My Weblog

I lie. Honest.

A few weeks ago, I did a signing at a local bookstore where, the following night, author Rick Bragg was scheduled. If you've never heard him speak, treat yourself the next time he's in your town and go hear him. That guy has got some stories to tell. Anyway, the next night I drove out to see him, and as soon as I walked in the store, the manager ran up to me and said, "I'm so glad you're here. Two ladies who thought your signing was tonight are over there getting your books."

Both were delightful, mother and daughter, and I was having a great time talking to them until something the Mom said sent a chill up my spine which shot immediately into my stomach and lodged, jiggled and gurgled uncomfortably, like I'd eaten too many green apples. "We both loved the setting of your first book so much," she said, and here comes the jiggle part, "...that we took our whole family down on vacation to see the places you wrote about."

Gulp. "Ah-blee, ah-blee-uh...huh?" Not sure those were my exact words as I was distracted by roiling waves of nausea and twinges of fear and guilt.

The thing is, my books are set in a somewhat magical forest. Not magical like a Disney movie. The trees and little animals don't talk or sing in English or sew dresses or anything like that. But odd things happen there, due to a small population of ghostly beings and possibly other supernatural entities as yet unknown. I do use a real place, Dismals Canyon, and some of its unusual features as inspiration for my make-believe forest, and both it and surrounding areas are indeed beautiful, just as I say in the books.

The problem is, writers lie. I especially lie about places. Some people like to write and read about places they know well, say, a certain city with certain parks or landmarks in the book. That's not what I do. I take the best or most interesting aspect of many places and swirl them around to create an imaginary place I hope the reader will find appealing. What I do is more like an abstract painting, rather than a real-life map with grids and everything just right.

So I worry that visitors to the places that inspired me will be disappointed. I feel guilty because I'm responsible for sending them on a trip to see something that isn't there. Or, isn't all together in one place. Or, might be only in my head. Once I get deep into a story, it's hard to tell anymore.

This is on my mind tonight because just yesterday, I got an email from an old friend who also decided to go down and visit the forest with a few buds. Eeek! Okay, okay. I can handle this. It's fiction. Readers understand that fiction means not real. They do. Of course they do. They know I lie like a dog when it comes to writing.

Call it green. Call it grouchy. I don’t care

by Donna

In my neighborhood, we have several free newspapers.  Of course, in reality, there’s no such thing as a free newspaper—someone has to pay for the ink, the paper and the staff salaries. What they really are is advertiser-funded newspapers.

My favorite is the Reston Connection, because it comes in the mail. When I travel, I don’t have to arrange for a neighbor to pick it up—it arrives with the rest of the mail when I get back. And in rainy weather, I don’t find it in a sodden mass at the end of the driveway, like the Reston Observer and the Fairfax Times. Only about half the issues of those two publications arrive dry enough that I want to bother with them. They could make better use of their newsprint (and save the cost of the completely ineffective plastic bags) by mailing them.

And then there’s the Examiner, the D.C. area’s daily advertiser supported paper. In 2005, I came back from week-long trip and found three or four copies of the Examiner at the end of my driveway.  Hello, burglars! Empty house right over here! I’d never heard of the Examiner, so I figured I’d been victim of a subscription drive for a new publication. I called to tell them to leave me alone, and had a lot of trouble getting them to understand that no, I did not want their free paper.  Took me three calls to get the damned thing stopped, and a couple of times a year, when they get a new "distributor" (i.e., delivery person), I have to do the whole thing all over again. Of course, since I have my fair share of the mystery writer’s professional paranoia, I am more than half convinced that the constant relapses into delivery are the result not of a new delivery person but of an institutional policy to periodically erase all the records of nondelivery requests, in the hope that fewer people will bother to opt out. Ain’t gonna work, Examiner.

If a company did that by email, it’d be called spam. Next time, I’m going to start emailing their advertisers to complain. Ccing the Examiner, of course. I have no idea if that will have any effect on the Examiner or its advertisers, but I can hope, can’t I?

Why am I so fierce about this? Because I’ve come to realize that in my life, freebies are one the biggest contributors to clutter.

