My Weblog

When storytelling doesn't *quite* save the day

Okay, so I'm sitting here at the household computer because my work computer is mysteriously, badly, out of order.  And I'm panicking:  I have a book in the final stages of editing, a short story that needs a lot of work, a three-foot-tall manuscript that isn't reading itself, and a host of other things, most of which require that other computer and most all due about the same time.  I would employ the obvious cliche about the clock ticking, except the kitchen clock has stopped.  Really.  I've decided it's all a colossal conspiracy, dark and ominous. 

On top of it all, it's my turn to blog for the Femmes, and I had this great idea about the end of the series Battlestar Galactica, the way the creators and some of the cast went to the United Nations for a panel on how the themes of the show--war, torture, bigotry, human rights--can be used to raise the profile of serious humanitarian issues worldwide.  I was excited because I've really respected the writing on BSG and the UN event brought one of my favorite themes to the fore:  how writing, more specifically fiction, more specifically genre fiction, is used to make sense of, and maybe even change, the world. 

It's not a new idea, but it is a powerful one.  A couple of my favorite recent examples:  Lee Child wrote a dandy essay touching on this notion.  At Bouchercon Anchorage, SJ Rozan moderated a panel on how genre fiction works, and we discussed ideas about community-building, discussing hot topics within the safer context of a fictional world, the way that storytelling can change the language--and mindset--of a culture.  We see this in the Femmes' work:  All of us write about truth and right, social justices versus and legality, and how rotten things happen--and how we'll get through them.  Potent stuff. 

All right, Dana, you're probably saying.  If fiction is so powerful, prove it.  How can you use BSG to solve your present problem?

No sweat.  I'm going to solve it by asking:  how would the central characters of Battlestar deal with my computer malfunction?

Admiral Adama:  Using a troop of armed marines, he seizes a new one from the civilian fleet, despite protests.  Not an option.

Starbuck:   Kicks the computer until it catches fire, gets drunk, and then has a one-night stand.  Attractive, but not an option.

Lee Adama:  Researches the issues surrounding the history of the computer and what its current political concerns are, and then broods before making a bold but dangerous change of allegiance.  Not applicable.

Caprica Six:  Redirects the computer's programming by accessing it directly through her own flesh.  Not biologically possible.

Dr. Baltar:  Ignores impending deadlines, wanders off to focus on an unrelated, secret pet project paid for by someone else, and then lies about the computer.  Attractive, but not an option. 

Frak. 

Perhaps I'm taking this a bit too literally.  Or, I may have to look to some other brand of storytelling to get me through this temporary crisis.  Any suggestions?

Decluttering: the first step is the hardest

by Donna

I've been binging on Clean House recently.  I've watched just about every episode of Clean Sweep, Neat, and Mission: Organization, but for some reason it took me a while to warm to Clean House.  Now, though, I'm an addict.  Last night, to motivate me through a marathon attack on my income tax preparations, I watched about six episodes of Clean House that I'd saved up on my DVR.  Went to bed tired, cross-eyed, but content.

When I look around at my own house, I often think of it in Clean House/Sweep terms.  Some days, I think my living room or my guest room could stack up to some of those lovely, serene, uncluttered rooms they show the families at the end of the show.  More often, I look around my office or my garage and say, "Oh, my God, this looks like the before shot on a Clean Sweep episode!"

Sometimes, I'm just as glad that Clean House, like Clean Sweep before it, only takes on families in the Southern California area.  I have the occasional nightmare in which Peter Walsh or Niecy Nash shows up on my doorstep, with the team arrayed in the background, to see how well I have profited from watching them.

Other days, I'm envious. Those folks on TV get a whole team to help them.  It's not just the manpower--it's the expertise.  The organizers know how to get rid of the stuff they talk the homeowners into giving up.

In fact, that's the biggest barrier for most do-it-yourself declutterer--not knowing what to do with the stuff you're no longer using.  You can't just pack it all up for Goodwill or the Salvation Army—there's stuff they won't take, and stuff you probably won't talk yourself out of if you're just dumping it en masse on a charity. And the stuff no one wants—are you just going to throw it into the landfill, or are you going to try to find a way to recycle it?

In short, the first step in any decluttering program has to be figuring out not what you're going to get rid of, but where.   Once I realized this, I started doing some research and collecting a file full of information on where to unload stuff. I call it my decluttering arsenal.  Here are some of the weapons in it.

