My Weblog

I have to share my office from time to time with other members of my family. My husband sets up his laptop there, and my daughter uses my computer in the evening. I really don't mind, but my dream is to have an office where no one can set foot but me.

This space, which was called a mother-in-law apartment on the property description, is a room across the carport from the main house. We've remodeled a little bit so the closet that faced outside and served as a toolshed now has doors opening inside the office. I use it to store extra books. The day we inaugurated it, it became full. I also have a big four drawer filing cabinet for hanging files and an ugly office metal cabinet where I store odds and ends. There's a bookcase for my true crime books (I didn't want them in the house when the kids were young, because some of them contain graphic pictures) and a smaller bookcase for my husband's National Geographics (we just didn't have anywhere to put them).

On top of my desk there are stuffed vampires, china vampires, and rubber ducks, plus two dried arrangements: one from the table where I sat the night I won the Anthony, and one from a librarian friend when I made the NYT Bestseller list for the first time. The walls are even more cluttered. There's a caricature of me that is really quite old, a vampire cartoon a friend had framed for me, several framed black and white shots of tombstones in New Orleans' famous cemeteries, various awards I've won, and a great picture of our three children. There's an overstuffed loveseat that no one likes but me, and a big cushion for my dachsund.

This is where I spend hours and hours of my time, so it's an important room in my world. I keep a dictionary on hand, and a few copies of my books for quick reference. On the corkboard by my desk, I keep a list of appearances I'm making in the current year, my daughter's class schedule, a list of parents on her softball team, and hotel and airline reservation print-outs.

Hearing all about my office may be low  on your list of pleasurable reading, but this was one of those days when a suitable topic just didn't drift to mind. The holidays had a lot to do with that. The importance of family? Done. The after-Christmas blues? Done. The tedium of putting away all the decorations? Done.

There's another item I want to mention. This past week James Brown died. Some of you very young readers may not remember James Brown, but I had the pleasure and the privilege of seeing James Brown perform live when I was in my teens. This guy may have had a chaotic personal life and a terrible childhood; but despite, or because of, these things, he was an incredible performer. He could move in ways Michael Jackson never dreamed of, he could whip an audience into a frenzy, and he worked harder than any entertainer I've ever seen. In his own way, he was a great man, and it makes my heart glad to see the tribute being paid to him now.

Charlaine Harris

 

Power Outages and Diarrhea

When I awoke this morning there was no snow on the ground. Now, a few hours later, there’s about nine inches. Weather man says it’s going to last until tomorrow evening and we’ll have a very white Christmas. "Up to a foot of snow," he exclaims. This keeps up that long, we’re talking feet not foot. And I’ve been out buying shorts and sandals. Life is precious. But it’s weird.

I’ve been to the doctor for typhoid and hepatitis A shots because I’m going to the birds. I don’t remember paying much attention to them until we moved to the county and didn’t have any. Just coyotes and jack rabbits and buzzards. You had to break the earth with a pick ax to plant anything. Someone gave us canna lily bulbs and we planted them along the front picture windows. For some reason they thrived in the rocky, anemic-looking soil. And the minute they started blooming we had humming birds. We’d seen them up in mountain meadows filled with wild flowers but never thought to see them on our barren dirt acre. I bought a canary and put his cage in front of a window and he’d get so excited when our little hummers arrived every year. The canna lilies and the canary and the vast views are long gone. The humming birds switched to sugar water without effort. We are no longer at the edge of Boulder, it has swallowed us up and surrounds us. The jack rabbits and coyotes are gone. Our children are grown and trees and houses now fill the view, and many kinds of bird song fill the air--but the humming birds arrive on time every year.

We are not real birders who keep track of every new species they spy. We just enjoy them. When the bird flu was new and we were warned to empty our birdbath because mosquitos breed in undisturbed water, we refused. Whoever made that proposal never watched a robin take a bath.

In the near future we are going to Costa Rica, where we’re told the bird life is splendiferous. We’ll slog through streams and jungle and even go up into the canape to see the winged wonders hiding there. We are also told we can count on power outages and diarrhea. The writer in me whispers, "Bet you could at least get a short story out of that. Maybe even a blog."

