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I'm a member of MWA (Mystery Writers of America), among other professional organizations. On an annual basis, MWA names a Grand Master. I don't have the literature in front of me, but a Grand Master should be a much-published and much-revered member of the mystery community. The Grand Master should also have written work that was so sound that it became the template for what came afterward.

This year's Grand Master is Dorothy Gilman. Gilman has published over thirty books, the best known of which are her Mrs. Polifax novels. Mrs. Polifax is a sweet-looking older woman who becomes a spy almost by accident. Along with many, many readers, I enjoyed the adventures of this woman of a certain age, and I appreciated the skill it took to make Gilman's writing look simple. (Incidentally, Gilman writes for both adult and YA readers.) Emily Polifax, widow, was a cozy heroine; an amateur sleuth stuck in a professional role, a woman who had a second career much more adventurous than her first.

As the most unlikely spy, Mrs. Polifax travels to foreign countries, unsuspected because of her middle-class-little-old-lady demeanor and good manners. She meets her adventures with nearly unfailing courage and determination -- and some of those adventures are very unpleasant indeed. But Mrs. Polifax perseveres, and she finds -- yes, she does -- love along the way. 

I think every single MWA Grand Master has earned his or her slot on that list. There are no undeserving political appointees, no one who bought a chance to join that exclusive club. They're legitimate heavyweights in the mystery genre. But I'm glad that Dorothy Gilman is on that list now. I'm glad that an American traditional writer's influence on the genre has been recognized. 

I'm proud of her selection.

Pretty gritty

by Dana

I've been doing lots of promotion in support of Boston Noir, which includes my story, “Femme Sole.”  It's been tremendous fun working with the good folks at Akashic, I was delighted by the chance to contribute, and I'm proud of the work I did on my story.  But there's been a recent twist on the “how much is your character like you?” question that every author gets.  It's become “Anna Hoyt's a very angry person.  Are you angry about something?”

The short answer is, well, yeah.  There's plenty in the world to be angry about, but people don't generally go around asking each other “are you angry today?”  This clearly was more personal, more specific to me and my story.  A couple of times, trying to sort out my confusion, the question was changed to “Anna's struggling because she is a woman.  Were you drawing on some experience you had as a woman?”  Again, the answer was too easy and unsatisfactory:  “Sure.  Everyone has an experience where he or she is treated differently because of expectations based on prejudice.  And most of mine have been because I am a woman.  All writers take experience and extrapolate.  I've written about a werewolf.  No one seems concerned that I'm about to start chasing rabbits and howling at the moon.” 

Since I got this question three times in four days, it got me wondering:  just what is so crazy about Anna and “Femme Sole” that it provoked this response?  It's not like Anna does anything so shocking, I explained to my husband.  He promptly ran down the list of things that happens in the story, some of them pretty gritty.  But it's noir, I said.  It's the same as the other stories in the collection because in noir, as I see it, people who can't go to the authorities to solve problems are forced to find their own, often criminal, solutions.  I've written antagonists in amateur sleuth books who were far scarier and more violent, in my opinion. 

“Yeah,” he said.  “It's just that good female rage.  Everyone's afraid of it.”

“It's different when it's a guy taking the course that Anna took?”

He shrugged.  “Yeah.  People think so.”

So, I have to ask:  what's everyone so scared of?

Of Coleridge and Cabot Cove

by Donna

The other day I did a book talk to a fairly erudite group, and the conversation turned to the subject of Cabot Cove Syndrome--the way everyone who came into Jessica Fletcher's life exited, sooner or later, either feet first or in handcuffs,  Some people think that’s an insurmountable problem for mysteries with an amateur sleuth. How many murders can you plausibly believe that one person can encounter?  How many dead bodies can our protagonists find? How can we expect our readers to buy this implausibility book after book?

Easy, I said.  Willing suspension of disbelief.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (of Rime of the Ancient Mariner fame) first used the phrase in 1817, in his Biographia Literaria.  The Age of Reason had made writing about the supernatural out of fashion, and yet Coleridge felt it was still possible to write about " persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith."

