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We Never Had That in Our Family

By Elaine Viets

Families develop their own shorthand. A single phrase from an old story can communicate volumes of anger, joy or pride. We don’t have to keep telling – and hearing – the same story over and over.

Here are some of my family phrases:

Even the water tastes better: Grandma Vierling was our storybook grandma. Barely five feet tall, Grandma was funny and loving. She was plump, with a generous lap and an equally big heart.  We kids called her "the good Grandma" and we loved to visit her. Grandma was a masterful Southern cook who made biscuits like warm clouds, fried chicken and baked mouth-watering fruit pies. I divided the summer by her homemade pies. We should be nearing blackberry pie season soon.

My little brother said, "Even the water tastes better at Grandma’s house."

That became our family code for anything impossibly good.

We never had that in our family: Grandmother Viets was a tall, stern German who cleaned for recreation. Her waxed floors were slippery as a skating rink. She disapproved of my father’s "mixed" marriage. My mother was one-quarter Irish, an inferior race in Grandmother Viets’ eyes. Grandmother was proud to be all German.

She blamed her grandchildren’s physical flaws on my mother’s "inferior" blood. When I needed glasses in grade school, Grandmother Viets said, "We never had that in my family." When I had flat feet and needed special shoes, Grandmother unlaced her Enna Jettick to show me her superior arched foot. "Look at that arch," she said. "We never had flat feet in our family."

Grandma’s phrase became a family joke, though I didn’t see the humor at age nine.

Yours and ours:  When one of us kids misbehaved, Mom would tell my father, "Your daughter was sent home from school with a note for talking in class."

When I did something right, it was, "Our daughter got an A in English."

Don and I don’t have children, but we use a version of that. When Mystery claws the sofa, I tell him, "Your cat ripped up the couch cushion." But when visitors praise her beauty, she’s "our cat."

What Clydesdale? Don and I were walking through a St. Louis supermarket when I saw a life-size plastic replica of a mascot for the Anheuser-Busch brewery in a beer display. "Look at that Clydesdale," I said.

Don, lost in thought, asked, "What Clydesdale?"

What did Larry say? I overlook things, too. Don told me a joke he heard in a bar, where the bartender was named Larry. The joke sailed over my head. "What did Larry say?" I asked.

That’s our family phrase when I miss something obvious.

What are your family phrases, Femmes?

 

Spring Stories

by Kris Neri

Although we're well into it by now, it's still spring, and that's my favorite season. I love the way the earth comes back to life after winter. Allergies be damned. I’ll take soaring pollen counts, and the necessity of using steroid nasal sprays, if it means I get to see endless bursts of vibrant color when the Arizona high desert wildflowers enjoy their brief blooms.

Another thing I especially like about spring is that it’s when so many baby animals are born. Baby animals are almost always cute. I actually stopped my car beside a field of cattle grazing the other day, just because there were so many little calves in it, and I don’t consider the cow to be an especially attractive animal. I even like javalina babies. Javalinas are a distant relative of a wild pig, which roam the Southwest. Ugly, smelly, hairy beasts. But the babies, with their little pink snouts, are actually kinda cute.

And baby animals are everywhere. I ran into one recently, when I left the house to take my dog Annabelle for a walk. While I was turned away, locking the door, Annabelle discovered a young gecko on the sidewalk. By the time I turned back to her, she had given the poor thing a thorough bumping with her nose. The gecko’s little feet were scurrying so fast, they looked like wheels slipping on ice. Not nearly as verbal as the gecko that shills for that insurance company, either. 

So, I guess I like most all baby animals. Apart from snakes, that is. And, man, are the snakes prolific here at this time of year. We see baby snakes flattened against roads all the time here, but that doesn’t noticeably seem to cut their numbers any.

I’ve always been a little afraid of snakes — don’t ask me why. And now I’m especially sensitive when it comes to baby snakes because of what I call my “Season of the Snake” two springs ago.

I first noticed something amiss when my cat Philly began parking himself outside the base of a  workbench in our garage, and he all but licked his chops while he watched. Philly, a big Maine Coon, has the least natural instincts of any cat I’ve ever known. He’ll watch spiders slowly meander past him until they’re out of visual range. It never occurs to him to pounce on them — we like to say he watches them to death. We discovered later that some snake had gotten into our garage and laid her eggs under that workbench. Philly may not go for spiders or crickets or even birds, but the scent of those snake eggs sure brought out the natural hunter in him.

Then baby snakes started emerging from under the workbench. I managed to get one away from him with a broom, after which I swept it out the door. But that was the only one I dispatched that easily. Thereafter, every day or two, Philly would carry one into the house -- so he could play with it in more comfortable surroundings, I guess. Or perhaps to show me what my great hunter had caught.