Purple Heart
If the sheer physical effort of hauling stuff away is stymieing you, try a pick up service.  At Purple Heart's website, you can enter your zip code into their web site to find out if it's available in your area, and schedule your pickup online.

The same goes for Vietnam Veterans of America, the Lupus Foundation of America, and probably quite a few other good causes.

Freecycle
Freecycle is cool. It's a nonprofit grassroots movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns, and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Membership is free, and each local group is moderated by a local volunteer. You can find out if there's group in your area by entering your town and state in the search box on the Freecycle site.  Once you join your local group, you can post items you want to give away, and if someone can use the item, they'll come and pick it up from you.  The great thing about Freecycle is that you know you're giving your stuff to someone who wants it.  I've given a surplus microwave to a family that couldn't afford to buy a new one and an old but serviceable window air conditioning unit to a needy college student.

And in many areas, Freecycle now has an adjunct called Freecycle Café, which is "a forum where members can show community appreciation; ask for information on local services, businesses, charities, nonprofit organizations; give members a chance to volunteer with Freecycle or other area groups, e.g. set up a table for volunteers wanted; allow members to post links in the Links section to their businesses or set up a database for this purpose."  It's a great place to find local decluttering resources. My friends on the Reston/Herndon Freecycle Cafe list must know every consignment store in the area!

Selling stuff
Maybe you've got items you paid good money for, and you can't quite convince yourself to give them away for free.  But what if someone would pay you for them?  For me, that often makes it much easier to pry my fingers open.  Check out Craig's List, or eBay, or ask around for those local consignment shops. Investigate the availability of community yard sales.   The where will depend on your local area, but once you know some places where you can sell stuff, you will suddenly start finding more and more stuff that you can bear to sell. Sometimes, if I am trying to convince myself that I no longer need a particular book, I look it up on Half.com.  If it's out of print and selling for a hefty price there, I might just list it.  And if it's selling for a dollar or less, that makes it all the easier to put it in the bag for our Sisters in Crime chapter book exchange or the Friends of the Library book sale.

Recycling
I hate knowing stuff's going to end up in a landfill.  And less and less stuff has to these days.  At Earth911 you can enter your zip code to get localized information on many, many kinds of recycling.  (For example, did you know that most UPS stores would love to have your Styrofoam peanuts to reuse?  Who knew?)

Technotrash is a growing category for all of us.  What to do with broken CDs, old videotapes or cassettes, outdated software disks, and all the detritus of the electronic age?  In many cases, there's a recycling--or ecycling--solution. 

The EPA has a highly useful page about ecycling.  Some of the useful links you'll find there:

Techsoup
The Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation

Best Buy's tech recycling program is now available in all of its stores. Check out Staples' tech recycling program, Office Depot's tech recyling program, and the programs now offered by just about every cell phone company.  And did you know that you can pick up free-postage paid envelopes in any U.S. Post Office to mail back inkjet cartridges, PDAs, Blackberries, digital cameras, iPods and MP3 players for recycling?

If you don't have a local tech recycling center, or if they don't handle some kinds of technotrash cluttering your office, try Green Disk— GreenDisk handles all technotrash disposal needs from a CD to a PC and just about everything in between--they will safely and securely destroy your old data, recover reusable components, and recycle all of the rest of your accumulated technotrash.  You buy a Technotrash can, and when you've filled it up, you can schedule a Fedex pickup and wave goodbye.

Or ask your friends.
By asking friends about where they donate or recycle, you can come up with some wonderful resources in your own neighborhood.  A friend put me in touch with a halfway house that helps give a new start to women who have been paroled from prison or finished their sentences—they need all kinds of things.  Another friend periodically hauls my old newspapers off to her veterinarian's office.  I know a couple of folks who collect books for active duty soldiers or veteran's hospitals.  I wouldn't have learned about these resources if I hadn't made it a project to keep my ears open for donating and recycling opportunities.

Your decluttering arsenal will be different from mine, depending on what kind of stuff you're getting rid of and what resources are available in your local area.  But if you need to declutter--and how many of us can honestly say we don't!--I highly recommend assembling that arsenal before you start sorting and purging.  Instead of picking up stuff, asking yourself, "What should I do with this?" and putting the stuff back where you found it, you will find yourself saying, "I can Freecycle this, and this should go into the Purple Heart bag, and maybe I should drop this off at the women's shelter and...."

