My music? It’s not about murder, BUT...

Elizabeth Zelvin

I was brought up on traditional folk music, about half of which consists of murder ballads, which I sang with great relish from an early age. Well, maybe not half. Other crimes were represented, including robbery of both the Robin Hood and capitalist varieties.

Jesse James was a man who killed many a man
He robbed the Glendale train
He stole from the rich and gave to the poor
With a hand and a heart and a brain.

And on the other hand:

Oh, the banks are made of marble
With a guard at every door
And the vaults are stuffed with silver
That the people sweated for.

Or, as “Pretty Boy Floyd,” one of my favorites back then, put it: As through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve met many kinds of men
Some will rob you with a six-gun
And some with a fountain pen.

But no question about it, the high lonesome subgenre was filled with songs about young men who did young women wrong and then killed them as a convenient alternative to marrying them. (My mother was always complaining, “Can’t you sing something cheerful for a change?”)

There was “Pretty Polly”:

“Oh, Willie, oh, Willie, I’m feared of your ways
I fear you will lead my poor body astray.”

“There’s no time to talk and there’s no time to stand.”
He drew out his dagger all in his right hand.

“Down in a Willow Garden” tells a very similar story:

I stabbed her with my dagger
Which was a bloody knife
I flang her into the river (I loved that “flang”)
It was a dreadful sight.

And then there’s “Banks of the Ohio,” which I still sing occasionally, because it’s a great singalong song with a delicious wailer of a chorus.

I took her by her lily-white hand
Down beside where the waters stand
I picked her up and I threw her in
And watched her as she floated by.

The first time I attended Killer Nashville, I had the unexpected opportunity to sing a murder ballad, accompanying myself on the beautiful black silver-inlaid guitar that had just been presented to guest of honor J.A. Jance. I sang “Long Black Veil”—not a traditional tune, but one written in 1959 that’s been performed by world-class musicians from Johnny Cash to Bruce Springsteen. You can still hear my performance of it on YouTube.

In my own songs, which I’ve been writing since before I started writing mysteries, nobody dies (except in “Two Tall Towers,” about 9/11, which is something else again, and “The Mayor of Central Park,” about a beloved New York character who died of natural causes at 94). Since I’m heading to Killer Nashville again next week, I’ve been thinking about whether my music is Off Topic at a mystery event, and I don’t think it is.

I’m scheduled not only to talk about mysteries in a panel on dialogue but also to perform a couple of my songs at the Sisters in Crime party on Friday night. I certainly hope to sell copies of my CD, Outrageous Older Woman, as well as my latest mystery, Death Will Extend Your Vacation. I write songs in the urban folk subgenre that are all about issues and circumstances that cause the kind of murders I write mysteries about, such as love, abuse, alcoholism, family, and ambition.

On the other hand, what I have to say about these issues tends to be hopeful. My mother, if she were still around, might even admit that their message is cheerful, on the whole. I sing about love, healing, recovery, having roots, and following your dreams.

I’ll sing two songs at Killer Nashville. The album’s title song, “Outrageous Older Woman,” is a good theme song for a lifelong writer whose first novel came out on her sixty-fourth birthday. I hope it will inspire the aspiring writers of the senior persuasion who show up at most mystery lovers’ events. The other, “All She Ever Wanted,” is just as apt, because it’s about a woman who dares to follow her dream, as every mystery writer I know has had to persist and persist and persist some more to accomplish. All the protagonist of this particular song has ever wanted is a country music band—and I’m tickled to death that I’m going to get to sing it in Nashville.

Judging a Book by Its Author

Sandra Parshall

“I’ve always loved her books, but I’ll never buy another one.”

“I’ll never read anything he writes again as long as I live.”

What did the writers do that so fatally alienated their readers?

They posted personal opinions on Facebook.

If you’re not a writer, you probably don’t realize that many authors are perplexed by and even a little scared of social media. We talk a lot, on our closed listserves, about the danger of posting something online that readers won’t like. If we offer anything other than the written equivalent of a pretty bouquet, we can land ourselves in trouble.
 

In this connected age, the quality of our fiction seems to matter far less than what readers think of us personally. We are learning just how fickle some readers can be. Many aren’t shy about telling us that the world is full of writers and books; we are nothing special, and if we offend them, they can replace us and read somebody else’s work.

