Patterns and Self-Protection

Sharon Wildwind

Crystallography is the study of how atoms are arranged in solid materials. Scientists identified seventeen possible two-dimensional arrangement patterns, eleven of them in lines and six in circles. Ruth B. McDowell, an American quilter realized these patterns were the same ones quilters used, but most quilters had limited themselves to only a few of their possible choices.

This past week I worked through a couple of her books, drawing a lot of patterns and coloring them in muted colors. As long as the patterns were pretty unidirectional I was okay, but when elements had to be reversed or placed upside down, I had a terrible time. I know I’m a little dyslexic with numbers, but patterns? I’m the pattern-recognition queen, so I was at a loss as to what was going on.

Here’s Pattern #1 (P1). Because it’s only one placement repeated over and over, I didn’t have a problem with it, though where most people would draw the first design from the instructions, I would be equally likely to draw the second.

The scientist's version on the left; my left-handed version on the right.

Pattern #2 (P2) was a little harder, but after several false starts, I managed.

Ditto to the previous drawings.

Pattern #4 (P4) was a complete disaster. (For those of you who like consistency and order, P3 is a circular pattern and I’m no where ready to tackle the circle ones yet.) 

You’re probably already ahead of me on where the problem lay. I’m left handed!

Ms. McDowell starts with a sample block pattern with a hand imposed over it. Tell most people to imagine a  hand over a pattern and they’ll visualize the first figure in the line. I tend to visualize the second one. Because I can do simultaneous translation of right-handed instructions into left-hand, I was also tending to mentally reverse the pattern, so it looked like the third figure in the line.

1) What most people see in their mind. 2) What I see. 3) A reversed left-handed pattern.

What I was supposed to draw on top.
What I kept drawing on the bottom.

When those patterns included elements that had to be flipped or reversed, my brain couldn't keep up with the changes. It took me a full day to work out the difference between the right-hand orientation for P4 (top) and the left-hand orientation (bottom) my brain kept handing me.

No doubt the scientists who came up with the seventeen patterns would tell me that the world isn’t put together with left-handed arrangements of atoms. Maybe their’s isn’t. Mine is. If you’re a mystery writer, so is yours.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever voluntarily, not because it was for work or school

• Fired a handgun just to see what it feels like?
• Done a ride-along with police officers or other first responders?
• Toured a new building and been more interested in places to hide bodies than in the nifty pro-ecology features?
• Read an autopsy report?
• Taken a field trip to the medical examiners office or a forensics lab?

Ordinary—I’ll refraining from saying normal—people don’t seek out these things as a matter of course. Because as mystery writers we have a far greater familiarity with what human beings do to one another, we have a greater need to pay attention to healthy, life-affirming activities. Art is one of my anodynes. It finally dawned on me that my need for pattern and low-key colors in the past few days is my reaction to what’s been happening out there in the world.

The point is we have to be as diligent in protecting ourselves as we do in researching our books.

Physical activity and sports are good ideas. So are meditation, dance, music, and good friends. I’ve learned some things recently about singing bowls and walking labyrinths, and I’m interested in trying both, though maybe not at the same time.

One further comment about pattern-recognition queens. I hope you saw the first episode of The Bletchley Circle on PBS last night. Four women who worked as code breakers at Bletchley Park during World War II reunite in 1952 London to track down a serial killer. There are two more episodes, one on April 28 and the last on May 5. Well done, well worth watching.

-----

Quote for the week

Let’s be careful out there.

~ Sergeant Phil Esterhaus, Hill Street Precinct, played by the late Michael Conrad (1925 - 1983)

Assassins

by Julia Buckley

My son is a senior in high school; many senior students (about 500 of them) have signed up to play a game they call Assassins. Each student must pay five dollars to play; they they are given a name of another senior student, whom they must "assassinate" by squirting them with a squirt gun.  They are not allowed to do it in the school building, so they are relegated to stalking one another on the grounds, or even at one another's houses.  If a student is squirted, then she or he must give up the name of his or her target to his or her assassin, who then moves on to "kill" again.

This is a macabre game, yes. But the winning student gets a whole lot of money, which, hopefully, he or she will use for college tuition.

But what I didn't realize about Assassins is how scary it feels. I'm reminded of the old childhood days of playing Hide and Seek, and feeling, while I hid in a dark closet, the tension of being stalked.

