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Femmes of the Past by Dean James

For November's "Femme Fatale of Yesteryear" I'm going to talk about one who masqueraded under a masculine pseudonym. Lucy Beatrice Malleson (1899-1973) wrote as Anne Meredith and J. Kilmeny Keith, but she is best remembered as Anthony Gilbert. As Gilbert, her first detective-story hero was Scott Egerton, a rising young politician who appears in ten novels.

In 1936 she introduced shady Cockney lawyer Arthur Crook in Murder by Experts, and the die was cast. A rather unpleasant character in his debut, Crook became more appealing over time and appeared in fifty further novels. Known variously as "The Criminals' Hope" and "The Judges' Despair," Crook comes in to save the day when things look their bleakest. He is not the point-of-view character in the books but he is the one who sorts things out and sees that justice is done. Given to wearing off-the-rack brown suits and inhabiting a chaotic office in a disreputable part of town, Crook is extremely capable. His appearance and demeanor work in his favor because snobs who don't know any better tend to dismiss him -- to their eventual cost.

Anthony Gilbert was a founding member of the prestigious Detection Club which listed among its members such luminaries as Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, and Agatha Christie. The stories are deftly plotted, and Gilbert infuses her books with a wry wit that I find greatly appealing. Among the ones I've read, perhaps the funniest is Tenant for the Tomb (1971), with a delightfully dotty spinster character.

Some of the novels are inverted murders (i.e., like the television show "Columbo"), and she handles these as adroitly as she does the detective-story plots. She is a vastly entertaining writer who deserves (like the other writers in this series) to be much better known today.

It's All About The Address

Actually it's not about the address, exactly, but who can resist a pun when it's a. right there b. clean and c. linked to Elaine's fab post from yesterday? Not me.

It's really about the house.  Hands up if you've ever drawn a plan of Godsend Castle from I Capture the Castle. Just me?  I don't believe you.  I'm certainly not the only one who wears out the remote trying to establish the floorplan of Oscar's eight room apartment. 

I know this because there's a whole section called TV/Movie Houses in a delectable website called Hooked On Houses where Mildred Pierce's beach house, George and Mary Bailey's dream home and - joy of joys - Doris Day's fixer-upper from Please Don't Eat the Daisies are all there in their movie-still glory.  It's definitely not just me.

But when I sat down on Monday morning to start a new book and got out the tattered pile of press cuttings, scribbled-on napkins and post-it notes that I laughingly call an ideas file, it was still a surprise to see how many floorplans, blueprints and estate agents' brochures were in there.  And how few actual plots, characters and twists.  You know, the important stuff.

Mind you, I don't think writing down plot and character notes is the way to go for me.  The book I've just finished has a heroine called Opal Jones.  A file card in my "ideas file" had her down as Ambrosine Twigg.  Those are not the same person, those two.

Also, I found a very excited note about a genius plot - lot of exclamation marks and underlining  - which said:  Builders! Close chamber, dappled, broadship. Wheelie bins? Footbridge/stepping stones/ford/swim(?) Back pain, gen mod. NO MARRIAGE. keep this!!!

Do. Not. Have. One. Clue.  If it wasn't in my writing I'd think elves had put it there.

And anyway this time I know exactly what house my heroine's going to live in.  This one:

 

 

 

 

Here it is again in oils:

 

 

 

 

 

I know what the tug on the gate will feel like and the crunch of gravel in summer, the squeak of it under the snow in winter, as she walks to the front door:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know how the kitchen will smell when the oily old Rayburn turns out another batch of perfect bread:

  

 

 

 

and I know she'll wake to the bleating of the orphan lambs in their pen just outside the back door:

 

 

 

 

Not bad for three days' research, you say?  Well, I cheated.  This was my house in Galloway, my roses round the door, my bread, my favourite orphan lamb (and the painting we commissioned when we knew we were leaving.) I always meant to use it in a book as soon as I could be sure of not weeping so much I shorted my keyboard.  I'm going to chance it.  And for once I don't need to draw a single sketch or floorplan before typing "Chapter 1".

