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Roundtable question #2: What is the funniest question you'v ever been asked?

You get weird questions at signings and events, odder questions than even fiction writers could come up with.  The thing is, whether it's about your writing or your life, sometimes readers' questions come out of the wild blue yonder and we're left scratching our heads.  The Femmes discuss the funniest questions they've been asked, in reverse alphabetical order by last name.

Elaine:  "Have you always been funny?"  The  answer is "yes."  But when I was a kid, I was regarded as a smart aleck. Now I get paid for it.  When my grandmother said, "My floor is so clean you can eat off it," I told her, "We have a table."  That got me in trouble for being rude.

Kris:  The funniest, and probably strangest, thing anyone has ever asked me was to discuss the mysteries I've solved in real life. I said, "Do I look that crazy?" This woman seriously believed that those of us who write amateur sleuths actually live lives like the characters we write about. She seemed confused, and maybe disappointed, to learn I'm really not my sleuth. I couldn't help wondering whether she understood those people she sees in TV dramas are actors, not tiny people living in that little box. (Equally odd, my grandmother believed that.) While I love all the sub-genres under the crime umbrella, the amateur sleuth sub-genre has been my favorite since I first discovered Nancy Drew. And like everyone who loves to read and/or write amateur sleuths, I cheerfully agree to accept the fiction that ordinary people could solve crimes. But to actually try to do it would be insane. Reading mysteries provides a wonderful escape, and I couldn't live without it. But we all need to know what's real and what's not.

Toni:  "Do you take requests?"  Seriously.  The clerk at the post office where I'd been mailing manuscripts and partials for some months finally asked why it was I kept needed return postage, and I explained I was writing murder mysteries.  This was his response. 

Charlaine:   The funniest thing anyone's ever asked me?   "I know you're a mystery writer.  Have you had any practical experience?"

Dana:   "Aren't you  S. J. Rozan?"  Well, no.  Once upon a time, S.J. and I shared a hair style and we still have some superficial similarity of mannerism.  A few years back, I was at a conference and heard someone yelling "S.J.! S.J.!" behind me.  I was excited, because I wanted to meet the writer behind that prose.  The person kept calling, so I turned around, fearing that maybe something had happened to S.J.  The person said, all disappointed, "You're not S. J."   What could I say?   Then the woman said "I don't know how I could have made the mistake:  S.J.'s so much *taller* than you are."  I found this amusing, because S.J. is probably a foot shorter than I am.  Maybe more.  This confusion has happened more than once, but one happy thing that came from this was that S.J. and I became friends.  I'm looking forward to the time when she is mistaken for *me*.

Donna:  A reader who loved puffins wrote to ask me if any puffins were killed in Murder with Puffins, because if there were, she didn't want to read it.

I replied that there was one deceased puffin in the book, but that we didn't see him die, and the person responsible got his comeuppance, big time.  She was satisfied with that, and went on to read and enjoy the book.

So, gentle readers:  What's the most funniest thing you've asked a writer, or have heard asked?

Why can't I like more than one thing?

by Toni L.P. Kelner

I'm going to commit an internet faux pas and quote from a bulletin board on the Neopets web site. The board is for aspiring writers, and one fellow posted the following today:

When I see all the HP, LOTR, and Twighlight fans and get depressed I remember that I used to be one of those tasteless fantasy nerds

and I also remember the solution:

IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE AFOREMENTIONED MASSES, PLEASE READ ANYTHING BY KURT VONNEGUT, HE WRITES SCIFI/FANTASY AND WILL BE A NICE TRANSITION FOR YOU

into real books that is

In later posts, he goes on to say that the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling, the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer are all trash, with simplistic storylines and one-dimensional characters.

I'm not going to argue with that.

Not that I agree with him, mind you. Though I haven't read Meyer's work and can't comment on it, I love the Harry Potter books and Lord of the Rings books, and have read and re-read them many times. But that's a matter of taste, or personal preference, so it would be silly to argue about.

Nor am I going to argue that Kurt Vonnegut is anything less than a terrifically powerful writer. I haven't read much of his work, but it was enough to know that he's tremendously talented.

What I'm going to argue with is this guy's idea that once I read Vonnegut, I will stop liking Rowling and Tolkien. Why would I do that? Why can't I like more than one thing at a time? What about Shakespeare? Would he ruin me for Vonnegut, or vice versa? Can't I like Jane Austen and Mark Twain?

