My Weblog

[SPAM]

by Kris

I met a spammer not that long ago. A middle-aged woman with a charming, if incredibly self-possessed, demeanor and more brazen than a stripper. While she described herself as an "internet marketer," it was clear from her description that what she disseminated was spam. She came into our store once and informed my husband that she wanted him to set up a meeting of his employees, so she could show them how much money they could make sending emails for her. She ended that arrogant request with an engaging smile, which seemed to suggest that people generally complied with her demands. I thought my husband's ears would blow off. Instead, showing remarkable restraint, he offered to throw her out the door in case she couldn't find it on her own.

But I'm betting she found takers elsewhere. So, when I say I met a spammer, I mean one I know for sure. How many others have we all met, who, either through shame or self-preservation, hide what they do? How many of our friends and neighbors lament on the general busyness of life to our faces, only to go home and pump out the crap we have to wade through to get to our email?

I can't help wondering who makes their efforts worthwhile. Does anyone really have such a desperate need for male enhancement products, investment schemes, bogus prescriptive drugs, and other products I can't discern since they're written in Asian characters and Cyrillic letters, that they fork over their hard-earned money for them?

The sad thing is that many of us have become spammers, too, albeit in a more limited way. I belong to the local chapter of a national organization of women business owners. At our meetings, we typically exchange business cards. While most of the women I meet don't regard that activity as any more than a quaint business practice, within days, if not hours, a few begin a relentless email campaign, while others subscribe me to newsletters against my will.

I wish I could say that we in the writing and publishing world behave any better. Too many authors believe that because they can send tedious notices singing the praises of their books to anyone whose email they can possibly harvest, that they should.

Someone who has sent me countless unsolicited notices regarding a book promotion service, ended with a fairly irate email, in which she insisted that after all the solicitations she'd sent me, I owed her the courtesy of a response. How does courtesy enter into this? When did it become incumbent on the recipient to respond to unwanted solicitations?

I think I've already written here about one writer who sent so many and such huge emails to our store email address, that it exceeded the size of our mailbox to such an extent, it reset the box, causing us to lose all the emails we'd saved, including those necessary for months of future author signings. I lost all my writing time that week, and my husband fell behind in his work, while we tried to rectify what one "I want you to stock my book!" author had done. And when I email this author back, to ask her to quit assaulting us with those solicitations, my request bounced back. I guess she didn't want any booksellers filling her mailbox with any of that nasty spam.

Recently, an ethnic-religious publisher sent us more than thirty emails about a single book that, given our demographics, we were unlikely to carry even before they entered the when-hell-freezes-over zone. 30+! Actually, they're still coming, though fortunately to an address we don't use much anymore, so it's anyone's guess what the final count will be. In their personal lives, do these people find that having a hammer applied repeatedly to the sides of their heads makes them more inclined to do something?

Remember when email was supposed to make our lives easier?

Holidays, or why I’d rather have a root canal

Denise Swanson

(Note:  Denise Swanson, writer of the wonderful Scumble River mysteries, has agreed to give the Femmes an injection of fresh blog. Denise has published nine entries in the adventures of Skye Dennison, a generously curved school counselor with an interesting assortment of suitors. Skye finds as many bodies around Scumble River as the Femmes find in their various locales. MURDER OF A BOTOXED BLONDE was Denise's most recent book, and the next(MURDER OF A CHOCOLATE COVERED CHERRY) will be on the shelves in April 2008.--Charlaine)

Any holiday gathering from the Fourth of July picnic to Christmas dinner has the potential for disaster, and my family hates to see any wasted potential. I often wondered why we seemed incapable of having a get-together that didn’t end in catastrophe, then I realized it was due, at least in part, to the mother-daughter relationship.

This complex bond allows two adult women to go from each other’s biggest supporters to each other’s biggest pains in five point two seconds. A mother and daughter can be having a loving conversation that results in one of them stomping out of the room boiling mad a nanosecond later. The urge to be with your mother can be a visceral craving, but it can also be the one visit you would give up chocolate to avoid.