A total of eight baby snakes emerged from  under our workbench. Never once when my husband was home, so it always fell to me to get rid of them.

I got pretty good at catching them, even though those babies wiggle like nothing you can imagine. I kept two legal pads on my coffee table. If I moved fast enough and never hesitated, I could sweep the little snake onto one pad and smash it with the other. Then I’d run as fast as I could and hurl it out the door.

Fortunately, the babies were all King Snakes, which meant they weren’t venomous. King Snakes are actually beneficial, since they’re the mortal enemies of rattlers. But no matter how much good they do, I really don’t want them around. Not in my house, anyway.

A couple of weeks later, after Philly had gone back to being a non-cat cat, I figured we were past the snake crisis. But one evening after coming home from work, I paused outside my house to unlock the front door. And another baby snake fell on my head! On my freakin’ head!

It’s a two-story entry — I can only conclude the stupid snake crawled up on some trim and fell off. Or maybe a hawk dropped it there. However it got there, it fell off right onto my highest point.

I didn’t actually know it was a snake at first. I felt something moving there, but I thought it was a bug. I reached up with the key I already had extended in my hand and flicked it at. Nobody could have been more shocked than I was when I saw what I tossed off with that flick.

So, now it’s spring again. Still love spring. Still love the wildflowers and the baby wildlife. But not snakes. No how, no way. For those of you who like them, and especially those of you who keep them as pets, let’s just agree to disagree on this.

Love and Death

by Hank Phillipi Ryan

Okay, do this: Say NeeeeOWM. Again: NeeeeeeOWWWWM. Neeeowm. Neeeowm Neeooowm.

Now you know what it sounds like to watch the Indianapolis 500. (Next time we see each other, ask me. I’ll demonstrate.)  Thirty-three high-performance cars, going 150 miles an hour, or whatever, for 500 miles, turning left and left and left around a two and a half mile oval track.,

Of course on this Memorial Day weekend, we are remembering our troops, now and in the past. Please come visit Jungle Red today, http://www.JungleRedWriters.com  for some very special memories of our families, and their war experiences. Not to be missed.

But growing up in Indianapolis, as I did, Memorial Day also meant the Indianapolis 500. The run-up and preparation for the race lasted the entire month of May, with everyone in Indianapolis caught up in the excitement of time trials and carburetion tests and  Goodyear versus Firestone tires, even if you have no idea what any of it meant or didn’t know an Andretti from an android, you couldn’t help but be swept away by 500 fever.

It was always was on the radio, not on TV, so we’d sit out in the back yards with our radio hooked p to triple extension cords, and listen to the whole thing. You had to. I bet if you stood in the middle of the street, you could hear Jim Nabors singing Back Home Again in Indiana, then the race blaring from every neighbors back yard.

NeeeOWM. Neeeeowm. NeeeeeeOWM.

I was thinking two big things happened to me at the race. Love and death.

The first big thing, the first time I ever went to the race, I was a junior in college, I think, I went with a date, a guy I was head over heels for. Older. Like, a senior. It was glorious day, truly, I can’t remember a more beautiful day, with perfect blue skies and no humidity, and even though there ware about 50 billion people at the race, we found parking, and got to our seats easily, and he lemonade guy was right here, and –oh, I’m making this up now, but it was terrific. The race—who cared—but there I was with this fabulous guy, sitting in the sun, and oh, I had a white dress, and a floppy hat, and it was—so romantic. And about halfway through the race, the guy turned to me and said—this is so wonderful. We should get married.

Oh, I said. Yes. Of course. And we watched the rest of the race if a haze of delight and happiness.

Then it was over-- no idea who won--and we floated to our car. Got in. Closed the doors.  Ah, he said. Yeah, I said. We’re not really going to… No, I agreed. We aren’t.

We drove home in silence. You wanna go to a movie? He said. I shrugged. I mean, where did we go from there?  And that was the end of that.   

Several years, later, on another beautiful day, I went to the race with..gosh, I can’t remember. But we were sitting in the stands with a family, the father was a provost, or something, at a local college, and the mother was a professor, and they had two little boys. Part way through the race, there was a HUGE crash. HUGE.  There was fire and debris and explosions and flying metal and obvious horrible disaster. I grabbed the nine year-old boy sitting next to me and hugged him to my chest, trying to prevent him from seeing the devastation. I thought—I don’t want this imprinted in his head.

The kid went bananas. He writhed and squirmed and twisted away—I WANNNA SEEEEE! he yelled.

Love and death.  NeeeOWM. NeeeoWMMMM. NeeeeOWWWWm.

Do you have a Memorial Day childhood ritual?  And because today we remember, I have a copy of Ace Atkins’ New York Times bestseller  LULLABY, the first in his new “writing as Robert B Parker” series—for one lucky commenter!

