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Hot Summer Reads

 

from Mary

 

June has been an excellent reading month so far. Y'all know what I like. Mysteries with a pinch of fantasy or a dab of history always rank high on my lists. It's even better when a book has both of those elements plus lots of laughs. That was the case with my #1 book this month which is the latest in my #1 favorite mystery series. 

Well, it's one of my three #1 favorite series. Make that fo -- actually, there's gotta be eight or nine at least, and I'm not even thinking hard. Whichever one I'm reading at the moment is the best. 

 

A quick round-up then for June as of today -

Ben Aaronovitch's London series starring PC Peter Grant is new to me but quickly becoming necessary. To my well-being. Grant has been assigned to The Folly, the home base for the supernatural crime unit. In MOON OVER SOHO and WHISPERS UNDERGROUND, the 2nd and 3rd books, we see him progressing with his Latin and learning a few basic spells that aid his investigations.   

 

MOON OVER SOHO has Grant searching for a killer whose victims are jazz artists, and as the case unfolds, it looks like the killing entity has been at it for decades. The search goes all the way back to the forties, to the night a German bomb destroyed a jazz club during the Blitz.

Mayhem continues in WHISPERS UNDERGROUND during which Grant is forced to wade and squelch through some rah-ther nah-sty wet tunnels. The good thing is that where there is water, there is a

 

young river goddess or two to help out. As with the previous two books, the history and sights of London make solid supports for these unique, engaging, funny stories. 

 

Fast-reverse to England during the War of the Roses. THE WHITE QUEEN by Phillipa Gregory is an excellent historical about Elizabeth Woodville Grey, wife of King Edward IV. The story begins when she meets the young Edward, not long after her first husband died in battle.

 

 

Not a mystery, but very well written and recommended for history buffs.

 

Now this is a hard one to describe.

 

 

THE LEFT HAND OF GOD by Paul Hoffman begins in a very bleak place. The hero, Cale, was given to the Redeemer Sanctuary when he was a very young boy. He is one of thousands of boys in the enormous religious warrior training facility, a horrible place where punishments are brutal and food is scarce. Luckily, Cale is smart. He escapes along with a few other inmates, and they strike out into the world that they know absolutely nothing about. I particularly liked how this installment ends, with just a faint hint of Cale's real destiny.

 

 And now for something different -

 

 

Okay, raise your hand if you have five or more organizing books. Yeah, me too. They all have good ideas to help get your life and your stuff together. UNSTUFF YOUR LIFE! had something that the others I've read did not. It 'talked you down' from the ledge first. Now, I listened to the audiobook, so maybe I felt that way because of the author's voice, or his compassion for those of us who get so overwhelmed sometimes that we don't even know where to begin. All in all, it's an excellent, thorough guide to organizing sanity.

 

From which we flip to delightful insanity. Cue uproarious laughter -

 

 

 

Oh my goodness, this was so funny. I laugh every time I see this cover art because it's of a hilarious scene that takes place in total darkness. Oh, he's good. Is it a mystery? It does involve a theft. And Jeeves lies and says he's a Scotland Yard detective, but only because he had to get Bertie out of a pinch. All right then. A crime novel it is.

 

AND NOW .....

The #1 favorite book of the month and my #1 favorite series of all time .....

 

 

I love Dr. Siri so much. He and the wonderful Lao gang are all here in THE WOMAN WHO WOULDN'T DIE. A strange thing happens in a village outside Vientiane. A housekeeper hears gunshots inside her rich employer's house and, a bit later, the sound of a truck driving away. She finds the lady of the house dead on the floor with blood pooling around her head. After an investigations, the dead woman is cremated. A few days later, the dead woman is seen about town, talking and walking about. There's no doubt it is the same woman. Is she a ghost? Since she now can see the dead, she is "hired" to find a boat of missing and presumed dead sailors in the Mekhong River.

Wonderful writing, great humor, outstanding portrayal of characters and their relationships, new revelations about Madame Daeng's past, and a big surprise at the end that makes me wish I could read the next book now.

 

Tell us what you're reading too! Love to get recommendations.

Charlaine in Hollywood!

by Charlaine Harris

Writers essentially work by themselves, for themselves, in rooms large or small, quiet or noisy . . . but empty of everything but the writer and her/his brain. Once a year I have the option to break that mold and do something that is, by any standard, glamorous. This year I exercised that option. My daughter and I attended the “True Blood” premiere held at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.