Have a peaceful Holiday, all.

Merry Marlys

Christmas Magic

All this blogging about getting lost in books and entangled in the holiday season reminded me of some genuine moments of Christmas magic, all brought about by written word.

One happened the year when I decided it would be easier on Santa Claus if my big sister Robin and I wrote our letter on one piece of paper, back and front, so he wouldn't have so much paperwork to deal with. I wrote my letter, handed off the paper to Robin to add her list, and we mailed it off. A few days later, I got a letter back. From Santa Claus. An actual paper letter from Santa. And it was clear from his letter that he'd read my letter, and he thanked me for thinking of ways to help him. He was real! It was magic.

A few years later, when my belief in the big guy evolved from literal to metaphorical, I remembered that letter, and realized that it meant that somebody at the post office had read my letter and taken the time to write back to give a little girl he didn't even know a wonderful Christmas gift. It was magic.

Even more years after that, my father got a Christmas card and after he read it, he handed it to me. The front was a Victorian London scene, and the message inside was something generic, but the signature? John Watson, MD. I grinned, figuring it was from one of the other members of Daddy's chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars, but then I saw the envelope. It had a London postmark. And for a moment I thought, "My God! It really is from him!" It was a few seconds, because I quickly realized somebody must have just arranged to have cards sent from London, but for those few seconds, Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes were real, still living in London. It was magic.

Last year, my daughter Maggie and I were talking about favorite Christmas memories. I expected her to mention toys, or lights, or snow, or the big trip the whole family took to St. John a few years before. Instead what she remembered was her own letter from Santa. You see, one year she asked for a game that was impossible to find in the stores. So Santa left her a different game with a note explaining that he couldn't find her the one she'd asked for, but since he knew she'd gotten a gift card from one of her aunts, she'd be able to buy her own after Christmas. I'm quite sure Santa just jotted the note down quickly, because he was tired and busy, but to her it was a treasure. It was magic.

And now it's Christmas time again. And in addition to the toys, and of course many books under the tree, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Santa leaves Maggie and her sister Valerie another note, just to let them know he's thinking about them.

For them reading the notes, and for me watching them, it will be magic.

It's beginning to look a lot like chaos

by Donna

Less than a week from Christmas, and I'm not ready.  Less than four days from the arrival of my twin three-year-old nephews, and I'm not ready for that, either.

Last year, when the family came to my place for Christmas, the munchkins (as I call my nephews) had just turned two.  I'd seen them in action and knew precisely how to child-proof my house.  Unfortunately, removing all the furniture and padding the walls didn't prove feasible, so I settled for packing up all the breakables--damn, but I have a lot of breakables!--and moving them into the basement, from which some of them still haven't emerged.   Which is fine--that many fewer breakables to pack up this year.

The munchkins were still learning stairs last year.  They'd gotten rather good at the climbing up part, but they still had a lot to learn about climbing down.  And when they got frustrated with the complexities of descent, they sometimes launched themselves into space from the top of the stairs--had someone been showing these kids Superman movies?  So after a day or so and a couple of valiant catches by my brother and me, we put up a child gate to keep them away from the stairs--the half-flight up to the bedrooms, and the half-flight down into my office.  Not only did it keep the munchkins from killing themselves on the steps, but it let us move all the Dangerous Things into my office.  By the end of the week, we'd identified so many Dangerous Things that the rest of the house was looking almost minimalist, and I was sleeping on the futon sofa in my office, surrounded by a forest of Dangerous Things.

I resolved to arrange things much better this year. 

So I started early.  My plan was to do enough decluttering and organizing in the basement that I could move all the Dangerous Things down there, and have a peaceful, well-organized office to sleep in.  I started working on this plan right after Thanksgiving.

Maybe I should have started right after Valentine's Day.

About two days ago, I reached that inevitable low point of any major cleaning, decluttering, and reorganizing project--at least the ones I undertake.  The point where you look around and realize that the whole place looks ten times worse than when you started, and maybe you should have left well enough alone.  Was sleeping in the Forest of Dangerous Things really so bad?

