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The Sound of...What?

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

 

When did my brain change?

 

I remember so clearly, back in junior high (that’s what we called it) and then high school, doing my homework… with the radio on.  There was only one station I cared about, W something or other, all Top 40 all the time, and I do remember the disc jockey had “Picks to Click” and  “Wax to watch.” Whatever that meant.  Oh—and oldies (!) were called “Hits from the Golden Grooveyard.”  It was cool at the time.

 

Sometimes at night, my radio could pick up signals from far-off WLS in Chicago. That was a real treat, me in Indianapolis imagining what it was like to live in the big city, and hear fabulous radio shows all the time.  .Anyway.

 

So it drove my mother crazy. She’d come in as I was reading my history textbook  or whatever, learning about the Battle of Hastings (or whatever) and listening to the BeachBoys and the Beatles at the same time. Sometimes singing along.

 

 “HOW,” she’d ask, in that Mom tone, “can you concentrate on your work with that. That…music on?” 

(That she didn’t approve of the music is another blog, I think…every time she’d criticize me for loving the Beatles I ‘d remind her she’d admitted to skipping school to go hear Frank Sinatra at the Circle Theater, a story I bet she regretted tell me since fourteen-year-old me weaponized it at every turn.)

 

SO back then, I would insist that I could not do my homework with out music. Without the music, it was incredibly boring, and the music was the way to get me through it. I guess. I’ve never really thought about the “why” until now.

 

Because now, when I’m writing my novels (which is what I should be doing this very second!) I have to have quiet. NO music, no anything. Not even classical.  If there’s noise, I can pretty easily tune it out—but having musical accompaniment to writing? . Not me.

 

Two things about that. One, I’m a TV reporter, and in the newsroom, there’s constant noise. Loud, crazy, unpredictable noise . And dozens of televisions, all on, all playing at different decibel levels, and people talking and general chaos I can write a news script during all that, no problem.  I’ve learned over the years, how easy it is to ignore it all.

 

The other thing—and I’m curious and a little bit envious—I know there are very successful authors who have actual soundtracks for their books. That they think about their stories, and then create playlists that enhance and inspire, and the music blasts while they create their new worlds.

 

I can imagine, this. I can.  When I create my stories for TV, I always use a music soundtrack underneath, and of course the music makes the story more emotional. (Imagine the Chariots of Fire running scene. Got it? You’re humming, right? Take the music away and it’s  just some weird guys on a beach.)

 

I’d adore to be able to put on sad songs when I’m writing the sad parts, and love songs,  maybe the theme from Jaws in an appropriate suspenseful scenes,  or Springsteen in the exciting parts.  I was forced, by a deadline, to write at a picnic table at Tanglewood while the Boston Symphony was practicing Beethoven’s third,, and I have to say I kind of flew along with the pages.  But when I tried it at home, nuthin.

 

And forget about anything with lyrics. I start thinking about the composer’s words instead of my own.

 

When did my brain change? And why?

 

So how about you? Do you write to music? Or read to music? Or are you a quiet one?

Where I Get My Ideas

by Toni L.P. Kelner / Leigh Perry

 

I know, I know. Asking authors where we get our ideas is a dreaded cliche, but I just finished a short story so recently that its genesis is still fresh enough in my mind that I can track most of it down, and I thought I'd tackle the age-old question.

In this case, I was working on my contribution for an anthology to co-edited by Femme Charlaine Harris and myself. We always have themes for our anthologies, and this time it was paranormals and sports. You'd think that since I was part of the brainstorming crew to come up with this theme, I'd already have an idea. But the editor-come-up-with-a-fun-theme side of the brain doesn't talk much to the I've-got-to-write-a-story-about-what? side. When time came to write the story, I was starting from scratch.

Well, I did have the following, from the letter we sent to potential contributors:

This time around, we’re focusing on sports. Nothing rouses the killer instinct like competition, and we figure it’s just as intense for supernatural creatures as it is for humans. We’re looking for stories about otherworldly characters playing football, cricket matches, wheelchair basketball, Olympic training, jogging, billiard tournaments--any kind of sport or game you can think of. The stories can be dark, funny, terrifying – we’ve learned that our biggest pleasure comes from seeing the variations a bunch of talented writers can spin on the same theme.

I figured the first thing I should do was pick out a sport, but I'll confess that I don't know much about sports. And by "much" I mean "anything." So all I had to start with was the idea that it might be fun to do something with candlepin bowling.

If you're not a New Englander, you've probably never heard of candlepin. It's a variant of bowling that actually predates the more familiar ten-pin game. The balls are smaller, and don't have holes for your fingers; the pins are also smaller and cylindrical; and you get three tries to get all the pins instead of just two. There are some other differences, but those are the biggies.

