Food--My Guilty Pleasure

Shadow Hill, my latest Geneva Chase Mystery, is in the hands of my copy editor at Poisoned Pen Press.

No sooner had I hit the Send button, that same copy editor sent me a version of my very first Geneva Chase novel, Random Road.  Before Shadow Hill is launched in 2021, Random Road is due to be rereleased and I need to read through it to see if I want to make any changes.

At the same time, I’m preparing for my next Creative Writing course that starts on June 22 at our community college. And oh yes, I have a day job, mostly working from home these days.

Along with all of that, I’m bombarded by news of the pandemic, the protests about racial disparities, the broken economy, and politics making it very difficult to concentrate.

So, as a distraction, I turn to food. The supply chain at our grocery stores here on the coast has fits and starts.  Like the rest of the universe, for a long time, you had to hunt for elusive paper products. Then when meatpacking plants were hit hard with the virus, I had to be creative when it came to preparing dinners.

There were times when the only protein in the meat section of the store was ground chicken.  Lo and behold, I discovered this recipe.

I’ve made chicken coq au vin before and it can be a real production.  But the recipe below it a whole lot easier and it’s really tasty.

I hope you enjoy as much as I do.

Coq au vin chicken meatballs.

•         1 1/4 pounds ground turkey or chicken
•         1 egg
•         1/3 cup bread crumbs
•         1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese
•         kosher salt and black pepper
•         2-3 slices thick-cut bacon, chopped
•         1 yellow onion, chopped
•         4 cloves garlic, minced or grated
•         4 carrots, chopped
•         2 cups cremini mushrooms, sliced
•         2 tablespoons tomato paste
•         1 1/2 cups dry red wine, such as Cabernet Sauvignon
•         1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
•         2 bay leaves
•         4 thyme sprigs
•         1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped
•         mashed potatoes

INSTRUCTIONS
1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment.

2. Add the turkey, egg, bread crumbs, parmesan, and a pinch each of salt and pepper to a bowl. Coat your hands with a bit of olive oil and roll the meat into tablespoon-size balls (will make 15-20 meatballs), placing them on the prepared baking sheet. Transfer to the oven and bake for 15 minutes or until the meatballs are crisp and cooked through.

3. Meanwhile, cook the bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until crisp, about 5 minutes. In the skillet, add the onion and cook for 5 minutes, until softened and fragrant. Stir in the garlic, carrots, and mushrooms. Cook another 5 minutes, until the vegetables are caramelizing on the edges. Add the tomato paste. Cook 1 minute.

4. Add in the red wine, chicken broth, bay leaves, and thyme. Season with salt and pepper. Stir to combine, bring the sauce to a boil, cook 10 minutes or until the sauce thickens slightly. Stir in the meatballs, cover and cook 5 minutes, until the meatballs are coated in the sauce. Remove the bay leaves and thyme and discard. Stir in the parsley and reserved bacon.

4. Serve the meatballs and sauce over mashed potatoes.

Character Playlist

In this moment of fear, anger, and discontent -- in the midst of hope vs. despair -- I am wondering what my characters would say about all this. Lizzie, the liberal, engaged to Quinn, the white former cop. Hannah, my police detective, who is now in the 2020 election year with a third party candidate who bears a striking resemblance to the present occupant of the White House. What kind of conversation is she having with her liberal, white, retired journalist father?

I've been thinking about their playlists. Actually, Angus, Hannah's father, is easy. Roger Whittaker, "New World in the Morning":


And he loves this song, and would have this commercial stored on his ORB. Beyonce reminds him of his late wife, a strong woman who channeled her fierceness through her poetry. And, of course, he's not too old to enjoy the costumes:

And Lizzie, my crime historian? What would she play for her white ex-military police officer, ex-homicide detective, fiance when she wants to get him to talk to her about what's happening?


Quinn, being Quinn, would probably not to have a lot to say when she tries to get him to talk about cops. She would get upset with him and storm out to walk his dog. He would watch her go while he's thinking about what to say. When she returns, she would hear this song playing:


I am composing my own playlist for 2020. I'm sure many of you are doing the same.

Take care and be safe.

Don't Get Sick - With Anything.

Donis here.  I intended to do a post on writing about race in a historical novel, but the other current world-wide plague made me change my plans. My husband Don was sick for much of the past week. This is is not a good time to be ill, especially since we weren't sure what the problem was. On Saturday he had a bad headache all day. By Sunday it had developed into a blinding headache, nausea, dizziness. On Monday he wasn't able to get out of bed at all. But he had no fever, no coughing, no problem breathing. The symptoms of the Covid seem to present differently in different people, and the infection rate in Arizona keeps going up. We've been very careful about leaving the house, but we have donned our masks and gone to the store on occasion. Was it Covid-19 or something else?

This reminded me of the kidney failure incident of 2009. On that occasion he got worse and worse, couldn't get out of bed for several days. We thought it was the flu – until he began to hallucinate and I bundled him up and rushed him to the emergency room, and thus began an ordeal I don't care to think back on.

