Showing posts with label "Nancy Cole Silverman". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "Nancy Cole Silverman". Show all posts

Saturday, November 04, 2017

Guest Post: Nancy Cole Silverman

Please welcome Nancy Cole Silverman back to Type M. Nancy and I share the same publisher, Henery Press, and are also both members of the Los Angeles chapter of Sisters in Crime. We've had many wonderful and interesting conversations over the years. Take it away, Nancy...



UNLEASHING THE FURY OF ME TOO

by Nancy Cole Silverman


I live in Hollywood, and when allegations film producer and former top studio exec Harvey Weinstein had sexually assaulted a number of Hollywood stars, women started talking. And not just about Harvey Weinstein, but about a cadre of studio execs and men in power in various industries who viewed women as fair game.

Women, particularly those of us who came of age during the civil rights movement, understood that our jobs and access to better positions with more money and power depended upon our not only doing a good job but pleasing those at the top as well. And sometimes that meant keeping our mouths shut.

If that sounds surprising to a younger generation of strong, independent women, consider this: A smart woman didn’t rock the boat. She didn’t have a human resources department to complain to. If a man insisted she have dinner with him, offered her a promotion in exchange for intimacy or locked the door to his office and chased her around his desk, she was on her own. If she complained, more often than not, the old boys’ club would rally ‘round the accused man and suggest she must have asked for it. After all, for the most part, those at the top viewed women in the workplace as an expendable commodity. In short, they could be removed, transferred or fired with little or any backlash to the man.

Simply put, women had to go-along-to-get-along. Or seek employment elsewhere.

I must have been channeling this when I sat down to write Room For Doubt, book four of The Carol Childs Mysteries. Women, the choices they make, their strengths in the workplace and their balancing act are a core aspect of all my novels. As a former talk radio exec, I pull a lot of my stories from headlines and those radio stations where I worked. But the theme for Room For Doubt, while very real was unlike any I’d ever read about or witnessed first hand because those stories are deeply buried. Yet I knew it innately. I felt as though I heard the hushed voices from another group of Me Too women. Women whose stories were even darker.

In Room For Doubt, my protagonist, Carol Childs, is called to the scene of a murder. A man’s body has been found hanging from the Hollywood Sign. The police have ruled the man’s death a suicide. But Carol doesn’t think so, and neither does Chase, an unruly private investigator. Chase’s theories run the gamut from an extraterrestrial killing to a gangland-style hit, and he wants to use Carol’s late night radio show to encourage listeners to call-in and talk about it. Carol refuses. She’s not about to open her show to a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists. But when an anonymous caller named Mustang Sally calls in and confesses to the murder, things change, and so will Carol’s understanding of right and wrong.

The theme for Room For Doubt was a familiar one. A story that we as women all know. A story that has become part of our psyche. A story about a friend or relative who had disappeared, been murdered or was estranged from friends and family. Abuse takes many forms and is deadly.

I applaud those women who have found their voice and joined the Me Too Movement, and I hope those sisters whose stories are even darker, who hide in the shadows afraid to speak, will find their voice as well. Because, like Mustang Sally said, “Women are mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore!”

Nancy Cole Silverman credits the fact both she and Edgar Allen Poe share the same birthday, along with her twenty-five years in talk radio, for helping her to develop an ear for storytelling. After writing everything from commercial copy to news Silverman retired from radio in 2001 to write fiction. Today, Silverman has written numerous short stories and novelettes some of which have been produced as audio books. Silverman's new series, the Carol Childs Mysteries (Henery Press) takes place inside a busy Los Angles Radio station. Silverman lives in Los Angeles with her husband, four adult children, and thoroughly pampered standard poodle.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Guest Post: Nancy Cole Silverman

Please welcome fellow Sisters in Crime LA member and Henery Press author Nancy Cole Silverman. Take it away Nancy... 


Exercising the Muse 
by Nancy Cole Silverman

Last Christmas, my step-daughter got me a coffee mug that says, Please do not annoy the writer. She may put you in a book and kill you. It got a lot of laughs around the kitchen table. But, turnabout is fair play. Right? So, that night, while I was cooking dinner, I put my copy of Deadly Doses, a writer’s guide to poisons, on the counter next to my cookbook. Needless to say, I had lots of leftovers. Spice cake, anyone?


Two years ago, our houseguest, Gracie, arrived during the holidays.
Gracie at the piano
Gracie is a life-sized, soft sculpture doll who resembles my husband’s deceased mother. Don’t ask! Instead, let me share how Gracie came to be. We decided during a holiday celebration that the house seemed a little empty and since we’d be traveling, thought it might be a good idea if the place looked more lived in. You know, on the chance, someone might peer through the windows to see if anyone were home. Gracie was a perfect answer. She’s usually in the living room and when guests visit, they frequently do a double take, thinking she’s a real person. And just to keep things interesting, I move her around a lot. I’ve propped her up in the shower, complete with a shower cap, put her in the guest bed, and left her stretched atop the piano like a lounge singer for parties. She’s a sure starter for conversations and of course, my husband never turns out the lights without say, “Good night, Gracie.”

My point in sharing all this with you is that I believe it’s important to exercise our muse. David Ogilvy, a driving force of American advertising, had a fun way of looking at it. He used to encourage his writers to embrace their peculiarities when they were young, so that when they achieved old age, nobody would accuse them of being crazy. Instead, it could be said, they had always been that way.

So you see, my whimsical sense of humor is nothing more than exercise. And while I don’t write whimsical mysteries, I do like a little humor with my homicides. I also like my characters flawed, my scenes hard and fast, and my plots highly twisted. In short, I like to write cozies with a bite.

When I sat down to write the first of the Carol Childs’ Mysteries,
I looked for any number of twists to surprise my readers. For twenty-five years, I worked in newstalk radio in Los Angeles. Sometimes, the stories we reported on were only half as interesting as the stories that happened inside the station, behind the mic. Gallows humor was a constant and the personalities that hosted the shows, presented the news and ran the station were a menagerie of odd. They never looked like what they sound.

Some of what I write is true. Some not so true. Can you spot the difference?

A) A top Hollywood agent is murdered coming home from an awards show and leaves her twin nieces her entire estate; albeit unequally. One inherits a million dollars. The other, nada.

B) A big city developer and a member of the police commission likes young girls and runs a sex trafficking ring in Hollywood.

C) A Beverly Hills jewelry store is robbed by a group of international jewel thieves before an awards show and the jewels are replaced–or maybe not–with paste.

If you’re looking for me to say which of the above is true, I will only say this; A. Was the inspiration for book one of the Carol Childs Mysteries; Shadow of Doubt. B. Is a tall tale I manufactured after reading about a number of lost girls in Hollywood. It became the inspiration for Beyond a Doubt. And C? Well, I’ll leave that for you to decide. Without a Doubt comes out May 24th.

Stay tuned.

Nancy Cole Silverman

Nancy Cole Silverman credits her twenty-five years in radio for helping her to develop an ear for storytelling. In 2001 Silverman retired from news and copywriting to write fiction fulltime. In 2014, Silverman signed with Henery Press for her new mystery series, The Carol Childs’ Mysteries. The first of the series, Shadow of Doubt, debuted in December 2014 and the second, Beyond a Doubt, debuted July 2015. Coming soon, in 2016, is the third in the series, Without A Doubt. Silverman also has written a number of short stories, many of them influenced by her experiences growing up in the Arizona desert. For more information visit www.nancycolesilverman.com