 

It's the code.

by Donna Andrews

Have you seen the Las Vegas commercial? The one where a woman finds that all her friends (or maybe former friends) are avoiding her because she broke the "what happens here stays here" code?  And at the end of the commercial she's standing there, watching a sea of backs disappearing into the distance, as she shouts "I won't post any more pictures!  I won't tweet!"

Sometimes I know how her friends feel.

Social media are changing our lives in many ways--not all of them bad.  If I'm having a rotten day, one of the things that helps turn it around is to make a wry comment about it to someone  And with Facebook, there's always someone out there to respond.  It's fun to hear from readers or old friends via Facebook or my website.  I love the fact that I can share the pictures I take for my 365 project (a photo a day for a year) through 365project.org and Facebook.

My 365 project is useful for another reason--at least I think it is.  It feeds the maw of the social networking beast.  Writers, they tell us, are expected to be active on social media.  To interact with readers and other writers.  To give something of themselves.

And that takes time, and energy.  Worse, at least for me, it takes the same kind of energy I use for writing.  Some days, when I finish my writing stint, I'm tapped out.  On the edge of nonverbal.  I pick up my camera, and I've got something of myself to share.

I think a lot of us are trying to feed that same beast, and some of what happens in our collective quest for copy gives me pause.

For example, it's no longer as easy to get subject matter experts, like cops and DAs and forensic experts, to speak as candidly as they used to at SinC and MWA meetings and at conventions.  A lot of them have been burned.  I remember, back in the days when we were lucky if someone showed up with a camera to take a fuzzy shot for the newsletter, a veteran cop told our SinC chapter the real story behind an unsolved local murder, complete with a strong opinion about whose fault it was that the case had gone unsolved.  I've told the story a time or two--I'm sure other people did, too--but as far as I know, the cop's career never suffered.

Today, we'd have plenty of pictures, from the two dozen digital cameras and cell phones in the room, but not a lot of straight talk, because savvy cops know that what they say could appear on someone's blog an hour or two later--or maybe in a YouTube video.  We ask attendees to be discreet, but one person's discretion is another person's censorship. 

Writers experience the same thing at conventions.  We're all used to having many of our panels taped, and philosophical about having our occasional verbal pratfalls preserved like flies in amber.  But these days, all too often, we can go online a few days or hours later and read a blow-by-blow reconstruction of what happened--though such reconstructions rarely capture the true ephemeral magic of a good panel, the quicksilver give and take of discussion, the nuances that tone and gesture lend to words.  I so often read descriptions of panels I'm on and wonder, "Did I really say that?" Or, more likely, "Damn, what did I really say that came out sounding like that when paraphrased?"

Sometimes people read such accounts and say "Oh, it's just like being there."

It's not. Trust me on this.

But it feeds the beast. 

And it changes the nature of a panel, even more than the clumsy need to repeat audience questions into the mike for the tape. I've seen a joke I made in a panel, that seemed hilarious at the time, come across as either stupid or bitchy when set down coldly in print, minus tone of voice and facial expression and the give and take between panelists.  And I bet I'm not the only one. 

I'm not saying no one should ever blog about conventions!  Obviously both the conventions and the attending authors can use publicity.  And readers enjoy hearing about them, including that subset of readers who are also writers.  But there's a fine line between giving people who didn't come a taste of what they missed and making them feel, "Well, I don't need to go to that; I can read it all online."  It's one thing to repeat a few of the authors' bon mots or insights; and quite another thing to share everything we say.  Heck, some of us only have so many good stories. 

In a way, it's like the whole notion of avoiding spoilers.  There's a generally accepted convention that if you're going to talk about a book or movie in a way that would spoil the enjoyment of someone who hasn't read or watched the work in question, you post a spoiler alert.  Every so often people debate how long they have to wait before they can talk about a work without worrying about spoilers--and I'd say forever.  There are still people who haven't watched Sixth Sense (released in 1999) and don't know the trick ending.  For that matter, there are new generations of moviegoers every few years and some of them don't know the big plot twist in Psycho (1960).  And I don't care if you think every mystery reader worth his salt should already have read Murder on the Orient Express (1934) and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)--if you blab the twists and even one latecomer's pleasure is spoiled, you have done an evil deed and should have your library card taken away!

And to me, overzealous reporting in blogs, on lists, on Facebook--it adds up to spoilers for life.

Not much I can do about it.  No matter what the Vegas commercials say, the social norms are changing--have changed.  Am I a dinosaur for even worrying about it?

Confessions of a Bad Editor

by Toni L.P. Kelner

As I write this, the writerly sections of the web are still buzzing about the experiences of Mandy DeGeit. DeGeit had a story accepted for an anthology, but when the anthology was published, she found that without her knowledge, her story had been substantially rewritten. The editor of the anthology has since apologized, but the damage has been done. (Here's the link for DeGeit's original post about it, and there are links to other blog postings.)