Okay, it's still a lot of work. But it's worth it.

And if you need to take a break, put your feet up, and do a little reading--try Mary Jane Maffini's new mystery series starring professional organizer Charlotte Adams, or Killed by Clutter from Leslie Caine's Domestic Bliss series. They might inspire you to keep going with your decluttering...and if not, at least you'll be having fun.

Happy decluttering! 

And by the way, I'm always looking for good resources, so if you've got any suggestions, please share them in a comment.

Donna

Who is Your Favorite Forgotten Author?

by Kris

I was recently asked by Patricia Arlene Abbott to write a review of a forgotten or neglected book for the Friday’s Forgotten Books feature on her blog, for this past Friday, March 20.

It stunned me to discover I wasn’t sure I could remember any anymore. Sure, like most published authors, I’m always keeping up with what’s coming out now. But that’s not the reason I fear I can’t remember the golden oldies. I’m also a bookseller — with my husband, Joe, I own The Well Red Coyote bookstore in Sedona, Arizona. I can’t tell you how strongly sellers of new books need to be focused on the to-be-published. And since our store is a general-interest store, that means what’s new in every single category.

But then I looked at my own shelves at home, and the books displayed in the most prominent positions. Those are the books I return to again-and-again for my own readings. Suddenly, I went from not remembering a single one, to remembering too many!

I don’t think the book I selected qualifies as forgotten, I’m happy to say. But since there aren’t many copies of Dorothy Gilman’s The Tightrope Walker in the major wholesaler warehouses, it sure seems neglected.

I bought my hardcover copy decades ago at the original Earthling Bookstore in Santa Barbara, California. I didn’t find it on a shelf, but on the sale table out front, with other slightly shopworn books. I know I bought a stack of sale books that day, but The Tightrope Walker is the only one of those that has moved with me from house to house and also across state lines. Now the tattered dust jack is gradually disintegrating into literal dust — it looks like paper lace. But it still holds a prominent spot in my library.

The Tightrope Walker features Amelia Jones, a sad young woman who finds an alarming note in a hurdy gurdy that has come into her possession. It reads, “They’re going to kill me soon…” and it’s signed by a just the first name, Hannah. Alone and terrified herself, Amelia senses the fearful isolation in the note. Soon, this sheltered young orphan sets out in the big, bad world, which she’s largely avoided until then, determined to discover what happened to Hannah.

Along the way she encounters a wider range of personalities than she ever knew existed, finds love, and most importantly, finally faces the darkest episode from her own past. She solves a murder that went unrecognized as a murder, and posthumously brought justice to someone who, through her writing, made a difference in Amelia’s life. She also finds herself.

The title comes from the first paragraph and provides a metaphor for the way Amelia views life at the start of the book. “Sometimes I think we’re all tightrope walkers,” she says, “suspended on a wire two thousand feet in the air, and so long as we never look down we’re okay, but some of us lose momentum and look down for a second and are never quite the same again: we know.”

Especially inventive is the book within a book thread. Amelia discovers that Hannah was the author of her favorite childhood book, The Maze in the Heart of the Castle. As we watch Amelia overcome obstacle after obstacle, we see Maze protagonist, Colin, do the same. Interestingly, The Maze in the Heart of the Castle is a real novel for young readers that Gilman published years earlier. (And a copy of that also enjoys a primo spot on my shelves).

Though this charming story, with its engaging protagonist, works as an effective mystery, it’s so much more. The Tightrope Walker is really a journey of self-discovery.

It came into my life when I needed to move ahead more boldly and to look at the shadowy corners in my own mind. Amelia’s example helped me to do that. I still re-read it whenever my courage needs a nudge. And isn’t that what novels should do for us?

What are some of your forgotten or neglected favorites?

To Tell The Truth

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

 

You watched Perry Mason when it was on TV, right? The real one I mean, with Raymond Burr and William Tallman and--who? As Della Street? In my house, we were not allowed to say a word during "Perry." My corporate lawyer-stepfather was glued and riveted to the set, and did not want to miss a word. It was one of our special family moments together--made all the happier for him, I think, because none of us kids were talking.