Gorgeous and Outrageous: St. Louis Has It All

By Elaine Viets
The public has spoken! The St. Louis Bridesmaid Dress Contest took place Thursday, Nov. 15, to a packed house at the main St. Louis County Library. More than 200 people attended.

To celebrate Josie Marcus’ wedding to veterinarian Dr. Ted Scottsmeyer, I held two bridesmaid dress contests – a national contest, and a special contest for my hometown, St. Louis.

The contests have two categories: Most Gorgeous Bridesmaid Dress and Most Outrageous.

The St. Louis contestants were flashed on a big screen in the library auditorium. The pictures were a revelation. I thought the older bridesmaid dresses would be the ugliest.

Clearly, I was wrong.

You’re looking at the first place winner for the St. Louis Most Gorgeous Bridesmaid Dress Contest. Betty Jean Funk wore this gown, fit for Cinderella. Betty Jean didn’t expect to win. Her daughter entered her photo in the contest.

I hope Betty will invite her to share the prize: a chocolate tasting party at Kakao, 7272 Manchester Road in Maplewood. Josie Marcus lives in Maplewood and loves Kakao’s sea salt caramels. Her best friend Alyce thinks the marshmallow pies are amazing.

Anna Gulliford is a perfect example of my theory that the newer bridesmaid dresses deserve another wearing. The library crowd voted her pink dress second place winner in the Most Gorgeous category.

Maybe she can wear that dress when she enjoys her prize. She won dinner for two at The Fountain on Locust, 3037 Locust Street in midtown St. Louis. You can see why the Fountain is one of the most photographed restaurants in St. Louis. Have an ice cream martini for me, Anna.

Now, on to the Most Outrageous St. Louis Bridesmaid Dress. Barbara Chambers actually wore this red 1976 bridesmaid dress to the contest at the St. Louis County Library, an amazing achievement after 36 years. Barbara said a friend duct-taped her into the dress for the event, but I sure couldn't tell. Barbara cheerfully modeled the dress for the audience, who overwhelmingly voted her the winner.

Barbara doesn’t regret wearing this dress. In fact, she wears it during the holidays. "After my children were born, I always had a  Mrs. Santa Claus dress," she said.

 

 Barbara won first prize for the Most Outrageous Bridesmaid Dress in St. Louis. That’s a VIP Tour for ten to the Schlafly Bottleworks, 7260 Southwest Ave., in Josie’s hometown of  Maplewood. Ted and Josie both like Schlafly beer.

Karen Grace won second place for this Outrageous St. Louis Bridesmaid Dress. That dress may have been pretty in the 1970s, but Karen says that flower print belongs on a couch now.

Karen can take comfort in her prize, a gooey buttercake from Gooey Louie’s, 6483 Chippewa Street in  St. Louis.  Gooey buttercake is a rich St. Louis coffeecake.

Want your chance to vote? Check out the National Elaine Viets Bridesmaid Dress Contest. You can vote through Nov. 30. You get one vote in each category –- Most Gorgeous and Most Outrageous. We’ve got some doozies.

 

To see the entries and to cast your vote, click on this photo of my bridesmaid at www.elaineviets.com.

May the best – and the worst – dress win.

Picky, picky

by Donna Andrews

The other day someone asked me what my favorite food was.  I hate that question.  I also hate being asked my favorite color, favorite movie, favorite author, favorite song, favorite musical group, favorite flower, favorite perfume, favorite city, favorite . . . you get the idea.  I rarely have a favorite.  I have a bunch of favorites.  More than I can easily name off the top of my head.

Take colors, for instance.  I like red--intense blood red.  Also deep purple.  And lime green. And teal or turquoise.  And cobalt blue. I'm also fond of fuchsia.  And lemon yellow.  I used to think I hated orange, but now I'm very fond of a sort of intense, saturated reddish orange.  And there are certain combinations of color, like clear pink and charcoal gray, or lime and forest green together, or--

You get the idea.  Favorites.  Plural. Life was simpler back when I was a kid and adopted red as my favorite color. But not as interesting.

