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On turning in a manuscript

by Donna Andrews

I just hit the send button on an email transmitting the draft of The Nightingale Before Christmas to my editor.

Allow me to pause and utter a small sigh of relief.  There are few things that make a writer happier than turning in a manuscript. It doesn't necessarily mean I'm finished.  My editor could ask for changes. He could ask for a lot of changes. And since my editor has been known to turn around manuscripts with astonishing speed at times, I could be hard at work again in a few days.  And then there's the copy edit stage, and the galleys, and . . .

Forget all that for now.  Let's live for the moment.  I just turned in a draft.

For the moment, I have the illusion of unlimited time to do all those things I've been wanting to do while working on my draft. Some of them will, of course, have lost a great deal of their charm now that I can actually do them without feeling guilty.  For example, the prospect of cleaning and organizing my entire basement probably won't be nearly as seductive as it was last week. Giving my deck and my yard a thorough spring cleaning is beginnig to sound tiring rather than invigorating. And when I look at the stack of books I've been saving to read when I finish the book . . . I'm not quite in the mood for so many more words.  I'll give it a day or two.

And there are also a few tasks I have been just as happy to avoid by immersing myself in the book.  Now I will either have to do them or find some other excuse for continuing to procrastinate on them.  Damn.

In a few hours or days, I will start to feel anxious, worrying about whether my editor likes the draft.  And before too very long I have to come up with an idea for my next book and start planning it, because that deadline will be hurtling toward me all too soon.  And then--

Never mind all that. Live in the moment.  The book's off my plate for now.

I need to have a celebration.  Something just a little bit more festive than popping the top of a can of Diet Coke or ambling upstairs for a nap.  Any suggestions, writer and reader friends?

 

 

 

Crime show challenge (and book giveaway)!

By Dana, Kris, and Mary

We're all obsessed by crime fiction, and as mystery readers and writers, we may be, er, somewhat opinionated when it comes to crime shows on TV.  There are loads of great ones on right now, but which one, in your opinion is The Best?  What do you think of the female roles in these shows?  Which has the best investigative pair or team?  And why do you think it's best--is it the acting or the writing?  Both?

(Just to get things started/fan the flames, here's one of my contenders.  Yes, that's Mr. Cumberbatch.  Yes, I'm a little excited. :) )

Leave a comment with your thoughts, and you'll be entered into our drawing for not one, but TWO books by the Femmes Fatales.  One is an ARC of Kris's Magical Alienation and one is a copy of my Pack of Strays (which will be out April 15)! 

Ready, set--opine!

The Show at the Show

By Elaine Viets

Glitter. Feathers. Funny signs. Sleek tailoring and artistic embroidery.

The best show at a cat show isn’t in the rings. It’s at benches, where the cats in cages wait to be judged. When I researched "Catnapped!," my new Dead-End Job mystery, I was amazed by the work that went into these cages.

In "Catnapped!" private eye Helen Hawthorne works undercover at a cattery for a show cat breeder named Dee to solve a murder and recover a kidnapped show cat. Her colleague, Jan Kurtz, tells Helen, "While you, lucky girl, clean the litter boxes, I’ll pick up the cat curtains at the dry cleaner."

"Cat curtains?" Helen looked at the tall windows where the four cats—silvery-soft Mystery, fiery Red, snow-white Chessie, and Chocolate, the delicious brown beauty, sunned themselves on their shelves. "You put curtains on these windows?"

"No, these are cage curtains," Jan said. "At the shows, the cats are displayed in cages on long folding tables—benches—while they wait their turns in the judging ring. Each cage is like a miniature stage to show off the cats. Most cages are decorated with signs, toys, and curtains. Our cage curtains are custom-made and have to be dry-cleaned."

"Must be some cages," Helen said.

"They’re little jewel boxes," Jan said. "Some breeders rent wire cages, but Dee has pop-up cages with mesh sides. Chessie has a black show cage with blue curtains. With a blue-eyed white, that combination is devastating. It really showcases her eyes. Red has a deep blue cage with copper curtains that make her eyes glow."

"Do the judges like the cages?" Helen asked.

"They never see them," Jan said. "But they’re a good way to get your cattery’s name in front of the spectators, especially if you’re selling kittens or have a stud."

