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Fuzzy Research

Writers often find themselves in strange places for the sake of research. Sometimes we take the old standby advice of "write what you know" when we're pounding out a new story. Other times we do the opposite, step outside our comfort zones into the outer limits.

And sometimes, we let our friends talk us into venturing Out There, just in case we might see or hear something useful and/or interesting that would fit in a future book, like this:

 

No, mystery fans, those laundry baskets do not contain wigs for customers of the Big,Tall & Downright Gigantic catalog. These are just a few of the hundreds of containers of wool encountered last week when former Femmes Deborah Adams and Julie Wray Herman took me away from my comfort zone and out to the country. So while Charlaine celebrated her #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list, and while Dana beheld the wonders of Italy and Greece, I was at the Sheep, Wool and Fiber Show at the Dickson County Fairgrounds.  

I am a city person. I don't do country well. Nor do I do craft-y things well. None of that mattered. I had such a great time being with my friends and learning all new stuff from the crafts people and sheep-savvy vendors.

When we walked into the first shed, we met Galena, a lovely lady from the Ukraine, who showed us how to use a spinning wheel:

 

Julie immediately got into the spirit of things. Galena showed her how to make yarn from combed wool with a drop spindle:

 

Since that takes coordination, I knew I couldn't do it. Farther along though, we stopped at a booth where two ladies showed us needle felting techniques. They used combed and dyed wool to decorate all sorts of fabric products:

 

Not sure I'll ever be able to do that either, but at least this one didn't involve spinning parts.

I wish I'd taken pictures of the Icelandic sheep wool we saw at a booth. According to the lady who owned them, these beautiful creatures were much smarter than the average sheep. I asked if they were in fact from Iceland. She said yes, they were descendants of Icelandic sheep who were descended from those brought over by Vikings. Wow, Viking bleaters in Tennessee. You learn something every day.

Who knows if I will ever use anything we saw in a future mystery. Maybe in a historical, set out in the country? Some of those farm implements looked like good weapon possibilities. The needles and the spindles, definitely. Not so sure about the spinning wheel. I guess somebody could trip over one and knock themselves out. Maybe I could do a mystery where the sheep are the detectives ... no, somebody has already done that. How about a serial killer who leaves little-bitty marks on his victims and it turns out to be a rabbit?

That red eye is a dead giveaway.

Research is fun and one of the good things about being a writer. The best part about it though are the special friends you make along the way.

Back from the Odyssey

by Dana

Okay, it wasn’t ten years out and ten years back, but it was my first time to Greece and we covered a lot of ground:  Venice (Italy), Split (Croatia), Corfu, Athens, Mykonos and Delos, and Olympia.  In a post on The Lipstick Chronicles, I described the different ways my husband and I prepared for the trip (he chose a graphic novel, Frank Miller’s 300, and a GPS; I chose the writings of Thucydides and Euripides, and quick-dry panties).  Oddly enough, our choices were complementary:  when we couldn’t see land, we used the GPS to find the rough location, then one of my more detailed maps to see it in better context (hello, geeks!).  When we visited the archaeological sites, we both had an idea of what to look for. 

But it’s not like we were navigating by stars, living off the land, and discovering lost cities.  It was a cruise, after all.  More than civilized, despite an alarming number of observed Speedos. 

A few highlights, with more soon to be found on my blog:

Venice:  It’s one of my favorite cities, and thanks to a vaporetto strike (hey, it’s not Italy without a strike), we “had” to take a water taxi the long way around the Grand Canal to St. Mark’s Square. 

Corfu:  The site of the family wedding, the raison d’etre of the trip.  Bright sun, blue sea, FANTASTIC food, happy family.  Congratulations to K and A! 

Athens:  We went on a tour of the Acropolis.  Our guide was fantastic, and fie upon those who say it’s less impressive than expected.  It was staggering.  

Delos:  We took a tour of this tiny island off the coast of Mykonos; it’s one of the most important archaeological sites in the world.  Sun, sea, and wind; ruins and wildflowers.  It made me incredibly happy to be there.   

Ancient Olympia:  The site of the original Olympics (and the missing statue in the Temple of Zeus is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World—my  first!).  Okay, that's the Temple of Hera, but you get the idea. 

Another wonderful thing about the trip:  the 2009 Anthony Award Nominations were announced while I was away.  Because it was hard to keep up with everyone from the ship, I’d again like to congratulate Fellow Femme Toni for her nomination for Best Short Story (“Skull and Cross-Examinations”) and all the nominees in every category.  I’d also like to thank so many folks for their kind words and congratulations on my Anthony nomination for my short story, “The Night Things Changed."  It’s been a very exciting year for me and I’m proud and honored to find myself among such talented writers.