And if you think the color question is bad, imagine what I can do if asked my favorite food.  Favorite food? Singular? Hell, no. 

So when my friend asked me to name my favorite food, I tried to explain that for me there are five tiers of food:

Foods I love.  I will actually cook to be able to eat these foods, or go out in the middle of the night to satisfy a craving for them. This tier would include Diet Coke.  Bacon.  Clementines and tangerines. French fries.  Utz potato chips. Potstickers.  Kibbe.  Beef Shawarma. Tart, tangy apples.  Steak au poivre. String beans.  Pork chops with sage.  Perfectly breaded or battered and fried flounder. Caesar salad, with or without grilled chicken.  Cobb salad. A good tossed salad with a nice tart vinaigrette dressing. Birds Eye Steam Fresh Garlic Cauliflower.  Ham.  Cheese.   Good French bread.  Orangina. Cherries.  Raspberries.  Gummi bears. Mom's cheesy broccoli casserole.

Foods I like.  I will choose these foods over other foods in a buffet.  This category would include cooked broccoli.  Lima beans.  Oranges and grapefruit.  Ordinary (i.e., non-Utz) potato chips with no seasoning. Competently fried flounder.  Corn.  Bananas. Kiwis. Blueberries.  Blackberries. Chocolate ice cream.

Foods I will eat.
Chocolate cookies. Chocolate cake. Brussels sprouts. Raw broccoli and cauliflower.  Most non-chocolate ice cream.

Foods I will eat only to be polite.
Most non-chocolate cakes or cookies. Salads with sweet dressings.  Potato chips with any kind of flavoring on them. Yams or sweet potatoes. Dried cocoanut.

Foods I will not eat, not even to be polite. 
Shellfish and crustaceans.  Tuna.  In fact, most fish that isn't fried flounder or cod. Artificial banana-flavored anything.  Avocado. Anything with more than an invisible dab of mayonnaise.  Sandwiches that come premade with condiments on them (especially mayonnaise).

You'll notice that the top and bottom categories are the most fleshed out, no doubt because it's easier to remember the things we feel strongly about.  And foods that are superlatively done can migrate from category 2 up to 1, and some of the foods in group 4 are ones I'd put in group 5 in a different mood. 

In case you were wondering, yes, I was a picky eater as a child.  The sort of dreadful picky eater who would shriek if two foods touched on my plate.  I probably still qualify as a picky eater, but I'm not nearly as bad as I used to be.  As a child I assumed (or perhaps was told) that when I grew up, I would eat all the foods I refused to touch.  I wasn't quite sure if I was supposed to learn to like them, or just shoulder my adult duty and suffer them.  Either way, didn't work.  My food vocabulary has expanded, but I still like the things I like and would rather go hungry than eat the rest.

Then again, I recently discovered that I am probably allergic to one of the items that has always lurked at the top of my dislike list.  My allergist thinks there may be some merit to the theory that if you have a visceral dislike for something, your body may be protecting you from something to which you are allergic. Thus I'll continue avoiding not just crabs but most seafood. 

So is it weird to have forty or fifty favorite foods?  Does the fact that I still balk at mayonnaise mean I'm basically immature?  Or are my food foibles actually pretty normal?

p.s.
Okay, favorite movies?  Not a complete list, mind you, but here goes.  Bedazzled--the original.  The Richard Lester Three/Four Musketeers. Days of Heaven.  The Twelve Chairs.  The Duellists. Sixth Sense.  Arsenic and Old Lace. Holiday.  Becket.  Philadelphia Story. Body Heat.  Chinatown.  Murder on the Orient Express.  Death on the Nile. My Dinner with Andre. The Girl from Petrovka.  Die Hard. Rear Window.  Harold and Maude. The In-Laws (Peter Falk version). Just Cause.  The Manchurian Candidate.  The Maltese Falcon. The Nightmare Before Christmas.  Four Weddings and a Funeral. Ninotchka.  Roman Holiday.. Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Taps. Wargames. Terminator. Time After Time.  Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx. Young Sherlock Holmes. The Wrath of God. True Confessions. Truly Madly Deeply. Behind the Red Door. Blade Runner. The Wrong Box. The Warriors. Vampires.  Vampires: Los Muertos.  Nosferatu. To Kill a Mockingbird. Swashbuckler. Manhunter. The Silence of the Lambs. The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh.  Thomasina. The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. Paris is Burning. Ordinary People.  Rent. The List of Adrian Messenger. Lord of the Rings. Magic. The Magnificent Seven. Just Between Friends. A Different Story. The Crimson Pirate.  Don't Look Now. Eddie and the Cruisers. The Fighting Price of Donegal.  A Few Good Men. Foul Play. Hopscotch. If. Jack's Back.  Jurassic Park. A Night at the Opera.  A Day at the Races. Aguirre the Wrath of God...........................(fade out, still listing)

