My Weblog

Feeding the muse (and not into the wood chipper)

by Dana

Recently I added my 2012 “year-at-a-glance” poster to the wall.  I toted everything up on the old calendar and realized by the end of the year, I will have been to seven conventions, traveled for four vacations (of varying lengths, but with three new countries), written one novel, published three short stories (and sent three more to editors), and done one short book tour.  That's not counting non-writing work stuff, household chores, books, trips to the gym, new bourbons tried, trouble gotten into, and generally, life as normal people live it. Dang.

In almost all of these adventures, I've found new things to energize me and my writing.  Mostly, I think of my muse as a work-a-day wench—she shows up for work when I show up for work; I roll up my sleeves, she rolls up her sleeves.  We sit, we play loud music, we type.  Sometimes we even type prose.  Sometimes though, I'm left with the other face of my muse, the one who folds her arms and regards me with an icy, Marlene Dietrich-like regard.  “Amuse me,” she says.

So here's a few of the things that sent me running for my notebook or keyboard this year. 

New Conventions:  I always have a blast when I go to Malice Domestic, Bouchercon, the Edgars, and the Salem Literary Festival, and I always look forward to the next time.  I participated in three new-to-me events this year, though, and really got charged up from them.  At Boskone in Boston, I got to geek out about SF and Fantasy AND talk mysteries (and make a joke about Strider and Boromir going to a fitness club, of which I am unreasonably proud).  Florida's Sleuthfest was a blast, and I particularly loved the CSI tracks—like the bomb-squad bus and a robot!  Robots!  What muse can resist those?  Most recently, Murder and Mayhem in Muskego (Wisconsin) was a day-long event in a gorgeous library where I got to listen to fantastic authors and hang with readers.  All of these events added to the TBR pile and the PSP (potential story pile).

Muskego also provided two other kinds of muse-fodder:  Comic books and music.  I used to have a nasty $40/week comic habit (back when $40 bought a lot of comics, and we didn't really have the $40 to spare), which lapsed sometime after graduate school.  The good folks at CrimeSpree got me re-hooked, I'm pretty sure.  Planetary sent me twirling with delight—and not just because they are “archaeologists of the impossible.”  The artwork and writing is breath-taking.  I'm also hip-deep into the reboot of Bat Woman and digging the work of Jill Thompson.  Also at Muskego, I got into a long discussion about “music to write to” with Hilary Davidson, and now my playlists are replete with soundtrack selections and electronica. Thanks, Hilary!

Then there were the days the unexpected happened.  In Stockholm, for example, we visited an outdoor history/architecture museum.  We didn't know they also had an “Arctic animals” exhibit.  I was expecting, well, architecture, not wolverines (wolverines!) fighting/playing over a piece of meat. I couldn't have been more surprised if it was actually Hugh Jackman.  Closer to home, I cleaned my desk...uncovering three knives, a can of crocodile pate, and a bottle of holy water.  Get cracking, muse, and wipe that bored look off your face!

So, Gentle Readers:  What sends you running to your notebook or computer with a story idea? 

In A Maisie Kind Of Mood

by Mary Saums

 

I have so many favorite mystery series. How many times have I read a book and thought, Oh this is it. This is the one I love the most. And then, not a week later, while reading another book, totally different in style, subject matter, characterizations, etc. from the previous read, thought, No, this one is my real favorite. Fast-forward through the calendar and it's deja vu all over again as I clutch the latest discovery to my chest and jump around like a pogo stick saying, "This one! No, REALLY. I mean it this time!"

All pogo sticks aside, this week I re-visited one of my favorite mystery heroines, Maisie Dobbs, in A LESSON IN SECRETS by Jacqueline Winspear.

 

 

 

There was a time when I had zero interest in 1920s or 1930s settings. Several years ago when I was so in love with my very favorite author Reginald Hill, I didn't buy The Wood Beyond the day it was available in the States, all because the story involved World War I. It took a while, but eventually I caved. And so glad I did. What was I thinking. It took the big man to make me give the 30s a try.

What I love most about Maisie's stories is the smart, sensible progression of events that make her and her investigations realistic. Her growth from a poor downstairs maid to an educated, compassionate woman on her own during war time feels like a real-life story.

