A Cautionary Tale

 "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . ."

You probably remember this opening line from A Tale of Two Cities. That was the novel that Charles Dickens published in 1859. But the description of that era might  apply as well to our own era. There is no denying that we are having another bad year. Right out of the pandemic and ready to enjoy summer , , ,but now we have climate change occurring even faster than predicted. Droughts, tornadoes,  forest fires, floods, mudslides. . .hoping no bridges will fall or buildings crumble. Watching for one of the trees towering around my house to land on top of my roof in the next high wind.

Here in upstate New York, between New York City and the Canadian border, we have alerts posted on the Northway suggesting we put on our masks. The same masks we were using during the pandemic.

When I dropped my dog, Fergus, off at daycare yesterday, I asked if they could keep him inside if the smoke got worse. He has allergies and he has been panting. I realized last night that I should turn off the air conditioner and turn on the humidifier. We were all -- including Maine Coon, Penelope, and I --breathing better after that. And this morning the sun was out. But on my way to drop him off, I could see the haze up ahead and I reached for my mask.

I was reminded this morning of something I have been  pondering. That brings me to the title of my post. I've been thinking about how this era is a lot like the years between World War I and World War II. My historical thriller in progress is set in 1939. That year, in February, the Nazi rally in NYC precedes the Easter Sunday concert by Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial. The opening of the New York World's Fair with the focus on"The World of Tomorrow" precedes that movie blockbuster about the Civil War and its aftermath, Gone With the Wind.

As I was reminded, it is sometimes a bad idea to use a real place as the setting of a book. For my Lizzie Stuart series, I have a fictionalized version of the history and geography of my home town, Danville, Virginia, and of Blacksburg, Virginia, home of Virginia Tech. I'm an alum of Tech (undergrad) and of UAlbany (grad school and faculty). I used buildings from both when I created my fictional university and located it on the campus in my mysteries. My fictional Southern city -- Gallagher -- has a history inspired by Danville.

I draw on Albany's real life history, but also have elements of an alternate universe in my Hannah McCabe police procedural novels set in my fictional Albany. I wanted to use real Albany history but have deniability about whether I was writing about real people and situations. And I haven't been. My two books have a twist with the UFO that had appeared in the skies in Nevada and disappeared after a NORAD scramble. I wrote about that UFO in 2012 in The Red Queen Dies. Now the government is admitting that UFOs are real and puzzling. 

I  wrote about a far-right candidate named Howard Miller, who was running for president in 2024 in both that first book and the second. What the Fly Saw. He was having an impact here in Albany. So was the female mayor. At the time when I wrote those two books, no real- life Howard Miller existed. At the time, Albany had never had a female mayor, not in all of the city's long history. But the mayor was elected while I was doing my revisions.

Now, I have a 2024 frame story about a murder related to the discovery of a time capsule in my historical thriller.. In my work in progress, the time capsule is discovered by some children who are playing. When it is taken to the museum to examine, a guard is killed and the time capsule is stolen. McCabe and her partner are trying to solve those crimes parallel to what is occurring back in 1939. 

I thought that was really a great way to keep the story moving and introduce another layer of tension. In my 2024 story, the candidates for president are coming to Albany for a debate, Is one of them going to be a target? Ticking clock as they try to make the connection.

In real life, in1939, as the World's Fair in NYC opened, a time capsule was buried. Burying time capsules was a fad. Some of my characters were here in my fictional Albany when a time capsule was being buried and put something inside.

Imagine my delight -- and dread -- when I heard the roundtable panel on the WAMC (public radio) morning show discussing the time capsule that workmen had discovered when they were taking down the statue that had stood in front of City Hall. The statue was of Phillip Schuyler, New York's first senator. Schuyler was Alexander Hamilton's father-in-law. He was also a slaveowner. And -- just as I finally figured out how to solve the problem I was having with the pace and structure of my novel -- there is a time capsule in his statute.

Don't know whether to laugh or cry, This makes for a good story to tell doing a panel. But I'm beginning to feel as if anything I write might come true. Just kidding -- the truth is I do my research and look for what might have happened or could happen if. . .but still it is occasionally disconcerting. 

Anyone else have examples of writing fiction that is a little too close to what happens next in real life?

I'm Back

 Better late than next time. I've missed my last two Friday posts. With the last, I was returning from South Burlington, Vermont. Luck was on my side. The GPS worked, the ferry from Vermont to Essex, NY was on time, and the traffic was not as heavy coming toward Albany as it was headed north into the Adirondacks. But by the time I got settled and ready to write, it was after midnight and no longer my day to post.

I went to South Burlington because I really need a break. School was out and I needed to get my grades in. I also needed some sleep. Thanks to the staff in the Registrar's Office I was able to get my grades in. Thanks to the hotel I stayed at in South Burlington I was able to get two nights in a lovely king-sized bed in a junior suite. I was supposed to have had four nights there, but my recently discovered carpal tunnel syndrome slowed me down when it came to grading the papers in my two classes. I'm looking forward to my doctor visit to learn about the treatment so that I can focus on the manuscripts I'm working on. 

While I was in Vermont I had a chance to scout out the settings for the 1939 historical I'm working on.   was rainy, but much like New York. When the sun came out, it was warmer than when I arrived. The friend who I had joined for her trip to Vermont left a little before I did. We spent Thursday enjoying the food Vermont hat to offer -- including delicious maple ice cream. I had a few stops I wanted to make to do research for the Vermont portion of my book. With map and guide book in hand, I looked for buildings that were there in 1939. 

I enjoy doing that kind of research. I enjoy walking in my characters' shoes. I enjoy imaging how my characters with various backgrounds and experiences would respond to the same setting -- the food, the music, the people -- to something they have never experienced first hand. I try not to make that off the cuff. If my protagonist loves Southern accents and blues music, I want to know when she experienced both. Maybe her mother sent her to live with her grandparents and that was the first time she also experienced being cared for and living in a stable environment. Or, if another protagonist hates the South and wants to get on a train or plane and never come back, maybe that character has experienced something traumatic in that time and place. Maybe my protagonist is someone who has fled a small Southern town one step ahead of a lynch mob. Maybe when he arrives in New York City, he is like the young African American man in one of Rudolph Fisher's stories who looks around him in astonished delight when he finds his way to Harlem -- just as my Southern-born schoolteacher will. But she will not be delighted. As I tried to imagine Vermont in 1939, I knew it was only an exercise. But as I gave some thought to how my white Southern plantation owner felt about the snow and the ski lodge and the laughing, happy young men and women with jobs in the city, The ones who had been on the train that the senator's daughter who he was courting had taken. She had invited to come along. He might well have wondered if she had wanted him to be uncomfortable. But he had accepted the invitation and was  having the rare experience of being ill at ease, 

 His insight was mine. Or, rather, his lack of insight was a clue to the mystery of his childhood and his pride. That was important and it made the time I had put in doing general and not very focused research about America in 1939, both the South and the North, worthwhile. I've been thinking about what I could use for other characters. I always take my characters to the settings where they might get a clue -- and if I pay attention, I will get more than a clue about who they really are and how they see the world.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

A Yawn-Worthy Hero

 I, too, have experienced what Barbara wrote about on Wednesday -- those moments of wondering "Why am I doing this?" with all that is going in the world. Shouldn't I spend all of my time writing about real-life events?

