My Weblog

by Donna Andrews

(pictures also by Donna, but they may or may not have anything to do with the text)

Yesterday I was watching the nine-year-old nephews for a while, and one of them kept asking me if there were any chores he could do to earn some money. He wants a fancy new bit of sports equipment, and his parents have told him he needs to earn the money for it.   I’m trying to exterminate all the pachysandra in my yard, so I offered him what I thought was an exorbitant fee per bag for pulling up pachysandra.  He only lasted three bags—it was rather muggy out, and he kept angling for indoor chores. Coming up with indoor chores that he could do, safely and satisfactorily was harder, but I managed.  I have a lot of clean windows and mirrors today and he’s a lot closer to his goal.  Maybe we’ll get after the pachysandra again when it’s cooler.

Reminded me of one summer, back when I had a day job, and my department was assigned an intern.  An intern whose parents were on the board, or friends of someone who was on the board, so she got her pick of departments.  I can’t even remember if we’d even requested an intern, or if we were just informed that we’d be getting Jennifer—which was not her name, but was almost certainly the most popular name in the country the year she was born, so let’s call her that.  I suspect Jennifer thought the Marketing Communications department would be a lot more glamorous than it was.

In the days leading up to Jennifer’s arrival, we were all asked to be thinking of projects on which we could make use of her services.  At the time, at least half of my work consisted of computer stuff.  I kept track of the department’s budget using Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets and macros.  I used the SAS programming language to pull mailing lists from our corporate marketing information system.  And while it wasn’t my primary job, I had such a reputation for making WordPerfect macros sit up and do tricks that I did a brisk business in helping secretaries from other departments figure out how to automate repetitious word processing tasks. I also wrote copy, saw it through the editorial process and worked with designers to produce finished documents. But that summer, we were doing a lot of business-to-business direct mail, so I was happily immersed in my tech work. And since Jennifer’s resume showed no usable tech skills, I didn’t see much of her at first.

And then my boss suggested that it was time for me to avail myself of Jennifer’s skills. Actually, the way I remember it, my boss told me that it was my turn to keep Jennifer busy, dammit!  If she doesn’t know how to do anything for you, teach her something.

Teaching people how to do things always takes longer than doing it yourself, though it’s worth doing if you’re training someone who you hope will be a longtime coworker and trusted asset to the department.  Training someone who was already counting the days until she went back to her Ivy League campus . . . arg.  But I try to be a good team player.  So I went through my project list and imagine my surprise when I found something I could easily teach Jennifer to do.

So bright and early at nine the next morning, I handed Jennifer a printout of one of our most important mailing lists, a list of some eight or ten thousand college and university administrators.  We were about to make a big, expensive mailing to this list, and we realized we’d been getting complaints that some people weren’t receiving information we’d been trying to send them, or that it was outdated by the time it finally was forwarded to them.  We’d occasionally get letters complaining that “so-and-so died five years ago; will you please take him off your mailing list.”  We were getting more returns than we liked.  So my boss and I had determined that we would save a lot of money and hassle in the long run if we called all of these institutions to verify that we had the right information.  I had started doing it, keeping a printout of the list by my phone, and making a few calls whenever I was waiting for a program to run, or at the end of the day, if I was too tired to start something requiring more brainpower.

It looked to me like the perfect job for Jennifer. 

She studied the printout.  She listened, with an attentive but puzzled look, to my explanation of the importance of this project.  And then she leaned forward with an earnest expression, as if about to ask me a question about the meaning of life.

“Just one thing,” she said.  “What am I supposed to learn by doing this?”

For a split second, I almost gave her the answer that leaped into my mind: “That not everything you do to earn your living is going to be fun.”

Probably not an answer that would go down well with her, or with Mommy or Daddy on the board.

“Well,” I said instead. “When I do it, I like to pretend I’m a spy or a detective, and I see how much missing information I can add to the printout.”  Not entirely a lie.

That didn’t impress her, though, so I added a few words about the enormous cost benefit to the company of having this list accurate, and how mission critical it was to charm people, not annoy them, in doing this.  Convince them that we cared about them, our customers and potential customers.

I could tell she wasn’t sold.  I gave her half the list, keeping the other half for myself. She actually made a few calls, at least until she thought of an Important Project she could do for the corporation.  Preparing a report about something.  Whatever it was didn’t seem like something the corporation needed a report on , and I don’t recall anyone actually doing anything with it after she left, but it kept her busy, and happy, and mostly out of our hair.  Completely out of mine, in fact.  Every time I saw her I asked how her calls were going, so she soon learned to avoid me at all costs. Eventually our secretary took charge of Jennifer’s half of the printout and helped me finish up the rest of the calls in time for our mailing.

