A Writer's Mind

When I was thinking about what I would blog about today, I kept going back to something that happened on Monday. This incident was both scary and – in retrospect – a little embarrassing. But I've got to tell you about it, because I suspect this is another example of how a writer's mind functions.

Here's what happened (thank you, Adrian Monk, for that phrase). I had a great time at Malice Domestic last weekend (great seeing several of my fellow bloggers!). The only problem was I kept waking up during the night when my hotel room air conditioner came on and it was too hot to turn it off. So I was a little tired on Monday morning, and I arrived at school with just enough time to hurry over to the building next door to make sure the noise from the pipe in the ceiling last class meeting was not going to be a problem during Monday's team presentations. Relieved not to hear anything and that the media equipment was also working well, I dashed into the cafeteria and picked up the lunch special to go. Back at my desk, I realized I'd gotten napkins and a plastic fork but forgotten I needed a knife. But I didn't have time to rummage through what was in my drawer looking for one. I needed to print out a copy of my syllabus so that I could remind the class of end of semester due dates.

So there I was, pressing "print" with one hand while forking food into my mouth with the other. And swallowing fast. Until something didn't go down and I realized a large piece of steak had lodged in my throat. Luckily, I had taken the time to fill my mug with water. And I managed – with the help of the visitor's chair on the other side of my desk – to perform my own Heimlich Maneuver (see image for instructions):

It was an interesting experience – similar to the time I hydroplaned during a rainstorm. I had time to think about what was happening and consider what I should do. And hear my mother reminding me to "chew my food." But it was all over in a minute or so.

A friend once told me that her tire had blown out as she was driving home on the interstate in rush hour traffic. I said, "Did you panic?" and she, ever logical, said, "That wouldn't have helped." I'd also browsed the Army survival manual and some other books when I was doing research for a Lizzie Stuart mystery. So I had been lecturing myself about not panicking during the next emergency – keep your head and survive. Or, save your cat. My last almost emergency was a few weeks ago, when Harry seemed to be choking on a treat he had gobbled. He managed to cough it up and then swallow. But that reminded me that I didn't know how to do the Heimlich on a cat. And while Googling the instructions, I'd had occasion to review what to do for a human – including yourself. And I was hoping I had time to try that before I ran out into the hall to search for help before I passed out.

As I was dashing out the door to class – couldn't be late because all the teams had to present – I made a mental note that I needed to write down what had happened because now I knew how it felt and I might be able to use it in a book. And last night, having thought of what happened again, I realized – much to my delight – that I can use it in the book I'm working on right now. In fact, it will be perfect in the book I'm writing because I have an important secondary character who is a cook aboard a train, and what if…

My question – am I really too weird even for a writer? Or, are we all – even during scary moments – constantly making notes to ourselves? What doesn't kill us or leave us unable to write, gets filed away to find its way into a book or short story?

Ever Had One of Those Weeks?

I have been incredibly crabby over the past couple of weeks. I don’t know quite what to blame it on. Sometimes these moods just come and go like the tide. Part of it may be the fact that our air quality here in the Phoenix area has been horrible, and high ozone has always done a number on my head. Two solid weeks of low grade headache would make anybody crabby. I also might blame the mood on my looming deadline. My WIP is due in to my publisher next month, and every day I think, this is the day I’m going to finish. And every day, the damn ending keeps getting farther and farther away. Every minute I spend doing something other than writing causes me great anxiety.

But those bills have to be paid and meals made and doctor appointments kept and meetings attended. The state of my house is beginning to depress me. I manage to keep things clean and tidy enough to forestall the Department of Health, but that’s about it. My long-suffering husband bought me a Hurricane Power Scrubber a couple of days ago (at my request. It wasn’t a clueless anniversary present or anything like that). I thought that having a power scrubber would make short work of cleaning the shower, so I was all excited to give it a try. The instructions say that you have to charge the scrubber for 24 hours before the first use, which I did. Then I rushed into the bathroom, I clicked on the appropriate scrubber head, gave it a couple of test whirls, lowered it to the shower floor, and…nothing. It seems our power scrubber is a dud.

I was immediately plunged into unreasonable despair. Sometimes it feels like nothing is easy. Why oh why couldn’t I at least be able to clean my shower without it being an ordeal? Don will return it tomorrow (he has one of those pesky doctor appointments in a couple of hours, which always makes me a bit nervous), and I hope he’ll be able to exchange it for one that works.

I’m sure that once I finish this book and get it off my hands, I’ll feel better. When I re-read parts of the manuscript, I’m pleased with the way the book is shaping up. When I next write to you, Dear Reader, I anticipate that the air will have cleared, Don will have gotten a good report from the cardiologist, the book will be done or nearly so, and my shower will be sparkly clean. I live in eternal hope. There is always light at the end of the tunnel. Isn't there?

The care and feeding of writers

Barbara here, writing from Iceland. This is a pleasure rather than a writing-related trip, but a writer always sees the world through the lens of words.

Iceland has only a little over 330,000 people, two thirds of whom live in Reykjavik, the capital city, but it has a vibrant arts, music, and literary scene. The gift shops are full of hand-crafted goods made by Icelanders, instead of the usual trinkets mass-produced somewhere in Asia. There are knitted goods, pottery, carvings, art... and books! Bookstores and libraries are everywhere, and a quick perusal of the bookstore shelves reveals a wealth of books in Icelandic, including numerous world-class crime writers whose books are not only devoured in their native tongue but translated and enjoyed the world over. One of Iceland's literary icons, Halldor Laxness, won the Nobel prize in 1955. All this in a country of only 330,000 people.

In the short time I've been here, I've noticed Iceland is fiercely proud and protective of its heritage, culture, and language, which is very close to the old Norse of more than a thousand years ago. Their culture is rooted in sagas of their origins, part fantastical, part myth, part historical. The family sagas were passed down orally for generations before being written down by storyteller historians. Tales of bravery, adventure, brotherly feuds, betrayal, and triumph. Storytelling, one might say, is bred in the bone. Through government policy and individual commitment, Iceland supports its culture and its artists, which allows a tiny population less than the size of most mid-sized western towns to provide a livelihood for its creative class. Something that English-speaking countries with populations hundreds of times greater, like Canada, struggle to do, and often fail.