I have come to the conclusion that crime fiction writers make an important contribution. Aside from entertaining our readers and offering them an opportunity to escape from grim realities, we provide them with an opportunity -- a "safe space" -- in which to ponder the nature of "crime" and "justice". 

But for all my soul-searching, I've still been struggling with my historical thriller. Who cares about 1939? Over the past two years -- in the midst of the pandemic -- I haven't made much progress in completing my ever evasive first draft. The book that I should be able to write -- the book that might be my eighth published novel -- is harder to write than either of those two unpublished novels in my desk drawer. I have cycled through a range of emotions, from enthusiasm and excitement while doing the  research to not caring and being ready to jettison the whole idea and move on to my next Lizzie Stuart mystery. 

Writing this book feels like climbing a mountain. Even getting to the soggy middle feels like strolling it onto American Ninja Warriors and trying to leap from platform to platform on that first obstacle. 

Committing (once again) to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has made it no easier. My 50,000 word + goal for the month of November isn't going to happen. I am not going to morph into "Super Writer" and spend the next five days glued to my desk knocking out thousands of words a day.

But this month has not been wasted. I have confronted what I didn't want to admit. My protagonist bores me.  

I was excited when I had the idea of having a sleeping car porter as my "hero". In 1939, an educated African American man who is working as a sleeping car porter is true to life. My protagonist, Jacob Baldwin, is the graduate of a small college in the South. He is working to save enough money to attend law school. He believes in the American ideal of truth and justice. He is a striver.

When first seen, he is attending Marian Anderson's Easter Sunday performance at the Lincoln Memorial.  He spots Cullen Talbot, the white Southern plantation owner for whom his family once sharecropped in the crowd. He sets out to find out what Cullen up to. But Jacob as I have been writing feels like a character who is going through the motions. He has not come to life. 

The "hero" that is too good to be true is recognizable to most writers and many readers. Jacob is too noble. I've Googled online lists of character flaws and flipped through the books about creating characters that I own. But I already know what I need to do. 

What I have been saving as backstory needs to open the book. I have an ugly, shattering scene that I need to write about something that Jacob experienced when he was ten years old. Jacob is a black man in 1930s America. For all his idealism, he is filled with suppressed rage. The impact of what follows will be much greater if readers know this and can watch him unravel. 

As Cullen taunts him, playing his own game, Jacob will find it increasingly difficult to hold onto his distance from the fray. He will be forced to make some decisions that will challenge what he claims to believe. He may fail as a role model, but his motivation will be stronger. 

He has my attention now. He can carry the weight I'm placing on my shoulder. However, the book ends, he won't bore me. And I may finally get through my first draft.

Lessons to Be Learned

 As I work on my historical thriller set in 1939, I have come to think of the year itself as a character. 1939 is an adolescent. He is torn between his ancestors who want him to carry their banners and beliefs into the future and the voices that are calling to him to march into "the World of Tomorrow." 1939 attends a Nazi rally and sits on the stage with smirking schoolboys in their uniforms. But two months later, he is in the audience when over 75,000 people gather at the Lincoln Memorial to hear Marian Anderson's voice float out over the crowd offering balm on Easter Sunday. That summer he is off to New York City to join the millions attending the World's Fair. He especially enjoys Elektro, the Smoking Robot. Everybody smokes in 1939.

1939 loves movies and he sits in theaters across the country watching. Some of the movies are too sophisticated for an adolescent year, but 1939 is interested in movie-making. He munches on his popcorn and enjoys the masters at their crafts. 1939 is delighted that there are movies for every taste in his year.  Funny movies, romantic movies, western, mysteries -- history and adventure and love and romance. Sometimes all in the same jam-packed movie. Sometimes the history is terribly wrong and the love stories are ill-fated, but 1939 knows that Americans coming out of the darkest days of the Great Depression need to be entertained and distracted -- and sometimes even elevated and reminded of who they are when they are at their best. 

1939 gives America and the world Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Four Feathers, Young Mr. Lincoln, Stagecoach, The Rules of the Game, Wuthering Heights, Love Affair, Gunga Din, The Man in the Iron Mask, Ninotchka, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Beau Geste, Drums Along the Mohawk, Stanley and Livingstone, Dodge City, Destry Rides Again, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, The Old Maid, The Roaring Twenties, Of Mice and Men, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Son of Frankenstein, The Wizard of Oz, Another Thin Man, Dark Victory, Union Pacific, The Women, Each Dawn I Die, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Rains Came.

In December, 1939 takes the movie-watching world to Atlanta, Georgia for the four-day premier of Gone With the Wind -- a sweeping saga of the Old South, a celluloid contribution to a mythology of a golden past now lost. In December, the African American descendants of the survivors of that past are not happy with that celebration in Atlanta. But 1939 is a clear-eyed adolescent who sees what is ahead, and knows that soon another battle will be joined, a battle abroad and at home for democracy.

Getting to know 1939 has helped me to make it through 2020 -- this careless, uncaring, cynical, often cruel year. I've imagined 2020 as the Devil, occasionally taking the shape of politicians and fanatics.  I've imagined 2020 smiling as he watches mourners weeping and protestors being gassed. I've imagined 2020 enjoying the chaos his henchmen (and women) are sowing in his year, knowing that his impact will be felt long after his time on the stage is over. 

I've imagined 2020 as evil, but as a writer I have found 2020 fascinating. He is much more sophisticated in his methods than 1939. Much more devious. Much more intelligent -- allowing us to destroy ourselves as if we were in an episode of Twilight Zone. 

But 2020 also has offered me some unwelcome -- but still valuable -- opportunities to learn. I've learned that if I hold on and keep moving, I can make it through moments that fill me with terror. I've learned to be patient. I've learned to be kinder to myself and other people. I've learned to think before I speak. 

I've learn to admire everyday heroes and the people who do the dirty jobs. I've learned to be grateful for all my privileges and what I have.

I will be glad to see the last of 2020. But as a character he is more nuanced than I at first imagined.

How to Begin

Well, this day has gotten away from me. I remembered as I was heading off to bed that today was my day to post. But between an unexpected service call and an equally unexpected invitation to contribute an anthology, I forgot that it's Friday.
Rather than try to write about something, I'm going to ask for some thoughts about when and where to begin a story. My historical thriller is incubating as I work on other projects. But I need to get it done in the next few months. Current events are overlapping with my story -- case in point, HBO's decision to take down Gone With the Wind temporarily. It now has an introduction by Jacqueline Stewart, a film scholar. I haven't watched that yet because I'm torn. My thriller ends at the four-day premier of Gone With the Wind in Atlanta. I've done lots of research and gone to a museum in Marietta, Georgia. I'm going to watch the movie again, but I'm trying to maintain a delicate balance between what I know now and what my characters knew them. Stewart's introduction may be too much information.
 That brings me to a larger question. I could open the book on February 1939 with the Nazi rally in New York City, or April 1939 at Marian Anderson's Easter Sunday performance. In the first case, I start with the female protagonist; in the second, with my sleeping car porter, male protagonist. His story is the driving force in the thriller, but her story is going to be crucial to what happens in Atlanta.
Here are the two opening scenes in the rough first draft. Chapter 1 would begin the book with Ophelia's departure from Gallagher and arrival in NYC as the rally is taking place at Madison Square Garden.She accepts a ride from a couple who she doesn't quit trust. Jacob's first appearance is in Chapter 2. He goes to Anderson's concert, see Cullen, his foe, in the crowd and wonders why he is there. I could begin with Jacob, but then Ophelia's arrival in NYC would be dropped from the story. The reader wouldn't meet her until Jacob goes to Harlem. As is, the end of Chapter 1 would leave readers wondering what happened. 
Gallagher, Virginia

Monday, Feb. 20, 1939 
Ophelia                                                                                                                                                                                                           "All aboard!"    

