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Femmes of the Past by Dean James

Morna Doris McTaggart Brown, better known to mystery readers as Elizabeth Ferrars (E.X. Ferrars in the US), was born in Rangoon, Burman (now Myanmar) in 1907. She took a diploma in journalism and published two novels under her own name before switching to crime fiction and writing under the name Elizabeth Ferrars. The Ferrars came from her mother; it was her maiden name.

Her first mystery, a detective story entitled Give a Corpse a Bad Name, was published in 1940 and featured Toby Dyke. She published four more novels with this character before turning to writing standalone crime novels. Later in her career she wrote two other series, one featuring Virginia Freer and her not-so-reliable husband Felix, and a retired professor, Andrew Basnett, said to be modeled upon her own husband, Professor Robert Brown.

Her early detective stories are entertaining, but when she switched to crime novels she came into her own. Never as successful as some of her peers (Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham), she nevertheless developed a loyal readership among mystery lovers. Her prose is concise, her insight into character incisive, and her ability to create a milieu of subtle menace is every bit as good as Christie's.

She died in September 1995, having published over seventy novels. A recent critical study, E.X. Ferrars: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction, by the late Gina MacDonald, provides an impressive study of her work.

 

Reigning Cats or Dogs?

Today, the Femmes Fatales welcome guest blogger Catriona McPherson.  (Just for the record, Catriona is pronounced just like Hurricane Katrina--nothing gets her goat like calling her "cat-ree-oh-na," and McPherson rhymes with "person." Just so you know.)

Catriona McPherson was born in Edinburgh in 1965, the youngest of four daughters, and educated at Edinburgh University.  She left in 1996 with a PhD in Linguistics and spent five years working as a university lecturer in Leeds before giving up academic life and starting to write fiction.
She is the author of seven-and-counting crime novels set in Scotland in the 1920s featuring the gently-born (but nevertheless rather kick-ass) private detective, Dandy Gilver.  The first, After the Armistice Ball was shortlisted for the Ellis Peters Dagger in the UK.  The Proper Treatment of Bloodstains (DG No 5) was bought by St Martin’s Press to launch the series in the US, where it was one of Hallie Ephron’s top 10 crime picks of 2011 in the Boston Globe.  It has now been nominated for the Sue Feder Macavity.  The 2nd US book An Unsuitable Day for a Murder was published in June.   

For ten years Catriona lived on a ramshackle farm in a beautiful valley in Galloway, running in the hills, swimming in the rivers and gardening in spite of the wind.  Then she moved  - with her cats and her scientist - to Northern California, where the running is flatter, the rivers are warmer and she can grow cantaloupe as well as cabbages.  The new farm, however, is just as ramshackle as the last. 

Reigning Cats or Dogs?

Never mind Romney or Obama, noir or cozy, Wars or Trek.  If you really want to get a bead on someone the question is: cat or dog?

And the answer is cat.

That was easy.

But since this is a blog, not a tweet, I’ll elaborate.

I’m a cat person.  I got a sixth share in my first cat when I was five: Tabitha.  And since then there’s been  Maggie, Arthur, Poppy, Clive, Carrie, Spud, Dennis and Rachel.  They all came as kittens and lived out their lives.  Poppy died in front of the Rayburn at fifteen, Clive met a car at two.  Dennis and Rachel are six and coping well with rattlesnakes, black widows and coyotes.

But that’s just me.  My detective, Dandy Gilver, is a dog person.  She certainly loves her Dalmatian more than she loves her husband.  Her children?  Well, I couldn’t comment, but she didn’t send her dog to boarding school when it was seven.

And it’s this that usually convinces readers I’m not Dandy and she’s not me.  The fact that she’s dark-haired, upper-class, born in 1886, and English, whereas I’m “blonde” (Thanks, Salon Blonde),  working-class, born in 1965 and Scottish are just details.  But a dog-lover and a cat-lover?  That’s no Mary-Sue – that’s really fiction.

Dandy’s reasons for preferring dogs are traditional, tribal almost.  Upper-class Brits are always nuts about their dogs.  I think a lot of them probably do prefer the puppy to the hubby.  And they really do send the kids away to school and keep the dogs at home, so who knows.