In my mystery series, Skye, my sleuth, and her mother, May, have a relationship that somewhat mirrors the one I have with my own mother. May wants what is best for Skye—at least what she thinks is best for Skye. And Skye loves her mother, but has to fight to maintain enough distance to hang on to her independence. In fiction, it can be pretty funny to read about this struggle. In real life, it can cause an otherwise sane, adult woman to yell, “You’re not the boss of me.”

Take the previously mentioned Fourth of July picnic. The ambulance would never have had to be called if my mother hadn’t said, “Is that how you’re going to chop the onions?”

My immediate reaction was, hell yes, but out loud, I said, “I was. Why?”

“Well, it’s up to you, but I’d dice them,” My mom replied. “Everyone will think you bought them that way if you leave them in big chunks like that.”

After hearing how I had come to cut the tips off of three fingers, the female EMT who was bandaging my hand, said, “That’s exactly why I volunteer to work holidays.”

Major holidays like Thanksgiving are worse. I remember a friend of mine telling me that once she ended up asleep under the dining room table after eating all the rum-soaked fruit from the punch bowl on this family celebration.

She was thirty years old at the time, but when she had picked up her mother to go to the family dinner, her mother had said, “You’re not going to wear that are you?”

“Well, I sure don’t have a change of clothes in the car,” my friend snapped.

“It’s just I asked your cousin the doctor to bring a friend of his and that outfit isn’t the most flattering.”

Eek! A twofer. Not only did her mother imply she looked bad, she had set her up for a blind date.

Which leaves the big daddy of all holidays, Christmas. Who knew a gift could result in a visit by the fire department? Before quitting my day job to write full-time, I worked as a school psychologist. I used to dread going back after Christmas break because I usually had a line of kids wanting to talk to me about their less than wonderful holidays.

One year, the first person in line was an adult—a teacher I had worked with for several years. Let’s call her Gloria. Gloria was an extremely competent woman and I had never seen her ruffled—even when a student had threatened to blow up the school. This particular morning she was close to tears.

As she sat down and started to tell me her story, she methodically shredded tissue after tissue from the box on my desk. It all started when she gave her mother a computer for Christmas. Gloria had had a baby the previous summer and wanted to be able to e-mail her mom pictures since they lived in different states.

She figured she could teach her mom how to use the Internet during her holiday visit. After trying to convince her mom that, no, she didn’t have to hold down the button on the mouse to make it move, and that yes, the computer uses the telephone line, but no she did not have to hold the receiver up to the monitor, more complications arose.

Gloria’s mother developed an irrational fear of pop-up windows, and freaked out when the little arrow turned into a hand. But what sent Gloria over the edge and resulted in her meeting the new fire chief, was when her mom accidently strayed into a porn site. Her mother got so flustered she insisted on immediately going to confession. While her mother was gone, Gloria, realizing her mother wasn’t ready for the technical age, decided she had better take the computer back and exchange the computer for a nice bathrobe.

This next part isn’t real clear to me, but for some reason Gloria put the laptop in the oven—she said she knew they were going out to eat and she wanted to hide the computer from her mom and it was too cold outside to put it in her car. When her mom got home from church, Gloria was de-stressing in the bathtub and her mother decided to bake cookies.

The fire chief was really nice about the whole thing. She said that she had moved from New York all the way to Illinois, to avoid situations like this with her own mother.

Gloria said that next year she was going to Tahiti for Christmas. I wonder if she really did.

The mother-daughter relation is already weighed down with powerful feelings, adding an emotionally charged holiday get-together to the mix is just a fire alarm waiting to go off. So this year, be careful out there.

Thanks for the memories...even the fake ones!

by Toni L.P. Kelner

It's the day after Thanksgiving, and no Thanksgiving would be complete without at least one article about how the popular view of the First Thanksgiving is totally wrong. After all, I live in Massachusetts, and we take our Pilgrim lore seriously. You probably know some of the myths yourself: the Pilgrims didn't eat turkey or cranberry sauce; Thanksgiving wasn't all that religious a celebration or they'd never have invited Indians; Thanksgiving feasts didn't just happen in November; and while black may be the old black, it wasn't the only color they wore.

Yet year after year, the decorations and movies show the Pilgrims lining up around the table in historically inaccurate garb eating historically inappropriate food. And for that, I say, "Thank you!"