I haven't played candlepin a lot, but I have gone to a number of kids' birthday parties at our local candlepin bowling alley (Ryan Family Amusements) and I figured none of the other contributors would use that particular sport. (I was right. In fact nobody else even used regular bowling: we have stories about baseball, softball, ice skating, roller derby, lacrosee, pankration, but no bowling.)

Candlepin bowling was all I had for a long time. Then my husband Steve said he had a title for me. Personally, I'd always thought Empress of the Universe sounded good, but he meant he had a title for the story: "Bell, Book, and Candlepin."

It was perfect! (My husband is brilliant, you know.)

What? You haven't seen Bell Book and Candle? It's a comedy in which a witch played by Kim Novak casts a spell to make James Stewart fall in love with her. The cast includes Jack Lemon, Elsa Lanchester, Ernie Kovacs, and Hermione Gringold. It is a little far-fetched--as if Kim Novak would need a spell to make somebody fall in love with her--but it's a lot of fun with a sweet ending.

With that movie as inspiration, obviously I would need a witch. Fortunately, I had one waiting in the wings.

A few years ago, Mark Van Name invited me to write a short story for his erotic urban fantasy anthology The Wild Side. Honestly, I don't know why he thought I could write erotic fiction since I'd never published any, but I gave it a shot and he liked it enough to included my story "For a Good Time, Call..."

For that story, I created the Allaway Kith, which is a family of witches living in and around Salem, Mass. But rather than cast spells, each Allaway has a special talent, or Affinity. Now I didn't want to use the character from that story, but when pitching some novel ideas to my editor a while back, I'd come up with a different Allaway witch. This one was going to gain power from sound, and since a bowling alley is really noisy, that would work.

I was thinking that she'd sense something magical--in addition to their Affinities, Kith witches can sense magic and lies. (The sensing lies idea came a throwaway line in my story "Pirate Dave's Haunted Amusement Park" in Death's Excellent Vacation.) Then she'd foil it with her sound power. Somehow. And there the story sat for weeks.

Obviously I need more ideas. So I dumped the sound witch, and went back to that story "For a Good Time, Call...", which was about Maura, a witch who worked with phones. (That idea, by the way, came from an ad that showed all the ways in which phones are being used at a given moment.) The story ended with Maura dating a guy named Rocha, but it was pretty obvious that Rocha's mother wasn't going to love the idea of her boy having a relationship with an actual witch.

So I was ready to play. I had a sport, I had a paranormal being, and I had a conflict. For a plot I had Maura teaming up with Mama Rocha to foil a murder in the middle of a candlepin tournament.

There was just one problem. I was bored. I didn't know why. I still don't know why. I just couldn't make it interesting. The plot twists seemed contrived. I couldn't figure out who to kill, or why. It just wasn't working. I struggled with it for several weeks before deciding it was time to throw in the towel.

Back to the starting line. I still wanted to use candlepin because I had that title, and that continued to say "witch" to me. So I went back to that sound witch. Maybe she needed a cohort to work with. Thinking back to other stories I've written, I remembered a young werewolf named Jake, who was in my story "Keeping Watch Over His Flock" from Wolfsbane and Mistletoe. He was fun, and a witch teaming with a werewolf could be interesting. But I was still bonking my head against one plot problem: Why would anybody commit murder at a bowling alley? 

I went back and forth coming up with obscure murder methods that required a pinsetting machine or throwing balls, but I just didn't love anything. By then I was out of old stories to mine, so I went to the one place where I'm pretty much guaranteed to get an idea. The bath.

 

The philsopher Wittgenstein said the key to thinking is the three B's: bed, bath, and bus. The concept is that when you give your brain a bit of a rest, you come up with better ideas. I wasn't sleepy and I don't like riding buses, but I do like long baths. Sure enough, a nice, long bath gave me the piece I needed: a curse.

No, I didn't cuss at the story. I'd been doing that already. I cursed the bowling alley, and everything else flowed from that. Sure, I had to work out some mechanisms and the plot and even rework some characters, but those was all details. I had the ideas I needed to write the story.

So from an obscure regional sport, a title, a background from an old story, a character from a pitch that went nowhere, another character from another old story, and a bubble bath, I got a story.

Aren't you sorry you asked?