I have no idea what Jennifer did in later life.  Politics is my guess.  At any rate, I’m pretty sure she didn’t become a writer. It’s a career that may look glamorous from the outside and turns out to be a lot of hard work. Especially if you are, like me, in the middle of a book and suffering from the usual nagging doubts about whether it’s ever going to come out right.  And when I’m in that stage, I do have the occasional day when I remember how, back on the day job, I could always mosey into my boss’s office and say “I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing.  We need to talk!”

But only occasionally.  And there are far more days when I remember what my friend Tracey—owner of the original Spike—said when I asked her how she felt about having left corporate life to run a business with her husband, Bill.

“You know what I like best?” she said. “If management is doing something really stupid . . . we can just stop doing it.”

Which reminds me of one of my favorite of the late, great Elmore Leonard’s writing rules: “Try to leave out the parts that renders tend to skip.”

Off to make war on skippable sentences.

On my own schedule.

Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

 

My dreams are so obvious. The other night, I dreamed I was walking to my apartment (we don’t live in an apartment) and I realized I had no idea where it was. I had no idea of the address, even though I’d been there a million times. The streets were familiar, but not familiar enough. And I couldn’t ask anyone where it was, because I didn’t know how to ask.

I was terrified, and confused, and upset, and baffled.  Now most often, I can stop the dream, I can tell myself “Hey, silly, this is a dream. Snap out of it.” This time, I didn’t--and I am still thinking about that, and why I didn’t do it. Usually, I can.

(And if that doesn’t sound like a dream of a writer who is a tough place in her manuscript, then I’m going back to Interpretation of Dreams and looking it up. But I am satisfied with that answer!)

Anyway, I don’t remember who told me about managing your dreams, but it sure works. And like all valuable knowledge, I got to pass it along to a pal at dinner.

She’d turned seven only two weeks ago, and was still getting used to her big girl status. The other night at dinner, my little next door neighbor, Ella, was seated at the grownups table, next to me. We had filet and horseradish sauce, which she gobbled with delight. She ate her caprese salad. As we waited for dessert—her mother’s birthday cake--we started talking about summer and the impending school year, and then she said, “Aunt Hank, can I tell you about something?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Well,” she said. “Last night I had a really bad dream. It was so scary!”

I shook my head.  “Whoa, that’s difficult,” I said. “Do you remember what it was about?”

“Not really…” she said.  Her voice trailed off.

I couldn’t decide whether she truly couldn’t remember, or if she didn’t want to remember. She’s 7, of course, so who knows.

“And when you woke up,” I said, “Did you still think it was real for a moment?”

Her eyes widened. “Yes, how did you know?”

“Oh,” I said. “We’ve all   been here. But here’s the trick. When you’re in a bad dream, just let your brain understand that you know it’s a dream.”

“What?” She said.

I could tell she was trying to figure this out.

“Yes,” I said. “You just say—in our dream—I know this is a dream! And I want the scary part to go away.”

“Will that really work?”  she asked.

By this time, the birthday cake was coming, but she was still focused on me.

“Yup.”  I nodded. “It may take you a couple of times to do it. But just tell yourself, before you go to sleep, ‘If I have a bad dream I can make it stop. I will make it stop. And I will not be afraid of dreams, because I can control them. And I might even learn from them.’”

“Really?” she said.

“Yup. It’s all in your mind, right? And you can control what’s in your mind, if you just—put your mind to it.”

So we shall see. And Ella then focused on her chocolate cake with mint boiled frosting, dreams forgotten. Or at least tucked away.

But bad dreams are scary, right? (Although, yes, indeed, very interesting and revealing!) How do you deal with them?

 

 

 

From Mystery to History

by Sujata Massey

After ten years in the business, killing people was becoming an irritation. This wasn’t a good omen…because where is a mystery novel without the supreme felony, cops, and the rest of it?

I enjoy writing mysteries, but have never been excited about the rules that govern most cozy mysteries. Such as: the murder victim can never be an animal or small child. She shouldn’t be the narrator, or someone who’s featured heavily in the series. Ideally, the dead one has something dislikeable about him or her. The murderer is someone within the victim’s social circle, a person with no criminal record or no previous history of domestic violence. Finally, there must be something wacky and indecipherable about the death scene, which will make it so tricky to solve that a smart reader will miss every clue. If a reader does pick up the killer’s identity before the last page, they will write you and say the book’s a failure.