This proves something that every writer should be thankful for: that fiction can be more powerful than truth, that humans crave myth so strongly that we cling to it in the face of all reality. The stories that we write can be more meaningful, and longer lasting, than history. For a writer, this is heady stuff indeed.

You see, while writers are usually referred to as creative, there often seems to be a perception that we don't really create anything at all. Sure, when I publish a story or novel, there's a resulting magazine or book, but that's printing, not writing. If I write a script and that script is made into a television show, it's the show that has the weight of reality. The words themselves, the characters, the action, the STORY doesn't exist in a tangible form. It isn't REAL.

Or is it? If it isn't, why does Sherlock Holmes get letters asking for advice every day?

Writers must be creating something, even if it's not tangible. Not that I aspire to creating a character as well known as Sherlock Holmes, or the fictional Pilgrims. My main goal is to entertain. But the idea that just maybe, for a minute, that somebody could read about Laura Fleming or Tilda Harper or Treasure Hunt and forget that they aren't real... That's a worthy dream for any writer. And it's something to be thankful for.

PS - If you see a link between this blog and the current Writer's Strike, it's not accidental. For the writers out there on the picket lines, making their voices heard, I say, "Write on!"

So, when are you going to write a real book? Revisted...

I had a discussion with a good friend of mine recently that went something like this. "You write mysteries. And you use humor in them. Yet, murder is hardly a light subject. How do you reconcile the use of humor in a murder mystery?" While not quite the question I used as the subject header, it skated close enough that my first knee-jerk reaction was as if she had asked it. It hurt. We had addressed this very issue -- can Cozies be Real Books -- pretty recently in this blog, so it was interesting that she brought it up again independently.

I write about murder not because I'm bloodthirsty, or because I find murder glamourous in any way, shape or form. It is something so absolutely beyond the pale that I find it the perfect catalyst to allow characters to explore human reactions to a dire situation -- and to show how wonderful indeed human beings can be when faced with adversity. As for humor in that dire situation, I can't get through a day without a good belly laugh. I take my friendships very seriously. If I was actually faced with a friend's death, I might feel differently about humor in a work of fiction, but I might actively seek it out to relieve my own grief.

Reading for many is an escape activity. Reading about different places, people different from those you meet every day, situations you'd never allow yourself to experience. And like people in daily life, the characters must also cope with the situation we've thrown them into. If I use humor, then why can't my characters?

Which brings me back to my friend. We've known each other for a very long time. She was there for my first book signing. She was there when I took my first writing course and encouraged me all the way. So why did it take her all these years to ask the question that must have been upmost in her mind about the validity of my work?

She was uncomfortable. You see, she had been touched by a real-life murder and found it everything you'd expect. A close friend and classmate died at the hand of a man several women in her school circle had dated. That's not terribly funny. And all these years later, it still hurts her to think about it.

The reality of murder is hard, painful and ever-lasting. The span of a murder-mystery is a few hours. I'm glad that my friend finally said something as it's given me a great deal to think on. I suspect that humor will always be a part of my writing, and that dead bodies will continue to litter the pages. But I'll always hold that thought about my friend's friend's life cut so tragically short.

Happy Turkey day to all!

Julie

Carnival Of The Criminal Minds, No. 4

Welcome to the fourth stop on the Carnival of the Criminal Minds blog, a traveling show for readers with a taste for wicked and mysterious entertainment. I'm your host, Mary Saums, here at the Femmes Fatales site where we talk about books and the writing life.

One of our Femmes recently attended Forensic University, the brainchild of Sisters In Crime, where she got hands-on experience with an Uzi. Click the link at the right, Forensic University Scores a Bullseye, for a report and a photo of Donna Andrews as you've never seen her before. 

Our Criminal Carnival world tour began in Australia, moved on to London, then crossed the Atlantic to Ohio where we last visited the lovely Julia Buckley. She has a nice write-up today on one of her mystery heroes, Mary Stewart. I'm a little farther south in Nashville, Tennessee, home of all things twangy. In area news, one of our Southeastern region Mystery Writers of America members, Richard Helms, has a new hardboiled/noir webzine called The Back Alley with some terrific stories including one by Shamus nominee Jack Bludis. Richard, a Shamus nominee himself, also has a new short story at The Thrilling Detective.