Mercury, you X#&% devil!

by Kris Neri

For those of you who are into astrology...mercury will be coming out of retrograde in a few days. Can’t come too soon for me. I’m used to little electronic oddities popping up during Mercury retrogrades — broadband slows down, small, inexplicable changes appear in files, computer applications behave in atypical ways, and other electronic roadblocks show up that require some little time to get around them. But this time, Mercury, that blankety-blank devil, has really beaten up the Neri household in a memorable way.

Back when I was younger and more of a skeptic, I considered all this doomsday talk about Mercury retrogrades to be pure hooey. The trouble was that even if I didn’t believe in it, my electronics and appliances did. If my appliances were going to break, they did it then. If my electronics were going to burp, those burps also came during retrograde periods. Hey, I might have been a skeptic, but I wasn’t stupid – even I could see the pattern that kept emerging.

If I weren’t a believer now, I'm sure I would be now. Our biggest mishap was that our bookstore (we own The Well Red Coyote bookstore in Sedona, AZ) crashed, taking with it our Point of Sale software, the only way we have to conduct our business, and our only inventory record. It took three dawn-to-dark, exhausting days, two computer consultants, and numerous calls to tech support , but at the end of it, we were up and running again. Since then my own personal computer has been doing odd things, such as renaming folders, changing them from words that describe that folder’s contents to a random assortment of letters, and has been falling into such a deep sleep, it’s almost impossible to wake it. And finally, the bright red LED lettering on my car’s radio/CD player has faded into oblivion. Those last two might seem minor by comparison, but I like knowing what my computer’s folders contain without having to guess, and it’s useful to know what my CD player is playing just by looking. Mostly, though, I’m fed up with electronic mishaps.

A side casualty in the Mercury-electronic-failings is that they take with us our confidence in those pieces of hardware and software. The absolute certainty we typically maintain that when we turn them on, they’ll always operate as we expect them to. When serious problems occur, that confidence can be replaced by a knot in the gut, and is often responsible for a financial outlay. Either a little, or in our case this time, a lot of money.

I’ve been told that retrogrades are merely planetary slowdowns, but with my schedule, I can’t afford  to go any slower. I’ve also been told that retrogrades  are times meant to teach us lessons. I can’t deny that. The backup software operating  in our store’s computer was part of a package we bought from a company providing bookstore POS software. We were assured it would save the day if the worst-case scenario occurred. It didn’t. So we did learn something important, albeit at a high price, financially and emotionally. Now we’ve rectified that with what we think is stronger backup system. I’m grateful for that, although I wish that lesson could have come in a less dramatic fashion.

Sure, I know other planets retrograde as well, but that never seems to affect things the way Mercury retrogrades do. What’s crazy is that Mercury is the ruling planet of Gemini – and my husband Joe is a Gemini, and I have Gemini rising. Maybe Mercury expects more from us. I have news for that $%&# devil – I expect more from it, too.

How about you? Have you had any retrograde mishaps?