My credenza drawer has a folder where I keep return address labels. It’s chock full of free labels sent to me by charities that want my money. I used to feel guilty about using the labels if I hadn’t given money to the charity and had no intention of doing so. I broke through that, and began using the labels anyway. I now realize that the labels are gaining on me, so my new policy is to shred the ones I don’t like, use the ones I do, and ignore all the freebies when making my donation decisions.

It’s increasingly common, when you order something online or from a catalogue, to find a cheerful message on the order form telling you that just because you ordered, you will be receiving a free gift. Maybe I’m unusually fussy, but those free gifts are almost never anything I would ever have paid money for. More like things I’d pay a premium not to have to deal with, things that go straight into the trashcan or the donation bag. Or things that I can see have a value—just not to me. For example, seeds that require more sun than my yard gets, grow into something that the deer would eat up instantly, or just aren’t anything I want to give yard space to.

I have more little free sample bars of DHC soap, more free samples of various brands of hair conditioner and household cleaning products and over-the-counter medicine than I can count. When I have a cold, it’s unlikely I’ll hunt down that single dose of a new cold medicine to give it a try. I’ll go for the tried and true. The sample soaps are only a little larger than the size at which soap becomes more trouble than it’s worth. I’m pondering whether I should set up some kind of special storage area for the free sample cleaning products so I can find them when I could make use of them. And set aside an afternoon to scanning the free sample magazines. And—

Enough. If making productive use of a freebie requires more work than it’s worth, it’s not free. I’m making a pledge to find ways to get myself off the free sample lists wherever possible. And if a catalogue or website persistently sends unwanted items, I’ll either mail the junk back or stop shopping with them.

Call it green. Call it grouchy. I don’t care.  I’m a recovering packrat.  I have enough trouble dealing with the clutter I create myself.  I don’t need help from freebies. 

 

 

Gordon and Tiger

Being a foodie, I occasionally watch "Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares" on BBC America.  It’s not so much the inventive swearing (which is fun, until it gets boring), but the way that an outside perspective can cut to what’s wrong with an operation that I find interesting.  It’s extreme restaurant editing. 

While not a fan of golf, I do admire Tiger Woods, not necessarily for his many accomplishments and firsts, but because several years ago, he had to readjust his swing to accommodate an injury (if I understand correctly—remember: foodie, not sports fan).  Reinventing something that had been so profoundly successful took a tremendous amount of courage and patience enough to rebuild over a couple of seasons.

Breaking out of one style that you’ve been accustomed to is painfully hard.  Not only are you setting aside something that is working for you (or, in the case of Ramsay’s restaurateurs, what you imagine is working for you), but you’re going against all your habits, your muscle-memory, your intellectual grain.   You’re taking a risk, moving from what you know.

When I started writing, I wanted to bring a certain realism to the way I depicted archaeology.  The same way anyone hates to see their profession badly drawn in fiction, if I did nothing else, I wanted to get the archaeology right.  That was reflex, for me.  Now that I’m trying on other characters and other types of stories, I’m finding I need to drastically reconsider the way I write.  It’s one thing to get persnickety about the accuracy of field work, but what about werewolves?  What about assassins?   Not a lot of research can be done and both groups tend to be secretive about their work.

Beyond letting go of that particular brand of realism, with these new characters I need to reconsider how I tell the stories themselves.  Different styles work better for different genres or subgenres.  I wish there was something like an internal mixing board where I could loosen the restraining bolts, increase the level of fantasy, nudge the violence up a notch or two or six, and turn the emotion to eleven.   It's a slow process, but giving way to effort.

Unlike Ramsay’s reluctant chefs, what I was doing before worked okay, in the sense that six books later, people are still asking me to write.  That makes the need to change harder.  Some of it’s fun (I had no idea of my proclivity for visceral action), some of it’s excruciating:  like learning new exercises, some muscles are just getting used for the first time.  The payoff will be, I hope, when I surprise my readers as much as I’m surprising myself.  In the mean time, I’m trying to reshape my approach to the craft, with a minimum of swearing and as little spit as possible.