 

***

 

NOTE: These other authors will also have stories in Games Creatures Play, but you'll have to ask them where they got their ideas:

Jan Burke

Femme Dana Cameron

Adam-Troy Castro

Femme Charlaine Harris

Caitlin Kittredge

William Kent Krueger

Ellen Kushner

Mercedes Lackey

Joe Lansdale

Laura Lippman

Seanan McGuire

Brendan DuBois

Brandon Sanderson

Scott Sigler 

How life feeds fiction

by Donna Andrews.

Last Friday I was having a productive day.  I had a long list of things to do, and the odds were against my getting them all done.  I usually have an overambitiously long list of things to do, and I rarely get through all of them, but that's okay--my list is really more of a "next actions" list in the Getting Things Done style.  And I was getting a lot of things done.  (At left: the scene of the crime)

Perhaps most importantly, I was making progress in planning the next book. I still had some plot issues to iron out, but only one that I really had to solve before Monday, the 24th, when I wanted to start my draft.  A question of exactly how to put together the elements that needed to go into the first chapter or two. One of the items on my list was to create a spreadsheet of my schedule for writing the draft, so I could start writing Monday and know what my daily quota was. But I was a little reluctant to make my spreadsheet until I solved that one nagging question about the start of the book. And I was really eager to start drafting. In the last week or so of planning a book, I tend to load myself up with things I know I won't have time to do once I immerse myself in the writing.  Once I'm in draft mode, doing that day's quota is task number one, and if that's all I get done on a day, I still count that day a success.  It's almost a luxury.

So in  addition to thinking time at my computer, I was also chewing on my plot issue while spending half an hour weeding the garden.  (Half an hour only made a small dent in the weeds, but still--a dent.) I mulled over it while hanging a picture I bought an embarrassingly long time ago--we're talking over a year--but finally had fitted out with a wire so I could hang it.  And then, after consulting with my friend Suzanne, who has a good eye in these matters, rehung it, a little lower. 

Plot problem still unsolved, but never mind.  I'd weeded out a lot of ideas that wouldn't work. I took a break to do a few tasks for our local Chessie Chapter, where I'm treasurer and membership chair.  And fire off a few emails in support of a project for MWA, where I'm a chapter president.   Ran a few errands.  Driving is always good thinking time.

Came back and began doing some much needed pruning.  Three of the bushes that had to be transplanted when I had work done on my house last year did not survive, so I dug up their skeletons and deposited them in a heap on the driveway.  My neighbors were probably wondering why I stood there staring at the resulting tangle of branches--I was following a rabbit trail.  Why did some of the transplants survive while others failed, and was there any way of using that as a clue?

Perhaps, but it wouldn't solve my first chapter plot problem, so I filed it away for later consideration and began the next task, using the small pruning shears to cut off small twigs and branches from the dead shrubs so I could bundle them up and put them out on my trash company's next yard waste collection day.  Eventually I'd need to get the larger lopping shears to tackle the bigger branches, but all in good time. I needed to knock off soon to go to my nephew's baseball game.  Maybe I should save the big branches for my yard guys to tackle on their next visit.  I was wondering where my trash company took the bagged and bundled yard waste and whether it got a lot of human scrutiny that would make it useless as a means of disposing of (fictional) incriminating evidence, and whether it was time to knock off and clean up for the ball game when--
   
Yikes!  My hand slipped, and lacerated my left forefinger.

(At right: the evil weapon)

I ran inside and staunched the bleeding, first with wads of toilet paper and then with gauze pads from the first aid section of the medicine cabinet.  Hmm . . . drops of blood on the bathroom floor.  And on the wood floor outside.  Useful clues? Not something I should be worrying about right now.

I decided that my hand wasn't bleeding so badly that I couldn't drive--I'm righthanded, after all--and that while it was hard to assess how deep the wound was when it was either spurting blood or wrapped in gauze, it should definitely be looked at.  I'm equidistant from two ERs, so I set out for the one that was sort of on the way to the ballgame.  It also had the virtue of being in an area that wasn't, at 4 p.m., about to become clogged with heavy commuter traffic, but I confess the dwindling hope of seeing my nephew play was the main reason for my choice.

I arrived at the ER and was ushered back to an exam room pretty quickly. I was gratified to learn, after the doctor's initial inspection, that yes, my cut did need stitches but relieved to discern that my stitches would take a back seat to anyone who arrived bleeding more profusely or otherwise in worse shape.  I don't ever want to be the person they rush to take care of in the ER.  I want to be the person in the nearby cubicle quietly reading a book on her iPhone until all the serious cases are stable and the doctor is free to stitch me up. Although I was still hoping that would happen fast enough to make the ballgame.