The Mystery Writer's Revenge

by Toni L.P. Kelner

A lovely by-product of being married to a psychologist is the interesting magazines that show up in our mail slot. They often end up in to-be-read stacks, but when unearthed, provide some unusual, but often fascinating, reading. A recent discovery was the October 2011 issue of Observer, the journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

In very basic terms, a study gave test subjects the chance to avenge themselves on people who had wronged them in a economic exchange game. And as they decided whether or not to take vengeance, "The decision caused a rush of neural activity in the caudate nucleus, an area of the brain know to process rewards (in previous work, the caudate has delighted in cocaine and nicotine use)."

In other words, revenge really is sweet.

Sort of.

The rest of the articule points out the negative parts of the equation. One, a person seeking revenge tends to relive the unpleasant incident over and over again. Two, the target of the vengeance has to know he is being punished, and why. Three, the target often feels that he himself is being wronged, and the cycle repeats.

But let's just go back to that neural activity in the caudate nucleus--in other words, the fun part. I mean, who doesn't like a little neural activity in the caudate nucleus? Some mystery writers--and by some, I mean me--live on the stuff.

For example, many years ago I dated a guy who I will refer to as the-guy-I-should-never-have-dated, or for short, the Jerk. I won't go into the many ways in which the Jerk was the wrong guy for me to date, or the lousy things he did, most which I didn't find out about until long after we'd both moved on. Suffice it to say that I had a certain amount of animosity towards him. So when I was working on Country Comes to Town, my fourth novel, I killed him. Right there on the cover. And darned if it didn't get my caudate nucleus buzzing.

 

Of course, at the time I didn't know my caudate nucleus from my hypothalamus. I thought I was just (1) writing what I knew, which all the writing books recommended and (2) saving buckets of bucks on therapy. In fact, I've saved therapy bills in several of my books and stories. I offed an ex-boss in Dead Ringer, beat up an ex-great-step-aunt in Tight as a Tick, and made fun of the Jerk again in Blast from the Past. In the novel I just finished -- The Skeleton in the Armoire, due out in September 2013 -- I trashed the reputation of a former boss of my husband's.

Now, should any lawyers be reading this, I assure you that the serial numbers have been filed off of these characters. By the time I finish changing a character's name, ethnicity, job, and location, I'm the only one who would know who these people were based on. There's just enough of the original target in there to keep my caudate nucleus happy.

Now I don't want you to think I'm just thinking of myself. I take requests. In Tight as a Tick I killed of a co-worker of my brother-in-law's, and in Death of a Damn Yankee, the victim is the ex-husband of a friend of mine. In the "Where are they now?" books, I based every one of protagonist Tilda Harper's hellish roommates on a real roomate of a friend or family member. (And with each book, I was so very grateful I never experienced roommate hell.) 

So now you know why I'm hooked on mystery writing. I can wreak vengeance to my caudate nucleus's delight without ever having to deal with any of the nasty side effects. And if it's addicting, that's all to the good.

Note: I think I should get special recognition for using the phrase "caudate nucleus" more times in this post than in any other Femmes Fatales post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who's Who?

by Hank Phillippi Ryan 

 

A big box arrived at my door the other day, the size of a…well, the size of a big box. You could have put a cocker spaniel in it, but you know, not for long.

Anyway, it was very light. And turns out, inside were photos from my mother’s house. She died last year about his time, and she’d put together big boxes of memorabilia for each of us kids, things we didn’t know she’d been keeping. Everything from baby pictures to an essay I wrote in fifth grade on why a person would be a spy. It was called “a Place in the Sun” and I apparently had a theory that a spy is looking for attention and to leave their mark on the world. I got an A-, probably because it was such a “unusual”  idea. But it did show some imagination. And showed even then, I had an affinity for sentence fragments.

Turns out the box that arrived at my doorstep was full of the photos she had kept for herself.  I had told the executor of the estate I wanted anything like that. And there it was.