In A LESSON IN SECRETS, all of Maisie's talents from previous books make her the perfect mole at an Oxford college. Ahh, Oxford ... what a dream gig ...

 

 

photo by Lawrence OP on Flickr

 

 

... the dons, the libraries ... 

 

photo by Roel Wijnants on Flickr

 

A beautiful place but Maisie isn't there to sight-see. British agents enlist her to gauge anti-government sentiment that might be breeding amongst the youngsters, now that Hitler is courting certain British citizens. The particular college she's sent to was founded so students from all countries could come together and find ways to create world peace. A difficult subject to tackle in a mystery, but very well done by Ms. Winspear.

Fast forward again from the 30s to a few days ago. While pushing my cart down an aisle at Target, I did an incredibly odd thing. I bought a hat. Odd because I am NOT a hat person.

And yet, when I saw several made in a 30s style, they made me think of Maisie who always wears the perfect hat, which made me think of rainy English weather, then daydream about cathedrals, school commons, cricket on the grounds, horses, corgis, Queen Elizabeth, and the next thing I knew, BLEEP, the cashier was swiping a hat across the check-out scanner.

 

 

Target had some pretty cloche-type hats too that would be nice for church. This one works better for me since it should keep rain off my glasses this winter.

A-HA. Now I realize how that pogo stick boinged its way in earlier. My current read is KILLED AT THE WHIM OF A HAT by my very favorite author, Colin Cotterill. He also wrote CURSE OF THE POGO STICK, probably my favorite book of my very favorite series with my all-time favorite character, Dr. Siri. He deals with the accursed pogo. His new book's protagonist deals with the hat. I'll have to do a blog on all those sometime soon.

For now, I'm enjoying thinking about English colleges, hot tea, polite educated societies, libraries several centuries old, and being inside on a rainy fall night with the temperature dropping. Snow is even predicted later in the week. Too early for that! If it does come, no problem. I shall trudge through it stylin' like Maisie in my new hat.  

 

GETTING THE JUMP ON THE NEW YEAR

Since the Thanksgiving season is being totally ignored in favor of the more lucrative Christmas season now, and Halloween is merely a preparation for the retail extravaganza, I’ve decided to skip straight to New Year’s Resolutions. Why go through the hustle and bustle of the holiday season?

So here are the things I’ve already put on my list.

1. No more reporters at my house.

Now, I know this may be a concept few of you have to entertain, and I never thought it would be on my list, either. But there you have it. From now on, I’ll meet reporters at restaurants, parks, on the Interstate . . . but not in my home. None of them has ever been less than professional, let me hasten to add. But it seems prudent to keep my home to my family.

2. No more dogs. That is, additional dogs.

I love the dogs we have, even though two of ours are actually Daughter’s leftovers. We devote an inordinate amount of time to Oscar, Rocky, Scrunch, and Colt (in order of acquisition). But by golly, four is too many. One jumps the fence, one digs under. One has a sneaky habit of wandering into the back of the house to use the bathroom where he shouldn’t. One has epilepsy. Enough.

3. No more putting things in the freezer without labeling them.

As God is my witness, I shall never do this again. Some things should be mysterious, but not food items.

I’m sure I’ll think of more resolutions to add to my list, but those will do to start with. And I see that I’ve put them all in the negative. Let me rephrase them in the positive: I will only meet reporters in public places. I will not adopt any more dogs. I will label everything I put into my freezer.

That does sound better.

4. I will be positive.

A Magical Time

by Kris Neri (See the contest below for a free book!)

Magical Alienation, the second title in my Magical Mystery series has just debuted, and I couldn’t be more excited!

The publication of a new book is always an exciting and rewarding time, the culmination of loads of work and the realization of a vision that has sustained the writer for some time.

But every book in a series is special for different reasons. In the first book in a series, a writer breathes life into characters that have existed as mere sketches in her mind, and they often grow in ways that even the author hadn’t anticipated. Relationships are forged. A voice the writer only heard in her own mind, booms out into the world.