It actually didn't take that long, by ER standards--although I did miss the game--and wasn't all that painful.  And asking the doctor if the laceration would impair my typing led to the revelation that I was a writer, so I entertained him and the med tech throughout the suturing with stories about my books, inspiring him to exclaim with great enthusiasm that I was the most entertaining patient he'd had all day.

And even before someone suggested it, in response to my post on Facebook about my misadventure, I'd realized that I'd found the solution to my plot problem.  Yes, Meg will cut her hand badly while pruning.  I'd already decided to have her and Michael hire a babysitter for the summer, so he can teach and she can blacksmith without worrying about who's minding Josh and Jamie. And I figured Meg and Michael--to say nothing of the readers--would feel much more at ease if the babysitter were someone well known and trusted--like Meg's niece Natalie. But no, that wouldn't work, because the other reason I want to introduce the babysitter is that early in the book I need to slip in a little bit of Meg's family history that new readers wouldn't know and long-time readers might not remember.  Natalie would already know all of it. Nothing kills a scene faster than having two characters telling each other stuff they both already know.

But now I have my ER doctor--young, inquisitive, new in town, usefully asking questions that will enable me to reveal a few bits of information the reader needs to know. (At left: the injury.  Okay, it would look more impressive if I showed you the stitches, and I have a photo, but yuck.  And the big bandage they did at the hospital kept falling off.)

And Meg's injury will be useful, too.  If I have her hiring a babysitter so she can at last spend time on her beloved blacksmithing, temporarily unfettered by the munchkins, then why would she run off to get involved in the events of my plot?  Because she can't wield a hammer, of course. Only for a few days, but that's all it will take.

If this sounds very mechanical--well, it is.  So is typing, for that matter.  The mechanical side of writing is important.  Having the right keyboard, so your fingers fly effortlessly.  Putting the right mix of characters in the scene so the magic happens.

Of course, I am in the very early stages of drafting, so it's entirely possible that another, even better idea will come along--although I hope if it one does it will not be accompanied by blood and stitches.  So don't be surprised if you read the book and find that Meg doesn't injure herself and my inquisitive ER doctor has faded back into the ranks of people who we know must exist in Caerphilly but haven't yet taken the stage.

But for now, mission accomplished.  Plot dilemma solved. I'm in motion.  If I see the same doctor on Friday, when I get my stitches out, I should probably thank him.

YOLO Fever

 By Elaine Viets

 "Whatever." Those eight letters can convey an incredible range in teen talk, from disgust to delight. Adults also use "whatever," but they can’t wring the same intonations out of the word.

I learned about the amazing flexibility of "whatever" from my friend MarySue Carl, who teaches biology in at Arroyo High School in El Monte, California. (Go, Blue Pride!)

 Her students help me choose the right words for 12-year-old Amelia Marcus in my Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper mysteries.

MarySue’s students give me the freshest slang, and remind me that nobody says "fresh" any more. Keeping up with teen talk is like learning a new language. Every week. 

Last week, I got this e-mail from MarySue, "My kids came out with a new one and I had to share." Here’s the exchange:

Student: "It's a yolo thing, Ms. Carl."

MarySue: "HUH?"

Student: "Yolo, Y-O-L-O."

MarySue: "And I repeat, HUH?"

Student: (deep sigh) "Yolo, You Only Live Once." 

MarySue: "Can I share that with my friend, Elaine?"

Student: "Sure, it is all the thing now. YOLO has completely replaced ‘whatever.’"

"So you are now in on the breaking news of teenage decision making," MarySue wrote.

I’m sorry to hear that, MarySue. YOLO doesn’t have the emotional range of "whatever." It’s a one-note word. Versions of YOLO have been around for generations. Mae West said:

 

Mae’s definition of "doing it right" probably wouldn’t match yours, but the old glamour pus had style.

Even earlier than YOLO was "carpe diem." That’s Latin for "seize the day," and the gloomy old German Goethe said, "One lives but once in the world." Maybe that lost something in translation.

YOLO was rediscovered in 2011 with the rap song, "The Motto," featuring Drake and Lil Wayne. You can listen to it here, but don’t play this version for your sweet old granny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V2VVEH6AX4 

YOLO became the anthem of a new generation. Zac Efron has a YOLO tattoo. If you look close, you can see it on his hand. 

 

YOLO is a common Twitter hashtag and the famous last words of rapper Ervin McKinness, who Tweeted while roaring along at 120 mph: "Drunk af going 120 drifting corners #FuckIt YOLO." All five people in the car died. Who wants to YOLO in a Nissan Sentra?

The Washington Post said YOLO is "the newest acronym you'll love to hate." The Huffington Post called it "dumb."