To put it in more modern terms, to enjoy a work of fiction you may be required to accept a premise that you wouldn't believe in the real world. 

Willing suspension of disbelief is vital to the enjoyment of any stage, screen or television production.  We know the people we see are actors, the daggers plastic and the blood only fake.   People don't really live out their lives before cameras or rows of rapt spectators.  Greeks were rarely followed around by choruses commenting on their lives.  Shakespeare's audience knew no real people who spoke in blank verse, yet that didn't their enjoyment of his plays. 

Suspending disbelief is obviously needed to enjoy fantasy or science fiction.  You don't have to believe in the existence of magic to enjoy reading the Harry Potter books.  I don't know how many of Charlaine Harris's devoted readers hold it as an article of faith that vampires actually exist, but I'm sure it falls well short of 100%. Star Trek and Star Wars offer two very different views of the future of the galaxy, and yet many fans happily enjoy both without being upset by the discrepancies between the two universes. Alternate history is a popular sub-genre, and part of its charm is knowing how things turned out in the real world and putting that knowledge aside to allow the author to entertain and enlighten with a series of ingenious "what ifs."

Perhaps "what if" is just another word for suspension of disbelief.  Forget what really happened.  What if this happened? It's the basis for all fiction. And perhaps enjoying any work of fiction requires some suspension of disbelief.  Letting go, immersing yourself in another time, another place, or even another view of life completely different from your own--that's one of the challenges and also one of the joys of reading fiction.

I would try to say something eloquent about people who avoid whole provinces of the literary world--fantasy, science fiction, romance, or amateur sleuth mysteries--because they find them unrealistic.  But it's getting late in the day, and I'm already late posting this, so I'll simply mention that recently I've been rereading a great many of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries.  Wolfe isn't precisely an amateur sleuth, but very few real life private detectives spend even a fraction of their careers investigating murders.  And I wouldn't call Wolfe's world unrealistic, but I doubt if anyone, no matter how much of a genius he is, would ever get away with running roughshod over the NYPD Homicide Bureau as he does.  In fact, everything about Nero Wolfe comes perilously close to being over the top, larger than life, and almost too much to believe.  And throughout the thirty-year life of the series, none of Stout's characters ever seem to age a day. 

When asked about the last point, Stout said, "Those stories have ignored time for thirty-nine years. Any reader who can't or won't do the same should skip them."

Of course, anyone who did so would be missing some of the best reading in mystery fiction.  Here's a belated thanks to Jim Huang and his fellow organizers of Bouchercon 2009, who declared Some Buried Caesar the official "one convention, one book" selection, and reminded me that it had been too long since I'd paid a visit to West Thirty-Fifth Street.

And now I'm going to curl up with And Four to Go.  Anyone else ready for a little eager suspension of disbelief? 

Or perhaps, culling another phrase from Coleridge, a little poetic faith.

Writing Nooky

by Kris

A small percentage of writers are lucky. Their parents are published authors, and they sit their writer-offspring down for “the talk.” You know what I mean. The talk about writing sex.

Their author-moms must say, “Don’t show off. We all know those words. Remember, you’re writing a novel, not a manual.”

Oh, sure, some of the dad-authors must take issue with that. They probably tell the boy-writers that creating super-lover protagonists will make them look like ferocious stud-muffins. But hopefully those published author families engage in interventions, telling those author-dads the truth: that creating unattractive protagonists, which all the female characters still throw themselves at, make the writers of those books come across more as dorks than studs.

Okay, so maybe going through the “how to write sex talk” with presumably knowledgeable parents might not be all its cracked up to be.

But most of us don’t have a choice. We don’t have writer-parents. We don’t get “the talk.” We have to pick up the birds and bees of writing love scenes on the playground. Well, in the halls of writers’ conferences, that is. We pick up phrases in the corridors outside of panel rooms, or in the elevator, and we try to make sense of it all.