At the cat show, Helen got a chance to see the cages. Here’s another scene from "Catnapped!"

         The show cages ranged from modest wire ones with homemade curtains to elaborate custom designs. Helen thought one looked like a bordello—okay, a cathouse. Draped with red velvet and topped with swags of spangled red feathers, it displayed two white Angoras lounging on plush, red-tasseled pillows.

Some cages had warnings: "Please Do Not Touch. Hugs and Squeezes Spread Diseases!" Others sported clever signs: "Kittens for Sale: Able to Do Light Mouse Work."

I learned that cat cage curtains can be homemade by loving hands, or elaborate professional jobs. The ones on this page were custom-made by Sandi at Show Cat Style

http://www.showcatstyle.com/index.html

Sandi says she "combined my love of cats with my passion for design and sewing." Her creations become stages for show cats, with beds, cushions, skirts, curtains and more. You’ll see her work at all the major pedigreed cat organizations.

Helen's cattery might not have to pick up Sandi's curtains at the dry cleaner.  "My cost for a full set starts at $300," she said. " Others use cheaper fabrics, cottons, lace, etc. and I know they charge much less.  I only use washable velvets, satins, and microfibers that never lose their colors and require almost no pressing."

Look at the embroidery for this Norwegian Forest Cat design.

And how about this sophisticat?

  Sandi knows how to put on the dog. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.)

  "Catnapped!" debuts May 6. To read the first chapter, order your advance copy, or see the book trailer, go to www.elaineviets.com

Each week until "Catnapped!" is published, I'm giving away a different Dead-End Job mystery. Enter to win your copy at www.elaineviets.com Click on Contests.

Oops, I Did It (my taxes) Again

HANK PHILIPPI RYAN:  Doing my taxes. There has got to be a better way!

I wish I had taken a photo of my huge box of paperwork before I shipped it to the accountant. It was—well, poor Howard. He's about to get the box from hell. 

It wasn't supposed to be like this. (And yes, I'm aware it's April Fools' Day. I guess that's what my English teacher meant by irony.) 

All year, I filled one of those red expanding accordion files with little bits of paper,  receipts, plane tickets, hotel bills, cab slips, scrawled and illegible carbon paper receipts from bookstore,  Amazon bills,  gas receipts, mileage listings, invoices from PR companies,  ten million crinkled up cash register tapes from the post office, and receipts form bookmark places and website designers and ah….whose idea was it to do all this? Anyway, it was very very organized, I THOUGHT, and I was very proud of myself for being so forward-thinking,  when April rolled around I would be all set to do my taxes.

Who was I kidding?

This weekend, I thought—okay, DOING IT. (I know, about time) and I got out my big bulging file and a bunch of manila envelopes and a legal pad and a calculator started to organize. I have a calendar, and it’s pristine, with absolutely everything I ever did on it. So what  happened and when, is very clear.

Still. Like I said, I should have taken a photo of me in sweatpants and a t-shirt from the Boston Book Festival that just has a  ?  on the front, SURROUNDED by little bits of paper. It was—can I just say, horrible? I whined for three solid hours (which I’m sure was not much fun for darling Jonathan, who was trying to watch basketball). I’M NOT DOING THIS was a theme, as well as WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS with the recurring refrain of  HIS IS SO STUPID.

I don’t mind paying taxes (too much)—I enjoy the highway system and the post office (obviously) (although know that is privatized), I appreciate our troops and the FDA and the CDC and the Justice department and all that.  (All good, without saying it all works perfectly, but there’s no way I can control it all and that’s another blog.)  I know I am lucky and I am happy, to help the less fortunate and keep the wheels of government on the road. Such as they are.

But the biggest thing I said was THERE’S GOT TO BE A BETTER WAY to do this. Better than saving little scraps of paper.  Better than using a legal pad and a calculator.

So Femmes, is there? Thing is, I know I am not going to go to my computer every day and enter stuff. I know myself well enough not to pretend that a daily accounting thing is gonna work.

I never pay cash, and so there are credit card and check receipts for EVERYTHING.

Grr. But I’m finished now.

And today I sent it all in a big box to the accountant, bless you, Howard, I hope you can make sense of it.