Have you ever found yourself in the position of having to change how your approach your writing or another job? 

I think I will sleep well tonight

I've been saying that a lot lately. I spent the last week or two of June getting the house ready for an extended visit from my brother, my sister-in-law, and my twin four-year-old nephews.  They're moving to a house less than five miles from me.  Unfortunately, their former landlady wouldn't extend their lease past June 30, and the closing on their new house wasn't till July 11, so they came to stay with me until the new house was not only theirs but livable. 

It's been a move fraught with peril.  The movers who came to help them pack their pod seemed competent, but when my brother opened the pod the next morning to put a few more things in, he found they'd done a rotten job of packing.  Like throwing the treadmill in on top of the sofa--breaking one arm of the sofa--with nothing to tie it down and keep it from breaking other items.  They ended up renting a truck for the stuff that shouldn't have been squeezed into the pod, and caravanning down instead of riding in one car.  Stressful trip, especially since one nephew got bitten by a bug somewhere along the way and began having an allergic reaction.  Their first night here, they spent five hours in the local emergency room while the other nephew and I watched Curious George from 2:30 a.m. to 7:30 a.m.   Other nephew got his turn in the ER a few nights later, when he fell down on my front walk and gashed his forehead, resulting in a zig-zag shaped scar.  Harry Potter fans, eat your hearts out.  He's also been stung several times by wasps.  I think they're beginning to think that Virginia is a savage and dangerous wilderness.  And with the boys being out of their usual routines and seeming to need more attention than usual--well, I sleep well after a day chasing around after them.

About a week into their visit, I made sure my brother and sister-in-law knew the way to the hospital and took off for a week-long book tour in North Carolina. The Tar Heel State boasts a satisfying number of independent bookstores, and I hit a whole bunch of them--you can now find signed copies of Cockatiels at Seven and various other of my books at Quail Ridge Books and Music in Raleigh, The Regulator Bookshop in Durham, The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines, McIntyre's Fine Books in Fearrington Village, and Park Road Books in Charlotte.  (All of these stores, I should add, would be happy to do mail order if you want a signed book, as would Mystery Loves Company.)  I also did an event at the Cary Library, thanks to the efforts of librarian Karen Kiley and the inimitable Molly Weston (who also restored my faith in the excellence of North Carolina barbecue after an unfortunate encounter with what was supposed to be a local dive with good barbecue and turned out to be....well, not someplace I'd really want to eat again). Lovely trip to a lovely part of the country--I can't remember the last time I saw so many crepe myrtles in bloom--and if there were a couple of days when I did a lot of driving, at least I knew that I'd sleep well that night.

Since I've been back from my mini-tour, we've been unpacking at the new house--a chore that would be a lot easier if Virginia weren't currently having a heat wave. And a chore that's easier done without munchkins underfoot, so today my brother took the boys to the zoo, to the pool, to the grocery store, and who knows where else while my sister-in-law and I emptied and flattened boxes for hours.  Seemed like days.  Maybe weeks.  But the house is looking almost livable, and after the boys were in bed, I treated myself to a hot soaking bath with Kneipp juniper-scented herbal bath (good for sore muscles) and a new paperback mystery.  Curled up in bed feeling mellow and relaxed, hit page 20 of the mystery, felt my eyes starting to close. . . . and remembered I was scheduled to blog.  Oops!  One more thing to do before I sleep the sleep of the just.  Or at least the sleep of someone who has accomplished a lot today, and has a plan for getting done the rest of the things she needs to get done.

Which, to bring the subject back to something writing related, is very similar to the sense of satisfaction I feel at the end of each writing day when I've done my quota. Writing a novel--like moving--is not only too big to tackle in a single day, it's too big to comfortably get your mind around at one time.  So you break it down into smaller chunks.  Organize this room. Unpack this box.  Finish this chapter.  Write this many words.  I love the enormous feeling of satisfaction--and relief--I feel when I have finished a book or other large project.  Time to celebrate!  But I don't find the final celebration is at all diminished if along the way I have dozens of smaller daily celebrations as I finish the daily quotas that eventually add up to a book. And even if I have a tight deadline, as long as I have a plan to meet it--a schedule the reassures me that all I have to do today to meet my deadline is write a certain number of words--I can go to bed and sleep soundly instead of tossing and turning.

