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Due to a set of strange circumstances, I was in a place I hardly expected to be on Saturday morning. I was at the Dallas Gun Show. I was surrounded by people I'd probably see together nowhere else, and I was seeing and smelling and hefting an amazing amount of death-dealing engineering.

I don't want to spark a gun-control debate, or a Second Amendment discussion. My interest, as always, was in the people behind the issues. Here are my observations: The huge hall was absolutely thronged with people and exhibitors, the crowd was probably 90% male, 90% Caucasian, and 50% (or more) over 40. There was also a heavy presence of law enforcement, and they weren't there to guard the exhibitors. They were there to buy.

Maybe I should have expected those statistics, but I didn't. The predominance of males, yes. But I didn't expect the overwhelming whiteness -- or maybe I should say grayness -- of the crowd. I'm still pondering that. I also noticed that the attendees were extremely courteous. I don't know if that's because we were in Texas, because of the age skew, or because it's smart to be polite around armed men.

And that led to another thought. There were a few police officers in the crowd who were there as security, no doubt about it. It struck me that it would take a complete and total idiot to attempt to rob someone at a gun show. Most of the exhibitors were armed, and I mean visibly armed. Anyone attempting to take down a dealer would have been Swiss cheese in a few seconds.

As we were leaving, a police officer who was there to buy (he had bags full of ammo) asked the man on the door how much longer he had to work. "The rest of the afternoon," the man replied.

"Just another day in paradise," said the policeman.

For me, it was a morning of immersion in another culture. I'd probably feel the same if I went to a polka festival or a Mary Kay sales meeting, though the fact that the common bond between the crowd members was firearms did color the event with darker hues. I learned quite a bit, and I got a lot of food for my brain. It'll be interesting thinking this over.

A visit to Torquay

by Marcia Talley

I’ve just returned from Dartmouth, Devon, where I’d gone to research my next mystery.  The parallels to my hometown of Annapolis are many – Dartmouth is home to the Britiannia Royal Naval College and the River Dart is alive with sailboats.  For me, it was love at first sight.  No trip to Dartmouth would be complete, however, without a pilgrimage to Greenway, the holiday home of Agatha Christie, just opened to the public this spring.  The National Trust, who maintains the property now, encourages visitors to arrive by “green” transport, so I rode the ferryboat up the river to Greenway.  Unfortunately, the remains of hurricane Bill were lashing Devon at the time, tearing at my raincoat and turning my umbrella inside out, so I had only the briefest glimpse of Agatha’s garden – where Amyas Crale drank that fatal glass of beer in Five Little Pigs -- and never made it down to the Victorian boathouse where poor Marlene Tucker was strangled in Dead Man’s Folly. 

The house is Georgian, the color of clotted cream, set on several hundred acres of lawns and gardens that sweep down to the river, the “perfect house” where Christie spent every summer from the time she bought it in 1938 until her death in 1976.  Due to the generosity of Christie’s grandson, Matthew, it’s just the way the family left it – hats, canes and umbrellas stacked on a table in the hallway, Agatha’s favorite serving dishes laid out on the dining room sideboard, a book resting on a table in the library, bookmarked by reading glasses.  You’ll find no docents dressed as Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot here, either, no velvet ropes.  Visitors can wander the house freely, as if they were Agatha’s guests and she’d stepped out, just for a moment.  Above all, it is a home.

During the restoration, the house began revealing fascinating secrets about its owner.  Christie was an accomplished pianist, but a crate of music under the piano showed that she composed music, too.  Then there was the discovery of 73 notebooks, including two unpublished Poirot stories, chock full of sketches for scenes that never made it into the novels.  One Poirot novel actually began life as an adventure for Miss Marple, the notebooks tell us.  And how about those 30 audio tapes, tucked away with an ancient tape recorder in an upstairs cupboard?  “Agatha sounds distinctly upper class, rather like The Queen, only more expressive,” says John Curran who recently published selections from the notebooks.  Eeek!  Time to get rid of that videotape of a speech where I’m talking so fast even I can’t understand it.