Writers frequently instruct each other on how to behave online. The list of verboten topics is endless.

Do not give any hint of your political leanings. Pretend you’ve never heard of politics!

Never, ever say anything about religion.

You’re vegan? Keep it to yourself, or the meat-eaters will think you’re looking down on them.

You think global warming is real and people are causing it? For pity’s sake, don’t say so! Do you know how many people believe global warming is a myth? Do you want to alienate all of them?

You think hunting for fun is barbaric? Shhh!

And the whole subject of gun control is toxic, of course.

Name almost any subject, and it’s off-limits for the writer who fears offending potential readers. For people who champion freedom of speech, we’re awfully quick to censor ourselves and our fellow writers. Social media is supposed to be a great advance, a terrific new way for authors to connect with readers, but sometimes I think it’s the worst thing that ever happened to us. It has made us afraid of our readers.

Readers no longer hesitate to tell writers directly that their books are disappointing, and the tone of these communications is usually angry. I once posted a blog in which I wondered why some readers are so confrontational with authors, and suggested that they should respect our right to compose our books however we choose. If they don’t like a writer’s work, nobody is forcing them to read it. That led to some private e-mails and a few posts on Facebook that made my jaw drop with their nastiness. Posts of the “Who the hell do you think you are?” variety. Those readers let me know that if they hate a book they will hold the writer personally responsible for their wasted money and time and will tell her in detail what’s wrong with her work and how she should have written it.

However, writing a disappointing book doesn’t seem to carry nearly as much risk as expressing a personal opinion in a public forum. Do all readers give up reading books they enjoy because of something the writer has posted online? I hope not. I, as a reader, am not in that category. I could name some writers who annoy me online, yet I will read their work if it appeals to me. I can say the same about a number of actors who make a habit of behaving badly. However abysmal their actions are – throwing telephones at hotel clerks, screaming at their young children, throwing tantrums on movie sets – I will go see their films if I think I’ll like them. I believe most creative people put the best of themselves into their work. I don’t care much about what’s left over.

In a guest column for an industry magazine, a publicity director for a publishing house adds more taboos, cautioning writers not to post about, or comment on posts about, any aspect of publishing. We should do what we’re supposed to do – write –  and not concern ourselves with the business of publishing. He suggests that every writer create an online persona that will make a favorable impression.

The online persona is an especially devilish problem for a writer, because it involves what a writer does – writing. Being able to use our own voices feels liberating after hours in the minds of our characters. But we are reminded constantly of the need to hold back, to hide our real selves, so we won’t offend anybody and lose readers. Some writers have invented online personalities that bear little resemblance to the real people I know. I’m sure they would say that hiding their genuine selves when they’re online is part of their marketing strategy.

I’m not saying we should all be ranting and raving online and constantly foisting our personal opinions on others in an offensive way. I’m not sure where the line should be drawn between public and private. I guess all I’m saying is that it’s kind of sad that writers can’t be themselves without risking career suicide.

How do you feel about this? Do you think writers should always keep their opinions to themselves? Have you stopped reading an author’s work because you didn’t like something he or she posted online?

Do you believe I should not have written this blog?
 

Zucchini Raids and Idea Banks

Sharon Wildwind

I spoke to someone recently whose parents live in rural Alberta. She said that the zucchini raids have already begun.

These are not raids to steal zucchini—oh my, no—but to deliver it. They involve careful watching until everyone has left the neighbors’ house. Lovely, huge vegetables, sometimes loaves of zucchini bread, or sometimes both, are left on the porch or in the mailbox. There might be a computer-generated, unsigned note. Enjoy!

Southern Alberta seems to be drowning in zucchini. What we could use is a few more recipes on how to use it or freeze it.

My aunt, from whom I inherited my obsessive traits, used a razor blade and metal ruler to cut recipes from newspapers and magazines. She rubber-cemented them into construction-paper albums. There were three or four on a page, depending on the size of the cutting. She also added cryptic notes in blue ballpoint, such as Mavis’ Tuesday afternoon bridge group, or Does not travel well.

Unfortunately after she died, the relatives clearing her house failed to recognize they had a national treasure and tossed those albums.

