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Quick Question: What Day is this? NOT SO FAST

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: There’s certainly a good explanation. Maybe several, and only one or two are distressing.

(First, though, whoo hoo. Very happy with the cover of the new RT Bookreviews. Nice, huh?)

Anyway, about the “situation.” Let me admit to you, friends, that there are times I have no idea what day it is.

This has gotten so ridiculously out of hand that the other morning (whatever day it was) I woke up, and had to THINK: What day is this? And then, in my frustration, I thought: They ought to make some kind of a device you could look at first thing in the morning that would instantly tell you what day it is.

Yeah, I know. They, um, did.  

But calendars aside, this whole juggling writing and full-time-job thing has given
me a better understanding of the Dowager Duchess’s famous question on Downton Abbey: “What’s a weekend?”

My confusion, sadly, does not come from the reality that I don’t have to work and as a result there’s nothing to separate weekdays and weekend.  

It comes from the opposite reality, that I work all the time.

This is not in the nature of a complaint in any way—I am happy and delighted, and buzzing along, counting blessings. But I’ve got to tell you, it’s disconcerting to realize that I don’t know the day of the week. I mean, don’t doctors use that as one of the three questions to determine if a patient is grounded in reality?) (And listen, don’teven ask me the date, like what number of what month it is. I didn’t study, and that’s too hard.)

I’ll be walking down the hall at the station or at home, and it will literally cross my mind—what day is this? Sometimes, if someone is nearby, I even ASK them. Most people happily, assume I’m joking. (A few, with a little shake of the head, seem to understand,and even commiserate.)

Kind of fascinatingly, I have turned this into a musing on how we’ve assigned “meaning” to each day of the week…the difficult Monday, the placeholder Tuesday, the day things get planned; Wednesday, when some things actually get accomplished; Thursday, when it’s suddenly too late, because it’s almost Friday, when WHEW week over, and in some offices and city halls and statehouses it might as well be Saturday, where, depending on your own life, it’s either HAVE FUN or DO ERRANDS, and then Sunday, when it used to be a rest day but now its either a catch- up-on-stuff (writing) day or when you get ready for Monday.

But—and here’s my point, and I know you were wondering—if you don’t know what day it is because, like me, you are writing (or thinking about writing) all the time, no matter what else is going on in your life, you lose those day-designators we’re used to. And you can look at time a different way.

Sure, you could decide “It’s always Monday, argh.” Or you could decide: Hurray. It’s another wonderful day where anything could happen!

Just don’t ask me what everyone else calls it.

(Is it…just me?)

This is not your father's summer camp!

by Toni L.P. Kelner / Leigh Perry

 

I never went to summer camp. Okay, I did a couple of stints at vacation Bible school, but I never did the cabin/sleeping bag/swimming in Lake Whatchamacallit thing. None of the outdoorsy stuff appealed to me, plus I was shy and a picky eater, so communal living really didn't thrill me. I'd say that my only experience with summer camps as a child was in books and in movies like The Parent Trap. (The original one--with Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills.)

I admit Hayley and Hayley lent a certain glamour to the idea of getting dumped into the lake and constructing bird cages out of Popsicle sticks, but I already had three sisters and didn't relish the idea of coming home with a hitherto unknown twin. So I was happy to have missed that particular rite of passage.

Then I had kids who wanted to go to camp, and took a whole new look at them. My gosh, even the rich Hayley never had camps like the ones that are available now. There are sports camps, math camps, science camps, high school prep camps, college prep camps, and fitness camps. There are camps for computer programming, animation, and game design. Kids can spend all summer at one camp, or switch venues every week.

Now my kids are no more into sports than I was, and honestly can be just as picky eaters, but they can still enjoy the wonders of summer camps in their own particular idiom: drama, art, and live-action role playing.

Maggie's was the first to go a'camping at Kidstock, a theater school in nearby Winchester, MA. We were gratified when she came home after the first day and told us she'd be playing Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet." Then she reassured us that she would not actually have to kiss the young actor playing Romeo. As it worked out, they had several Juliets of different age levels and acting abilities. Here's Maggie in costume.

 

Later on she appeared as a random member of the Capulet family in a massive battle with Montagues. Cutest. Fight. Scene. Ever. 

Val joined the Kidstock fun when she was old enough, but I confess I can't remember what role she was playing in this glorious hat. (Hats play an important part in characterization.)