Their disapproval only helped spread YOLO fever. There are YOLO shirts, hats and hoodies. And a newer, cleaner song called "YOLO," featuring Adam Levine and Kendrick Lamar. YOLO has been suburbanized into this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5Otla5157c 

YOLO spawned YODO: You Only Die Once.

The Urban Dictionary says YODO is "revolt against all the douchebag kids that ruined the song ‘The Motto’ by saying YOLO nonstop, everywhere they go. Who wants to play Frogger on the highway? YODO."

But YOLO refuses to die. Ms. Carl’s class is proof that YOLO is stronger than ever.

You Only Live Once.                                                                    

You Only Die Once.

Unless you’re a zombie.

Whatever.

Sherlock Holmes and the Curious Case of the Exploding Rats

by Dana

A couple of weeks ago, I attended A Scintillation of Scions VI.  SoS is a yearly, one-day affair celebrating any and every aspect of Sherlockiana.  I was thrilled to be asked to present by Jacquelynn Morris (ASH), who's organized the Scintillation with the scion, Watson's Tin Box of Maryland.  It was her idea to create this “family reunion” of Sherlockians. 

I had the awesomest time.  If you can go June 2014, go. 

The first thing you know about is the people.  Fans of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, fans of Arthur Conan Doyle, fans of the recent TV and movie incarnations, all ages, all sorts.  Many BBC "Sherlock" fans (including me) could produce pictures posing with Benedict Cumberbatch with joyous, geeky alacrity.  You could discuss the number of “James Moriarty” brothers there were.  You could discuss Guy Ritchie's exploding trees.  You could discuss Victoriana and all things British.  Smart, funny people sharing the same interest is a very good thing (above, we see Donna Andrews, Carla Coupe, and June Matics (of Sherlock DC)).

The second thing you should know about was the range of topics the speakers presented.  I love a good variety of thoughtful discussions with a common thread, and this was it.  Everything from the use of the Internet to build Sherlockian communities to the use of the press by Sherlock Holmes to the comic book series “Watson and Holmes” to the illustrations used in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmesian stories and novels.  Dan Stashower spoke on connections between the Canon, Allan Pinkerton, and Abraham Lincoln. Lyndsay Faye spoke about the “mind palace,” the “portable Newgate Calendar,” and morphine  addiction.”  Kristina Manente did a fabulous presentation on the images of the Reichenbach Falls in "The Great Mouse Detective," and Fellow Femme Fatale Donna Andrews spoke of her experiences reading about Holmes and how it influenced her own novels.

Exploding rats were a key part of my presentation.

There seems to be a lot of references to explosions and/or rats in this post.  Let me explain. 

From an early age, I've been fascinated by spies and spying.  Most recently, it's surfaced in the form of  short stories in (“One Soul at a Time”) and forthcoming (“Dialing In”) from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.  But in high school, I wrote a paper on the Special Operations Executive, the intelligence organization created by Winston Churchill to specialize in propaganda and guerrilla tactics in 1940.  Because of the SOE's offices in Baker Street in London, the SOE referred to themselves as “The Baker Street Irregulars.”  The original Baker Street Irregulars were the homeless children employed by Sherlock Holmes to be his eyes and ears around London, because they would not be noticed.  These qualities of blending in and using local informants (and occasionally “dirty tricks”) were much valued by the SOE, who were regarded as “ungentlemanly” by established British intelligence agencies.  Who knew there was a “gentlemanly” way to spy and wage war?

(The exploding rats come in with my brief discussion of the gadgets created by the SOE to conceal things; among other things (like fake tree branches and shaving gel tubes), dead rats were used to hide explosives.  They'd be left by the SOE operative near a furnace, and when it was eventually shoveled in, it would explode well after the operative was away from the site.)   

So how could I resist the chance to discuss Holmes, spies, history, and the possibility that the original Baker Street Irregulars inspired Mycroft Holmes to suggest such a covert organization to Churchill?  I would never resist that chance!  I hope everyone had as much fun as I did.

P.S. On an entirely different subject, I was delighted to participate in Crimespree Magazine's "Interview in Plastic Brick."  Imagine Lego Dana interviewing her protagonist from Seven Kinds of Hell, Lego Zoe Miller.  Actually, you don't have to--check it out here. 

Hot Summer Reads

 

from Mary

 

June has been an excellent reading month so far. Y'all know what I like. Mysteries with a pinch of fantasy or a dab of history always rank high on my lists. It's even better when a book has both of those elements plus lots of laughs. That was the case with my #1 book this month which is the latest in my #1 favorite mystery series. 