Before you’re tempted to knock me off for having a bad attitude, let me explain what drew me to the genre in the first place. I love everything about story telling: creating an adventure with a clear beginning, a rise in suspense, and a smashing dénouement. And then there are settings. I’m a passionate traveler, and never have trouble finding intriguing settings—Japan, Hawaii, Washington DC and San Francisco so far.

But my favorite part about writing is exploring ideas about culture, usually in the past: say the courtesan culture of 1800s Japan, or the Hawaiian sugar plantation world of the 1920s. Even the unspoken history of orphans left behind after the US military occupation of Japan.

As my writing career has progressed, I’ve pinned most of my books on events that have happened decades or even centuries ago. I began wishing I could write from the viewpoint of these long-gone figures—and also that I could expand my settings to India, where I’ve been traveling in recent years for family matters. Calcutta, the city where many relatives of my paternal relatives live, was once the largest and richest city in the British Empire outside of London. The grand, wedding-cake buildings of the 1800s are now dingy with grime—but as I gazed up at them, starting in the late 1980s, I felt as if they were whispering stories of past adventures within. As I explored Calcutta, I also became intrigued with a nearby home of Bengal’s most famous revolutionary, a man who tried to wrest India away from the British with the help of the Japanese during World War II.The events and characters of Calcutta’s history were so spectacular they would overshadow any mystery I might concoct. The only story I needed to tell was India’s painful fight for independence—fictionalized, of course. While most stories of this era are narrated by British men or women—or perhaps an educated, elite Indian man—I wanted someone different to speak. The quiet, ignored servant girl, who was much smarter than anyone could believe.

It wasn’t until I lost the ongoing contract for Rei books with a longtime publisher that I had the chance to actually sit down and try a historical novel. It felt like a vacation to undertake the reading, traveling and interviewing involved in getting 1930s and 40s Calcutta just right.

As I’d expected, I didn’t miss creating an implausible murderer and the victim. But some mystery writing habits were so ingrained that I couldn’t help from using them in the new book. For instance, when research led me to read about the existence of a secret spy unit within the Indian Civil Service in the 1920s through the war years—and also, the participation of Indian women college students in the revolutionary movement during the same era—I had to add espionage to the plot. And of course, there had to be emotional suspense, which is taking the form of a mother-daughter story, as well as a romantic love triangle.

It was also natural that in my historical world, I found dead bodies. More than 50,000 people were killed during “The Week of Long Knives,” also known as the Calcutta riots of September, 1946, a climactic part of the book. Also, an estimated 500,000 died from starvation in the 1944-45 rice famine. Witnessing loved ones fade away from malnutrition or disease, or suffer sudden violent deaths, was a terrible reality I couldn’t exclude. So I wrote death into the novel, but the fact that these losses can’t be blamed on one individual makes them all the more powerful for me.

After five years of writing and rewriting, I’d produced a 500-page novel called The Sleeping Dictionary.  Surprisingly, I didn’t feel closure. The history around India’s independence is so fascinating that I am tempted to write more about it. Just like an ambitious mystery author, I’m envisioning a series, some kind of hybrid history-espionage-romance (HER!). The setting is always Bengal, but as geographic boundaries fluctuate over time, a character’s home might be in Pakistan, or Bangladesh. Just as the young daughter of the heroine in the first book might become the star of another story.

It seems that the literary rules I worried about should not have been so important. I was the one with a problem, not the genre itself. In light of this novel, I hope to finish a Rei mystery later this year…or bury myself whole-heartedly in another Indian historical. The key is just to keep writing—and stretching.

Sujata Massey, formerly a regular commentator with the Femmes Fatale, lives in Baltimore with her family. Her most recent book, a historical-espionage-romance novel set in Calcutta, is The Sleeping Dictionary.

It Never Gets Old

by Toni L.P. Kelner / Leigh Perry

My family and I recently returned from nine days on vacation, and when we got home late Sunday night we were jet-lagged and worn out. There were at least six packages waiting, a stack of mail and newspapers, and guinea pigs to check on. Amidst all of that, I zeroed in on one particular package.

I'd had my fingers crosse the whole week that it would arrive while we were gone. Even as we were in Disneyland, riding the Pirates of the Carribbean and dancing to the Mad T Party Band and watching the Incredibles on parade and driving through Cars Land, I wondered about that package every day. So when we finally got home, I didn't even take a bathroom break before opening it.

You see, the box was from my publisher, Berkley Prime Crime, and the whole time we were gone I'd been hoping that my author copies of A Skeleton in the Family would have arrived by the time we got back. I ripped open that box and there they were.