Both girls continued to attend summer camp at Kidstock for many years: acting, singing, dancing, making movies, doing Popsicle-stick free art projects. (Not a canoe in sight! And while I enjoyed attending ever single performance--sometimes going to the same show multiple times--I never felt wistful about having missed out on a camp like Kidstock myself. I'm not an actress or a dancer, and my singing is pretty much restricted to the shower.

In later years, both girls attended a different kind of camp: live-action role-playing camp. (That's LARP to those of you who share my geek cred.) Wizards and Warriors gave Maggie and Valerie the chance to create characters and design costumes to match. (Well, with a little shopping help from me.) The counselors led them through fantasy adventures in the mythical land of Siddleterra with mysteries to solve, battles to fight, and stories to tell. It's amazing.

Though Maggie has now aged out of the summer camp phenomenon, Valerie just finished a session Wizards and Warriors this week, and the big finale was the Feast of Heroes. Songs were song, heroes were recognized, and we managed to escape from a ring wraith. (Bilbo Baggins made a guest appearance.) Some of the parents--and big sisters--got into the spirit, too, and came in costume. Here's Valkyrie Stefansdottir, Maggie, and the aforementioned Stefan at the feast.

You know what. With Wizards and Warriors, I finally found a summer camp I would have liked to attend. Like? I'd have begged my parents for a chance to go. Of course, it's too late for me to dress up for such things. Or is it?


I think I'm starting to like summer camp after all.



PS - I very much hope to follow Marcia's example some day and establish Camp Grandmama! And just in case, I'll hang onto my hat.

 

A day in Oxford

by Donna Andrews

Oxford, Maryland, that is.  This weekend I did a signing for The Hen of the Baskervilles, my new book, at Mystery Loves Company in Oxford, and as usual, I went over to the Eastern Shore the day before. There's a practical reason for my early arrival--beating the Bay Bridge traffic. But it also lets me spend Saturday morning wandering around Oxford, taking photos. (Above: roses and hibiscus twin around an Oxford fence. More on the fence in a sec.)

The last few years, Oxford has offered an additional inducement to phototourists with its picket fence display. Since at least the mid-1800s the town has been home to a unique style of picket fence.  Instead of a plain, pointed top, each picket has a bulbous onion-dome-shaped top with a small hole drilled through it. Local historians speculate that the design was brought back from Russia or the Middle East by some seafaring Oxford resident,though no one knows for sure.

Starting in 2008, the Oxford Business Association began offering small four- or five-picket sections of fence to local artists--professional or amateur. As long as their creations reflect some aspect of life in Oxford, the artists are given free rein to paint, sculpt, and decorate the fences as they please.  The resulting art works are sold to benefit the artists' chosen charities in the fall, but meanwhile they're installed around town, in and in front of various businesses. And any of the businesses would be happy to give you a map showing the location of all of the year's fences, so on bright sunny day like last Saturday, you'll find any number of tourists diligently following the trail of the picket fences. (Above: a fence called "The Doors of Oxford," installed in front of the Oxford Community Center.)

That's what I did with my morning.  It's a good way to make sure you see a lot of Oxford, since the fences are scattered throughout town.  There's a good concentration along Morris Street--named after Robert Morris, Sr., father of the Morris who signed the declaration of Independence, whose house now forms part of the Robert Morris Inn. So I walked that part of my visit to the town, from Mystery Loves Company down to the Oxford Ferry and back. 

I made slow progress, because I had to stop three or four times in every block to admire and photograph the gardens. The hydrangeas were mostly fading, but the crepe myrtles were going strong, and the roses, daisies, mallows, black-eyed susans, and other mid-summer bloomers were running riot in the gardens along Morris Street.  And every other street in Oxford, from what I saw, but by the time I finished my stroll up and down Morris Street I realized I'd need to take to my car if I wanted to see all the fences, so I only saw the rest of the gardens in passing.

(Above: the garden outside the Oxford Museum--note the typical Oxford picket fence, and also the path made of oystershells, a familiar sight not only in Oxford but also in Yorktown, Virginia, where I grew up.)

If I hadn't been following the picket fence trail, I might not have gone down to the western end of The Strand.  I might not have been the regatta that was underway on the Tred Avon River, and I certainly wouldn't have taken some of my favorite photos of the day--the regatta from the Sandaway Bed and Breakfast, where the crisp white chairs on the lush green lawn would be the perfect place to relax, sip a lemonade, and watch the sailboats bustle up and down the river. (That's it below.)

Following the picket fences will take you to several of the better restaurants in Oxford, several marinas or yacht-building firms, and, of course, Mystery Loves Company.  