Wheezing, trying to catch my breath, I stopped there inside the door of the colored car and looked to see where I should sit. A few people looked in my direction with blurry eyes. The others were asleep or trying to be. A man near the front coughed. A baby whimpered and began to cry. I started down the aisle, clutching the musty carpetbag I had stolen from the attic of the house I was escaping.

Or
Washington, D.C.
Sunday, Apr. 1939

Jacob

        Some lies are easy to believe, especially when people need to believe them. I thought about that later.
        But that Sunday afternoon all I had on my mind was getting my work done.

      As soon as I had finished my count of the sheets and blankets and my paperwork, I spoke to the conductor. Then I changed out of my uniform and almost ran out of the station.

      I was hoping to get there in time to get a place up front. The best I could do was half-way. But I was s close enough to see. I tugged up the collar of my coat against the brisk wind coming off the river and looked around.      

__________________________________

Thoughts?

Settling Into A Routine

Like everyone else, I've been trying to adjust to being home-bound. Yesterday, I tried my hand at making a mask so that I could go out. I needed to drop off my tax documents. The office I've been going to for two decades was about to close as it usually does on April 15 (even though this year the deadline is in July). If I had missed the person I've worked with for years I would have had to the branch office that was remaining open and work with someone there by email or phone. Since my person knows all about my writing deductions I opted to make a quick trip to give her what she needed.

What surprised me was how anxious I felt when I ventured out of the house after being on shutdown (here in New York) for four weeks. I have been having everything delivered -- and, yes, that really is a time-consuming process. Way too much time involved in trying to think about what you might want to eat two weeks from now because it takes five days to get a delivery slot. Also a problem to have to order veggies that quickly go bad if you don't cook with them first.

But going out yesterday reminded me that I need to get some fresh air. I need to step out the door and go for a walk at least every other day. I also need to get a routine in place. This afternoon, I ordered the supplies I need -- printer paper, files, storage boxes, and a larger shredder -- so that I can bring some order to my home office.

 I'm alternating organizing with working. I have a proposal to get in, and I need to finish my book about gangster films. At the same time, I am teaching two classes online. That's a learning curve that I and a lot of other teachers are experiencing right now. I normally do hybrid courses, but now I need to do  Power Point slides. I rarely do a complete Power Point presentations for my in-class lectures. So Monday and Tuesday I focus on classes. The rest of the week, I'm doing research and writing. I'm also attending Zoom meetings.

Of necessity, I've becoming more skillful in navigating virtual meetings. I'm learning how far to sit from the camera and to pay attention to what's on my desk. Or behind me. I realized in the middle of one meeting that my cat's litter box was visible on the screen. I use a litter deodorizer, and it's okay there (the only convenient place to have it out of the way). But anyone looking must have wondered. Anyone who saw this little dragon must have wondered about him, too.

 I always wonder about what I can see of other people's rooms.

There is also the question of what to wear for a virtual meeting. With celebrities dressing down and showing us their unmade-up faces and just out of shower hair, everyone else seems to have followed the trend. But I still feel as if I should at least tidy up enough not scare people when my face pops up on the screen. I do have this hair thing going on. Like some other ill-advised people, a few days ago I decided to trim my own hair. Now, the gray is really showing. I can't decide how I feel about it. I've been seeing gray hairs since I was in my 20s, and I'm really tired of doing touch-ups every two or three weeks. Now that I'm house-bound I could see what I look like if I don't. Except for those Zoom meetings where other people are seeing my experiment.

I think I need a hat. Maybe I'll knit one with that beginner's knitting kit that I bought a couple of years ago and never time to use. Knit while I learning about French culture from a Kanopy course or taking a Master Class (now that I have a year's subscription). I could knit my hat while I'm learning how to make something really interesting for dinner.

Except I need to stay focused. I want to get back to my 1939 historical thriller. The delay has given me a few ideas. Although Sleuthfest was cancelled, I had a character-naming opportunity in the auction. The winner offered me two names to use. I decided to use both, pairing them with another couple whose names I had already offered to include. As soon as I thought of that, I could see the four of them chatting together on a train bound for New York City. They are discussing the World's Fair that both couples plan to attend. The sleeping car porter, my protagonist, is moving about in the background -- an echo of the scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. But instead of telling the two couples about the man who hasn't been seen since he boarded the train, my porter will be worrying about his own problems. The perfect set-up for a flashback. . .

So that's the news from here on my sofa. It's late and I should go to bed. Stay well, everyone.

Starting the Year

Well, in spite of my best intentions, the last week of December and the first week of January zipped by, and I didn't get a lot of the items on my to-do-list crossed off. I did go to Virginia last week to visit my family. While I was there I spent some time in the public library. I had been using the New York Times for research on 1939. A terrific newspaper that I turn to often for all kinds of research -- but not a researcher's friend if she is trying to read (or, at least, scan the headlines) of an entire year. I can search by topic, but I wanted to see entire issues of a newspaper. So I spent five hours going through as much as I could of my hometown newspaper and getting a better sense of how the news of the year was being reported. That worked well because one of my characters departs from "Gallagher, Virginia" en route to New York City. It also worked because the Danville Register used the same wire services as the big city newspapers. I'm hoping to get the microfilm through interlibrary loan and continue reading.

Now, I'm juggling -- going back and forth between the 1939 book, my dress and appearance in crime justice book proposal (the first draft is done), and editing the manuscript of the third book in my Lizzie Stuart series (that is being reissued). I also have several backburner projects that I need to get started, and school is about to begin. So I'm taking a time-out next week to simply focus on finishing everything I can get done. I'm going to check my email only once a day -- in the evening. I am going to work at home and in the library. And I'm planning to get the updated proposal for the dress and appearance book and the first 50 pages of the 1939 book out to my agent before our upcoming lunch in NYC.

The good news is that an anthology to which I contributed a short story is now available. It was such a fun story to write. This anthology features "The Bronze Buckaroo" (and is available in both print and ebook. The Bronze Buckaroo was a "singing cowboy" who appeared in a series of movies in the 1930s. These movies was intended for an African American audience. The "race" movies in various genres featured mainly African American casts and played in segregated theaters.  In his other life, the actor, Herb Jeffries, was a smooth-voiced singer who signed with Duke Ellington in the late 1930s. My story is a genre-blender -- western/mystery/romance -- inspired by the films and by the cowboy serials that I used to watch as a kid. The movies can be found on YouTube.

My other good news -- something I'm excited about -- is that I've been invited to join the 2019 faculty for the Yale Writers' Workshop this summer. I'll be one of the instructors for Session II in June, devoted to genre fiction and nonfiction. I've already started to prepare. I can't wait to see the Yale campus and hang out with writers from different genres and students from all over the country and international. If you are interested the website is up and registration is open.

But right now, I've got to get to the office before the day is over and do some work there.