For the same reason, my son's eyes darted nervously around today while he helped me carry in groceries.  He's still "alive" and has not spotted a possible stalker in the last few weeks.  This does not make him lessen his vigilance--not after he witnessed the assassination of his best friend.

I usually pick the two of them up after school. On Friday I was sitting in my car waiting.  My glasses were off (I don't need them for reading), so I was pretty blind to my surroundings.  Then I heard running feet, and two bodies slammed into the side of my car.  Alarmed, I reached for my glasses as the back doors were wrenched open.

Then I heard a girl's voice say, "Got you, Mike!"  and Mike moaned in humiliation.

I turned to see a young woman with a tuft of blonde hair--a la Pink--saying, "Sorry about that.  Could you give me the name of your target, please?"

Mike looked surly, but he named someone.  She wrote it down in a notebook and said, "Thank you!"  Then she disappeared and walked down the sidewalk.

"Well, that's it; I'm dead," Mike said.

"I'm so sorry," I told him.  And I was.  I felt somehow responsible, as though I should have parked closer or had the doors open for them.  Anything to prevent Mike from losing his "at large" status.  And while I think young men today are fairly accepting of equality of the sexes, I think he felt pretty humiliated to be assassinated by a cute (and fairly small) girl.

"I can't believe this," he said as we went home.  "This is a real weekend-ruiner."

"It's a bummer," my son agreed.

And now he's getting more nervous.  There are still weeks and weeks before graduation, but someone out there has his name. And just as he hasn't really pursued his own target, his person hasn't really pursued him.. Yet.

I'm not sure what I think of this game, and I don't know how long it's been a senior tradition.

But we've all learned that a faux assassination plot creates real tension.

(pictured: my younger son assassinating a pumpkin in 2009).

Networking in Person

We hear so much about social networking that we almost forgot that there is also the real thing. You know, actually meeting people face to face. I belong to two organizations particularly good for that. One is Sisters in Crime and the other is Mystery Writers of America. I've been attending a lot of events for both organizations for years, and volunteering where I could (because that is an excellent way to get to know other members, to network in what can often be a clique-ish group.) Consequently, a couple of years ago I was elected president for Sisters in Crime Orange County, became vice president last year for Sisters in Crime Los Angeles, and was elected president this year for the Southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America. I'm not saying you have to be on the board of these chapters to get anywhere, but these groups offer multiple chances to network with fellow authors and learn a thing or two about what readers want. 

If you're serious about making a career in writing mysteries then networking is essential. After all, you are going to run into these people again and again at conferences and other author events. I've helped up-and-comers and veterans have helped me. In fact, I can't think of a more welcoming group than people who write about ways to kill.

But you will have lots of chances to meet and greet readers, librarians, and booksellers as well. This is networking, too, in case you missed it. And there's no better way to hand sell books than to get in good with librarians and booksellers.

I can't tell you how many times newbie authors shrug off libraries. People only borrow books from libraries, they say. That's a lost sale! But nothing could be further from the truth. Remember, libraries have to BUY the books in their stacks. And if they have a lot of branches, it would be wonderfully swell if they bought at least one book for each branch. That's a good chunk of sales right there. And if you have several formats of your book--large print, foreign language, audio--that's even MORE sales. And let's face it. My books come out in hardcover at a $26 price point. Readers who aren't familiar with my work may not feel comfortable plunking down that much money, so they try it at the library first. Hopefully, they might like it enough to buy the other books in the series.


If you're invited to an author luncheon sort of event, don't just sit aloof at the head table and chat only with your bookseller or the organizers. Get out of your seat before festivities begin and work the group! This is like a wedding--your wedding--and you should be going to each table and chatting up the people at the table. These are your guests. Enjoy yourself. If you enjoy yourself, your audience will. And a happy audience likes to give your books a chance.

You just never know when or where a good networking opportunity will present itself; in the grocery line, at a swap meet, on vacation--anywhere you find yourself. I'm not saying to hard sell, but if the opportunity arises when someone asks what you do, have that bookmark ready to give away.

The Boston Bombing

by Sheila Connolly

Poor Kim Jong-un.  You almost have to feel sorry for him.  His sabre-rattling was going so well; he had thousands of North Koreans parading around, waving their guns and dragging missiles around the country.  The rest of the world was sitting on the edge of their seats, biting their nails, wondering "Will he?  Won't he?" actually send a nuclear warhead somewhere.