I question the wisdom of installing a fence outside the Oxford Bank & Trust, particularly since it was one of the smaller signs that are sometimes posted inside a window.  Even in a popular tourist destination like Oxford, doesn't it make the bank staff nervous to have cars and pedestrians constantly circuling their building in a manner that, anywhere else, would trigger a call to 911?

Putting a sign outside the Scottish Highland Creamery was inspired, though. I wonder how many tired tourists have taken a break from their walk or bike ride there?

In the end, I only missed one of the fences, and I ran out of time long before I ran out of things to photograph. Someone remind me to go over two days early next time! (Above, boats and roses at the HInckley Yacht Company.)

For an almost complete gallery of this year's Oxford Fences, go here.

For a more photos from my day in Oxford, go here.

 

 

A Scandal at 16

By Elaine Viets

"Tell me something about yourself that your readers don’t know," Lynn Kaczmarek said.

Lynn was interviewing me for Mystery Scene magazine. I wound up on the cover with some of my favorite authors, including Diamond Dagger winner Peter Lovesey and Qiu Xiaolong. (If you haven’t read Lovesey’s Detective Peter Diamond series, or Qiu’s Chief Inspector Chen Cao, treat yourself.)

But back to Lynn’s request. What didn’t readers know about me? I’ve been married 42 years and I write two mysteries a year, so there isn’t time to get into trouble.

But I did have a scandal in my past.

"I was thrown out of a New Orleans hotel at age 16 for bad behavior," I told Lynn.

That was the last line of the interview. I had no idea how many people read Mystery Scene  until that Summer issue came out and the questions started.

Mystery writer Michael Haskins asked, "What did you do at 16 to be thrown out of a hotel in New Orleans? It's like being 86ed from a bar in Key West!"

"Eighty-sixed," for those who don’t know tavern terms, means you’ve been barred from a bar. I ’ve been in a lot of Key West bars – exactly how many, I can’t remember – but so far I haven’t been banned.

But about that hotel.

I was 16 in 1966. Forget the Swinging Sixties. It was more like 1956. The Sixties really weren’t revving up much outside of New York, London and LA. Rocker Keith Moon’s historic hotel room trashing wouldn’t happen for another year.

Life was firmly buttoned up in Florissant, Missouri, a blue-collar suburb of St. Louis. I was tall, gawky, wore nerd glasses, and was addicted to doing good works with a church group.

We belonged to a chapter of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. In those days, that Catholic charity was mostly old white guys. Our chapter was the first to have women (we girls weren’t about to get shuffled off into a ladies’ auxiliary). When we tried to join, the old cigar chompers grumbled, "Women! Next they’ll want to put curtains on the meeting room windows." Clearly, he didn’t know us.

Our small group – I think it was three girls and three boys – went to the big de Paul Society convention in New Orleans to make our case, chaperoned by our group leader, George Fernau. We stayed at the  Jung Hotel in New Orleans.

This was the first big hotel most of us had ever stayed in. On summer vacations with our parents, our families were crowded into one motel room, and we kids slept on roll-away beds. Those were fifty cents extra.

At the Jung, excited by being in the big city at a big convention, we girls thought it would be funny to get back at the boys. So we sneaked into their room, TP’ed it and covered the mirrors with shaving cream.

Unfortunately, the maid got to the room before the boys. She was outraged by the mess and complained to the manager. He summoned George, our chaperone. "Pack up and get out!" the manager said. "Leave this instant."

George was horrified. Where would we find another place to stay in a convention city?

"Give the girls another chance," he said. "Let them clean up the room."

George found us girls huddling in our room. We got a stern lecture. We’d jeopardized the whole trip. How could we convince the de Paul Society we were responsible after such a childish stunt? We were a disgrace to Florissant, our families and St. Sabina Church. What would our parents say?

I still squirm at the memory of his furious lecture.

We girls dutifully cleaned up the room. We groveled to the maid. George groveled to the manager. He inspected the room for damages, and decided we could stay – but security watched our every move.

Our group was officially accepted by the de Paul Society. Our parents never found out.

And I went back to inflicting myself on the unfortunate. I still remember  visiting a home for the elderly when a resident found out her beloved niece had died suddenly. I was assigned to sit with the grief-stricken woman until her family arrived.

"She was only 30," the poor woman wailed.

I patted her liver-spotted hand. "There, there," I told the ninety-year-old. "Only the good die young."

 

The part where my answer to everything is "no, can't, deadline."

by Dana

It's happening again. 

I'm creeping up on (nay, let's be honest--rocketing toward) a book deadline.  I write out of sequence, without an outline.  I've tried both ways, and this is the way that works, is least painful, the most fun/interesting for me, and whatever your process is, you should try to aim for that.  But I'm always left with the question:  Will all the scenes I've been writing suddenly, magically, gel into a book?   