Education is free through secondary school, which runs until age 20, and free also at the state universities, and there is a high level of literacy in Iceland. A culture of reading is supported both at the schools, through dedicated reading times, and at home. Grants and awards are available to support writers as well. I suspect that if I had time to delve deeper beneath the surface, I would find government policies and incentives to support local creators. Certainly in the bookstores, the small English book section contained translations of Icelandic crime writers (among other writers) instead of the usual American or British blockbuster thrillers that feature most prominently in bookstores in English speaking countries.

Iceland's geographical isolation and unique language no doubt contribute to the thriving indigenous book scene, but like many Europeans, most of the people I encountered, from store clerks to mechanics at the tire store, spoke English remarkably well and were plugged into the larger global scene. But they also seem to believe that art and literature, in particular their own, are worth preserving. In a world increasingly homogenized by international corporate juggernauts, if we want to preserve the richness of regional, personal, and cultural diversity, we would do well to take a page from Iceland's book.

You’ve got to be paying attention

by Rick Blechta

Aline’s comment about everyone scribbling notes at one of the presentations during the weekend conference she organized really resonated with me. For those of us who write crime fiction, these opportunities can be incredibly important , because not only can we make use of the “nuts & bolts”-type things to which Aline is referring, but we can also make use of “motivational” (meaning plot motives) items that are encountered almost daily — if one is paying attention.

That’s why I nearly always read accounts in the media of crimes and criminal proceedings. If I had the time, I would attend trials too. Anytime I’m around those involved with law enforcement, I may not be keeping actual notes, but I’m doing my best to memorize anything said that might be used later.

Here’s a good example of what I mean: When I first got involved with Crime Writers of Canada years ago, the Toronto chapter held monthly meetings. Quite often an expert on something or other would come in to give a presentation. There were many good ones over the years: a court clerk, a profiler, policemen (from beat cops to the brass upstairs), a firearms expert, and even one person who was a specialist in hand-to-hand combat.

I always took a notebook to those meetings! You’d invariably come away with tons of useful little details that only insiders know, and even though I’ve only used a handful of them over the years, I’ve kept my store of them dry and ready to use at a moment’s notice.

One experience, though, sticks out above all others. The chapter meeting wasn’t really well-attended which was a huge shame, but those of us who came sure got our money’s worth.

The guest that evening was a senior homicide detective from the neighbouring municipality of Peel. He brought a slide presentation with photos of an actual crime scene. He’d arranged the ones he’d chosen (he told us there were over a thousand) to take us through the scene of a murder investigation as the police had found it.

The police had been called because of the smell coming from an apartment in a large building. The murder took place during the summer and the body they found in the bedroom was a mess. Fortunately, he only showed us one or two of the less-graphic ones, but believe me that was enough to viscerally bring home what it must have been like for the forensics team.

The owner of the apartment was gay and had picked up the person who murdered him at a Toronto bath house. The weapon used was a long kitchen knife and there was blood all over the place: floor, walls and ceiling. It was immediately obvious the body had been there for several days. (The apartment didn’t have air conditioning.)

The detective told us they were pretty sure from start that the murder had taken place around three days earlier. One of us asked how they knew that without a postmortem or witness statements.

“See that glass on the night table in this shot? Both men had been drinking screwdrivers (vodka and orange juice) in those last hours. You can still see half of it in the glass.”

“What’s the black stuff floating on top of the orange juice?” I asked.

“Flies. We found a two-inch layer of dead flies in that glass. It takes about three days to get a layer that thick, so we knew right away roughly when the murder had taken place.”

Now there is a detail that would set a written murder scene description way in front of the rest of the pack of usual descriptions, wouldn’t it?

I have my little file of oddball facts gleaned over the years. Every so often an opportunity to use one comes up. To a writer of crime fiction, it’s pure gold.

So for those of you out there who read crime fiction, keep a notebook of these sorts of details. To those of you who only read crime fiction, this is a good example of where those juicy (and in this case cringe-worthy) details come from.

But you've got to be paying attention.

Conference Time

For the past few weeks most of my waking hours – and quite a few when I should have been sleeping – have been occupied in helping to organise the Crime Writers' Association Conference, held this year in Edinburgh.

When you volunteer for things like this you really don't have the first idea how complicated it is and how many details have to be thought through. Luckily our committee was headed by the wondrously efficient Aly Monroe and included Marianne Wheelaghan whose charm can persuade the birds off the trees and, more importantly, people to donate gifts for our goody bags (you may remember them from their guest posts on Type M) and somehow it all got done.

The CWA is, I think, unusual in that the conference is nothing to do with selling books and only members of the association attend, with their guests. It started in the days when there were no crime festivals and writing was a lonely business, and the idea was to get to know each other, have a good time and attend lectures that would give useful insight into the arcane workings of police procedure, forensic science, psychological assessment, judicial process and other related subjects.

We chose for our theme 'The Jekyll and Hyde City.' Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Louis Stevenson were both born here and Alexander McCall Smith and Ian Rankin, whose books typify these two faces of Edinburgh, spoke at the Welcome drinks party. We had visits arranged to see round the sinister underground streets, walled in and built over in Plague times, as well as to the writers museum dedicated to the three great names of Scottish literature – Walter Scott, Robert Burns and Robert Louis Stevenson.

A rumour may have reached you that the weather in Scotland is not always as clement as one might hope but on this occasion Edinburgh really did us proud with three beautiful spring days. Having visitors is always good for you; it makes you look around you and see the beauty that you take far too much for granted: the castle, dominating the skyline; Arthur's Seat, the brooding, extinct volcano; the medieval tenements of the old town; the elegant Georgian squares of what is called the New Town but which, since it was built in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, ought really to be called the Not-Quite-As-Old-As-The-Old-Town town.