My reason for preferring cats is easy.  I don’t mean to start something but . . . cats are better.

Dogs might herd sheep and save mountaineers, but cats do endless work around the house.  From wrapping birthday presents:

 

To putting away groceries:

 

They take part in your hobbies too.  From jigsaw puzzles:

 

To gardening.  They particularly enjoy pruning the Nepeta:

 

(aka catnip) but will also act as decorative mulch sometimes:

 

No, but seriously.  Here’s why cats rule.

Cats have fluffy tummies.  Dogs’ tummies look like something that should have underwear on.

Dogs smell.  People say cats smell.  What they usually mean is that litterboxes smell.  But if you had a litterbox it would smell too.

Cats love who they love.  (Dennis loves everyone.  Rachel loves me, the undergardener a bit and almost my mum.)  Dogs love whoever has the bacon bites.

A dog’s internal monologue goes like this: “What will I do?  Where should I be?  Tell me what to think!  Where are you going?   Do you still love me?  Are you going away? Don’t you love me?  Alone, alone, alone, aloooooooone.  Back!  You came back!  You saved me!  You love me!  What will I do?  Tell me what to think!”

A cat’s internal monologue goes like this: “Consider the stars . . .  mmmmm . . . ’ opens one eye  ‘Is that you, Catriona?  I love you, you know.  Perhaps later I’ll show you.  Perhaps not.  Mmmmmmm . . . Consider the earth . . . ’

(I do realise I’ve made both sound as if they’re completely off their heads, only on different drugs, but I stand by my argument.)

Finally, twenty thousand New Yorker cartoons can’t be wrong.

But.

For the last two weeks, I’ve been house-sitting, teen-sitting and dog-sitting.  Me, Dennis, Rachel and the undergardener moved back into the granny flat where we first stayed when we moved to America two years ago and I’ve been in charge of the bacon bites for Harry.

 

I’ve been walking him twice a day (dealing with his warm little bundles and his endless love of lamp-posts) and hanging out with him while I write and he . . . well, to be honest I don’t know.  I’ve tried to interpret his many whines and groans, tried to understand what he wants, what’s wrong (usually), what’s right (occasionally) what’s worrying (always).

And he has somewhat grown on me.  I always liked him.  He’s as cute as a cupcake made of daisies to look at and was the perfect host to two strange, jet-lagged cats when we first arrived here.  Now, I actually think I’ll miss him when I go home tomorrow.  I know he’ll miss me, until he realises the bacon bites are staying.

Anyway, last night Dennis was lying on the dining table, accepting the adulation of a staff-member (dogs have owners; cats have staff), just one set of claws out to remind us that he’s no schmuck . . .

 

 and I looked over at Harry, curled up as small as a dot, still recovering from the trauma of his Welcome-Home-Mom-&-Dad bath, and felt a twinge.

 

Just for a minute I found myself thinking: ‘Look at that smug, elitist, too-cool-for-school cat just rolling about there and look at Harry, being a dot, hoping he won’t get washed again.’  Then I found myself speaking. 

‘Who’s a good boy?’ I said. 

Dennis, Harry and the undergardener all looked up.  But only one of them wagged his tail.   And there was the answer. 

The Family Tree

              By Elaine Viets

Your family tree may go way back, but mine has more mileage. In twenty years, we’ve put nearly 2,000 miles on our family tree.

Our tree is a ficus. When we bought a house in St. Louis, it sat in the living room, daring us to move it. The six-foot tree stayed by the window. It’s tough. When we moved to Washington DC, the Missouri ficus was crammed in a moving van for 850 miles. It survived another long haul from DC to Fort Lauderdale – 1040 miles.

The movers cursed that ficus as they lugged it up to our third-floor Florida apartment. "Lady, here we trim these things with Weed Wackers."

The tree kept growing.

It shed most of its leaves during a two-year exile at our tiny beach apartment. But when we moved to our Fort Lauderdale condo, the ficus grew like a weed. This winter, it was eight feet tall and eight feet around. It outgrew its pot.

How was I going to transplant a hedge? I delayed, dithered and watered the tree until its leaves yellowed and it stank like a swamp.