Many of you Dear Readers know of Don's history, since I haven't been secretive about it at all. He's been doing very well for quite a while now, but over the past decade, he has endured just about every health problem you can think of – eye bleeds, heart failure, kidney failure, Crohn's disease, colon cancer, broken arm, post-op infection (fifteen surgeries in twelve years). He's also of an age. He is in the number one category for a bad Covid outcome.

I tried to call the doctor's office but couldn't get through. What to do now? Shall we go to Urgent Care? Would he infect people? Would people infect him? I don't want to go to the hospital emergency room, not right now, not if we can help it. I don't know if it's an emergency. What if they admit him? I wouldn't be able to go in with him. I don't want to be separated from him when he's sick. I asked him what he wanted to do and he squinted up at me and said that if he didn't feel better in the morning we'd go to an Urgent Care. I still couldn't get through to the doctor. I couldn't decide whether I should keep calling and pushing, which left me annoyed and upset. To be cautious, I went to bed in another room and tossed and turned Monday night, checked on him every few hours. It amazed me how quickly I fell back into my emergency caretaker mode.

Tuesday morning he was better. The nausea abated and the headache just a dull throb. By the end of the day he was much better and was able to eat. Today (Wednesday), he's tired but much back to normal.

Once upon a time he was plagued with knockout headaches like this, but he hadn't had one for more than twenty years. What a bitch of time for his migraines to return. I can only hope that this was a one off.

So for God's sake, my friends, take care of yourselves, because this is no time for anybody to get sick, Covid or not.

By the way, the doctor's office has not yet called back.

In defence of molecules

My goodness, Wednesday has crept up on me! Days blur together in this new "date-less" regime, so I was happily perusing the internet this morning, checking email, social media, news headlines, and various other intriguing links that popped up along the way, when I suddenly realized it was Wednesday. Blog post day! What possibly gems of insight do I have to share today?

Like Aline, I have been plodding along on my first draft at a snail'a pace, in fits and starts as I feel my way forward. Like her, there have been exhilarating moments when the story just poured out and it was exciting to see what would happen next, and other moments when I would ask myself the usual writer questions. Why in earth am I writing this dreck? Where is it going?

The pandemic has sapped a lot of creative energy. First of all, the formless anxiety we feel from the constant news of suffering, dying, and outrageous reactions, along with the disruptions to our routines and social supports, makes concentration very difficult. Secondly – and I felt this very acutely at the beginning – our stories, even though about murder and mayhem, seemed silly and trivial in the face of global real-life tragedy. And as if the pandemic weren't a big enough crisis, the death of George Floyd has triggered anti-Black protests across much of the world and brought the struggles and despair of Blacks and other people of colour into sharp public consciousness. All of which has made my own story seem even more trivial and irrelevant.

Yet fiction is about people, and crime fiction in particular shines a spotlight on people in pain. People who are desperate, frightened, enraged, or horrified. It doesn't usually paint on a big picture, global canvas, but rather it drills down into the unique and individual lives of those make up that canvas. Put together, molecule by molecule, fiction can tell the story of that global canvas.

So I will write on, delving deep into the story of my unique band of characters and hoping that I contribute in some small way to the bigger picture. And also hoping that when my next Wednesday comes along, I will have something more coherent to say.

People Need Books

The recent traumatic events of one kind and another have impacted on us all in so many different ways.  Grief, sickness, anger, loneliness  - despair, even.

Yet through it all, people need books.  We read for comfort, for distraction, for information, for whatever may blunt the pain of reality.  Maybe just for something to pass the long slow hours of the day.

So someone has to write them.  We're authors.  It's our job.  But it's been very clear, both here and on other social media, that writers have been finding it hard.  There doesn't seem to be any satisfactory reason why so many of us have struggled and progress on the WIP has slowed to a crawl.

It is only this week that the infection numbers here have slowed to allow a slight relaxation in the lockdown.  Very slight, but last week it meant that we could have a civilised, if socially-distanced, drink with friends in the garden, go to a garden centre for plants to fill the garden pots and with suitable precautions meet family.

And what a difference it made!  I sat down at my desk this week feeling upbeat, and suddenly the words were flowing.  It was such a relief, particularly since this is the first time I've set off on a book with very little idea of where it was going to go.

I've been what you'd probably call a cautious pantser - setting off with the shape of the book in mind, though ready to change direction if that was what felt right.  I was pretty scared about it, and when the virus came in it managed to make my problems worse.  There were lots of four am panics when I thought about throwing away even what I'd managed to write so far.

But now I've discovered the joy of pantsing. The story's unfolding and I'm excited every day to get to my desk and find out where it's going to take me.  I just wish I could write faster.

Would I do the next book the same way?  I don't know.  The bad times were very bad,  and could I really be sure that next time the plot and the characters will be so obliging?  I'll have to wait to find out.

Lincoln Weeps

I'm at a loss for words. As is the case with our blogmaster, Rick Blechta, I've not  posted any political comments on Type M. It's not what this blog is about. Nor do I comment on political situations when I give presentations.

Nevertheless, the past two weeks have broken my heart. As an African American historian I'm aware of the inequality endured by blacks in America. The brutality of our justice system cannot be ignored. The senseless murder of George Floyd was the culmination of unchecked bigotry in our country's police departments.