A few days after the zucchini conversation, a woman asked me what I do with material I write, but don’t use. I said I let it go. She was horrified. “My dear, you must keep everything in an idea bank for future use.”

I gave the idea an hour’s worth of serious consideration, including played around with computer data base and filing programs, but in the end, I decided an idea bank was easier said than done.

I have bookcases full of hand-written journals, file boxes of partial or completed manuscripts and project notes, and computer backups going back decades. It takes hours and a certain amount of luck to find anything in them. Some things will never be located.

At least when Leonardo DaVinci shuffled through the loose papers that comprised his “notebooks,” he could recognize if he’d found a drawing of rock formations, a helicopter, or his grocery list. Easy retrieval is one of the reasons I envy visual artists.

I think writers reach a certain level of plasticity and self-trust. We recognize that ideas won’t dry up. We may pine for that half-remembered perfect line of dialog or exquisite description, but we also know that, even if we found it, it’s like to have passed its best-before date.

We need to keep writing fresh things. And, maybe, plant a few less zucchini seeds next summer.

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

Quote for the week

My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.

~Anais Nin, (1903 – 1977), French-Cuban author, and journal-keeper

Pondering Abductions That Failed

by Julia Buckley

A girl in my town was abducted a couple of years ago. She was in her back yard playing, and a man came to the fence and asked if she'd like to see a puppy. He told her that her mom had said it was okay. The girl, who was six, agreed. He lifted her over the fence and put her into the back of his car, where he buckled her into a child seat. He drove her several miles into a different town before he pulled over and told her to get out. For whatever reason, the abduction had gone awry. The frightened girl went to a mail carrier and said she needed to get home. 

Her parents had a couple of bad hours, but their story had a very happy ending.

My female students have harrowing stories, every year, about the people who follow them when they walk to school, when they get off the bus, when they're out with friends. Luckily they are all smart enough and old enough to know a suspicious character when they see one. 

But I've been reflecting lately about how many abductions ALMOST happen. This had me thinking back to my own childhood. I still remember sitting with my dog in the parkway in front of my house, as a child of about ten or eleven, and watching a man stop his car and get out. He walked up to me and asked me about my dog: what breed she was, when we got her, whether I liked to pet her. He said he loved dogs and he just had to ask. At no point did I think he was anything but a dog lover. Eventually my mother's face appeared in the window; the man waved, got into his car, and drove away.

In retrospect, there is much that I suspect about that man's motives. It makes me wonder how close I came to the sort of nightmare many children endure.

There were other incidents, as well: people who offered me rides when I walked to school as a teenager. Because I was vain and wouldn't wear my glasses, I sometimes went close to the cars, thinking it was a friend who had pulled over. And then I'd run away when I realized it was a stranger--a supposedly well-meaning stranger.

Generally people don't attempt to abduct women in their forties, but last year a man who must have been seventy pulled up next to me as I walked to the store.

"Would you like a ride?" he asked.

I almost laughed. "No."

"It seems we're going in the same direction," he persisted. "I just thought I'd save you the trip."

"I don't know you," I said. 

And then, to my utter shock, he moved up the block and began talking to another woman. I didn't even know what to make of that situation. Can that sort of thing ever be "innocent?" Was I to believe that he was just a friendly man looking to give another adult a ride?

In retrospect, the world seems full of shadows and near misses for which I suppose we must be grateful.

Does everyone have a near miss story?

(Note: this is a re-posting of a piece I wrote in 2009, but I thought it was still timely.)

Guest Author Cornelia Read

I met Cornelia Read on an airplane heading for my first Bouchercon. I was wearing a shirt that read "Read Banned Books" that I think caught her attention, and we began to chat. I didn't have a contract yet and I was on my way to try to interest some editors and to get some pre-contract blurbs for my manuscript. Cornelia was the first to offer me one--and it was a doozy. 

So here she is today, with another fabulous book. But I'll let her tell you in her own words.

Though it is a novel and not a memoir, Valley of Ashes is heavily autobiographical, as are my three previous books (A Field of Darkness, The Crazy School, and Invisible Boy). The darkest of the subjects which the story explores—infidelity, suicide, death by fire, and autism—are, unfortunately, things with which I have had close personal experience.