And now, to bed.  I have a rendezvous tomorrow with an undisclosed number of cardboard boxes and the heat index tomorrow may hit 100.  But that's tomorrow.  Tonight, I think I will sleep very well.

Cats and Characters...What Chatty Beings They Are

By Kris

My cat, Philly, has decided that, after happily spending the whole of his eight years within walls, he now wants to become an outdoor cat. I know some people believe that cats should be free to roam, but we live in Coyote Alley. So many cats go missing in this neighborhood, it's a testament to the feline reproductive system that we have any cats left here at all.

He gets plenty of stimulation. Unlike most indoor cats, who find their thrills with toy mice and cat condos, Philly often eagerly scoots into his carrying case, and I take him to our bookstore, where he charms people from all over the world. Tourists actually plan their final stop in Sedona for when Philly will be there, just to say goodbye. I'm not kidding. How many indoor cats have an international fan club?

Philly's sudden fascination with the great outdoors is my husband's fault. One evening, as we ate dinner on our patio, Joe gave into Philly's piteous cries to be allowed to join us. "Oh, let's give him an adventure," Joe said. It seemed harmless enough because Philly is actually not that adventurous. He spent the whole hour rolling around on the patio surface and munching a weed. Only now he's obsessed to repeat the weed-encounter. In his high-pitched Maine Coon voice, he cries, he begs, he demands. He smacks the doorknob in outrage. If his big fat paws weren't so furry, he'd have it opened. Please tell me cats can't turn deadbolts.

This wouldn't have to bother me only, despite having a pretty nice office, I often like to write on my laptop at the kitchen table. It's at the corner of the house, surrounded by a pretty French door and lots of paned windows. I'm at peace in that corner, and as I stare between the panes, the words seem to flow to me.

Naturally, that was before a certain furry big mouth decided that French door was the one he should pass through to begin his new life. Now it's impossible to concentrate there.

Even though I know he doesn't have the street smarts to survive out there — unless he could talk a pack of coyotes out of eating him — Philly think he knows it all. Cats usually do.

And so do characters. (You didn't think I was going to get to a writing connection, did you?) My characters can be just as vocal as my cat if they think I'm making a mistake. And while characters limit their cries to the inside of my head, their demands for changes can be just as distracting.

My WIP, which had been moving along so well, stalled recently, when the ending I'd been working toward for a while no longer felt right. It stopped me in my tracks. The characters began talking to me at that point, as relentless as Philly. With more determination than sense, I ignored them and pressed on, trying to make my idea fit. Nope, still not quite right. The book simply wouldn’t proceed.

Finally, in exasperation, I went to the actual locale I'd just depicted in the book, the last event that worked. I sat there, and for once I listened to the creatures who inhabit my mind and my word processor.

When they shared their idea, I felt like saying, "How long have you known this?" But I knew what the answer would be. They'd known it from the start. The underpinnings of their idea had been present in the book from the beginning. I realized now I'd put those some in at their suggestion, without really understanding why.

Characters who talk to us — are they real? Well, not as real as cats that have to be combed and fed and who cough up hairballs, obviously. But their voices can be just as insistent. Although the characters didn't get it exactly right, either. We melded their idea and mine to get to the right place. The conscious mind and the unconscious, working together. Perfect!

And how about cats? Does this mean Philly should get what he wants? He's still not going to become a coyote gumdrop, that's for sure. But he just might get another patio adventure, even if it means he'll be more determined and noisier than ever, and just where I like to write.

If my writing can benefit from listening to chatty characters…maybe there's something I can learn from a vocal cat.

Welcome to our new Femme Fatale, Hank Phillippi Ryan!

We are pleased as punch to welcome Hank Phillippi Ryan as the newest Femme Fatale!   Hank is an Emmy- and Edward R. Murrow-award-winning reporter on the air at Boston's NBC affiliate; she's also on the boards of the New England chapters of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America.   That's just the tip of the iceberg: check out her website to get the inside scoop.

