours spent sitting, and eight hours for everything else in life. I don’t suspect, I know that I spend more than eight hours most days sitting, mostly at the computer, but also in my car, or at a desk. And what about those nice relaxing afternoons when I take a book to bed and read? It’s research after all; I’m learning how other authors write.

Six hours of sedentary behavior (one day at the computer or one afternoon in bed), in both lean and not-so-lean individuals, increases blood triglycerides, decreases healthy cholesterol, and increases insulin resistance, even if you’re getting that recommended 60 minutes of physical exercise a day. So taking a lazy afternoon to read a book might be great for the mind, but it’s lousy for the body.

There is some good news in all of this. Undoing the negative effects of sitting or lying down can be reversed by walking for a few minutes at a leisurely pace, as long as you take frequent, short breaks, say 5 to 10 minutes out of each hour. And no, it’s not cumulative. Working for 4 hours and then taking a 20 minute break doesn’t produce the same benefits as working for 55 minutes, taking a five-minute break, and repeating this pattern three more times.

As writers, we are world-class sitters. We owe it to ourselves to set a timer and get up for 5 or 10 minutes every hour. And we owe it to other writers to make sure that every time we teach, we give people 5 or 10 minutes per hour to get up and move around. Starting tomorrow morning, I’m setting my timer.

---------
Quote for the week
Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.
~Charles F. Kettering (1876-1958), American engineer