Our lectures this time were from police officers, a pathologist, and most interesting of all a top forensic soil scientist, Professor Lorna Dawson. She gave a most fascinating lecture about the information that can be gained from as little as a smear of mud on someone's clothing. Most amazing of all was a clip she showed us from a programme on the BBC. They had given her a challenge: she was handed a boot that the presenter had worn on a walk and the only information given her was that it had been somewhere in Scotland. She had to say where. It showed her going through the various processes – initial inspection, microscopic examination, elimination of certain soil types, forensic analysis. We watched on a map of Scotland as she eliminated more and more areas until eventually there were only two possible sites and she chose the right one, a small wooded area in central Scotland. It was a stunning display of forensic power and I wasn't the only one who was frantically scribbling down information that may well appear in the next book.

We were privileged, too, to have the Lord Justice Clerk – Scotland's second most senior judge – as a very witty speaker after our Gala Dinner. I'm actually boasting here; she was one of my former pupils so I was able to exercise some of my former authority in persuading her to do it. Even if it did make me feel about 103.

It was incredibly hard work but there's a great satisfaction in looking back after it has all gone according to plan. There's great satisfaction, too, in knowing that it's someone else's turn to organise it next year!

PS As a follow-up to my last post, I too like Sybil, found the work I had lost. That vital notebook was hiding in a cupboard, pretending to be one of a pile of old diaries. What a relie.

A One-Star Review and Guns

Like other writers, I loathe one-star reviews. I hate to get them, and if there’s a book that I didn’t like I’d rather ignore it and spend my time writing a review of a book that I did enjoy. But I was compelled to write a one-star review on a particular book because it exploits my favorite genre--crime fiction--as a soapbox to promote a political agenda that I disagree with. The book, Unloaded: Crime Writers Writing Without Guns, is an anthology edited by Eric Beetner who uses the book as a platform for his pious grandstanding as a shill for the anti-gun lobby. Read my review here.

No doubt, you’re going to ask, “Mario, what is it about you and guns?”

To begin, I’ve always liked guns. When I was four, my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told her I wanted a machine gun. Part of the reason I joined the army was that I’d have the opportunity to shoot all kinds of guns. Once I even got to shoot a vintage automatic rifle reportedly used by the police when they ambushed Bonnie and Clyde. Macabre for sure, but if you write crime novels, supremely cool.

Then on September 5, 1985, my father committed suicide with his pistol. It was a day of enormous tragedies, heartache, and shame. I associated guns with those horrific events and my reaction to the pain and grief was to get rid of the few guns that I owned. My attitude was that I didn’t need guns, and neither did anyone else. So for the next twenty-five-plus years I was ambivalent to owning guns.

Then recently I read Woe To Live On by Daniel Woodrell and Empire of the Summer Moon by S.G. Gywnne.

                                 

In both books, the early black powder revolvers were central to the action. I became fascinated with these guns to the point that I decided to buy one. When I mentioned this to a writer friend, he told me that if I owned a gun my chances of being killed by it would be 2.7 times more than if I had no gun. The statistic shocked me. Why would I do such a risky thing? I decided to investigate his claim and that led me to dive headfirst into this debate about guns in America.

I learned that statistic came from a study (long since discredited) headed by Dr. Arthur Kellerman, sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control. His study was part of CDC’s quest--not to find the truth or promote public safety--but to cook the evidence in support of abolishing guns. “We’re going to systematically build a case that owning firearms causes deaths.” And “…a long term campaign… to convince Americans that guns are, first and foremost, a public health menace.” However skeptical you might be that the CDC willingly compromises its ethics you only need look at their history with the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.

The anti-gun lobby, in league with the American medical establishment, likes to preach about the dangers of owning a gun but when you look at the numbers reported by the CDC, for 2015 Accidental Fatalities, you have: Firearms 489; Pedestrian 959; Drowning 3602; Falls 33,381; Automobile 36,161; Poisoning 47,478 (of which half are prescription opioids, i.e., provided by the medical community). Considering that in this country there are as many gun owners as there are car drivers, Americans as gun owners are much safer than Americans as car drivers. And accidental firearms deaths continue to decline (in 2005 it was 789, in 2010 it was 606), and so you think the anti-gun crowd would cheer that trend but they don’t even mention it.

The Epidemic of Gun Violence! Now that sounds super scary. The big numbers that make up “gun violence” are gun homicide and gun suicide, and those numbers are subsets of the much larger totals of violent crime and all suicides. Interesting how no politician or bureaucrat ever says we have an epidemic of violent crime or an epidemic of suicide. By using the term gun violence, the apparatchiks can blame gun owners--people like me--while washing their hands of the hard work needed to stop violent crime (domestic violence, robbery, gang violence, and drug trafficking) and suicide (depression and substance abuse). To me, suicide is especially troubling since we live in a land of promise and plenty, and yet as our material standard-of-living continues to rise, so do our suicides.

If we are truly committed to solving violent crime and suicide, then we must devote the necessary resources and be diligent and honest in grappling with some tough social issues. The solution will not be a policy based on fraudulent agendas, misdirection, and lies.

Serial Killers Begone

The Beautiful Lizzie Borden

Fractured Families required a serial killer. It was necessary for the plot. The murders were too bizarre to have been committed by a person of ordinary sensibility. I did a lot of research on this subject and know more about truly evil people than is good for me.

My editor asked if she should use the word "sociopath" or "psychopath" in flap copy. Actually the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is the psychologist's bible, called this kind of deviance "psychopath" until 1958, then the term switched to "sociopath." After 1968,  information was classified under the heading of Anti-Social Personality Disorder.

For publicity purposes, we settled on using the word "psychopath" because the term is more familiar.

My home state of Kansas has had its fair share of serial killers. Lizzie Borden was famous, of course, and so were the Bloody Benders.

Graves of victims of the Bloody Benders

However accurate historically, It seems as though serial killers have been done to death in mysteries. I'm happy that my current work-in-progress won't need this kind of individual. The classic motivations of greed, love, and revenge have stronger characterization.

Recently I listened to an old, old book (1830s) The Count of Monte Cristo, on an audio recording. Narrated by John Lee it was the one of the best narrations I've ever heard. A classic tale of revenge, it held my interest for hours.

I think betrayal and revenge is are two motivations that are universal.

Going Places

One of the great things about the crime fiction genre these days is that it is so diversified readers can both see themselves in books and experience (virtually) societies and people who live in worlds far from their own.

Therefore, when I buy a crime novel, I’m more interested in character and setting than I am in crime and plot. I want a novel to take me to a real world I haven’t explored yet.