Of course I can! I like them all. I own and read them all. My brain seems to be able to handle the cognitive dissonance just fine.

I believe this guy thinks that it's not a matter of not being able to enjoy different authors, but more that once I've read a so-called good book, then I'll no longer care to waste my time on so-called trashy books. Obviously that begs the question of what's a good book and what's a trashy book. Frankly, I think it would be a meaningless argument. That whole matter of personal preference comes into it again.

But for the sake of argument, what if I thought that Vonnegut's work was better than Tolkien's. So what? Can't I enjoy more than one level of quality? If I go to a four-star restaurant in Munich, does that mean I can no longer enjoy a burger at McDonald's? If I watch Hamlet, do I have to stop watching Underdog cartoons? If I read James Joyce, do I have to throw out my X-Men comics?

Of course not.

I like lots of books, and lots of kinds of books. My husband and I have thousands of books, and while Vonnegut, Tolkien, Rowling, and Meyer are all in our library, they represent only a tiny fraction of the authors whose work I love. Sure, I think some of our books are better than others, in countless ways. I have a degree in English and many years experience writing, so of course I have opinions about quality. But I don't stay up nights worrying about which one is the best.

Instead, I try to appreciate a piece of writing for what it IS, rather than dismiss it for what it IS NOT and never intended to be. In other words, Rowling wasn't trying to write Vonnegut, and Meyer wasn't trying to write Tolkien.

It comes down to what my friend Doug once said. He had an advanced degree in English himself, and one day my husband saw him reading a fairly low-brow book and asked how he could stand it after studying loftier tomes. Doug shrugged and said, "When I feel like reading Henry James, I read Henry James."

We've got some Henry James, too. I kind of like it. I don't think Vonnegut will mind.

Sometimes, vampires truly do suck...and not in the good way

[Note:  The lovely and talented Maria Lima is the Femmes' guest blogger this month.  An Agatha-nominated writer, Maria specializes in the things not of this world and particularly the undead.  Her supernatural mystery, Matters of the Blood (Juno, 2007) takes place deep in the heart of Texas and features Keira Kelly, a heroine with more-than-usually troublesome neighbor and family problems about to realize her own awesome powers.  Keira will be back in Blood Bargain in November.  Don't forget to say hey to Maria when you're at Malice Domestic in a couple of weeks; in the meantime, check out her blog.  Maria, take it away! ]

Sometimes, vampires truly do suck...and not in the good way.

I mean, take writing them. You go along, line by line, chapter by chapter and then, all of a sudden, the sucker (pun intended) won't *do* what you wanted him to do. That goes for all types of characters as well.

Now, I do realize that characters really don't have a life of their own and that's it mainly my subconscious trying to make me realize that I'm about to go down the wrong writing road (because if I really thought that Keira Kelly or Adam Walker or Tucker or any of my characters were whispering in my ear, that's when they'd come to take me to the asylum to be a roomie for Renfield, and I'm so not going there).

What I'm really talking about is the little voice inside that nudges you when the book you're working on is branching off into boring land, or maybe just repetition road. I know. I've just been there, done that. About seven eighths of the way to a finished draft of my upcoming book, Blood Bargain, I decided to make a huge concerted effort to finishing the the draft in a week. Not so bad, a couple of thousand words a night, every night for six nights. I could do this. Part of my angst involves my day job, a fairly demanding position which was about to become even more demanding after losing two of my peers due to life moves (basically, cutting the project management staff in half). I knew that in order to make sure Blood Bargain had even a remote chance of getting done and getting turned in, I'd have to knuckle down and write more than usual.

I went along, first night, about 1500 words, second night, 3000, third night, 1700. As I wrote, I polished, trimmed, sorted and resorted actions and sections to make more sense in the narrative flow. I cut out part of the prologue, move most of the rest of it to within the body of the book, making it more dynamic. (Thank goodness for Scrivener, which lets you do this with relative ease. I've fought a long hard battle with Microsoft Word, and it lost, but that's a tale for another day). I expanded one scene, trimmed another, made sure that my timeline made sense. I was doing great. I felt a wonderful sense of accomplishment, basking in the euphoria that happens when you're in the writing zone and you know it.

The euphoria lasted three nights.

On night four, I got home loaded for bear and ready to attack. I just knew that I could do at least 2000 words tonight, maybe even more. I sat down, opened up Scrivener and reviewed the last couple of chapters I'd written. In less than fifteen minutes, I realized that  there was a totally extraneous chapter where nothing happened. I don't know why it took so long to realize. This was a chapter that had been written eons ago, long before I'd actually gotten to this point in the overall narrative. It was one of those scenes that I'd conjured up so very clearly. In fact, I could visualize just about everything, including the lighting, the sounds, the smells. Oh yeah, baby, this was golden!