I had to save it. That tree was family. A bit of a stick, maybe, but it never talked politics or asked when I’d get a real job.

Our local nursery owner refused to transplant the tree. "It’s rootbound and waterlogged," he said. "You need to know if it will live first. Put it out in the sun and drill holes in the pot."

My husband Don and I dragged the eight-by-eight tree onto our balcony. The air turned blue as we cursed. As least we insulted the tree and not each other. I swept up a trash bag full of leaves in the livingroom.

The holes in the pot were easier. It’s foam that looks like stone. When I poked holes around the bottom, dark smelly water trickled off our balcony.

After the water drained, the tree was down to a handful of leaves. I asked our landscaper friend, Tim, to look at it.

Then I ordered a lightweight planter the size of a table for the ailing ficus, and found an 8-foot areca palm for the living room. The areca would take the place of the ficus in my home, but not my heart.

Right before the transplant, the condo maintenance man pounded on our door.  "What’s leaking on your balcony?" he asked.

I looked down. My heart fell seven floors. Tree water had turned the balconies below dark brown. Tannin stains.

My neighbors didn’t deserve that.

Friday morning, I met Tim at the nursery. The areca palm looked light and feathery standing with its fellows. But on the condo elevator, the palm seemed big enough to swallow Tim and me both.

Tim covered the balcony with a dropcloth and trimmed away the dead wood. "The ficus has a 75 percent chance of survival," he said.

Tim was a wrestler in school, and he needed his skills to manhandle the ailing ficus and the new palm. After two hours, Tim looked like he’d been mud wrestling.

But the family tree is recuperating on the balcony and the new palm is reigning in the living room.

I spent the weekend experimenting with ways to remove tannin stains from painted concrete. Conventional cleaners didn’t work. The next steps involved rubber gloves, wire brushes and acid.

Until my handy friend Karen suggested hydrogen peroxide. We had some   in the medicine cabinet. "You have to use it at night," she said. "It evaporates in sunlight. That’s why it’s in a brown bottle."

I soaked a paper towel with peroxide and left it on a test section. The next morning, the stain was gone. It worked. Peroxide was cheap, easy and environmentally safe. The condo association won’t have to repaint the balconies. My neighbors below may forgive me if I give them each a bottle of wine.                                

I wanted to thank my smart friend Karen. She likes ficus trees.

"Please let me send you a six-foot ficus," I said.

For some reason, she said no.

Real Life Mysteries

by Kris Neri

When you consider that I write paranormal fiction, in addition to humorous traditional mysteries, and that I love fantasy fiction, I have no fondness for real life encounters with things that go bump in the night, or any other time.

When you write or read fantasy, it’s not necessary to believe in any of it. That’s why it’s called fantasy. You can buy into some of it, or just enjoy a trip to another world, which might be similar to ours, but really different in other ways, without believing in any of it.

I used to maintain a strictly skeptical bent on all things woo-woo. Although some questionable things did happen to me on occasion, I always found another way to explain them. I’ve also had prophetic dreams, but I wrote those off to coincidences.

Then we had an author come to sign at our bookstore, who was an EMT who claimed she communed with  those who had passed over while she tried to help them during the course of doing her job. I didn’t necessarily believe, although I figured she did. I even enjoyed her nonfiction book, although I approached it as if it were fiction.

But when she appeared before the sizeable crowd she drew, a round shadow suddenly popped up on the wall behind her, where there was nothing to cast a shadow. To say I was freaked was a criminal understatement. I kept trying to find a logical explanation, but logic totally eluded me.

After the author left, I tentatively broached the subject of that distinctive orb cast on the wall with a customer. “Oh, sure, that was an entity,” the customer said. “I figured she brought it along with her.”

Wasn’t that nice of her? Shouldn’t she have asked permission first?

In all the years we operated our bookstore out of that suite, which was more than six, I never again saw anything like that, but neither was I able to forget it, or explain it away. Maybe there really are more things in heaven and earth… Even if this paranormal writer doesn’t want to believe it. I wish that incident were unique, but I experienced too, too many things I can’t explain.