Well, it's one of my three #1 favorite series. Make that fo -- actually, there's gotta be eight or nine at least, and I'm not even thinking hard. Whichever one I'm reading at the moment is the best. 

 

A quick round-up then for June as of today -

Ben Aaronovitch's London series starring PC Peter Grant is new to me but quickly becoming necessary. To my well-being. Grant has been assigned to The Folly, the home base for the supernatural crime unit. In MOON OVER SOHO and WHISPERS UNDERGROUND, the 2nd and 3rd books, we see him progressing with his Latin and learning a few basic spells that aid his investigations.   

 

MOON OVER SOHO has Grant searching for a killer whose victims are jazz artists, and as the case unfolds, it looks like the killing entity has been at it for decades. The search goes all the way back to the forties, to the night a German bomb destroyed a jazz club during the Blitz.

Mayhem continues in WHISPERS UNDERGROUND during which Grant is forced to wade and squelch through some rah-ther nah-sty wet tunnels. The good thing is that where there is water, there is a

 

young river goddess or two to help out. As with the previous two books, the history and sights of London make solid supports for these unique, engaging, funny stories. 

 

Fast-reverse to England during the War of the Roses. THE WHITE QUEEN by Phillipa Gregory is an excellent historical about Elizabeth Woodville Grey, wife of King Edward IV. The story begins when she meets the young Edward, not long after her first husband died in battle.

 

 

Not a mystery, but very well written and recommended for history buffs.

 

Now this is a hard one to describe.

 

 

THE LEFT HAND OF GOD by Paul Hoffman begins in a very bleak place. The hero, Cale, was given to the Redeemer Sanctuary when he was a very young boy. He is one of thousands of boys in the enormous religious warrior training facility, a horrible place where punishments are brutal and food is scarce. Luckily, Cale is smart. He escapes along with a few other inmates, and they strike out into the world that they know absolutely nothing about. I particularly liked how this installment ends, with just a faint hint of Cale's real destiny.

 

 And now for something different -

 

 

Okay, raise your hand if you have five or more organizing books. Yeah, me too. They all have good ideas to help get your life and your stuff together. UNSTUFF YOUR LIFE! had something that the others I've read did not. It 'talked you down' from the ledge first. Now, I listened to the audiobook, so maybe I felt that way because of the author's voice, or his compassion for those of us who get so overwhelmed sometimes that we don't even know where to begin. All in all, it's an excellent, thorough guide to organizing sanity.

 

From which we flip to delightful insanity. Cue uproarious laughter -

 

 

 

Oh my goodness, this was so funny. I laugh every time I see this cover art because it's of a hilarious scene that takes place in total darkness. Oh, he's good. Is it a mystery? It does involve a theft. And Jeeves lies and says he's a Scotland Yard detective, but only because he had to get Bertie out of a pinch. All right then. A crime novel it is.

 

AND NOW .....

The #1 favorite book of the month and my #1 favorite series of all time .....

 

 

I love Dr. Siri so much. He and the wonderful Lao gang are all here in THE WOMAN WHO WOULDN'T DIE. A strange thing happens in a village outside Vientiane. A housekeeper hears gunshots inside her rich employer's house and, a bit later, the sound of a truck driving away. She finds the lady of the house dead on the floor with blood pooling around her head. After an investigations, the dead woman is cremated. A few days later, the dead woman is seen about town, talking and walking about. There's no doubt it is the same woman. Is she a ghost? Since she now can see the dead, she is "hired" to find a boat of missing and presumed dead sailors in the Mekhong River.

Wonderful writing, great humor, outstanding portrayal of characters and their relationships, new revelations about Madame Daeng's past, and a big surprise at the end that makes me wish I could read the next book now.

 

Tell us what you're reading too! Love to get recommendations.

Charlaine in Hollywood!

by Charlaine Harris

Writers essentially work by themselves, for themselves, in rooms large or small, quiet or noisy . . . but empty of everything but the writer and her/his brain. Once a year I have the option to break that mold and do something that is, by any standard, glamorous. This year I exercised that option. My daughter and I attended the “True Blood” premiere held at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.

Beautiful Daughter shot her scene on “True Blood” on Monday. We both got a lesson in filmmaking; her scene was scheduled to be right after lunch, and we left the studio at seven p.m. But we had a fascinating day and came away impressed with the thought that goes into every scene. BD will be in episode 8, looking authoritative in a lab coat. (We named her character Cornelia, the Sadistic Lab Tech.)