I hope that as a result of the protests our law enforcement system will undergo sweeping reforms. I hope that when a black man commits a crime he is treated exactly that same way as a white person. I hope that both white police officers and racially prejudiced black officers (yes, they exist) will find themselves thinking twice before arresting African Americans for no reason at all and for brutalizing them when they do. I hope they are scared to death that they will go to prison themselves when abuse the civil rights of other human beings.

I hope that people casually joining protests will be aware of how quickly innocent participants can find themselves surrounded by persons who are destructive. I'm furious with the hoodlums who are hijacking these gatherings and using them as a cover for looting. I despise the police officers who automatically equate peaceable protests with criminal mobs.

I'm worried for the police officers who are doing their best to control crowds by relatively sensible methods and are then suddenly confronted with dangerous weapons. Because that is happening too.  Of course they escalate their responses.

The murder of George Floyd, the protests, the suffering of his family, and other African Americans must not be in vain.

Sweeping reform of our justice system must be the result.










I

So much to digest

There has been so much to digest this week. The news cycle nearly forgot COVID-19, as the death toll topped 100,000 Americans, and swung to nationwide protests in the wake of the horrific killing of George Floyd.

On Monday evening, I, along with the rest of the nation, watched the president use military force to clear a path through protesters so he could have his picture taken in front of a church. He was holding a Bible as the armed military members stood at the ready.

As a privileged white man, I don’t pretend to understand the emotions my Black friends and colleagues feel this week. I am not teaching right now, so I’m not working to help students process images seen on TV or the words they hear coming from home. My work at present is primarily as a father: in conversations about systemic racism, about the anger spilling into the streets in nonviolent and violent protests borne in the deep and dark waters of slavery, about the ways we, as a white family in this particular nation, have benefitted from a financial system built on oppression and designed to allow us, above others, to own property, and about how owning property alone creates opportunities for things like college loans. Admittedly, this effort on the homefront is not much, certainly not enough.

If you are looking for a compelling read about race and its relationship to the American police forces, check out Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me.

*

When scenes like the one I saw on CNN Monday evening elevate my blood pressure and these next five months loom large, I, like probably many who turn to this blog do, turn to the blank screen –– and write.

I have a manuscript with my agent, so I’m playing the waiting game. Meanwhile, I’m writing a short story with the idea of using it as the frame for the sequel to the novel my agent has. I got the idea by reading Ed McBain’s story “Sadie When She Died” and then the novel by the same title. The story is wonderful. McBain liked it so much he turned it into a novel. I did this with the first Peyton Cote novel, Bitter Crossing.

Using the short story form allows one to take a plot and try it out. To see where it falls flat, see where, if you had another 90,000 words, you could expand it with additional storylines, characters, suspects, and complications.

Writing a story is good practice. I’m keeping a careful eye on my word count. There are no extraneous scenes. No fluff. Hemingway said fiction writing was architecture, not interior design. Nowhere in fiction writing is that more true.

It hasn’t been a good week, but I am hopeful that change is coming.

Be well, be safe.

The Power of Music

I like all kinds of music, but I don’t pretend to know anything about it. The one music theory class I took pretty much went over my head. But, what I do know is how different kinds of music affect me. I know what makes me happy, what gives me energy, what annoys me, what agitates me and what calms me down and helps me to focus.

The U.S. military certainly felt music had power when they tried to force Noriega out of the Vatican embassy in Panama in 1989 by continuously blasting all sorts of music through loud speakers directly at the building, at a deafening volume, around the clock. I probably would have surrendered after a few hours because really loud music, even stuff I like, grates on my nerves. But he stuck it out for a very long time. Eventually, the military stopped the music and sometime later he surrendered. You can read more about that here.

There is some music that, shall we say, I haven’t yet learned to appreciate. I walked into a greeting card store once where I found the background music so annoying that I couldn’t concentrate on the cards so I walked out without buying anything and went somewhere else.

Back in 2014, I wrote a blog post here on Type M about writing to music. Basically, I said that I could only write fiction to certain kinds of music, mostly instrumental. I’ve discovered in the years since then that the kinds of music I can listen to while writing has broadened to including oldies from the 60s and 70s, music that I grew up with. I'm not sure what brought on the change. Perhaps I've gotten more confident in my writing.

I haven’t been the calmest person lately, as I’m sure is true of many people right now. I’ve been having trouble focusing enough I can write so I’ve been actively using music to calm myself down enough I can get some work done. My favorite right now is harp music, which really lessens my agitation.

So, what about you all? How does music affect you?

What do you say at a time like this?

by Rick Blechta

Last Thursday, I already began thinking about what I would write for this week’s post. As the weekend progressed I realized it could not be “business as usual” for me at Type M. We try to keep our pages as apolitical as possible because that’s not why we’re here, but I think recent developments have to override that mandate. I cannot remain silent.

For the record, I was born in the United States, moved to Canada for university, and basically never returned home. My wife and I have now lived in Canada for more than two thirds of our lives, and are also Canadian citizens. For all intents and purposes, we are Canadians. But for several reasons, we also remained Americans.

It is simply overwhelming for me to observe the convulsions sweeping the US. I’m not going to lie: I now fear what I’m watching is the death of that country. Will the United States of America disappear? No. But it is going to change. It has to change. Things can no longer remain the same. It might be for the better, but it also might be for the worse.