We recently encountered another real life mystery that proved to be just as troubling and just as perplexing. While in New Mexico on vacation, we had repeated problems with a super loud TV in the room next door every night. While it playing at different hours, the TV was always tuned to a soccer game.

We put up with it one night. When it was repeated the next night, my husband initially went next door to talk to our inconsiderate neighbors. He knocked over and over, but no one answered. By then the TV was at a staggering volume, so he assumed they simply couldn’t hear. He went downstairs to report it to someone at the desk, while I remained in our room.

While he was gone, the TV went off. Joe came back with the night manager, who insisted there weren’t  any guests registered in that room. We thought that an employee might have used his passkey to enter it, and used that place to hide out and watch a soccer game when he was supposed to be on duty. But the night manager insisted that there was no indication that anyone had used the room since it was made-up by the maid days earlier.

Maybe so, maybe not. Neither Joe nor I had gone into the room with him, so we weren’t able to verify it either way. The TV had gone off by then, which was all we cared about.

Next night, same thing. Televised soccer game played at maximum volume, though at a different time than the night before. This time Joe went straight downstairs. With the night manager off that night, the head of security accompanied him back upstairs.

Joe entered that room with the security guy. The TV was still on, still playing at full volume, airing another soccer game. But the room was dark. When they turned on the lights, the condition of the room was perfect. As the night manager had insisted the night before, there was no sign that anyone had ever sat on the bed to watch the game. There was nothing to indicate anyone had entered the room at all, apart from those checking on a TV that seemed to turn itself on.

Joe pulled the plug on the TV, and it never bothered us again, although we only spent one more night  there. The security man maintained there was no way to program the TV to either go on or go off with the remotes the hotel provided. I’m still looking for that logical explanation, though. Maybe there were other remotes that the staff had access to, which had greater capabilities. Maybe some guest in another room had a way of activating TV sets through the wall or from across the hall, just to play with people’s heads. Maybe someone really did sneak in and out quietly, watching soccer games in stealth, and taking pains to leave the room in faultless condition.

The security officer also said that the hotel maids reported that strange things often happened in that wing and floor of the hotel. We didn't ask what they meant by "strange."

I’m still clinging to any one of the logical explanations I’ve managed to come up with. But it’s getting harder.

What do you believe? Have you had encounters you can’t explain?

 

PANTS ON FIRE!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: It's special guest day! And we are delighted to introduce you to--oh, wait. You already knew Terry Ambrose? You probably do--he not only writes the wonderful CRIME FICTION Examiner--but is also a mystery novelist in his own right.

And today--he's giving us a little tutorial--in Lying!

 

PANTS ON FIRE

      by Terry Ambrose

 

I doubt that there’s a single person alive who can say they’ve never told a lie. Some might stop with the little fibs—Yes, there is a Santa. No, that doesn’t make you look fat. Others will graduate to the more serious—No, officer, I didn’t see the light change. And, of course, the select few will escalate to the really serious stuff. As a fiction writer, I love writing about characters who tell lies for a living.

Quite frankly, I used to be really good at recognizing facial and body cues. I never graduated to the level where I could readily manipulate others, but that’s another story. I stopped practicing those skills years ago when I left my last “real job.” From a practical standpoint, once you get past the emotional guilt that telling a lie brings on, the difference between good and bad liars is much like a hitter’s batting percentage in baseball. Maybe you’re a .267 hitter. Or even .350? So, how could you, or the character in a book, improve that percentage?

First, a good lie is based on facts. The closer to the truth, the better. This might be classified as the sniff test. If it doesn’t smell like complete BS, the lie may fly.

Keep It Simple Stupid. This saying, which began in the aerospace industry to force engineers to make the planes they were designing easy to repair under combat conditions, also applies to telling a good lie.

The KISS principal is often misunderstood because what it really means is keep things as simple as they need to be, i.e., blend the complex with the simple and you’ve got a winner.

So what about those body cues I mentioned? This is where good liars shine.

In the years that I spent as a bill collector and skip tracer, I listened to a lot of lies. Little did I realize when I took the job, that I was going to get an education at “Liar U.” Later on in my career, I was fortunate enough to train with an industrial psychologist who taught me and a few others about neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)—an amazing, and controversial, practice.