The Default Setting

Sorry I'm late today. I'm getting a slow start because I was up late last night and slept in. Because I'm on intersession schedule and working at home rather than the office, I haven't been setting my alarm. Left to my own devices -- i.e., doing what I do naturally -- I become nocturnal and have to watch the clock to remind myself to go to bed. Last night, my cat went to bed before I did.

But I was already thinking about my 1939 characters and their default settings -- how they go about their lives unless compelled or making an effort to do something else. I've been thinking about that because I've been considering how I might weave that into the plot. I have multiple characters, and I want to give them lives. Real people go about their lives negotiating with the world and making adjustments -- or not. They have to cope with their natural inclinations. 

So I've been pondering each character's default setting. This is more of a challenge than I usually have with a book. I'm accustomed to writing series protagonists. I know by now how they navigate life. I even know a lot about my recurring secondary characters. I spent a lot of time learning about Jo Radcliffe, my most recent protagonist, a former Army nurse in the late 1940s who debuted in an EQMM short story.  But now I'm writing a standalone. I have a cast of characters in a much larger book than I've tried before -- not so much in word count but in the size of the canvas and the problems they encounter. It's 1939. First, they were dealing with the Great Depression. Now, they are living in a world on the brink of war.

I have to keep reminding myself that I have knowledge that they don't have yet. In April 1939, they don't know what is going to happen in September. They don't know that Pearl Harbor will be bombed and the United States will no longer have the option of staying out of the war. I need to get into their mindsets as people who are even less able to see into the future than we are in 2018. How are they going about their lives in an era of uncertainty, but one in which they are not dealing with a 24-hour news cycle and social media? What are their default settings? What makes each of them make adjustments -- work schedules, promises to friends, an evening out or church on Sunday?

I need to ponder how each deals with day-to-day life before getting themselves into the difficulties of the plot. I keep coming back to their bios and asking myself questions about them. That is my default setting as a writer. Even when I want to plunge into my thriller and see where I end up, my tendency is to keep circling back to read my characters' bios.

Last night, when I was up browsing on my computer, I had my characters on my mind. This morning when I woke up, I was wondering who among them would understand why I didn't go to bed last night and woke up late and sluggish. My Pullman porter is a night worker by necessity. But I think he would be tucked into bed before midnight if he had a choice. How does lack of sleep affect what he does? My villain on the other hand, likes to roam about outside at night. He lives in Georgia, on the plantation that once belonged to his grandfather. He is a businessman now, travels back and forth to Washington and New York City. But wherever he is, his default setting is to be up and restless. Does he leave his hotel room and go for a walk? If he does, what happens?

By the way, I have been thinking about who would play these characters in a movie. I, too, am having a problem with the ages of the actors who come to mind. So, I'm still pondering.

Happy New Year!  See you in 2019.

Going on Location

This week I went out to do location scouting for my 1939 book in progress. I went to Nantucket -- a fast turnaround of two nights and a day. I had a credit at an inn from last year when the ferry wasn't running because of a hurricane. I needed to come back quickly because of an event my students and I will be attending on campus this afternoon. Since I really needed to get to the library on Nantucket, I decided the quick trip for a first look would be worth it.

If you live in the Northeast or have been watching the weather report, you know that the remnants of Florence have been bringing us rain. Nothing like the devastation in North Carolina and hardly worth complaining about -- just enough to produce flash flooding and to make the drive to Nantucket on Tuesday an exercise in peering at other people's brake lights and on-coming headlights through downpours. I stopped at one point to remove a temporary registration renewal from from my dashboard because the white paper was being reflected on the windshield and I couldn't see through it. That was the weirdest effect I'd ever seen, and I have to remember it for future use (somewhere, somehow).

But getting back to my soggy drive from Albany to Hyannis -- I ended up stopping and calling to change my ferry reservation. Lucky I did because even with the change in time, I barely made the next ferry. And had a hard time getting a taxi in the rain once I arrived in Nantucket. But finally made it to the lovely bed and breakfast where I was staying. The rain continued, and I ordered a pizza, had a hot shower, and settled down to make some notes about the book.

The next day was much better. After enjoying breakfast with the other guests, I walked over to the Nantucket Atheneum, the public library. One of the reference librarians told me that I would be able to access the digital collection of the Nantucket newspaper. That freed up the time I thought I would need to spend reading in the library. Then he showed me the Nantucket section (local histories, fiction, cookbooks, picture books, everything Nantucket). I settled down at the table and knew I was about to have a wonderful afternoon.

Any Moby-Dick fans here? I admit it. I've struggled since high school to read that novel. I love the opening lines, the first few pages, but I never gotten beyond that either in print or audible. I am now ready to try again. Now I know that at one point Nantucket was the whaling capital of the world. I know that Melville's novel was inspired by the true story of the sinking of the Essex. I've read sections of the account written years later by one of the survivors, who was a fourteen year old cabin boy on the ship. I started to read the nonfiction book based on that account and other research. Now, I'm ready to tackle Moby-Dick again -- an unexpected bonus of my research.

But the real find was the prairie dogs. In the 1890s, for unknown reason, prairie dogs were brought to the island. The population quickly got out of hand. One of the problems was that the prairie dogs dug holes. Horses could break legs if they stepped in those holes. The town where most of the prairie dogs were found decided to eradicate the prairie dogs. This happened in 1900, long before the beginning of my novel. But the mention of horses breaking their legs reminded me of the real-life story from 1939 involving the death of a horse during the filming of a movie. One of my POV characters loves horses. I thought this would be an interesting minor detail. Two characters mention this in passing when she is out riding. But since she is the character who will go to Nantucket, followed by my bad guy (who is trying to court her), the prairie dog/horse story has caught my attention. In fact, it has sent me off in a new direction as I imagine an argument she might have with my bad guy and re-think what she does for a living. All that from one brief entry in a book about Nantucket history. More than worth the trip.

But that wasn't all. There were other bits and pieces that I can weave into my plot -- like the Fourth of July celebration that summer in 1939.  Now, I know what my female character would have done that week in Nantucket. I have photographs and descriptions.

In my room that evening, I also had time to think about the relationship between two other characters. To think and realize that I could eliminate a minor character by making one character do the work of two.

Anyone else love getting out and doing location research after days and days at your desk? Wonderful how being there can open a story up and make it work.

Bad Girls, Bad Boys

It's happened again. I've been seduced by my villain. The first time it happened, I was writing Old Murders, the third book in my Lizzie Stuart series. Being a plotter (or, at least a hybrid), I started writing feeling sure I knew whodunit. But during the last fourth of the book, I realized I couldn't do it. My killer had convinced me that someone else should take the fall.

It happened again, that time much earlier, when Lizzie went in search of her mother, Becca. She had never seen her mother, who was 17 when Lizzie was born and got on a bus and left Drucilla, Kentucky five days later. Lizzie was raised by her grandparents, and she wanted to find her mother before accepting her lover's proposal. I knew from the beginning that Becca was not going to be a cookie-baker. As Lizzie followed her mother's trail, Becca took shape. When Lizzie finally came face-to-face with her mother, Becca was smart, beautiful, and cold-blooded. I loved Becca -- and she threatened to walk away with the book.