As an anthology editor myself, I followed the story with indignation, and would like to go on record as saying I would never treat a writer that way.

But I can't.

I can only say I will never treat a writer that way again.

You see, DeGeit's reminded me of an incident I hadn't thought about in many years. When I was a student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, I was Features Editor at The Carolina Journal, the student newspaper. I had only had the position a month or two when I asked a brand-new staff reporter to write a piece about the local flea market. He did so, but when I went to copyedit it, I didn't think it was good enough. So I rewrote it, filling in with my own experiences from that flea market, and sent the piece to be typeset. When that issue of the Journal came out, the reporter was exceedlingly upset.

At the time, I thought I'd been justified. His story came in late, and it was poorly written, I was on deadline and had no way to contact the reporter for a rewrite, and I had a gap in the features page I needed to fill. So if I even bothered to apologize, I'm sure I did a lousy job of it. I honestly thought I'd done the right thing.

I was wrong.

In retrospect, I'm embarassed by how insufficient my excuses were. Was his story late? Sure, but it was a student newspaper. Most of our stories were late. Was the article poorly written? Maybe, but maybe I just didn't like it. At the time I'm not sure I had the experience to know the difference. Was I on deadline? Absolutely. Did I have a gap in the paper? Sure, but that wasn't the reporter's problem. I could have let it go blank, written an article myself, or even just run the story as is.

What I did was the worse choice. I betrayed my writer. 

To make it even worse, my actions led to all kinds of bad feelings at the paper and a ludicrous amount of infighting. Rude comments flew back and forth, there were petty acts of revenge, everybody was taking sides--basically the pre-internet version of a flame war. By the time the fire died down, the reporter had been elected the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal, and he let some people go and others left in a huff. So not only was I out of job, but a lot of better-qualified people were no longer on the paper either. (Fortunately, the editor was mature enough to let most of them back onto the staff later on.)

All because I didn't know how to be a good editor.

Fortunately that was a long time ago, when I was younger and vastly less experienced. Since then, I've had years of working with good editors and learning what editors are supposed to do. That means I don't change a contributor's story without permission, and I let my contributors see their stories at every step of the process. Now I know the difference between editing and rewriting. Anybody who claims to be an editor should learn those lessons first.

So while I will continue to follow DeGeit's story, I can't do so from any moral high ground. All I can say that while I'm sure I'll mistakes as an editor in the future, that's one I'll never make again.

 

 

POSTSCRIPT: I have not named the reporter in question because I'm not sure he'd want his name bandied about, and I can't check with him because I have no idea where he ended up. If any readers have contact information for the first editor of the UNCC 49er Times, please let me know--I would like to send him a much belated apology.

A Dreadful Disguise

By Elaine Viets

Phil Sagemont, Helen’s husband and partner in their private eye agency, Coronado Investigations, has a problem. In FINAL SAIL, he works undercover at the home of a suspected killer. He needs to tail Blossom when she leaves her mansion, but his employer knows Phil. His distinctive looks are a handicap.

How does he disguise himself in Fort Lauderdale, a city touched by the sun? Even ordinary folks dress outrageously. Phil solves his dilemma with a trip to the tourist shops. In this scene from FINAL SAIL, my latest Dead-End Job mystery, Helen is packing to leave for her undercover job as a yacht stewardess when Phil shows off his disguises.

Phil barged into Helen’s bedroom with three bulging plastic bags.

"Retail therapy?" she asked. "You’ve never gone in for recreational shopping."

"I’ve been working," he said. "While you were lolling, I bought disguises to tail our suspect. I am no ordinary detective." Phil dropped the bags on Helen’s blue bedspread. Thumbs, attracted by the rustling and crinkling, jumped on the bed and cautiously circled the mound of bags. The cat sniffed prodded a red bag with his big six-toed paw. It crackled invitingly. Thumbs leaped on it and a shock of wild brown hair spilled out of the bag. The cat hissed, swatted the hair and disappeared under the bed.

"What’s in there?" Helen said. "It upset Thumbs."

"Items that will render me invisible when I follow Blossom," Phil said.

Helen ruffled his thick silver hair. "With that hair?"

"I am a master of disguise," Phil said. "Watch."

He disappeared into the bathroom with the bags. Helen was packing a navy canvas carryall for her yacht cruise. She folded a pink T-shirt into the carryall while Phil slipped out of the bathroom, a vision in black dreadlocks with a red, green and yellow rasta tam plopped on top. A neon tie-dyed shirt, red board shorts, and round John Lennon sunglasses completed the ensemble.

He tapped her on the shoulder and said, "Don’t worry. Be happy."

Helen put her hands over her face and moaned, "My eyes, my eyes. I may go blind."

"You have to admit this doesn’t look like me."