Hitting that low point usually derails me for a day or two.  I go off and brood over the parts of my life that are disorganized, and revile my own packrat nature.  Yes, I'm a packrat, and imperfectly organized.  This would probably come as a great surprise to those of my friends who seem to see me as some kind of guru of organization and decluttering.  No, that's Meg, my protagonist.  Me, I'm still working on the whole graceful living thing.  That's why I'm such a good source of advice and helpful hints and inspirational thoughts on the subject--because I'm working so hard on it myself.

But I didn't have time to mope now, so I pushed past the low point, and things are looking better.  There's still a lot of decluttering that I want to do when I have time, but it can wait till after the holidays.  When Mom gets here Tuesday, she'll probably have to watch me bustle about, shoving a few Dangerous Things in the basement.  But we'll trim the tree on Wednesday, and by Thursday, when my brother, sister-in-law, and nephews arrive, the place won't be perfect, but it will be good enough.

Good enough.  That's probably the most important thing I've learned about surviving the holiday season.  Forget perfect--my mantra is "good enough."  Maybe there are people out there who can manage to get the house spotless for the holidays, decorate to the hilt, write long personal notes on each and every one of the several thousand holiday cards they send, throw a series of elegant parties, cook Christmas dinner from scratch, and--you get the idea. I'm not one of those perfectly organized people.  I'm getting tired just thinking about it. 

So I'll finish my decluttering, because I want the nephews to be able to romp at will without hurting themselves or anything else.  And I'll trim the tree with the unbreakable ornaments I've collected--the dainty glass stuff's in hibernation till the boys are older.  And assemble the giant wooden train track layouts I'm giving the nephews for Christmas.  And after that, I'm going to declare that the place is good enough, and settle in to enjoy the season. 

Sense and Susceptibility

By Dana

We all know it:  Books are powerful things.  As I kid, I learned this when reading Salem’s Lot--alone in the house, late at night, during a storm--and I realized that hiding under the blankets was probably not my best defense against vampires.  I learned this in college, when I realized that one of my life rules had to be “Never read Chekhov before breakfast,” because before I figured that out, I’d spent a gorgeous spring week wandering around campus in a dismal Russian funk. 

Books can alter our reality, as Julie mentioned in her recent post about getting lost in a good book.  Reading her essay, a rush of memories came to me, times when I was so lost in that book that reality and the one in the book start to blur.  Call it overwork or susceptibility, call it not paying attention to the outside world, but I bet you’ll relate to moments like these:

• The one time I did not immediately flee the dryer sheet-scented purgatory that is the Laundromat as soon as I’d finished the wash.  I was on a bench in Paris—actually, I was on a bench in Salem, Massachusetts reading The Age of Innocence--and could NOT understand why I couldn’t find Newland Archer, to tell him to get his butt up those stairs. 
• The moment under the beach umbrella when I felt my ankle get hot, and could have sworn that I saw smoke coming up from the place where the sun hit.  Yes, I burn to candy-apple red, and have to wear SPF 350, but for a moment, it all seemed so much more dire.  Blame it on reading Robin McKinley's Sunshine, a wonderful vampire book. 
• Waiting in the border control and customs line in the airport, when I found myself becoming increasingly anxious.  Were my documents okay?  Had I filled out the forms properly?  It was a trip for pleasure, this time, right?  This was courtesy of reading Blowing My Cover:  My Life as a CIA Spy (Lindsay Moran) and The Master of Disguise:  My Secret Life in the CIA (Antonio J. Mendez).  By the time I was asked what I do for a living, I was surprised at how calmly—and convincingly—I could answer “writer.”
• And most eerily, there was walking into a state-of-the-art gym in San Diego.  Instead of seeing the expected elliptical trainers and weight machines, I saw racks and pulleys.  If I hadn’t been reading a flock of medieval mysteries on the plane, I might have recognized them as Pilates machines instead of instruments of torture.  If there was ever a moment I wanted to flee a gym, that was one of them. 