Only thing is, I also knew that I'd had trouble with this chapter for a long time, but kept thinking it was the lead in from the previous chapter that was the problem. A couple of my beta readers had even remarked on the abruptness of introducing this scene. I could fix that, no problem. Just make sure to write a scene before it that gets my characters here.

Except..not so much. Turns out, it was a problem because simply, the scene existed. It wasn't the writing. The words were good. The dialogue was good. It's just that absolutely nothing happened. Without giving away the plot (a crucial part at this point), my protagonist, Keira, finds something out about Adam, who is her lover and the chief of the local vampire tribe. In the original version, Keira's at her house, with her brother, telling him why she's not at Adam's, when they get a call and rush over to Adam's ranch to find out that [insert spoiler here that I won't give away]. It was about 2500 words of Keira saying & thinking: "I'm at my house, being all angsty and oh, is that the phone?"

What's wrong with this picture? There was absolutely no reason for the entire scene at Keira's house. None. Nada. Rien.

After going through the five stages of writing grief: Denial (No, I can't cut it. It's a good chapter); Anger (Damn it! I just wasted all that time!); Bargaining (Well, maybe if I just tweak it a little...); Depression (Sigh. That means I'm 2500 words further away from "the end"); Acceptance (Cut, paste into a separate file for posterity, rework the discovery of [insert spoiler here] where Keira is at Adam's house), I realized that the lessons I've learned from hanging out with writers over the years are very, very true and that ignoring them will just lead to bad writing.

(1) Writing is not for sissies.
(2) Show, not tell.
(3) Sometimes, you have to kill the puppies.*
(4) When in doubt, cut it out.

Oh yeah, and vampires really do suck...but mostly in very good ways.

* Killing the puppies = deleting a well-written scene because it doesn't advance the plot.

Fight, fight, fight!

by Dana

Both Donna and Kris have been talking about writing lately, and so who am I to buck a trend?  When I added a section to my website on writing action scenes, I needed examples. Not surprisingly, the scenes that immediately sprang to mind were from movies. For writers thinking about doing a fight scene, they’re not a bad place to start. While I only used examples from books on my website, my present top five movie fight scenes and their justifications, from least to most favorite, are:

5. Bridget Jones’s Diary, in which Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver engage in what is basically a slap fight. This scene works because they decided to go realistic with it, showing the inexpert and downright silly attempts of two middle-class, university graduates to appear macho. My only complaint is that it actually went on too long. The kicking is the best part.

4. Desperado, the gun fight in the bar between El Mariachi and Bucho’s men.  There’s a grim humor to the end of the scene, when both men repeatedly pick up and aim weapons that are empty, that I really appreciate. The lesson here is that it’s not as easy as it looks to keep track of things in the heat of battle. A bonus: the sheer amount of brass on the floor. Fighting is messy. 

3. Raiders of the Lost Ark (wherein Indy ups and shoots the swordsman), tied with “The Train Job” episode of Firefly (when Mal lets the crew know he doesn’t need to finish the fight on his own, and would they please shoot the bad guy beating him up?). Sometimes it just makes more sense to take the unheroic short-cut. 

2. The Killer or nearly any movie where John Woo is directing Chow Yun Fat tied with Dragons Forever .  Sometimes a stylized action scene not only moves the story along, it conveys the whole feeling of the film (the same thing can be done in print). The fight scenes in these movies are things of beauty, exuberance, and elegance. 

1. The Bourne Identity , the fight in the Paris apartment. Not only is there a realistic and recognizable fighting style, but there is a fine mix of brevity, brutality, improvisation, and pain. There are consequences. And while the combatants pause too long between blows (professionals wouldn’t stand there admiring their work), some concession has to be made for cinematography. 

It’s fun to dissect these, but they don’t necessarily teach you what to think about when writing a fight scene. For that, you go to the writing pros. It’s infinitely useful to observe how someone like Elizabeth Peters writes a fight scene with an amateur sleuth compares with someone like Lee Child, who has a trained hard-guy for his protagonist. Neither shies away from violence, but they do it in marvelously different ways. It’s well worth making a study of your favorite authors. 

So—what are your favorite fight scenes, from movies or books? 

