Beachhead of Integrity

Sharon Wildwind

Last Wednesday—June 6th—we didn’t watch The Longest Day, as we sometimes do, but my husband and I talked about the landing and what establishing beachheads on Gold, Sword, Juno, Omaha, and Normandy beaches meant.

I might have a tenuous connection to the landing. When I was in high school, the principal boasted that some of the planning sessions for the D-Day landing were held in our school auditorium. I’m dubious, but it made a nice story.

My husband knows an even better story. A U.S. Naval officer reported for duty in England, and needing to find him something to do, his commanding officer had him driven to a secret location. Military Police verified his identification and then locked him in a room with hundreds of binders. Every day he read binders for hours on end and at the end of each day, he’d pound on the door and the Military Police would let him out.

That room contained the entire plan for Operation Overlord, which had been drawn up by hundreds of people, some of them possibly in the same auditorium where I sat every Wednesday morning for general assembly.

The officer’s job was to find what everyone else had missed, the one overlooked thing that could cause the invasion to fail. He found it.

One thing that the planners had correctly assumed was that after the initial invasion, the beaches would be in ruins. Artificial docks would be needed to provide a place for supply ships to land. Concrete docks were built in England and then sunk. What better place to hide them than underwater?

Once the invasion had succeeded, the water would be pumped out of the docks, they would pop to the surface, ready to be towed across the English Channel.

The problem the officer discovered was that the pumps intended to drain and raise those docks were nowhere near strong enough to do the job. Someone had confused two types of marine pumps and selected the wrong one. The officer, having worked in marine salvage before the war, spotted this right off. The problem was, he couldn’t get anyone in the chain of command to listen to him.

After futile, frustrating attempts to get senior officers to realize that the invasion was headed for disaster, as a last resort, he took a piece of paper from his wallet and called the phone number written there.

Back in World War I, this officer had been seconded to the British Navy and had become friends with a British Naval officer called Bertie. Bertie had given the officer his home phone number and told him if he was ever back in England, to look him up. In the intervening years, Bertie had become George VI, By the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas King, Defender of the Faith.

The phone number in his wallet was for Buckingham Palace. Within a few minutes the officer was talking to someone who did listen and who promptly set in motion getting the right pumps. The rest, as they say, is history.

Serendipitously, I came across the following quote a couple of days before the D-Day anniversary.

As artists we must work to express our inner imperatives and not just filling the form provided by the marketplace. Integrity comes from the root word integer, meaning whole, unfragmented by doubt or discomfort. A positive list [about why we are a writer] goes a long way toward establishing a beachhead of integrity.

~Julia Cameron, Walking in This World

I fell in love with the phrase establishing a beachhead of integrity. A writing career means establishing a series of beachheads. It’s what each of us does when she makes the decision to turn pro. It’s what we do when we move to a new publisher, or establish ourselves in a new genre, or commit to a new way of publishing. We might be hanging on by our fingernails, but by golly we’re in this writing thing for keeps and we intend to stay here.

One of the nicest things about being part of the mystery community is that other writers are willing to help us get off the beach once we’ve landed. I’ve heard, “How can I help”? far more than, “Go away and don’t bother me.” That to me is integrity.

________

Military factoid for the week:

Men who were U. S. military nurses went ashore on June 6, 1944 with the initial landing. Female nurses waded ashore with the 91st and 128th Evacuation Hospitals on July 10, 1944. A memorial plaque to those two hospitals was unveiled last week, on June 8, 2012, in Boutteville, Normandy. Link to the article about the plaque. At the bottom of that short article is another link to some still photos and training films made during World War II about the operation of evacuation hospitals.

Those Memorable Musicals

I watched the Tony Awards last night--my only chance each year to see some excerpts of those wonderful New York musicals.  The performances inspired me so much that I thought I'd reminisce about some of my favorite songs in musicals, specifically those that were televised, and therefore made up the movies whose soundtracks I sang all through my childhood.  These examples only scratch the surface of my list of favorites, but maybe you'll enjoy reminiscing, too.