 

I grabbed out two copies--one for me and one for my family--and we got busy admiring. I'd seen the text in the galley proofs, negotiated the cover, approved the cover copy, and grinned as each cover quote came in, but I'd never seen the whole thing put together.

 

And I'd never seen the adorable skeleton on the spine!

 

It never gets old.

Bear in mind that I've been publishing books for twenty years. This is not my first book. Or second. Or... Heck, it's my seventeenth, counting my eleven novels and five anthologies co-edited with Femme Charlaine. Then there are different edtitions of those books--large print, translations, paperback reprints, and so on. I've been in a slew of anthologies, magazines, and collections of essays. I don't even think I can count how many times I've opened up boxes of author or contributor copies in order to check out the latest addition.

And it never gets old.

Even now I've got a copy sitting on the desk next to my computer so I can oggle it while I work.

There's another on the end table in the living room so I can fondle it while watching TV.

It never gets old.

I admit that this book has particular significance. A Skeleton in the Family the first in a new series and the first written under my pen name Leigh Perry. It's also a departure for me. It's a paranormal cozy mystery, and I don't know if my readers will be willing to follow me from the Southern small-town Laura Fleming series or the freelance entertainment world of the "Where are they now?" series or the urban fantasy short stories. Plus the subject matter--a single mother whose best friend is an ambulatory skeleton named Sid--is a bit quirky. So I'm particularly anxious about this release, as if I were back on the Tower of Terror at Disney's California Adventures.

But honestly, I've been that same mix of nervous and excited for every release. That doesn't get old, either.

So for the next few weeks, until the September 3 release date and the numbers start to come in, I'll be distracting myself from the business of publishing with the reality of holding an honest-to-gosh copy of A Skeleton in the Family. And I'll be working hard on the next Family Skeleton book, too.

Writing never gets old, either.

On writing, doggedly

by Donna Andrews

I was going to write a really serious, profound, philosophical blog about life and the universe and how as writers, if we're lucky, our writing connects us in some small way with . . .

That's about as far as I got before the loaner dog banged into the sliding glass door at the back of my office. Lacking opposable thumbs, he can't let himself in, and he can't even make a fist to knock, so he jumps up on the door, making an audible and now familiar thud.  And then, when I turn around to see if it's him--as opposed to a really large bird mistaking the door for an open space--it would have to be a bird with seriously bad eyesight, because the door, never pristine, is now covered with nose prints and paw marks--he goes into the Dance of Pleading.  He dances in place, tail wagging furiously, with eager eyes, clearly saying, "Let me in! Please? I’d really, really, really love to be inside with you!"

He's adorable.  (He knows it.) So I get up from my desk and walk over to let him in.  When he sees me approaching, he doubles the speed of his dance, creating the Dance of Joy.  He manages to give the impression that this, my arrival at the door to let him in, is the single most important moment in the history of the universe.  Gets me every time.

As dogs go, he's actually pretty easy to have around.  Completely housebroken.  Crate trained to the point that if I'm not doing anything interesting--i.e., anything that could cause food to fall from the sky--he will go and crate himself for a nap.  In the evening, he lolls on my purple velvet couch for hours and sometimes, if I am staying up past what he thinks is his bedtime, he will sudden jump up, shake himself, give me a disgusted glance--"what you YOU doing still up at this hour?"--and trot purposefully into his crate.  And often, if I'm at my computer, he will lie down on the floor at my feet, doing his faithful hound routine.

So once I've fed him, and let him out for a necessary visit, it should be pretty easy to settle down at my computer to think deep and creative thoughts. To write an incisive, thoughtful blog and then get back to work on The Good, The Bad, and the Emu.  I envision a quiet, creative day, just me and the dog at my feet.

The dog who sleeps with his paws about an inch away from the base of my office chair, so I can't roll the chair a few feet to get a reference book I need without checking to see where his paws are. And if I look down to see where his paws are, he interprets that as a signal that I'm about to pet him or feed him.  And then lies down again, and who knows where his paws are now.

It's a relief, actually, when he decides to go up to the living room.  I can roll my chair freely!  I can write without canine supervision! 

But I can't concentrate.  Not sure whether it's worse if all's quiet up there, or if I hear the faint noises that mean he's on the move--the jingle of tags and the click of claws. Is he getting into something? (I know better than to leave food on the counter, or tissues in a trash can.)