TRANSITIONS

No matter what you're writing, in every book there's a before -- and after. Before I found the body, before I confronted the murderer, before I discovered that the leaves of a billabolla plant were undetectably poisonous . . . After every "before" situation, the "after" consists of the reaction or the consequence.

The past two weeks have been all about befores and afters in my family. Last week I found out I'd debuted at Number One on the New York Times list. There's simply no thrill like that for a writer. Maybe it's because most publishers are in New York, or maybe it's because New York is one of the cultural capitals of America, or maybe it's the excellent reputation of the Times . . . but for whatever reason, the New York Times list has more prestige than any other. Of course the thrill was immense, but then came the "after." What do I do next? What do I long for professionally? What goal do I set? Should I have "Number One New York Times Bestseller" put on my tombstone?

In another "before" and "after" situation, my daughter became a college freshman instead of a high school senior. She earned honors along with this transition -- Female Athlete of the Year, Honors graduate, All-Star Arkansas. But now that she's gotten her diploma, there's a definite sag in the atmosphere. We're used to being proud of her as a high school student. We don't know what to expect of our last chick as a college student. Again, we're filled with uncertainty about how to proceed.

I'm sure lots of you have read Rosellen Brown's wonderful 1992 novel, Before and After, and you'll remember that the contrast in this book lies between before -- when the Reisers are the happy parents of happy children, whom they trust and adore -- and after, when they discover evidence that suggests their son may have murdered his girlfriend. I'm not suggesting my "afters" are that dramatic, but they both involve self-knowledge. Learning to know myself now that I've exceeded my expectations will be a challenge; and learning to know my daughter now that she's surely a young adult will be much more challenging and interesting.

Mayhem and the Mongoose Moon

by Donna

What is the plural of mongoose, anyway?  Mongeese?  Mongooses?  Both seem slightly odd.  Of course, so does the mongoose, singly or in group, so I'll try to avoid talking about more than one mongoose at a time.

Of course, that's going to be difficult, because there were an awful lot of them at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo.  And perhaps I shouldn't mention them at all, because they were the only living creatures I've seen so far in Omaha who weren't astonishingly upbeat and welcoming.

My friends Lori Hayes and Evelyn Whitehill, members of the Mayhem in the Midlands committee, were hospitable enough to take me on what has become an annual pilgrimage to the zoo on Thursday.  We were in our last hour at the zoo, beginning the slow uphill trek to the gate, when we passed the Dwarf Mongoose exhibit.  They're small--maybe squirrel sized--and cute, and we all stopped and said "Awwwww."

That's when one of them mooned us.

The mongoose, who had been peering myopically at us, his nose almost touching the glass, suddenly whirled, smacked his derriere against the glass as high as he could manage, dragged it down the glass, and then raced to the back of the cage to join a knot of his relatives.

Our jaws dropped for a second, and then we all burst out laughing. 

"I wish I'd gotten a picture of that," I said.

As if hearing my request, another mongoose scuttled forward, peered through the glass, and mooned us.

We must have spent ten or fifteen minutes there, cameras in hand, but never quite managing to have them pointing in the right direction when a mongoose made his amusingly rude gesture. 

Was this some kind of territorial defense tactic--warning us that we were getting too close to the glass that marked the boundaries of their turf?  Was it something they do to amuse themselves at the expense of the tourists, the way the gorillas occasionally hurl themselves at what the signs assure us is unbreakable glass, just so they can watch the humans flinch?

We never figured it out.  The mongoose tribe wasn't giving out any information.

We eventually gave up, and moved on to visit the sharks.  There's a part of the aquarium where the human path travels under the tank, and you can look up at the white underbellies of the sharks as they cruise slowly overhead.  Not a view of a shark I'd like to see in any other situation.  But the sharks never pay any attention to the tasty tidbits strolling beneath them.  They ignore us, which is exactly the sort of treatment you want from a shark.

We didn't ride the Sky Rail, a sort of ski lift from one end of the zoo to the other, but had fun imagining what the animals must think as it sails over their heads.  Particularly since part of its route lies over the cheetah enclosure.  Do the big cats ever glance up hopefully as a car sails over--filled, perhaps, with rowdy teenagers shoving each other, or perhaps a quarreling couple?  Do they plot out what they'll do if human prey ever does fall from the sky?