I begin with my favorite: Julie Andrews. There is no one better. I saw her in concert once and experienced her immense talent live--what a wonderful experience that was. But I first fell in love with her as Mary Poppins and Maria Von Trapp. Her five-octave range and sweet vulnerable face made her a hit throughout the world. Here's one of her great performances from THE SOUND OF MUSIC. I loved everything that the lovely Shirley Jones appeared in, from OKLAHOMA! to CAROUSEL; this is a favorite of mine from THE MUSIC MAN--one of the most romantic of the musical ballads. Ever since I saw Mitzi Gaynor play Nelly Forbush in SOUTH PACIFIC, I can't really see anyone else in the role, nor have I heard the man who can outsing Rossano Brazzi from the 1958 version of the musical. I couldn't even find Rossano Brazzi on youtube, but I did find this gorgeous clip of his voice, singing my one of my all-time favorite songs. (Have you figured out that I am a chronic romantic?) This performance by Ted Neely is still my favorite version of JESUS from Andrew Lloyd Webber's JESUS CHRIST, SUPERSTAR (1973).  His high reedy voice sweetly captured the vulnerability and strength of Christ. My sister and I both loved the 1956 movie BUNDLE OF JOY. Back before Eddie Fisher left Debbie Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor (a barely-remembered scandal), they had quite a nice chemistry together, as you can see here. My sister and I can sing this song in harmony. :) And another classic: Audrey Hepburn in MY FAIR LADY. She famously didn't sing her own part, but this clip is her own voice before the overdub. Not always on key, but very sweet. What is it about musicals that makes me so happy (mind you, the rest of my family left the room while the Tonys were on). What are your favorites?

View from Preikestolen

by Jeanne Matthews

In the early ‘80s, my husband and I fell in love with cross-country skiing.  We lived in Colorado then and there were lots of tracks to explore.  But we dreamed of going to Norway where the word “ski” was invented (from the Old Norse “skid,” meaning a piece of split wood).  We drooled over photos of Norway’s rugged, snow-capped mountains and spectacular fjords.  But for one reason or another, we never made it. 

Thirty years later, as I began to think about a setting for the third book in my Dinah Pelerin international mystery series, the idea of visiting the Land of the Midnight Sun resurfaced.  I had become fascinated by the Svalbard “Doomsday” Seed Vault in Longyearbyen, Norway and submitted a proposal and the first hundred pages of the manuscript to my publisher.  I settled on an itinerary that combined sightseeing with research and bought the tickets.  We were to depart on July 23, 2011.

On July 22, Anders Behring Breivik, a blue-eyed Norwegian with a hatred of immigrants and all those who advocate on their behalf, detonated a massive bomb in the heart of Oslo, killing eight and critically injuring ten more.  While the police and emergency units rushed to secure the downtown area and tend to the dead and wounded, Breivik boarded a ferry and proceeded to the island of Utoya where a number of children of the immigration-friendly Labor Party were attending a summer camp.  Disguised in the uniform of a policeman, he hunted down and shot to death sixty-nine more people, mostly teenagers.  It was the deadliest attack by a single gunman in recorded history and the worst violence to hit Norway since World War II. 

When we arrived in Oslo two days later, the grief was palpable.  Crowds of mourners poured nonstop into the churches.  Every public space was blanketed with flowers and candles and miniature Norwegian flags and pictures of the dead.  Many of the bouquets and wreaths bore messages of condolence and gratitude from immigrant groups the Norwegians have welcomed into their country. The city looked like a war zone.  The concussion from the explosion destroyed the government headquarters and shattered the windows of buildings for blocks around.  Workers nailed plywood over the gaping holes and erected chain link fences to seal off the cratered buildings.

We took a bus from Oslo to Bergen and as we passed by Utoya, our driver choked up.  When we reached Bergen and checked into our hotel, we found the receptionist in tears.  The whole nation seemed to have succumbed to grief.  It was heart-wrenching.  Sitting in my hotel room and watching that grief unfold on TV, I cried, too.  And then I opened my e-mail.  “Congratulations,” said a message from my publisher.  “Your book will be published next June.  You need to finish it fast.”

I don’t write tragedies.  My books fall on the lighter side of the crime fiction spectrum.  In Bergen, I didn’t see how I could write anything light ever again.  At least, not in or about Norway.

I had always wanted to hike to the top of Preikestolen, one of the most jaw-dropping, ya-gotta-see-this-to-believe-it pinnacles in the world and an iconic image of Norway.  Preikestolen (Pulpit Rock in English) looks like the prow of a monstrous ship.  

On three sides, sheer granite cliffs plunge 2,000 feet to the cobalt waters of the Lysefjord below.  There are no fences, no rails, nothing between you and the abyss.  Just looking at the photographs made an acrophobe like me feel queasy.  But we might never be so close again and the lure of adventure outweighed fear.  On August 3, we hopped a ferry to Stavanger and set out to conquer The Big Rock.