It’s those little moments of shaking up reality that make books such awesome things, and a single act of reading can change us forever.   As we near the holidays, I’m particularly grateful for the community books have built here—with the help of my dear Femmes.  So Happy Holidays, the very best in 2007—and let me know what books have rocked your world!

Happy Cozydays

by Mary

The holidays will soon be upon us. Are you ready for the fun to start? I am. I caught the bug early this year because Dear Hubby is like a kid who can't wait for Santa. Last week, he came home with a present for me that he wanted me to open right away. I resisted but not much and only for a minute or two. How could I, when I could see it was something warm and snuggly? The temperatures had nosedived into the 'teens at night and they weren't getting much higher in the daytime.

I took out and donned the ultra-plush almost shearling body blanket with little snaps that hold it on you for necessary trips from the computer to the kitchen for snacks. I've hardly taken it off since. It warms you up in no time, maybe thirty seconds or less. I ask you, is there a better gift for a reader in winter? I think not. It has put me well into the spirit of the season. While plans are made for get-togethers with family and friends, and gifts and food and beverages are bought by day, at night I have begun to plot more solitary celebrations. From the warm cushy depths of my blanket, I'm formulating a plan, a cozy agenda for winter sanity, as colder weather approaches. Here's what I have so far:

Item #1: Get out a cup and saucer from my Grandmother's china, and make some Maisie Dobbs tea. If you attended one of Jacqueline Winspear's book signings this year, you know what I'm talking about. For her signing in Nashville, Ms. Winspear gave away little boxes of Twining's English Breakfast tea with Maisie's likeness on the outside from her Messenger Of Truth book cover. Loverly.

Item #2: Nonni's Biscotti to go with the tea. I like the chocolate ones with chocolate on top. In a perfect world, like England for example, I'd have those McVitie's chocolate digestive biscuits instead, but I recommend the Nonni's as an excellent substitute.

Item #3: Turn on fireplace. Yes, here in the Saums household, we don't light the fire, we flip it on. And pretend.

Item #4: Herd cats. This is much easier than on the commercial. We have two cats who like to hang out with us, so they usually saunter in to see what's going on. Ahh, there's something comforting about a sleeping cat curled up before a roaring fake fire.

Item #5a: Listen to the BBC. Since we got broadband internet, I've enjoyed listening to the BBC's reading programs. Radio 7 has a Crime and Thrillers section, so I listen to it most of the time. This week, they have these lined up: The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers, Paul Temple and the Spencer Affair which is a 1950s thriller, and Drowned Man's Inn by Georges Simenon. Radio 3's Wednesday Choral Evensong program is also wonderful. It's broadcast from a different UK location each week.

Item #5b if not in the mood for #5a: Gather up books which have been saved for special holiday reading. Here's my stack: Still Life by Louise Penney, a re-read which was one of my favorite books of the year. Then on to installments of favorites series: The Old Wine Shades by Martha Grimes, Blind To The Bones by Stephen Booth, and Disco For The Departed by Colin Cotterill. These should take me through Christmas. To bring in the New Year with a bang: Calibre by Ken Bruen, and Bust, a collaboration by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr.

Once all the above have been taken care of, out comes the body blanket. Time to get cuddled up for a long winter's read. Have I forgotten anything? If you have any special books you're looking forward to reading this month or have certain reading rituals of your own, I hope you'll share them.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

The holidays will soon be upon us. Are you ready for the fun to start? I am. I caught the bug early this year because Dear Hubby is like a kid who can't wait for Santa. Last week, he came home with a present for me that he wanted me to open right away. I resisted but not much and only for a minute or two. How could I, when I could see it was something warm and snuggly? The temperatures had nosedived into the 'teens at night and they weren't getting much higher in the daytime.