Perhaps we hear some jerk in the bar pontificating about the “obligatory sex scene,” and that gets us to thinking. Are such scenes obligatory? Why should they be? There’s no obligatory cow-milking or nose-picking scene. But since real sex presumably trumps cow milking, maybe written sex does, too.

I never worried about writing sex before. Especially not in my Tracy Eaton mysteries, featuring the unconventional daughter of eccentric Hollywood stars and her stodgy lawyer husband Drew, since a  cyclone life between the sheets seems to be the basis of their unlikely marriage. I’ve been told by countless readers that I really hit the mark with those scenes. But Tracy and Drew are normal people — well, as normal as characters get in zany, madcap mysteries. Even without the guidance of author-parents, I’m on safe ground there.

But my latest book, High Crimes on the Magical Plane, presented a real challenge to me for which I was unprepared. My nooky scenes were between Samantha Brennan, my fake psychic protagonist, and Angus, the ancient Celtic god of youth and love and laughter. Angus has been around forever, but since he's immortal, he still looks hunky.

But what did I know about writing encounters between gods and mortals? Nothing I heard in the writing conference playgrounds had prepared me for this.

So, I approached it systematically:

Angus would have endless stamina, right?

And he wouldn’t be confined by such pesky concerns as gravity and reality. My characters have always treated reality like it’s an okay place to visit, but they wouldn’t want to spend their whole lives in it, but Angus is the first who has a good reason for that belief. Doubtless, he would be imaginative. And I bet he wouldn’t be subject to pillow hair or morning breath, either.

Still, when you’re learning a new writing skill on the fly, you never quite know if you’ve hit the mark.
But I think I must have nailed it. A friend of mine, who read one of the first copies of High Crimes on the Magical Plan, pronounced the Samantha-Angus scenes as “steamy.”

Steamy? Is that a word I should know?

Nobody on the writer-playground has used it yet.

Rockin' the (Gravy) Boat

by Hank Phillippi Ryan 

 

Where’s the mystery in Thanksgiving? That’s an easy one.

It’s the gravy.  Why is it after so many years of making Thanksgiving dinner for various numbers of family and friends, every year on Thanksgiving morning I wake up with the burning (ouch) question: How do you make gravy?

Is it easy for you? I’ve been a TV reporter for the past 30 years. Like my mystery heroine, I’ve wired myself with hidden cameras, gone undercover into tricky situations, confronted corrupt politicians and chased down criminals.  But the gravy thing? No can do.

First you have to wait til the turkey’s done, right? Then somehow, lift the huge and hot turkey out of the roasting pan without ruining the perfectly brown (if you’re lucky and careful) skin and transfer it to a platter. They never tell you exactly how to do that. I always wind up putting a huge spoon into the stuffing cavity and using a spatula thing to boost the underside.

The thing weighs 25 pounds after all—more, because of the  stuffing I guess, right? So this is what they don’t say in the instructions..

Hurray. The turkey is, once again, safely placed on  the platter.  The fragrance is tantalizing, amazing, irresistible, and people are ready to eat. Happily, there’s the “the turkey has to rest” rule, or else the gravy would lever get made.

Into the oven goes the other container of stuffing, the sweet potato casserole, and the experimental dish I make every year that no one eats. Hoping that because there are three things in the oven trying to cook at 350 degrees at one time doesn’t throw off the temperature somehow. My sister, a real chef, says real chefs just turn the oven to the highest possible temp and cook the food til it’s done. Thanks, Nanc. YOU come over and do this.

Anyway, praying for side dishes, you can no longer ignore the gravy.

Balanced on two burners on the stove , that roasting pan sits, taunting. One recipe says “Skim off the fat.”  You know how long that takes? And how difficult that is? I’ve purchased ever fat-skimming implement known to Sur La Table and  I’m here to tell you, for me, they don’t work. So, for a couple of minutes, I pretend to take off the fat. The turkey juices are beginning to bubble. I must make the oh-so-critical  next decisions.