Just write it

by Donna

I’m currently working on a Meg Langslow book on a tighter-than-usual deadline.  When I agreed to take on the project, I resigned myself to the idea that I was setting myself up for a pretty miserable, stressful few months.  I apologized in advance to some of my friends for the antisocial grouch I’d have to become.  And to some of the people I work with in volunteer organizations for the fact that I might not be as productive as usual.  With a sigh, I accepted that I wouldn’t be doing as much gardening this spring, which would probably mean diminished beauty in my yard for the rest of the season—diminished, not totally absent, because I go in as much as possible for perennials that repay your up front investment of planting time with beauty for years.

So I set my daily quotas, I warned the world that I was about to become Grumpy Recluse Writer, and I sat down at the keyboard to begin the long, yet all-too-short, and bound-to-be painful process of writing this book. 

To my astonishment, it hasn’t been as painful as I expected.  Oh, there are all the usual pains and problems, and I’m sure I’ll have to do at least the usual amount of rewriting and polishing and general cleanup.  But overall, the process hasn’t been worse than usual.  Maybe a little better. And that’s mainly because I’m getting a lot better at just doing it. 

Too bad Nike has already taken and probably copyrighted that tag line.  If they hadn’t, some writer’s organization should, because "just do it" is probably the best and most down-to-earth advice anyone can give a writer.

So lately, if I wake up and can’t get back to sleep, instead of doing the usual things I do to cope with insomnia, I stumble downstairs and start writing.  Never mind that I’m profoundly not in the mood to do anything, much less writing.  Never mind that I usually have no idea what I’m going to write next. Never mind that I’m not even quite conscious yet.  I’ve been telling people for years that the secret to writing was application—applying the seat of the pants to the chair.  (And until just now, I never knew who originally said it, but I just did some research: the otherwise-unknown-to-me Mary Heaton Vorse.)  Anyway, I followed her and my own advice—not, I hasten to add, for the first time, but it never fails to astonish me how well this particular bit of advice works.  I sat, I started typing, words emerged on the computer screen, and wonder of wonders, the book moved forward.  I just wrote.

And the rest of my life hasn’t come to a standstill.  I’m probably in the doghouse with my volunteer organizations, but not too badly.  My friends haven’t seen as much of me lately, but they haven’t forgotten what I look like.  I’ve kept the book going in spite of having other projects on my plate, like helping my mother start what we hope will turn from a trial stay to permanent residence in a retirement community near me, and doing a lot of househunting for my brother and sister-in-law’s projected move to the area.  I’ve even gotten a reasonable amount of gardening done.  The house isn’t a total mess. I know I don't have time to weep and wail over how busy I am. I just do things. 

Of course, something had to give.  What I haven’t done much of is reading, because I’ve been walking around with the book in my head even more than usual.  Not all a writer’s work is done at the keyboard, and those hours at the keyboard flow better, with better results, if my brain is chewing away on the project between keyboard sessions.  If I test drive dialogue on my way to the grocery store, think over what I’ve done while pottering in the garden, and fret for a few moments over some knotty problem before going to sleep, I come back to the keyboard that much better prepared to write.

When I first started writing seriously, I thought what I needed was quality time.  Big, sweeping stretches of it. If I had anything else looming ahead of me that day, it cast its shadow over the writing time ahead of me, and I felt less able to focus on the writing.  I still feel that way sometimes, but I’ve learned to recognize that as a trap. One of the ways the lazy part of your mind sabotages your writing.  Oh, I can't write, I've only got an hour.  Well, an hour's better than nothing. In fact, sometimes I get less done on days when I have the luxury of nothing else to do, and can be more productive when there’s something else looming that I have to do or want to do when I finish my writing. 

I’m not sure which I find more reassuring: to find that after twelve books the writing process is getting perhaps a little bit easier, or to realize that after twelve books, there are still things I can learn about it.

I’d go on but . . . I have this book to write.

A Writing Instructor's Musings

by Kris

I'll be repeating my popular online mystery writing course, Committing the Perfect Crime: Writing Your First Mystery, in April for the UCLA Extension School's Writers' Program. Online courses are tough to create. All good instructors plan their courses, naturally, but in classroom situations, they don't have to write every word of every lecture. Nor proofread them until they're perfect. But that's how online courses work. Proofing online course material is like proofing a novel — mistakes seem to creep in while you sleep.