And then along come one or two guys with a couple of pressure cookers and

some buckshot and nails, and suddenly North Korea has fallen off the map, and Boston is front and center on every news outlet in the country.  Explosive devices made of stuff that you or I could buy on any street or in any mall in Middle America.  My husband tells me you can cook up gunpowder with no exotic ingredients and no high-tech equipment, in your garage (I haven't tried it). See, it doesn't take nuclear warheads to terrify people.  The bloody deaths or maiming of some children and innocent bystanders is more than enough to make the point.

And whoever made and planted those bombs hasn't even bothered to come forward [as of the time of this writing—it's a very fluid situation].  Can't you see him (most likely it's a him, right?) sitting back and watching the wall-to-wall news coverage and gloating?  I did that! Is it a good thing or a bad thing if that feeling of personal satisfaction is enough for the perpetrator, without any grand political agenda or terrorist affiliation? 

This is not a political blog, but we are all mystery writers here, so we all choose to deal with death and fear and threats on some level.  None of us writes violent stories filled with explosions and assault weapons and stacks of bodies (and I'll confess I find it harder and harder even to read those as I grow older).  We write softer, gentler mysteries.  Yes, someone dies, but the plot revolves around finding out who killed that person, and why the killer believed that person had to die.  There are seldom convincing reasons for the killing, because killing another person is inherently wrong.

Our stories most often involve ordinary people, usually women, thrust into an investigation because finding a killer is the right thing to do.  Often one of the main characters is a law enforcement official of some sort, and that matters too, because that person carries the weight of our whole societal structure.  He or she is appointed or volunteers to keep us safe, and to pursue and root out the evil that hides within our culture.

Violence is never far from American society. Witness the heated arguments about gun control.  Private citizens may never in their lives fire an assault weapon, but they want to be able to, just in case.  In case of what?  Do they truly believe that chaos is just around the corner, and having a serious weapon will protect them?  If the entire citizenry of Boston had been carrying during the Marathon, would it have made a difference? (More likely a lot more innocent people would have been injured by terrified citizens shooting wildly.) The sad thing is, we don't feel safe, even in our own homes.  And the Marathon Bombing just reinforces that.

I have no solutions.  I write murder mysteries because killing is wrong, and I believe that it is important to show that justice can be served, even if it's only by one person at a time.

What Agents Do

Elizabeth Zelvin

With more and more aspiring writers skipping the lengthy and discouraging quest for an agent to deal directly with small presses that permit it or self-publish e-books and sometimes print on demand paperbacks as well, I thought it might be useful to review the many things that agents do in addition to placing manuscripts with the Big Six (or is it Big Five now?) traditional publishers. I’m not saying that every agent accomplishes or even offers all of these. But I suspect that many authors who think finding an agent is more trouble than it’s worth don’t realize quite how much they’re missing.

An agent is an expert on publishable writing who believes in you and your work. We all know about the periodic self-doubt that assails even the most successful authors. Praise from your mother and your three best friends is no substitute for an agent who loves your manuscript.

Many agents will work with you to make sure your mansucript is publishable—as good as it can possibly be—to give you the best possible chance with the editors to whom they’ll submit it.

An agent negotiates the contract so you don’t have to. Even if you’ve found your publisher without an agent, you may want one to make sure the contract doesn’t give away rights to your characters, get a bigger advance, maybe include more free author copies than originally offered, better percentages on sales, a shorter contract term, a clear mechanism for reversion of rights to you, and protect subsidiary rights.

Assuming you haven’t given away all the subsidiary rights, including e-books, trade and mass market paperbacks, audio books, foreign editions, and movie and television options, an agent can help you exercise them advantageously. Without an agent, you may have no idea how to market any of these or not even think about these opportunities to make more money from your work, except for formatting your book as an e-book and putting it on Amazon. An experienced agent knows whom to approach and how to dicker with them.

An agent acts as a buffer in the business relationship between you and your publisher. Ideally, your relationship with your editor is all about what you’ve written and how the editor can help you make it better. You may have some disagreements along the way—say, a plot twist or character that the editor wants you to change or delete. Those are the battles you want to devote your energy to. In the meantime, your agent may be working on getting you more visibility in the publisher’s promotions, finding out why your statement and royalty check haven’t arrived, or, if necessary, prodding the contracts department to disgorge that crucial reversion of rights letter.

