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No, I am not my heroine

by Donna

"Donna!  Where are you?"

Even through the fuzzy cell phone reception I could hear that Marcia Talley's voice was a bit frayed.

"I'm on I-270.  Tony says we'll be there in ten minutes."

"What are you doing on 270?"

"Long story.  I'll tell you when I get there."

It was the Monday after Malice Domestic, and Marcia and I, along with Rhys Bowen and Kate Flora, were embarking on one of the mystery writer's favorite spring pastimes: the post-Malice pilgrimage up to Oakmont, Pennsylvania, for the Mystery Lovers Bookshop's annual Festival of the Mystery.  For mystery readers, this event's a paradise--Mary Alice and Richard rent the parish hall of a church near their store, invite forty mystery authors, haul in hundreds--maybe thousands--of those authors' books and throw a four-hour long book party.  It's a pretty cool time for the writers as well--talking to fans, signing books, and seeing readers leaving the hall with shopping bags full of books.

But first we had to get there.  Rhys, Kate and I had stayed at Marcia's house after the four of us and Sarah Rosett had done a signing Sunday night at an Annapolis Barnes and Noble.  Marcia and I were both going to drive to Frederick, Maryland; park my car there; and take her car to Oakmont--Frederick being the point where, on our way home, I would be heading south to Reston while Marcia went southeast to Annapolis.  Simple plan.

As we pulled out of Marcia's street, I realized that Tony, my GPS, wasn't getting a signal.  Not unusual on a cloudy day, and he'd pick one up before long, and until then, I'd follow Marcia.  No problem.

Except that after a few miles, I lost track of Marcia--the heavy rain and fog weren't ideal for caravanning--and Tony still didn't have a signal.  I turned him off and then on again, which sometimes seems to help him find a signal. Still took a while, and I was looking for somewhere to pull over and wait when he finally spoke up.  "Right turn ahead."  (These days, he says this in John Cleese's voice, which usually cheers me up.)

I obediently did Tony's bidding for a few miles until I spotted a familiar landmark and realized we had a problem.  Apparently when I'd turned him off, he'd forgotten about the address in Frederick where Marcia and I were supposed to meet and had reverted to our last successfully found destination--Marcia's house.

I uttered a few words you will never find in my books, and since I was on an interstate with no safe place to pull over for miles, drove with one hand while reprogramming Tony with the other.

Crisis averted.  Tony began giving orders again, and I obediently followed . . . until I realized that instead of the due west course I had expected, Tony had me heading south.  One-handed again, I clicked buttons to get a preview of the route he had planned.  Tony, no!  He was routing me onto the Washington beltway!  Which was not only pocked with rain-induced accidents but clogged with large contingents of trucks trying to get downtown to participate in a rally to protest high gas prices.

I reached into my purse for my cell phone.  Surely Marcia would have some suggestion on a better route.

Only my cell phone wasn't there.  Had I left it at Marcia's house, or perhaps stuffed it in the suitcase that was packed in the trunk of her car?

I forged ahead with all the speed of an arthritic snail.  Every time I glanced at Tony, my arrival time in Frederick had slipped another few minutes later, from 9:44 to 9:55 to 10:05 to . . .

Suddenly I felt a strange vibration near my right foot.  Holy cow--was my car manifesting some strange new symptom of impending mechanical failure?  Was it going to need expensive repairs  when I got home? Or was it perhaps about to collapse into a thousand pieces right there on the interstate?

The vibrating came and went a few times, and I realized it was following a regular rhythm. 

It was my cell phone.  I'd had it on vibrate while attending panels at Malice, and apparently it had fallen on the floor and under my seat. Extricating it from under the seat wasn't the easiest thing in the world, but I managed, after a few miles of nerve-wracking writhing.  I called Marcia back, gave her my ETA, and thank goodness, it was only another ten minutes before I pulled up beside Marcia's car and we started on the next leg of the trip.

With Marcia driving.  Whew.  The rest of the trip was a lot less uneventful.

Meg Langslow, my heroine, would never have been in this predicament to begin with.  Before taking off, she would have made sure her GPS had a signal, compared its planned route with Marcia’s and made adjustments if necessary, and made sure that her cell phone was fully charged and within easy reach.  (Which would make her pretty boring to write about if life didn’t keep strewing dead bodies in her path.)

So when my friends tell me that Meg reminds them of me . . . well, I’m flattered, but puzzled.  Too me, all too often, life looks just like Monday’s mishap-filled trip to Frederick.

Earth-Related Readings

by Kris

Two years after the original publication of Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, the first Earth Day was celebrated, on April 22, 1970. While there's no way to say for certain, I’d like to think that the first event brought about the second. I have to admit that I didn’t discover Abbey until sometime thereafter, so it’s the other way around for me. In any case, I’m glad that both the book and the day exist.

With ice shelves now falling off the north and south poles, with wolves about to be taken off the endangered species list and hunted for sport, with our urban and suburban landscapes continuing to expand, it sure doesn’t appear that mankind has made much progress in preserving the Earth over the past 38 years.

But we have to keep trying. Since this blog is being posted just a day after Earth Day, and because commemorating the Earth for just one day doesn't seem enough to me, I thought this would be a good time to share some nature-related reads.

Read or reread Desert Solitaire.  I don’t care how many times you’ve already read it -- read it again. I guarantee you’ll discover things to think about that you missed before. And, read anything else by Abbey, fiction and nonfiction.

House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the Southwest by Craig Childs is a wonderful book that conveys to the reader an amazing sense of place and appreciation of the Southwestern landscape, as well as its ancient peoples. It's a true story of historical detection, exploring the greatest unsolved mystery of the American Southwest, related to the disappearance of the Anasazi.

The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild, also by Craig Childs, is a great way to reconnect with our co-inhabitants of this planet. Each of the short narratives in The Animal Dialogues focuses on Child's own encounter with a particular species. Especially impressive is his ability to capture the nature of the wilderness and the individual essences of the animals he encounters.

Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild by Ellen Melloy is another worthy read that explores our relationship with the wild in a vivid study of desert bighorn sheep. Equally good is Melloy's The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone and Sky, which uses turquoise, the color and the stone, to look at man's connection to the landscape.

Terry Tempest Williams’ Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place intertwines natural and manmade tragedies in a powerful way.

There are so many other books that deserve note, books that focus our attention on the importance of taking care of our planetary home, too many to list here. But I do have to suggest one more. A tiny book called The End of the Wild by the late M.I.T. professor, Stephen M. Meyer, which should serve as a wake-up call to all of us, builds a shocking case for what might be our last chance to save the planet. This little book should be required reading for every person seeking or holding an elective office anywhere in this or any other country, who might be in a position to make public policy decisions about our shared environment.

Happy Earth-centered reading. At least we have one day a year to focus on the needs of Mother Earth -- not enough, but it's better than none at all. We only commemorate our actual mothers one day a year as well.

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?