For the most part, the voice booming from the first book in my series, High Crime on the Magical Plane, belonged to Samantha Brennan, a funny, boisterous fake psychic with a highly eccentric wardrobe. In the relentless pursuit of her goal of being a popular celebrity spiritual advisor, Samantha dealt herself in on an FBI case, the kidnapping of a movie star, apparently by a set of stalkers. Samantha never expected that during the course that case her entire world would be turned upside-down. Never would she have expected to discover that the agent assigned to the case, Special Agent Annabelle Haggerty, was also a modern Celtic goddess, descended from the gods and goddesses depicted in the mythology books. And never did Annabelle expect to be paired with precisely the kind of flaky, fun mortal that she deplored. Samantha and Annabelle sure made a mismatched pair.

But there were compensations. Samantha did succeed in turning the ancient, but immortal and ever-hot, god of youth and love and laughter, Angus, into her own personal love-slave. The stakes couldn’t have been higher, though. As the case took one bizarre twist after another, Samantha thought that if Annabelle and her family of deities couldn’t stop Armageddon from coming down on them, what chance did a poor little fake have of surviving.

The first novel in a series is in essence a setup, a launch pad for the entire series.

A second book is different. Second books sometimes bring surprising new themes.

In Magical Alienation that means exposing the U.S. Government’s most closely-guarded secret of the last sixty years: the truth about what seems to have been an alien invasion that occurred in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, and what exactly has been going on at the mysterious Area 51.

Second books in a series allow the writer to test the relationships forged in the first. Initially, in Magical Alienation, Samantha and Annabelle find themselves on opposite sides this time around. Annabelle is assigned to the security detail of Arizona’s junior senator, Kenny Campbell, the target of a militia terrorist assault. While Samantha, through her employer, rocker Rand Riker, actually works on behalf of the most reviled man in the country, militia guru Normal Frankly, who to all eyes isn’t quite normal, accused of mounting a terrorist campaign against Senator Campbell.

We get to meet new characters, including Senator Campbell, with his fuzzy definition of Family Values, and his oh-so correct political wife, Kelly. And Rand Riker, Samantha’s new boss, the Aussie, aging bad boy of rock ’n’ roll. 

We meet new gods and goddesses, including Fiona, Annabelle’s beautiful mother, who’s not quite as adept at hiding her secrets as a goddess should be. Was she the woman Samantha heard canoodling in Rand Riker’s luxury suite, or did Fiona harbor another secret? As well as Lugh and Taliesin, trickster gods involved in crop circles, who once beached an iceberg in the tropics, who just can’t get enough fun, as long as it’s at the expense of mortal Earthlings. And Gwydion, god of enchantment and illusion, whose trick stuns the world.

Second books allow us to visit new places. Magical Alienation takes Samantha and Annabelle to Sedona, Arizona, the Vatican City of the New Age, at a time when a monstrous harmonic convergence brings extraordinary power to Sedona’s famed energy centers.

Mostly, with second books, authors get to introduce shocking, unheard of action. While the mysterious rock people twist the very surface of the earth and Sedona heads into the darkest night the planet has ever seen, Samantha wonders which, if any of them, will survive it.

But when Celtic gods are involved, Samantha should know, nothing is ever as it appears.

The best part of a second book? It’s that it invariably leads to the third book in the series. I can’t wait to discover what that will hold.

What is your favorite second book in which series?

CONTEST: I'LL RANDOMLY CHOOSE SOMEONE FROM AMONG THOSE LEAVING A COMMENT TO RECEIVE A FREE COPY OF MAGICAL ALIENATION!

Crimebake Wisdom!

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

You see me running, right? Rushing, panting ,collapsing, hands on knees, trying to catch my breath.

I'm just back from CrimeBake, the New England mystery festival sponsored by New England Sisters in Crime and New England MWA. (It's in New England, if you didn't figure that out.)

All kinds of wonderful things happened, as they always do at Crime Bake. Including Femme Toni and her husband winning the prize for "Partners in Crime" costume in their hilariously perfect outfits representing Mrs. Peacock and Mr. Boddy from Clue.

Jonathan and I won, too! For best dressed. We were Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. I'll post a photo soon...but think fur and tweeds for me; monocle, tux and and top hat for Jonathan. 

 Friend of Femmes Nikki Bonnanni won best in show for  a truly show-stoppping Lisbeth Salander get up..I'm sure photos will soon be everywhere.