Agents know a lot that authors don’t. It’s a full time job for them to keep their fingers on the pulse of the publishing market. In a time when things are changing constantly and everybody—publishers, authors, booksellers, marketers, libraries, agents, and the reading public—is guessing, sometimes wildly, about what’s going to happen next and how to stay in the game, it’s no small thing to have an agent in your corner.

Mysterious Weather

 by Sandra Parshall

It was a dark and stormy night.

Laugh, if you must, at this classic example of bad writing, but I sort of like it. For me, nothing creates atmosphere as effectively as weather. I’ve  considered weather and seasons in fiction before, and now that I’m preparing to moderate a Malice Domestic panel on the topic, this seems like a good time to revisit a few points.

I always appreciate a writer who knows how to use the natural world to enhance a novel, and I’m disappointed when a writer’s story seems to take place in a hermetically sealed chamber, with no mention of what might be going on outside. Characters who never experience weather are not living in a world I recognize.

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

Maybe I’m hyper-aware of weather because I’ve lived for many years in the Washington, DC, area, where residents are obsessed with what Mother Nature is up to at all times. In summer it’s the tropical heat, the humidity, the violent thunderstorms that leave tens of thousands without electricity — or, alternatively, the drought that leaves dead lawns and gardens in its wake. 

In winter, we’re terrified that it might start snowing at any moment. If a single flake wafts from the heavens in one of the outer suburbs, all the schools close and half a million federal workers claim liberal leave and head for home to hunker down. Everybody knows that once our streets are covered with snow, they’re going to stay that way for a while. A few inches of white stuff can trap people in their homes for days as they wait for a plow to rescue them. People who spent the first forty years of their lives in Maine somehow forget how to drive in snow when they move to Washington. Adding to the anxiety is the baffling inability of the District and suburban counties to clear the streets in a timely manner. Several years ago, when we had back-to-back blizzards that dumped three FEET of snow on us… well, there’s a reason the event became known as Snowmageddon.

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

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

Summer also seemed a good choice of season for Broken Places, which brims with hot emotions, and I liked the melancholy of autumn, when so much of the world fades and dies, for Under the Dog Star. 

In my latest book, Bleeding Through, early spring's winds and volatile weather, which can make us doubt that summer will ever come, mirror the turmoil of the characters' lives.

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

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

 

The four authors I’ll be working with on the Malice Domestic panel all know how to use the seasons and weather effectively. If you haven’t read them yet, give these books a try: A Broth of Betrayal and A Spoonful of Murder by Connie Archer: A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die (out in June) by Edith Maxwell; Murder by Vegetable by Barbara Graham; Revenge of the Crafty Corpse by Lois Winston. And I hope we'll see you in the audience at Malice.

Red Ink and Invisible Powder

Sharon Wildwind

In Nursing Arts, my classmates and I learned to take temperatures, make beds, fill hot water bottles, dispense medications, and perform other hands-on skills. The class was held in a ward-classroom of eight beds. At the beginning of one class our instructor had us press our hands onto a red ink pad. We went about making beds, taking each other’s temperatures and dispensing M & Ms into paper cups to simulate pouring medications.

Within twenty minutes red fingerprints covered the ward. We spent the rest of the class cleaning. The lesson was a visual reminder of how fast and far we would spread bacteria if we didn’t wash our hands well and often enough.

I was reminded of that class this past week when I went looking for an update on the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA). I had one simple question: was it safe to shred receipts, which are coated BPA powder? The answer was not simple.

BPA has at least three strikes against it.

Strike #1: BPA has been in a lot of things: food and beverage containers, water bottles, baby bottles, and baby toys like teething rings. Though some restrictions have been placed on its use, there is still a lot of it around. It is on one very important thing: thermal-paper receipts, those aggravating bits of paper that clutter our purses or fanny pack.

Strike #2: Since thermal papers coatings are a powder BPA rubs off on everything the receipt touches, and it stays there until that object rubs against something else.

Strike #3: Some research indicates that BPA is perhaps more toxic at low-levels than at higher levels.

Come run errands with me.