Is there any magic way to make this easier? How do you do it?

IN WHICH TONI AND I WEAR BASEBALL CAPS

Toni (L.P. Kelner, also known as Leigh Perry) and I have a day to celebrate on April Fool’s. Our sixth anthology will be on the shelves . . . and we’re still friends. In fact, we’re better friends than ever.

 

Many years ago, at least seven or eight, I was approached by the late, great, Martin Greenberg, who had the strange idea that I could edit an anthology. Since I had a pretty accurate estimate of my skills as an editor, I agreed to do it if Toni could be my co-editor.  And Toni and I both were also obliged to contribute a story apiece to the anthology.

 

Toni has always had the skill, or the educated knack, of putting her finger on what ails a story. I might be able to tell you the story is not completely healthy, but Toni can tell you what medicine the writer needs to take to make the story better. I’ve been learning from the master. Since Toni is also a multiple award winning short story writer, I may have had that talent of hers in the back of my mind, too.

 

We’ve had fun picking the themes, and even more fun assembling our dream team of writers, a list which must resonate with both ourselves and our publisher. We try to balance both mystery writers and urban fantasy writers, female writers and male writers, well-known writers and about-to-be-well-known writers.  We have never published a story we’ve regretted, and we’ve been proud of the quality of our selections.

 

“Games Creatures Play” will be on the shelves April 1, and the combination of sports and supernaturals was a lot of fun for all the writers concerned. What sports? Well, we’ve got baseball, softball, ice skating, roller skating, hide and seek, cops and robbers, drag racing, boxing . . . and more.  What supernatural creatures? Ha! Ghosts, the Devil, a magician, space aliens . . . just to name a few.

 

The phenomenal part of this experience is that Toni and I still like each other, and I respect her skills more than ever.  I like to think that we’ve turned some mystery readers on to urban fantasy writers, and vice versa.  Some of the stories have spawned series, and some have led to a movie option. (We’re proud grandparents.)

 

We can hardly wait to see what happens after “Games Creatures Play.” Want to put some money on which story becomes the stand-out? Hey, betting’s a game.

 

Charlaine Harris

Nekkid werewolves at the ancient Olympic Games

by Dana

 
I was thrilled when got the invite to contribute to the anthology Games People Play, edited by Fellow Femmes Fatales Charlaine and Toni.  Then...a sense of trepidation when I realized that I had to come up with a sport or a game.  I was coming home from vacation, so my first thought was “museum touring,” but it's not a competitive event (at least, not outside certain circles).  “Drinking games” was my next thought, but I don't know (or remember) any drinking games because, like Ford Prefect in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I usually played to lose.  I used to compete in “balk-offs” when I worked in the field, which meant racing another archaeologist to see who could clean a unit's wall with a trowel the fastest and most evenly.  Again, not widely accepted as competitive sport.

Marie-Lan Nguyen, 2011

But then...there's always punching and kicking.  When I was working on the Emma Fielding books, I took a few years of krav maga.  My first thought was to have Gerry Steuben the PI werewolf investigate illegal cage fighting...? 

Then, a brain wave:  Pankration!  A sport that was a combination of boxing and wrestling, developed in the 7th century BCE, and the antecedent of modern mixed martial arts.  Back in the day, it was so vicious it was said Hercules himself invented it, and the only rules were no eye-gouging and no biting.  The opponents fought naked on a muddy field; the victors were celebrated in song.  The cheaters were a source of disgust.  And the losers...were often maimed or dead.  On the pottery below, an eye-gouger is about to be rebuked (hit) by a judge.

© Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons

Best of all, the name means “all powers,” which created a nice conflict for my Fangborn character, Nikodemus of Halicarnassus, who would not be able to use his werewolvish abilities in front of an audience at Olympia.  I decided to set it in the 4th century BCE, and pretty soon, I had a crotchety oracle telling Niko he had to prevent a murder that would pollute the holy rites of the games and bring disaster on everyone.  I threw in a beautiful courtesan, and a strange weakness overcoming my Fangborn hero.  And...there was a time limit, as the games were only four days long. 

 

The best part was that, having traveled to the site of Olympia a few years ago, I had a sense of the place.  I had no idea about the rules of the ancient games or how the religious rituals were performed, so I turned to the excellent A Visitor's Guide to the Ancient Olympics by Neil Faulkner. 