Beautiful Daughter shot her scene on “True Blood” on Monday. We both got a lesson in filmmaking; her scene was scheduled to be right after lunch, and we left the studio at seven p.m. But we had a fascinating day and came away impressed with the thought that goes into every scene. BD will be in episode 8, looking authoritative in a lab coat. (We named her character Cornelia, the Sadistic Lab Tech.)

On Tuesday, after a meeting with APA (my left coast reps) we return to our hotel (the Peninsula – great staff!) to have lunch and prepare for the arrival of our hair-and-makeup woman, the diminutive Julie. We were much better looking after her intensive work, and dressed in our finery and with friend and scriptwriter Kam Miller, we climbed into our car to be taken by our driver to the premiere. Most TV shows don’t have a premiere, much less a red carpet, but HBO does things right. There is an actual red carpet, and actual press, and many lovely actresses and handsome actors there for the premiere dressed in their carefully selected outfits. It’s pretty darn glamorous, and I always feel strange in such company. But I did a little press and was photographed a bit (which always amazes me), and then I was VERY glad to get into the building and off my torturous heels.

I got to speak briefly with Alexander Skarsgard, and at the afterparty I had great talks with some fans of the books who were at the premiere. The party was “decorated” with actors sprayed all red with giant red wigs, who introduced themselves as professional fangbangers and slithered all over in an atmospheric touch. It was amazing to get to talk to Dale Raoul (Maxine Fortenberry) and Tara Buck (Ginger, the Fangtasia waitress), and to congratulate Anna and Stephen on the season to come and (more importantly) their twins, now nine months old.

I’m relieved that BD and I are back to our regularly scheduled lives and facing ordinary problems (rather than, “Which restaurant for lunch?” or “Is this the right outfit for today?”). But it’s fun to go Hollywood once in a while!

Charlaine Harris

Hot and Bothered

By Elaine Viets Monday night, Don and I came back from a trip to Key Largo, relaxed, rested and ready to snooze in our cool condo.

It didn’t happen.

The condo was there, all right, but the air conditioning died while we were on vacation. We thought the place was so warm because the South Florida temperatures had hit a record high. We cranked the air conditioner down to seventy degrees.

The condo still didn’t cool down. It took us six hours to figure out that the air conditioner was broken.

What I can say? Vacation brain is a documented disorder.

About midnight, we finally realized the air conditioner was DOA and opened the windows. The cool breeze felt good – certainly better than our hot, stuffy home.

Another half an hour of summer breezes, and I felt like a little girl.

In steamy hot St. Louis. Before we had air conditioning.

Those are not memories I want to revisit.

The Midwest is actually hotter in the summer than the Sunshine State – and there’s no ocean breeze to cool things off at night.

Yes, our Fort Lauderdale bedroom was cooler with the window open, but the sheets were so soggy, they felt like I’d dragged them out of the dryer half-damp. My bare feet stuck to the tile floor. The ceiling fan churned the soggy air but never cooled it.

I remembered all of that from the good old days. I took a shower and fell asleep for another two hours, until the sticky heat smothered me awake again. Then I took another shower.

When I woke up again at four-thirty in the morning, I wondered, How did people survive the heat before air conditioning?

My St. Louis grandmother told me the rich went to Wisconsin, Michigan or some place else cool. The poor couldn’t leave. They got up early in the morning, cooked in the basement – Grandma kept an old stove in her cellar – did the cleaning, and then sweated it out for the spent the rest of the day by a fan. Some people would sleep  outside on the balcony or even try to sleep in the park. Most of us wouldn’t walk around in those parks after dark nowadays. Back then, no mugger would ply his trade in a park packed with hundreds of sweaty, sleepless humans – that was really dangerous.

But I think our ancestors were also tougher.

Take the movie, "Key Largo." Bogart arrives at the Hotel Largo right before a hurricane, so you know it’s hotter than Hades. Look at that photo. No one thinks there’s anything odd about Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and that third hulk wearing ties, jackets and an overcoat.

 

Okay, that’s a movie. Consider this photo of Fort Lauderdale pioneer Ivy Stranahan. Just looking at that high collar and those scratchy lace ruffles makes me sweat. She’d never discuss it, but Ivy wore a corset, too. That woman had the right stuff to be a pioneer.

 

The men didn’t have it any easier. This postcard Shows two Florida fishermen  earing hats and heavy coats. The archives of local historical societies are stuffed with similar photos of overdressed anglers.