 So, wow. Here's Mom, on her wedding day. Amazing, huh?  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here’s Mom and Dad, I think this must be in Chicago, when she was so chic (this must be 1948 or so) and doesn’t Dad look like Arthur Miller? (He still does.) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the proof I’m not exaggerating when I tell people I was a geeky bookish kid. A-HEM. Here I am, with the “favorite book” I was told to bring to the shoot. It’s Golden Sovereign, about a horse. (It was actually about a girl, but to me it was about a horse.) (This blog thing will NOT let me put the next two photos right side up. I'm homicidal, so just tilt your head.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This shot of the three sisters (yikes) includes the only existing photo of our first dog Rusty, an Irish Setter who chased cars so relentlessly he finally caught one, and wound up losing a leg. He never seemed to notice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know this is my mother’s father, Grandpa Bill.  (He sold cars, I was told. I was never sure this was true.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know this is his wife, Grandma Rose. She was a little strange. When she died, we went to her house and found –-in her closet—a collection of dresses.  Again and again, she had purchased the same dress in every size. I’m sorry, Grandma Rose, that creeped me out. I wish I knew why you did that.

 

And it’s still nice to know I still recognize them.  I haven’t seen those people for fifty years.

 

But what is so unnerving about the box—there are also photos of people I don’t know who are. And now, I’m not sure who to ask. There may be no one I know who knows.

 

 

 

 

 

For instance. Who are these people ? When would you guess this is from?  Can you tell from the clothing? It seems to be in front of a synagogue, don’t you think? But I have no clue who these people are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this photo, the guy without the hat is Uncle Sam, I’m pretty sure. How he was my uncle, I have no idea. But the others—hat guy?--shaking head. No idea.

 

What if they’re nobody we ever knew, photos that got put into the box by mistakes and never discarded?  But why would Mom keep them? Or what if they’re pivotal important parts of our family? Sigh. I just don’t know.

 

 So me being me, I’m thinking, photos like this might be a good clue in a mystery, right? I’m mulling that over. 

 

But first, I’m calling my dad. I can’t let these faces remain nameless.

 

Help wanted

by Joelle Charbonneau

I work at home, which is pretty awesome.  There isn’t a need to wear business suits every day or spend an hour commuting back and forth to the office.  To tell the truth, I don’t even have an office.  My paid work takes place in the comfort of my living room.  I’m snug in the arm chair when I write (unless I’m feeling frisky and camp out on the couch) and sit on the piano bench when it is time to put my singing students through their paces.  And of course, there is all the other work I do around the house cooking, cleaning and being my favorite job of all – a mom.  While there were days early on in my son’s life that I doubted my ability to stay sane and raise a child, I have found that it is the best thing ever.  And working from home means I get to enjoy every minute of the parenting adventure.

Of course, while I love being home with my son, I have found that working from home presents a problem that I hadn’t anticipated.  Because of my deadlines and the joy of technology, there are very few waking hours that I don’t find myself working. Last Wednesday was a great example.  My schedule for the day was as follows:

Got up.  (I suppose this is a given, but all stories have to start somewhere.)
Pulled on my clothes (Yes, while some authors revel in wearing their PJs all morning, it is not a luxury I’ve gotten to avail myself of, although I aspire to a life of fuzzy slippers and ratty terry cloth.).
Rousted the four-year-old and made breakfast. 
Drove the small person to school.
Went to the store to buy groceries.  (And caffeine.  Lots and lots of caffeine!)
Came home, cleaned bathrooms, did laundry and vacuumed.  (Ah – the glamorous life of a writer!)
Worked on revisions. 
Picked the tot up from school and made a stop at the playground.  (The kid had a blast.  I shivered with several other moms.)
Made lunch.
Answered e-mails with cartoons playing in the background.  (Calliou isn’t my favorite show, but at least it isn’t Barney.)
Put the small person down for a nap.
Answered texts from a student going to a college audition.
Worked on revisions until naptime ended.
Made dinner and washed dishes.
Spent an hour with family.
Helped get the small person to bed.
Worked on revisions until 1 a.m until the words on the screen got fuzzy and I decided it was time for bed. 

Phew.

Depending on the day, you can add a voice lesson or two into the mix, but you get the gist.  I’m lucky, because I love my jobs.  I love teaching, writing and adore being a mom.  But working from home makes it tough to remember to have…well…a life. There is always another page to write, or an e-mail to answer or an idea to jot down.  The sad thing is that I know this problem isn’t unique to those of us who work at home.  For those who can leave the office behind, smart phones and e-mail have made it almost as hard to separate work time from home time.  Technology has made it easier to keep in touch 24/7, which is great for some things, but when it comes to allowing us to work 24/7…not so much.