There's no suddenly and there's no magically about it.  I would have thought, as organized as I try to be about everything else in life, that I'd be an outliner.  Since I long ago came to terms with the idea that I'm not, I did keep a work journal, so after having written a flock of books, seven of which were published, I know there's a rhythm, possibly a method, to this madness. 

It's still working, fingers crossed.  It looks a little like this:

Throughout the year, I'll be working steadily as I can, writing scenes that come to me.  It is usually a visual impression, like a movie in my head.  If I have a loose idea, I write it down, and it joins the little motley pile of scribbled notes on my desk.  If I need an idea, I shuffle through them, like a Tarot deck, to see if anything speaks to me.  I write that, and if I can, write the outline of the next idea, so I have a “wet edge” to continue with the next day.

Eventually, I figure out that some of the characters—just rough sketches, like “female vampire” or “bad guy”—seem to be overlapping, and I can blend them together, finding more personality traits, which lead to more deductions about their motivation.  Some of the scenes seem to be redundant, too—if there are two scenes with information, can they be made into one?  Or can they both be better incorporated into some other action scene?

There are mile markers:  at about 75 pages, it starts to feel like there might be a plot.  At about 200 pages, it feels like it might be a book.  At between 250 and 300 pages, I know I need to start seeing how it all fits together.

That's where I'm at now.  The last six to eight weeks of the project are the most hectic, when flaws of logic, unexplained characterization, and world-building are thrown into high relief.  If I can go through the manuscript in two or three consecutive days, I can keep all the events in mind, moving them around, leaving notes for myself. 

There are also clues in the text I've written.  If I've been going in a general direction, I know to think about the consequences and side effects of that.  I can go back to my other Fangborn stories, especially “The Night Things Changed,” to get elements of the world.  I go to Seven Kinds of Hell to remember what questions I left unanswered that need to be addressed now.  Somehow it all works.

If I'm lucky, what eventually is revealed is that there are small things to fix, and scenes to write, but a generally sound chronology and progression of events.  If I'm very lucky, I'll get excited, rediscovering things I'd forgotten I've written.

If I'm unlucky...well.  So far, it's never come to that.  That's the thing that gives me the guts to fly by the seat of my pants.  My process keeps working.  It's exactly like the bit from "Shakespeare in Love" between the theater owner, Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush) and Will (Joseph Fiennes), in a moment of crisis:

    Henslowe:  It will be all right.
    Will:  How will it?
    Henslowe:  I don't know.  It's a mystery.

Not a satisfactory answer, but even if I don't know how it works, it keeps happening.  It will be all right. 

The end game is is not the pretty part of writing.  It is not cinematic, there is no wonderfully lit montage suggesting exquisite thought and insight.  I am forgetful and absentminded about everything but the book.  I am largely absent from my on-line communities and pray my friends understand when I am uncommunicative and tardy, and why I must be the party pooper who says "no, can't, deadline" when invited to do more fun things.  My husband, Mr. G, knows that I will be inarticulate, repetitive, distracted, obsessive.  I will work longer hours during the week, and one or both days on the weekend.  He jokes about throwing gobbets of raw meat into my office, then running away, but is careful to announce his approach long before he gets close, because I inevitably will have my WIP playlist blaring and be staring at my screen, senseless to everything but the story.  Typing, hopefully.

Wish me luck.  I send Fangborn Book #2 to my agent and beta readers Wednesday.

A Few July Book Reviews

 

 

from Mary

 

 

What's everybody reading this summer?

 

This month I've discovered a new favorite author. Yes, another one! Where has he been all my life? At home writing, apparently. Robert Goddard is the author of 20+ novels and, having read history at Cambridge, he certainly knows how to use historical events that add depth to his stories.

 

 

In PAINTING THE DARKNESS, the older son of a baron disappears and is believed to have committed suicide. The son's fiance eventually marries and has a child, the baron's younger son inherits everything when the father dies.

Eleven years later, a man turns up and claims to be the long lost brother. He looks like the brother who left, and he knows facts that only the elder son would know. He intends to take back his title and his inheritance. This, of course, does not go down well with little brother. Nor with the mother who claims the man is an imposter.

But the fiance knows it is her one love. Oh, the wonderful twists and turns in this book! I loved every word.