America has been hit by a pandemic which is taking a huge toll in illness, misery, and death. With that came an economic downturn only seen once before in its history. The effects of both only seem to be getting worse as the weeks pass.

However, every other country on the planet is currently facing similar challenges, some handling it better than others.

Then a week ago Monday, the US’s dirty history of racial injustice boiled over again in the most horrible way imaginable: a black man slowly murdered by a white policeman live and in living colour right on our TV screens and devices. The actor Will Smith perhaps said it best: “Racism is not getting worse. It’s getting filmed.”

What can be done? I wish there was a clear answer to that. The leadership of the country is pulling in two different directions making things worse, not better — with no end in sight. For anyone living out of the country, regardless whether a US citizen or not, comes the knowledge that demonstrating against racial inequality in the US will be blown off by the administration in the White House. I believe they just don’t care what the rest of the world thinks.

My plea to all of you reading this is to speak out and do whatever you can. The only obvious way forward for me is to make it impossible for racial/religious/whatever injustice to continue being tolerated, to stamp it out wherever it shows it’s ugly face. The time has come to not let this scab over again, ready to be ripped off once another racially-motivated murder takes place — regardless of where it happens.

This problem is not present only in the United States. Vigilance and will must be applied in every society where injustice is found — and in that quest, all of us have a part to play.

Your choice is to be part of the problem or part of the solution. Your actions can make a difference, even if it’s only in a small way. Please consider doing whatever you can.

Thomas used a funny graphic yesterday from Star Trek. I’ve always felt the most profound takeaway from that show was the Vulcan saying, “Live well and prosper.”

That is my fervent wish for everyone on this planet.

I’d like to thank everyone for letting me ventilate, and I’m sorry if I upset you. You don’t visit Type M for Murder to hear political diatribes. But I’m upset, angry, and confused, and I know I’m not the only one. I needed to share my thoughts with my friends, which is something I consider everyone who writes for and reads these pages. I won’t presume to take up your time in this manner again.

An image of levity and an image of calm

I’m on deadline to get my final revisions of my latest mystery to my publisher by today, so this blog will be necessarily brief.

As I write this, over 102,000 Americans have died from the covid-19 virus. There are over 40 million Americans out of work. There’s widespread turmoil in the streets across the country. We have a president at war a social media platform.

So rather than try to coherently write about writing, I’m going to leave you with two images. By the way, the one at the bottom was actually posted by Stephen King. He admitted that he’s a softy at heart.

Guest post: Andrew Taylor

Aline here. I'm so pleased to have been able to persuade Andrew Taylor to be our guest this week. He's famous for his historical crime novels and has had a positively embarrassing number of laurels heaped on his head. Andrew, if you don't want to blush, look away now!

He has won the Crime Writers' Association's John Creasey Dagger, Historical Dagger (3 times) and Diamond Dagger, as well as Theakston's Old Peculiar award (twice), the Edgar and Sweden's Martin Beck award, the Golden Crowbar. His books The American Boy and The Ashes of London were number one best sellers in The Times list. I could go on – there's more! – but I'm going to finish by saying that he's also the most charming and modest man you could hope to meet, with a fine line in wit.

His new book, The Last Protector, has just come out.

_______________

Most non-writers assume that lockdown provides the perfect working environment for authors. I’d have done so myself, if I’d thought about the subject in the abstract before it actually happened. After all, during lockdown we have far fewer interruptions, no need to go out and do events, and acres of time just waiting to be filled by the flow of our immaculate words. But, like many authors, I’ve found that it just doesn’t work that way.

I don’t know what impedes the ability to focus on writing. Maybe it’s the low-level anxiety, faint but constant, which lies the background like static on the radio or the weather on the streets. Maybe it’s the economic implications of Covid-19 for all of us who make our living from writing.

My latest book, The Last Protector, came out on 2 April, at a time when bricks-and-mortar booksellers were closed and Amazon was prioritising the sales of hair dye and DIY tools over those of books. Bookshop events, festivals, etc. were cancelled. In the first four weeks, as a result, the print sales were significantly down on the projections, though a noticeable bump in ebook sales partly compensated for this. This is not a complaint. It’s a fact of life. It could be so very much worse.

It doesn’t pay to look too far ahead. I’m currently trying to write the next book in my Marwood and Lovett historical crime series set in Restoration England. (The Last Protector was the fourth in the series.) For me, the writing process almost always begins with setting, rather than character or plot.

I need to know the context of a novel – both the time and place – before I can visualise characters and set them in motion among themselves. For this series, contemporary politics are a vital ingredient, so for me that forms part of the setting. It usually feeds into the storyline as well, often by unexpected routes. The plot comes last of all, by fits and starts, emerging from the interaction between the characters and the setting.

This is not a particularly efficient method of writing fiction but it’s the only one that seems to work for me. We have to make our own rules. One thing I’ve learned during the writing of nearly fifty books is that there’s no one way to do it, no magic formula.


Every author evolves their own methods (which may vary from book to book). I’ve seen a lot of crime writers give themselves unnecessary grief at the start of their careers by trying to follow someone else’s prescription for success. Given the expectations of the genre framework, this can be a particular hazard.