Thickener.

Flour? Cornstarch?  Whatever arrowroot is? Maybe no thickener?  Just clear gravy? How did I do this last year?

Then the liquid.

Wine? Water? Chicken broth? Did anyone buy chicken broth? (I guess “anyone” would be me.)  Back in the recesses of the left-hand cabinet, I find can of chicken broth. Does a little rust around the edges of the can make any difference?

Should I have saved the giblets? And what are those, anyway? But too late now.

The turkey juices are bubbling. I whisk the brown stuff (what is that anyway? Do  we want to know?) off the sides and bottom of the pan and into the mix. Someone asks if there are appetizers, and if so, when we’re having them. Someone is about to get clobbered with a wooden spoon.

Cornstarch it is. I dump cornstarch into a Pyrex cup of water—would it be better to put the water into the cornstarch? And make a little paste.

I stir it into the pan juices. I think this is right. Whatever. No going back now.

Someone offers me champagne. Apparently, in the other room, the party is starting. I take a sip of the champagne—and dump the rest into the gravy. Stir stir stir.

Add the chicken soup and a can of water. I’ve crossed the gravy Rubicon now. Wishing for more champagne. Stir stir stir.

Stir stir stir.

Stir stir stir.

Oh. My gosh.

Gravy.

I hope I remember this for next year.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Fan-Tastic!

by Toni L.P. Kelner

My "Where are they now?" series includes a lot of fans. In Curse of the Kissing Cousins, freelance entertainment reporter Tilda Harper encounters fans of an obscure seventies sitcom. In the forthcoming Who Killed the Pinup Queen?, it's fans of pinups and TV cowboys. Now fans can be an easy target--the word "fan" is short for fanatic, after all, and many of us have an internal picture of an overaged adolescent still grokking Spock when he should be having a real life. But I want to be fair to these people, so I spent this past weekend trying to get a feel for how these poor people live by attending Boston Super MegaFest, a collectibles show that includes celebrity appearances.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Did you believe that? Because it was hard for me to even type that without bursting out laughing.  The fact is, there are shows and movies and actors and books that I totally adore. In other words, I am a fan!

I love pop culture, and I have a brain full of trivia about where the Fonz attended school (Yale), which Star Trek: the Next Generation star is married to which eighties soap opera queen (Jonathan Frakes is married to Genie Francis, formerly of General Hospital), and what U.N.C.L.E. stands for (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement). Remember the old adage of "Write what you know"?  Well, why do you think I started writing a series about fans? 

So while I was planning to do some research for the Tilda books at Boston Super MegaFest, I was also there to see James Marsters (Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Brent Spiner (Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation), and Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz (surely you don't need an introduction for two of the Monkees!).  These four performers are among my absolute faves, and I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed seeing them in person.

In a Q&A session, James talked about his work on Buffy and Torchwood, and I was delighted to learn that his interpretation of Macbeth is right in line with my thoughts. I only wish I'd had a chance to ask him what he thinks about the Third Murderer. Saturday night he played guitar and sang, and it was just wonderful.

 

I saw Q&A sessions for Peter and Micky, too, and was delighted to be only a few feet from men whose music I've been listening to since I was ten or younger. Peter's concert Saturday night was amazing--the voice isn't what it once was, but he could play guitar and banjo like nobody's business. (By the way, please don't get him started on the assertions that the Monkees didn't play their own instruments.) When Micky joined in for a couple of songs, it was magic. The band, a terrific Michael Nesmith tribute band called Loose Salute, were clearly just as excited to be there as we fans in the audience were.

  

  

Unfortunately, I missed Brent's Q&A, but I did speak to him and get his autograph. That was enough to make make this Trek fan mighty happy.

 

Along the way, I did do some actual research, so there was business mixed with pleasure. I saw how security worked for a show like this, and came up with a lot of questions to investigate about how the shows are organized and paid for. I also watched the fans...  I mean, the other fans, to see what got them excited and how they interacted.