 

Even back then, you could have fun on the beach. Just imagine yourself in the ocean at what’s now New Smyrna Beach, wrapped in layers of saltwater- soaked swimsuits.

My unwelcome walk down memory lane ended at noon the next day, when the air-conditioning repairman fixed the condenser on the roof. The heat had melted the wiring.

 By two o’clock that afternoon our condo was blessedly cool.

I’ve heard people tell say that air conditioning is isolating and people don’t sit out on their porches and talk to their neighbors like they used to.

I’ll see my neighbors in the air-conditioned elevator, thank you.

I’m no fan of the good old days.

Davis when it Sizzles

I know it doesn't have quite the same ring to it but, it was 102 degrees at 7pm on Friday night in Davis, CA, when I was hosting a launch party for my new book.  That's my excuse for looking like a greased balloon in all of these pictures.  Why doesn't anyone else, you ask.  Native Californians - they're used to it.

First of all then, thank you so very very much to everyone who ventured out instead of lying in a cool bath with a bag of frozen peas on their head.  It was amazing to see such a crowd.

Here they are, including John Lescroart in the front row - no pressure there then.

The Avid Reader (owned by the just-as-amazing-as-she-sounds Alzeda Knickerbocker) did me proud again, with the kind of window you want to linger outside and show to passers-by:

But I like to think I did my bit too.  I did this anyway:

Even if it meant that at the end of the night I came home to this:

And it was wonderful to hang out with so many friends.  In fact it's still kind of wonderful to *have* so many friends so soon after I moved here.  But then Californians are very friendly people.  Here are Connie Berkowitz and Michele Barefoot about 70 seconds after they met:

Some of my NorCal and Capitol Sisters in Crime were there, and don't Susan Shea, Cindy Sample,local radio producer Lin Weaver and I make a colourful bunch:

And some of my lower-case sisters in crime were there too, including the national-bestselling suspense writer Eileen Rendahl (aka Xena) and the award-winning western and gardening book writer Spring Warren (aka (by me) Sprinkles ). Aren't they lovely?

I tried to be entertaining but I think some of the reason people were happy was that the men behind the bar took their work so seriously.  Look at the concentration here from Neil McRoberts, Dave Gilchrist and Dave Rizzo:

They're UC science professors and can solve major food security problems while doing sudoko but when it comes to wine . . .  total focus!

Anyway, as hard as I tried to put on a good show the funniest line of the night came from Lin Weaver who saw Aubrey Suleiman (here with Keith Raffel and me):

and said: "Is that your sister?  she has *exactly* the same colour of hair."  It's true; she does.  Aubrey is my hairdresser and her colour and mine come out of *exactly* the same bottle at Salon Blonde!

So much of this writing life is typing (and weeping) alone in a room.  It's a treat and an honour to get out from behind the keyboard once in a while and raise a glass with new friends like these.

Next month, I'll be in Edinburgh, raising another one with old friends instead.  My mum will make the cake; the kitchen will stay tidy and I don't need a crystal ball to say it won't be 102 degrees!

 

Suspense on the Big Screen

I've read mysteries for over forty years now and have read thousands of them. As long as they're in book form, I really get into them. With movies (and television), not so much, and I haven't ever quite figured out why. But there are some big-screen suspense films I love, and here they are.

My #1 is a classic, Alfed Hitchcock's "Notorious," starring Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant. The final scene of this movie is one of my all-time favorites, and no matter how many times I watch it, I still find myself hardly daring to breathe. (If you've seen it, you'll know why.) Bergman and Grant, along with the always terrific Claude Rains, are superb. Bergman was never more beautiful, nor vulnerable, in this film (except for maybe in "Casablanca").

And speaking of "Casablanca," it's another of my all-time favorites, not only as the classic romance it is considered to be, but also as a suspense film. There are a number of wonderfully tense moments in it, and it has one of most memorable last lines of any film ever made.

Kudos to Hitchcock again for the chillingly rendered "Rebecca" with Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier. They play their roles admirably, but for me it is Dame Judith Anderson who steals the picture. As the malignant housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, Anderson is terrifying. She played Lady Macbeth to Olivier's Macbeth, and also to Maurice Evans's. I can imagine she was thoroughly blood-curdling as Lady M.