In the end, there’s only one important rule – or rather guideline – for authors, crime novelists included. Writers write. Everything else is a side issue.

Nothing else matters. Because nothing can happen if you don’t get the words down on the page or the screen. Which is a good point for me to stop writing this and start writing my next novel…

What We Write About

Should we keep the real world out of our books and short stories? Some writers and readers would argue that we should be able to "escape" into a book. In crime writing, those books are sometimes dismissed as "cozies." Many readers want books that provide an opportunity to spend time with characters who are likable in settings that are safe. It requires as much of those writers to craft a satisfying book as it does of writers in other subgenre, and they deserve respect.

But then we have the other question. If we are authors who write grittier books, how much should we deal with social issues? Should we respond to the current reality? This morning I woke up as a message was being left in my voice mail. The host of the morning roundtable discussion on our local public radio station was calling to ask me to join this morning panel.

During the show, he mentioned that I'm a mystery writer, but I was there as a criminal justice professor. If you've been watching the news, you can guess that the conversation was about -- the death of Mr. Floyd and the fires burning in Minneapolis and the tweets coming from the White House and the social media responses to the video. . .

As a crime fiction writer, I've spent of my fiction writing life focusing on a series set in the recent past with a couple of short stories set in the 1940s. Now, I'm working on a thriller set in 1939. I also have two novels published by St. Martin's set in the near future. Or, at least they were, now it is 2020. And my second book in the series was set in January 2020. I was writing alternate history, but that history shares much in common with the present moment. In the third book -- the one that I had contemplated writing even though I don't have a publisher -- that book involves a threat to my protagonist Hannah McCabe. She is the target of a group of rogue police officers who are aligned with the candidacy of a third-party right-wing presidential candidate who is doing "arena" rallies doing which he urges his supporters to make American Great Again. He is running against a Hispanic woman who is the Republican candidate and the African American (biracial) male vice president who is running because the first female president has been so badly damaged that she is not a viable Democrat candidate. As the election approaches, Howard Miller, the third party candidate is coming  to visit the Albany area.

Let me say, the first book in this series, The Red Queen Dies, came out in 2013. The second, What the Fly Saw, was published in 2015. I wanted to write a series that would allow me to comment on the future that nonfiction writers were foreseeing -- the environment, the food supply, pandemics, domestic terrorists, poverty, solar flares. I had a long list of concerns.

I deal with social issues in my book. I try my best not to stand on a soap box yelling. I write books and short stories in which I try to present various perspectives. But my protagonist, Hannah McCabe, is a police officer -- a detective in my fictional version of the Albany police department. She is a good cop. She works with other good cops who care about their job. But in my world, there is also rot at the core in the form of the police officers who are Howard Miller supporters. Hannah's father is a white retired newspaper editor. Her mother was a black radical poet. She is caught in the middle -- an "outsider within".

This is a moment -- with a pandemic and fires burning and fear, anger, and chaos -- that I want to spend some time with Hannah. I want to hear how she sees the world and find out what she will do when she finds out what is happening around her.

I have the murder -- my plot involving an animal-rights activist who supports bringing the wolves back to the Adirondacks and is found dead in an abandoned school -- I also have the context in which that murder occurs. My challenge if I decide to take it is to write a book that is both a good mystery/police procedural and a comment on the times we live in.

 

Pandemic Personality

Oh, hello there! You startled me, Thursday. You shouldn't sneak up on me like that. Since this "shelter in place" thing started, I've lost track of what day it is, or maybe even what month it is. Did you realize, Dear Reader, that by this time next month it will be June? That means that 2020 is almost half over. I hope that's a good thing.

In the last couple of months Don and I have begun the strange ritual of watching "The View" in the mornings. I have never in my life enjoyed watching daytime television, but for some reason since the lockdown I can't get enough of this particular show. This morning they talked about "pandemic personality." A British University has come up with the idea that we all fall into three categories when it comes to dealing with the pandemic : The Accepters are generally older people who accept the lockdown and adjust to a new way of life. The Sufferers are more anxious and depressed since lockdown began. The Resisters often (but not always, in my personal observation) tend to be young people who flout lockdown rules and think it's all big to-do over not much.

I doubt there is such a thing as a "pandemic personality." I imagine that whatever type of person you were before this all began, you are just more of it now. I'm sorry to say it, because my pandemic personality has turned out to be pretty sluggish. I should be learning all kinds of new skills and turning out books and stories by the dozens. Instead I'm barely managing to plug along. But I am at least plugging along and have not ground to a complete halt. I call that success. What have you learned about yourself during this unprecedented time, Dear Reader? Do you like what you see?

I wish I were a better promoter. This is my biggest weakness, I fear, and I haven't done any better this year than I ever have. However, I do have one bit of news to share with you. Mysteryrat’s Maze posted a podcast this week of an excerpt from my latest novel, The Wrong Girl, The Adventures of Bianca Dangereuse, set in Hollywood in the 1920s. The short excerpt (set at a Hollywood party!) is read by actors Maxwell Debbas and Brianne Vogt Debbas. I loved it! The production was top-notch. It’s such fun to listen to actors bring your characters to life. Mysteryrat’s Maze is a mystery podcast produced by Kings River Life Magazine with short stories & first chapters read by local California actors. If you enjoy the episode please review or rate it as that helps more people be able to find them!