On the upside, once an online course is finalized, the theory goes, the teacher doesn't have to revisit that work again, and can simply offer up those lectures to new students without having to put in any extra work. For the lecture part of the course, anyway; assignment feedback and questions from students work pretty much like classroom situations, except that they're typed.

But I like to review my courses before I offer them again, as I recently did for my April class. I look at the lectures to see if I can better clarify areas that I know have plagued some students in the past. I add new assignments, take others out, and come up with new ways this round of students can attack certain challenges.

As I reviewed my course, it struck me anew how much this class requires students to cover, and by extension, how much new mystery writers need to learn. And these are just the basics — they'll have to deepen their knowledge of all of this material as they go on. It also struck me what an act of faith and hope it is whenever anyone sets out to learn a new discipline.

While everyone who is published today made it over that hump — most take the abilities they developed for granted now, and have largely forgotten the growing pains they must have suffered along the way. I've never had kids, but I've heard women forget the pain of childbirth the same way.

While I've always been told I'm a compassionate instructor, nothing has brought back the difficulty of the journey, and the emotional ups-and-downs, like the art classes I've taken occasionally in recent years. They're closer in time, and in memory, than learning to write. And I'm still very much a newbie artist. Granted, they're not precisely the same. The process of learning art contains a physical component. It's  hard to get pencils and fingers and brushes move in a way that will allow what appears on the paper or canvas to approximate that vague image in the artist's head. But while a writing student's fingers merely have to hit the right keys on the keyboard, the student's inability to paint as effective a word picture as she longs to, can feel quite similar. And just as frustrating when it won't happen.

Those times when I took art classes while teaching writing classes caused me to observe the struggle from both sides. I remember nights of dragging myself to art class, and confessing to my teacher that I felt hopelessly inept, forcing him to be as much a therapist as an instructor — even as I gave the same pep talks to writing students pained by their slow progress. I also remember the smug smile my art teacher would flash at times, because he could see the progress I was making when I could not, I suspect — while I enjoyed that same satisfaction with my writing students. Every experienced teacher observes when students are making big leaps, or starting to grow at faster rates, before the students make those discoveries themselves.

So…I keep experiencing both sides of that leap of faith and hope. Although this course is billed as "Writing Your First Mystery," it actually attracts a range of students, some newbies, some intermediates, and even some who've been published, not to mention thriller writers, and even some literary writers, at every stage as well. Most of the published members of the class have come to the mystery from other genres, and just need to shore up some of their mystery conventions and skills. I welcome them, of course. But it's the newbies and the intermediates for whom I bring my strongest wishes. So that they can make the progress I know they're capable of, even if they don't know it. To keep their faith and hope alive.

Going to the Dogs

The Femmes Fatales would like to welcome our guest blogger, Twist Phelan!  Twist writes the critically-acclaimed Pinnacle Peak series, legal-themed mysteries featuring different extreme sports. Although she’s learned to team rope, ridden her bicycle across the country, and paddled a canoe from one Hawaiian island to another, the tiniest Chihuahua can make her run in terror.

I have to admit, I’m not much of a dog person. In truth, I’m afraid of them. (Probably has something to do with getting pinned for a half-hour by a neighbor’s guard dog when I was three years old.) I’m okay with some individual dogs—those to whom I’ve been properly introduced and spent some time with. But if a strange dog approaches me, no matter how friendly, I look for the nearest tree to hide behind (or, if it’s a big dog, climb).

I’d been recuperating in the desert from a sports injury. Couldn’t do real exercise (limited to 90 minutes in the gym, plus hiking), so fell into the habit of taking a walk in the early morning before it got too hot. Near where I parked my car (I know, driving to go hiking is weird, but it couldn’t be helped) was a doggie daycare center. Actually, I think it was more of a doggie spa—it had dog massages, a dog whisperer, dog yoga, etc.

One week a banner in front of the spa read “Take a shelter dog for a hike.” When I enquired, they told me they brought dogs from the animal shelter up for the day so they could walk with the daycare dogs. They also said anyone could take a shelter dog on a hike alone. 

I felt sorry for the shelter dogs. The whole thing smacked of bussing in the orphans so they could see how the rich kids live, then taking them back to the orphanage at night. So I signed out a dog. When asked what kind I preferred, I responded “lively.” A medium-sized whitish dog with shaggy hair was produced. I was handed his leash, told his name was Sparky, and we were out the door.