I start at the bank to get cash from the automatic teller. I also get a paper receipt, which is likely coated with BPA powder. The money has a high probability of being contaminated with bacteria, cocaine, and more BPA powder. Cocaine and bacteria aren’t absorbed through unbroken skin, so unless I have a cut, rash, or chapped hands those two contaminants sit on my skin until I wash my hands. BPA is absorbed through unbroken, healthy skin. As I head for my car, BPA on my hands heads for my blood stream.

Since I’ve stuffed receipts into my purse for ages, everything in there—comb, keys, wallet, cell phone, hand lotion, make-up and so on—is BPA contaminated. Open my car door, now it’s on the door. Touch the steering wheel, now it’s on the steering wheel. Rub my eye, it reaches the blood stream faster through mucous membranes.

At the grocery store, I wipe the cart handle with anti-bacterial wipes the store provides. Great for removing bacteria, but the alcohol plus the rubbing action likely drives BPA through my skin faster.

Do my shopping, go through the checkout, collect another receipt and start the process over.

Or maybe I ask the cashier to put the receipt in the bag with my groceries where it rubs against the bag itself and the cans, jars, and bottles inside, depositing powder. Hopefully my fruits, vegetables, bread, etc. are in bags, but then again, with the desire to be more eco-friendly, I don’t always bother putting fresh food in plastic bags any more. After all, are my apples really going to suffer riding around loose in a cloth shopping bag until I get home? I didn’t think so until today.

When I reach home maybe I leave my receipts in my purse. Maybe I put them in the box where we collect bits of paper needed to balance our check book. Eventually, after doing the balancing act, receipts go into the shredder—must be conscious of identity theft— giving me an opportunity to breathe aerosolized BPA powder and throughly contaminating my shredder.

Off go those clear plastic bags of shredded paper to the recycling center to begin their journey into other kinds of paper, including more cash register receipts and toilet paper, which currently has about a 50% chance of being containing BPA powder and the cycle begins again.

Sometimes it seems that when we solve one problem, we create two in its place.

If you can live with the idea, stop getting receipts. If you can’t live with that idea—I can’t—here are some cleaning tips gleaned from the Internet.

Clean the most highly-contaminated objects and areas, those places where you’ve previously housed receipts: purses, backpacks, glove compartments, cloth grocery bags, boxes where you store household records, shredder, etc. Wash them or at least rinse them with soap and water, using paper towels which are then disposed. Wash or wipe everything that’s been in those areas, like everything in your purse.

To prevent future recontamination, bring a plastic bag with you. Ask the clerk to put the receipt in that bag and close it tightly. If you’re doing self-check out, touch the receipt as little as possible as you put it in the bag.

Never crumple a receipt and throw it away. Apparently crumpling releases the most powder onto your hands.

Wash your hands as soon as you can after handling receipts. At a minimum, wash your hands when you get home. Consider using liquid soap in a dispenser. Rubbing BPA-contaminated hands on bar soap transfers the powder to the soap.

Never shred or recycle receipts. I know, I know. Identity theft and the ecology. I’m not keen on either receipts being out there with my credit card number on them or BPA leaching into landfills, but is that worse than aerosolizing BPA in my office or it ending up in my recycled papers? I honestly don’t know.

Above all, have hope. Someone clever will come up with a solution to all of this.

Quote for the week

Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change - this is the rhythm of living. Out of our overconfidence, fear; out of our fear, clear vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress.
~ Bruce Barton, (1886 – 1967), author, ad executive—he created Betty Crocker—and member of the U. S. House of Representatives

Dog Stories: Good and Evil

Perhaps it is appropriate to discuss this right after Kate George's post about the deaths of animals in fiction--but the stories I'm discussing are true, and one of them will infuriate you.

Last night I finally watched MARLEY AND ME.  I had avoided this movie for a long time because I didn't want to watch the ending, which I knew simply from the movie buzz was going to be sad.  My husband and I enjoyed the movie, though, and the irresistible cuteness of all of the Labradors who played Marley over the years.  By the end, even my fairly stoic husband was in tears, to the point that he had to remove his glasses and sop up the moisture with several tissues.  Why?  Because all people love dogs, right?  And this movie (along with the book by John Grogan, detailing the life he shared with his real dog, Marley) highlights the bonds people form with their animals.