On Tuesday, after a meeting with APA (my left coast reps) we return to our hotel (the Peninsula – great staff!) to have lunch and prepare for the arrival of our hair-and-makeup woman, the diminutive Julie. We were much better looking after her intensive work, and dressed in our finery and with friend and scriptwriter Kam Miller, we climbed into our car to be taken by our driver to the premiere. Most TV shows don’t have a premiere, much less a red carpet, but HBO does things right. There is an actual red carpet, and actual press, and many lovely actresses and handsome actors there for the premiere dressed in their carefully selected outfits. It’s pretty darn glamorous, and I always feel strange in such company. But I did a little press and was photographed a bit (which always amazes me), and then I was VERY glad to get into the building and off my torturous heels.

I got to speak briefly with Alexander Skarsgard, and at the afterparty I had great talks with some fans of the books who were at the premiere. The party was “decorated” with actors sprayed all red with giant red wigs, who introduced themselves as professional fangbangers and slithered all over in an atmospheric touch. It was amazing to get to talk to Dale Raoul (Maxine Fortenberry) and Tara Buck (Ginger, the Fangtasia waitress), and to congratulate Anna and Stephen on the season to come and (more importantly) their twins, now nine months old.

I’m relieved that BD and I are back to our regularly scheduled lives and facing ordinary problems (rather than, “Which restaurant for lunch?” or “Is this the right outfit for today?”). But it’s fun to go Hollywood once in a while!

Charlaine Harris

Hot and Bothered

By Elaine Viets Monday night, Don and I came back from a trip to Key Largo, relaxed, rested and ready to snooze in our cool condo.

It didn’t happen.

The condo was there, all right, but the air conditioning died while we were on vacation. We thought the place was so warm because the South Florida temperatures had hit a record high. We cranked the air conditioner down to seventy degrees.

The condo still didn’t cool down. It took us six hours to figure out that the air conditioner was broken.

What I can say? Vacation brain is a documented disorder.

About midnight, we finally realized the air conditioner was DOA and opened the windows. The cool breeze felt good – certainly better than our hot, stuffy home.

Another half an hour of summer breezes, and I felt like a little girl.

In steamy hot St. Louis. Before we had air conditioning.

Those are not memories I want to revisit.

The Midwest is actually hotter in the summer than the Sunshine State – and there’s no ocean breeze to cool things off at night.

Yes, our Fort Lauderdale bedroom was cooler with the window open, but the sheets were so soggy, they felt like I’d dragged them out of the dryer half-damp. My bare feet stuck to the tile floor. The ceiling fan churned the soggy air but never cooled it.

I remembered all of that from the good old days. I took a shower and fell asleep for another two hours, until the sticky heat smothered me awake again. Then I took another shower.

When I woke up again at four-thirty in the morning, I wondered, How did people survive the heat before air conditioning?

My St. Louis grandmother told me the rich went to Wisconsin, Michigan or some place else cool. The poor couldn’t leave. They got up early in the morning, cooked in the basement – Grandma kept an old stove in her cellar – did the cleaning, and then sweated it out for the spent the rest of the day by a fan. Some people would sleep  outside on the balcony or even try to sleep in the park. Most of us wouldn’t walk around in those parks after dark nowadays. Back then, no mugger would ply his trade in a park packed with hundreds of sweaty, sleepless humans – that was really dangerous.

But I think our ancestors were also tougher.

Take the movie, "Key Largo." Bogart arrives at the Hotel Largo right before a hurricane, so you know it’s hotter than Hades. Look at that photo. No one thinks there’s anything odd about Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and that third hulk wearing ties, jackets and an overcoat.

Okay, that’s a movie. I've seen a photo of Fort Lauderdale pioneer Ivy Stranahan. Just looking at that high collar and those scratchy lace ruffles makes me sweat. She’d never discuss it, but Ivy wore a corset, too. That woman had the right stuff to be a pioneer.

The men didn’t have it any easier. I have a postcard showing two Florida fishermen  wearing hats and heavy coats. The archives of local historical societies are stuffed with similar photos of overdressed anglers.

Even back then, you could have fun on the beach. Just imagine yourself in the ocean at what’s now New Smyrna Beach, wrapped in layers of saltwater- soaked swimsuits.

My unwelcome walk down memory lane ended at noon the next day, when the air-conditioning repairman fixed the condenser on the roof. The heat had melted the wiring.

 By two o’clock that afternoon our condo was blessedly cool.

I’ve heard people tell say that air conditioning is isolating and people don’t sit out on their porches and talk to their neighbors like they used to.

I’ll see my neighbors in the air-conditioned elevator, thank you.

I’m no fan of the good old days.