I even got a bonus lesson. You see, both my daughters have watched all three of these performers' shows via our DVD collection. (Yes, we do have full runs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek: the Next Generation, and The Monkees on DVD. I told you I'm a fan!) Both Maggie and Valerie draw, so they drew pictures to present to the stars. Without exception, these men who'd spent years in the public eye accepted those pictures with enthusiasm and appreciation. Peter told Valerie he hoped she'd become an artist like his brother, Micky gave her a plastic sleeve to protect the picture once he'd signed it, and Brent said he was going to frame it. (He also said he was going to set up an alter to it, but Valerie understood he was pulling her leg with that one.) Both girls had pictures for James, and he praised Maggie's thoroughly and stopped at the end of his concert to admire Valerie's. Had Maggie and Valerie not already been enthusiastic, they would have become lifetime fans of those four men after this weekend.

It didn't take much: handshakes, smiles, compliments for the girls' work, a few minutes of conversation, and most of all, thanks. That was enough. I already knew about being a fan--now I know more about treating fans.

Thanks James, Brent, Peter, and Micky. The girls aren't the only ones who will be fans forever!

How to Save Animals When You’re Tapped Out

by Elaine

Do you have an unused kiddie pool or plastic sandbox?

How about that fluffy orange bath rug and those old towels and blankets taking up space o n your shelves?

Your local animal shelter may need these items and more. Donating them won’t cost a dime – and could earn a tax deduction. Our shelters are suffering in these hard times, too.

The Fashion Hound Murders, my new Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper novel, spotlights  an important  issue for animal lovers – puppy mill pets. Yes, the subject is grim, but the novel isn’t. This Josie Marcus mystery is funny and upbeat. If you’ve ever adopted a cat from the animal shelter, you’ll sympathize with Josie’s daughter, Amelia, who wonders why her new pet  lives under a clawfoot bathtub.

In The Fashion Hound Murders, mystery shopper and mall moll Josie has what seems like an easy assignment: She gets to look at puppies. And discovers some of those dogs come from a puppy mill. When a helpful clerk winds up murdered, Josie realizes this job could bite back.

Puppy mill breeders force pedigreed dogs to deliver litters of “fashion hounds” until the mothers die of exhaustion. Chihuahuas, Pomeranians, poodles and other purse-dogs popularized by celebrities like Paris Hilton are favorite puppy mill breeds.

Sadly, some women use these dogs as fashion accessories instead of companions. They want the pedigree papers the way they crave designer logos. Sure, they could get the same pedigreed breeds at the animal shelter. But they’re showing off the document, not the dog. Pedigreed puppy mill dogs are bred in cruel conditions and sold for piles of money.

After authorities raid a puppy mill, the animal shelters deal with the victims – hundreds of ailing, abused animals. Shelters are already coping with bankrupt families forced to abandon their animals when they had to choose between feeding their children or their pets. Shelters are taking in abandoned pets from hamsters to horses to pot-bellied pigs.

Many people want to help, but can’t afford to donate money. But there are other ways to give. Many shelters need volunteers to play with or exercise their dogs, to type, file, sell in the gift shop, or answer phones.

Look at your local animal shelter’s online “wish list” of donations. The Humane Society of Missouri  has a list as long as an anaconda. It’s asking for pet beds, leashes and collars, paper towels and cardboard flats from soda cases (they make terrific temporary litter boxes). It also want kiddie pools and plastic sandboxes.

Why?   

For the rescued pot-bellied pigs. The pools and sandboxes are filled with water to keep the pet pigs cool on hot days.

                        *****
The Fashion Hound Murders is my fifth Josie Marcus mystery shopper mystery. Check out the first chapter and reading group discussion questions, as well as my signing events, at www.elaineviets.com.