So, I guess I’m curious – how do people do it?  How do you separate work from home and still manage to get everything done?  Please share your secrets because I can use all the help I can get!

Had I But Known by Dean James

Like many mystery fans -- both readers and writers -- I got my start with one of the mysteries series written for children. I was probably ten at the time. In my case it was Nancy Drew, because my cousin had several Nancy Drew books, and the cover of The Secret of Shadow Ranch intrigued me enough to pick it up and start reading. I was immediately hooked and for several years after that I sampled every such mystery series I could find.

When I was about thirteen (circa 1972) I borrowed a book from my aunt Mary, a book entitled The Shivering Sands. The author was Victoria Holt, and the book was the first adult mystery I ever read. What no one told me at the time was that books like this were intended for women and were generally labeled "romantic suspense," or Gothics. Frankly I didn't care what anyone called them, I thought they were interesting reading.

From Victoria Holt I went on to discover Phyllis A. Whitney and Mary Stewart, Barbara Michaels and Elizabeth Peters, Velda Johnston and Anne Maybury, Jane Aiken Hodge and her sister Joan Aiken. And I can't forget Dorothy Eden and Susan Howatch. My imagination was filled with the adventures of plucky heroines in Victorian England and other exotic locales, past and present, and the looming sense of peril that surrounded the intrepid women in the books.

Later on I learned that some critics and historians of the mystery genre turned up their noses at these books, referring to them derisively as the HIBK school of writing. "Had I But Known the evil villain lay in wait for me in that dark attic I never would have ventured up those stairs wearing only my nightgown and carrying a candle." Such was the popularity of these books -- their heyday was the 1960s and 1970s -- that of course publishers flooded the marketplace with them, and of course with a glut of this kind there were plenty of really awful Gothics published. Because of this the truly first-rate writers got lumped in with the hacks, and the genre as a whole treated as mindless fiction for brainless readers.

It might also have had something to do with the fact that most of the writers of these books (although not all of them) were women and the intended audience for the books was women (although there were plenty of men who read them too). Books by, about, and for women naturally couldn't be as important or well-written as books written by, about, and for men. Add to that the fact that these books also featured a love story between the heroine and a dark, brooding, sometimes tortured hero who swooped in at the last minute to save the poor little woman, and the recipe for disrespect was complete.

  I'll let you in on a little secret, however. A lot of these women were damn fine writers who created intelligent, capable heroines -- like Linda Martin in Mary Stewart's Nine Coaches Waiting, who risked everything to save the life of a child. What about Vicky Bliss, the brainchild of Elizabeth Peters? Vicky might look like a Playboy bunny, but she has a fine mind and isn't afraid to use it. She might overestimate her ability to get herself into -- and out of -- trouble, but James Bond does it all the time.

Readers have asked me why several of my series featured women as main characters. All writers are formed and influenced by what they read. I went from Nancy Drew, Judy Bolton, and Trixie Belden on to Mary, Victoria, Phyllis, and their sister writers. With role models like these, why wouldn't I write about women?

Tidying for the Cleaners

by Donna Andrews

I can't talk long--my cleaners are coming tomorrow.  I have to get the house ready. I'm immersed in the usual mad frenzy of preparation.

No, I'm not cleaning the house before they come.  I'm tidying.  There's a difference.  (Most women get this.  Men, I find, do not.)  I pickup stuff that's lying around on surfaces.  They dust and scrub and clean and polish the surfaces.  The less stuff I have lying around in their way, the better job they do. Simple logic.  (So why the frenzy?)

I remember when I first hired cleaners.  It seemed a reckless extravagance.  But I was trying to write books while still holding down a day job, and something had to give.  Still, I put off hiring cleaners for months, because my apartment was so cluttered and messy I was embarrassed to have them in.  Then I finally decided enough was enough. I set myself a goal. I decluttered for several months. I finally shoved the remaining clutter into my office, and called the cleaning service.  They were supposed to clean the whole apartment--except for my office. I posted a big sign on the door that said "Do not clean in here!" in English and Spanish. 