Now, I'm writing my 1939 historical thriller. I like my characters. But my protagonist -- decent, intelligent, a believer in justice and doing the right thing -- was boring me. When his antagonist was on-stage and I was in my villain's post of view, I was intrigued, not sure what he would do, waiting to see. In desperation, I switched my protagonist's point of view to first person. That helped. He turned out not to be as squeaky-clean as he at first seemed. In fact, he has a secret that is going to walk up and bite him in the middle of the book. He is in turmoil, and that's makes him more interesting to write.

But I will need to dig deeper to make him the equal of my villain. Not that I am dealing with a comic book super-villain. But he is complex, and his downfall will come about because my hero discovers his vulnerabilities.

The thing about villains is that they have few compulsions. They don't feel the need to be good. And, for writers, who spend our real lives trying to be as decent as our heroes, villains are freeing. My closest analogy is that villains are like avatars. To do a villain well, one has to step into his body and walk and talk and think as he would. To play an unfamiliar role.

The good news is that most of us are only temporarily seduced. Being in the head of someone who rejoices in villainy is disturbing. Unsettling. Being in the head of the killer in my last Lizzie Stuart book convinced me that I would never be able to go too far to "the dark side". The villain in my 1939 book may "smile and smile," but he is up to things that I find despicable. He is someone who may carry me along with him -- good for the plot and pace of the novel -- but in the end, he must be stopped.

Distracted Characters

The discussion about endings got me thinking about my series arcs and my subplots that sometimes extend beyond the current book. The romances. The deceptions.  The murder that is solved, but the relationships that aren't resolved. I was going to write about that, but then my life intruded.

I've been juggling balls -- symposium in April, classes to teach, SinC chapter, non-profit board, books to write, short story for an anthology -- and my mail has been piling up on my foyer desk. I noticed but didn't feel any urgency about the pink envelope I received. I knew that if my car insurance payment had been credited on the next day, then I would automatically get a notice. I was sure I had made my customary payment by phone because the bill wasn't there in my in-box. And then I got around to paying bills and realized there was no entry for the insurance. And called to make sure I had actually paid. And was told by the customer service person that no, I hadn't and I had missed the grace period. Luckily, I've been with the company for most of my driving life, and he reinstated me in a few minutes. And I -- horrified by the accident I might have had -- signed up for automatic bank withdrawals of my payments.

After I'd hung up, I started thinking about distractions in my characters' lives. I've been thinking about subplots in my historical thriller. But over the course of the eight-month span required in this book (because of real life events), any number of things might distract or obstruct my characters.

Over the course of eight months, they will need to go on with their lives, attending to the ordinary tasks that we are all required to do to avoid having bad things happen. Even when we are organized, sometimes we are required to work late or deal with a difficult person or go to another store to find something. Sometimes we have a dripping faucet or are spattered by a passing car before an important appointment and have to stop to make repairs. 

Thinking about this over a soothing cup of tea, it occurred to me that I should think about my  characters' ordinary days.  What will fall by the wayside when they find themselves immersed in this extraordinary situation?  How will little things left undone create problems? How will things beyond their control distract them from bigger problems.

This is sending me back to my 1939 timelines and notes with each character in mind.  I don't think I'm wasting time thinking this through. As I've mentioned I cannot write a non-stop thriller -- even if I wanted to do that -- but I do need to make sure my characters struggle to get to the finish line.

Of course, I've done this in my series, particularly the first-person Lizzie Stuart books. But I think that here it might be even more important. I can work in setting and a sense of ordinary life without  paragraphs of description.

What about your characters? Distractions as they are sleuthing or plotting mayhem?

Writing Different

As I mentioned, this year I'm taking part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I'm not sure if I'm going to reach the 50,000 words, but I am now looking for time when I can write each day. I do write every day, but — because I'm trying to finish a nonfiction book — I haven't carved out a time each day to work on my historical thriller. Instead, I've been doing research.


I've done research on the mood of America in the 1930s. Research on fashion and houses and Gone with the Wind. Research on the 1939 New York World's Fair, J. Edgar Hoover, Eleanor Roosevelt, the Great Depression, and the cost of living. I've done research on train schedules and the details of the tasks performed by sleeping car porters. I've watched films released in 1939 and listened to popular music. I've watched video tours of Washington, D.C., New York, and Atlanta. I've also watched a video showing how to drive a 1936 Ford. I know a lot about some things and a little about others.

The question — the real test — is whether during this month of focused writing I know enough to make it through the first draft without stopping to do research. Can I insert a question in brackets to remind myself to fact-check later and keep moving? That is not the way I normally write. I don't like to fill in information later. But this is my month of challenging myself to write different.

Writing different means that instead of working on my novel on weekends, I will get up a couple of hours earlier and start writing. I will write the entire two hours, not go back to read what I wrote the day before and edit. I will keep moving forward, working toward a first draft that is sure to be horrible.

But writing a horrible first draft may be what I need to do with a thriller. I need to feel the forward motion.

Right now, I'm going to bed. Getting up at 7 am is a shock to my system. I will keep you informed about how my attempt to write a novel in a month goes. If nothing else, I think it will force me to stop researching everything that crosses my mind, and instead focus on what I need to know.

Is anyone else doing NaNoMoWri? How did you prepare for the month of writing?

Characters and Seasons

Donis's blog yesterday about summer reading reminded me of what I've always liked about summer. As a child (student) and as an adult (teacher), I have three months of "summer vacation." Of course, now that I'm a grown-up, I do need to use my summer to get some work done. But summer is the time when I can stay up late reading a book or go to a matinee in the middle of the day (Wonder Woman is at the top of my list).

What has changed is that I don't go outside as much as I did when I was a child. Of course, I've never been a fan of summer heat and bug bites. But growing up in the country in Virginia with a big back yard and paths through woods and dogs, I would never have thought of wasting a summer day inside. Nowadays, living in a house in the city, I've been contemplating setting up my empty (until winter) garage as an "outdoor" space. The problem with the grass in my small yard is that it might have ticks. And, besides, even with sunscreen, I could get too much sun. Grilling -- I remember those wonder family barbecues in the front yard under the big old tree. But I could blow myself up trying to start a grill and what about the health risks of hot dogs?

My seasonal preferences have carried over to my characters. My Southern-born protagonist, Lizzie Stuart, loves the South but hates heat and storms. Hannah McCabe, my police detective, lives in Albany, New York, and is dealing with the sizzling summers produced by climate change. I've set some books during the summer, but haven't had to think like a "summer person".

That brings me to my challenge with one of my major characters in my 1939 historical thriller. He lives in Georgia, and summer is his season. The heat and the sun. The smell of his own sweat. He stands out in a field watching the black clouds roll in. Then he sits on his porch with a drink watching the storm erupt.

He loves the land and the smell of the soil. If I don't capture this part of who this character is, then his motivation for the things he does will fall flat. But I need to step into his work boots.

So in answer to Donis's question about summer reading, I'm heading South with books (fiction and non-fiction) written during the 1930s. Books about summer, with heat and sweat and storms. And I'm hoping that the weather here in Albany will not echo what I'm reading.

Does your character have a favorite season? A time of year that he or she loves, but you don't?

Thrilling in Slow Motion

I have to catch an early train down to New York City. So I'm going to make this post brief and interactive.

As you may recall, one of my writing projects is a crime novel set in 1939. I've been calling it a "historical thriller" because the plot does involve a race to uncover the details of a conspiracy and prevent a crime from being committed. But this is a race that happens over eight months in 1939. Although I hope for thrills and chills along the way, with an edge-of-your seat confrontation in the last few pages, I want to make my characters three-dimensional. They will drive the plot.