 

 

I loved CAUGHT IN THE LIGHT too. Ian Jarrett is a photographer who goes to Vienna on assignment. He takes a photo of a woman, Marian, while there. They talk, they click, they have an intense affair. It's so intense, they each decide to dump their spouses in order to be together forever.

Ian goes home and tells his wife it's over. He's leaving and there's nothing she can do to stop him. On the appointed day he and Marian are to go off together, Marian calls him to say she can't do it. She hangs up, and Ian realizes he has no idea where she lives or how to reach her, only that he must find her.

This is another exciting, complex story with many a winding plot twist. I look forward to reading all Goddard's books.

If you've read any of my posts before, you already know how I love Dean Koontz. This month, I re-read his two books featuring Christopher Snow.

 

 

Chris was born with a rare genetic disease that makes him vulnerable to most kinds of light. Even the smallest exposure to the sun can be deadly. So he lives by night, riding his bike around Moonlight Bay, a small town in California. His girlfriend is a late-night radio disc jockey. His best friend is Bobby, a surfer and work-at-home surf tech businessman. 

 

 

They're wonderful people who are smart, compassionate and friends to the end. Which may come very soon. Christopher's mom was a theoretical geneticist employed by the Department of Defense. She worked on a highly classified project that involved human DNA experiments with animals, just down the street where the naval base used to be. Unfortunately, like other ideas from the Dept. of Defense, this one goes a little screwy. They should never have started monkeying around with animal DNA.

Fans of Koontz's ODD THOMAS series - you need to read these two books soon. Hints dropped in the last couple of Odd books look like signs to me that the two heroes will soon join forces to combat the Big Bad on the horizon. I was sure it would happen in ODD APOCALYPSE, but nope, not yet.

 

 

Odd and Chris are such wonderful heroes. Both are young, down-to-earth, and most of all, they're serious about being deeply good. It will take both of them to defeat the overwhelming forces that threaten their world. The poor things! 

 

Making lemonade

by Donna Andrews

My latest book, The Hen of the Baskervilles, comes out tomorrow.  On the eve of publication, I thought I'd share a little bit about how I came to write it.  Warning for anyone who's a congenital pessimist: this is a story about making lemonade.  Not the drink, the kind you stir up when life hands you another crate of lemons.

Years ago my first editor, the legendary Ruth Cavin and I, had a discussion about what made my Meg books funny.  Meg herself has a nice, sardonic sense of humor, but things don't really get hilarious unless her family are around, trying her patience (and entertaining the reader) with their antics. Ruth and I agreed that whenever I come up with an idea for a book, I need to make sure there's a way for Meg's relatives to get involved in whatever's going on.

So when I thought about setting a Meg adventure at the Virginia State Fair, one of the first things I did was see if I could reasonably expect a critical mass of family and friends to show up there.  Of course I could.  The ones who aren't exhibiting livestock or entering produce and baked goods in the competitions would come for the food, the shows, and the Midway.

I researched the state fair.  This meant, of course, going down a couple of times to hang out, take pictures, talk to the fair denizens, and sample the fair food.  I did that a couple of times.  I thought I was ready to write the book. And a good thing, too, because the time had come to start writing my next book if I was going to turn it in on time.

Then a friend sent me a link to a news story.  The Virginia State Fair was run by a private non-profit corporation, not the state.  And the corporation was going bankrupt.  The story explained that there was a possibility that someone would buy the fairgrounds and the right to run the fair.  But that it would take months for that to play out, and meanwhile I needed to start my book now.

I could set my book at the state fair, and hope that someone bought the rights to hold it in future, and that what they held looked at least a little like what I described.  Or . . .

I created my own fair, held in Caerphilly, the fictional town and county in which the recent Meg books have taken place.  In my book, the possible demise of the state fair inspires several groups to organize events designed to take its place.  Caerphilly organizes the Un-Fair. And I looked around for a hook to make the Un-Fair a little different from the state fair--necessarily to ensure its survival if the real state fair did continue.

And I remembered a magazine I came across while in Ithaca doing a signing.  It's called Out Here, a quarterly published by the Tractor Supply Company that celebrates farm life.  This issue--Spring 2011--had an article about rare livestock, including a short feature about the American Mammoth Jackstock donkey.  I have no idea how this magazine found its way to the lounge area of the high-tech health club where Killer Coffee Club leader Nikii Bonanni worked, but I started reading it while waiting for Nikki--as soon as she finished with her day job for the day, she was going to lead me to the bookstore for my KCC appearance.  Nikki was probably unsurprised to find me reading to while away my wait--but reading a farming magazine?

"May I borrow this?" I asked.  "I need to find someplace where I can make a copy of these articles."  I wasn't sure how I was going to use the information in Out Here, but I knew it was plot fodder.