 

The sun was shining for the first time in a week and there were hundreds of people on the trail, all of them climbing faster than us.  After an hour of scrambling over boulders the size of SUVs, we stopped to catch our breath beside a small lake and struck up a conversation with a Norwegian family from Oslo.  They expressed sadness over the massacre, but spoke with pride about Norway’s history of tolerance and equality for all.  They and all Norwegians place great value on their open and inclusive way of life and they refuse to be intimidated by the hateful acts of a bigot.   

The confidence and resilience of those people, not to mention the way they vaulted over chest-high boulders and leapt from precarious ledge to ledge, reminded me that Norwegians are descended from the Vikings, some of the bravest, toughest people who ever walked the planet.  They will endure and, as their national motto says, remain “united until the mountains crumble.”  I decided I could finish my book and even end it on a triumphant note.  We scored the view from the top.  And I modeled the Sami policeman who helps Dinah solve the mystery on a Norwegian Good Samaritan who helped my husband make the descent down the mountain after he fell and broke his arm.
 
Jeanne’s latest Poisoned Pen Press novel is Bonereapers. Visit her website for more information.

The H-Word

by Sheila Connolly

On Memorial Day the Boston Globe ran an interesting article by Billy Baker, titled "Not easy for Harvard grads to say they went there." Front page, no less.

It was a surprisingly lengthy article, about why Harvard grads are reluctant to tell people they actually went to Harvard.  They stutter and stumble when asked where they attended college, and end up saying strangled things like, "uh, Boston," or "in Cambridge."

The thing is, a Harvard affiliation comes with baggage.  People who are generally friendly and open-minded immediately jump to conclusions:  you're smart and you're a snob (i.e., not like them).  You are branded with the Harvard brand.  People expect you to say and do important things, and when you turn out to be a normal, average person, they're disappointed—or they think you're being condescending.

As a result, many graduates manage to avoid saying anything at all about it. They don't wear the sweatshirts in public, literally and figuratively.

I suppose it's Harvard's own fault, since Harvard graduates been running the country for decades, if not centuries.  It is the premier Old Boys Club.  Oh, sure they let the girls have a corner several blocks away (from the seat of power), and only reluctantly did they let them in as of 1999.  It must really gall some of those Old Boys that Harvard has a woman president now.

All right, I'll come right out and admit it:  I have a Ph.D. from Harvard.

Does that make you read my posts in a different way?  Do you know, when I wrote that sentence, I wanted to start adding qualifiers—oh, but I haven't used it in years (it's parked in the garage); they took a lot of people that year (which was true in my department, but it shouldn't imply that we were inferior stock).  I plead guilty to avoiding mentioning it.

But those Harvard folk (no! not me!) are not like other people.  I remember years ago receiving one of those begging letters asking for contributions (excuse me, but you have a bigger budget and endowment than many countries, and you're asking me for money?), and the information sheet I was supposed to include with my generous gift offered me titles such as "Your Lordship," Ambassador, or Archbishop to check off.

I receive the alumni magazine, and have for decades.  I have moved several times, across multiple states—and still they find me, in case I have a few million dollars to leave them (keep dreaming, boys).  I have never sent them either money or a change-of-address form.  Big Crimson Brother is watching me.

Maybe this reluctance is a recent phenomenon.  When my daughter was in elementary school (she's 27 now), I was on the PTA board of her school, and there was much concern voiced about fostering the children's self-esteem.  Something went wrong in there:  prizes were awarded for perfect attendance and nicest smile, while students who stood out academically were told it was rude to boast—it might make the less-talented feel bad.  Competition and excelling were discouraged.  How sad is that?

And that's the generation that is graduating from "that school near Boston" and can't talk about it.

My diploma hangs on my wall.  It's in Latin, and I can't read it. See?  I'm still apologizing.

What's a New York series doing in the Hamptons?

Elizabeth Zelvin


In today’s market-driven publishing industry, editors can sometimes get a bit narrow-minded about where a mystery series is set. If it’s a South Florida series, by gum, they want every book to take place in South Florida. If it’s a Las Vegas series...well, what’s set in Las Vegas had darn well better stay in Las Vegas. The Big Six publishers in particular are wary of anything that might be labeled “regional” or as appealing only to a “niche” market, in spite of plenty of evidence to the contrary. “No one wants to read about Canada” (cf Louise Penny) or “No one wants to read about Italy” (cf Donna Leon), for example. On the other hand, I’ve heard of a New York series set in the music world being dismissed as “niche” by a prestigious smaller publisher located in another part of the country.