On a slightly lighter note, I have to include Stanley Donen's quirky "Charade," starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. Great supporting cast, too: Walter Matthau, George Kennedy, James Coburn, and Ned Glass. Hepburn is plucky and elegant in this one, feisty too, though she falls for Cary Grant's enigmatic character rather quickly. (But, hey, he's Cary Grant, even if he was a quarter-century older than Hepburn.)

The most recent film in that bunch is "Charade," which hit theaters in December 1963. There are other older films I could include, like Hitchcock's "Saboteur," "The Lady Vanishes," and "Strangers on a Train." "The Maltese Falcon" is brilliant, and "North by Northwest" is great, too.  And I can't forget "Double Indemnity."

I love the underrated "Dead Again" with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, and I have a sentimental fondness for two Hayley Mills films, "The Moon-Spinners" and "That Darn Cat!"

 More current suspense films, well, not so much. I've never seen "The Silence of the Lambs" and never will. Anything that verges on horror isn't for me. Any film with gushing blood, etc., or people being hacked to death by a guy in a weird mask, they're not for me. Give me "Notorious" any day.

The ups and downs of book signings

by Kris Neri

I’ve been asked the question many times, as I’m sure other authors have as well: what was your worst book event?

No contest. My worst signing occurred in the months after my second book, Dem Bones’ Revenge, was published, at an LA-area Barnes & Noble. I’d rather not get more specific than that because, although the store in general did nothing wrong, some employees didn’t acquit themselves too well.

When I arrived I was thrilled by the turnout. I was scheduled to present a workshop on getting published. This was before the self-publication explosion when people still wanted to know the how-tos of getting an agent and finding traditional publication. Some of my established readers who lived in the area and a current student were in attendance, along with about forty or so strangers. The evening’s prospects looked good.

Then a wackadoodle wandered into our midst presumably to hear the talk, wearing filthy clothes, with snot running down his face, and clutching a messy, yellowed manuscript to his chest.

While I spoke to the audience, the wingnut began mumbling some nasty neo-Nazi crap to himself, just loud enough to be heard. Well, he was either saying it to himself, or me, or the audience, or the universe in general — I was never sure about that, but while it was a low mumble, people around him could hear well enough.

I kept trying to make eye contact with the CRM, who was seated in the first row of chairs, looking for some direction about how I should handle this situation. She mostly kept her eyes on me, though not intently, wearing a vague benign smile on her face that never changed, which told me she was off in never-never land somewhere. I’m sure she never heard a word I said, and she really didn’t pay any attention at all to the Aryan disaster. 

I’m not sure I made the right choice, but since he kept his diatribes mostly at a muttered level, I carried on as if he weren’t there. I don’t think I would do the same today — I’m a lot more outspoken now — but I was newer to book signings then, and trying to make the best choice for everyone.

Throughout this, though, my anxiety spiked off the charts. At one point, he placed his manuscript on the floor and began reaching into his pants and grabbing something there. He was probably just grabbing what men have in their pants. That would have been gross enough. But I secretly feared he might have been reaching in for a weapon. I kept expecting him to pull a gun out. Considering how many shootings we've seen in public places, it wasn't a totally hysterical fear. This was a really scary wackadoodle. 

Obviously, he made others in the audience as uncomfortable as me. People began to get up and leave. Some of them were nice enough to grab a copy of my book and, with a little wave, took off. Mostly, however, they simply left. I didn’t know that some had stopped at the front desk and suggested they call the police and have them get rid of this guy. But the employees chose not to.

Towards the end of my talk, he quit mumbling and groping, picked up his manuscript and wandered off. By the end, two-thirds of the good audience I started with had left. My fans and my student had stayed, as had some strangers. I ended up having adequate sales to my surprise, given the diminished crowd. But fear had turned my legs to rubber, and I thought I might have developed an ulcer during the prior hour. Thankfully, that didn’t actually happen.

While I signed books, all my customers could talk about was the wingnut and the stuff he was saying. The CRM claimed not to have heard any of it, even though she only sat two seats away, and people much farther away had heard plenty. I wish I could turn off my hearing like that -- it would help dealing with my snoring dog.

Since then, I’ve had great signings and I’ve had crummy ones, as all authors do. But none of the so-so ones have ever been a fraction as colorful. Never before or since have I ever seriously believed that someone might shoot me. Books do tend to bring out more cerebral people, though not exclusively that day.

I can laugh about it now. I’ve actually laughed about it for years, just not then.