Come on by and have a listen. It’s great fun and not very long. Here’s the full link, just click on and enjoy: Mysteryrat’s Maze

Navigating the first draft

Well, as usual in Canada, we have gone from winter last week to mid-summer this week, and all around us, nature has burst into life. Plants have exploded and all the birds are singing as if to make up for lost time. The lilac bushes and flowering fruit trees are laden with fragrant blossoms, and it's sheer heaven to walk down the street. Well, perhaps not at high noon today, because it's sweltering.

Given the pandemic, we can be forgiven for not knowing what day it is. Even what month it is. But since we also know winter will be back, perhaps next week, we'll seize the day. I'm plodding along on my manuscript, which doesn't seem to want to end. I am beginning to have an idea of the climax, which is always a relief, and I think I know whodunit, although I've been known to change my mind at the last minute, but I still don't know how they're going to get caught. This is an essential element in mystery/ suspense novels. I have to develop an exciting climax while keeping the reader and if possible the detective guessing about who they're chasing and how it's going to end, up until the gotcha moment. Let's hope I figure that out before I hit 200,000 words. My contract says 90,000.

My first draft is usually fairly bare-bones as I rush to discover what the basic story is and who the characters are. In rewrites, I almost always add words because I enrich the detail of the setting and the characters, or realize I need another scene or two to flesh out a crucial subplot, fix plot holes, etc. So a 100,000+ first draft does not bode well. I know I can tighten scenes and pare my prose down, but to end up with a net loss of 10,000 words is going to take work. I may even have to turf out scenes and combine plot points.

There is a certain thrill to rewrites. During first drafts, I never know if the story is actually going to be a book, even though every other time I've written a draft, it's ended up being a book, so I should trust the process. But that's the uncertainty of the creative unknown. But once I reach the end of the draft, I can see it's a book; however imperfect, it's something I can work on. Add, subtract, deepen, fix, polish; it's all satisfying without the terror of the unknown.

If at the end of the process I have produced a brilliant, perfect, 100,000-word book, I'll throw myself on the mercy of my editor, who usually has a very sharp pen.

A grand idea?

by Rick Blechta

Sitting out in our backyard yesterday evening with my wife, discussing our weekend with our grandkids who were over for the first time since the last week of February, there was a lull in conversation when an idea popped into my head. I must have been thinking about what I need to do today and of course Type M was near the top of the list — and I needed a topic for this week’s post. With the harsh reality of our daily lives, I wanted a topic that would provide some fun for everyone.

I have a vague memory of this sort of thing being tried before, but not enough to give out names or authors, so sorry for that. (Perhaps someone can help.) My brain storm was this: what if you could put two favourite characters from some of the great crime fiction series.

So let’s have some fun. Here’s my choice for a mash-up.

How about Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch with Peter Robinson’s DCI Banks? Both detectives are exceptionally experienced and good at what they do, both have a tendency to do their own thing, but more importantly, both are quintessential products of their respective cultures. Bosch just breaks rules, damn the torpedoes, while Banks operates more discretely while being equally subversive in his own way. Bosch and Banks also are not afraid to rely on hunches.

I also think this combination would work best if the characters were operating in a “neutral” third country where they’re both out of their element — although I have to admit it would be interesting to see Bosch navigate the British policing system. Since Peter and Michael are good friends, it might even happen some day (are you two listening?).

So that’s my choice. How about you? And don’t forget the why part because that’s what makes this idea interesting!

Zoom

What huge lessons we've had to learn, these past weird weeks!  What new words have come into our vocabulary, what new skills we have had to master!

I've never had much interest in technology, I'm ashamed to say. Over the years I've been dragged relentlessly into doing all sorts of things on the internet and have found many of them useful - indeed, indispensable. I can repeat operations when I've been shown what to do, in much the same way I managed quadratic equations - without having the faintest understanding of them - and if I haven't performed them for a while I am lost. (Again, much like seeing a quadratic equation now and marveling that I ever even knew how to begin.)

When something goes wrong all I can do is scream, for instance to Rick who, bless him, sorted out my next weekend's guest post for me when HTML turned into gobbledegook, or to my husband who is much more skillful than I am.

Like, I suspect, many of you,  the big technological leap I have had to take recently has been to take part in Zoom meetings.  This week alone I have joined Zooms of three different sorts - one  professional, a formal directors' committee meeting; one a social group; one a family chat - and it's prompted quite a lot of different thoughts.

The first is how awful it is to have to see myself on screen.  I look truly terrible and though I try to cheer myself up by observing that people whom I know are perfectly nice-looking look bad as well, I still feel I look even worse and it's utterly demoralizing. 

The second, reflecting on the committee meeting, is that it's depersonalizing too. Several people made observations that were hurtful to someone present, in a way I'm quite sure they wouldn't have done if we were sitting round a table, looking each other in the eye.  Compromises are much more difficult to reach when you can't engage in direct communication.  Certainly you can get business done, but there is a serious cost.