Her first Charlotte McNally mystery, Prime Time won the Agatha for Best First Novel (above left, Hank with her Agatha, and Louise Penny), won the Romantic Times Magazine Reviewers' Choice Award, is a finalist for the 2008 Daphne Du Maurier Award, and  is nominated for two RITA Awards (Best First Novel & Best Romantic Suspense)!   The second book in the series, Face Time , was a Boston Globe Bestseller and a Book Sense Pick.

If you've seen her at conferences or met her at signings, you know Hank is sharp, funny, and a lot of fun; in other words, a perfect addition to the Femmes.  We hope you'll join us in welcoming her and Charlie!

Meet Hank. And meet Charlotte McNally

HANK PHILLLIPPI RYAN: Hey Charlie. Thanks so much for taking the time from your busy schedule as an investigative reporter for a Boston TV station to chat today.

CHARLOTTE MCNALLY: Well, you should know. You've been the investigative reporter for Channel 7 in Boston for what, 25 years? And a TV reporter for, what, 30 something years? I've only been on the air for 20.

HANK: So you're younger than I am. Fine. You can thank me for that, you know.  Anyway, Charlie, before we both have to get back to work. You told me once--wait, I have it here in Prime Time: "I’m married to my job, but I wonder what will happen when the camera doesn't love me anymore." Are you still worried about that?

CHARLIE: I could ask you the same thing.

HANK: Yeah, but don't. Besides, you know perfectly well, after 30 years in TV, I'm adding fiction to my resume. I don't want either of us to be the poster girls for aging women on television.

CHARLIE: Thanks. I'm relying on you to prevent it.

HANK: But I still love my reporter job. Which is why I'm interviewing you. So I hear you're working on a blockbuster story about--

CHARLIE: Hey! What I told you about AIR TIME was off the record. No one can hear about that until it goes public. And speaking of my big stories, I slam-dunked the ratings in PRIME TIME--when I discovered secret messages in computer spam.

HANK: Yeah, and remember? The FBI special agent in charge of cyber crimes told me that scheme would actually work.  But back to you, as they say. You grew up in the Midwest, studied English in college. Just like I did, imagine that. Did you always want to be a TV reporter?

CHARLIE: Well, I admit I did. My pals still call me Brenda Starr or Murphy Brown. Although now that bothers me a little, since they may be good role models, Murphy especially, but they're fictional characters. You know? (pauses)
Anyway, how about you? Did you always want to be on TV?

HANK: Not really. I wanted to be the lawyer for the mineworkers union for a while. A geneticist, until I could no longer avoid taking math and chemistry courses. I worked in politics for a while, then as a radio reporter. It's funny--I got my first job in radio in 1970, even though I'd never taken one journalism course and had not one second of experience on the air.

CHARLIE: How'd that happen?

HANK: Well, I informed the news director that the station's license was up for renewal at the FCC, then reminded him (oh so politely) that he had no women employees. He thought about it for maybe, 30 seconds. Then I got the job. I went on to work in Washington DC as a legislative aide to a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee, then at Rolling Stone magazine.

CHARLIE: Did you meet rock stars?

HANK: (sighs.) I was in the political unit. But I did work with Hunter Thompson for several months, traveling and helping him organize his coverage of the 1976 presidential campaign. As a result, I know how to inhale lighter fluid, then light it and breathe fire. Do NOT try this. I never actually did it, Hunter just showed me how.

CHARLIE: And then you went into TV?

HANK: I'm supposed to be interviewing you, right? But if you must know, just because we're colleagues, I started in TV in late 1975, covering the presidential campaign. After a year, I got a wonderful job offer at a station in Atlanta, and worked there for 5 years as an anchor and political reporter, then as the on-the-road reporter, doing features out of a mini-van. In 1982, I came to Boston accompanied, only by my cat Lola, as a general assignment reporter. Somehow, I became the feature reporter. The news director would say--there's no news today, send Hank out to do something funny. I did stories as poems, as songs, as plays. After a few years of that, I really felt that my role in TV was not to be the funny one. I felt more like the serious one. After covering the 1988 presidential campaign, I took the job as the investigative reporter.