My father, Frederick Harvey Read, committed suicide in May of 2010, while I was finishing the first draft of this manuscript.

The novel’s protagonist, Madeline Dare, relates the story of an event which I think may have precipitated my father’s lifelong struggles with mental illness: Dad’s having witnessed his best friend Hazy’s death when they were children.

My grandfather, William Augustus Read, owned an Autogyro which was an early form of helicopter. He kept it in a private hangar on the family property in Purchase, New York. Hazy and my father Fred were playing in the hangar one day, shooting “strike-anywhere” kitchen matches at the hangar’s concrete floor with their slingshots, trying to make them light on contact with the floor’s rough surface.

One of these matches bounced into a large barrel of varnish, which exploded in flames all over Hazy.

My father Freddy and I. Oyster Bay, 1967? Valley of Ashes is dedicated to Dad and to my great friend Rick Dage, whose own suicide I learned of ten minutes before my literary agent called me in 2005 to tell me that we had a publisher for my first novel. The character Cary in Valley of Ashes is loosely based on Rick.

Dad urged him to roll on the ground to extinguish the flames, but Hazy’s sister yelled for him to run to a nearby brook. He died before reaching the water.

My mother told me that shortly before she and Dad were married in 1961, he took her to visit Hazy’s grave, explaining that he still felt responsible for his friend’s death. For months afterward, he said, every time he heard a police car’s siren, he thought they were coming to the family estate in Purchase to take him to jail. He was eight years old when Hazy died.

While talking about my former husband’s infidelity and my daughter Lila’s diagnosis with autism are serious spoilers for readers of Valley of Ashes, both are things that have had a powerful impact on my life.  

Lila, 1999

I fudged the real-life timeline on a comment Madeline’s husband Dean makes to her during the course of this novel: “You need to give up this writing shit, because you’ve never made any money at it and I deserve a homemaker.” My actual husband said that to me several months after my first novel was published in 2006. That was the moment I decided he was going to be my ex-husband. Which has worked out pretty well, considering. Especially since I now out-earn him. Heh.

I hope very much that this novel, though dark, might offer some hope to women struggling who struggle to balance the care of small children with their own aspirations—especially when those children have special needs. As such, this novel very much embodies my favorite F-word: feminism, since Madeline is not only a wife and mother, but also a kick-ass hero therein.

I also hope that any woman who’s dealt with a cheating spouse enjoys reading the scene where Madeline beats the crap out of her husband’s mistress, not least because it was so damn fun for me to write. (Okay, I did not do that in real life. I am way more wimpy than Madeline is. Also, the real-life skanky mistress chick wasn’t a serial arsonist and murderer. At least as far as I know.)

Cornelia Read is the author of the mysteries A Field of Darkness, The Crazy School, and Invisible Boy. She has been nominated for an Edgar® and six other awards, but actually managed to win the Shamus for best short story and a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Read’s fourth novel, Valley of Ashes, is due out from Grand Central Publishing on August 14th. She lives in Upstate Manhattan. www.CorneliaRead.com

Politics

by Sheila Connolly

Did I say I wasn't going to write about politics?  If I did, I lied.  Or the press took my words and twisted them to make a more sensational story.  My latest book, Sour Apples, was released this week, and it's about…politics.

No, I don't have an axe to grind, or a party platform to promote--just a book.  But politics is an inescapable part of our daily lives, even in off-years, so for a writer to ignore it entirely in the fictional communities we create seems unrealistic.

Besides, politics is fun.  I've never run for office, but I've been part of several campaigns, both federal and local, and I can tell you that the excitement within a campaign is electric. 

I first got involved before the computer age (way, way before), typing envelopes for my hometown political committee at a penny apiece.  I got the job because I babysat for the committee chairperson.  I also handed out buttered corn at a local fair at which one of my state's congressional candidates gave a speech (and I was told in a whisper that "everybody knows that he drinks"—he was re-elected anyway).

In college I volunteered for a gubernatorial campaign, mainly out of curiosity, and most of my efforts involved handing people pamphlets on street corners, and on one memorable night, at a Bruins game at the old Boston Garden. And smiling a lot.  If you're a nice young lady, most people will take what you hand them.