Lively didn’t begin to cover it. Every rabbit hole had to be sniffed out, every bush investigated, every trail run down. I had a wonderful time. After an hour, I returned Sparky (after unsuccessfully trying to comb the bits of brush out of his hair with my fingers), bought him a treat from the dog snack bar, and promised to be back the next morning.

The next few hikes were great. Sparky jumped and barked and wagged his tail whenever he saw me. What an ego boost! Or maybe he was just happy at the thought of the treat I gave him at the end of each walk. Sparky stayed at the daycare center fulltime because they had the space and I was walking him regularly. The staff showed me where his leash was and let me go in the back and fetch him without being accompanied by a staff person.

On about the sixth day I picked him up, he looked especially great. He had been bathed and clipped (he looked rather like a poodle but not quite). He was also whiter than he had ever been before. He was a little subdued when we started, and I was worried he wasn’t feeling well. But when a cottontail broke cover, he was off running like his old self. He chased the tennis ball into the chaparral and rolled in the sand. (We lost the bow that was in his hair. I was glad—I think bows look dumb on boy dogs. Actually, all dogs.) He capped off the morning with a dive into a cattle water trough to cool off.

When I returned to doggie daycare, I was met by a staff member, a county sheriff’s deputy, and an angry woman who began screaming I had stolen her dog. Yep, the pooch I had taken on a walk wasn’t Sparky. I’m embarrassed to admit it wasn’t even a male dog. (I told you I wasn’t a dog person!) To make matters worse, apparently Dog #2 was a somewhat valuable dog who was supposed to have been exhibited that morning at a local dog show.

As it turns out, Sparky had been adopted (hurray!), and Dog #2 had been put into his kennel after being bathed and show-clipped. The woman kicked up such a fuss, the deputy actually put me into the back of the squad car. (The woman was convinced I was working for her rivals to sabotage her chances at the dog show. Under her theory, my “assignment” was to kidnap her dog and either hide it until the show was over or just mess up its coat so it wouldn’t look nice for the show.

Even though it was scary being in the squad car, I couldn’t help but laugh when she laid out my “plans” for her darling. (To my relief, the deputy cracked a grin halfway through her diatribe.) Then the daycare employee who knew me and Sparky arrived. She explained I was a volunteer dog walker who was clueless about dogs. (That made the owner of Dog #2 mad all over again—how dare I confuse her purebred with a mutt?)

Things were finally sorted out, with the woman agreeing not to press charges if I covered her entry fees for the aborted dog show and paid for another bath, trim, and pedicure for her dog (who had a very long and fancy name, the only part of which I remember is “Princess of ...”). The lady didn’t even let me give the dog a treat. (The way she reacted, you’d have thought I was peddling canine crack.) 

Anyway, I’m sticking to cats and horses now. No more pooches! Although I think part of me is going to miss Sparky tomorrow morning.

Blogging. I'm not doing it right.

by Toni L.P. Kelner

I've come to a conclusion about blogging: it's a lot harder than it looks.

Seriously, the web is filled with blogs from people who post every week, every day, more than once a day. They talk about the music they're listening to and the books they're reading, give interesting links, describe their day, and even add clever insights. Whereas I've spent the past two days trying to come up with something worth blogging about.

So here it is, eleven in the evening the day AFTER I was supposed to blog. And I'm going to do what I try to teach my daughters never to do, and have tried to avoid whenever possible. I'm going to copy other folks.

MUSIC: I listened to one of my husband's mix tapes in the car, with everything from Duran Duran to the Beatles, but none of that good stuff was stuck in my head. No, what I can't escape is the song "Christmas Shoes." Do you know it? Sappy, sappy, sappy piece about a guy encountering a kid buying shoes for his mother for Christmas because she's dying and "meets Jesus tonight." Totally idiotic and it always makes me tear up because I'm totally idiotic about sad songs. And it reminds me of a very sad incident. Two years ago, my daughters' school had a Christmas pageant, and I remember the eighth graders singing that song, and listening a bunch of kids from Massachusetts trying to sing in a Southern accent was one of the saddest things I'd ever endured.

BOOKS: A high point for the day, actually. Thanks to the recommendations of Femme Charlaine, I've discovered Diana Galbaldon. I read one of her Lord John mysteries first, and it was good, but now that I've started reading the Outlander series, I am hooked. I'm near the beginning of the third, Voyager, and having a wonderful time. Can't wait to see what comes next. I also read an interesting biography this week. Mr. Confidential by Samuel Bernstein is about magazine editor Robert Harrison and the effect his scandal rag Confidential had on Hollywood. Great stuff, and great research for my "Where are they now?" series.