I took out and donned the ultra-plush almost shearling body blanket with little snaps that hold it on you for necessary trips from the computer to the kitchen for snacks. I've hardly taken it off since. It warms you up in no time, maybe thirty seconds or less. I ask you, is there a better gift for a reader in winter? I think not. It has put me well into the spirit of the season. While plans are made for get-togethers with family and friends, and gifts and food and beverages are bought by day, at night I have begun to plot more solitary celebrations. From the warm cushy depths of my blanket, I'm formulating a plan, a cozy agenda for winter sanity, as colder weather approaches. Here's what I have so far:

Item #1: Get out a cup and saucer from my Grandmother's china, and make some Maisie Dobbs tea. If you attended one of Jacqueline Winspear's book signings this year, you know what I'm talking about. For her signing in Nashville, Ms. Winspear gave away little boxes of Twining's English Breakfast tea with Maisie's likeness on the outside from her Messenger Of Truth book cover. Loverly.

Item #2: Nonni's Biscotti to go with the tea. I like the chocolate ones with chocolate on top. In a perfect world, like England for example, I'd have those McVitie's chocolate digestive biscuits instead, but I recommend the Nonni's as an excellent substitute.

Item #3: Turn on fireplace. Yes, here in the Saums household, we don't light the fire, we flip it on. And pretend.

Item #4: Herd cats. This is much easier than on the commercial. We have two cats who like to hang out with us, so they usually saunter in to see what's going on. Ahh, there's something comforting about a sleeping cat curled up before a roaring fake fire.

Item #5a: Listen to the BBC. Since we got broadband internet, I've enjoyed listening to the BBC's reading programs. Radio 7 has a Crime and Thrillers section, so I listen to it most of the time. This week, they have these lined up: The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers, Paul Temple and the Spencer Affair which is a 1950s thriller, and Drowned Man's Inn by Georges Simenon. Radio 3's Wednesday Choral Evensong program is also wonderful. It's broadcast from a different UK location each week.

Item #5b if not in the mood for #5a: Gather up books which have been saved for special holiday reading. Here's my stack: Still Life by Louise Penney, a re-read which was one of my favorite books of the year. Then on to installments of favorites series: The Old Wine Shades by Martha Grimes, Blind To The Bones by Stephen Booth, and Disco For The Departed by Colin Cotterill. These should take me through Christmas. To bring in the New Year with a bang: Calibre by Ken Bruen, and Bust, a collaboration by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr.

Once all the above have been taken care of, out comes the body blanket. Time to get cuddled up for a long winter's read. Have I forgotten anything? If you have any special books you're looking forward to reading this month or have certain reading rituals of your own, I hope you'll share them.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Silver Anniversary

Last month, Luke and Laura Spencer celebrated their silver wedding anniversary by renewing their vows, despite the facts that Luke is currently married to somebody else and that Laura was expected to slip into catatonia within days of the ceremony.

If you're of a certain age, you may remember when Luke and Laura from ABC's soap opera General Hospital got married. The pair, played by Anthony Geary and Genie Francis, had become soap opera's first super couple, starting with their romance's unlikely beginning (Luke raping Laura) to their even more unlikely adventures (going on the run from gangsters and saving the world from being frozen on a jungle island), to the wedding itself, which was a huge media event. So when the anniversary rolled around, General Hospital trotted the two of them out again, even though the couple had divorced some five years back and the actress playing Laura had left the show. It's part of a trend of using what they call legacy characters.

And this may sound odd, but I think this new media event has a lot to say about the nature of writing.

1) People fall in love with characters. Sure, we all love a pulse-pounding plot filled with twists and turns, but if the characters don't engage us, the best plot in the world isn't going to go over nearly as well. This is just as true in mysteries as it is in soap operas. I read Murder Must Advertise the first time for the plot, but I've reread it more than once to watch Lord Peter Wimsey in action.

2) People will forgive an awful lot of plot problems as long as they keep loving those characters. Face it, a lot of the Sherlock Holmes plots don't stand up all that well, but Holmes himself is as fresh as ever.
Even though Agatha Christie used up so many of the available cozy mystery plots, and Mickey Spillane did the same for PIs, we keep reading mysteries to see how the new sleuths on the block handle the work.