I was thinking about this as I wandered around Agatha’s house, poking my nose into her closet, and even her loo.  Fifty, sixty years from now, when my grandchildren donate my home to Historic Annapolis, do I want visitors to know that my first novel, Sing It To Her Bones, started out as a soap opera, a sprawling Southern, learning-how-to-deal-with-it novel?  Nuh-uh.  Ditch that crappy manuscript now, and make Ann Gelillo – who claims she still has a copy somewhere – an offer she can’t refuse.

Agatha has botanical prints on the walls of her bathroom.  I’ve got an Audubon bird print.  Check.  I’ve also got a stack of New Yorkers, a Chico’s catalog and a Carl Hiassen novel.  Okay, they can stay, but the jar of bleaching cream that I use on my upper lip has gotta go.

Agatha’s closet contains leather trunks, summer frocks, ball gowns, hats and furs.  Mine has old canvas duffles, a pair of bell-bottoms, an ankle-length leather skirt and a mu-mu in a festive Hawaiian print.  On the top shelf there’s some half-finished crewel embroidery that I started during the 1968 Olympic games.

I need help here.   I need The Stagers, those people on the House and Garden network who prepare a home for sale, making it look as attractive as possible.  Out with those Readers’ Digest condensed editions of Moby Dick and Sister Carrie!  Pitch that dog-eared copy of War and Peace that makes it abundantly clear that I’ve read Peace a couple of dozen times more than War.  Mystery Writing for Dummies, The Joy of Sex, Twenty Characters in Search of a Plot?  Buh-bye.  Replace the complete run of tattered James Bond paperbacks with leather-bound editions of Dickens and Shakespeare, and find me some Proust, vite, en Francais, bien sur.

There.  I feel better already.

Agatha Christie’s Greenway is so comfortable, so homey, that you’ll feel like you could move right in.  And you can.  An upstairs, self-catering apartment can accommodate you and nine friends for around two thousand pounds per week.  Dinner in Agatha’s dining room, served by a butler, can also be arranged.

Anyone care to join me for tea?

Marcia Talley is the Agatha and Anthony award winning author of Without a Grave and seven previous mysteries.  A new short story, “Can You Hear Me Now?” appears in Two of the Deadliest: New Tales of Lust Greed and Murder by Outstanding Women of Mystery, edited by Elizabeth George.  HarperCollins is featuring Marcia’s story full text online.

When art shouldn't imitate life

by Donna

I used to be a cell phone Luddite.   My old cell phone was a Motorola something-or-other.  I can't exactly say I hated it. More like we never really got past being distant acquaintances.  It spent weeks at a time peacefully nestled in its little recharger, and it could be lost in the house for days or even weeks without causing me more than moderate annoyance.

It's different with my new iPhone.  I've bonded with it.  Maybe it's because feels more like a little computer than a phone.  Or because it's easy to use and, with the relatively large screen, easy to read.  I carry it with me nearly every day.  I voluntarily make calls on it.  I tap out short emails on it. I check the weather on it.  I play audiobooks on it at the gym or during long drives.  I even have a couple of rudimentary games on it.

Not having my iPhone with me makes me . . . well, anxious would be an exaggeration.  But annoyed, and disconnected.  And every night I plug it into its little charger on my bedside table, hear the comforting rattle that confirms it's connected, and wait the seconds until its screen goes dark.  Bedtime ritual, grownup style.

I wasn't overly anxious yesterday when I realized my iPhone wasn't in my purse.  And I didn't really turn the house inside out looking for it the minute I got home.  But at bedtime, I began looking around for it, and when I realized it could not be found in any of the places it normally lurks, stress set in. 

So I called my iPhone from the land line.  I've found it before that way.  Call it, listen for the ring tone, and track it to its lair.  Unfortunately I had it set to go to voice mail after four rings.  Didn't make it easy to do a thorough search of the house.  I called it six times and ran around the house listening.  I tried to search the car, but it was past midnight and the dome light didn't really give enough light, so I gave up. 