Naomi Hirahara gives me this. She explores the Vietnamese-American culture in Los Angeles in a fascinating and interesting way in her Ellie Rush series. (SJ Rozan, who does New York City pretty darn well herself, suggested Naomi’s books to me.)

Hirahara’s parent-child relationships illustrate the potentially-tense dynamics among a generation that wants for their children all that America offers but also needs for those same children to appreciate their Vietnamese heritage. A familial conflict is always simmering, ready to boil over.

Similarly, I’m rereading A Corpse in the Koryo, by James Church, who according to the author bio on his books was "a former Western intelligence officer with decades of experience in Asia." That’s about all I can find on the guy. No pictures. No further info. Church offers North Korea in a way the makes his respect and love for the citizens their obvious. Here’s a teaser: “Trees are not like people.” His lips tightened, and his cheeks lost their color. “They’re more civilized. People lose someone, what do they do? Nothing, they just keep going. Some people lose everything, everything. They lose everything, they keep going. Not trees. Trees don't do that. They live together, they don't move away, they know each other, they feel the wind and the rain at the same time, they can't bear it when one of them dies. So the whole group just stops living.” He paused while the train went past a patch of open ground with an abandoned log cabin. “Don't listen to anyone who tells you about loyalty to an idea. You're alone,” he said. “Without your family you're alone.” (101)

Wonderful metaphor. Fascinating illustration and exploration of culture and society. Church is an impressive prose stylist who offers North Korea (in a novel written in English, no less) in a manner similar to Dostoyevsky's handling of Russia (in translation). North Korea’s people, politics, and landscape are presented in a nuanced and subtle way that only decades spent on the ground observing can provide. Will I ever get to North Korea? I bet most of us won’t, but Church takes us there.

And, finally, there’s The Sympathizer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Edgar Award, written by Viet Thanh Nguyen. This book is a huge step forward for crime fiction. It wasn’t too long ago, after all, that my grad school professor told me that if I wanted to teach at the college level I needed to “write a mainstream novel.” (I asked why if I wrote a mainstream novel, I was doing the acceptable thing, but if he wrote a crime novel, he was becoming a commercial sellout.) I never got an answer that day. The Sympathizer shows a great crime novel can be a great novel.

So many contemporary crime novels offer setting in rich and interesting ways that plot really does become secondary, at least for me. I’d love to hear what my Type M colleagues are reading and what they and others look for in contemporary crime-fiction novels.

SWAT On My Street

I used to live on such a quiet street, so quiet that during the day you could hear the birds twittering in the trees and squirrels skittering across our roof. When there was noise, it came from leaf blowers and kids playing in the street.

Then the Great Construction Period started. For the last six years or so, there’s been one house or another under construction on the block. The bang of hammers and rat-a-tat-tat of jackhammers has become the new normal.

Last week, it got more interesting. We received a notice on our doorstep that the local SWAT team would be doing a training exercise on our block, using a house that is slated to be torn down. (Yep, another one.) They warned us there may be loud noises during this period. We’d be allowed to observe as long as we stayed in the designated areas.

SWAT vehicle parked in front of house and a few observers on the right.

SWAT preparing to go in

The thought of a police training exercise happening just two doors down from us filled this writer’s heart with joy. The first evidence of activity was someone going into the designated house and hearing them talking about their plans.

When the SWAT vehicle arrived, I headed outside to do a little gardening...and see what was going on, of course. (Yes, I really did do some weeding and deadheading of roses. It wasn’t just an excuse!) A few people hovered around watching. I met the developer who’d bought the property and his children and grandchildren, all there to observe.

Finally, the SWAT team was ready to start. They breached the front door of the house followed shortly after by a flash bomb. The boom set off two car alarms on opposite ends of the block and brought out a concerned neighbor who hadn’t gotten the memo about the police training exercise. Some time later, another boom. Then, an hour or so after that, they were done and the street returned to normal.

The part of me that likes a quiet street was happy they disrupted the neighborhood as little as possible. They didn’t block the road or cause excess noise. Other than the two booms you wouldn’t have known anything was going on. But the writer side of me was disappointed there wasn’t more to observe. The construction fencing prevented us from seeing a whole lot. Still, it was interesting to see what they were doing.

There’s enough construction going on in this city and the surrounding ones, the police shouldn’t have any trouble finding another house to train in when they need one.

On a separate note, I found that sentence I was looking for the other day. Yep, it wasn’t as great as I remembered but, at least I found it! Now I have something to revise.

The Arthur Ellis Awards Shortlist for 2017

by Rick Blechta

In case you don’t know — and that’s probably most of the readers of Type M — my novella, Rundown, published last year has been shortlisted for an Arthur Ellis Award given by the Crime Writers of Canada. It is a high honour indeed and I am over the moon about it. Here's a link to the complete shortlist in all categories: http://crimewriterscanada.com/

My book is in pretty select company with a past winner in this category, Jas. R. Petrin, plus the illustrious Peter Robinson and two other very worthy writers, Linda L. Richards and Brenda Chapman. With competition like that, I’m not figuring on much happening past the nomination, but at the very least, it is very validating to have one of my works chosen — and I also get a whole month of glory.

But beyond the wonder of possibly winning an Arthur is this: the idea behind the awards has always been to promote Canadian crime writing (both fiction and non-fiction) to the world-at-large and show there are good things happening in the Great White North. So every Canadian crime writer has a stake in every Arthur Ellis shortlist.

Most of our Type M readers do not live in this country, and even if you live in Canada, the chances are good that you’ll not hear about any of these books. Our publishers don’t have the megabucks needed to seriously promote their books, and what money they do spend always goes to the “sure things” because they know (or at least feel) they’ll sell enough of those books to justify the expense.

So please, if you enjoy reading crime fiction or true crime (and I assume that’s the case if you’re visiting Type M), whether in English or French, take a look at the Arthur shortlist, pick something that piques your interest and give it a read. All of the books on this (or any) year’s list have been adjudicated by experienced panels and found to be “worthy”. I’m pretty darn sure you will be pleased with your selection.

And please cross your fingers for me on May 25th!