I loved a recent article in the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell called Dangerous Minds. He tells how a local psychiatrist, consulted by the NYPD in the 60's, became the father of criminal profiling, along with the fascinating work of profilers on the BTK killer case.

CSI lovers and writers looking for forensics help, check out Booked.TV. Crime experts give short talks by podcasts and 'webisodes' on all sorts of investigative work. Some of the topics included are Cold Case DNA, Disarming a Bomb, and, my favorite, Cycle of Insects on a Corpse. Booked.TV also has podcasts by several mystery authors.

Links to just about everything associated with investigation and crime fiction can be found over at In Reference To Murder. General topic links, like Crime Scene Investigation, Crimes by Topic, Mysteries by Topic, and Publishers take you to pages with many websites and articles to choose from. The November 15th blog has Men's Journal's recent list of what it considers the fifteen top thrillers of all time.

Several weeks ago, when J. Kingston Pierce hosted the second Carnival blog at The Rap Sheet, I got caught in up in the One Book Project. He asked over 100 crime novelists which one mystery they considered “most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciated over the years.” Each author wrote quite persuasive defenses of their favorite, thus sending me on elaborate and invigorating book hunts. Great fun.

Fans of noir books and movies will revel in the podcast candy of Out Of The Past: Investigating Film Noir and its companion Behind The Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed, both from Clute and Edwards at Noircast. Noir readers can also find great reviews at International Noir Fiction. And, if you're in the mood to hang out on the dark side with like-minded readers and writers, NoirCon looks like a good bet. This convention will be in Philadephia, April 3rd-6th, 2008. I like their idea for 20-minute noir slots on classic authors like Dorothy B. Hughes, Jim Thompson and Charles Willeford. Best of all, there will be an interview with my very favorite writer, Ken Bruen.

Let's catch the flip and go over to the Cozy Library. Leave your shoes, covered with all that unspeakable gunk from the mean streets, outside. There's a large bathroom just as you come in. Take a nice hot shower and let the depressing ways of the cruel world go down the drain. Relax and enjoy the cozy reviews and articles, and with the holidays upon us, be sure to check the Library's page of holiday reads.

I have two comfort blogs that I check regularly. Neither blasts the internet with non-stop self-promotional commercials, so you may not have heard of them. They are by mature seasoned mystery authors who only want to share a thought or two with friends. At Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life, Nancy Pickard might blog about writing, she might blog about meditation, or a book that has inspired her. John Baker's blog takes a similar approach. Bits of writing advice may enter the mix, along with political or other newsworthy topics. What I love are the descriptions of plays he has recently seen. I find his down-to-earth commentaries soothing, a good end to the internet day.    

The Carnival will hit the road again around December 1st. Next stop: Ireland! Our host will be Declan Burke, author of The Big O. If you haven't already found his blog, Crime Always Pays, don't wait until December. You'll not want to miss anything on one of the funniest, most entertaining blogs around. I don't know how he got that photo of me partying in Brazil. I thought I had destroyed all prints and negatives.

In case you missed earlier Carnival blogs, all previous road trips are archived at the home site, Carnival of the Criminal MInd. Thanks for stopping by!

Choosing Topics

It's obvious to anyone familiar with my writing style that I'm not much of an advance planner. I've always been the same with blogging, too. I blog once weekly on my own website, and then once or twice a month here at the home of the Femmes. Usually I just shake my fingers over the keyboard and a topic pops out.

I seldom have time to read a lot of other writers' blogs, but when I do, I'm astonished at the range and intimacy of what others choose to share with the world. I'm not casting aspersions on anyone else's  selections; I'm expressing amazement.

I don't know if it's an "age thing" or not (everything is increasingly related to age, especially in my birthday month), but younger writers share more than I'm comfortable sharing. I don't want to involve an audience in my creative process. I don't want to let them know when I'm having trouble with a scene, or how many words I wrote today. I will share very little of my private life.

It's hard to believe anyone would be interested, in the first case, and it's hard to believe I'd have much left for myself, in the second. My books are my connection with the public world, and there's plenty personal in them, if that's what people are looking for. Everything I believe, and everything I've experienced, finds its way into the books.