I'm trying to think of crime novels with thriller elements that extend over a substantial period of time — months rather than days. I'd love to see how the authors deal with pacing.

Any titles spring to mind?  Please share.

Characters, Ideas, and Settings

The posts by my colleagues this week has been so thought-provoking, I had a hard time deciding what to blog about today. Characters who take over? Where ideas come from? Setting as character?

I have experienced that phenomenon of a character who refuses to do what he or she was intended to do. In my third Lizzie Stuart book, Old Murders, the character who was to have been the killer refused that assignment and insisted on having a subplot. In the fourth book, You Should Have Died on Monday, Lizzie's mother, Becca, made an appearance that threatened to upstage Lizzie, my first-person protagonist. Becca is still out there and now that I've returned to the series for a new book, I'm sure she will be making another appearance. I hate to have her ruin Lizzie's wedding, but I'm pretty sure she will show up during the honeymoon. And when she reappears, I will be torn. She is the most take-no-prisoners character I have ever created. A femme fatale who disrupts Lizzie's life, but shouldn't overshadow her.

The idea for my historical mystery came to me when I was thinking about 1939 and the events that symbolized the struggle in America between past and present, inequality and justice. In 1939, Marian Anderson performed at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, the New York World's Fair opened that summer, Billie Holiday performed "Strange Fruit," a song about lynching, at Cafe Society in NYC, and that December, Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta. This idea -- even more than most of my ideas -- has required a lot of thought to get to workable plot.

On the other hand, the idea for my sixth Lizzie Stuart book, now in progress, came to me as an image of a woman running out of her house toward her car. I wanted to try my hand at a flash story for the New England Crime Bake contest. It wasn't a great story -- I needed more words -- but I did discover where that woman was going. She drives up into the mountains to rescue her child, who is being held hostage by an old enemy. The story was pure noir. In my head it played out like a graphic novel. And my protagonist Lizzie Stuart was nowhere in sight.

But that dark, rainy night wouldn't go away. When I was ready to start my new book, the plot changed and the characters changed. But the book begins with Lizzie, driving home on a rainy night in Gallagher and coming upon a car by the side of the road. A woman is trying to change a tire. . .

The book begins there. But the next day, Lizzie and her fiance, John Quinn, fly off to Santa Fe to spend Thanksgiving with his family.

Lizzie has never met his family and wants to make a good impression. But now she is distracted by what is going on back in Gallagher. A woman is missing. Her car was found by the side of the road. . .

Since the murder mystery is back in Gallagher, I might have done some reading about Santa Fe and watched some YouTube videos. But my Thanksgiving gathering -- when Lizzie meets Quinn's family, all of whom have been mentioned in earlier books -- is important to readers who have been following the series. I'm curious about Quinn's family, too, and I want to do those scenes justice. Lizzie and Quinn will soon be on a plane back to Gallagher, Virginia, but I want the family gathering to ring true. So I'm going to Santa Fe for three days in November to find the neighborhood that Quinn's half-sister lives in and the street where her art gallery is located. I'm going to do the tour of the area that Lizzie will have when she goes there. I want the setting to have as much significance in the story as Gallagher.

I have one other idea that I'm playing with, but need to work out. I need to resolve a series arc from my two Hannah McCabe police procedural novels set in Albany. The two books, The Red Queen Dies and What the Fly Saw, are set in 2019 and 2020, respectively. My Lizzie Stuart series is set in the recent past. The year in the sixth book is 2004. But Lizzie is an alum of the University at Albany, School of Criminal Justice. I've been thinking of a cameo appearance by a professor in Gallagher, Virginia, who Detective McCabe contacts to ask a key question about the threat that she is facing in Albany, NY in 2020. Lizzie would be in her 50s, and I wonder what would be going on in her life and how she would be different in McCabe's alternate universe. Just playing with the idea. . .

What I Write About

Last night I did an exercise suggested by Donna Alward and Nancy Cassidy, the authors of an article in Romance Writers Report (RWR)* about "Finding Your Core Story." Alward and Cassidy encouraged writers in search of their brand to look for the elements that appear in their novels over and over again.

I'm fascinated by marketing -- maybe because I'm not that great at doing it. I don't have the time to do it well or consistently. I'm also not sure how to market in a way that feels comfortable and true to who I am. But I do enjoy reading marketing books. I do research on mass media/popular culture in my other job as a criminal justice professor, so I'm always interested in how a good marketing campaign is developed and implemented.

The exercise recommended by Alward and Cassidy is a writer's version of what branding experts recommend for entrepreneurs and business owners. I found a pen and sat down to list the recurring elements in my fiction writing. I had no problem narrowing down to five: brainy and compassionate female protagonist; multicultural cast of characters; impact of past on present; social issues; ethical dilemmas.

When I thought of these elements as my "core story," I discovered something. In both my Lizzie Stuart series (featuring a crime historian and set in the recent past) and my Hannah McCabe books (police procedural novels set in the near future), the core story is about time/place/people. That sounds obvious, but what is important to me is that I show how my characters have been shaped by the time and place in which they live. Lizzie was shaped by her childhood and teen years in a small town in Kentucky in the late 1960s and 70s. Hannah was shaped by growing up in Albany, New York, an old city coping with rapid change.

As I really thought about this -- about how important the impact of  time and place on my characters is to my stories -- I realized this was what I was missing in my 1939 historical thriller. As I've written in other posts, I've been struggling with the structure of that novel. I have to move the characters from Easter morning 1939 in Washington, D.C. to the New York World's Fair that summer and finally to the premier of Gone With the Wind in Atlanta in December. I've been focusing on that and making minimal progress. This "core story" exercise reminded me that I have been putting the plot before the elements that matter most to me when I'm writing a book.

To make my thriller work, I need to stop what I've been trying to do. I need to go back to those character bios that I did and then put aside. Plot matters in a thriller, but -- for me -- the only thriller I'll ever be able to write needs to be rooted in how my characters are shaped by time and place.I need to allow my characters to think about and comment on their world in 1939. I have to let them respond to what is happening rather than try to move them through the plot.

That is my core story -- people in a time and place responding to extraordinary events in their lives. They are dealing with social issues, responding to ethical dilemmas, and fumbling their way through the relationships in their lives.

Now I understand why I am drawn to stories set in the past or future rather than the present. I need to be able to look back or look forward. It makes perfect sense that my new protagonist is living through the disruptions of post-World War II America.

*RWR is published by Romance Writers of America. This article appears in the September 2016 issue.

Real People and Fiction

I can't resist joining this week's discussion about the use of real people's stories in fiction. I have done it, too. Because my character, Lizzie Stuart, is a crime historian, she is often concerned with cases from the past. I draw on real life cases, most of them involving ordinary people who would have passed their lives in obscurity if not for their involvement in a crime. 

I use the stories of these real people as inspiration and starting point, spinning form fact (or what is believed to be fact) into fiction. For example, in A Dead Man's Honor, the book began with a real-life lynching. I changed the victim and the crime that served as the catalyst for the lynching. I made the man who was lynched innocent of the crime. I inserted Lizzie's grandmother into the story as a child who had witnessed what happened.