And every time they came to clean, I tried to spend the time I would have spent cleaning to declutter the office a little more, to get it a little closer to the point where I could fling open the door and let them clean that, too.  Took me eighteen months, but I did it.

When I quit my day job, one of my (now former) co-workers said, "So, I guess you won't need cleaners now that you're not working." I straightened him out on that so fast he probably got whiplash.  No, I am not giving up my cleaners, because I am in no way ceasing to work.  Working harder than ever, as any serious writer knows. Just doing it on my own schedule, in my own space.  And I want it to be a clean space.

I moved from the apartment to a house ten years ago, and brought my cleaners with me.  I confess, I've regressed a little.  They're not allowed into the basement.  Although I have a long-term dream of turning part of the basement into a neat little exercise room, and getting them to clean it.  Someday.

Meanwhile, I rejoice in the fact that I don't do toilets anymore.  And frankly, having the cleaners come every two weeks keeps me from letting the place get out of hand.  When I'm deep in deadline psychosis, it's all too easy to put things off.  Let the dishes and the laundry pile up.  Drop things on the floor.  I'm being creative!  Don't bother me with trifles like housekeeping!

And then comes the day before the cleaners are due. I scurry around tidying.  (I repeat: not cleaning--tidying.)  I pick things up and put them away.  Space appears.  Dusty space, with garden dirt tracked over it--but cleanable space.

I usually flee when the cleaners arrive.  I run errands.  Or I work in the garden.  Anything to stay out from underfoot while they work their magic. Besides, if I stayed, I wouldn't have that wonderful moment of walking back into the house to see shining floors and inhale the faint traces of lemon, bleach, and Murphy Oil Soap. 

Every week when I walk in and take that first, satisfied breath, I vow this time I will work harder at keeping the place tidy between cleaner visits.  Wouldn't it be nice NOT to have that mad frenzy every other Monday?  Wouldn't it be nice to walk in a week after the cleaners came and have the place so tidy that I instinctively sniff, expecting the lemon/bleach/Murphy Oil traces?

And some weeks it works.  The other day one of my eight-year-old nephews was over and asked, "Did your cleaners just come?"

"No," I said.  "They came last week."

He was impressed.  I was proud.

I've been backsliding a lot lately. My brother and I have  been clearing out the house I grew up in, now that Mom lives up here, and a lot more stuff seems to have landed in my life, much of it, I hope, destined for sorting and donating. And this is the fall gardening season, not to mention the leaf removal season, which means I've been tracking in a lot of dirt and leaves. And then there's the usual disorder that creeps in when I'm working on a deadline--compounded, right now, by the fact that I'm squeezing in a Christmas Meg book (Duck the Halls) between next year's summer book (The Hen of the Baskervilles) and the summer 2014 book (title TBD). Casa Donna is not the serene, uncluttered space in which I would like to write. 

Of course, it rarely is.  But it's getting better.

And having the cleaners come does more than just temporarily restore order.  Although I don't know my cleaners--remember, I flee as soon as they arrive!--I imagine them as keen critics of my personal habits and decluttering progress.  I imagine them saying, "Oh, bother, she's been cooking again!   The stove is a mess!" Or "If she ever wants to sit on that chair again, she'd better tackle that pile of clutter. It's been there the last three times we visited." Or "Wow, I see a lot less clutter in here!  Is she making progress or did she just move all those books to another room?" 

Actually, I doubt if they pay that much attention to the ebb and flow of my efforts to declutter and train myself in tidiness.  But thinking they do keeps me pushing to get things just a little better than they were the last time they came. 

So I have to dash.  There's a pile of papers that's been perched on a dining room chair for far too long.  I am sure the cleaners will beam with approval if they notice it's gone.

(Please tell me I'm not the only one who cleans--make that tidies--before the cleaners come!)