The social group was admittedly stilted but was pleasant enough.  Here the problem was technical - quite often the yellow line round the gallery picture to tell you who is speaking was slow to activate and since for some reason the gallery pictures keep dotting around rather than staying in the same place, the conversation got a bit jumbled.  I have to say, though, that it was great for reaching out to people who may have been feeling isolated and would welcome the chance for a cheerful gossip.

The third Zoom meeting was pure joy.  My little grandson is thirteen months and hasn't taken any interest during previous Zooms.  Yesterday for the first time he realized suddenly that we were speaking to him and that he could speak back to us.  And boy, he did! he babbled all the time, not just random sounds but what he clearly thinks are observations, pausing to look for signs of understanding and then, as if feeling a little unconvinced about by our ability to understand words, amplifying his points using sign language.  We went on to waving, blowing kisses, clapping and playing peekaboo while we all shrieked with laughter.   It's not the same as getting a cuddle but it's a lot better than nothing.

It's amazing what technology has done.  Crime panels and festivals on line have kept readers and authors in contact; programmes on TV are being patched together by individuals working in their own homes. I'm sure that if this goes on long enough  technology will come up with new and ever more sophisticated techniques. But I have to say I fervently hope they won't have to.

The Days of Our Lives

A running theme here at Type M, understandably, has been our reflections on this pandemic. For me, the disruption has been minimal. As a freelance writer, I work from home so no change there. I'm fortunate, knock on wood, that my clients are weathering the financial storm. Though the lockdown or shelter-in-place or safer-at-home or whatever your local government calls it, has given me a severe case of cabin fever. I can't wait to enjoy a good meal and a cocktail at a nice restaurant. When I walk my dog, it's amusing to see people detour around one another. If you wear a mask, then for some reason, you're given a wider berth.

I've attached a photo of my calendar to show what I had planned for this weekend. Originally, I was supposed to be at Comicpalooza in Houston; however like everything but the virtual online events, that got cancelled. Last Friday, I was looking forward to high tea at a swanky hotel downtown, and that didn't happen. For later that evening, I had a Weird West reading scheduled for the Colorado Book Awards at the BookBar on Tennyson Street. Instead the reading took place via Zoom. We had over seventy people tune in, which was more than the number who usually attend the event in person. As you can see, I also had an interview scheduled with Social Security to review my eligibility for Medicare, and thanks to the magic of the telephone, did take place. The green "Parking" indicates that I have to move my car for street sweeping, but because of the pandemic the city has suspended fining people who haven't moved their rides. The city still sweeps anyway. The decrease in parking tickets represents a significant loss of revenue for Denver but I'm not crying.

Bits of Fun

Everyone keeps on talking about how much extra time they have these days. I admit I'm a little mad about this because, well, not a whole lot has changed for me. I'm still writing, though I don't get as much done as I should. I attribute that largely to not having a hard deadline, but a little bit to the state the world is in. I'm still doing my usual exercise routine, which was indoors anyway so no change there. Construction is still going on across the street, into the 2nd year for this particular house, and almost 10 years of continuous construction on our street.

One big change is that I don't go out on errands much anymore. Not that I went out much before. Now it’s even less. Only when absolutely necessary do I venture into the great unknown. My husband does most of the grocery shopping. I only occasionally accompany him.

Still, I find that I probably don’t have the best of attitudes these days. I get more annoyed about things, especially the idiots across the street. Hey, you deal with not knowing if you can get out of your garage when you need to and picking up their lunch trash every single day and you’ll get annoyed too. I’m coming up with all sorts of scenarios I could work into a story some day. So that’s good, I guess.

Still, I find that bits of fun can change how I feel about everything. So here are a few things I’ve discovered that you might all find fun. They give me a little relief from life’s annoyances and the grim statistics I read about every day.

Google Fun: 

You can search on “Google Fun” in your browser and find all kinds of fun things. My favorite is the Wizard of Oz:

• Type “Wizard of Oz” into google. 
• Click on the red shoes in the results window. (Be sure you have your sound on.)

Jigsaw Puzzles:

If you’ve run out of physical jigsaw puzzles you can go to jigsawplanet and do some online. You can also create a puzzle using your own image. These can be either public, available to everyone, or private, ones you can only play yourself.

Best British Home Cook:

Then there’s the Best British Home Cook, which I recently discovered on Hulu. I’m not sure where else you can find it, but if you get a chance check it out. The cooks on BBHC all seem to genuinely like each other and they often help each other. A really lovely attitude that I wish was more prevalent these days. Plus Mary Berry is one of the judges so if you miss her from the Great British Baking Show, you can get your fix here.

Music:

Someone sent me these links to 3 version of “Ode To Joy”. The first one is a quartet playing together from their balconies. The other two are orchestras playing the piece together from their homes. Really enjoyable, all of them.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B861wmQ8li8&list=PLc6r63evhcfJktSKNNQ3np0_kur2s4XJU&index=4&t=0s 
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG29VFMphpo 
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZHOJHP33Ps

Furry Friends:

We haven’t had any cats in our household in quite a while so I’m making do with cute kitten videos. Here’s my favorite:

I know it’s not much, but that’s my little contribution to your mental health. Stay safe and healthy, everyone.