It’s on my mind today because in a short time, I will be taking off for my Southern California signings for Revenge on Route 66, and that memory always reminds me that no matter how my signings go, they’re always better than that. But no matter what happens, there will probably also be less to laugh about, too.

Mind you, I expect my SoCal events to be great because they’ll be at some of my favorite stores, including Book ‘Em Mysteries in South Pasadena, and the two Mysterious Galaxy locations, in Redondo Beach and San Diego.

I am saddened that two of the other stops I’ve always made there — Mysteries to Die for in Thousand Oaks and the Mystery Bookstore in Westwood — have closed their doors. As an independent bookstore owner myself, I know what a challenge it is keeping an indie store going today. Boy, will I miss those stops.

If you read below, you’ll see my schedule. If you’re in the area, I’d hope you’ll stop by one of my events. It would be great to connect with you. 

But if anyone there, or at any future signing of mine, sticks his hand in his pants — this time, I’m ducking.

Signing Schedule:

Saturday, June 8, 2 pm: Book ‘Em Mysteries, 1118 Mission Street, South Pasadena, CA. (626) 799-9600.

Sunday, June 9, 2:30 pm. Mysterious Galaxy – Redondo Beach, 2810 Artesia Blvd Redondo Beach, CA. 310-542-6000. I’ll be signing there with Kate Carlisle.



Monday, June 10, 7 pm. Mysterious Galaxy – San Diego, 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Suite #302, San Diego, CA. 858-268-4747. I’ll be presenting a writing workshop, Creating Memorable Characters, in addition to signing copies of REVENGE ON ROUTE 66.

Where does it begin?

Where does a mystery author begin? With the Nancy Drew books I devoured as a young girl? Or maybe it was the night Daddy made an inspired exception: I could stay up past 9:30 to watch "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," provided my homework was done.

The seed had been planted.

I wrote my first "novel" in eighth grade, a shameless Nancy Drew/Hardy Boy rip-off set in a Nevada ghost town. At the top of my "manuscript" Mr. Ramerez wrote, "Write what you know. Ever been to a ghost town?"

If I was discouraged by his negative review, I don't remember. I continued to write stories with twisty Hitchcockian endings all the way through high school, until the rigors of college and the realities of being the full-time working mother of two young daughters gave me new priorities.

Fast forward to 1993. I was a career librarian at a big government library in Washington, D.C., where my involvement with mysteries consisted of the huge To-Be-Read stack beside (and under!) my bed. Like many women of my generation, I aspired to be Supermom, until life—as it has a way of doing—brought me up short.

I don't recommend getting breast cancer as a way of helping you decide what you want to be when you grow up, but for me, the diagnosis and subsequent mastectomy and chemotherapy were the wake-up call that helped convince me to abandon the grueling one-hour-each-way commute from Annapolis to a windowless office in Washington, D.C., for a job closer to home.I had always wanted to be a novelist, and as I faced my own mortality, I thought, if not now, when?

So I got serious. I was accepted at the Sewanee Writers' Conference (founded by the estate of Tennessee Williams at the University of the South) and at Bread Loaf where I work shopped the sprawling, learning-to-deal-with-it novel that later morphed into "Sing It To Her Bones." My mentor at Sewanee was National Book Award winner, John Casey. During our one-on-one session, he said, "When I read your first chapter, I knew I was in the hands of a born story-teller. But the rest of the novel is crap." After a stunned silence (of about six months!) I took his advice. I tossed everything but the first chapter and began again.

I was encouraged by a member of my writers' group to enter "Sing It To Her Bones" in a contest sponsored by Malice Domestic, an annual conference in Washington, D.C., that celebrates the traditional mystery. Nobody could have been more surprised than I when, three months later, the phone rang with the good news that it had won. For the award ceremony, I bought a new dress (with matching blue snakeskin shoes from Nordstrom) and when I left the podium, clutching my check, the photograph my husband took shows me floating several inches above the carpet. Three days later, back at my desk, the first of several phone calls from New York agents came in, asking if I needed representation. Did I ever! Before long, I had a three-book deal with Bantam/Dell and the rest, as they say, is history.

When we first meet Hannah Ives, the crime-solving protagonist I created, she's finished chemotherapy for breast cancer and is recuperating on her sister-in-law's farm in southern Maryland while waiting for her hair to grow out. She's been downsized from her job in Washington, D.C., and is feeling unlovely and unloved. While on a walk with the family dog, her hat tumbles into a well. Hannah goes fishing for it and discovers the body of a young girl who had disappeared five years previously. Suddenly Hannah has something to distract her from her own personal problems—finding a murderer.