But sleep proved elusive.  I put some soothing music on the bedside iPod, but it only reminded me of the missing iPhone.  I mentally retraced my steps, eliminating most of the stupid places I could have left it. I tried to decide how many days to wait before giving up and getting another.  And what if—

Just then the power went out.

You wouldn’t think this would be a big problem, since I was overdue for sleeping anyway.  But some vestige of pioneer instinct compelled me to get up and cope with the situation.

I peered out the front window.  Yes, the whole neighborhood was dark, thus reassuring me that armed thugs had not cut my power lines in preparation for invading the house and holding me at gunpoint to demand that I reveal who done it in the book I'm finishing up.  Of course, since my power lines are underground, the thugs would have to do quite a lot of excavating before they could reach them, but why let reality spoil that small, exquisite frisson of fear you get when you think you just might be starring in a real life remake of Wait Until Dark?

The flashlight I'm supposed to keep at my bedside for occasions like this was nowhere to be found, but I picked up the iPod and used its screen to light my way downstairs where I retrieved and donned my caving helmet.  A caving helmet's a great comfort in a power outage, and mine, a StenLight prototype, has an LED light that's bright enough and long lasting enough to read a whole book.  I only finished a chapter in my bedside book before drifting off to sleep with the caving helmet beside me like a security blanket.

The next morning, I enlisted my friend Barb to call my cell phone repeatedly while I wandered around the house and yard searching until I finally heard the ringtone I've set for her—the opening guitar riff of Jackson Browne's "Boulevard"—emerging from the inaccessible recesses beneath my car seat.    Victory! 

Of course, my poor iPhone had been languishing all night without being recharged, and had less than twenty percent power.  So I decided to use the land line to call Dominion Electric to find out when power would be back on.

The land line was out.

That's when my morale hit rock bottom.  Like so many writers, I can jolly myself through everything from a small annoyance to a full blown crisis by muttering, "I can use this.  What great material!"  But it was clear to me that my whole weekend was completely useless for fictional purposes.  Readers are quick to label heroines "too stupid to live" if they forget to take their cell phones with them in a dangerous spot.  And heaven help the author who uses a cheap trick like having her heroine forget to charge the phone or bumble into a dead zone.  And the coincidence of having an uncharged cell phone when both the power and the land line go out?  Preposterous!

Although maybe I can use the scene of me wandering around the house, head cocked, listening intently for the dulcet tones of the iPhone.  Yeah, I can see Meg doing that. And maybe when she finally finds it, she looks up and sees—

But wait!  That would be a spoiler.  Let's just say that if I ever used that scene in one of my books, finding her phone would be just the beginning of her problems.

Me? I've set it so when I call the iPhone from my land line, I get the loudest, most annoying ring tone available. And I'm going to do some ap shopping.  Surely someone sells a program you can load into the iPhone that helps you locate the silly thing when it's lost.

But not tonight.  Tonight I'm catching up on all that sleep I lost last night.

Goodnight, iPhone, wherever you are.

The Gift of Holiday Joy

by Kris

We all have our holiday traditions. We cook special meals, bake cookies, wrap gifts, send cards and enjoy warm times with family and friends. Since my husband and I opened our Sedona bookstore, The Well Red Coyote, I’ve tried to hold onto as many of our holiday traditions as possible. But December in retailing is over-the-top crazy — good crazy, but insanely busy nonetheless. Some traditions I’ve had to discard — if you’re one of the people who was on my card list, I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t take another year of filling out cards in the middle of the night, after a day that began before sunup. 

One tradition I’d never consider discarding is my annual toy-buying excursion for the Toys for Tots bins. I divide my searches into different age and gender groups and try to find wonderful gifts for the unknown boys and girls who’ll receive the holiday toys, thanks to the efforts of the Marine Corps Toys for Tots Foundation, and the generosity of countless strangers. Frankly, it’s my gift to myself, since it makes me feel good to know I’ve helped to bring a little holiday joy to a child who might not otherwise experience any.  