LINKS: Just discovered this site this week, and have spent several happy hours laughing here: http://icanhascheezburger.com/ It's difficult to explain the appeal of LOLCats. I expect you either like 'em or you don't. Take a look and see which side of the fence you belong on.

MY DAY: And a long one it has been... But I just can't convince myself that anybody cares about my gripes and daily tedium. Does anybody care that I had to spend ten minutes scooping wet litter out of the guinea pig cage because their bottle leaked while we were gone? I didn't think so. I'll just mention the good stuff.

Via e-mail, I found out that my agent and editor have finally ironed out the important issues of a new contract. So I can now say confidently that my new book really is the first in the "Where are they now?" series. Berkley Prime Crime will be publishing the paperback reprint of Without Mercy, and will continue the series for at least two more books. (Apparently the editor does not like my proposed titles, since she refers to Untitled Books #2 and #3, but I can accept that.) There is much rejoicing in this--contract negotiations had gone so long I was starting to worry that it wouldn't happen.

The yard men came and cleaned our yard. It's so satisfying to watch other people work hard.

On the way out the door to go to a library event I had scheduled, found a box on the doorstep. It was copies of the large print edition of Many Bloody Returns, the vampire anthology I co-edited with Femme Charlaine. It is pretty.

I spoke at a Sisters in Crime panel at the library in Burlington, MA, and it went very well. My daughters were well-behaved in the back of the room, there were brownies and cookies, the discussion with Gary Braver and Nancy Bruett was interesting and entertaining, and I sold a few books. Can't beat that.

When I got home and checked my e-mail, I found a very favorable review of Without Mercy that's been posted on a blog.

Best of all, my husband Steve will be returning home in a few minutes. He's been in Australia for TWO LONG WEEKS, and I'm really looking forward to seeing him again. Really, really, really looking forward to it.

CLEVER INSIGHTS: Make sure your guinea pig's water bottle is sealed tight. Sorry. That's all I've got. Maybe I'll do better next time...

Roundtable question #1: What was your worst signing ever?

As much as we might not want to remember, we’ve all had rotten signings. Communication or chemistry fails, and we’re left muttering to ourselves, “well, there are two hours I’ll never get back.” Sometimes we learn from them, sometimes we find unexpected allies, but still…we wouldn’t want to repeat the experience. I asked the Femmes, “What was your worst signing experience?” and the answers are below.  Ladies, in alphabetical order by last name, if you please.

Donna: My worst and best signing experiences seem to go together. Sometimes they're the same event. For example, the first time I visited a mystery bookstore, I didn't see my book on the shelves. I was about to slink out in despair when the staffer behind the desk spotted me and asked if he could help me. I 'fessed up that I was looking for my book, which they didn't have. I gave him the title, and he led me to the space on the shelves at the very front of the store where it would have been if they hadn't already sold out. Worst turned to best in a heartbeat. 

Dana: I think the most miserable was a brutally hot evening in a venue with a wheezing air-conditioner that produced more noise than cool air. The Red Sox, against all odds, had found a slot in the playoffs and I would have cancelled, but was told “some people don’t watch baseball.” In New England, when the Sox are hanging in there? Ha! I had to shout to make myself heard over the a.c. and the two people in the audience only opened their mouths to praise the author who’d been in the month before. Three more people showed up. The discussion widened to include other authors we all liked, and this was much better, right up to the point where I had to tell them that one of the other authors they’d enjoyed (and wanted to come back) had just passed away.

Charlaine: My worst signing experience? I have several to choose from. Probably the most startling came on my last tour. The crowd at the store (and I forget which store) was pretty good, and I was doing my usual spiel and answering the usual questions, when a man standing in the back row asked, “Why is Sookie such a slut?” I think my mouth hung open for a few seconds. I was not the only one who had decided he’d put it that way for the shock value. I straightened my spine and told him that these days, a woman of 26 who’d only had three lovers certainly didn’t qualify as a slut, and I’d created Sookie to be a moral person. To my relief, the rest of the readers present waxed indignant on my behalf. He backed down pretty quickly after that. But now I’m much warier, and I won’t be lulled into false security again.

Toni:  That would be the time that Femme Alumna Teri Holbrook suggested I sign at a particular chain store in Georgia. She'd had TWO terrific events there.  When I showed up, it turned out that they hadn't received their order of my books.  So there was NOTHING for me to sign.  Why hadn't they called me?  The CRC said it was because by the time she found out, I was already in Georgia and she couldn't reach me. With gritted teeth, I pointed out that I have an answering machine and checked my messages regularly.  Then I sat there to greet people who came, expecting to buy books.  Nobody came.