Since I am a cancer survivor, too, people often ask me, "Are you Hannah?" Hannah is the woman I would like to be: younger, prettier, thinner, funnier, and much braver than I would ever be. She has a legion of fans who are cancer survivors. They love her upbeat attitude and wry sense of humor. "Believe it or not," Hannah says at one point, "there are advantages to having had cancer. I get my mammograms at half price."

If you had told that little girl—sitting cross-legged in front of a flickering black and white tube where the familiar profile of Mr. Hitchcock was taking shape as Gunod's "Funeral March of a Marionette" played in the background—that fifty years later she'd be an award-winning author of twelve novels and more than a dozen short stories, well, she might have wondered if you were off your meds. The seed might have been planted that day, but it lay dormant for many years, until family, friends, colleagues, and thousands of readers helped the dream grow, blossom, and flower.

Both Hannah and I are survivors, and we couldn't be more grateful.

Paris When It Sizzles

Hank Phillippi Ryan: I know there’s love at first sight, if you believe in it and I might.

 

And you know, there may also be “friend at first sight.” If there is, then it happened when I met Tilia Jacobs at Crimebake—was it last year? We instantly had everything in common. More than I can even describe or retell—but it was quite amazing.

I knew I’d love her writing and I do.

But when I invited her to come visit at the Femmes, I didn’t quite know what to expect. I knew her new book is just out, WRONG PLACE, WRONG TIME—an intelligent, page-turner of an adventure—so I figured it might be about that.

It isn’t.

Paris when it Sizzles

by Tilia Klebenov Jacobs

I've never worn this, although I expect it would fit me.

Pale blue blouse, full-length sleeves, cross-hatching pattern of darker stripes in green, brown, and darker blue. The label says, "Saint Clair Paris Made in France 38."

It must have been my mother's; and maybe she got it in the 1950s when she and my dad were crazy in love and living together in sin on the Seine. My parents met at a sidewalk café in Paris. Really. (I cherish a fantasy that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were at the next table.) They fell headoverheels in love and set up housekeeping in a rancid little apartment on the Left Bank.

The flat was dark and cramped, so they and their friends painted it in Frigidaire white. Years later Dad still crowed about how that coat of paint brightened the murky rooms.

The landlady hated them, however, and the feeling was mutual. She was prone to capricious hikes in rent, and they were prone to being broke. This made life difficult. La Landlady appears to have been cast in the Granny De Farge mold. To hear my parents tell it, the only two creatures on Gods’ green earth who could abide her were her two Dachshunds, both of whom had asthma and wheezed in counterpoint as they followed her around on her nefarious errands. Dad always said he loved Paris, hated the Parisians.

To be fair, though, the City of Lights was under stress when my parents lived there; she had been through a lot in her recent past. For Paris, the late fifties was still a time of recovering from the Nazi occupation. But Paris loves couture, and those years might well have been when Mom bought the blouse.

Mom left us too soon. She died when I was a teenager. And I never saw the blouse until after my father died, twenty-two years later. My brother and I were clearing out Dad’s house to sell it, and found great mounds of stuff, silver and jewelry and old, decaying clothes that Dad must have been nutters to keep.

We took turns poking holes through the brittle fabric of parkas that had fit us when we were eleven and fourteen, laughing hysterically. But some of the items were in very good shape and quite wearable, which made us rather piqued at Dad. More than once I pointed out that it would have made sense for him to have given us this stuff so that we could have enjoyed it. Mom’s jewelry. Mom’s dresses and maternity wear. Instead it sat in closets and dressers for over two decades.

More than once my brother pointed out that he agreed with me and that I needn’t clobber him with the obvious.

The blouse is one of the items in fine shape, bearing no stain and trailing no thread. Since it was my mother’s I can’t throw it away and I can’t quite bring myself to wear it. But I expect it has stories in its weave.

"We were all finding ourselves," said Sylvia, one of their friends from that era—indeed, one of the cadre who had helped paint the apartment. Sylvia was visiting from her homeland in Germany, and my husband and I had quickly invited her to our annual Summer Solstice party. (We are not so Jewish that we can't have a big ol' pagan hoedown twice a year when the days and nights grow to their mightiest.)