CHARLIE: Twenty-six Emmys, right? And people put in prison, new laws passed, homes taken out of foreclosure, loans forgiven, millions in restitution and refunds, all because of your stories?

HANK: Thank you, Charlie. You've certainly done our homework. I mean, your homework.

CHARLIE: But hey, I must say loved PRIME TIME. Up for two RITAs and a DAPHNE. Won the RT Reviewers' Choice Award. Won the AGATHA for Best First Novel.

HANK: Let's hear it for aging women in TV...

CHARLIE: (interrupting) I especially loved that dress I got to wear in the final chapter. Even though I met a lot of scary people. And almost got killed a couple of times. What happened to that book, anyway? I'm hearing its hard to find.

HANK: Well, that's the good news and the bad news. It's pretty much sold out. FACE TIME, too. You remember that, your story about the--

CHARLIE: Sssshhh. Make 'em read it. It was a Book Sense Notable Book.

HANK: Anyway. They're both being re-issued as MIRA Books, next summer. So they'll be available again, and absolutely everywhere. And then, AIR TIME's coming out, as a MIRA Book, in September 09. Then DRIVE TIME, in 2010.  So you’re going to be all over the place.

CHARLIE: Do I get a clothing allowance? I love MIRA.

HANK: Me, too.

CHARLIE: And these Femmes! They totally rock. I love them, too. Think they'll let me interview them someday?

Jealousy--Turning a Vice into a Virtue

by Toni L.P. Kelner

Charlaine's post a few days about about envy got me thinking a bit about another vice: jealousy. It seems to me that jealousy has gotten a bad rep. Okay, it can cause all kinds of problems and hard feelings, but for me, it can sure be a dandy motivator.

As I write this, I'm sitting in the office of my house, and I honestly don't think that I'd have a house if I weren't a jealous person. A few years after Steve and I got married, a couple we knew bought a house, and invited us to come see it. We went, and made the appropriate sounds of approval and admiration. Then, when we got home, we kvetched. Why did they have a house, when we didn't? We made as much money as they did. We'd been married longer. Darn it, why didn't we have a house? We'd always kind of wanted one, but figured it was still out of reach. But seeing that they had managed to work out the myriad of details involved in the process convinced us that we could, too. Before six months were up, we had a house.

My writing career has similarly petty roots. After I moved to Massachusetts, I called a friend back home, and she asked about my writing. I admitted that the move and settling into a new job were keeping me pretty busy, and that I hadn't written much in a while. My friend then launched into an extended tribute to her friend "Penny," who had finished a manuscript and was shopping it around to publishers. Maybe Penny could give me pointers. Once again, I said the polite things, but as soon as I was off the phone, it was time to kvetch. More importantly, it was time to get serious about my writing, if I ever wanted to catch up to Penny. Within a year, I'd finished a draft of my first novel. It took another couple of years to rewrite it and sell it, and that took a lot more than being annoyed at Penny, but that's what got me started.

Jealousy isn't enough, of course. I can be jealous of Annie Lennox's singing and Robert Downey, Jr.'s acting without having the talent to emulate them, or the obsession to get past my lack of ability. But we really could afford a house, and I had been working at my writing for years. It was just that nasty jealousy of mine that lit the fuse.

So even though I'm still jealous by nature, at least some of the time I can twist that vice around into a virtue.

The time suck conundrum

Note:  This month's guest blogger is Michelle Gagnon.  Michelle is a former modern dancer, bartender, dog walker, model, personal trainer, and Russian supper club performer. Her debut thriller The Tunnels was an IMBA bestseller. Her next book, Boneyard, depicts a cat and mouse game between dueling serial killers. In her spare time she reads and…wait, who’s she kidding? She no longer has spare time.  Michelle, take it away!

 

Last weekend I attended a lecture by legendary crime author Gillian Roberts.  She discussed all the obstacles we face as writers, from the little voice in the back of our heads saying, “You can’t do this…you won’t succeed,” to the need to demand time and respect for your work, both from yourself and from your loved ones.