So I get up and go to the bottom of the half stairs between my office and the living room and look up.  He's not on the couch.  I go into the kitchen, ostensibly to get another soda from the fridge. (Why am I pretending I'm doing something other than checking on the dog?)  He's not in his crate.  But I hear a slight noise--
   
He's sacked out on the dining room floor. Sometimes there's nothing like the feel of a nice hardwood floor beneath your fur, apparently.  And for once, he does not interpret my appearance as a signal that I am going to feed him or pet him or let him out to chase the chipmunks and squirrels.

Don't worry, small rodent lovers.  He's unlikely ever to catch one.  But he has a strong prey drive and if he sees one on the deck, he will beg to be let out to spend a happy half hour snuffling and pouncing among the pots and planters and deck furniture. And then, when he tires of the chase, he thumps the door and we repeat the Dance of Pleading/Dance of Joy. Followed, of course, by a trip to the bathroom with me, because what humans get up to in the smallest room of the house is particularly worthy of close supervision. 

He's having a lovely morning.  I have yet to get a thing done. 

But just when I'm starting to feel a wee bit resentful of the loaner dog, who has no deadlines to worry about, I let him out to scamper after the chipmunks again, and find myself envying and admiring how happy dogs are in the moment.  Every time I let him out, he bounds across the yard with the same undimmed enthusiasm.  This time he knows he will catch the chipmunk.  And there will be things to bark at, and things to sniff, and when he wants to come back in, I will always be there to let him in and give him a treat.  It's dog's life, and a pretty good life at that.

And I resolve to approach my day's writing with that same energetic optimism.  To stop beating myself up about where I am in my schedule and just write.  To stop worrying about the part that just isn't going as well as I'd like and just write, trusting that if I keep working it will get better. To stop fretting about. . . Hang on a sec.  Got to let the dog out.

Editing, a love-hate story

by Dana

Writers have it harder than other artists.  This fact was revealed to me in a brilliant anecdote a writing instructor told, comparing his work day with a sculptor's.  Every day, she would chip away and her lump of marble would look more like her intended subject.  Every day, he had a bunch of words that didn't look any more like a book than the day before.  It was incredibly frustrating, he said, until he realized one thing.  

She picked up her marble from Italy and could start work immediately.

He had to make his marble first.  Only when he had enough words could he start chipping away with the editing process, giving final form to his text.

I have the marble—the ideas, words, and scenes—for my second Fangborn book.  It is a rough slab with tons of potential locked up in it.  Now I'm editing the book and it is a love-hate process.  I love editing, at every stage, because it makes my work better.  I hate editing, at every stage, because it forces me to wrestle with my own ego and be brutally honest; it demands a perspective and emotional distance that are extraordinarily difficult. 

So I turned to my Fellow Femmes Fatales—among the best in the business!—to find out how they cope with editing.

Change how you read your book: 

A change of persepective makes all the difference.  Dean says:  “My best advice is to read the book aloud to yourself.  I know that when I'm reading a chapter to the critique group I hear things that I wasn't able to see before, and it's always helpful.”  And Donna agrees:  “Printing out my work in a different typeface from the one I normally work in helps me see it with slightly fresher eyes and find a whole new range of things to fix.”  Charlaine recommends temporal distance, too:  “I think any book benefits from a thorough editing, and I think the best strategy is to let the book sit for at least two weeks after you finish, so you can look at it with fresh eyes.”

Keep an “overused word” list: 
We all have go-to words, and my subconscious apparently believes that if you've found a great word, use it a bunch of times on the same page.  Almost every Fatale agreed on the value of keeping a “kill list." Elaine said, “Be aware of words and phrases you over-use and take them out. "Just" is one I have to hunt down and kill when I edit my work.”  Others of us agreed, (over)liking “very,” “creeping dread,” and “distract.”  I've discovered that I need a legal-sized pad, not a Post-It for this.

Think about how you're expressing things: 
That first chunk of marble we produce is bound to be in shorthand.  Once the structure and big things are in order, it's time to make the prose your own.  Marcia says “Use your search/replace function to locate all instances of WAS or WERE and words ending in ING.  ...[for example] He was standing in the door. Replace with He filled the doorway, like a cork in a bottle.”  And Kris reminds us:  “Don't forget to use all of your senses. Too often we describe everything in terms of visuals. Although visual descriptions are important, sometimes smell or touch can provide the reader with a stronger, more visceral impression of some place or person or object.”  Hank says:  “My advice would be… Shorter is almost always better. I mean: shorter is better.  When in doubt, take it out. Or -If you're not brave – make a copy of the first way, and then try it the other way.”