Too much time on my hands

by Rick Blechta

In these most novel of times, everyone has had to face new realities and new ways of doing things. Hell! We have had to come up with less than new ways of living our lives. The pandemic shutdown has locked us all in cages, nice ones if you enjoy your living quarters, but cages nonetheless.

One seemingly good offshoot of this is time. Even if you’re lucky enough to have a job where you can work from home, everyone should have more time to do things that they normally wouldn’t. If you’re unfortunately not working, well all you do have on your hands is time.

But something is going wrong.

I was speaking with a musician-friend yesterday. He was lamenting that even with hours on his hands every day, he wasn’t getting much done. Sure, he was practising a lot, but he had other musical goals (recording, arranging new pieces, learning a new recording program he’d bought, but somehow he never got around to these things in any meaningful way. “I feel completely stalled.”

That really resonated with me. I, too, seem to be spinning my tires more than would expect. Part of that is due to the curse of the internet. Even though it’s like watching a slow-moving car crash, I can’t resist reading about current events on various platforms. It’s appalling and fascinating at the same time. Like being in the middle of a great novel, I’m constantly thinking, How is this all going to end? At least we don’t have a TV…

That’s my main time-waster, but there are others. We have bird feeders right outside our back door and I can easily spend a half-hour dawdling over a cup of coffee and watching our guests — especially since a pair of Baltimore orioles arrived last week. There’s also another male hanging around, so there’s lots of chivying going on. (Birds can be really quite nasty to each other.)

You get the picture on how much time can be wasted during the day. I’m sure many of you have similar stories to tell.

So this morning I woke up and vowed that I was not going to allow myself to keep being distracted, keep myself on a schedule and actually accomplish the things I want to accomplish — and above all, not waste so much time!

First off, make a list. Always make a list when you wish to Get Things Done (that’s my mom talking).

Here’s today’s list:

1. Write Type M post: 1 hour
2. Take birthday present over to our granddaughter (she’s 4 today!): 2 hours
3. Practise! : 1.5 hours
4. Record 2 flute pieces for darling wife’s students: .5 hours
5. Change water in fish tank: 20 minutes
6. Make dinner (ratatouille): 1.25 hours
7. Finish song arrangement and print parts while waiting for dinner to cook: 2 hours

Get the picture? You don’t see anything on there about writing, do you? This is how all my days seem to go. Sure, it does take more time whenever you have to go out to the store. It’s not currently a matter of bopping our to the , grabbing what you need and arriving back home in under half-an-hour. It just doesn’t happen.

Something’s got to change or I won’t be able to call myself a writer anymore.

Starting today, I have a timer at my desk and I’m going to use it. Need to ? I set the timer for my budgeted time and when it goes off, I stop cold and move on to something else.

And no looking at the internet between tasks!

Real World Tension

In my creative writing class that I was teaching for our local college, cut short by the pandemic, I stressed the value of ratcheting up tension as your book progresses.

Well, welcome to the real world, where the tension is rising nearly every day.

On Friday, the governor of Michigan shut down the Capitol in Lansing in fear of armed protesters. For the past week, lawmakers have been debating how to safely enable lawmakers to work and vote in session while the state’s laws allow people to bring firearms into the capitol building. The debate grew in intensity as some lawmakers read about threats to the governor’s life on social media, which were published in the Detroit Metro Times.

There’s a tense video on YouTube filmed by a female customer in a Trader Joe’s, arguing with a young worker who was trying to enforce company policy by asked the woman to wear a face mask. The discussion grew heated, the young man called the police, who never showed up, and the woman finally left. When she did, the other customers in the store applauded.

A Target employee in California ended up with a broken arm as she helped escort two customers who also refused to wear masks.

In Pennsylvania, a female convenience store clerk refused to sell a man who refused to wear a mask a pack of cigars. He punched three times in the face.

In Texas, a man was told he couldn’t ride a public bus if he didn’t put on a face mask. He shot another passenger who ended up in the hospital and the gunman was arrested.

Then in Flint, Michigan, a security guard outside a dollar story insisted that a customer wear a face mask. The guard was shot and killed.

On a much lesser note, but still ugly, I was in line at our Food Lion, wearing a mask. As the lady behind the counter checked me out and I place my groceries in my cart, I turned to put my credit card in the machine to pay. I saw a man and woman standing right next to me, neither of whom were wearing masks. I politely asked the man to please step back. In a loud belligerent voice, he said, “Where do you want me to go? The back of the store?”

Wanting to defuse the situation, I didn’t tell him where I really wanted him to go.

The poor clerk smiled sadly and told me, “Have a nice day, honey.

I’m working from home and in my spare time, I’m working on edits for my fourth mystery, Shadow Hill. But it’s difficult not to fall down an internet rabbit hole when an alert pops up on my phone letting me know when some new kernel of news has arrived. Usually it’s bad news.

It’s not productive. At some point I just switch it all off and lose myself in my work. It’s a little like a movie or a book where the tension has nearly peaked.

So my advice is that when the world serves you more tension than you think you can handle, turn it off, go for a walk or open your work in progress and lose yourself in that.

Stay safe and stay healthy.