"Now that would be an interesting plot for a story," I said to Lori.  "What if you just took your victim in the Sky Rail and shoved him out over the cheetahs?"

Lori's a writer, too.  She got that look we all learn to recognize in each other--the look that says we're checking out the fictional possibilities of an interesting what if.

That's one of the beauties of spending a weekend at a mystery convention.  We may never know what the mongoose and his siblings were thinking.  But back at Mayhem, we can get a little closer to understanding the minds of our fellow homo sapiens--at least the subspecies of us who love mysteries.  We're all looking for the next must-read book.  We're all hoping to gain a few insights into the minds of the writers who created our favorite books and series.  And for those of us who write, there's always the possibility that some phrase uttered in a panel, some small fact tossed off by the forensic expert, or perhaps a chance word overheard in the bar will be just the tidbit we need for our next story.

Just remember: I've got dibs on the Mystery of the Mongoose Moon.

The Amazing, Exploding Blog

By Kris

I never doubted the power of the Internet. I don’t think any of us can, given the way it has created communities from strangers across the globe, brought us an immediate form of communication that many prefer to the phone, pushed the 24-hour news cycle to such manic extremes it’s as if the entire planet perpetually OD’s on caffeine, not to mention alerting us to all the hot chicks yearning for us out there, money-making opportunities only available to the billion or so souls hand-picked by Nigerian philanthropists, and the plethora of enhancement products available for parts that some of us don’t even have. Okay, so it’s been a mixed blessing. But powerful. If I had any doubt of that, I recently received a demonstration of its speed and its reach.

It started simply enough. One of my publishers asked me to set up a Red Room page. In case you’re not familiar with it, Publishers Weekly has described RedRoom.com as “Facebook for authors.” Well, I’m not sure Facebook and MySpace and that generation of sites  offer much in the way of genuine promotional opportunities for authors. I’m not convinced they sell books. When a reader wants to find a new author, do they spend eight hours viewing the baby pictures of countless strangers, or do they browse a bookstore or library?

But I do love networking with other writers, and Red Room seemed like it provided something unique. I set up my page, and I posted my first blog there, “Authors Behaving Badly.” You can read it here.

In case anyone is unaware, I am not only a published author, with my husband, Joe, I also own The Well Red Coyote bookstore in Sedona, Arizona. Nothing has taught me as much about the book biz as running a bookstore. And while I’m sure I don’t know nearly as much as full-time booksellers, who’ve been in the business longer than my four years, I do think my duel perspective gives me an unusual take on things. Most of the authors I’ve encountered in my bookseller capacity have been absolutely wonderful, but too many have behaved in ways that can only hurt their relationships with bookstores.

I’ve shared these remarks in a variety of forums and formats before now. But posting this blog on RedRoom.com also demonstrated the truth in another couple of clichés, including “Timing is everything” and real estate’s insistence on the value of “location, location, location.” Posting it on RedRoom.com, at this time, gave that blog an unbelievable ride.

Once RedRoom.com chose “Authors Behaving Badly” for their “Best of RedRoom” section, the Internet put on its muscle-flexing show. Thousands of visitors to my page there read it, according to the stats the site provides. But that was just the beginning. Writer after writer posted it to other lists, blogs and writing communities. I heard from people I haven’t seen in years, and each told me about reading it on this list or that, and the number of other locations they passed it onto. It moved from writer lists to editor and librarian lists. My mailbox filled with reactions from both acquaintances and strangers. Google Alerts worked overtime announcing new sites on the Internet that shared my remarks. All within days. It’s beyond my ability to count how many people may have read it — I’d need hundreds of fingers and toes! The speed, the reach, the power of the Internet absolutely stunned me, its semi-fan.

Though the number of views still continues to climb, the speed with which this blog was moving has finally slowed down. I’m glad of that. For a short time there, my head was spinning so fast, it threatened to fly off. But the Internet’s might has meant my remarks reached loads of people. I hope it's been read by up-and-coming writers, the newly published or soon-to-be, so they can learn from the mistakes of others. And I hope a few of the writers who’ve made the mistakes I wrote about, or others just as ill considered, have learned something, too.

What surprises and gratifies me most is that I didn’t receive a single negative comment or email. You might be thinking that nobody would defend rude, clueless behavior. Get real! Actual authors made those regrettable choices. And anyone who has been on the Internet for more than five minutes, not to mention the years most of us have, know there are people out there who will flame absolutely anything.

But not this, apparently. Not yet, anyway. That has made my belief in other authors even stronger. While the aberrations that still occasionally occur continue to shock and sadden me, I’m sure they represent only the tiniest part of us. I feel good about that.