3) Once people get invested in a character, they want a payoff. People don't mind following a character, but the character has to be going somewhere. In Luke and Laura's case, it was a wedding that people were clamoring for. (No less a fan than Elizabeth Taylor called the writing staff and demanded they get on with it, and she herself attended the wedding.) In a mystery series, the payoff can still be a wedding (as in Sayers' Busman's Honeymoon,) or the death of the protagonist (in books I'm not going to spoil), or even a strong piece of character growth (Dana Cameron's Emma Fielding starting to study forensic anthropology). Of course, sometimes the payoff the author chooses doesn't please all the readers--there are those who wish Lord Peter had never married--but that's the chance you take.

4) Characters can surprise you. A lot of writers talk about their characters "taking over" a book, and while I get uncomfortable with the idea of my characters taking on lives of their own, it is true that the character you create for one purpose may turn out to be a lot different. Luke was intended as a villain-hence the rape. But the chemistry between Geary and Francis was inescapable, so the plot was shifted to take advantage of that. Likewise, in Elizabeth Peters' The Camelot Caper, the erstwhile villain Sir John was such a strong character that he nearly blew the protagonists off the page, and Peters wisely used him as the love interest in her Vicky Bliss books. In my own Laura Fleming books, I created police chief Junior Norton only because I needed a cop, and darned if she didn't become one of my favorite characters.

So even if you're not a particular fan of soap operas, I still think there's something to be learned from them. Shoot, if in twenty-five years I can generate that much excitement with a fictional romance, it won't just be a silver anniversary. It'll be pure gold.

Lost in a Good Book

Kris's previous post has me worried. I have eclectic taste in reading. If so few books are getting such large sums of money, leading to yet more authors being squeezed out of print, then where will I be able to turn for a good book in which to lose myself? I am a busy woman. I count on good books to revive me when I've had a bad day, or help me to wind down when the pace of the day has been unrelenting. Not to mention the holy grail of reading: a long, uninterrupted interlude in which to read.

I'd forgotten what a luxury sitting down and reading a book from cover to cover can be. I've been wanting to nestle into a chair by the fire and read, or reread (Hi DorothyLers!) a favorite author. But events have been conspiring to deny me that treat.

Last night, after a week busier than most, I rebelled. Instead of finishing up the dishes and working on donation letters for a volunteer organization, I pulled Phillis A. Whitney's Women Without a Past (purchased from a new/used bookstore, Cypress Book Company, during a recent signing) from my to-be-read shelf and indulged.

Published in 1991, this book has the flavor of books from my youth. (I felt a grey hair sprout as I typed this last, perhaps I should rephrase...) First person, brooding, and featuring a heroine who, while independent in spirit during the normal course of her life, is drawn into a situation where things spin out of control. As I read, I enjoyed the pace and storytelling, but felt a little impatient with the heroine, who got more than a pethora of warning signs that she ought to pack her bags and leave. Yet she stayed on until the end when the tragedy played out to the twist at the end.

I haven't read a romanitic suspence of this period in a long while. It's not your modern Chick-Lit. I identify more with today's novel because, modern heroines do not flit about in filmy nightgowns and go into the dark room on the stormy night when every sensibility screams to turn and run. Today's women endanger ourselves through poor time mangement, fighting daily battles trying to balance family expectations, expectiations of coworkers and friends, and our own not-always-realistic expectations about what can actually happen within one twenty-four hours period of time.

Like the publishers in the article Kris quoted, who give out huge advances to a small group of authors who write the Next Big Thing, which is just like the Last Big Thing, we continue to invest our time in things that served us in the past. (Going to the family holiday dinners despite the fact that Aunt Sylvia was horrid to us in the past and we know she will be so again= publishing that same old Blockbuster novel.)

While the Women in Peril novels on my shelves will continue to be favorites among my reading memories, I think I'm going to switch reading gears and dive more often into my to-be read stack of new releases. Since multi-million copy bestsellers only come along once in a great while, I can only hope that publishers will continue printing a goodly variety of books so that I will always have something to read when that golden Lost in Good Book opportunity comes my way.

Happy Reading.

Julie