As for posting details of my working life, I consider that boring. Some days I write three pages, some days ten. Maybe if I committed myself to posting this daily, I'd write more out of sheer embarrassment? I'll have to think about that. Do you really want to know about the days I write, "Then she heard a knock at the door," followed by ten minutes of me sitting there wondering who knocked?

I didn't think so.

 

It was all genre, once

By Dana

I’ve been thinking about some of the issues surrounding genre fiction.  At Bouchercon, I was on a panel discussing mystery as a genre, addressing how it succeeds as craft and as an accessible art form.  Donna Andrews and I briefly chatted about this at Dying to Write 2.  Then I checked out Jennifer Crusie’s eloquent essays, which, among other things, insist genre fiction (especially romance) be given more respect by critics, reviewers, and society.  Sarah Weinman’s blog occasionally addresses this, too, and since I can’t shake the subject, I’ll blog about some of my own thoughts on it.  I doubt I’m being original, and I’m hardly attempting comprehensively to outline or reconcile the issue (ha!), but these are the ideas that keep resonating for me. 

Hierarchy.  In our B’con panel, SJ Rozan mentioned the class issues that characterize assaults on genre fiction.  I’ll see this and raise you one:  As anthropologists point out, we are Homo hierarchicus.  It’s a habit of humanity that when you get more than four or five people in a group, it’s suddenly much easier to find divides along the “us and them” lines, describing “goodness” and “badness” which might be better defined as simply "difference."  Note I say “habit” and not “hardwired:”  I do my own wiring, thank you very much.  Speaking of which...

Criticism.  As I mentioned in one of my personal blog entries:  I blame Samuel Richardson.  Not only because I think Henry Fielding is a far superior writer, but because when Pamela was first published in 1740, it was intended to be a book that educated and uplifted.  Many critics point to this as the beginning of formal literary criticism and the idea that fiction’s job should be to educate.  If it wasn’t, to some authority’s mind, “meaningful,” then it was probably dismissable as sensational trash. 

Craft.  I did an interview about a week ago, and the reporter asked me about the special talent that mystery writers must have for keeping readers turning the page.  My response was that mystery writers are talented writers, first and foremost, and every author—whether “literary,” mystery, science fiction, romance, horror, or even nonfiction—has to keep the reader interested.  This is done by building suspense and having something at stake and that can be a threat to hearth and home, the pursuit of justice or perfect love, humor, overdue bills, the quest for the perfect handbag, or an alien invasion.  Every narrative has to have a tension you recognize and relate to.  Good craft leads to…

Stickiness.  For me a good book is one where you don’t notice the writing because you're so wrapped up in the story, but when you go back, you see how great the language is.  A good book is one that, long after you’ve finished, you recall the OMG moments.  A good book lives up to your memories of it, decades after your first read.  You even remember where you were when you finished it the first time:  The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton (the laundromat—when do you ever loiter at a laundromat?), The Bone People by Keri Hulme (the foot of my bed—I was going to get going, but this book…), MacBeth by William Shakespeare (family vacation in Edinburgh; I didn’t even notice the parade), Salem’s Lot by Stephen King (way, way under the covers, age 15),  Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers (Montreal, my honeymoon)…go ahead.  You give it a shot.  What sticks?

Community.  One thing I’ve noticed about genre fiction is that it allows you to discuss difficult topics, things society is still working out for itself.  People mention this particularly with science fiction, fantasy, and horror, but think about what thoughtful mysteries say about justice and whether it is the same thing as law.  Think about what the history of romance say about the quest of women for agency and adventure.  These aren’t necessarily the goals of these types of work, but I can’t think of anything better than this kind of discussion/argument/furor/consideration.  It’s civilized.

Discuss among yourselves.

Forensic University scores a bullseye

That's my target at the left.  Not bad for only the third time in my life I've fired guns.  The little holes are from a .22 and the big holes are from a .38.  If you saw the whole target, you'd only see one other bullet hole, a little outside the 7 ring; and unless they miscounted the number of bullets they gave me, I didn't miss the paper any.  Cool.  I should mention that I was doing this target practice as part of an outing arranged by the organizers of Sisters in Crime's Forensic University.  Those of us who signed up in advance, came a day early, and paid a fee to cover our ammo got to go out to the Bull's Eye LLC Indoor Shooting Range to try our hand at doing what our intrepid heroes and heroines do in our books. Meg Langslow, my heroine, would of course get a few more shots in that all-important red center, but I don't think I did too badly.