However! It was not all about costumes. :-)  There were some marvelous panels--with top notch authors.  Here are some of the truly valuable things I heard:

Guest of Honor Nancy Pickard talking about all the secrets revealed by her characters in her novels--Nancy admits, when she's writing them, she doesn't know what they are until the characters reveal them to her.

Guest of Honor Barry Eisler remembered a waiter in a crowded restaurant on the Ile St. Louis..overworked, crazed, ovewhelmed. Barry said the waiter, working at top speed, kept muttering: "Just keep going, just keep going..." So now, when Barry's feeling that way, he just says to himself (probably in English) "Just keep going, just keep going.."

Barry also revealed that when he turned down a $500,000 advance from St. Martins (that was not a typo) it was scarier than anything he'd ever done in the CIA.

Michael Palmer revealed he still feels a huge relief when he gets an okay on his book proposal from his editor. He said "I'm so reassured I'll have something to do!" He's a New York Times best-selling author!

Peter Abrahams (who also writes the Spencer Quinn books) said "It's good in writing if you make it hard for yourself. Challenge yourself. Always pick the hard way."

Do you outline? someone asked Gerry Boyle. "Yes," he said. "Almost every day! But all the ideas are jettisoned as the books takes over..so be open to the book as you're writing. The books just--figure themselves out. Be especially ready and receptive when ideas seem to come out of nowhere."

Abrahams said: "Backstory should be folded in like truffles in a cream sauce--so the reader doesn't know its there." (Isn't that wonderful? I adore him.)

Boyle says he has a hard time writing descriptions of people--so, he said, "I just write really fast and hope that no one notices."

Next year, I wish you all could be there!

 If any of you attended--what wonderful things did you hear or see?

 

St. Louis’ Sweet Life Started in Bed

 By Elaine Viets

Putting chocolates on hotel pillows began when screen legend Cary Grant stayed at the Mayfair Hotel in St. Louis. The debonair Grant used chocolate to send a sweet message to a woman friend.

Is that story true? I sure hope so.

Another major star has a St. Louis connection. Lauren Bacall asked a Vanity Fair interviewer to open a box of Bissinger’s chocolate bark for her. Bacall confessed that she’s gotten free chocolate from the St. Louis chocolatier ever since she said "Bissinger’s is the best chocolate" when she starred in the musical "Applause" in St. Louis in 1971.

Some women have all the luck. Bacall got enduring beauty, Bogie – and free chocolate for the rest of her life.

St. Louis was settled by the French and the Germans, nationalities that celebrate sweets.

You already know about German chocolate, Dutch chocolate and Belgian chocolate.

Is there St. Louis chocolate? St. Louis chocolate maker Brian Pelletier at Kakao Chocolate says no. "We’re all so different. Other local chocolate makers, Bissinger’s, Merb’s and Lake Forest, have their own traditional approaches and familiar flavors."

Brian sees these trends in St. Louis chocolate lovers: Customers want "all-natural ingredients. We don’t use any artificial flavors, colors or preservatives," he said. "Our truffles and caramels use real cream and we give them a shelf life of three weeks at room temperature."

St. Louisans like "local ingredients. We use local honey, lavender, fruit, coffee and locally blended tea in our confections."

Brian even adds local beer and other off-beat ingredients. "We buy a lot of inclusions – liqueurs, flavored oils and vinegars from Vom Fass – and use Schlafly beer, too. Our customers enjoy a lot of unique flavors in our creations: honey, balsamic vinegar, Earl Grey tea, smoked tea, absinthe, stout."

Kakao has two St. Louis area shops, one in Josie’s Maplewood and the other in south St. Louis. This suburb,  more than 100 years old, says it's "somewhere between Mayberry and Metropolis." Maplewood has one of the coolest shopping districts in the country. 

Are you drooling for St. Louis chocolate yet?

In my new mystery, "Death on a Platter," mystery shopper Josie Marcus has to sample St. Louis food. One of her sweetest assignments is to try Kakao chocolate in Maplewood. She wants her best friend Alyce to go with her, but Alyce is reluctant, with good reason. The last time they went mystery-shopping together, a customer was poisoned.