"I recognize the smug look," Helen said. "Except for that, it’s a good disguise. Where’d you get the dreads and the tam?"

Phil pulled them both off his head. The dreads were attached to the hat. "No problem, mon," he said in a bad Jamaican accent. "All in one."

"I’ve seen pale guys on vacation with rasta tams and dreads," Helen said. "I didn’t realize they were wearing wig hats."

"It takes many beers to look this stupid," Phil said, abandoning the accent.

"What happens if you don’t catch Blossom the first time?"

"Wait and see," Phil said, shutting himself back into the bathroom.

"Ta-da!" Now he sported a camo visor with a burst of wild brown hair on the crown, like a clump of dead grass. A "Guns, God and Guts" T-shirt stretched across his chest. His jeans needed a wash.

 

"No wonder Thumbs hissed at the hair," Helen said. "If he sees the whole outfit, he may never come out from under the bed."

"You don’t like Bubba?" Phil asked. "I was hoping you’d admire my new look." He waited for a reaction.

Helen laughed.

"Laugh away. You haven’t seen Jimmy Ray," Phil said. "He’ll be here in a moment."

The bathroom door opened again. Phil lounged in the doorway. "Wanna go to the dump and shoot rats?" he asked.

Now he wore a greasy Marlins cap with dirty-blond curls hanging down the back of his neck. He had the same saggy jeans and a smiley face T-shirt with a gray bar across the mouth. "Silence Is Golden, Duct Tape Is Silver," the shirt said.

"What is that hairstyle?" Helen asked. "A half mullet?"

"Something fishy, darlin,’ " he drawled. He gripped a tin of Skoal chewing tobacco in one hand and a Dr. Pepper in the other.

"When did you start drinking Dr. Pepper?" Helen asked.

 

"I’m recycling," Phil said. "That’s where I spit my ’baccy juice."

 

"Ew," Helen said.

"Exactly the reaction I wanted, little lady," he said.

 

 

 

"Sherlock" mania in NYC

by Dana

A couple of weeks ago, I lucked out—and I mean big time.  There was a drawing to get a pair of tickets to the preview screening and event to celebrate the American premiere of "Sherlock" (Season 2) in New York City.  Like many of my friends, I signed up, fingers crossed.  Alas, I didn't actually win tickets, but Mr. G did, and graciously decided to take me with him.  I don't know what I was expecting, but it surely wasn't what we encountered.

The line was already a block long an hour before the doors opened.  One woman had been waiting for almost twelve hours, on the chance of getting a standby ticket.  There were 150 pairs of tickets:  ten thousand people put their names in the drawing.

A woman ahead of me in line turned and said “Don't take this the wrong way...”

I immediately assumed I had spinach in my teeth, and clamped my mouth shut.

“...but I'm glad I'm not the only one here over thirty.”

I made a mental note to call my colorist as soon as I got home.  But she wasn't wrong; the crowd was overwhelmingly female and young.  A few were obviously dressed in honor of various incarnations of “Dr. Who”—long scarves, bowties, a fez or two.  There were a few sporting a Steampunk-y aesthetic (thigh-high wooly stockings, waistcoats, the occasional corset, deerstalkers), and a few who looked like they shouldn't be out on a school night. 

I found my friend Lady J there, who was there to blog as part of the Sherlockian community.  She's also working to raise awareness for the Undershaw Preservation Trust, an effort to save the home that Arthur Conan Doyle built and lived in.  It's an excellent cause, and you should check it out.

Finally, after a reception, we were ushered into the auditorium.  There were some preliminary words and we watched the first thirty or so minutes of “A Scandal in Belgravia.”  Then Rebeccan Eaton (the Executive Producer of “Masterpiece” and “Masterpiece Mystery," in the photo above) came onstage.  Then Sue Vertue, the producer of “Sherlock” (and “Dr. Who"), then then her husband, Steven Moffat, who writes both for "Sherlock" and "Dr. Who" (I'm having a happy geek moment with them, above).  Then...Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Sherlock Holmes, recent Olivier honoree for his work in the play “Frankenstein,” came on stage. 

The only comparison that seems even remotely apt is the screaming, near-hysterical throngs who greeted the Beatles.  The crowd lost its collective mind. 

It was terrific.  Watching a hit show, with a crowd of like-minded enthusiasts, is heady stuff.  Eventually, came the Q&A, during which I found myself occasionally impatient with questions (statements, really) focusing on a personal fan response to the show, and to Benedict Cumberbatch. 

Hey, I'm the first to admit, I am  susceptible to tall, dark, and brainy.  I screamed myself almost hoarse during the introductions.  It was fun.  But I wanted to hear more of what Steven Moffat had to say about being a fan of the canon and how he (and co-creator Mark Gatiss) made decisions about updating the Holmes stories.  I wanted to hear more about how Sue Vertue and her team worked to bring a really lush-looking world to life.  I wanted to hear Rebecca Eaton talk about “Sherlock” (and “Downton Abbey,” and so much else).  I wanted to hear Benedict Cumberbatch discuss his acting process...  