Davis when it Sizzles

I know it doesn't have quite the same ring to it but, it was 102 degrees at 7pm on Friday night in Davis, CA, when I was hosting a launch party for my new book.  That's my excuse for looking like a greased balloon in all of these pictures.  Why doesn't anyone else, you ask.  Native Californians - they're used to it.

First of all then, thank you so very very much to everyone who ventured out instead of lying in a cool bath with a bag of frozen peas on their head.  It was amazing to see such a crowd.

Here they are, including John Lescroart in the front row - no pressure there then.

The Avid Reader (owned by the just-as-amazing-as-she-sounds Alzeda Knickerbocker) did me proud again, with the kind of window you want to linger outside and show to passers-by:

But I like to think I did my bit too.  I did this anyway:

Even if it meant that at the end of the night I came home to this:

And it was wonderful to hang out with so many friends.  In fact it's still kind of wonderful to *have* so many friends so soon after I moved here.  But then Californians are very friendly people.  Here are Connie Berkowitz and Michele Barefoot about 70 seconds after they met:

Some of my NorCal and Capitol Sisters in Crime were there, and don't Susan Shea, Cindy Sample,local radio producer Lin Weaver and I make a colourful bunch:

And some of my lower-case sisters in crime were there too, including the national-bestselling suspense writer Eileen Rendahl (aka Xena) and the award-winning western and gardening book writer Spring Warren (aka (by me) Sprinkles ). Aren't they lovely?

I tried to be entertaining but I think some of the reason people were happy was that the men behind the bar took their work so seriously.  Look at the concentration here from Neil McRoberts, Dave Gilchrist and Dave Rizzo:

They're UC science professors and can solve major food security problems while doing sudoko but when it comes to wine . . .  total focus!

Anyway, as hard as I tried to put on a good show the funniest line of the night came from Lin Weaver who saw Aubrey Suleiman (here with Keith Raffel and me):

and said: "Is that your sister?  she has *exactly* the same colour of hair."  It's true; she does.  Aubrey is my hairdresser and her colour and mine come out of *exactly* the same bottle at Salon Blonde!

So much of this writing life is typing (and weeping) alone in a room.  It's a treat and an honour to get out from behind the keyboard once in a while and raise a glass with new friends like these.

Next month, I'll be in Edinburgh, raising another one with old friends instead.  My mum will make the cake; the kitchen will stay tidy and I don't need a crystal ball to say it won't be 102 degrees!

 

Suspense on the Big Screen

I've read mysteries for over forty years now and have read thousands of them. As long as they're in book form, I really get into them. With movies (and television), not so much, and I haven't ever quite figured out why. But there are some big-screen suspense films I love, and here they are.

My #1 is a classic, Alfed Hitchcock's "Notorious," starring Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant. The final scene of this movie is one of my all-time favorites, and no matter how many times I watch it, I still find myself hardly daring to breathe. (If you've seen it, you'll know why.) Bergman and Grant, along with the always terrific Claude Rains, are superb. Bergman was never more beautiful, nor vulnerable, in this film (except for maybe in "Casablanca").

And speaking of "Casablanca," it's another of my all-time favorites, not only as the classic romance it is considered to be, but also as a suspense film. There are a number of wonderfully tense moments in it, and it has one of most memorable last lines of any film ever made.

Kudos to Hitchcock again for the chillingly rendered "Rebecca" with Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier. They play their roles admirably, but for me it is Dame Judith Anderson who steals the picture. As the malignant housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, Anderson is terrifying. She played Lady Macbeth to Olivier's Macbeth, and also to Maurice Evans's. I can imagine she was thoroughly blood-curdling as Lady M.

On a slightly lighter note, I have to include Stanley Donen's quirky "Charade," starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. Great supporting cast, too: Walter Matthau, George Kennedy, James Coburn, and Ned Glass. Hepburn is plucky and elegant in this one, feisty too, though she falls for Cary Grant's enigmatic character rather quickly. (But, hey, he's Cary Grant, even if he was a quarter-century older than Hepburn.)

The most recent film in that bunch is "Charade," which hit theaters in December 1963. There are other older films I could include, like Hitchcock's "Saboteur," "The Lady Vanishes," and "Strangers on a Train." "The Maltese Falcon" is brilliant, and "North by Northwest" is great, too.  And I can't forget "Double Indemnity."

I love the underrated "Dead Again" with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, and I have a sentimental fondness for two Hayley Mills films, "The Moon-Spinners" and "That Darn Cat!"

 More current suspense films, well, not so much. I've never seen "The Silence of the Lambs" and never will. Anything that verges on horror isn't for me. Any film with gushing blood, etc., or people being hacked to death by a guy in a weird mask, they're not for me. Give me "Notorious" any day.