"You can keep it," she said.  It was an old magazine that someone had left behind, and eventually destined for the recycling bin. Instead, it went home with me and found its way into my research files.
   
And when I crafted my own state fair, I decided to bring in the heritage animals.  I studied the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy's site and my fair began to be populated with animals from its conservation priority list.  Florida Crackers and Red Polls (cows).  Mulefoots, Red Wattles, and Gloucestershire Old Spots (hogs). Romeldale sheep.  The American Mammoth Jackstock Donkey, of course.  And the bantam Russian Orloff chickens whose theft is one of the first signs that all is not well at the Un-Fair.

The poultry tent in my fair got a considerable assist from my current editor, Pete Wolverton.  Shortly after I began my draft, a package arrived in the mail, containing a book Minotaur had recently published, called Beautiful Chickens. Anne, Pete's assistant, had included a note saying that Pete thought I might find it interesting.  Interesting? Yes, and fabulously useful.  Beautiful Chickens contains dozens of studio portraits of different breeds of chickens.  I'm sure it has seduced many a person into becoming a backyard chicken farmer. It helped me populate the chicken tent at the Un-Fair, and helped inspire Meg's and Michael's decision to add chickens to their small farmstead.

The state fair story has a happy ending.  A company out of Tennessee that runs a lot of events bought the fairgrounds down in Doswell, Virginia, and the rights to hold the Virginia State Fair.  And from what I've seen, they seem to be striving for continuity with the fair's long history, so I'm looking forward to going this fall. And frankly, while the research I did at the real fair was invaluable to creating the Un-fair, I had a lot more fun creating my own event.  And before long, Meg begins to wonder if the events surrounding the near-demise of the state fair and the competition to create a replacement have anything to do with the murder that mars the Un-Fair.  (I'm not telling you if she's right.  That would be a spoiler.)

In short, I had to do a lot of extra work to rescue the book when it looked as if I'd set it at an event that might be disappearing.  But I think that extra work made it a better book.

And now it's a real book.  As in, a box of copies just arrived on my doorstep.  I'll be giving away a signed copy at random to someone who comments on this blog, here or on Facebook. 

As Time Goes By

I'm a re-reader, one of those people who likes to reread favorite books by favorite authors. I'm also a re-watcher, one of those people who rewatches favorite movies and television series. Multiple times, sometimes as often as once a year, perhaps twice. I know there are people who find that odd. Hey, I kill people in my spare time (in fiction), so I'm already odd.

Now, to answer the burning question -- why watch a movie or television series (and I'm talking the complete series) over and over?

Several reasons, actually, the first being plain old unvarnished comfort. That's the thing about a beloved movie or television series. They will take you to another place, another time, take you out of yourself and whatever the crisis of the moment might be. Also tiredness. When I'm really tired but need to unwind, I rewatch or reread -- spending time with the familiar is less taxing than trying something new and unknown and having to focus intently enough to follow a storyline.

When you rewatch a movie or television episode that is high-quality, though, there is an added benefit -- though perhaps a subconscious one. For writers, that is. Good writing teaches you things, as does good acting. Plot construction, setting a scene, dialogue, the telling detail -- all prevented visually and aurally.You can absorb an excellent lesson this way.

You can also learn what isn't good, what doesn't work well, by watching mediocre movies or television more than once. And be mystified why some badly produced, badly written, and badly acted things are still showing up on the small screen, or on DVD, etc.

But back to the good stuff. One television series that I admire and enjoy tremendously (and have watched all the way through a good six or seven times by now) is a British one called "As Time Goes By." If you don't know it, here's the basic story: Jean and Lionel fell in love back in the 1950s, when Jean was a fledgling nurse and Lionel was in the army. Lionel gets posted to Korea, writes Jean to let her know where he is, etc., but Jean never gets the letter. End of love story.

Except that Jean and Lionel meet again thirty-eight years later. Jean is a widow with her own business, a secretarial agency, and Lionel is a retired coffee planter who has returned to England after years in Kenya. He's writing a book about his life (with the ingeniously clever title My Life in Kenya). He needs a secretary, and Jean's agency supplies him with one. The series, which began in 1992, eventually ran to some sixty-seven epsiodes over the course of thirteen years. Dame Judi Dench is Jean, and Geoffrey Palmer is Lionel.