Know when to stop editing:  
 Knowing when to stop editing is just as important; you don't want to undo all the good you've just done.  Toni tells how she recognizes that moment: “I know to stop when in one pass I change "good" to "great" and then in the next pass change it back to "good."  And Catriona says, “I know it's time to stop when my answer to any problem is to cut. A misplaced comma? Ach - cut the chapter. At that stage one more pass could get the book down to a haiku.” 

There is a ton of great advice out there--writers, which techniques do you use to edit?  Readers, what do you wish more writers would think about?

Rivers, Oceans, Heirs & Cuckoos

from Mary

 

Oh, dear, I did it again. Since last month's reviews, the fiction books I've read have all been written by British authors. There's quite a bit of variety though, so I hope you'll give one, or all, of these five-star novels a try.

 

Previously, I talked about Phillipa Gregory's book THE WHITE QUEEN about the life of Elizabeth Woodville, who married King Edward IV.

 

 

THE LADY OF THE RIVERS is its prequel, the story of Elizabeth's mother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg. Her family are descendants of Melusina, a river goddess and, apparently, they have the papers to prove it. So they are all regal and beautiful. Also very lucky. Certain women in the family have special powers of visions and the like. She is one of them.

According to this story, her visions are the reason the Duke of Bedford wants to marry her. He thinks she could help England by foreseeing what those rascals the French are up to.

However, most of the book isn't about her superpowers. It follows the lives of Jacquetta and her second husband, Richard Woodville, who was the Duke's squire. When Henry VI marries Margaret of Anjou, Jacquetta is called to the royal court to help the young queen adjust to her new surroundings and duties, like Jacquetta did when she, too, was a teenager. And it's all great until the king goes nuts. Seriously, the women's strong friendship and the love story of Jacquetta's happy marriage to Richard during the turbulent years before the War of the Roses make this a believable and most interesting read.

 

What's your favorite ocean? Mine is in a village in England. I heard about it in THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE by Neil Gaiman.

 

 

You can't read about an ocean and really know what it feels like. You have to experience it. The same is true here - a review of an imaginative book with magical elements cannot compare to diving in and swimming around in a Gaiman creation yourself. Trust me. With that in mind, this novella is about a man going back to his childhood home and remembering some weird ... events when he was a boy, and how a family on a nearby farm helped him out. Bad review, good story.

 

Frequent Femmes Readers here know how much I love the Her Royal Spyness series by Rhys Bowen. The latest one, HEIRS AND GRACES, finds Lady Georgiana at a stately manor house in the country.

 

 

Her cousin, HM Queen Mary, hasn't sent her to spy on the Prince of Wales and that ghastly American woman this time. Instead, Georgie's helping a friend of the queen's, a Dowager Duchess, who awaits the arrival of a newly discovered grandson. Her eldest son and heir to the estate had been an adventurous lad who moved to Australia. He came back to England at the beginning of World War I and was killed at the Sommes.

The second son, Cedric, takes over the estate. Cedric is different. He has no intention of ever marrying or producing an heir. This motivates the Dowager Duchess to hire investigators, in hopes they will find that her deceased son had a child before he died. And indeed, he did.

Georgie is hired to coach the new grandson in the ways of high society. Easy job, right? Did I mention they found him living at a sheep station in the Outback? Another winner in a fun series.

 

Probably the biggest news in mystery this summer was the outing of JK Rowling. She wrote THE CUCKOO'S CALLING, a private eye novel, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

 

 

Don't let the pseudonym thing turn you off. Maybe you've been burned in the past. You heard about a so-called "literary" author, maybe even a literary award nominee or winner, who used a fake name on a mystery novel he threw together, but because he was so highly regarded and Irish fer the Holy Father in Rome's sake, you fell for the shtick and bought the hardback and it was total crap. Not just crap either, it was Total Arrogant Crap With No Story, No Interesting Characters, No Spare-klin' Mah-gic Oi-rish Beauty Nor A Bit O' Cleverness.

Hypothetically. :)

THE CUCKOO'S CALLING delivers on all counts in all categories. Mystery lovers will enjoy getting in deep in the story and in the characters. Cormoran Strike is a down-on-his-luck private eye. His business is about busted. Creditors harrass him. His woman left him. Or rather, he left her since it was her apartment, so he's also homeless.

If all that sounds formulaic, it's not. In this case, Rowling/Galbraith respects the form and then goes beyond that with creating fully-formed people, real action and reaction for the storyline, real emotion and interaction between characters.

I loved it. I can't wait for another one. May the series go on and on, at least until there are enough for a BBC Mystery! series.