By the way, I’m also the photographer for the Arthur Ellis Gala this year, so if by some amazing circumstance Rundown gets the Best Novella Arthur, I guess I’ll have to take a selfie.

What Sort of Reader Are You?

by Vicki Delany

I got a chuckle out of this cartoon.

What sort of reader are you, this chart asks.

I am a variation of a monogamist reader.

I usually read one book, straight though. Beginning to end. And then I start another book. I never read two books at once.

But unlike the above category, I don't often re-read books. I have lots of favourites that I would probably enjoy discovering again, but time is short and there are so many new books out there.

There are only a few books I've re-read. I've read the Lord of the Rings maybe twenty times. Seems excessive, doesn't it? Most of that would have been a long time ago, although I did reread the entire series when the movies came out.

I've read The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart several times. Gosh, how I loved that book. And her others about the life of Merlin as well.



A couple of years ago, I bought a bunch of Barbara Michaels' books and re-read them. I did enjoy them, but in some ways I found them dated. Michaels (who we all know was Barbara Mertz AKA Elizabeth Peters) was an early feminist and wrote with a feminist sensibility, but her female characters still needed saving, rather than saving themselves.

I re-read an early V.I. Warshawski novel for a radio interview I did on influential books. And I found it really dated.

I recently re-read The Hound of the Baskervilles to reacquaint myself with the story for writing the next Sherlock Holmes Bookshop novel, and enjoyed it very much. Of course it's horribly dated, but as I read I could hear Jeremy Brett's voice in my head.

Speaking of reading new books, last time I wrote about the book I'd read for my book club and how I thought it needed a bit of food and drink to liven it up.

Vicki Writing (not exactly as shown)

Vicki Reading (not exactly as shown)

This month’s book club choice is one of the best books I have read in a long time. I just loved Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng. It's very slow and lyrical, so beware if that's not your taste. I am now just beginning the next book by him, The Gift of Rain, and so far enjoying it as just as much.



So much, that I've decided to go to Malaysia for my next year's trip.

Tell me, dear readers and fellow bloggers, what reading type are you? And do you re-read old favourites?

Of Notebooks and Chocolate Bunnies

In the midst of my usual almost-end-of-semester chaos, I'm late to the discussion about how we keep track of ideas. But I did take a photo this morning. Here's my current notebook.  I've had this notebook for years. I bought it one Christmas as a stocking-stuffer for myself – intending to keep a journal when the new year began. I never got around to the journal. But I have enjoyed looking at the notebook's lovely pristine pages. A couple of months ago, I had an idea and no other paper handy. I grabbed the notebook and a red pen and wrote down my semi-brilliant idea before it could slip away. I am now using my notebook to record random thoughts.

This notebook is in addition to the five files I have on my computer with notes about potential books or short stories. I sometimes forget those files. But when I go back to them I'm always pleased that I have a plot factory quietly churning away. I'm also dismayed at how many ideas I have with limited time to develop them. But sometimes the ideas come together – as in the case of the short story set in 1948 that I have coming out in EQMM. Random thoughts became ideas that finally took shape and came together when I did some research.

That brings me to the chocolate bunnies in this post. Here is my cat Harry's plate. I took this photo this morning. His plate is one of the reasons I choked when I tried to eat the chocolate bunny that I bought during the Easter candy sale. I haven't had a bunny in years and I thought it would be a treat.

But as soon as I chopped the head off I remembered the headless corpse of one of the rabbits who was living in my yard. I came upon it one morning as I was walking to my car. The rabbit had apparently been the victim of one of the cats who pass through my yard. The memory of that headless rabbit – and that I could never eat rabbit stew (made by my mother when my father went hunting) when I was a child – gave me some clue about why I was having a hard time eating my chocolate bunny. Harry's plate this morning gave me the rest of the story. This is what he left after gobbling down his breakfast of rabbit and pumpkin. Harry has a finicky stomach so I didn't argue when his vet suggested I vary his canned prescription cat food, alternating between chicken and rabbit. I didn't argue but I did say, "Yuck!" Which suggested that I am much more squeamish about fluffy bunnies than about chickens. At any rate, watching Harry gobble his weekly canned rabbit reminded me once again that my sweet, gentle cat would hunt and kill his own bunny if he were allowed outside.

So because of a headless corpse, rabbit stew, and Harry's gourmet cat food, I choked on my chocolate. That got me thinking about characters and how something as simple as a chocolate bunny can be a way into understanding a character and revealing something about her or him to readers.

Thoughts?

Rough Justice

Great-Grandpa

Aline’s entry, below, got us Type M-ers talking about how some of us keep notes, in one way or another, of stories we’ve heard or read about, that finally end up in our books. I am particularly guilty of doing that.

I’ve lived most of my life in the American West, which is a gold mine of eccentric behavior that is better than anything I could make up. My books and stories are full of tales that others have told me or snippets I have read in the paper, or events I was involved in when I was a slip of a lass—sometimes things that I have remembered for decades. A few weeks ago I was having lunch with a friend who is very into research on her ancestry, and she told me a tale about a forebear of hers who pretended to commit suicide on the front porch of the lady who had rejected him. I immediately filed that tale away for use in a future Alafair Tucker mystery.

My own relatives have provided me with a wealth of material, though I have to admit that some ancestral events are too grim or shocking to use in the type of series I’m writing without being…let us say, cleaned up a bit. There is one family tale that I’ve used as inspiration for murder more than once, but never actually written about. One of my maternal grandfather’s sisters, whom I will call Violet, was married to a man who regularly abused her, but she kept it a secret from her family for years. Until her husband (let’s call him Perry) finally beat her so badly that she took the children and went home to her parents. Her face was so pulped that her father, my great-grandfather, grabbed a pistol and ran out of the house, intending to do justice right then and there.

My great-grandmother didn’t care about the abuser, but she did care about her husband and had no desire to see him hanged for murder, so she persuaded her sons (including my grandfather) wrestle their father to the ground and prevent him from leaving the house. I fear that eventually my great aunt went back to her abuser, who also was a womanizer and cheated on her regularly. But this was in the late 1910s in the wilds of Arkansas, and women had few other options back in the day. My great-grandfather was a Baptist circuit preacher, and I’m sure divorce was not an option.