The writing is clever, for the most part, and Jean and Lionel are both quirky characters in their own ways. Dame Judi and Mr. Palmer invest these characters with utter believability, at least to me, and I forget that I'm watching actors; instead I'm watching Jean and Lionel. The series follows their reacquaintance and the burgeoning romantic relationship, family relationships, ups and downs, and so on. As is the case with some British sit-coms, the action is sequential, almost like one episode over the span of the thirteen years. That in itself is an achievement, and good writing makes it work.

You can pick up a lot about creating complex, believable, and distinctive characters by watching good television and movies. At least, that's one of my excuses for indulging myself when I spend time with favorites like Jean and Lionel. Sometimes it's Samantha, Darrin, Endora, et al. Or maybe Rob, Laura, Buddy and Sally. Or Mary, Rhoda, Lou, Ted, and Murray. Sometimes Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, Marjorie Frobisher, and Richard Cavendish. There are more, but those are my favorites. What are yours?

Unwritten Rules

What started me off on this was sitting at the next table to a group of diners in the local steakhouse a week or two ago and hearing them order white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake, chocolate  mudcake and pecan and ginger pie to start with, and ribs to follow.

The waiter was unfazed.  We love desert, they said.  We’d rather eat desert and box our entrees.  Why not? I thought. "Why not?" I asked Neil. "Why not?" he asked me back. And the only answer was “Because of everything that is good and holy and makes sense and allows the world to turn.  You can’t- You can’t just-  You just can’t.”

But they did.  And it got me thinking about all of our unwritten rules, those pockets of senseless rigidity that gain us nothing and yet would have to be pried from our cold dead irrational hands.  Here are some of mine.

1. Socks and underwear go in the top drawer.  My top drawer is very shallow and thick winter socks don’t really fit in it without bunching up in the runners and making it stick.  The bottom drawer where I keep my running clothes is deep.  Running clothes are slinky.  I should swap them.  But . . . I can’t.

 

2. You start flossing your teeth in the middle.  You go out to one side then back to the middle.  But this means you floss the middle twice.  You could start one tooth over from the middle on the second side, but it’s hard to tell where that is (Did I mention that I’m in the shower with no mirror?).  The sensible thing is to start flossing at one side and work round.  But . . . are you crazy?  Of course, I can’t.

3. You don’t phone people after nine pm even if you know they never go to bed until midnight. My brother-in-law Brian (very sensibly given the eight-hour time difference) thinks he can phone when he knows we’ll be up.  So this happens. 

[Phone rings at 10.45pm. I leap for it, heart hammering.]

Catriona:  Hello-o-o???? (Roughly translated, this means “who’s dead?”)

Brian: Hiya. 

C: Brian? Is everything okay? 

B: Yeah.  Why?

C: It’s so late.

B: Are you still up?

C: Yeah.

B: Is everything okay with you?

C: Yeah.

B: Soooo . . .?

And there’s really no answer to that question except . . . you can’t.

 

4. I have a set of black enamelled cooking pots (pale blue on the inside) bought at an antique fair in Perthshire.  They’re of British manufacture but were intended for a school in Sri Lanka (in the days of Empire), so they have some Tamil writing stamped on the side.  Or they did until it wore off under daily use. 

Now, these are the worst cooking pots ever.   You can’t use metal implements in them.  You can’t put them in the dishwasher.  They’re not particularly thick bottomed so they sometimes get stuff stuck to them and you can’t clean them with wire wool.  The lids get really hot and you need to use an oven glove to touch them.  The handles get even hotter.  Another two oven gloves there.  The blistering hot handles are two stubby little lugs, so you can’t hold the pot in one hand and pour water out if you’re draining spaghetti.  You need to hold both handles – with oven gloves – stand a colander in the sink and drain the spaghetti into it.

Did you notice me saying the Tamil wore off under daily use.  Yep, I use these inconvenient, painful, stupid black cooking pots every day and have done for at least ten years.  Because . . . because . . . I’ve got nothing.

 

5. But I’m not as bad as some people because I really like Brussels sprouts. All over the UK the biggest feast of the year for lots of people is Christmas dinner.  And all over the UK in millions of households, people cook and serve a vegetable that no one likes and no one eats and then they throw it away. 

Wait - what am I saying ?  Of course they don’t.  They put it in a dish, cover it with foil and keep it in the fridge for a couple of days. Then they throw it away.  That’s completely different. 

And all the magazines are full of recipes for Brussels sprouts throughout December, as food writers do their best.  Bacon, walnuts and truffles are a theme, but – let’s face it – if you serve anything with bacon, walnuts and truffles it’ll taste pretty good.  If you serve bulky, top-drawer-sticking socks with enough bacon, walnuts and truffles, you’d be able to choke a few down.