 

When I lived in California, I volunteered for Jerry Brown's PAC (I had to do a quick check:  that was after his first stint as governor and his losses in a Senate race and two presidential bids, but before his time as mayor of Oakland and his second round as governor).  I must admit that I had no idea what a PAC was or what it was supposed to do, but my brief role got me onto the floor at the 1984 nominating convention in San Francisco, and I got to ogle a lot of Big Names I actually recognized.

Then we moved to Pennsylvania, and after a couple of years I found myself the chair of one of our local political committees, in a town with only a couple of thousand registered voters (most of whom were like-minded).  That gave me some direct contact with county and state politics—and believe me, that was an eye-opener.

And finally, I ended up as a paid staffer for a Senate candidate.  It was one of the most exciting experiences of my life.  There were a few seasoned professionals running the show, but otherwise the staff was made up of eager, enthusiastic younger people.  We worked very hard, and we had a wonderful time.  And our candidate lost, but for the right reasons (like refusing to play some traditional political games just to get votes). 

So how could I not use this experience in a book?  If you're involved in politics at all, beyond a strictly local level (my character Seth Chapin is a Granford selectman, with no higher aspirations), you take it very seriously, because a lot of people are very invested in any race.  And that leads to important questions:  is there something in the candidate's past that will come back to haunt him or her?  Just how far will the candidate go to hide that? And could that lead to murder?

And that's what Sour Apples is about.

The New Technology and Disinhibition

Elizabeth Zelvin

When I started doing psychotherapy online a dozen years ago, I learned that psychologists and other technicians had already identified what they called the disinhibition factor in the way people communicated on the Internet. In The Psychology of Cyberspace (2001, revised 2002, 2003, & 2004), psychologist John Suler, who became a collegial buddy of mine when I joined the International Society of Mental Health Online, identified various beliefs that contribute to this disinhibition when people are texting (at that time, not yet a verb in common use) online, including:

“You don’t know me.”
“You can’t see me.”
“See you later.”
“It’s all in my head.”
“It’s just a game.”
“We’re equals.”

The truth, even inevitability, of the disinhibition factor quickly became apparent to me when I became an Internet user.

Sometimes the lack of inhibition is benign, as when online therapy clients feel safer and reveal themselves more freely than they might in face-to-face therapy in an office, not to mention their daily lives. (What makes these particular clients good candidates for online therapy is that they do feel safer writing and not being seen than they do in person and are at their most candid in cyberspace.

Sometimes the disinhibition becomes toxic, as in the flame wars—uninhibited hostility and verbal abuse—that can spring up in online group situations such as chats and e-lists. I’ve seen flaming, on and off, in almost all of the mystery e-lists I’ve participated in for the past decade. I’ve even seen it happen in groups of online mental health professionals. On a rational level, they should know better, right? But the disinhibition isn’t rational: it’s a psychological reflex.

I’ve been enjoying email exchanges lately with a couple of people from my childhood. One is my best friend from Girl Scout camp, whom I haven’t seen or been in touch with since 1958. Our lives have gone in radically different directions, but she’s still easy to talk to, and we’ve resumed the conversation without any reserve or awkwardness. The other is a guy from high school whom I haven’t seen since 1959 and whose email address I happened to acquire through a small-world connection. This guy was the charismatic leader of my particular “crowd” in high school. We weren’t friends, but I admired and was somewhat in awe of him. His life, too, has been very different from mine, but we are talking easily via email and I’m tickled pink to be having this comfortable conversation. Finding both of these people so easy to talk to got me thinking about how everybody is easy to talk to on the Internet—in other words, the disinhibition factor. When we text asynchronously, as in email, cell phone texting, and on Facebook, we don’t get the constant feedback of face to face communication, small signals that we can interpret as negative reception. Part of what inhibits us in sharing our thoughts is fear of how the listener will receive them. (When we want feedback, as in a therapist’s active listening, there are text-based techniques to provide it. But that’s another story.) To Suler’s take on invisibility, “You can’t see me,” let’s add, “I can’t see you—so I don’t have to worry about what you think of what I’m saying or censor what I say to please you.”