The story has an interesting ending, however. Shortly thereafter, Perry was found dead by the road, a bullet in his head, apparently shot right off his horse. No one was ever charged with the crime. Was he killed by a cuckolded husband or the relative of a wronged woman? Or did one of Violet’s brothers, or even my preacher great-grandfather, decided to take matters into his own hands? However Perry met his end, he brought it on himself in those days of rough justice.

Violet didn’t have a lot of time to enjoy her freedom. She was killed in a car wreck in the 1920s, and her children were raised by Perry’s parents.

I love to learn the details of a life, and there is no one who has ever lived who doesn’t have a fascinating story, whether they share it with us or not, whether we ever know about it or not. It seems important to me that our tales by shared, because the joys and tragedies of every life are what binds us together as human beings.

p.s. Someday I’m going to ask permission from my living relatives to tell some of our more shocking family stories. I’ll bet that when they brought into the light of day, we will hear from many people who have shared our experiences and lived to tell about it.

Politics and the Pen

Barbara here. It seems right now politics is foremost on everyone's mind. As the world teeters dangerously closer  to war, as leaders rattle sabres and trade threats, it's difficult to keep our gazes resolutely turned away, ignoring the rumblings and avoiding any kind of discussion on the subject. I suspect not too many Passover and Easter gatherings escaped without a single mention of missiles and egomaniacs, no matter what one's political stripe.

My favourite social media sites are full of it, with the resulting flame wars, outraged "unfriending", and accusations of stupidity and heartlessness. There are those who insist they will always stand up for truth, equity, and justice. There are others who are overwhelmed by helplessness and just want a respite from the fruitless anger and fear. They have withdrawn from social media altogether or choose nothing but flowers and cute puppy pics.

Social media, with their instant communication, relative anonymity, and impatience with subtlety or complexity (why use a paragraph to express your thoughts when you can use an emoji), fuel this polarized, oversimplified discourse. And sometimes we authors find ourselves caught in the thick of it.

By nature, we writers are thinkers and communicators. We reflect on the world and want to share our thoughts and observations. If we weren't, we'd fix cars instead; it pays better. Crime writers in particular are concerned with questions of moral and social justice, of right and wrong, of good and evil. We grapple with heroes and villains every day. So not only do politics seep into our writing, we usually don't try to avoid them. We want to talk about the ills of the world.

Most crime writers I know lean towards the progressive end of the political spectrum. I realize this is an oversimplification, because even the "spectrum" is multi-dimensional, but in general our exploration of interpersonal struggles and our quest for social justice in the stories we tell, together with the empathy we develop as we step into the shoes of many different characters, leads us to a nuanced and tolerant understanding. As many scholars have observed, the less a person knows about a subject, the more certain they are. Conversely, the more a person learns about a subject, the less they "know".

Many crime writers prefer to leave behind the simpler world of black and white in favour of the grey zones of human frailty, conflict, and failings. Politics can't help but sneak in, whether in overt themes such as poverty, racism, and exploitation or in more subtle, personal themes of greed, family dysfunction and unattainable dreams. It's part of who we are as writers, and to ask us to stop writing about the challenges of today's world and simply focus on telling a "good story", is like asking a bird to fly without wings.

Sometimes we're not even aware of the political biases in our books, and we're surprised when a reader expresses their disapproval. Some readers go so far as to say they will never read another book by us. No writer wants to lose readers, but after a brief period of soul-searching, most of us dust ourselves off, shrug, and carry on, muttering privately that the reader probably wouldn't enjoy our next book anyway.

Socia media are a different story. As the recent horrific murder illustrates, social media have a dark, unpredictable side. Writers often have an eclectic mix of friends from around the world, some of whom we've met only casually through conferences and book events. Often a joy of reading has brought us together. With all of them, we writers enjoy sharing book talk and other thoughts of the day, including political opinions, without expecting flame wars, name calling, or unfriending. We react like anyone else; sometimes we block, unfollow or unfriend, sometimes we just delete the comment, sometimes we engage the commenter in a discussion.

But sometimes we feel a twinge of alarm. Social media trolls can be more that just a nuisance; they can be threatening and dangerous. Public figures can be the targets of extraordinary, unfiltered hatred, so much so that some have shut down their accounts, changed addresses, and retreated from the public eye. The more public and outspoken we writers become, the more vulnerable we are to this fringe element. Not just ourselves, but our families. Most of the time, it's all sound and fury signifying nothing, but it only takes one person ...

This should not, and will not, shut us up, but it does give us pause. Who knows where I live? Who knows where my children go to school? What invisible bear might I poke simply by creating this story or posting this opinion? I'd love to hear what others' thoughts and experiences have been, and how they have handled it.

And now for something completely different…

by Rick Blechta

As I said in the comment section of Aline’s post from yesterday, her woeful story of loss brought back one of the really bad moments in my life to the point where I couldn’t get the memory of it out of my head all day, and it even carried over into my dreams last night.

Something wonderful and a little strange happens when the bond is forged between  serious musicians and their instruments. I often tell people it’s really falling in love with an inanimate object. The emotion is that strong. I’m speaking, of course, of musicians who are committed to playing well, not some youngster who’s taking piano lessons and really not all that into it. I never felt any kind of bond between myself and the piano banged away on for years in our house.

That all changed when I held my French horn for the first time in 1969. I’d played trombone in high school and in university switched to horn, basically because New York University’s School of Education was awash in great trombonists, untouchable in their excellence. Hornists were, however in short supply, so I contacted the school’s horn teacher, Harry Berv (who’d taught a very good friend all through high school) and asked if he’d take me on. I told him I’d bought a very good pro trombone just before school. Harry told me to bring the trombone to him, he’d sell it, and the following week at my first lesson, he’d have a horn for me. (I had to pony up an additional $225).

From the first time the horn’s mouthpiece touched my lips, I was in love. It just felt so right. I progressed very rapidly and was soon playing in the school’s senior band. I could not put that horn down and practised for hours, completely smitten.

Then disaster struck one Friday evening the next fall. After a very long week, I got my sorry butt onto the train at Grand Central Station, found a seat, and put my horn on the overhead luggage rack. During the 40-minute ride, I fell asleep over a book I needed to finish for a class.