Hello.  My name is Dana.  I'm a writing and acting geek.

Eventually, I managed to remember that this was a fan event, and not meant to be a seminar or a professional meeting (but wouldn't that have been a hoot!).  I can always dig out the DVD commentary or prowl the Interwebs to hear what the creators and actors think about the show.  It's not like anyone had actually spoiled the plans the panelists and I had made, to go off for whiskeys and discuss deep, writer-y and creative matters.  I mean, there was always the chance, but...fine, whatever. 

More importantly, there are few enough gateway opportunities to get new generations reading crime fiction.  And fewer still that are this good.

Once More Around The Old Block

 

Author Carolyn Haines stops by with another thought-provoking post in her guest blog series. It's amazing all the work she gets done. She teaches, she has a new book in her successful Bones series coming out in June ... just a few weeks now!

... she's writing the next Bones book, she's just put this year's Daddy's Girls Weekend to bed after months of planning ... it makes me tired thinking about it all. Oh yeah, and she runs a horse farm. And that's just the stuff I know about ...

 

ONCE MORE AROUND THE OLD BLOCK

by Carolyn Haines

An incident that occurred in recent weeks has put me thinking about issues of gender, equality, the literary establishment, and the perception of female writers. Since I’m writing this on Mother’s Day, I think it’s an appropriate topic.

I gave a speech with another writer, a male, at a library. The good news is that the event was covered by two newspapers. The bad news is that a reporter for the major daily in the area dispatched me with one line from a Wikipedia entry. One line. “Alabamian and former newspaper reporter Carolyn Haines, a prolific writer of romance and mystery novels.” The rest of the article, about 800 words, was about my co-speaker. A female reporter for the same newspaper did a more balanced story.

My co-speaker, who writes humorous general fiction set in the South and is indeed a fine writer, is the bigger name in non-mystery circles, no doubt. But a female reporter managed to put some balance in an article. But the same cannot be said of a community newspaper reporter, also a male. I fared a little better in the local reporter’s article. A whole paragraph, to a much longer story including even where my co-speaker went to college.

Two male reporters, all about the male writer. One female reporter, a more balanced story.  Was it my gender, the fact that romance (albeit they were romantic mysteries) was mentioned, or was it the label “mystery” that made two male newspaper writers decide that I wasn’t worth a few paragraphs of copy.

Back when I was a journalist my editor would have gnawed my ear off for such a blatantly unbalanced piece. Then again, journalism isn’t what it used to be in the 1970s when good reporting brought a crooked president down.

Certainly this isn’t the first time, or the last, that a female writer will be given short shrift. It’s happened to much bigger writers than me. Jodi Picoult made a dynamic stink about it recently. (Yay!)

But this is 2012, and surely things have changed. Then again, I’ve heard the words “War on Women” repeatedly in the last month. By god, I believe it’s true. I believe there is a concerted effort to keep women “in their place” or at least relegated to a lesser place. And I think these male newspaper writers are unwitting accomplices in this prejudiced attitude. On this Mother’s Day, I’ve just passed another birthday. I am of an age where I’m pretty sick and tired of this BS. I’ve heard this kind of crap for a long time.

When I was working as a reporter and covering a tense story of a knifing in a high school, I was told by a superintendent of education that I was “unnatural.” That a “normal woman” would be at home taking care of her husband and kids. I was “abnormal” and “unnatural” because I held a job. A man’s job to be more exact. I wasn’t a secretary or bank teller or school teacher or nurse (everyone knows these are women’s jobs.)

The problem wasn’t that I was an “unnatural” female. The problem was that a tragedy had occurred and it would not look good for the superintendent. But the first line of defense was to attack my gender and the fact I was doing a “man’s job”-- in his opinion. 

When I worked in PR at a university and asked for a raise, I was told, “You don’t need more money. What you need is to get married and let your husband take care of you.” These are clearly gender biases. But this latest newspaper reporter—I’m just not sure where to file it: gender bias or genre bias. Maybe both.I’m a woman who’s chosen to write in genres that some people don’t value. Had either male reporter bothered to read any further in the Wikipedia entry—or heaven forbid, gone to my web site--they would have learned that I’ve also written general fiction, short fiction, crime fiction, and biography. I’ve been given the cold shoulder by elitist bookstores where I’ve been told their clientele doesn’t “read mysteries.” Oh, really. Perhaps they just buy them elsewhere.I found these figures on the National Romance Writers of America website. These are recent totals of sales in each genre.