A signing with no books, and nobody cared.  Which was worse?  Oh, I know what made it perfect!  It was my birthday.

Kris:  My worst signing experience was one of my early ones, when my first book came out. I presented a "how to get published" workshop in a large chain bookstore, which drew a respectable 60+ people. Unfortunately, among them was a Neo-Nazi who wanted to get his hand-written scrawl published. Forget about the Ayran efficiency of the movies, though — this was a disgusting little dweeb, teetering on the periphery of psychosis. While clutching the pages of his messy tome, he punctuated his continuous mumbling by shouting out nasty beliefs. He also kept thrusting his hand into his pants for a little self-jollying. I don't know why I feared he'd pull out a gun, since the purpose of the hand-in-the-pants was pretty clear from the groaning, but I was afraid he was going to shoot me. Inefficient, maybe, but he was a scary guy.

I'd like to think I'd handle it differently today, but then I took my cue from the CRM, a young woman who sat there, relaxed and giving no evidence of what scared the crap out of everyone else. What did I know? Maybe they always had Nazi whack-jobs at their events.

But people kept leaving. I later learned many complained at the register. But nobody did anything because that was the CRM's job. One of my former students was among the attendees. When I concluded my talk, the Nazi wandered off, leaving just the CRM and my poor student, who had soldiered on to the end, with a sickly, rigid smile plastered across her pale face. The strangest part was that the CRM, who, while insisting that she listened to everything, claimed not to have heard anything we heard from Weird Guy. What an enviable ability to zone out! 

To my amazement, I sold six books. Not great normally, but with only one person left in the audience, my expectations were low. Besides my loyal student, a few of the folks who had left, listened from other parts of the store, and they returned for signed copies. Given the mass defection, it stunned me to sell any. My goal for that appearance had long since gone from selling books to just leaving the store alive. 

Apparently, the Nazi went on to engage in more vigorous self-jollying in the aisles and more people complained. Finally, some employee threatened to call the police if he didn't leave. My student and I waited, hoping he'd be gone from the parking lot by the time we left. Fortunately, he was — the only good thing to happen that night. At the time, I just hoped that this wasn't a normal signing, because I knew I would never survive my first tour. 

Let us know: what was the worst signing you’ve ever experienced, as an author or a reader?

Oy, What A Book

Dana's post about the artist's need to reach and connect with an audience had such good thoughts in it. I particularly liked the chef's take, that his art is for the purpose of making his customers happy for a couple of hours.

For a long time, I've held a favorite prejudice, that so-called literary writers who try to write mysteries can only fail. I've believed this because their stories seem to be only for themselves with no thought about connecting to the reader. Well, this week, I had to flush that prejudice swirling down the toilet. Goodbye, old friend. I commend you to the sea.

One of the new Edgar nominees brought this about. THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN'S UNION by Michael Chabon manages to both defy and embrace several genres at once in a beautiful way. It's a classic detective story with a classic protagonist, one who himself defies and embraces the qualities of cops and PIs from the best of those genres. This from a guy who is a Pulitzer Prize winner. Who would have thought?

If the Edgar committee had not chosen this book, who knows when I might have read it. Its description and blurbs didn't appeal to me. It's set in 2007 but in an alternate world, one in which Israel lost its battle for statehood in 1948. The U.S. allows the displaced Jews land in and around Sitka, Alaska with a lease of 60 years. Now, the lease is almost up. When the land is about to revert, the Sitka Yiddish police department is ordered to close all its unsolved homicide cases before handing over control to the new U.S. police force.

Sound funny? Deep? Not to me, but I was oh so wrong. It is both of those things and a fantastic mystery all wrapped up in gorgeous imagery. They don't tell you these things on the cover because it's better for it all to sneak up on you and grab you before you know what happened. This is what makes me love a book and a new-to-me author. The humor, intelligence and the imaginative nature of Yiddish Policeman's Union are not things one normally expects in an Edgar nominee. Hats off to the committee for recognizing it.

Don't take my word for it. Don't be turned off by the book cover or the fact that the writer hasn't, until now, been known as a mystery author. This is a one-of-a-kind book. I'm so in love with it, I will risk reading a non-mystery, literary book by Chabon. He's that fabulous.