TIME TRAVEL

 by Hank Phillippi Ryan

 

You think there's no such thing as time travel? I disagree.  Wasn't it just the other day I was wearIly slogging through yet another snowstorm? Cranky about cold feet and dripping eyes and those tricky slush puddles that look like pavement until you step into them and realize they're icy gunk up to your knees.

 

(In all fairness--it was also just the other day, I think, that I was marveling at the beautiful snow, how it so perfectly covers everything and how I still hesitate to be the first person to step into a pristine expanse of white.)

 

And now--the tulips are almost over. Some even survived the attacks by the marauding squirrels. And the migrating ducks have arrived again, for the sixth year or so, into our backyard pool. The lilacs are in full bloom. (And I still haven't figured out how to keep them from wilting when I bring them inside.)

 

But the time thing--I remember when summer vacation stretched forever, when three months seemed full of endless possibilities and the fall semester impossibly far away.

 

Now, I'm planning events into 2010. Twenty-ten! What kind of a year is that! I'll have my fourth book out in February 2010. And I still reel when I think about how we got there.

 

I remember when I thought  "1984" was such a bizarre year--and it was never gonna happen. It did.  And 2000, of course, that was so far away that it seemed like a made-up date on the calendar. And 2001 was just as unsettling Did you hear Also Sprach Zarathrustra in your head from time to time? I did.

 

Last night we went to the Titian-Tintoretto-Veronese exhibit at the Museum of Fine Art. It was--wonderful of course but there was a time-line in one room and that blew me away. Titian was born around the time Columbus came to the new world.  During the time span of the three painters, Shakespeare wrote, and Michaelangelo lived and died, and Elizabeth I came to the throne, and it was all five hundred years ago.  We still know about those things, and love the writing, and revere the Queen, and are in awe of the art. 

 

And now--I'm in the edit booth at work, and my editor just turned on the TV to the NASA channel. And I'm seeing the astronauts walking in space. It's hard even to fathom.

 

So, you're saying, what's the point, please, Hank? And I promise there is one. Time travelling is what we do every day.

 

But it's still not time for white shoes.  And I had a fleeting thought the other day about a gin and tonic--but my husband told me that was pushing the season.  And we don't want to do that. The time will go by quickly enough on its own.

Honor Bound

by Toni L.P. Kelner

I've been thinking a lot about honor. I've recently been honored by a Macavity nomination for my short story "Keeping Watch Over His Flock." At the same time, I've been embroiled in a dispute with a company that refused to honor a quote for a service on their web site, which was finally semi-resolved today. (I say semi-resolved, because they've made a promise, and until they actually honor that promise, it's not totally resolved.) Then today my daughter was inducted into the National Junior Honor Society. That all got me to thinking about what honor means to a writer.

Of course there are the obligations and responsibilities of business:  completing the manuscripts you've promised, meeting your deadlines, posting your blogs as scheduled. Plus a writer needs to honor other writers' work, which means no plagiarism or claiming somebody else's idea as your own.

Then there is the honor of the work itself, the implied promise to the reader, and that means a lot of different things.

• I have to honor my reader. If I start a cozy series, the series should stay cozy--if I start out writing a procedural, I'm not going to turn it into a romance. Sure, I can push the limits, but only if I stay true to what I've already established. To act any differently feels like a bait-and-switch. So when Femme Charlaine wanted to write something with a darker edge than her Aurora Teagarden books, she started the Lily Bard series--she didn't suddenly make the Teagardn books go noir.
• I have to honor the subject. If I'm writing about television investigative journalism, as Femme Hank does so well, I have to write about it accurately. I can't turn my reporter slapping around suspects when she's supposed to be conducting interviews and hitting the web. It's also my job to make it interesting to the reader.
• I have to honor the characters. Conflict is the heart of fiction, and that means I'm probably going to use characters with opinions I do not share. If nothing else, I write about murderers, and I disapprove of murder. But I cannot make the villains and antagonists out of cardboard. They have to be real characters, just as Femme Elaine makes the most annoying of Florida's characters understandable.
• I have to honor the world. If I've world with werewolves and vampires, or with Celtic goddesses and leprechauns, I've got to establish the rules and stick with them, just as Femme Dana does in her Fangborn stories and Femme Kris does in her new book High Crimes on the Magical Plane.
• I have to honor the setting. If I write about a small Southern town, I have to know small towns as well as Femme Mary does for her Thistle & Twigg series. 

Okay, maybe I won't get all of those points right in every story and novel--I already blew the one about deadlines, since this was supposed to be up Sunday--but I promise to try. Word of honor.