The more popular the author, the more latitude in this regard. For example, Laurie King’s Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes get to San Francisco; Margaret Maron’s Judge Deborah Knott gets to Manhattan. But midlist writers like me are expected to keep a New York series firmly within New York. I didn’t know this going in. I originally envisioned my series about recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler and his friends, world-class codependent Barbara and computer genius Jimmy, alternating between books set in the city (as we New Yorkers call it, as if no other existed) and books set “out of town” (as we characterize all other places from Boston to LA and mountains, lakes, and prairies from sea to shining sea). My editor at St. Martin’s, the late Ruth Cavin, nixed that right away.


I didn’t win that battle (or any others) with the legendary Ruth. But I maintain that “out of town” is an essential part of the New York experience. How do you think those of us who live in the Big Apple stand it but by getting out of it once in a while? I adore my city with its rainbow population, 24-hour energy, and kaleidoscopically innumerable, bright, and constantly shifting little worlds. But sometimes I hunger for fresh air, quiet, and more green leaves and blue water than Central Park provides. I leave exhausted, and I come back refreshed and ready to plunge in again.


The Hamptons in particular are to some extent an outpost of New York City. The locals who have been there for generations may resent it, and there are perennial battles between the Bonackers and baymen on one hand and the summer people on the other, some of which provided fodder for my new book, Death Will Extend Your Vacation, set in an imaginary Hampton called Deadhampton (Dedhampton on the tax map), where Bruce and his friends take shares in a lethal clean and sober group house that turns out to be brimming with secrets. Unlike such authors as James Patterson, Nelson DeMille, and Susan Isaacs, whose Hamptons books pit the locals against the celebrities and rich folks south of the highway whose lifestyle you probably picture when you hear the term “the Hamptons,” I focus on the ordinary people who get away to the more modest area north of the highway.


My own country house in Springs is an 800 square foot (yes, that’s two zeroes) cheaply built ranch that a wolf with good lungs could blow down, soil that’s not rich from three hundred years of potato farming but a mix of inorganic sand and rocks (“For this my ancestors left Ireland?” my husband asked when he tried to dig a garden, right after we bought the place twenty years ago), and scraggly oaks rather than the giant elms of the Hamptons that get into the movies. But I love the beach, the birdsong, the flowers, the clean air, and the relative peace and quiet (no murders in my neighborhood so far), and so do Bruce, Barbara, and Jimmy.

The Biggest Risk a Writer Can Take

by Sandra Parshall

I picked up the book automatically because it was written by one of my favorite authors. I didn’t look at the jacket copy. I hadn’t read any reviews. All that mattered was the author’s name.

I didn’t realize until I got home that this book wasn’t another of the insightful, character-driven “domestic thrillers” I’ve come to expect from the writer. This one was about terrorism and a government conspiracy, and part of it was set in Iraq. Not the sort of book I usually enjoy.

I was more than disappointed. I felt cheated. I felt, melodramatic though it sounds, betrayed. My reader self whined, How dare one of my favorite authors write a book I won’t enjoy? At the same time, my writer self argued that an author is entitled to write whatever he chooses and shouldn’t let disappointed readers interfere.
 
However, my rational self (I do have one, although it’s not always on display) knows that any author is taking a big chance when he or she shifts gears and produces a book that doesn’t meet established reader expectations. A popular cozy author who publishes a bloody, action-filled thriller will discover that her cozy readers aren’t as gentle and polite as their book preferences might indicate.

It’s likely, in fact, that an editor will stomp on the thriller notion before it gets past the discussion stage. Your fans won’t follow you, the editor will say, and they’ll be mad at you too. In most cases, the editor will be right. The author who achieves success in one subgenre and switches to something radically different will essentially be starting over, aiming at a new audience. If the publisher goes along with the change, in the hope that the author will break out of a narrow category and find general success, the writer may be asked to use a pseudonym to avoid confusion with the earlier books.