This year I have another way to contribute to Toys for Tots, and so do you. Tony Burton, publisher of Wolfmont Press, has published three annual anthologies of short crime fiction with holiday themes, and he donates his net proceeds to Toys for Tots. Through the sales of the first three anthologies, Wolfmont Press has been able to donate over $6,600 to the Toys for Tots Foundation.

Buying these anthologies isn’t just a charitable gesture — they’re great reads.  Last year’s anthology was Dying in a Winter Wonderland, which made the 2008 Top Ten Bestsellers' (Softcover) list of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. The 2009 anthology is The Gift of Murder, edited by John M. Floyd. Its contributors include J.F. Benedetto, Stefanie Lazer, Stephen D. Rogers, Anita Page, Randy Rawls, Earl Staffs, Peg Herring, Deborah Elliot-Upton, Bill Crider, Carolyn J. Rose, Liz Zelvin, Barb Goffman, Austin Camacho, Sandra Seamans, Steve Shrott, Gail Farrelly, Hershel Cozine, Marian Allen and me, Kris Neri.

These authors didn't receive any money for their stories, so more could be contributed to the kids. In our store, we're donating our net proceeds from the sales of The Gift of Murder, too.  Click to pre-order it on our Virtual Store.

You'll find a great selection of stories in this collection. The geography they cover is all over the map, from New York City's Chinatown, where you'll meet a female assassin; to Texas, where you'll encounter a duded up elf, describing himself as an S.I. -- Santa Investigator; to the vast, small town vistas of Cottonwood, Arizona. There's even a story set in Heaven. 

You'll also find a diverse collection of characters, from a pint-sized con artist trying to scam both Santa and the US Postal Service; to a mom who goes to unique lengths to get the most wanted toy of the season; to an ex-con who pays too high a price for a doll for his daughter.

The mysteries are crafty and inventive. Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanza are all represented. And don't think the supernatural has been forgotten -- you'll also meet a werewolf with a penchant for redheads and schnauzers.  

This holiday season, when choosing gifts for your family and friends, considering giving The Gift of Murder. You'll not only provide your recipient with hours of engaging reads, you'll brighten the holiday of some child. Give a toy for a tot.  

Do any of you love this charity as much as I do? Tell us about it.

Those Meddling Kids

by Toni L.P. Kelner

Like most writers, I claim many inspirations for my work. But this Sunday, September 13, is the anniversary of one of my greatest influences. On a Saturday morning forty years ago, Scooby Doo, Where Are You? aired for the first time.

I can't imagine that many people reading this blog aren't familiar with the tropes of that famous cartoon series, in which four teenagers and a Great Dane with a speech impediment chase ghostly knights, shambling creepers, glowing aliens, and wicked witches. There have been--so far--eleven different Scooby Doo TV series plus TV specials and telefilms, direct-to-video films, live-action films, video games, and even stage plays. 

The plots are pretty simple, particularly in the original series. Something spooky, supernatural, or unearthly happens. Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby Doo--the gang known collectively as Mystery, Inc.--arrive in the groovy Mystery Machine and investigate. This requires splitting up to find clues, chase scenes, and a complicated trap that never works quite the way it's supposed to. At the end, the gang unmasks the villain, who is in fact neither spooky, supernatural, nor unearthly.

Now I won't go so far as to say that everything I learned about writing mysteries, I learned from Scooby Doo, but I did learn a lot. Just consider the following lessons:

• Give your characters a reason for getting involved. This is particularly true for amateur sleuths, which is mostly what I write. The members of Mystery, Inc. were dragged into mysteries to help friends and family, to save towns and businesses, and for Scooby's love life. There's always a reason, and I keep that in mind. In Down Home Murder, my first book, Laura Fleming only starts hunting for a killer because her grandfather has been murdered, and everybody thinks it was an accident.