In Photo Finish, my protagonist, who is a former skip tracer, is taken in by a con artist who uses a variety of methods to cloak her lies. These methods include several body-language cues that help establish rapport with the hero. The con artist knows that if she establishes rapport first, everything else will be easier later on.

One of the techniques that helps to establish rapport is an open and erect body posture. By not coming across as defensive—arms crossed over chest, leaning into or encroaching on someone’s personal space, and avoiding stiffness in posture—the other person relaxes their guard.

Another step in the rapport-establishment process is maintaining eye contact. However, forcing the other person to break eye contact by getting into a staring contest can only lead to disaster. Instead of waiting for the other person to crumble by looking away, break the eye contact with a simple distraction such as a smile, gesture, or action.

There are many more techniques involved in NLP to help individuals learn how to establish rapport and communicate better, but leave it to a fiction writer to look beyond a discipline’s intended purpose to see the “dark side” and say, “What if?”

****************************************

  Terry Ambrose started out skip tracing and collecting money from deadbeats and quickly learned that liars come from all walks of life. He never actually stole a car, but sometimes hired big guys with tow trucks and a penchant for working in the dark to “help” when negotiations failed. A resident of Southern California, he loves spending time in Hawaii, especially on the Garden Island of Kauai, where he invents lies for others to read. His years of chasing deadbeats taught him many valuable life lessons such as—always keep your car in the garage.

And here's a fun trailer about Photo Finish!

A Wonderful Knight!

by Toni L.P. Kelner

 

I recently took my daughters to a talk by cartoonist Keith Knight, creator of the comic strips The K Chronicles, Knight Life, and Th(ink), and we really had a great time. 

My husband Steve was the first Kelner to discover Knight's work, either on the web or via our comic book haven The Million Year Picnic, but we've been hooked ever since. All the strips are terrific, though I tend to prefer the art in Knight Life just a bit. The strips are funny, his wordplay is witty, the characters are hilarious, and Knight makes great points about the world without hitting you over the head with a stick.

We were tickled to find out that Knight grew up in Malden, MA, where we live, so every now and then Malden shows up in the strip along with other area landmarks. He shows up every now and then in the area to visit family, and this time his appearance was fabulously convienient. He came to the Malden Public Library--right across the street from the high school he attended--to give a demonstration of drawing comic strips for high school students.

Since I've got two teenaged daughters interested in art careers, we jumped at the chance to attend. I figured they'd learn more about how a professional artist works. I was just there as a fan but I think I came away from it with as much as the girls did. (Not just the autographed books, though we did bring home several of them.)

 

 

You see, I always enjoy hearing creative people talk about their work, but I was suprised by how much of it seemed applicable to me. He's a black man who grew up in Malden and moved out west to Califorina--I'm a white woman who grew up in the South and moved up north to Malden. He's an artist and has always drawn at every opportunity--I'm write prose and I'm not even a decent doodler. 

But here's the commonality: we're both storytellers.

Well, that and we both like comics and Star Trek. But for the purposes of this blog, we'll stick with the storytelling. And an awful lot of the things he said that ring true for me.

• "People learn the language of comics." Knight was talking about how certain graphic conventions convey surprise, distance, cuss words. But it's true in mystery, too. Writers and readers learn the conventions of the genre: spotting clues, following investigations, establishing means-motive-opportunity, don't wait until too late to have a body.

• "You only need a picture of a pyramid--it's Egypt." Knight meant that it's much easier for a cartoonist to establish a setting than for a filmmaker. I'd say it's easier for a writer, too, and not just because you don't have to wait for good weather to film. A few very carefully chosen words of description set the scene immediately. Robert Heinlein once started a book like this: The door dilated. Three words, and you know you're reading science fiction.

• "You don't need to be realistic." Knight was referring to stylized art, and at first I was thinking this didn't apply. Then I remembered I'm working on a series about an ambulatory skeleton. He has a point. It's also true that writers don't need to be hyper-realistic anytime. Nobody needs to see my characters go to the bathroom, burp, or blow their noses unless it's important to the story.