Further Thoughts On Helping Out

I don't want to retread ground that's been covered, but Donna's blog resonated with me in an uneasy way. I do get requests to read manuscripts, blurb manuscripts, and tell people how to get published. No writer has time to do all that and write, too. At the same time, I had some help when I started out. Shouldn't I give back?

Obviously, yes, I should do what I can to help out fledglings. And I offer what advice and help I can, though I think it's far more valuable to discover this information yourself. My advice does to tend to emphasize that a lot of industry information is available on the web for free, and that someone new to the business can learn a lot in the process of seeking it out. But I've noticed that the people who are most persistent in asking for help are the people who . . . well, they're the people my help won't help. They're never going to be writers.

It always seems cruel and snobbish to make that judgment; and yet I've been in the business for many years and I've read many a book. Though I'm absolutely willing to concede that I can make a mistake about what's publishable and what's not, and I know that a manuscript in the early stages can bear little resemblance to the form it'll eventually assume, there are some books that I evaluate as too bad to be published by any reputable publisher.

People who are driven, born, to be writers are going to start looking for information on their own. They may ask for help, but they're going to find a way to put their feet on the road toward publication whether I offer advice or not.

I do blurb books . . . if I genuinely like them, and if I have time to read them carefully. I don't read manuscripts by unpublished writers, because the pitfalls represented by legal issues scare me to death. We've all seen the lawsuits in the courts from people who claim a famous artist ripped off their song/book/picture/credit. I'm sure in some cases, the unknown or lesser-known plaintiff has a legitimate beef, but I don't want to go through the courts even if I'm found innocent. So I had to stop doing that, though rarely I'll read a manuscript and offer a criticism for some charity auction.

It's getting harder and harder to offer effective help. The business is in bad shape, there are fewer publishing houses, fewer editors, and arguably less support for new writers. The most practical advice I can offer someone who wants to be a writer today is to have a good backup plan.

That having been said, I hope you make it. I hope you have the same amazing luck I did. And I hope some day you can hold your own book in your hands.

New England Crime Bake

by Dana

I’m heading off to the New England Crime Bake tomorrow, along with Fellow Femmes Toni and Hank.  Crime Bake is like homecoming for New England writers and readers:  every fall, the temperatures and the leaves drop, and the New England chapters of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America put on a fantabulous party to celebrate mysteries and New England mystery writers.

Okay, it’s not exactly like homecoming, because there is no football game.  Or a parade—though maybe there should be.  Memory may dim, but I don’t recall formal dances at Crime Bake, either.  And there’s no  bonfire.  Well, there hasn’t been one yet, but you never know what will happen. 

Now that I look at it, it’s clear I know nothing about the traditional high school or college homecoming, and everything I pretend to know comes from movies. 

I can tell you about Crime Bake, however.  Crime Bake is a reunion for the New England mystery community, writers and readers.

Crime Bake has world class guests of honor.  Sue Grafton is this years GoH, and the theme is “C is for Crime Bake.”  We’ve had Janet Evanovich, Tess Gerritsen, Lee Child, Lisa Scottoline, Harlan Coben, and Robert Parker.  You can be pretty sure there will always be an awesome guest of honor.   

Another difference from homecoming:  Crime Bake features literary agents taking pitch meetings.  And there are classes on preparing your pitch.  And masters classes on writing short stories and reinventing yourself.  And manuscript critiques.

This is before we get to the panels.  Local authors, police and forensic experts sharing their experiences.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re a reader or a writer (published or aspiring), you’re going to get the inside scoop. 

More than that, there is the Al Blanchard Award, given to a short-story writer with a New England topic or setting.  This includes a cash prize AND publication. 

Now the bad news:  if you haven’t already signed up for this year’s Crime Bake, you’re out of luck.  It’s sold out. 

Now the good news:  You can keep checking the Crime Bake website, because soon they’ll announce registration for next year’s Crime Bake and you wouldn’t want to miss that. 