• The longer a series lasts, the more forgiving readers are about characters getting involved in mysteries. After a while, all the gang needed was a chance sighting of something creepy to step in. I've done the same. In Curse of the Kissing Cousins, I had to work hard to get my protagonist fired enough to chase a killer. But it was less tricky in Who Killed the Pinup Queen?, and by the third book, it'll be easier still.

• Don't make it too easy. The Scooby gang always faces setbacks: Daphne gets captured, Velma loses her glasses, Fred's trap catch the wrong person. That's what makes it interesting. I don't want to make life too easy for my characters, either, 

• Give the characters something to work with. The Scooby gang doesn't stumble around until they catch a crook in the act. They hunt for clues and figure out what they mean. I direct my characters to do the same--I sprinkle in clues so they can reason out the mystery.

• Remember that the mystery isn't everything. Shaggy and Scooby particularly recognize that life goes on, and even when things are the worst, they have to stop for a Scooby snack. Or two. While my characters aren't quite so food-oriented, they do turn away from the mystery plot now and then to pay attention to their lives, which makes for richer, more believable characterization.  

• Even small mysteries are important. The Scooby Doo plots didn't involve murders, or particularly violent crimes. Usually it was more along the lines of theft, sabotage, or counterfeiting. Yet those stories are just as meaningful to the people involved. Of course, I generally do write about murders, but I don't need them to be serial killers or world-threatening assassinations to be dramatic.  

• Play fair. In the classic Scooby Doo plot, the villain is always somebody the Scooby gang has encountered before, and the clues are there right in front of you. That's how I plot my mysteries, even if it does risk the reader figuring out the killer before I pull his mask off.  

• Your characters are important. At the end of most episodes, the unmasked villain would bitterly declare, "I would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for those meddling kids!" In other words, had the Mystery, Inc. gang not investigated, the bad guy would never have been caught. That's how I want my mysteries to work. I want to convince the reader that if Tilda Harper hadn't gotten involved, a murderer would have killed again.

Forty years ago, I watched that very first episode of Scooby Doo, Where Are You?, and I'm awfully glad I did. No only did I take away all those lessons to apply to my mystery writing, but I always enjoyed those cartoons, and I've had a great time introducing them to my daughters. So to Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and most especially Scooby Doo, I offer my heartiest congratulations. I hope you're around for another forty years. Scooby snacks for everybody!

A Man, a Woman and a Car.

Today, the Femmes Fatales welcome guest blogger Rhys Bowen.  Rhys writes the Molly Murphy and Royal Spyness mysteries. Her latest book, Royal Flush, has made several best-seller lists. 

by Rhys Bowen

Many thanks to the FFF (fabulous Fatal Femmes) for asking me to join them today. I’ve had a crazy summer of travel, both my publisher’s official tour and some trips I arranged on my own. One of these was a car trip, starting in New York, going through New England up to Canada for Bloody Words convention and then back down through the Hudson Valley for more research for my Molly books.

And during that ten day road trip with my husband I decided that men and women were never meant to share a car together for that length of time. No, we haven’t killed each other and we parted quite amicably as I flew off to Chicago and he back home, but it hasn’t always been easy. In fact confining two people to a car in a strange part of the country is a test of any relationship, male or female, but more than anything it illustrates the basic differences between men and women.

 For starters my husband likes to have the whole trip mapped out ahead of time. He likes to know exactly where we are going each day, where we are stopping for the night and he will not deviate from this for fires, flood or a sale at his wife’s favorite store. His idea of seeing the country is to drive past the sights, slowing to look at Mount Rushmore or the Grand Canyon, but never actually stopping and certainly not going to see any sight if it is more than half a mile from his planned route.

My idea of a good road trip is to set off with an objective in mind, but then to be lured off on tangents, to stop and browse in cute little towns, to stop for yard sales and funky antique shops in barns, to pet sheep and goats and generally to have a good time. These two philosophies are not compatible, but he will grudgingly stop if I yell, “STOP!!!” loudly enough. Anything less than this and he will drive on with determination.