Now, fifty years after the apartment and the blouse and the watching my parents fall in love, Sylvia was standing in our back yard talking to me and my cousins and my father's sister. They had never met her, and were hanging onto her every word. "That was what the Americans called it: 'Finding yourself.'" I briefly wondered what you did with that person once he or she had been found. Was it a catch-and-release program?

I rather doubt that my mother found herself in Paris. She was not prone to introspection. But she did find my father and they did find love. And the blouse must have looked lovely on her. Did she wear it with slacks for those drizzly Parisian autumns? Or with a high-waisted, swinging skirt, so popular in the fifties? Either way, I expect she gave my dad whiplash as she walked by.

Or Mom might have bought the blouse when she and my dad returned to Paris almost twenty years after their original sojourn. It does have a rather seventies look to it, with collar points a bit larger than is currently fashionable. My brother doesn't remember this trip of our parents’, as he's three and a half years younger than I and was therefore small and blobby at the time; but I do, because it was a Thang.

We did not accompany them. They were away for a week or ten days, and baby sitters were arranged round the clock. When I was a teenager I asked my dad about that trip. "But wasn't it depressing," bear in mind I was a teenager, "seeing how much everything had changed?" Dad smiled, a wistful one that nonetheless held glints of a grin of unexpected joy from decades before. No, he assured me, it was the opposite.

Because when they stood outside their old apartment building, holding hands and sighing, the door opened; and out stepped their poisonous old crone of a landlady, walking the same two asthmatic wiener dogs that had plagued them when they were young and in love and living in Paris. And, perhaps, shopping for pale-blue blouses with cross-hatching stripes of darker colors.

Maybe I should wear it some day.

 

***********************

Tilia Klebenov Jacobs holds a BA from Oberlin College, where she double-majored in Religion and English with a concentration in Creative Writing. Following an interregnum as an outdoor educator with the Fairfax County Park Authority in Virginia, she earned a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and a Secondary School Teaching Certification from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Despite lacking the ability to breathe fire except in the strictly metaphorical sense, Tilia has taught middle school, high school, and college. She has also won numerous awards for her fiction and nonfiction writing. She is a judge in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, and she teaches writing in two prisons in Massachusetts. Tilia lives near Boston with her husband, two children, and two standard poodles.

 

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

When Tsara Adelman leaves her husband and two young children for a weekend to visit her estranged uncle, she little dreams he is holding several local children captive on his lavish estate. Mike Westbrook, father of one of the boys, kidnaps her to trade her life for the children’s. Soon Tsara and Mike are fleeing through New Hampshire’s mountain wilderness pursued by two rogue cops with murder on their minds.

Milestones

by Toni L.P. Kelner / Leigh Perry

 

Every year has milestones, but 2013 is just chockful of them, personal and professional, parental and psuedonymous. In fact, I've already passed a couple but there are plenty more to come.

 

May 9: Fiftieth Birthday

No, not mine. I passed that particular milestone some time back. But this year, my husband Steve turned 50. Unfortunately, we haven't thoroughly celebrated yet because of all the other milestones coming this month. But I can say that smooching a fifty-year-old is even better than smooching a forty-something-year-old man. Practice makes perfect.

 

May 23: High School Graduation

My ittle baby Maggie graduated from Matignon High School. Gulp. Not only was the graduation itself a momentous occasion, but there were so many other mini-milestones associated with it: the school Art Show (Maggie won an award), Awards Night (she came home with four), the Prom, the funny school tradition of driving around the school honking on the last day of classes. I would have felt melancholy about taking that last drive to school on grad night had it not been for an upcoming milestone.

 

June 1: Authorial Anniversary

Tomorrow will be the twentieth anniversary of the release of Down Home Murder, my first book. Though I had a couple of interviews and a dozen limericks published before that, I count June 1, 1993 as my debut as a professional writer. In twenty years, I've published eleven novels, five co-edited anthologies, twenty-eight short stories, a few more limericks, and an assortment of essays and recipes. I figure that's a good start. 

 

June 7: Junior High School Graduation

Next week, my even ittler baby Valerie graduates from junior high school. We are particularly glad for Valerie to graduate because this is her third grammar school. She had two close while she was attending, and we've been on tenterhooks for the past three years that this one wouldn't die. And it didn't! As with Maggie, there are a multitude of mini-milestones attached. The school play (Val was fabulous), the school Art Show (Val won in her class), the art class Art Show, and a graduation banquet on this coming Monday. I'm starting to think they cluster all these events so you'll be so busy that you don't remember that you're supposed to be sad.