I had a terrific time writing this story because I learned so much about the ancient Games.  I also learned a bit more about the history of the Fangborn.  And speaking of which...

I have a new Fangborn novel coming out in about two weeks!  Zoe Miller is back, reeling from her

discoveries at the end of Seven Kinds of Hell, and desperate to save the Fangborn from the Order of Nicomedia, an organization dedicated to finding and destroying the Fangborn.  Leave a comment—on sports, on werewolves, about how you discovered the Femmes Fatales, about which story you're looking forward to in Games, almost anything (be nice!)—by 5:00pm EST Sunday for a chance to win a copy of PACK OF STRAYS!

Monterey in pictures

by Donna Andrews

One of the joys of going to Left Coast Crime this year was the location, a block from the waterfront in Monterey, California. I played hookey a couple of times to walk up and down the shore taking pictures. Here are some of my favorites from the trip. You can click on any of them if you want to take a closer look. And let me know which one I should choose as my grand prize winner!

Game on!

by Toni L.P. Kelner / Leigh Perry

I live in in sports heaven. Here in metro Boston, we have the Bruins for hockey, the Celtics for basketball, the Patriots for football, the Red Sox for baseball, and of course, the Boston Marathon. Then there's all the college teams and tournaments to enjoy. Heaven!

Except that it's all wasted on me. I'm not a sports fan.

I don't understand the inside fly rule, I've never understood what a down is, and fighting over a puck just seems rude to me.

This is nothing new me. When I lived in Charlotte, NC, home of the World 600, I knew nothing about stock car racing. Nor did I care about college basketball, even though college basketball has quasi-religious status in North Carolina. Despite the occasional social awkwardness, my ignorance was never a problem until Femme Charlaine and I decided to use a sports theme for Games Creatures Play, the latest of our urban fantasy anthologies. Then it was a problem.

Fortunately, there is one Boston sport I can get behind: candlepin bowling.

What? You've never heard of candlepin bowling? But it predates the standardization of ten-pin bowling! In fact it goes back to 1880, which means it also beats basketball and stock car racing. Okay, I never heard of it before moving to Massachusetts, and it's mostly played in parts of New England and Canada. It's played mostly like ten-pin bowling, but with smaller finger-hole-free balls, and the pins are thinner. The picture below shows a ten-pin ball and pin on the left, with a candlepin pin and ball on the right. (That short thing in the middle is a duckpin bowling pin. Don't ask.)

Candlepin is popular for kids' birthday parties around here, which is how I learned about it. Not only are the balls a lot easier for kids to handle, but for kids, they can put up bumpers along the sides of the lane so that the ball can't go into the gutter. I've played many games of candlepin myself. (Though not well, even with the bumpers).

Still, just because I knew it marginally better than most other sports, I wasn't completely convinced that I was going to use it as a background for my story. I was afraid that it was too obscure, and that my surface knowledge of the sport would be called out by hordes of rabid candlepin fans. But as much as I'm immune to the lure of sports, I cannot resist a good pun. And one day, when I mentioned to my husband Steve that I was considering using candlepin in my story, he said, "And you could call it 'Bell, Book, and Candlepin.'"

As they say in the alley: STRIKE!

Of course, with a title like that, I had to throw in a witch. The werewolf was just a spare. Get it? A spare?  In bowling? Okay, I don't ever think I'll be a sports fan, but I'm definitely a sports pun fan.

Anyway, if you're interested in sports, or just in stories about supernatural creatures playing sports, other stories in Games Creatures Play feature more familiar games like baseball, softball, boxing, roller derby, and fencing. (Also pankration, which is even more obscure than candlepin bowling.)

The rest of the team roster includes: Charlaine Harris, William Kent Krueger, Jan Burke, Joe R. Lansdale, Caitlin Kittredge, Brendan DuBois, Dana Cameron, Scott Sigler, Ellen Kushner, Brandon Sanderson, Mercedes Lackey, Seanan McGuire, Adam-Troy Castro, and Laura Lippman. I think I speak for the whole team when I say...
Game on!