Romance: $1.358 billion
Religion/inspirational: $759 million
Mystery: $682 million
Science fiction/fantasy: $559 million
Classic literary fiction: $455 million

Statistics fascinate me. Of course, they can be manipulated to tell any tale the author chooses. So I won’t attempt to interpret them. They are what they are.

I work at a university, so elitism toward popular fiction is no stranger to me. Mostly I have a good sense of humor about it and just realize that those who disdain a career in mystery writing would likely give a lot to have one. And I educate my students to the stupidity of this kind of peculiar vanity. To define one’s intellect by the books one reads is hysterical to me.

I am indeed a “genre slut,” because I’ll read any kind of story that is compelling and well written. I don’t care what label is slapped on it. I guess the bottom line here is: Don’t judge a book by its cover (the author probably had very little say-so on the cover), and don’t judge an author by the genre she writes in, or her gender.

In 2012, this shouldn’t have to be said, but it does.

 

Carolyn Haines is the author of the Sarah Booth Delaney Mississippi Delta mystery series. Among her awards are the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Writing, the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, and two of her books were listed in the top 5 mysteries of the year by Library Journal--in 2004 (Hallowed Bones) and 2006 (Penumbra). She is a former award winning journalist and runs an animal rescue. She urges everyone to please spay and neuter their companion pets and adopt from shelters. 

How A Strong Woman Steals The Show

 

We have a special guest blogger today, Elizabeth Zelvin, a psychotherapist by day, an author and musician by night. Let's see how she brings her experience into her mystery writing work ....

 

HOW A STRONG WOMAN STEALS THE SHOW

 by ELIZABETH ZELVIN    

 

 

As a card-carrying feminist (if there were such a thing), I have a tendency to jump up waving my hand, like Hermione the first year at Hogwarts, whenever someone starts talking about mysteries with strong female characters.

It’s not entirely my aging memory that makes me forget over and over that the protagonist of my series is a guy: recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler, with his smart mouth, his New York attitude, and his ill-concealed heart of gold.

A reviewer of the new book, Death Will Extend Your Vacation, said some nifty things about it, including that it “will keep readers guessing till the end.” However, he wrote me privately that he didn’t understand why Barbara, more than Bruce, seemed to be driving the investigation.

 It was a fair question, because I’ve given Barbara not just an important part in the investigation, but a very active role, along with Bruce, in the climactic showdown with the murderer. I did the same in Death Will Get You Sober. Yep, I broke one of the cardinal rules of traditional mysteries (the protagonist is the one who gets the bad guy), and I had some good reasons for doing so.

The first reason is historical. I did not intend to write a book without a strong female protagonist. I was passionately committed to writing a book about recovery from alcoholism. I might have chosen a woman alcoholic, except that I cared deeply about the secondary theme of friendship getting a second chance, and I had a two-guy story to tell.

Two boys, best friends, grow up together, start drinking together, become alcoholics together. Then one gets sober; the other keeps drinking, wrecking his own life and all his relationships. Fifteen years later, the second guy gets sober. Can this friendship be saved?

So I tried to do both. I wrote a story with two protagonists, a male alcoholic (Bruce) and a female codependent (Barbara), with the long-sober friend (Jimmy, Barbara’s boyfriend) as a sidekick. I gave them alternating chapters, both in first person, each with a distinctive voice.

About 160 queries and many revisions later, the first book appeared. But in the meantime, an astute editor had suggested that I rewrite the manuscript. He thought Bruce made a terrific protagonist but that Barbara, while a good character, would do better as a sidekick.

It was a good suggestion. Barbara was a little too preachy and discursive in the first person but came out just right with a few close third person point of view chapters punctuating Bruce’s narrative. But I still wanted to make her a strong character, so I didn’t remove her from the action.

The second reason comes from my commitment to the character-driven novel. The way Barbara leaps on the sleuthing bandwagon and harrasses Bruce and Jimmy until they can’t do anything but say, “Yes, dear,” and follow her lead is consistent with Barbara’s character as a world-class codependent. A counselor by profession, she burns to help.

She can’t stop rescuing, controlling, and minding other people’s business. As a result, she makes an excellent amateur sleuth. At one point, in a so-far unpublished novella, the guys accuse her of having no boundaries. When she protests, “I have boundaries,” one of them says, “Yeah, the Mongolian border.”

Part of Barbara’s shtik is her investment in both Bruce’s sobriety and the friendship between Bruce and Jimmy. She thinks sleuthing will engage Bruce emotionally—an important aspect of coming back to life after years of hard drinking—and thus help keep him sober. And she is utterly involved in the drama of the guys’ renewed relationship. When they talk on the phone, she listens on the extension (a device I’m reluctantly letting go of as more and more people give up their landlines). She wants to know what they’re thinking and feeling. She says out loud the things they’ll never say, including that they love each other. She’s moved by that. She cares.