While we watched, our gaze occasionally strayed to our Beagle, who slept in his basket next to the television.  He occasionally let out a huge sigh, sometimes sliding his snout over the side of his bed until he resembled a crocodile.  Aside from some aging front legs that cause him to limp now and then, he's a pretty happy pup.  It was a very dog-friendly evening.

I woke today to see the headline that 30 dogs have gone missing since November in the region of Twin Falls, Idaho, and five dogs have been found brutally murdered in the same area.  I fear for the missing dogs, and worry over what may have befallen them.  I wondered at the sort of person that could perpetuate this sort of sadism.  If the person (or people) are caught, I wondered, would they face felony charges for such venal crimes--perhaps a multitude of them?

Probably not. I was distressed to learn that Idaho makes animal killing a felony only if someone has two prior  offenses.  So even the murder of many dogs--what seems to be a cruel and ritualistic murder perpetrated by at least one twisted mind--would not necessarily send the killer to jail.  Might the killer be aware of this?  Or does someone who commits acts like these really not contemplate potential consequences at all?

I hope that Twin Falls is using significant resources to find and prosecute this murderer, and that they will look at this case as justification for more extreme laws against animal cruelty.

Why is it so important for us to know these dog stories, good and bad? Dogs are fun to read about in fiction, but it's even more pleasant, perhaps, to read about real dogs who have good lives. So, rather than leave you with the sad story above, I'll reference a third non-fiction account of dogs, written by one of the best animal tale writers of all time: James Herriott.

In his compilation of stories called Dog Stories, Herriott reflected on dogs he knew over a lifetime in private practice. Herriott understood, as a Dalesman and a veterinarian, that if animals are put here for our pleasure, then we have the obligation to be loving and compassionate caretakers.

If only everyone could embrace that philosophy.

If you wrote a book about a dog, who would be the star of your story?

Breaking the Taboo

by Kate George

 There is somewhat of an unwritten law in writing about kids and animals. It goes something like "No Harm Shall Come to Children or Pets."

I’ve heard a number of variations of that rule through the years, and I pretty much stuck to it. That is, until I went to a writing seminar with writer/agent Donald Maass. 

Donald spent some time researching best-selling novels and discovered that one of the things they had in common was a high level of emotion. I learned a lot from Donald Maass but the most surprising thing was that bestsellers didn’t necessarily follow the rule about kids and animals.

Forgive me for messing up this quote, Don, but here’s what I heard: “Don’t just kill the kitten, make the kitten save the child’s life and then have it die.” In other words, elevate the pet to the level of a hero and then when the reader is as attached as she can be, kill the sucker flat. 

Yikes. “Really?” I asked. “Even in books with a lot of humor?”

Yes, even when books are meant to be funny.

I wasn’t sure I subscribed to that theory. The “no harm” rule had been hammered into me pretty firmly. I’m not really brave enough to break big taboos. And yet I did.

I got to the point in Crazy Little Thing Called Dead where something drastic had to happen. Something that would push my protagonist into acting against her own nature. She had to be reduced to a flaming ball of murderous rage. Actually Bree was more like a frozen ball of icy rage, but you get the drift. Something had to happen that was horrific. I suppose I could have had the antagonist kill one of her brothers, or her parents. But Bree’s family is not on the page much. Her fur-babies, however, are on the page quite often. They are her children, her companions, her joy in life. Her cat and three of her dogs die in a fire. Her beagle attempts to save her tabby before she dies.
 
Good lord, it’s awful. How could I have written that?

I knew there would be some fallout. Readers were bound to be upset. But I trusted Donald Maass when he said that the emotion would improve my books. I was not prepared for the level of hatred in the letters I received. I was called a murderer. I was told I should be blackballed. No one should let me comment on their blog. One woman who was particularly distraught told me that I am God in my stories and I could have saved the animals. They didn’t have to die. But that’s not how it seems to me. Stories unfold. They come to me. I don’t create them, at least not in a conscious way. I avoided the fire as long as I could, but it needed to be there.

Did you see Romancing the Stone? Do you remember how Laura Wilder cries while she’s writing her books, tissues everywhere? That was me. It didn’t help that we had recently lost a dog to cancer. I was a weeping mess.

The negative un-fan mail has been fairly intense; however, I am also getting a lot more positive comments. More readers telling me they like my books. Asking when the next Bree MacGowan mystery is coming out. I’m getting more “yes” mail than I’m getting “hell no” mail.