• "I use routines, repeated pieces of business." The examples of routines that Knight gave were the myriad Charlie Brown strips where Lucy was sitting in her psychiatric help booth or Snoopy was on top of his doghouse. In my series mysteries, these are the moments recur without being duplicates: Laura Fleming catching up on family members, Tilda Harper's horrible roommates. The trick is to make these routines fun for the new readers and the established fans.

• "I start with real people, but they fall into a character. I'm not sure if they evolve or devolve." Knight's technique is defintely one I use. A lot of my characters start with real people, though by the time I'm done with them, they're nobody recognizable. Laura Fleming started from me--Southerner living up North, working in computer industry, husband in academia--but she never managed to adopt my sense of humor. 

• "To see if a character is designed strongly enough, draw a silhouette of it and see it it's recognizable." I think the comparable technique for writers is dialog. If you pull a bunch of dialog out without attribution, and you can just tell who said what, then you've got a strong character.

• "You only have to hit every third time to get into the hall of fame." Knight works every single day: Halloween, Christmas, his birthday. He started the demo late because he had to get a strip finished. Obviously, he said, some of his strips are going to be better than others. But here's his view, given to him by somebody whose name I did not right down. To get into the Baseball Hall of Fame, you need a .333 batting average--one hit out of three. So he figures if one strip out of three is really good, then he's doing fine. I don't think I could survive if only one book out of three was a homer, but maybe I can think of paragraphs that way. Not all of them are going to be golden.

If you get a chance to see Keith Knight in person, don't wait until it's fabulously convienient. If you can't do that, treat yourself to one of his books. I bet you'll learn a lot more than what I've put here. I know there are other lessons I could have come away with, but for the rest of the talk I was following Knight's advice: I was doodling.

ME, TOO!

By coincidence, Donna, Dean, and I are all at the same point. I, too, am about to start a new book. Furthermore, it'll be the first in a new series. As many times as I've started new books, this procedure ought to be stress-free; but it's not. The only comfort I have is that I can't make any continuity errors, since there's no previous body of work to coordinate.

This time, I'm starting by drawing a map. That's so much fun it ought to be against the law. I love creating a new town, and I already have a good idea of most of the people who live there. After I draw the map, I'm going to refer to the book synopsis I had to create when my agent was selling the book. Since my editor and I have worked together a long time, I know it's not necessary to stick to that slavishly, but it's a definite guideline.

Then I have to decide at what point in that story the book will open, which will determine how much backstory I have to insert.

And finally, I'll type "Page One, Chapter One" and the first sentence will flow. After I set the tone and vocabulary for the book, I may rewrite the first sentence several times. Next July, I'll write "The End."

That's the plan, but the experience of writing every single book is different. And it doesn't get any easier! I still can't imagine doing anything else.

Process

by Dean/Miranda James

I'm going to riff on Donna's blog post because I'm at a similar stage. I recently finished a book and about to start writing the next one. This is always an odd time for me. I'm thrilled because I managed to complete another book but terrified that I won't be able to finish another one.

You'd think that, after having completed what will be my eighteenth published novel (available January 29, 2013) that I wouldn't be all that worried about starting number nineteen. After all, if you've done something eighteen times, surely you have the hang of it by this point. Yeah, you'd think so.

I have this weird quirk about a new book -- I can't start it until I have the first sentence thoroughly worked out in my head. I might jot a version or two of it on a piece of paper, but the book doesn't really seem real to me until I type that first sentence onto the screen (and immediately save it). That first sentence is so important; it's the "hook" that will draw readers in and convince them to read further. So it has to be the best I can make it.

By this point I have thought about more than the first sentence, of course. I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about the characters and the plot, and once I get the green light I'm ready to move forward. Hoping, of course, that my conscious and my subconscious will play well together and help me come up with about 70-80,000 words that actually make sense.

One of the most fun things about writing is that moment when the subconscious comes through with just the right line of dialog or an inspired plot twist. I rely heavily on my subconscious because frankly I think it knows a lot more about writing a novel than I do. I have to feed it by thinking about the book when I really need to shut my mind down and go to sleep so I can get up the next morning and be coherent at my day job, but that's multi-tasking, right?

If my subconscious cooperates again (and I can come up with the right first sentence), number nineteen will appear on the shelves sometime around the first of February 2014.