As a result, Barbara comes to life every bit as fully as Bruce does. To some readers, her insatiable nosiness is an irritant—a cake crumb under the skin of Kipling’s rhinoceros. But a lot of women readers like Barbara—“She’s a hoot”—or get annoyed with her in a way that tells me she comes across as real. “Has anyone ever told you they’d like to smack Barbara?” one reader asked me. Best of all, to me, is when they say, “I love Barbara—she’s such a strong female character.”

                                   *

 

 

Elizabeth Zelvin is a New York psychotherapist, a three-time Agatha Award nominee, and author of the mystery series featuring recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler, starting with Death Will Get You Sober. The third book, Death Will Extend Your Vacation, is just out, and “Death Will Tank Your Fish” was a 2011 Derringer Award nominee for Best Short Story. Liz has also just released a CD of original songs, Outrageous Older Woman. Her author website is www.elizabethzelvin.com, and her music website, www.lizzelvin.com. Liz blogs on Poe’s Deadly Daughters and SleuthSayers.

 

 

 

 

On the Road Again

Welcome back, guest blogger, SJ Rozan!  SJ, author of the Lydia Chin and Bill Smith mysteries, is tackling another aspect of the writing life today:  teaching.  Without further ado, take it away!

I'm back again with my final entry in this trifecta of guest blogs for the Femmes Fatales.  My subject: the public side of the writer's life.  My first post was about doing a panel, and thus hanging with other writers; my second, on leaving town for public events.  Seeing as how I just got back from a terrific teaching gig in Florida, I'm going to talk about teaching, workshops, and all that jazz.

I love to teach.  I really do.  I've never sought out a regular, normal, semester-long teaching job, because I travel so much and it would involve too much co-ordination.  So what I do is time-limited workshops and classes.  In the general way of things, I'll consider (and likely agree to) any invitation that includes airfare, a hotel room, and some form of honorarium.  Partly, this is why I travel so much, which is why I've never sought...  You get the idea.

The Miami gig was at the Writers' Institute at Miami Dade College.  (These are the same fine people who put on the excellent Miami Book Fair, and if you're a writer and you get an invitation, go!  If you're not a writer but you're a reader and you live anywhere near there, I suggest you put it on your calendar and also, go!)  I taught a 3-day course in crime writing.  I had seven stellar students (and if you're reading this, mis estudientes, know I do mean you even though you're the one(s) who thought your work was junk).  This was a class, not a workshop, so although we did in-class exercises to illustrate various points, the students didn't bring previously-written work to share and the ratio of me yapping to students' work being critiqued was higher than usual.  I was wiped out at the end of each day, as I always am when I teach (probably another reason why I've never sought...) but the terrific thing about teaching is, it's as energizing as it is exhausting.  I gave assignments I've given dozens of times, and the responses are always different, always new.  It's a cliché, I guess, but I learn as much from teaching as the students do.  I either see a new angle to an element we're working on, something I never thought about before, based on a student's answer to the problem I give; or a student asks a question that forces me to articulate and therefore be precise about a concept that until then had been one of those undeveloped, fuzzy-edged ideas we all carry around.

I especially love to teach beginners, people who've wanted to try this writing thing for awhile but never have, until this moment when they nervously and self-consciously stick their toes in the water.  I enjoy the steep learning curve.  Working with people who are already experienced is rewarding in a different way, because the technical level of work is, as you might expect, consistently higher; but the incremental improvements beginners make are greater, and tremendously exciting.  The most exciting thing -- and this happens with both experienced students and beginners -- is the moment when someone stops thinking of her- or himself as a butcher, baker or candlestick maker who writes, and becomes a writer with a day job.  It's a mental shift all writers need to make, except maybe those high school lit mag, college creative writing program, MFA folks -- the ones who knew this about themselves from Day One.  Most of us didn't, though, and were adults when our identities changed.  I was half-way through my second book, had just sold my second short story (the book hadn't sold yet) and was still working full time as an architect, when it happened to me.  The shift has nothing at all to do with whether you ever sell anything.  Selling a work makes you an author.  Writing makes you a writer.  And I love to see my students make that shift.  It doesn't always happen -- sometimes it takes a number of classes and workshops, and for some people it never happens.  But sometimes it does, and that, plus all the other benefits of teaching, is enough to keep me coming back.

And: If you've been thinking about sticking your toe in the water, or you've been writing for awhile but  want a concentrated time and a gorgeous place to do it, my next teaching gig is in July, at the Art Workshop International in Assisi, Italy.  Two weeks in a four-star hotel, folks, two weeks of workshop and the company of other artists.  And great food.  Do come -- I promise you you'll work very hard and leave all revved up.

Okay, SJ signing off, until such time as I'm invited back here to run my mouth at the Femmes.