Just for fun, here are a couple of other book covers, for the British market I presume:

 

 

 

They fit the book better, I think. The American one is easy to spot with the typical faceless female. :)

 

As always, I'd like to hear your book recommendations too. Don't want to miss a good one!

 

 

Remembering Barbara Mertz

I grew up on a small farm in Mississippi, an only child who was more interested in books and reading rather than athletics or hunting. Other than a brief infatuation with David Cassidy and the Partridge family when I was about twelve, I didn't think of rock stars or actors as idols. I didn't dream about meeting them or spending time with them, though I did think Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett would be fun to hang out with.

When I was a teenager the famous people I most wanted to meet were writers. I devoured mystery and historical fiction in my teen years, and I was fascinated by the people who wrote the books that I devoted so much time to reading. I wondered what it would be like to meet them and to tell them how much their books meant to me.

One of those writers who meant a lot to me was Barbara Mertz, in her guises as Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels. I never dreamed I would meet her, or that she would become a treasured friend. I knew only that her books enthralled me and took me on fascinating journeys around the world and, in some cases, back into the past. I could escape whatever was going on in my life at the time, and Barbara and her books never failed me. They always pulled me in and gave me respite when I needed it.

I never needed it more than when my father died in 1990. That last night in the hospital, awaiting the inevitable, I took with me The Crocodile on the Sandbank. I had already read it two or three times but I knew it was what I needed. That night, and through the days that followed, I reread my favorite Elizabeth Peters books. They gave me solace when nothing -- and no one else -- could.

Barbara was an extraordinary woman. My friend Elizabeth Foxwell has written about that on her blog, so I won't repeat Barbara's many accomplishments here. Barbara's books will live on and continue to bring joy to her readers around the world. For me they will always be the gifts of a friend who never failed to offer comfort when I need it most.

Beyond This Point Be Monsters
After reading Facebook this morning, which is maybe not the best way to start the day, I had a mélange of thoughts. One posting (by CJ Redwine) about America’s rape culture made me sad and despairing, and reading the many postings about our loss of the great Barbara Mertz, known to literally millions of readers as Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels, also dampened my hopes for the day.

I thought about Barbara and the unforgettable characters in her books . . . and her own unforgettable character. I thought about the prejudice against female mystery writers which she had to confront early in her career, and the fact that we’re still fighting that battle against being considered less than our male peers. Barbara was more than. Always. She was smart, concise, educated, talented, opinionated. It seems that CJ Redwine is, too.

I imagined Barbara’s comments about the prevalence of rape culture, about how simply appalling it is that young men thought grabbing women up from behind and carrying them away was a harmless prank. How they thought the anxious laughter of the women excused this behavior – if they’re laughing, they must think it’s funny, right? So it’s okay. But not so. People laugh the same way dogs wag their tails – not only to express amusement, but to express anxiety. “If I pretend this situation is okay, maybe it will BE okay.”

Barbara was never afraid to speak out. She was never hesitant about expressing her opinion. She was never one to back out of a healthy argument. I don’t pretend I was a close friend, but I was a friendly acquaintance . . . and I knew that about Barbara, even on our slim experience of each other. She was a pioneer, and a great example.

Here’s what gives me hope: we’re addressing the monsters and not letting them stay under the bed any longer. If you shine a strong light on them, they shrink. If you study them, they acquire context. Monsters are diminished from the undefeatable to the conquerable through examination. I’m heartened to know women who are doing this, and optimistic that someday the monsters will be the size of peas. But this process takes the courage to turn on the flashlight.

The Night Things Went Bump

by Catriona McPherson

The first thing to say is that I don't actually believe in ghosts.  (In fact, I don't have any supernatural beliefs at all.  I've never come across anything that didn't seem best explained by science, coincidence, and the human flair for drama.  Not to say I mightn't come across something tomorrow that causes a swift update . . . just not so far.) 

But I love a good ghost story.  Vampires, zombies and werewolves included, (super)naturally.  And a delight in spookety-woos has not always been my friend. 

I used to live here:

in an isolated, some might say creepy, old house with plenty of creaks and rattles and no locks on any of the windows.  For three nights a week I stayed there alone and many's the time my taste in fiction outdid my lack of beliefs. 

One notable night, I watched The Sixth Sense while home alone, in the dark, during a storm.  That was daft.  I put every light in the house on and I was still whimpering as I made my way along the corridors on creaking floorboards between shadowy bathroom and shadowy-er bedroom.  It didn't help that the neighbouring farmer had just speaned the lambs (separated them from their mothers).  Everyone involved protested this arrangement all night and, although I knew it was lambs saying "Mrreeeee" out there and ewes saying "Baaaaaa" in reply, it sounded pretty much like ghosts saying "Catreeeeeenaaaaaa" by three-ish, I can tell you.