So what have I learned? Well, for one, Donald Maass was right when he said readers would become more invested. The readers that don’t like my books really don’t like them. Some would like to see me incarcerated for crimes committed. I haven’t pointed out to them that incarceration would give me more time to write. That might be insensitive. And frankly, I don’t want to give anyone any further reason to come looking for me. It’s scary how much some people hate me.

On the other hand the opposite is also true. It’s wonderful how much some fans like me. I get messages everyday telling me how much they like Bree.

Have my sales increased? Yes, but that may have happened anyway. The more you write, the more you sell. It’s kind of a rule. So the jury is out on the numbers.

Would I do it again? Kill pets? I don’t know. I do know I will push my characters out of their comfort zone. I will create situations that push them into doing things they wouldn’t normally do. Because that’s the stuff that compelling stories are made of. I’m not making any promises. I will write what I need to write for the stories. Whatever I write, not everyone will be happy, and that’s okay. My readers will be happy, and they’re the only people I have to please.

Do I recommend breaking the “no harm” rule? I can’t tell you what to write, but I can advise you to grow some pretty thick skin before you try it.

Kate George is the author of the popular Bree MacGowan mystery series. She lives in an old farmhouse in the backwoods of Vermont with her husband, four kids, and three rescue dogs. Visit her at www.kategeorge.com, or contact her at kate@kategeorge.com.

Watching the Birds

by Sheila Connolly

When we lived in Pennsylvania, for a time we had a resident mockingbird.  I don't know that I ever saw it (or would recognize it if I did), but one year it decided to serenade us regularly at midnight, just as we were trying to fall asleep.  Like clockwork, it would start its repertory and run through a series of different calls, clearly and precisely, repeating each one twice—no more, no less.  I think I actually counted them, and went though about eighteen before he started over.

I was reminded of this when earlier this week I was awakened before six a.m. by some other brave "early bird" (sorry, I couldn't resist).  No, it wasn't a mockingbird.  I have no idea what it was.  I apologize for my great ignorance to all dedicated birders out there who are reading this.  Anyway, as I listened to this morning mystery bird, I found myself thinking, how would I describe that on paper?

Which of course led me to think of David Allen Sibley's Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America. I have a copy that I keep on my kitchen table, next to the window from which I can see my two birdfeeders.  I live close to the center of a small town, and my lot is small (and there are a number of neighborhood cats that roam freely), so the birds that appear are few in variety.  There's an extended family of cardinals that live nearby and visit regularly for the sunflower seeds I put out.  There are the ubiquitous sparrows.  In the spring I see the occasional cedar waxwing.  This week I waved to a passing goldfinch, but they're rare here.  In short, nothing particularly extraordinary visits, but I do enjoy watching whatever appears.

But to get back to the point, I love reading Sibley's book because he makes a valiant attempt to transliterate (is that the word I want?) the calls of each and every bird.  And the results crack me up.

Who knew that the golden eagle makes high yelping calls, while the bald eagle (we do have a nesting pair not far from here, the location of their nest carefully not made public) makes weak, flat chirping whistles?  The Great Horned Owl (which I did hear occasionally back in Pennsylvania, although I never saw one) makes "a deep muffled hooting in rhythmic series ho hoo hoo hoododo hooooo hoo." The courting female is said to respond with a "nasal barking guwaay." (Did Sibley notice that looks a lot like "go away"?)

Open the book to any random page and you find all sorts of entertaining descriptions.  Take, for example, the Dickcissel (I don't know that I've ever met one, although Sibley tells me they like to hang out with House Sparrows, and I have plenty of them).  Here's how a Dickcissel sounds, per Sibley:  "song a series of short notes skee-dlees chis chis chis with dry, insect-like quality.  Call a dry husky chek. Flight call a distinctive, low, electric buzz fpppt."

You have to admire the man, who must have spent untold hours just listening, and then trying to capture the sounds in writing, making each one distinct.  There's a lesson somewhere in here for writers.  If you're describing your protagonist sitting outside on a nice summer morning with a cup of coffee, do you write "she could hear birds chirping," or do you say something like, "she could pick out the hard sharp tik tik of the cardinals gathered at her bird feeder"? It makes a difference.