So . . . socks, floss, pots and phone calls.  Those are my unwritten rules.  How about you? 

I drove in Southern California, and lived to tell about it

by Kris Neri

As a result of my recent Southern California tour for Revenge on Route 66, I have a confession to make: I am not in shape.

I’m not referring to my physical conditioning, although that’s also true. I have maintained the weight loss I managed to achieve last year, but my muscles are as gooey as the Pillsbury Doughboy’s. Of course, since I live at altitude, when I return to sea level, I enjoy great stamina. If I had any muscular strength, I could go on forever.

But as I said, I’m not talking about my body not being in shape. I mean I’m not in shape to drive the Southern California freeways, the gold medal event in demolition derbies.

Driving challenges and unique road characteristics exist everywhere, though the degree of difficulty required to stay alive varies enormously. Here in Northern Arizona, that’s certainly true. In Sedona, the greatest challenge involves anticipating the awe of tourists who are likely to forget to accelerate in the face of an interesting rock formation. I’ve almost hit a few cars drifting to a stop.

And in nearby Cottonwood, the locals exhibit a curious practice at stop streets. They stop. Usually. But it doesn’t seem to occur to too many people that they’re supposed to remain stopped at a stop street that feeds into a right-of-way street. After a second or two, they simply drift slowly into ongoing traffic, causing cars in both directions to have to come to an immediate halt to avoid hitting them. They always seem surprised by the horns and nasty hand signals that result, too, as if everyone should know a stop sign means that after the briefest-ever stop, you’re allowed to go, no matter what the traffic conditions are like.

It’s only disconcerting the first few thousand times you experience it. Since speed limits here in Arizona are often set at snail pace, there’s rarely any danger, except to the frustration levels of driver who crazily believe stop signs mean drivers should stay stopped until they have the right to go. Heck, even the local cops drive that say.

Okay, small town driving can be quirky. But I don’t just drive in small towns. I make appearances in Phoenix and Tucson all the time, so I should be keeping my city driving chops in good shape.

But just as there's a difference between high school track meets and the Olympics, the stakes involved in  city driving will vary as well. In Arizona there is plenty of road space for local dwellers and visitors to share comfortably. That makes for more relaxed, considerate driving. (We could discuss a state that pours millions into road construction -- often widening little traveled roads in the middle of nowhere -- while continually defunding education, but that's a topic for a different day.)

Whereas in Southern California, no matter how much the freeways there are widened, there is never enough space by a factor of ten. That turns driving into a blood sport. While I did survive driving in that jungle for which I wasn’t prepared, I didn’t excel.

For instance, I forgot that when you want to change lanes there, you never signal. That just alerts other drivers to your plans, which gives them the edge in subverting you. When the stakes for space are so high, other drivers feel they have to snatch that bit of lane opening up before anyone can. Even if, by filling the spot you want, they find themselves in the absolute wrong space for their own exit. Not a problem. They can always frantically cut across six lanes to make their own exits. Southern California drivers have to be prepared to react to that, too.

While people there take pride in their ability to navigate this automotive jungle--including my husband, who is still a master--I must confess that even when I lived there, I was never among the best of the best. When I used to teach night classes on campus at UCLA, I always dreaded the ride home. By 10:30-11:00 pm, the freeways there finally move, but they're still crowded. Lane after lane of cars cruise at 80 mph with only three feet between bumpers. I always hoped that if fatigue did cause me to spin out at that speed, my car would tumble somewhere in a field where it's relatively safe to come to a stop on your car’s roof, rather than crashing through someone's house or flying off a freeway overpass.

Yet strangely, while Southern Californians take pride in their abilities to handle their crowded commutes, they also are a bit touchy about criticism. A long time ago, back when I mostly wrote nonfiction pieces, I once penned a funny article about local driving patterns. Sure, it poked fun, but with good-natured humor--nothing mean-spirited at all. I submitted that piece to all the local periodicals for which it might have been appropriate. But every one of them rejected it. And not just rejected — rejected with nasty, outraged letters, expressing how deeply my remarks had offended them. I felt as if, with my submissions, I should have sent along bandages for all those nerves I seemed to have exposed. It was one of the only spec pieces I wrote that I never sold.

I’m not any fonder now of Southern California driving than I was then. But I drove there once more throughout my recent tour, and I lived to tell about it. Just barely, though. Before my next tour, I think I’ll try to take some laps on really crowded Nascar tracks. That won’t test me enough, but it’ll be a start.

What’s the craziest, most maddening aspect of driving where you live?