NOTE: For people who've read some of my other short stories, the witch in "Bell, Book, and Candlepin" is a member of the Kith family I introduced in my story "For a Good Time, Call..." in Mark Van Name's anthology The Wild Side, and the werewolf first appeared in "Keeping Watch Over His Flock" in Wolfsbane and Mistletoe.

Left Coast Crime Report

By Catriona

There are as many Left Coast stories as there were people there; this is one.

My adopted state of California put on a great show for a start. The Pacific was sparkling, the sun was shining, the seals were  . . . scenting the air with that special fragrance of theirs. I don't think anyone who made the trek to Monterey for Left Coast Crime 2014 was sorry they came.

It was especially lovely to see friends from the snow zones unfurling in the mild air and dusting off their t-shirts and sandals. (A bit sadder on Sunday morning to see them checking weather reports from home and beginning to think about where they'd left their shovels.)

 Here are Sparkle Abbey (Iowa) and Nancy Parra (Illinois)at the conference hotel on Thursday.

Also on Thursday was the opening reception where the toastmaster, Brad Parks, announced the award nominees. And the lovely thing about Left Coast is that they put the honour just to be nominated in physical form with a plaque.

The panels I got to were wonderful, especially Deadly New Voices where these debut authors talked about their paths to publcation: MP Cooley, Sherry Novinger Harris, Lori Rader Day, Carlene O'Neill and Holly West.

And how adorable is the smile on Martha Cooley's face as she embarks on her first ever signing?

The best surprise of the weekend came from Terry Jacobsen of Library Journal. I admitted in an interview with LJ recently that I had never read any Nancy Drew. On Friday morning, Terry called me over and said she had a present for me:

The absoutely best *thing* about the weekend wasn't actually a surprise, although I did have to pinch myself. My parents were there!

And I got the chance to say a very public thank you to them for all they've done, because of the biggest and best surprise of all. (I lied.)

Look - a shiny thing! Holding an award. DANDY GILVER AND A BOTHERSOME NUMBER OF CORPSES won the Bruce Alexander Memorial Award for best historical mystery, presented by my friend David Corbett.

And soon after the end of the awards dinner, it was all over. But instead of trailing off alone to an airport as usual after conventions, this time I strolled along a coast path and then went for a surrey ride with my parents and hsuband. No fringe on top but ehh - you can't have everything.

 

THE STRAW

I might as well call this blog “The Straw that Broke the Camel’s Back” or “I Throw up my Hands in Exasperation” because these are both things I experienced this past week. You know that situation? When you decide the deck is stacked against you, but you can stand it, and then one more thing happens to push you over the edge?

I had a little surgery, which was no big deal to anybody but me. And it turned out fine. But I was pretty nervous, and I walked out with a big bandage on my arm, and after a week, when I went back, the site was still sore and unpleasant. Finally, that day, the surgeon was able to close it, which was an immense relief, and then . . . I turned out be allergic to the bandage. The next day, my arm looked like something the contestants might create in the reality show “Face Off.”

This seemed to me to be adding insult to injury. I’d had a string of illnesses, and I was sick of it. Either I developed this allergy (presumably to Latex) because of the previous bandaging, or the new bandage had more of whatever I’m allergic to in it, because everywhere it touched my skin, I had swelling and redness and those little itchy weepy bumps. It was a spectacular display.

Though hardly life-threatening or disfiguring or even very serious, right? But while I was worried about other things to begin with, it was just enough to push me over the edge into an immense case of self-pity.

Does it sometimes seem that Life, with a capital L, is taunting you? Or have you just experienced a series of random events, a piling of misfortune upon misfortune? I’m reminded (in a more serious vein) of families who return from an interment to find that the house has been burgled. In a way, you can see that coming (lawbreakers can read the obituaries, too), just the same way that you can only discover you’re allergic to Latex when you put some next to your skin.

In another way, the tragi-comedic viewpoint of life has to kick in when the bad things start stacking up. Minor or major, it requires a great attitude adjustment to find the ridiculousness of it all, and to laugh at it.

So let’s pretend we’re at a bar together, and let’s belly up and have a drink, and laugh at life. There’s more to enjoy than not, and laughter is the best defense against misfortune pile-ups.

Of course, it can take good long while to get to the point where you can laugh.

Charlaine Harris