Even a change in tone in an established series will leave readers angry. We’ve seen this happen recently to Nevada Barr, with Burn and The Rope. I’ve read all of Barr’s Anna Pigeon books, and I noticed the tone had gradually darkened in the later ones. The series was never cozy, and Anna’s drinking problem is troubling, but cozy lovers can enjoy the earlier books because they aren’t particularly graphic and they overflow with lovely descriptions of the natural settings I which Anna, a federal park ranger, works. The violence in the later books, especially the violence aimed at Anna herself, is more vivid and prolonged, and her emotional turmoil is acute. With Burn, which got away from the park settings entirely and focused unflinchingly on sexual exploitation of children, a lot of readers said they couldn’t read Barr anymore. I’ve heard complaints about the depressing tone of the latest book, a prequel titled The Rope, although it seems no darker to me than the books that came before Burn. Barr still has enough fans to put her books on bestseller lists, and as both a reader and a writer I’m curious to see what she’ll do next.

Ending a popular series can be as difficult as switching subgenres. Success, and the expectations of fans, can create a golden cage that a writer might never break out of. While the author yearns to move on to fresh material, fans still love the familiar characters and are still willing to pay for the books, and the publisher is happy with a sure thing. Starting a second series is an option, and a lot of writers now produce two (or more) books a year in different series. But kill off a series that’s selling well? It doesn’t happen often.

As for the new book that seemed uninviting to me although it was written by a favorite author, I grudgingly gave it a chance. I discovered that everything I loved about the author’s work is there: the complex characters, the thoughtful dissection of motives and emotions, the tangled relationships. No, I don’t enjoy the descriptions of people being blown up and gunned down in Iraq, but fortunately those scenes don’t dominate the story. I’ll finish it. And I’ll look forward to his next book, which (judging from the description) will get back to what I enjoy most: portrayals of ordinary people forced to work their way out of horrific situations.

Have you ever been disappointed when a writer went in a new direction? Do you think writers should stick with what they do best and what their fans love to read?

Summertime and the writing is . . .

Sharon Wildwind

. . . the same as it is the other three seasons of the year.

A few days ago I had lunch with fellow writers, the last time we would get together before fall. We got to talking about the good old writing days.

You remember, summers when the publishing world shut down June, July, and August. Especially August when every agent and publisher in New York City—and the publishing world was New York City—was reputed to leave town not to return until after the Labor Day weekend. When if you hadn’t sent off a submission by the middle of July, you knew there was no sense worrying about it until at least the middle of September.

When you might be lucky enough to take a writing workshop at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop or the Whidbey Island Writers Conference. Supposedly you were going there to write, but you going as much for what the Irish call craic, the fun and enjoyment of like-minded companions sharing talk, gossip, and perhaps a little wine around a campfire or on a deck overlooking a lake.

Or you’d pack your journal and perhaps the portable typewriter inherited from your great-aunt, fully intending to get into serious writing at the cottage or on the houseboat. Two weeks later you’d come home with maybe six pages of your journal filled.

Man, those were the days.

Back before there were year-around deadlines, 24/7 e-mail and social media, and a publishing world that never, ever sleeps.

I sometimes blog about how to find the motivation, time, and energy to keep writing. This week I suggest that you stop writing this summer. If you must write, do it as play.

Write in a different way than you usually do. If you’re usually banging on the keyboard, try writing in longhand in a journal.

Write stuff that makes you laugh, whether it’s a skit for the kids to perform at the family reunion or limericks, you can get a lot of healthy mileage out of writing AND laughing.

Take one photo everyday for 7 days. At the end of the week, download those 7 photos to your computer and use them to make up a short story.

If you quilt or sew, create some story-based fabric. Get yourself some light-colored fabric, freezer paper, and fabric markers. Iron the wrong side of the fabric to the waxy side of the freezer paper. Write with the markers all over the fabric, then quilt it into a purse, pillow, or small quilt. If you don’t quilt, find a quilting friend. You write and he or she quilts.

If you’re stuck with a deadline this summer and have to keep the serious stuff going, at least wear a funny hat while you write. I’m planning to wear my Mini Mouse Ears. 

And, I’m taking my own advice and doing two things for fun writing this summer. 

First, I’m joining two other local writers to inspire one another to turn out a complete first draft between June 27 and September 29. No pressure here just a lot of sharing and fun. We might even get in some of that crac on a deck overlooking a lake.

Second, I’m ignoring all deadlines, e-mail, and social media for three weeks. I’m sure I’ll be writing during those three weeks, but I hope all of it will be playful writing. I might even make a word quilt.