 

June 18: Silver Anniversary

Twenty-five years ago, Steve and I were married in Charlotte, NC. Marrying him was one of the smartest things I ever did. I was explaining to Valerie that the twenty-fifth anniversary is known as the Silver Anniversary, and she wondered why. Actually, so do I. It may refer to the silver showing up in our hair. All I know is that this marriage hasn't tarnished a bit.

 

September 3: New Book, New Series, New Name

September is the day my new book comes out, and as you can see from the cover, I'll be morphing into Leigh Perry for the Family Skeleton series. Now you know what the L.P. in Toni L.P. Kelner stands for.

 

September 5: Starting High School

You remember how I said I almost felt melacholy about that last trip to Matignon? Well, it was far from the last time I'll make that drive, because history will repeat itself as Valerie starts at Matignon. She excited about many aspects, but I think the part she likes best is knowing that she won't have to wear ugly plaid skirts ever again.

 

September 14: Starting College

Maggie will be studying animation at the Atlanta campus of the SCAD. Though I'm very proud of her, I don't want to even think too hard about this particular milestone. According to Mapquest, SCAD is 1115.77 miles from my house. That's a whole lot of milestones.

 

After that?

There may be more milestones coming this year--after all, life is full of them--but that's about as many as I care to contemplate right now. Of course, the good thing about milestones is that every one represents a chance to celebrate and share the excitement. I just hope that by September, I'm not worn out from passing so many.

 

What about you, Gentle Reader? What milestones do you have coming?

 

 

 

Celebrating National Procrastination Week

by Donna Andrews

Actually, National Procrastionation Week is in March.  So either I'm late celebrating it for 2013 or I'm getting a jump on 2014.

I vote for late.  Around here, sometimes, every week seems like National Procrastination Week.

If I'm immersed in a draft, it's not so bad.  I can blame my procrastination on the writing.  "I'm pushing aside everything so I can get my draft done," I proclaim, bristling with virtue.

But I've already turned in both books that will come out this year.  The ARCs are already out for Hen of the Baskervilles.  I'm nearly finished proofing the galleys for Duck the Halls.  I'm going to start drafting my 2014 book soon, but I haven't quite yet.  So logically you'd think maybe I'd be caught up with all those things I pushed aside to finish the books.

Yeah.  Logic.

So what's my excuse now?

I'm resting.  Recuperatiing.  Gathering my energy for the draft I have to start pretty darn soon.  Researching my topic.  Recharging my batteries.

Sounds a lot better than goofing off.

Actually, I have been doing a lot of gardening.  Gardening is a great palate cleanser for a writer, because it's completely non-verbal and seems to occupy a different part of the brain than writing. I can happily putter around in the garden while nibbling away at a pesky plot problem. Or, better yet, putter while ignoring a plot problem, in the not unrealistic hope that the verbal part of my brain will solve it in the background while in the foreground the gardener brain is staking tomatoes, pulling weeds, planting bulbs, and deadheading flowers.  Or while the photographer part of my brain--another creative but non-verbal part--is trying to figure out the right angle to take a photo of the latest blooms.

The best of the garden shots end up in my 365 Project--it's a photo challenge to post a photo every day for a year--a photo you took that day.  I'm in my third year of doing it, and if you'd like to follow the results, check out my author page on Facebook.  Or go directly to my 365 project.  Or just look at the photos decorating this blog, all but one of which were taken this week in my garden.  (The one that wasn't is the bee visiting the allium.  Not my yard, but I did give the yard's owners the allium bulb.)

Yes, I've been doing a lot of gardening and taking a lot of photos.  Sometimes procrastination doesn't mean you're lazy, or not busy.  It just means I'm not doing what someone--possibly me--thinks I should be doing.

One of the things I did manage to get done over the winter was create my 2013 calendar.  It's something I send out as a present every holiday season.  Got it done in time . . . but then I had just a little bit of trouble getting all of them out.  Lost a handful.  Had to order a few more.  And then, last week, I found the lost ones.  Which still have half a year's use left in them. 

So, in honor of National Procrastination Week, I'm giving them away.  If you'd like one, leave a comment. Say something, profound, amusing, or just plain true about procrastination, and you could win one of the handful. 

I promise I won't procrastinate too long about mailing them out.