Waking with a start as the train arrived at my station, I grabbed my briefcase, shoved the book into it and dashed for the door. Unfortunately due to my grogginess, I completely forgot about my horn on the rack above.

I discovered what I’d done almost immediately, but alas, it was too late. The train was already disappearing around the bend north of the station.

I ran home as fast as I could. My brother was home, and we jumped into his car and tore off up the Thruway, heading for Stamford, Connecticut where the train terminated. When we got there, the train had already been sent to the north yard for the weekend. I implored the man in the office to let me search the train. They sent someone instead who came back with the bad news: no French horn.

Most people face personal catastrophes during their lives. This was my first. I was completely beside myself, distraught, angry that I could have been so stupid, and sad beyond belief. We went home (my brother was actually nice to me during the drive). I wrote up a poster, offering a reward for any information on my lost “closest friend”, and took it up to the Stamford station — but not with much hope.

I spent the next two days sitting beside the phone. It didn’t ring. I have certainly never been so depressed.

Monday, I just couldn’t face going to school and stayed home. Around eleven o’clock, the phone rang. It was a conductor who’d been on the train. He’d found my horn at the end of the line. In a hurry, he’d jumped on a southbound train with my horn which he’d taken home for the weekend. When he’d seen my poster that morning and immediately called me. With unimaginable relief, I picked up my horn that evening and gladly gave the man $100 for his honesty (a lot of money for a student in those days).

A few weeks later, my brother presented me with a set of handcuffs for Christmas so I could be assured of never being separated from my beloved instrument again.

I still have that horn, and I still feel the same way about it. My wife understands. She feels the same way about her flute!

And now here’s a link to that Flanders and Swann version of the Rondo from Mozart’s Fourth Horn Concerto in Eb Major. It is very clever and has always been a favourite. If you’ve never heard it before, you’re in for a treat — and a good laugh.

Losing the Plot

I was so interested in Sybil's post about organising those invaluable random thoughts that occur to us and might even, one day, spark an idea for a whole book. I too have these scrappy bits of paper – ideas don't tend to come handily when you're sitting at your desk with a neat notebook or a computer file marked 'Inspiration' readily to hand.

My practice has been to chuck them into a box – a Tiffany's box, in fact, which I couldn't bear to throw away – and on one of those bleak days when no beautiful idea possesses me I tip the whole lot out on to my desk and sort through.  Surprisingly often, I find that there's been a subconscious theme to these bits and pieces and some of them hang together and point to a plot line that's worth pursuing.

When it comes to a WIP, I do try to be more systematic. For the series, I keep a file of names, dobs, physical characteristics and so on but for a long time there were piles, too, of plot development thoughts that occurred while I was writing and I scribbled down on a sheets of paper – recycled, naturally! – which then did their very best to get themselves lost among all the other things on my untidy desk.

This time, I vowed it would be different. Like Sybil, I got myself a book and put all the snatches of ideas, plot line, one or two pivotal scenes, details of characters and research background in it together. It's certainly a more efficient system.

But then I was inspired to tidy my desk. This doesn't often happen but just once in a while I realise I've forgotten what the surface looks like and think it might be nice to reacquaint myself with it. I had a proper clear out, and then we went away on holiday. When I came back, there was a beautiful tidy desk.

But when I sat down to work, I realised the book wasn't in its usual place. I ransacked my study. I ransacked my husband's study, darkly suspecting he might have picked it up by accident. I ransacked the house, looking in more and more improbable places. Twice.

It had gone, swept up with something else and put in the recycling bin that was emptied while we were away.   It was a bad blow, and I had no one to blame but myself. It should, of course, have made me vow to keep my desk tidy. In fact it's made me swear I'll never, ever, tidy it again. Well, probably I will sometime, but much more carefully.

But like Sybil having to find that one perfect sentence, there was quite a lot of original material in that book that I'd been pleased with, at least at the time, and that's getting in the way of the replicating I have to get down to now. I keep feeling that it just won't be as good as what I wrote before.

I may well be wrong about the lost material. There have been times when I've found something I'd misplaced after a long search and been quite disappointed with what I had thought was a sparkling piece of writing. So I just have to remind myself of that.

Sybil, I do hope you find your perfect sentence. But if you don't, I hope you can convince yourself that its replacement is even better.

The Velvet Curse

 

I've had a lot of trouble writing this week.

Oh that's such a lie. I only have trouble writing when I'm actually doing it. The truth is that I've stopped about fifty pages into my next book. Not because I'm stymied but because I've sullied up and indulged in one time-wasting activity after another. True I can always find excuses. Allergy season, etcetera, etcetera. But they are fake. Truth is I can write almost anywhere, anytime. I don't have enough sense to be temperamental.

There's a subtle curse hanging over me this time. That of good fortune. My newest book, Fractured Families, has received a series of good reviews. This week I was dumbfounded when one of the largest papers in the San Francisco bay area, the Mercury News, reviewed it. In fact, Fractured was in the lead position.

So it seems like the best time possible to retire, or at least stop the series and write something else. I make no secret of my passion for historical novels. But the truth is I really want to write the new one, Silent Sacrifices. Nevertheless, it involves a lot of new territory from a technical standpoint and I worry that I'm not up the challenge.

One of the ideas I've inserted in my blogs time and again (with the fervor of an evangelist) is that writers have to toss people out of their writing room. Read head. Whether it be a husband, mother, priest, principal, next door neighbors, fellow writers, or literary critics. Whoever is peering over your shoulder standing in judgement of your morals or your abilities. Nattering, chatting among themselves about your ability to plot, characterize, turn a phrase. Raising doubts, jeering.

They must go. They all have a paralytic effect. Like the head of Medusa, they will turn you to stone if you allow them to peek at your manuscript.

One of my favorite images from Kansas's Garden of Eden (the first scene in Fractured Families) is that of Reaching Woman. This week it seems to portray my state of mind. Reaching, reaching, for a half-constructed plot misting away, reaching for wisps of characters and scenes that lack energy.

Monday morning, the end of Lent, I promise to end this self-imposed slumber and throw everyone out of my writing room once again.