------------

Quote for the week

Vacations are seen as an antidote to work. They are medicine, a remedy for counteracting the effects of labor.... Vacations allow us to be away from the job, to change the patterns of our day, to alter our routine, to reconfigure our actions and habits, to rediscover ourselves.

~Dr. Al Gini, ethicist, teacher, and writer in The Importance of Being Lazy

What You Should Know About Tomorrow's Transit of Venus

by Julia Buckley

By now you've certainly heard of the Transit of Venus, which will be viewable tomorrow, June 5, "around 6:04 p.m. EDT until sunset."  It will be the last Transit of Venus in our lifetimes.

Venus will pass directly between the earth and the sun, and it will be visible (as pictured on Wikipedia, at left) as a small black dot on the sun.  You can check out some interesting historical facts about previous transits at the Transit of Venus website.

Here are some interesting selected facts about the Transit of Venus on Tuesday, June 5th:

--You can see a live broadcast of the event (which will last about six hours) at www.slooh.com.  Check out this amazing space camera for a calendar of viewing in your area.

--You can check out the memoir of Jeremiah Horrocks, the twenty-one-year-old English minister who predicted the Transit of Venus in 1639 in Hoole, England, here.

--There are several theories about the "Black Drop Effect"--that is, that when the planet Venus reaches the edge of the sun, it appears to elongate.  You can read about them here.

--For six safe ways to view the transit, click here.

--For Transit of Venus merchandise, shop here.

--For some neat cultural connections, including a Transit of Venus soundtrack, check out this page.

--Why are transits of Venus so rare?  Find the answer here.

Whether you watch the event online, through the safety of an appropriate viewing apparatus, or on the news after the event, you will surely appreciate this rare and wonderful happening in the solar system, one of the few viewable with the naked eye (sort of).

Enjoy the moment!

Drawing on Personal History

by Charles Todd
(Charles and Caroline Todd)
 

(Photo by Sandra Parshall)

We’ve just come back from England.  There are banners and bunting everywhere for the Queen’s Jubilee.  And in all the shops are commemorative cups and plates, tablecloths, balloons and even pillows with crowns and gilt carriages and ER II embroidered on them. Block parties are being planned, and special dinners in restaurants are being advertised. Gardens abound with floral tributes, from a huge crown at Bateman’s, Rudyard Kipling’s house, to borders laid out in the colors of the flag in smaller front gardens. The newspapers are full of royal history, photographs of the Queen at various stages of her life, coverage of the important political events of her reign, and even postcards one can send to friends. Michael Wood is doing a series on TV about the history of Britain. All very exciting and festive. 
 
We’d have liked to stay for the celebration, but the new Bess Crawford mystery, An Unmarked Grave, comes out on the 5th of June, and we wanted very much to be here for that. 

This book reflects a bit of family history. The Spanish Flu epidemic that raged through Europe in 1918-1919 isn’t just a page in a history book. It’s personal. On both sides of the family accounts have been passed down by those who lived through it. Stories of a young mother who nearly lost her life, of a child who didn’t survive, of the uncertainty of an illness with no treatment and no cure, waiting for the crisis that meant the difference between life and death for a father, a sister, a beloved aunt. This is captured so well in Downton Abbey, as Lavinia loses her struggle, but Cora lives. In England, where so many families had already suffered the loss of a loved one on the battlefield, they now faced fresh losses at home. Like a Biblical plague, influenza swept the world, and millions died. 

And so An Unmarked Grave opens with Bess facing the epidemic as best she can, running short of sleep, barely remembering to eat or stop for a cup of tea. There are wounded, as well as the flu victims, to nurse.  She hasn’t heard from her parents or Simon, she doesn’t know if they have fallen ill or if letters have been delayed.  Mrs. Hennessey hasn’t written. Is this silence because the men who must read and censor the post are dying at their desks and there is no one to take their place? What news there is from England is bad, soldiers being notified of the deaths of wives, parents, children. In the midst of this nightmare, Bess is shown a body that hadn’t died of wounds or the influenza. Where did he come from? And why was he murdered? Before she can even report what she’s seen, she herself collapses and lies at death’s door.

Bess tries to regain her strength and piece together what she remembers of that last night before she herself is struck down. But long before she can identify a killer, he strikes again—and again.  What is driving him? Vengeance? Love? Or just plain hate?