You see, being a woman, I expect a fellow human being to pick up signals and hints. If I say, “Oh, look at that pretty little river flowing under that bridge,” what I am really saying is, “I’d like to stop and take a look at that pretty river.”  If I say, “Wow, homemade ice cream at that adorable little farmhouse,” I expect the driver to sense that what I really want is a large scoop of that homemade ice cream. But I now know that one has to spell out wishes to men or they simply DON’T GET IT.

So I have to say, “there is a good parking space coming up at exactly thirty five yards on the right and I’d like to spend a while taking a look at that art gallery.”  You see, it’s no use saying, “I’d like to take a look at that art gallery” as we drive past because we’ll be gone by the time I finish the sentence or he’ll claim that it was too late to find a parking space.

He also sees no reason to browse in antique shops. Apparently we have all the junk we need. Ditto funky clothing stores, bead shops, yarn shops and all the other things that make life worthwhile. This is why road trips with girlfriends are so much more rewarding. Girlfriends also want to browse in shops and stop for ice cream. Furthermore they laugh when things go wrong. When husband and I tried to cross the border from Canada back into the US we found that the particular crossing was closed, due to a dispute with a local Indian tribe. There had been no warning of this as we drove 90 miles down the road to the border so naturally we were not amused. We were even less amused when we had to drive fifty miles out of our way and then fifty miles back to get to where we were going. Girlfriends would have salvaged the situation. We continued with repeated grumpy mutterings about bloody idiots.

And this is also why female writers should be given female talent escorts on book tour. Last year I had a charming male escort for two days in Los Angeles. His only fault was that he would park right outside a Chico’s or a J.Jill and then expect me to cross the street into a Barnes and Noble without a backward longing glance at my favorite stores. A female escort would have sensed that I needed a quick Chico’s fix. Female escorts also realize that life is not worth living without a vanilla Frapuccino in summer.  They like to chat about make-up and Brad Pitt and favorite beaches and which shoes don’t kill feet by the end of the day. Male escorts are happy to point out interesting facts about their town, or to discuss how the baseball team is doing or even about food and restaurants, but it’s not the same.

This is why I used to love touring with fellow authors. It is great therapy to have someone to laugh with, to drink margaritas with after a great signing or more margaritas after an abysmal one.  After my publisher’s tour this year I snuck in a quick whisk around Florida with fellow writer Mary Anna Evans. We found time to get to the beach twice. We found a beachfront restaurant that served a great cold seafood platter, including oysters and then found a pretentiously avant-garde place in Palm Beach where the place mats were made of what looked like insulation. We had a blast.

I’m just getting ready to set off with husband again, this time to the Australian Outback. I’ll let you know if he actually parks for Ayers Rock!

Rhys Bowen blogs regularly at The Lady Killers and Jungle Red Writers. 

Gifts on the Road

I love to meet my readers face-to-face, and I try to give them a little bit of me in return for all the time they've spent reading my books. In their kindness, some of them try to give me a little bit of them. A tangible bit. This is both charming and alarming.

For those of you who've packed for touring before, you know how valuable every square inch of suitcase is. You know how heavy that suitcase can be when you have to swing it up on a luggage rack or pull it off the conveyer belt at the baggage pickup. Some readers let their generosity sweep away the practical aspects of a woman living out of a suitcase.

Sure, I love food that is a specialty of the region where I'm signing. But blueberry jelly in a glass jar is really not something I can take with me when I've got five more cities to go. Coffee-table-size books, no matter how much I might want to look at them, are also (here's a favorite word) contraindicated. Like any sane woman, I love chocolate. But it melts when you have to pack it, especially in the late spring and summer.

A gift that almost made me gush was a handmade bookmark. And the first thought that crossed my mind? How grateful I was that it would be easy to pack, and I would get to enjoy it and use it.

Have any of you gotten strange or unusable gifts? How did you handle it?