On the cusp

Last night, instead of writing this blog in advance, I went to our local Mystery Writers of America chapter dinner.  Two local writer friends, Alma Katsu and Allison Leotta, were our speakers.  They're both former feds turned full time writer.  Our head table was top-heavy with writers--Kathryn Johnson, Ruth Glick (aka Rebecca York) and Art Taylor were also there.  So of course the conversation turned to writing, including who was still on deadline and who had just turned in something. 

I found myself saying "I'm on the cusp of a book."  And then wasn't sure what I meant by that.  So I came home and looked up the word "cusp."

The first two definitions made me think I'd misspoken.  "A point or pointed end" and "a point, projection, or elevation, as on the crown of a tooth." Okay, when you're getting close to delivering a book, maybe it does feel rather like a pointy object digging into your back, saying "Finish me! Edit me!  Polish me!  Turn me in!"--while the nonwriter part of you is trying to derail the process, muttering about books to read, movies to watch, long-neglected household chores, gardening projects that seem so alluring when you don't have time to do them.  Still--not sure that's what I meant. 

The third definition is geometric (a point where two branches of a curve meet, end, and are tangent) and the fifth architectural (a decorative device, used especially in Gothic architecture to vary the outlines of intradoses or to form architectural foils, consisting of a pair of curves tangent to the real or imaginary line defining the area decorated and meeting at a point within the area). Even farther afield from what I wanted to convey.  In astronomy, it's a point of a crescent, especially of the moon. In astrology, the zodiacal degree that marks the beginning of a house or a sign. At this point I was convinced that my writer friends probably thought I was a loon when I said I was on the cusp of a book.

It wasn't until the seventh definition that I realized I hadn't misspoken--a cusp is also a point that marks the beginning of a change: on the cusp of a new era.

Yeah.  Because that's what it feels like when you're nearing the end of a book project.  The end of an era.  And a whole new era looming ahead.  One minute I've lived with this book too long and want to kick the damned thing out the door.  The next minute I say no, there are still things I want and need to do to it.  And I'm eager to get to the next book I'm going to write and at the same time saying "Noooooo . . . I need to think about it some more (and I want to play a little first)."

The pushme/pullyou mood is stronger than usual because I'm on an accelerated writing schedule this year and next, squeezing in a Christmas Meg book between the regular 2013 and 2014 books. And I also have a couple of short stories I promised to write, on what seemed, at the time, like really long deadlines. So as soon as I pry this manuscript out of my hands and send it to my editor, I'll be diving straight into the next project. 

But I haven't finished the book yet.  I haven't started the next project yet.  I have one foot in the old and one in the new.

On the cusp.  I find it's a curiously satisfying place to be.

Of course, my favorite seasons are the transition times.   Those first cool September days when you get a taste of what fall will be like.  The first late winter days when a hint of warmth reminds you that spring is coming.  And at least here in the Northern Virginia area, we're definitely in that fall transition time.  This summer was particularly brutal.  But we survived it. They're predicting a colder, snowier winter than usual.  But we're not there yet. Right now, the days are warm and sunny, the night are cool and crisp. 

Right now my almost-finished book still holds possibilities I could explore (well, if I wanted to test my editor's patience).  And my next book is all possibility, though thanks to my synopsis, I have a map to help me explore that possibility.  Right now I'm liking it here on the cusp.  Anyone else fond of the cusp?

A Novel Diary: Chapter 3

Water Boarding

By Elaine Viets

NOTE: This is a continuing series about my May 2013 Dead-End Job mystery from conception to publication.

 

My new mystery had a name: "Board Stiff." And a theme: beach concessions. But which one?

For that, I needed more research.  I walked along the beach at Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, checking out tacky T-shirts slogans. Some tourists must feel they haven’t vacationed here until they buy shirts with unprintable sayings.  Something  . . . Hanes-ous.

At Fort Lauderdale Beach, I discovered a correlation between bars and T-shirt shops. The lower the dive, the grosser the closest shirt shops.

At a boutique, I bought a pink-and-black blouse with no slogan. Somebody has to support the silent majority. Shirtwise, anyway.