If Forensic U itself had a target to represent how well it did this past weekend, you'd see a whole lot more holes in that red center part.  In fact, the whole red part would probably be torn away in one giant hole.  I heard several people saying that Forensic U was the best conference of its kind they'd ever been to.  The last time I've went to an event that had anywhere near this much good information about the hows and whys of crime and crime solving was when I went to a conference that was designed as continuing education for private investigators.  And Forensic U was longer, and had more tracks, and was tailored for the working writer who really doesn't want to make mistakes in her DNA evidence or get his police procedure all wrong.

Among the sessions I went to (and about the only complaint I heard all weekend long was that the conference organizers should have providing a cloning machine so we could all attend all the sessions we wanted):

Dr. D.P. Lyle, talking about "The ABCs of Forensic Science" and "The Basics of Toxicology."  Doug Lyle writes fiction as well as his Macavity-winning, Edgar-nominated nonfiction books about forensic issues, so he's uniquely qualified not only to give good information about forensics but to know what kind of information a mystery writer really needs to know. 

Lee Lofland on "Undercover Tactics" and "Basics of Police Procedure."  In addition to his wide experience in law enforcement, Lee is a born raconteur, and after the first session he did, I went out and bought his book Police Procedure and Investigation (part of the Writer's Digest Howdunit series).

Det. Joe Burgoon (retired) of the St. Louis Police Department, who now works as an investigator in the department's cold case unit, on how DNA is helping close some of their old and outstanding cases.

Mary Fran Ernst of the St. Louis County ME's office and the St. Louis University School of Medicine's Pathology Department, on Medicolegal Death Investigation. With photos!  Mystery writers are one of the only groups I know that could get really excited about viewing autopsy photos just before the lunch break.

Of course, seeing Mary Fran meant I had to miss Jan Burke's history of forensic science session, dammit.  I also managed to miss Eileen Dreyer on trauma and wounds.  And what are you supposed to do when you have a choice between "Interviews & Interrogations," "Forensic Entomology," "Forensic Anthropology," and "Footwear and Tire Impression Trace Evidence?"  Whine a little and flip a coin, that's what I did.

So I was glad that some sessions had no competition.  Like the one with Lt. Kevin Lawson, Commander of the Police Crime Laboratory in St. Louis, who gave us an inside view on what life in the crime lab is really like.  And Dr. Mary Case's talk on the Walter Scott murder case--only one of the fascinating cases she has handled in her career as one of the country's most distinguished medical examiners.  And the presentation by Judge Donald Shelton (22nd Circuit Court in Ann Arbor, Michigan), on his research project to determine whether the "CSI Effect" really exists.

Another cause for celebration: Saturday night's auction raised nearly $4,000 to benefit the Crime Lab Project. (If you haven't heard about the Crime Lab Project: it's a group of crime writers and their friends and readers who are concerned about the gap between the public's beliefs about the current state of forensic science and the reality faced by the many underfunded, understaffed labs and coroners' offices throughout the country. CLP members see the lack of support given to labs as a matter that has a growing negative impact on law enforcement, justice, and national security. If you're interested, check out the Crime Lab Project website.)

In short, I had a fabulous time.  Like everybody I ran into in St. Louis, I left asking "How soon are we doing this again?"  The good news is that Joanna Campbell Slan and Michelle Becker, the co-chairs of the conference, are game to do it again--though not quite NEXT year.  But odds are anyone who couldn't go--or worse, could have gone and didn't--will get another chance.

Anyway, I'm back home in the real world now, and still on a high from everything I saw and did and learned over the weekend.  And in case you're curious, I taped my target to the sliding glass door at the back of my office to take a photo of it. . . and I think  I'll leave it there.  Any burglars show up to case the joint, maybe they'll take a look and slink away to prey on the neighbors.  Especially if I change my screensaver to this photo of me holding the Uzi.