The second-worst time I freaked myself out was reading Dumas Key by the emperor of spookety-woos himself, Stephen King.  It was winter, there was a storm, I was alone, outside there was blackness all around.  When I was fifty pages from the end the power went out.  Now I had to decide between reading something else, having an early night, or finishing this spine-chilling masterpiece by the light of a guttering candle while the thunder cracked and the lightning flashed.

I finished Dumas Key, of course.  (It was Stephen King.)  Then I phoned my mum and she talked me through brushing my teeth and getting undressed for bed without any monsters catching me.  She laughed quite a lot but she didn't hang up.  Thanks, Mum.

The very worst time of all, though, had nothing to do with ghosts.  It was real human intruders.  Burglars, perhaps, or serial killers.  Flesh-eating zombies at a push.  Here's what happened.

It was dark, I was alone, there was a storm outside and I decided to watch Panic Room.  Yup, a woman alone in a big old house on a dark and stormy night watched a film about a woman alone in a big old house on a dark and stormy night with murderous intruders trying to kill her.

 

About halfway through, both of the cats asleep on my lap woke, sat up very straight and stared towards the living room door.  "What?" I asked them.  Cat A - Spud - slunk down off the couch and, crouching, padded along the hall to the kitchen.  I followed with Poppy, Cat B. 

Spud stopped in the kitchen and listened, then set off down the stone steps to the back hall.  Poppy  and I followed.  He went across the back hall into the old dairy and looked up the wooden stairs to the hatch that opened into the cheese loft.  Poppy looked up too.  They froze.  I looked up.  I freaked.  (Quietly.)  The cheese-loft hatch, which we kept shut, was open.  Had I opened it earlier? 

Spud and Poppy did a meerkat impersonation, listening very intently.

"Hello?" I said.  Only it came out with about five syllables.  I heard nothing in reply but the cats both turned and streaked away back to the living room.  I followed as far as the kitchen and paced up and down beside the phone, weighing my options. 

I could call Liam and Cathy, the nearest people along the road.  Or my mum (again).  Or Neil.  Or the laird, Richard, who had a shotgun (ditto Willie the farmer, Nigel the gamekeeper, Brian the cowman).  But whoever I called I was going to have to say to them: "Yeah, funniest thing, so I'm watching Panic Room and it just so happens that tonight of all nights . . ." 

I decided against that and hatched a cunning plan.  I went to bed with both cats and the two brass fire pokers that usually rested against the living room chimney.  When he - the serial-killing zombie - came into my bedroom, I would brandish a poker at him.  He'd advance anyway.  I'd throw it (and miss, no doubt).  He'd think I was unarmed (because who has two pokers, right?).  He'd pounce and I'd lamp him with the other one. 

But do you know what?  He left quietly in the night without visiting me.  I woke up in the morning, got a small fright at a foreign object (brass) in the bed with me and watched the end of Panic Room later that day.

All of this is to explain that, even though I usually write traditional mysteries and have recently branched out into modern stand-alones, I've been reading ghost stories my whole life and adoring them.  So when I decided to try my hand at my first ever short story last year it seemed the perfect oppurtunity to see if I could pull off something supernatural.  Less cheeky than attempting a novel in a venerable genre with a long illustrious culture and a canon all of its own. 

I set out to be dark and chilling - well, you would - but then a joke occurred to me.  It was too funny not to put it in and before you could say vegetarian vampire, I had a comedy.  It's happened before.  Dandy Gilver was going to be very solemn, you know: WWI, the depression and all that.  Only it ended up sharing a carriage with Jeeves and Wooster.  And AS SHE LEFT IT was going to be very Stieg Larsson indeed.  Oh well, Gary Larson is great too. 

This particular failure of gravitas has a happy ending, though.  Because just as I finished a ghost story with laughs, over in Florida a brand-new press put out a call for short stories in the sub-genre of "paranormal humour".  And this very week, I'm proud to say, I've become a published short story writer, with "One Scareful Owner" - a haunting tale of ghosts, real estate and 1970s kitsch - appearing in the brilliant, inaugural anthology STRANGELY FUNNY.

There's a virtual launch party for STRANGELY FUNNY going on over at Mystery & Horror's website - interviews, a reading, a trailer, give-aways, calorie-free recipes . . . and the anthology is available in paperback and as an ebook.  Look no further for a half-chills-half-chuckles treat.