Malice-A-Palooza!

Wow, my recovery time from mystery conventions just keeps getting longer. Malice Domestic, the raucous con that brings out the beast in genteel traditional and cozy mystery fans every spring, took place last weekend. Am I back to my normal self (no snickering please) yet? Nope. Still high from the excitement of it all. I love seeing old friends and talking to enthusiastic booklovers. Hanging out in the bar, laughing all night and sampling fine chocolates are pretty fun too.

None of those can compare to the best thing about this year's Malice - that my fellow Femmes ROCKED AND RULED!! The Big BIG news - Dana Cameron won her first Agatha Award for Best Short Story. Way to go, Dana!

That little cutie in the teapot was one of the Dana's giveaways in celebration of her new Fangborn series. I named mine Teef.

Femme Toni Kelner was also an Agatha nominee for Best Short Story this year. In a way, this was a triple win for her. She and Femme Charlaine Harris co-edited the anthology Wolfsbane and Mistletoe in which Toni's and Dana's nominated stories appeared!

Equally cool: Femme Elaine Viets was a masterful Toast Master for all the ceremonies. She also did a bang-up job as moderator of the Humor panel and managed to throw out some of the night's best zingers herself. It was so good to see her doing what she does best - being wickedly funny.

We knew Hank Ryan was a Femme of many talents, but that she could be an AUCTIONEER??!! Thanks to her persuasive, some might say dangerously so, abilities, she and her co-conspirator and Femmes' Friend Pari Noskin Taichert, helped raise a boatload of money for the John L. Gildner Regional Institute for Children and Adolescents that will support their literacy programs. Great work, ladies!   

Once again, Femme Donna Andrews made us proud with her Agatha nomination for Best Novel for Six Geese A-Slaying. This is the latest installment in her multi-award winning Meg Langslow series. How does she keep doing it? Congratulations, Donna!

Random thoughts and photos:

From Dana:

"Going to Malice is always a treat, and winning the Agatha for 'The Night Things Changed' was as wonderful as it was unexpected. Getting to celebrate with a number of the Femmes - Mary (who rocked the Senior Sleuths panel), Toni and Donna (who were both nominated for Agathas), Hank (who was amazing at the Live Auction), and Elaine (our Toast Master) - made it all better.

"I was sitting, still dazed, at the airport, when I found out the story had also been nominated for a Macavity. I had about three minutes until my flight boarded, so I called Toni, who was on the road to the Festival of Mystery with Donna, to tell her that SHE had been nominated, too! That was a great flight home!"

  

Here Toni and Dana pose with friends Chris Grabenstein (left) with his Agatha Award for Best Young Adult Novel, and on the right, Carla Coupe who was also a nominee for the Agatha for Best Short Story.

From Toni:

"As we've all heard, this was a smaller Malice Domestic than usual, but no less fun. I had a terrific time, as usual, catching up with people and their books and upcoming releases. Naturally, a serious high point was being right next to Dana when her name was announced for the Agatha Award. It was also fun being next to her as she squee'ed for the rest of the evening at the bar. Seeing Elaine Viets as Toast Master after a two-year delay was wonderful, too. Getting to be an Agatha nominee didn't suck, either.

"But my favorite moment was when somebody plunked a copy of Curse of the Cousins in front of me to ask me to sign it. It was the first copy I'd signed, and only the second copy I'd even seen, since author copies arrived while I was gone. Later on, I saw the first stack of copies for sale in the dealer's room, thanks to Mystery Loves Company.

"It just seemed awfully appropriate for a book to debut at Malice. You see, Malice is my personal milestone. I attended Malice III in 1991 with my first completed manuscript in my suitcase, looking for an agent. By Malice IV, I had an agent. By Malice V, I was waiting for my first book to come out, and by Malice VI, I had two out, and so on. Malice has become the time of year when I look back at my career so far and forward to where I'm going. Right now, I'm pretty happy about what's coming.

"So here's to Malice Domestic past, present, and future! If all goes well, I'll be back next year, for my twentieth Malice!"

My biggest surprise at the convention: At the Agatha banquet, convention-goers who were attending Malice for the first time were asked to raise their hands. To everyone's amazement, what looked like about a third of the audience did so. Folks, contrary to the popular propaganda that the traditional mystery genre is dying, readers are still seeking out and buying mysteries on the lighter side in great numbers, just like they have for the past sixty or more years.

My thanks and admiration go out to the Malice board for their hard work in putting on another great Malice convention!