A teenager girl's life and death was the starting point for another book. She had killed a woman and she was executed by the state of Virginia. The true story was sad and frustrating. The girl, whose name was Virginia Christian, was a member of a sharecropping family. She worked in the home of the widow who owned the land. During an argument and a physical confrontation, she killed her employer. I went to the Library of Virginia to go through the documents related to the case. A page from the 1912 record of Christian's appearance in court and the discussion of the charges against her appears to the left. Christian's story and that of her victim became the starting point for Old Murders. In my version, Lizzie encounters Christian's lawyer decades after he had failed to save his client's life.

In the same way, real people have found their way into my Hannah McCabe books. In the McCabe books, these people have been better known. John Wilkes Booth (long dead, but not forgotten) plays a pivotal role in The Red Queen Dies.  But there is another story involving ordinary people and an abandoned school that I would love to tell. In my mind that story has become interwoven with a newspaper article that I read about an investigation of a boys' school in another state. I have a victim and a case I would love to have McCabe investigate.

I am always interested in the ethics that we bring to bear in writing about real people. In my Author's Note, I acknowledge the inspiration/starting point of real cases and the people I include (if they might be recognized). I explain that I did research to learn more about what happened. But then I turned down another path, spiraled off into make-believe, and what was true was now blurred into fiction.

In my 1939 book, I do have real people appear in cameos. But I'm trying to stay close to what they might have said or done. I want to make sure that J. Edgar Hoover wasn't in Florida when I have him meeting with my FBI agent in Washington, D. C. I also want what he says to reflect his attitude about the looming likelihood of war and the real-life people being investigated.

This topic sometimes comes up when I'm doing an event. Someone from the audience will come up after it's over and tell me about someone they know who has been involved in a crime as victim or offender or an old family story about an uncle or a grandfather. This person often wants to write a book about what happened and is wondering whether to try a novel or true crime. I tell him or her that if there are gaps in the story and people still alive who were involved, I personally would write a novel and change the facts. But that's because I write mysteries.

Anyone else have these chats with people about stories they'd like to tell?

Writing in the Present and the Past

Rick's post on Tuesday about the digital age and new technology struck a chord with me. I agree that as writers of crime fiction, we end up looking fairly stupid -- or making our characters look that way -- if we don't know about and make use of current technology in our books. I have tried a twist in my two Hannah McCabe books. They are set in the near-future, but in an Albany, New York that exists in an alternate universe. The characters communicate with an all-purpose device called an ORB. I've incorporated some other real-life technology already available but not yet widely used.

On the other hand, my Lizzie Stuart series is set in the recent past. The challenge there is to remind readers that Lizzie is in 2004 right now. Only problem, my memory of early 2000 is becoming a bit blurry. I haven't written a book in the series in several years. When I return to it with the next book, I'm going to have to do some research -- read some newspapers, look at some ads, get back into the technology of 12 years ago.

I thought it would be easier to write a historical thriller set in 1939. Even with the future looming and on display at the World's Fair, no one was able to pick up a smartphone and find information.  But I do need to know what  technology was available. That's a fairly easy question to answer regarding the FBI and large city police departments. But I must dig deeper to know how readily a small town police chief in Georgia would have been able to obtain information about a suspect or verify someone's identity.

And there are other questions I need to answer about 1939. Recently, I came across a collection of letters online. Letters to a young woman who was in her first year of college. Most are from her mother, with an occasional letter from her father, a minister. The letters are fascinating because the parents are keeping their daughter informed about what is happening at home. What has struck me is how often someone is ill that winter. The mother has a toe that has become infected and she is at home with her foot up in the early letters, waiting for the toe to drain and the hole to close over. She later comes down with a horrible cold, as do several other people she mentions. One of those people is a radio personality. A family in the town suffers a double tragedy when a young man attending the funeral of his sister, fails to dress properly for the wet, chilly weather, catches pneumonia, and dies soon after. All of this illness has reminded me that I need to know more about the state of medicine in the 1930s. I had this on my radar as a concern for the people struggling to survive the Great Depression, but even in this middle-class, well-educated family and among their neighbors, the danger of an early demise seems to loom over their heads. So research on the state of medicine in the 1930s is in order.

But right now, I am waiting to receive my new computer. I have turned over my old equipment to my computer guy and he is transferring everything over. I'm going to keep my outdated desk top to use for writing when I don't want to be distracted. The new laptop will have all of the most recent bells and whistles, including touch screen. It should be interesting to see how long it takes me to adapt

Self-Discipline and Writing

I'm frequently told that I accomplish a great deal -- criminal justice professor and mystery writer -- non-fiction and crime fiction. Right now, I'm in the midst of writing a nonfiction book about dress, appearance, and criminal justice and a historical thriller. Meanwhile, I'm working out the plot details of another mystery. But the truth is, I am easily distracted.

As Donis told us in her post yesterday, sometimes there are ants in the kitchen -- or some other distraction from sitting down at the keyboard and writing. I think at some point, all of the Type M-ers have recounted a major or minor distraction from writing. So I know I am not alone in having to cope with the ups and downs of the real world. In fact, these legitimate reasons for not writing on a given day are of less concern to me than the thought that I waste time. I admit I have a limited supply of self-discipline.

Over the years, I have tried to develop strategies to compensate for my lack of discipline. I have read numerous books and articles and blog posts from other writers about how to be more productive. I have tried to apply some of that advice. For example, the advice to "be consistent" and "develop writing habits". I have tried getting up at the same time every day and going to my computer. That would work if only I could persuade myself that I should go to bed at the same time every night, or set my alarm to go off at the same time every morning no matter what time I finally fall between the sheets. I am a night person. I like being up and reading or doing research at night. When I have a deadline, I write at night. After all these years, my bed time remains erratic, and so does my rising. Actually, in summer I am much more likely to wake early because of the light pouring in. But if I am tired, getting to the keyboard consistently is still a problem. Hence, my feeling all summer that I was wasting my precious mornings with tasks around the house and to-do lists.

I am on sabbatical from teaching this fall because I need to finish my book on dress, appearance, and crime. I did a proposal, so two chapters and the introduction are already done. The other chapters are outlined. My research is done and I am ready to write. I have a deadline -- the beginning of January when I need to start preparing for spring semester. I know I will get the first draft done because I must. But it is still annoying that I could not develop and follow a writing schedule this summer. Yes, it was true I had another lingering writing commitment that I needed to finish up, and I served on a committee, and I cleaned out my office and my house. And my spaces are now much more tidy. But I might have finished those tasks more quickly if I hadn't been distracted by ideas that occurred to me and sent me off to the computer to spend whole afternoons looking for articles and then reading the articles or requesting the ones I couldn't access from the library. During the summer, I created new piles of articles and books to read. Some of them may be useful in the end, but looking for them was a distraction because much of what I was looking for could have been found later when I got to that point in my writing.

Right now, I am fascinated by Eleanor Roosevelt. I am reading her "My Day" newspaper columns (collected in book form). I needed to only read the columns from 1939 for my thriller. But the columns cover the period 1936-1945, and I sure that I will not be able to stop reading when I finally get to 1939. Eleanor and I will go right through World War II together. And then I will have to restrain myself from reaching for Goodwin's No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, a hefty volume about the home front during World War II. But my book is set in 1939. I need to exercise some discipline and focus only on what people living in the years leading up to 1939 would have known. And as intriguing as she is, I will stop reading about Eleanor. I will get back to what I am supposed to be doing.