Catching up, giving back, giving up

by Donna

I've been catching up on my email. I get behind on email during the final throes of meeting a book deadline.  Actually, I get behind on a whole lot of things, but the email bothers me most, because email’s supposed to be fast.  Almost immediate.  And feeling on the hook for an immediate response to every single request anyone sends you isn't good for a writer on a deadline.

So since I'm about to dive into revisions, I'll probably procrastinate for another week or two on some of the stuff piled up in my email inbox.

Maybe after I turn in my book, I'll figure out what to say to the teenager who asked me to tell her how she can become a writer.  It would never have occurred to me, at thirteen, to write to an author asking how to follow in her footsteps.  I don't know whether to admire her initiative or throw up my hands in dismay: does she realize what an enormous question that is? Helping her out would be a lovely thing to do, but I have no idea what to tell her, apart from "read and write as much as you can."  And attempting to write a thoughtful, useful, helpful answer would take time.  Like an hour or two.  So I just put out a feeler to one of my writers' lists, asking if anyone knows a book or website I can recommend.  And if no one has one, maybe I'll write an answer when I have the time and turn it into a page on my website, so the next time I get a query like this, all I have to do is say, "look here!"

I don't seem to have any "How can I find an agent" queries in my mailbox right now, which is a pity, because they're easy to handle.  I blogged about the subject for the Femmes Fatales a while back.  When I think of something I didn't already cover, I'll revise the text of my blog and create a page about agent-finding on my website.  For now, I send people to the blog entry.  Is this impersonal? Yes.  But people who ask me that question get an answer that contains my best advice on the subject, and they usually get it pretty quickly. If they had to wait until I had time to write a thoughtful, helpful, personal email . . . I don't know how long they'd have to wait. I'm not sure I want to know how long the thirteen-year-old's email has been waiting.

And I also have a request from someone to read her unpublished manuscript.  I've been procrastinating about finding a gentle way to say no.  A lot of writers I know have blogged about why they don't read unpublished manuscripts or posted something on the subject in their FAQs.  That's probably in my future.

"What?  You don't read unpublished manuscripts?"  Of course I do.  I belong to two critique groups and run an open writing group at my local bookstore.  I do teaching sessions and panels at conferences and libraries.  I'm co-editor of an anthology series.  I've occasionally judged contests. I already read a hell of a lot of unpublished manuscripts. But I only get 24 hours in my days, same as everyone else, and taking on more just isn't doable.

Writer Laura Resnick has a fabulous section for writers on her website.  I particularly like her FAQ, which not only lists why she doesn't read unpublished manuscripts but links to explanations by John Scalzi, Orson Scott Card, Robin McKinley, David Gerrold, Tess Gerritson, and Jennifer Roberson.  Maybe until I get my own page written, I should just send people these links.

And I know, once I put up that helpful, informative page politely declining to read anything anyone wants to send to me and suggesting helpful alternatives, some people will put me into the category of writers have become too concerned with their own careers to help others.  I've seen discussions on this very subject erupt into flame wars on several listservs that include both published and unpublished writers.  "Published writers have become selfish.  They are no longer interested in giving back to the community."

"Giving back."  It has become almost a cliché.  But clichés often become clichés because they express exactly how we all feel in a given situation.  Yes, those of us who have succeeded in getting published often feel that we want to give back something to the community.  To pass along to the next crop of aspiring writers some of the help and wisdom we received when we were aspiring writers.  

Problem is that all too often what we want to--or can--give back isn’t what many aspiring writers want to receive.  Maybe this is a new development; maybe it’s always been that way.  

What is definitely a new development is that published writers are more accessible than they’ve ever been before.  We have emails on our websites; we participate in lists; we post on blogs like this.  Someone who wants to ask us to do something can probably find us. And more and more, aspiring writers find us with questions and requests.

And we do what we can.  If we're smart, we do it after we've done our own writing and taken care of the business of our own lives.

I could go on, but I've got revisions due in a few weeks, some work to do for MWA and Sisters in Crime, and a couple of stories to read for tonight's writing group meeting at the bookstore.