But Josie didn’t have to use much persuasion to change Alyce’s mind. All she needed was a few rationalizations. This scene from "Death on a Platter" is set in the Maplewood Kakao shop:

They stood in the doorway and inhaled. "Chocolate, my favorite perfume," Alyce said.

The shop was tall, long and light-filled. A bright-painted red tree hung with dark cocoa pods spread across the walls. But the chocolates, displayed in little baskets like works of art, captured their attention.

"Dragees!" Alyce said. She noticed Josie’s blank look and said, "Almonds toasted in sugar and dredged in chocolate. I have to get those. Almonds are good for you."

"A source of protein," Josie dead-panned. "And chocolate is good for your heart."

"Definitely a health food. And a vegetable."

"The only vegetable I truly like," Josie said. "I’ll get some of those for Mom and my daughter."

"I want that coffee bark covered with locally roasted coffee," Alyce said. "Locavores are good for the environment."

"What’s a locavore?" Josie asked.

"People who eat locally grown food," Alyce said.

"Not only are we eating locally, we’ll walk off the calories locally," Josie said.

"I could walk all the way home and I wouldn’t be a pound thinner," Alyce said. "But I’ll be happier if I eat chocolate."

"That’s the spirit," Josie said. "Don’t forget the sea salt caramels and the marshmallow pies."

"With Missouri pecans," Alyce said. "Dr. Oz says nuts are good. I love wicked virtue."

                                                        ***

I’ll sign "Death on a Platter," my seventh Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper novel in St. Louis, Thursday, Nov. 10 to 13. This mystery celebrates St. Louis food, with a side order of murder. There will be sweet treats  at all the signings. Check out the details at www.elaineviets.com

The history of your world in objects

Mr. G just bought me a book, A History of the World in 100 Objects.  It's based on the BBC Radio 4 series that came out last year, which you can hear here.  There were 100 fifteen-minute radio shows, one about each object, all of which were from the British Museum.  The goal was to span two million years of human history to the present.

Just the scale of the project is enough to leave me speechless.

What I particularly like is that this is not a catalogue of “the most valuable,” “the rarest,” “the earliest,” “the most beautiful,” though some of the artifacts are phenomenally old, rare, or exquisite. The objects are chosen for what they symbolize in human history, and the staggering variety of connections that exist across cultures.  Even the least complicated artifacts, the ones we could make by banging two rocks together, represent massive amounts of information about the individual, his culture, and the human species.  And this is what the book is trying to convey.

Love. This.

The earliest object is a stone chopping tool, from Olduvai in Tanzania, made about 1.8 million years ago.  It's not just a tool that's had an edge made by knocking a few chips from it, it's not just one of the earliest artifacts made by humans, it's not just a useful thing for stripping the meat and bone marrow from scavenged carcases (early humans let big predators do the dangerous work, first). It represents the first time we know humans tried to improve their situation by imposing their will on the outside environment.  It's the first material evidence of our big brains working hard, identifying a problem and coming up with a solution.  And then building on that to solve the next problem.

One of the latest artifacts in the series is a gold Visa credit card.  Two million years after Olduvai, we don't leave home without them.  Not a stone tool with which we can protect ourselves or dig in the ground or butcher meat—a thin piece of plastic that represents the promise of payment later for an object today.  It works globally, it works almost instantly.  Think about what that means in terms of communication and technology and finance. 

I turn to the sage, Douglas Adams, to summarize: “The History of every major Galactic Civilization 

tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?”

Just think about the amount of effort to go from hunting and gathering, to the invention of writing, to the ability to look up The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the Internet.

Humans are wanders and traders, moving thousands of miles to see if they could do a little better just beyond the hill, dealing in complicated, often messy or violent, exchanges of food and mates and ideas and pretty, shiny things that seemed to have no other purpose but to be pretty and shiny.  No matter language barriers, or political or cultural strife, humans keep reaching out to each other, they keep exploring.  And we have the stuff to prove it.

Just picking out the objects, from all across time, and all across the world—I can't even imagine the wrangling that went on among the folks working on the project.  I'd have a hard time picking ten objects to define my life so far, and I'm just one little monkey out of seven billion. Maybe five: my copy of Little Women (or maybe The Hitchiker's Guide), my WHS trowel, my Swiss Army knife, my wedding band, and...what?  What objects would you choose to define your life?