 

Anyway, he used to say that there was a problem with juries  as a result of Perry, because they began to expect that--within 48 minutes or so--Perry would latch on to some critical hole in the case and blow the bad guy out of the water. Or, failing that, that some poor soul would leap up form the back of the courtroom and confess. And that would be that.

 

And when that didn't happen, my dad would say, people were not really convinced of anyone's guilt.

 

Time flies, but the effect of TV on juries persists. We all read last year or so about the CSI effect, right? When juries who watched the forensic specialists do their prime time magic were waiting for real-life counterparts to reveal--instantly and right on time--the critical blood spatter match or the maggot growth or the fact that what someone thought was a bone was actually ossified chewing gum. You get the picture.

 

Real life prosecutors were wary and worried--and began to ask jurors in the voir dire whether they  were CSI aficionados, and try to gauge whether they'd have unfair and unreasonable expectations of what real-life forensic analysis could provide.

 

Well now, there's a new one. The "Lie to Me" effect.  You know the show. Investigators look for "tells" or "microexpressions" on suspects, and describe and analyze how these short-lived and fleeting expressions can point to the guilty person. (There was a terrific article in the New Yorker about it a year or so ago. And I admit it made me start watching people more closely.)

 

 Like--a furrowed brow and jutting chin means someone is about to do something nefarious. Or pointing your finger in one direction while looking in the other signifies lying. You already know, when someone's covers their mouth when they talk, or pulls an ear--what they're saying is not true. (I think mothers get this instinctively.)  It's interesting, like instant body language. And the TV show intersperses clips from real life (Bill Clinton, Condoleezza Rice) to illustrate their points.

 

So--the Lie to Me effect. My husband is a criminal defense attorney, and apparently there's some talk on his lawyer listserv that jurors are practicing the "skills" they "learned" on Lie to Me to assess whether a witness is telling the truth!

 

Scary. But completely believable.

 

And wouldn't that be a great element for a novel? Fiction imitating life imitating television imitating a magazine article speculating about psychology.

 

(I'm not lying. Can you tell?)

 

 

 

Great Expectations

by Toni L.P. Kelner

This past week or so, there have been two interesting threads on the mystery listserv DorothyL.

• Fictional characters doing stupid things. You know, the gal in the filmy white gown who goes into the creepy basement armed with nothing but a birthday candle that's about to go out. Or the tough PI who gets a message from a source telling him that he has the key to the case, but he doesn't want to mention it on the phone, and by the time the PI gets to the source, the source is dead. 

• Real-life people not seeing what's going on. The example was the people who, upon finding out that their neighbor is a vicious serial killer, declare, "But he always seemed like a nice man." 

It occurred to me that these things are two sides of the same coin:  expectations.

Readers expect certain things to happen in books. If a source has a key bit of information he doesn't share immediately, he's going to die. If a gal goes into a creepy basement, there's going to be something awful in there. Every reader knows that. So why don't the characters know that?  Could it be because compelling characters don't know that they're characters?

Have you ever gone to the basement when the lights were out, even if you couldn't find a working flashlight? I mean, somebody has to flip the circuit breaker. Have you ever had a secret you didn't want to tell over the phone? I certainly have. Yet I'm still alive and kicking, and I'm not even surprised about it. I don't expect there to be anything creepy in my basement, except maybe a spider. And I don't expect to get killed because I wanted to break bad news in person.

Now go back to the neighbors of serial killers. No matter how much you hate your neighbor using the chain saw in the middle of the night or wrinkle your nose at the smell from his basement, very few of us honestly expect to find a serial killer next door. My own neighbors ran a chop shop pretty much out in the open, and I was totally clueless. It just never occurred to me to expect such a thing.

This provides an interesting problem for writers. We want our characters to be true to life as much as possible, but as soon as we send an unwary heroine into the basement, readers start complaining. Even if they're in a basement themselves! But if we go too far the other way, and have our character instantly suspecting that Mr. Strange the Neighbor is a serial killer just because he has bad hygiene, readers will howl just as loudly. It's tricky to balance readers' expectations of how a character should act against their expectations of what's going to happen next.

Just in case that weren't complicated enough, you have to recognize the fact that readers rarely open a book without knowing what it's about. Does anybody pick up Twilight by Stephanie Meyers without knowing that the strange boy in town is a vampire? Don't most people already know Harry Potter is a wizard?  So do you put the big revelation scene in the book early, to meet the reader's expectations, or later, to match the character's? 