But you can now see the problems created by my lack of discipline. In spite of the good advice that would undoubtedly make my writing life easier, I am not consistent. I don't have a fixed time to write. I don't have a  word count/quota that I am trying to reach. I don't have -- and this is one of my greatest distraction even though I tell myself that it isn't -- but I don't have one place that I write each day. I move back and forth between my office at home and my office at school. I fear I am wasting a significant amount of writing time in transit. But even this fall when I will be on sabbatical, much of my collected research for the nonfiction book will be stacked up in boxes and file cabinets at the office. And I will still focus best on my fiction when I work at home.

I am thinking of designating days of the week for working at school or at home. On those days, I will get up and move briskly to reach my desk -- a few feet into my office or get dressed and out the door and drive into school. I will sit down, I will focus, I will not be distracted by ideas that pop into my head that seem urgent but can be thought about later. I will write those ideas down on a pad and come back to them later. I will have a designated day of the week when I will do all my chores such as grocery shopping and taking clothes to the cleaners and filling the car with gas.

I will not be distracted. I will be consistent. . . well, I will at least do a calendar and write down proposed word counts and try to follow it. I must because if I don't, January will come and I will not have finished what I must get done.

How Can I Use That?

I may be speaking for only a small group of heartless, cold-blooded scribblers. But from the conversations I had over the years, I suspect this is true of most of us who write crime fiction. In an emergency, we do our best to respond effectively and with compassion. We do everything we can to help. Then we step back, think, "That was really interesting" and wonder how we can use it in our next book or story.

The following tale will illustrate my point. The cat in the photo below is Harry, my Maine Coon mix, who I adopted in October of last year. He is sniffing an old sock filled with organic catnip and experiencing total bliss.

 Last weekend, Harry was experiencing a completely different emotion. And it was my fault. I live in an old house, 100 years old. My house is one-story, attic overhead, well-insulated since I moved in four years ago. But there is nothing to be done about the basement. The basement has two sections. The smaller, front section is accessed by going down the stairs from the kitchen. The "laundry room" is located there. Gray outdoor carpeting covers most of the rock and dirt floor. The washing machine and dryer are up on platforms. The trim hot water heater sits against a wall. On the other side of that wall is the furnace. One can access that other section of the basement by taking a few steps. When I first moved into the house, I was sure a serial killer lurked on the other side of that wall -- in spite of my alarm system -- waiting for me to come down and do laundry. For several weeks, I would not do laundry at night. Until I really needed something to wear the next day. . .

I still take a flashlight and turn on the lights on the other side of the wall -- just to make sure everything's okay around there in that cavernous space occupied only by the furnace and the work table and tool cabinet on the other side of the room. And a radiator that my contractor told me I should save in case I ever wanted to re-install it. . . My basement isn't as scary to me as it used to be.

When I go downstairs, I always close the kitchen door so that Harry won't be tempted to follow me. Last Saturday morning, I was careless. I didn't realize this until I came back upstairs from putting clothes in the dryer. The door was ajar. I assumed, I had left it that way. But Harry was nowhere to be seen. Not out on the enclosed "sleeping porch" where he had been watching the birds fly by. Not on the radiator watching the birds fly in and out of the bird apartment house on a pole in my neighbor's yard. Not stretched out on the rug in the dining room or the futon in the sun room having a nap. Not under my bed or behind a chair. Nowhere. Harry was gone. 

But both front and back doors were closed and locked. He had to be in the house. I ran back down to the basement, thinking he must have slipped by when my back was turned. Of course, I was calling his name . . . calling with increasing desperation when he didn't respond.

No Harry in the basement. No Harry when I ran back upstairs and looked in all the places I had looked before as if he might have been invisible the first time.  

Back down to the basement still calling his name and reminding myself (the dog person) that cats often ignore their names being called. But he had to be somewhere. And then I head a "meow". It seemed to be coming from outside -- outside just beyond the window above the tool cabinet. Upstairs, I ran. And realized as I reached the front door that the window over the tool cabinet had been closed. 

Back down to the basement again. This time, I tipped over to the cabinet. The cabinet that was against the wall and should have left no room for a large cat to be behind it. But he was. And he hissed at me from midway between either end. Obviously, Harry didn't recognize me or was too scared to come out even if he did. I stopped to think about that for a moment. About what could have scared him so much. He must have been startled by the dryer that I had turned on and dashed into the other section of the basement and found himself there in that strange space. And he had hidden in the only place there was to hide. 

The question was how to get him out. I went upstairs to get the open can of cat food in the refrigerator. Surely when he smelled the food. . . .

That got him almost out, and then he dashed back when I reached toward him. Dry food. The dry food he isn't allowed to have any more because he needs to lose a couple of pounds. But I still had half a bag. Harry always responds to the sound of that bag being opened. 

And he did respond. To the sound of the bag. To the food in my hand. To my verbal encouragement. Slowly, step-by-step, as I backed across the room. Harry following, focusing on me and my outstretched hand. Harry crouching as we came around the wall, staring at the dryer and then moving closer for a better look. Harry dashing under the kitchen steps, but then peering out. Following me up the kitchen steps, one at a time. Harry crossing the threshold and realizing he was back in known territory. And instead of meowing for the dry food he was not allowed to have, dashing into the dining room. And sitting down by my chair at the table as I came with brush and wet wipes to clean away the dust and cobwebs clinging to him. Even allowing me to wipe his paws. Harry jumping back on the radiator to watch the birds.

And me, sitting down and taking a breath. Thinking that had been scary. If I had been that scared -- heart pounding, on the edge of panic -- when my cat disappeared, what would it have been like if the cat had been a child? And thinking the next moment -- "I could write that. I could write that scene with a mother and a child who vanishes. But I don't have anywhere to use it." And thinking maybe I should write it down anyway, while I can still feel the emotions . . .

I did have somewhere to use it! The book I was working on. My 1939 thriller with the first chapter that wasn't working because my protagonist was doing nothing. Yes, he was watching other people who had come that Easter Sunday to see Marian Anderson perform at the Lincoln Memorial. He was observing and he was thinking. He spotted my villain and then he thought about that. But my hero was static, passive. 

What if I moved him back a scene or two? What if that first chapter began as my hero was rushing to get to the event, running late, and concerned that he would be so far back in the crowd that he wouldn't be able to see. And then he encounters the woman -- the desperate mother whose child has vanished. People are rushing by. No one is listening to her. She grabs his arm because he is wearing his porter's uniform. Begs him to help. He tells her she needs a policeman, tries to rush on. . .but she clings. He stops. He helps her look and finds her child, who is hiding and afraid to come out because he thinks his mother will be angry.

My hero has done a good deed (and been heroic). But now -- from his point of view -- he is late. He is irritated. Since he is far back in the crowd, he looks around at the faces as Ms. Anderson sings. He sees joyful, transfixed faces. He sees a few people weeping. He seems my villain -- who shouldn't be there in that crowd. Their gazes meet. My hero is puzzled, disconcerted. . .

Thank you, Harry. I'm so sorry you were frightened. I'm so sorry I was careless and a bad "cat parent". I'm really happy you are curled up on the floor by the table as I write this. But, thank you for solving my first chapter problem. You are going into my acknowledgments.

And I admit I was reaching for my notebook within minutes of making sure you were safe.