All of the above applies to text. So how do we account for cell phone users’ habit of blatting private matters wherever they are—on the street, on line in the post office, on a crowded bus? That’s an egregious form of disinhibition. Hardened cellphonistas let it all hang out, whether the “it” is marital conflict, finances, or intimate medical details.

I find it mega-irritating when cellphonistas do it. But it’s not a new phenomenon. In New York, where I live, people have always carried on intimate conversations in restaurants and on the subway. I’ve done it myself. One of the city-dweller’s defenses is to create psychological space. Even if the physical distance between me and the strangers at the next table is only an inch or two, as I get absorbed in conversation, I easily forget they’re there. So maybe it doesn’t have as much to do with technology as we think it does.

Is Forensics Becoming a Woman's Job?

By Sandra Parshall

Here’s a startling fact: women are taking over the forensic science field.

I was aware that most of the female mystery writers I know – and I know a lot – are fascinated by forensics and don’t blanch at the gory details of death investigation, but I didn’t realize until I read a recent Washington Post Magazine article that female students are leading a boom in forensics education. According to the article, universities across the U.S. have added hundreds of new forensics training programs in the past 15 years, to fill the rapidly accelerating demand for people trained in the scientific investigation of crime.

And the majority of students in those programs are women.

As long ago as 2008, a survey of graduate and undergraduate forensics programs showed that 78 percent of students nationwide were female. The percentage is likely higher today.

In the three-year-old forensics program at George Mason University in Fairfax County, VA, 90 percent of the students are female. Why? William Whildin, who worked as a death investigator for 30 years before creating the GMU program, told the Post that “men tend to gravitate toward the gun-carrying jobs” while women enjoy the “more scholarly path.” Women students say they’re drawn to the field by their interest in science, a personal trauma, a desire to help society – or a love of mysteries.

An aptitude for science is essential for anyone who wants to become a real-life CSI. The women enrolling in forensics programs and going on to work in crime investigation are proving that males don’t have an edge when it comes to chemistry, biology, and other disciplines. Men don’t have stronger stomachs either, or tougher sensibilities.

Contrary to some studies that show women try to prevent other females from succeeding in their careers, women in forensics appear genuinely supportive of one another. The Association of Women in Forensic Science, based in Philadelphia, provides “networking opportunities for female forensic professionals as well as educational opportunities, mentoring and outreach programming for female adolescents ages 12-18 with the desire to pursue a career in forensic science.” The organization sponsors workshops, conferences, and other events and offers a wealth of information on its website.

In one of the member profiles on the AWIF site, Pamela J. McInnis, a laboratory director for the Pasadena (Texas) Police Department Crime Lab, offers a look at the life of a woman in the field. The daughter and sister of police officers, she wanted to work in law enforcement but didn’t want to carry a gun. When her father took her to see the crime lab, she was hooked, and she’s been working in forensics for 28 years. She enjoys the variety of cases – every day is different. She has the satisfaction of helping victims and society as a whole. At first, getting the respect of male cops was a problem, but after they worked with her they came to value her expertise and professionalism.

Ms. McInnis has two pieces of advice to anyone interested in a career in forensics. First, forget what you see on television. The work isn’t glamorous, and you won’t be interrogating suspects or making arrests. Second, get a solid grounding in science and develop the critical problem-solving skills you will need.     

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a 19 percent growth in jobs for forensic science technicians between 2010 and 2020. All indications are that the majority of those jobs will be filled by women. Maybe it’s time crime fiction writers caught up with reality and started placing a lot more women at crime scenes and in the lab.
            

SOUR APPLES RELEASE DAY

SOUR APPLES, the sixth book in the Orchard Mystery series by Sheila Connolly, comes out today from Berkley Prime Crime.  It's available in print and ebook formats.

If you want to know how I manage to combine dairy farming, a congressional campaign, toxic waste, and murder, you'll have to read it!

Advanced Reading Copy Blues

Sharon Wildwind 

Here it is, the advanced reading copy of Loved Honor More. Yes, I think it looks good. Yes, I’m delighted to have it. Yes, I have my usual case of ARC blues.

Note the oval that says uncorrected proof. This means I had one final kick at the can to get things right. I had to find the errors that I missed, my proofreader missed, and my editor missed. And I had to reach perfection quickly, so one morning last week I read the whole book, start to finish.