Researching this fourth mystery in the Bess Crawford series meant learning more about the flu epidemic, more about the aid stations and hospitals in England and in France. There’s an American in the story, and we went to Mackinac Island in Michigan to find out about him.  In England, we traced a killer’s race toward his final target. We traveled to Cheddar Gorge to learn more about Private Wilson, and to Somerset to a clinic and thence to Bess’s own home. Each step of the way, we followed in Bess’s footsteps. As we always do, whether it’s Bess or Rutledge. To see the things they see, to see the world they knew, to find out what’s real about a place and what it must have been like during the war years. The fascinating part of research is discovering something unexpected, something that adds to the story or a character’s background. Something that makes the action more exciting.

What did we discover this last trip to England? You’ll have to read next year’s Bess or next year’s Rutledge to find out. We have over twelve hundred photographs, our own memories, our thoughts as we walked the ground, and the kernel of a plot. But the first page hasn’t been written yet, the first scene hasn’t taken shape on the page. The first characters haven’t spoken. Or lied. After all, we’ve only just unpacked our suitcases! By the end of June there will be a beginning, and by the end of September, Bess will be ready to hand over to our editor. A few weeks later, it will be Rutledge’s turn.  

This is why writing our books is so enjoyable—it’s like setting out on Safari into the unknown, and bringing back a mystery that will keep readers enthralled from start to finish.  That’s why we love what we do so much---we ourselves get caught up in the story-telling, just as the reader does.  So stick around until next year.  Meanwhile, find out just who is in that Unmarked Grave. And why.
 
The mother and son team of Caroline and Charles Todd write the Ian Rutledge mysteries and the Bess Crawford mysteries. Visit their website at www.charlestodd.com to learn more about their books and their writing partnership.

REUNION

by Sheila Connolly

This weekend I'm attending my 40^th reunion at Wellesley College.  That one has always been a landmark because the college development/fundraising office figured that by then we'd have made our fortunes and be ready to come up with a Really Big Gift.

Well, not so much.  Through no fault of the college's I've wandered through five careers.  Or maybe that was partly the college's fault, because they convinced us all that we could be whatever we wanted to be.  I guess my problem was that I was never quite sure what I wanted to be, so I tried a lot of different things, like art historian, investment banker, and professional genealogist.  In any case, no fortune to donate, save for gratitude.

I avoided my first few reunions, in part because I lived on the opposite coast and couldn't afford the airfare, and also because I didn't think I had anything to say.  I think the first one I attended was my 20^th reunion.  It's always both fun and depressing to go back and see many classmates all at once, and try to fit the faces in front of you with the shiny-bright 22-year-old faces you remember.  Yes, we all got older—except in our memories.

One thing that has always saddened me about these reunions is the people who are not there. That's the downside of attending a prestigious and renowned college:  people have expectations of you.  Your parents, your professors, even you yourself, expect you to go out and conquer the world.

You have to remember I attended college during one of those optimistic feminist waves.  If I recall accurately, about 3% of female college graduates nationwide attended a professional school (law, medicine) after graduation.  Now it's more like 50%, so I guess there have been some positive changes. But I daresay that Wellesley's average was higher, and I do remember the fierce competitiveness among biology majors fighting for those few slots in medical schools (which has something to do with why I changed my major from biology to art history).

But I have heard too often that the graduates who choose not to attend reunions stay home because they feel they simply aren't successful enough.  They aren't CEOs of Fortune 500 companies; they don't run government agencies; they haven't saved any small countries lately.  They have merely lived simple productive lives:  married (we did that in those days), raised a family, held a job, volunteered for community organizations, taken care of ageing parents, often all at the same time.  And still they feel that they don't measure up against their college peers. That saddens me.

I feel extraordinarily lucky to be where I am today:  a published writer.  Maybe I heard the college message, that if you want it enough, and work hard enough, you can succeed—but I know that doesn't hold true for a lot of  people.  I can now look back on my varied careers and say, all of it goes into my writing.  I've learned from everything I've ever done. I choose to count that as success.

Which still doesn't mean that I can catch up with the sister graduates, such as Katherine Hall Page and Diane Mott Davidson.  Maybe by my 45^th reunion? 

P.S. Recently our class reunion coordinator put out a call, saying, "We want to invite each of you to share something special about yourselves in the form of a picture or item that we can display."  What would you choose that summarizes your past five years, or where you are now in your life? Not an easy choice!