A Shaken Snow Globe

There are days when it hits the fan, when life leaves you feeling like your head is a shaken snow globe, and you want nothing more than a quiet corner and a blank computer screen.

These are the days when you know you’re a writer –– when at the end of a long day you don’t want a drink, you don’t want to exercise, or even to curl up with a good novel, but, rather, to fill a blank screen.

I had one of these days recently: a long meeting that ended at 8 p.m., followed by a debrief. I came home and watched the first episode of House of Cards with my wife Lisa. When she went to bed, I stayed up to write. Needed to do so. Just 45 minutes. Just needed to clear my head by filling it with the novel I’m working on. Then off to bed, and I slept like the dead.

All of this makes me think about what writing means to me. Billy Collins, in his poem “Driving Myself to a Poetry Reading,” writes, “There is a part of me that wants / to let go of the wheel, climb over the seat / and fall asleep curled in the back.” This makes me think of the complex relationship writers have with writing. The thought, for instance, of everything this new book (and its author) will endure on its way to publication –– feedback, revisions, submission, rejection, contract negotiations –– is like staring at Mt. Everest before attempting the climb. It makes no sense to do so. Later in the poem, Collins writes, “Another part of me wants to be up on the hood, / a chrome ornament in the shape of a bird / leaning aerodynamically into the wind.” There is a push-pull relationship with this craft that most writers experience. The personal insecurities (will people like this?) that we all have and the business frustrations (promotion, reviews, advances) are often at odds with the love we all have for the craft, the I-need-to-do-this aspect of writing. When the latter wins, you know you’re in this for the right reasons.

The physical, mental, and spiritual act of writing keeps me going. I don’t write full time. So it’s not and never has been a job. It’s what I do –– most days at 4 a.m. when I push the plot forward –– but also late at night on the heels of month-long days when I need to clear my head by filling it.

Keeping Track

Right now I’m looking for a sentence. Not just any old sentence—the first sentence of my WIP. Sometime when I was working on the final edits to A Palette for Murder I thought of the perfect sentence for the next book. I wrote it down in a safe place so I wouldn’t lose it. Trouble is, I don’t remember where that “safe place” is. It could be anywhere.

I tend to write down my thoughts in random places on pretty much anything—Post-it notes, envelopes, travel brochures, stray pieces of paper. I’ve even written a short note on my hand when nothing else was available. (Hey, it’s washable!) I always intend to transfer these gems somewhere more permanent, but they don’t always make it. I’m a lot like my amateur sleuth, Aurora Anderson, in this respect. She learned her lesson in Fatal Brushstroke when a Post-it note she’d written something on ended up where it shouldn’t. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet learned mine.

So now I’ve started writing everything to do with a story in blank notebooks I pick up all over the place. Okay, mostly at Disneyland. I’m hoping I’ll lose less that way.

I may have problems keeping track of notes, but I don’t have a problem keeping track of the timeline for my books. I’ve got a system for that.

In a past life, I worked as a script supervisor on a handful of student films. That’s the person responsible for preserving continuity while filming—within a scene as well as between scenes. As you might guess, there’s a lot to remember so script supervisors use all kinds of forms to keep track of important information. When I started writing mysteries, I realized some of those forms could be repurposed to do the same for a book.

One of my script supervisor duties was to create a list of “one-liners”. Essentially, these are one line descriptions of what happens in each scene. In the course of working on those, I also noted down the time within the story, i.e. when a scene takes place in relation to other scenes.

I modified the Story Breakdown/Chronology form I used on those films, substituting ‘chapter’ for ‘scene’ and voila! I have a way to keep track of the timeframe of each chapter and its contents.

I fill out the form as I’m writing. Whenever I have a question about when a scene takes place, I have a ready reference. It only takes me moments to find the answer. Or if I’m looking for when an event takes place, like the finding of a body, I can easily look that up as well. I also use it for a final review of my manuscript, making sure what I’ve written on the page matches the timeline I mapped out.

The form I use is a table with three columns labeled ‘Chapter’, ‘Time’ and ‘Description’. ‘Chapter’ is the chapter number. ‘Time’ is the day number on which the chapter takes place in the story. ‘Description’ is a one-line, barebones description of what happens in the chapter, something that will jog my memory about its contents. By the time you’ve finished a draft of a book, you’ll have all of the chapters listed with the time they occur and a short description.

Entries in the time column are in the format D or N followed by a number, e.g. D1 or N1 for day 1 and night 1, respectively. Chapters that take place during the day use the D designation; those that take place at night use the N designation. D1 is the first day in story time, D2 the second day and so on. D1 and D2 don’t have to be consecutive days, they could occur days, weeks or months apart. But, in terms of story chronology, D1 comes before D2. If there’s a gap in time, add a plus sign to the time designation. e.g. D1+ indicates a chapter that takes place on day 1, but there’s a gap in time from the previous chapter.

If a chapter spans more than one time designation, you can split it onto two lines or leave it on one line and put a slash between the times, e.g. D1/N1 denotes a chapter that takes place during the day as well as at night. Do whatever works best for you.

So, for the first chapter of my book, Fatal Brushstroke, the columns in the first line on the form were filled in as follows: Chapter: ‘1’, Time: ‘D1 (Tues)’, Description: ‘Rory discovers body in garden and police come to investigate.’ (I like to keep track of the day of the week in the time column since that’s important to me; if you’re writing something where the actual date is important, put that there also.)

I don’t generally use flashbacks in my books, but if I did I’d probably use an FB designation for those to indicate they’re taking place at a different time. I generally have one line for each chapter though, if two chapters cover the same event such as a memorial service, I might combine them on one line.

That’s it. I hope you find this interesting and useful. It’s pretty easy to set up the form in Word or any other program you want to use. Now, back to seeing if I can find that sentence...

Some things to make you smile

by Rick Blechta

It’s another one of “those” weeks and there’s been no time to think of a topic for a post — let alone write one. I just noticed that it’s nearly one-thirty, and I’d better get something up so there won’t be a big Tuesday hole here on Type M and that just will not do!

Being prepared with quick fixes is something in which I specialize, so this week I come armed with cartoons of a literary bent. I’m sure you’ll guess the underlying theme.

So enjoy, everyone.