I also studied beach concessions: Ocean kayaking was too strenuous. Parasailing looked too dangerous. It was. A few days later, a Connecticut woman fell some 200 feet to her death while parasailing on Pompano Beach. 

But stand up paddleboarding caught my eye. I’ve secretly longed to hang ten, but lack the agility to surf the waves. Stand up paddleboarding, known as SUP, looked like a slow, easy-going form of surfing. Sure, SUPers could paddle through the raging ocean, like this man in Maui:

  

But the sport has a gentle side. You can paddle on a glass-smooth morning ocean or a lake. I signed up for one SUP lesson on Fort Lauderdale’s  Middle River at George English Park.

SUP photos often show lithe muscular women wearing the bare minimum.

If I could have found suits like these, I would have happily donned them.

Instead, I wore a knee-length T-shirt over a one-piece swimsuit, along with a cracked pair of sunglasses, in case I lost them when I fell off the board. I knew I’d fall off.

Mario gave me my first lesson at George English Park. He’s a good teacher. We waded out from a small crescent of sandy beach. The water was about three feet deep. Mario knelt on his board and rose up gracefully as a sea creature, paddle in hand. I got up from my knees with a shaky wobble, but I was standing. Sort of like a newborn stork, but not as cute.

"Don’t look down," Mario cautioned. "Keep paddling. Avoid the middle where there’s a current and stay away from that big corrugated pipe."

Then he gave the really hard command, "Relax."

I never relaxed, but I paddled. My SUP form won’t win any prizes, but my board was skimming over the quiet water. It was fun. I stayed close to the bank and watched a white egret. I peered into the backyards and living rooms of the houses facing the water.

I tensed at my first challenge: a Jet Ski roared by. My board rocked,  but I stayed standing in its wake. For 45 minutes, I paddled until my arms ached and my knees shook with fatigue. A speedboat roared by with a bigger wake and stronger waves, and I tumbled into nine feet of water.

Blech!

I thrashed around in the slightly salty water and surfaced, still wearing the cracked sunglasses. I crawled back on the board and stood up.

"You fell very gracefully," Mario said.

I paddled again, but I was tired. I finished my lesson a little early and left alive – and overconfident.

My second lesson was more challenging. This time, I went with another paddleboard rental company to a busy inlet on the Intracoastal Waterway in nearby Lighthouse Point. The water was rougher, thanks to lots of boat traffic. My instructor was about 30 years old and infinitely patient.

I stood up on the board, once again shaky, and paddled over to a brown waterbird who looked like a gnarled branch of a mangrove tree. The bird watched me with beady eyes. A boat roared by and my board rocked in the wake.

I fell off in four feet of water.

The bird still didn’t move. Maybe it enjoyed people watching.

I got back on, stood up, and followed my instructor in the other direction, paddling toward a house, avoiding a rusty ladder on a private dock. We paddled for about half an hour. Then a large dive boat went by and four big waves slapped my board. I wobbled but recovered for the first three. For the fourth wave, I lost my balance and tumbled into seven feet of water with a whale-worthy splash.

I surfaced and towed my board back to the shallow water by the twisted bird. He watched my humiliating struggle to stand up on the paddleboard.

At one point I was stuck on the board on all fours, rear in the air. Neither the bird nor my instructor laughed.

I stood up finally, but I was exhausted. Enough.

"Your paddling is good," my instructor said. (It wasn’t.)

"But you need to strengthen your center core. Try practicing standing up from a kneeling position."

I started practicing in the kitchen with a broom for a paddle. Our cat watched, fascinated.

This experiment gave me three things:

(1) In my novel, the novice paddleboarders needed to learn on a calm lake, not the ocean, as I’d originally planned.

(2) Some knowledge about the paddleboarding and some useful contacts to answer my questions.

(3) Deep gratitude that there were no photos or videos of my paddleboard lessons.

***

This week on the Dead-End Jobs Radio Show: Gondolier Capt. Pierre has heard hundreds of marriage proposals – and one spectacular rejection. He plies the canals of Fort Lauderdale, the Venice of America. Stream it Monday at 1 PM ET and Wednesday 6 PM ET on radioearnetwork.com