Having not had a boo at it for several months, there are things in it that I can’t remember writing. There always are. I have to trust that someone didn’t hack my e-mail account and use my e-mail address to send unauthorized changes to the editor. 

See those four fuzzy markers to the right? (One is yellow, so you might not be able to see it. It’s there. Trust me.) Five corrections this time, one which I didn’t bother to mark. That’s less than half of what I usually find, so the editor did a super-bang-up job.

The thing I didn’t mark has to do with a span of days. I was sure some reader was going to think that I couldn’t count how many days separate Wednesday and Sunday. The issue here is that the International Dateline is involved, so yes it really was six, even though it seemed like five. I figured I should tell the editor that sentence was correct in case someone questioned it at the last minute.

Three of the four corrections were minuscule: commas and misspelled words. The fourth one actually required that I rewrite a sentence. My feet had gotten tangled up in the words and I tripped over the prose. The sentence made no sense at all. Now it does.

What keeps bugging me is one additional sentence. Even though it’s perfectly clear, there is one word in it that I could ask them to change and it might improve the sentence. I had to ask myself, is this obsessive-compulsive disorder, or great editing? Since I’d already sent in the corrections, I decided it was obsessive-compulsive editing and let it go. Be free, little sentence.

Also note the big, unfriendly NOT FOR SALE in the oval. This is why the copies just arrived. The publisher had declared the equivalent of “no commercial value” on the customs slip and Canada Customs was skeptical that two boxes of books had no commercial value. It took four people exchanging e-mail with the customs broker to sort this out, so the shipment was delayed at the border.

For some reason I got more ARCs this time, like about four times as many as I usually get. While those books look impressive on the bookshelf, what I want to do most is to empty that shelf as soon as I can. That means I have to ship out four times the number of books that I usually do.

The problem is my nemesis, the Postal Angel. Don’t let that blond hair and angelic face fool you. Every time I try to mail packages, she makes shipping boxes and tape disappear, deletes addresses, hides the bag of plastic popcorn packing, and ensures that I fill out the wrong customs slip, so I have to fill out new forms at the post office. All of this makes mailing packages my almost absolutely least favorite activity in the whole world. I tend to put it off, sometimes with disastrous results. I guess I’ll just have to shoo her away and get to the mailing ASAP.

Incidentally, I’ve got a book launch scheduled. Thursday, 2012 November 22 at Owl’s Nest Books in Calgary. Come on over. We’ll have a great time.

Just in case you don’t want to wait for the launch, here’s the first three paragraphs:

Sunday, 4 May 1975, 2200 hours

The Homestead

Madison County, North Carolina

Ex–Army Nurse Elizabeth Pepperhawk burrowed deeper under her quilt. If she could stop the images, she could sleep. Both Saul and Avivah had warned her not to read every issue of Time and Newsweek, not to linger over each gruesome photograph coming out of Vietnam and Cambodia. If Avivah really were her best friend, she would have snatched magazines from her hands. That wasn’t fair. Avivah was her friend, not her mother or her watchdog. It wasn’t Avivah’s fault that Pepper now shared sleepless nights with images of dead children and burned vehicles.

Pepper weighed the quality of her tight, hard stomach knot. If she concentrated on feeling nauseous, she could make herself ill. If she were lucky, she might vomit. A good upchucking would be a hell of a lot better reason for booking off sick tomorrow than “We lost the Vietnam War five days ago. My country’s honor is a shambles, and I don’t have enough energy to get out of bed.”

The doorbell’s shrill ring cut through the dark, cool night. Who came calling at ten o’clock at night? 

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

Quote of the week

Touchdown confirmed. We are safe on Mars.

~Jet Propulsion Lab engineer, late in the evening of 2012 August 5, California time

I’ve worn my lucky NASA T-shirt every day for the past week, hoping to work the right ju-ju to get Curiosity safely to the Martian surface. (If I had a JPL T-shirt, I would have worn that instead. Come to think of it, I might embroider a sweat shirt with “JPL got my Curiosity down”) I’m pretty sure that the T-shirt had absolutely nothing to do with the safe landing, but I can always dream. Congratulations to everyone who worked on this project.