As a reader, I want to have my expectations turned on their ear--as a person, not so much.  And as a writer, I'll try to keep playing with your expectations.

Deep Reads

Something I like about crime fiction is that there are so many types of books within the genre to choose from that I never run out of potential good reads. Literary? Non-fiction? Ha, it is to laugh. No way. I give literary novels this, they have great covers. Okay, some have good stories inside. So when a friend, a very well-read friend who knows what I like, recommended a mystery written by someone whom reviewers had described as 'literary,' well, huh. I hesitated.

I'm a mood reader. This is why I must have many books of varying mystery intensity at hand in my house. I don't want to risk a breakdown. This necessitates buying books of different flavors, even if I'm almost positive one isn't to my taste. And so, when my buddy Dean James said I had to read a mystery that a) was written by a literary-type person and b) has to do with Santeria, that scary voodoo stuff I have no interest in reading about, I didn't think I would like it at all.

I was so, so wrong. The book was Tropic of NIght by Michael Gruber. I bought it and stuck it in a bookcase almost a year ago then week before last finally got in the mood to try it. My oh my, what a book, what a writer. I can't believe I loved it so much. Yes, Santeria does play a big part in the story, and I admit, I did skip some paragraphs when I knew they were going to be gross, but it worked out fine. 

The basic storylines are about Jimmy Paz, an Afro-Cuban homicide cop in Miami, and Jane, a woman living under an assumed name in order to keep her murderous husband from finding her. That sounds blah, but Gruber masterfully brings these two characters to life. He does so beautifully though in a non-literary way. His experience in ghostwriting the first 16 Robert Tanenbaum thrillers explain this. He knows how to keep everything moving along well but not at the expense of developing the people and setting. You know, like a real mystery writer. They are police procedurals, only wider than usual.

What I love about Tropic of Night and also its sequel Valley of Bones is that they satisfy me on a mystery level and also on a deeper level. Each book is really about something else, something bigger. In Tropic of Night, readers are left to ponder what reality 'really' is. In Valley of Bones, this idea is explored further when Detective Paz deals with a murder suspect who could be crazy or could be having religious hallucinations. I will be thinking about these books for a long time.

Deep reads - gotta have them every now and then. Do you have any favorites like these that have stayed with you long after you read them? 

We Bold and Dangerous Women

I'm amazed at the punishment we women of mystery hand out. Not to our enemies -- to our protagonists. You'd think we were battle-hardened babes who carry concealed, or sorceresses with lots of defensive spells hidden in our pointy hats.

I've met all the Femmes. Several have been my friends for many years. Though we're not geographically close, we've been in each others' company often enough that I think I'd know if the other Femmes got beaten up on a regular basis. I've certainly never seen Toni whip out a revolver and shoot a waiter who was bringing her drink too slowly. Dana, yes. Whoops! Just kidding.

The closest we've ever come to crime while we were together was in Anchorage, Alaska. Strange, huh? We were there for Bouchercon, and we heard sirens outside. Of course, we couldn't resist . Dana was intelligent and prudent and stayed inside. Toni and I . . . weren't. We trotted outside to watch policemen -- guns out! -- arresting a young man (apparently an Inuit) who'd been "apprehended" in a stolen car. The crowd gathered on the sidewalk also consisted of Inuits, and they were unhappy with the arrest. Other tourists strolling by stopped to find out what was happening, and Toni and I found ourselves in the strange position of trying to explain the situation to people who spoke only (we think) Spanish. We can pantomime guns and handcuffs with the best of 'em.

But I digress.

It seems interesting to me that a group of very nice women, women who wouldn't even cheat on their hotel bills, can be so ruthless and bloodthirsty in the life they live in their minds.

Toni's Laura has been trapped in a burning building with a crazy cop. Dana's Emma's been stalked by an armed bad guy. Donna's Meg Langslow organizes a Christmas parade during which Santa gets murdered, Mary's Phoebe's kitchen has been firebombed, and my Sookie has been in the hospital so many times I've lost track. The other Femmes have an equally high injury/horrific event quota.

Why do we do this to them? So it won't happen to us, a psychologist might say. I prefer to believe that we're all so mild-mannered in real life because we deal out the punishment with a heavy hand when it comes to our fiction. We can take it, too. We've proved that, by golly. And we're still standing! Or at least, our protagonists are . . .