But what really resonated with me was when she mentioned the pitfalls of the internet. Don’t get me wrong, I love the internet— I can’t even imagine getting the vast majority of my book research done without it. And all of these various social networking groups are a godsend to writers at a time when much of the marketing responsibility is in our hands. 

That being said, it is stunning how much time I lose every day. Even as I write this, I’m clicking back and forth to check my email, a compulsion that I can’t seem to resist. If something occurs to me, however random it might be, I head on over to google. Is this movie playing in my area, and at what time? Or hey, I haven’t thought about that person in years, wonder if I can find any information on them online (or better yet, a photo). And while I’m at it, maybe a new review has posted for one of my books, I better take a minute and check…of course, since I’m already here, what’s my Amazon.com ranking these days? (I’m especially not proud of this last one, but there it is, the ugly truth).

Trolling the internet and checking email has fast become the equivalent of moseying on down to the fridge to see if anything new has materialized in the past hour (not that I’ve stopped doing that, either).  Every day I receive digests from over 30 yahoo groups, not to mention Dorothy L, Shelfari, Good Reads, Myspace, Facebook…the list truly does go on and on. Time slips away as I sift through these (saying to myself, “But I MUST know what’s going on in the mystery community! Cannot fall behind!) And there are always so many interesting threads that I feel obliged to chime in on, so many books to review, so many emails and comments and blogs to check…I look up, and it’s time to sign off for the day and start getting dinner ready.

So where do you draw the line? How do you stay on top of the industry, market yourself and your books, while still getting some writing done and maintaining your sanity?

Seriously, I’m asking. Any and all advice would be appreciated.

PS: I’m holding a series of contests via my website for prizes such as an Amazon Kindle, iPod shuffle, and gift certificates (no time-expansion machines, though. Sorry). Go to www.michellegagnon.com for more details.

Extraordinary Symphony

BETANCOURT IS FREE!!!!! It is a day of great joy, laughing, dancing and loads of happy tears!

In case you haven't seen the news, Ingrid Betancourt, held hostage in the jungle by Colombian guerillas since 2002, has been rescued, along with a number of other hostages, by military intelligence agents of the Colombian government. The agents managed to infiltrate the guerillas, remain focused over long periods of time in the most dangerous of circumstances, and lie like dogs without being found out. God bless those brave, two-faced story-telling heroes.

Any rescue attempt in that environment could easily have ended in a blood bath with the hostages killed. Instead, the agents and other military personnel pulled it all off without a single shot being fired. Of the daring, meticulously planned operation, Betancourt said, "It was an extraordinary symphony in which everything went perfectly."

The details of the rescue, which I'm sure are all over the internet and news shows now, are the kind that make you want to jump up and shout, "Yes!" Why? The 'extraordinary symphony' of events, the same thing that happens in a great book or movie. Sometimes when mystery writers feel they can never finish that book they're working on, things will never come together, it's completely impossible, it's because they're feeling the pressure of creating that symphony. It isn't enough to put down words. We want our readers to experience the delight of a complex plan coming together. We want to be the best composer and the best conductor we can possibly be.

Here are two fine examples in the mystery world:

James Lee Burke - The Man. El Numero Uno. That guy knows how to mix a big batch of well-rounded characters who aren't just written well, they're singular, like real people. Need I mention setting? I thought not. Every book is a swirling mass of hot lush conceit and every other human failing and triumph, deep hate and deeper love, all perfectly orchestrated. He's so good, at the end of the book, you need a double whiskey and good cry as you contemplate the universe.

Ken Bruen - Also The Man and El Numero Uno. It's like Rubenstein and Horowitz - they're both the best. And speaking of crying in your whiskey. Holy St.Taylor and St. Brant. Bruen accomplishes the same as Burke, only by doing the opposite. He strips away everything, no excess words for difficult emotions to hide behind. Oh, but what beauty in the words he does use. Immaculate. Poetry and music, the food of the gods. And if that's not enough, he mixes beautiful plot twists and humor in the score.

Who are your favorite mystery maestros?