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The Femmes Fatales welcome Katherine Hall Page!

posted by Dana

A Broken Heart Can Be Murder

I'm delighted to welcome the amazing Katherine Hall Page back to the Femmes Fatales blog!  A multiple-award-winning and much honored writer, Katherine has always been a champion of crime fiction, and especially the traditional mystery.  On a personal note, she's been an adviser and dear friend to me, which was why I was so thrilled to have the winning bid for a character naming in her latest book, The Body in the Birches.  Here, she describes the inspiration behind that book, set on Sanpere Island, Maine--perfect for summer reading.  Katherine, take it away!

Photographer: Jean Fogelberg

In the latest book, The Body in the Birches, I introduce a new character, Sophie Maxwell, and since this is Femmes Fatales, I thought I’d write about her —although she is virtually the opposite. She’s in her late twenties and on the fast track to making partner at a prestigious New York City law firm when Sophie—always such a sensible girl—falls head over heels in love with a charming Brit who is in town representing his company in a complicated merger that is being handled by Sophie’s firm. Ian reciprocates, bemoaning the ocean that will soon separate them and pledges his troth, presenting her with a ring—a family Victorian flower ring, one perfect pearl surrounded by turquoise and garnet “petals”. Sophie’s much married mother Babs is not impressed and suggests Sophie walk him by Tiffany’s windows if not for a replacement “at least, darling, for something to sparkle around your neck or your wrist.” Babs is even less impressed by, in fact opposed to, Sophie’s decision to quit her job—and worse, give up her rent controlled apartment—to follow Ian to London.

It’s Christmas and Sophie is ecstatically happy, settled into Ian’s tony Kensington flat. She meets his stiff upper lip parents and all is lovely in the garden. The wedding will be a June one. And then suddenly time flies and it’s spring. No date set. Returning to the flat clutching a bouquet of fragrant lilacs from the little man selling flowers by the tube, Sophie finds Ian in bed with a gorgeous redhead—and it’s natural. He smirks, “Sorry you had to find out this way, darling.” But he isn’t sorry at all. Gillian the downstairs neighbor takes her off to the pub and lets Sophie crash on her couch after the drowning of sorrows. As Sophie closes her eyes, she wails “But he gave me a ring! His great-grandmother’s!” “Oh luv,” Gillian says, “He has a drawer full of them.”

And so little Sophie returns to the US jobless and at her mother’s bidding takes off for Sanpere Island, Maine to represent Babs in a bizarre “audition”. The Birches, a treasured family cottage—as in Newport or Bar Harbor ones—is up for grabs. Priscilla Proctor McAllister had no children and unwilling to select among her nieces and nephews has asked her devoted husband to do so after her death. All who wish to inherit are invited for July. One and only one will be selected—too difficult trying to share (and I can tell you many stories about this sort of nightmare). That’s the set up and we’re off with a sufficiently nefarious cast of characters so when the bodies start appearing, there are a goodly number of plausible suspects. Enter Faith Fairchild, who is conveniently staying at The Pines next door, owned by octogenarian Ursula Rowe—familiar to readers of the other 21 books in the series. The Fairchild’s cottage, which really is a cottage, is having work done on it. I send Tom back to Massachusetts, giving his poor mom heart surgery, leaving Faith free to sleuth, although the Fairchild offspring, Ben and Amy, are teens now and we all know what that means. Sophie and Faith team up (spoiler alert-they will be together again in the next book, The Body in the Wardrobe).

Who knows what mystery lies beneath the sea?

 Over the years I have been asked by readers (and my publisher) why I didn’t add another series to the “Body” ones. Aside from the fact that the mere thought was so daunting I could barely reply, the real reason was that I didn’t want to write about anyone else. Occasional books have had her friend and neighbor, Pix Miller, play a somewhat central role, but Faith Fairchild was the person in my head and there simply wasn’t room until Sophie Maxwell came along. It has been fun, and freeing, to write about a younger—and very different—woman. No, there will not be a Sophie series in any form, but for now I quite enjoy having her along for the ride.

This book is about the ramifications of inheritances and has already struck a chord with readers. We all know too many stories. And I’ve been hearing about them, to my delight—everything from quarrels over grandmother’s cameo set to a five-acre island off Boothbay Harbor. My favorite is a news clipping from the Boston Globe sent to me by wonderful bookseller, library person Dottie MacKeen. Here in it’s entirety:

"WOMAN JAILED FOR DIGGING UP DAD’S GRAVE
"A New Hampshire woman who told police she dug up her father’s grave in search of his “real will” but found only vodka and cigarettes has been sentenced to 1 1/2 to 3 years in prison.  Melanie Nash did not speak during her sentencing Tuesday.  She told police last year she dug up the grave “with respect” and her father “would be OK with it.”  Police said Nash, 53, felt she was shorted in her share of the inheritance."

As my friend Harlan Coben says, “You cannot make this stuff up.

Thanks for letting me drop by, Femmes Fatales and this is the book in which that mistress of the short story and other literary forms, Dana Cameron, makes an appearance in a very different form!!

(Dana: VERY different indeed!)

Katherine Hall Page's books feature amateur sleuth/caterer, Faith Fairchild. The Body in the Belfry (1991) won an Agatha for Best First; "The Would-Be Widower" (2001) won Best SS; and The Body in the Snowdrift (2005) won Best Novel when Katherine was Malice XVIII’s Guest of Honor. Have Faith in Your Kitchen Cookbook was an Agatha nonfiction nominee. She will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at Malice XXVIII in 2016 and had been nominated for an Edgar, Macavity the Mary Higgins Clark, and Maine Literary Award. Katherine lives in Massachusetts and Maine. She is on Facebook and www.katherine-hall-page.org  The Body in the Birches is her 28th book overall.  

Carolyn Haines Considers the Femme Fatale

Today we have a special guest, Carolyn Haines, in celebration of her latest release, Bone to Be Wild, the 15th in the Sarah Booth Delaney series, just released by St. Martin's Press/Minotaur. Carolyn also writes ghost stories as R B. Chesterton. She lives in south Alabama on a farm with rescued horses, dogs, and cats. In addition to writing and teaching, Carolyn runs the Good Fortune Farm Refuge, which is an animal rescue where she cares for dogs, cats, and horses. For more information, go to www.carolynhaines.com and sign up for her newsletter. You can also join her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Here's what Carolyn has written about today:

Thanks to the Femme Fatales for asking me to blog today. My mind is a curious and convoluted place, and as I considered different topics to blog about, I wondered if I actually qualified as a “femme fatale.” So I looked up the definition.

Femme fatale is: an attractive and seductive woman, especially one who will ultimately bring disaster to a man who becomes involved with her. Synonyms are:

seductress, temptress, siren, enchantress

Okay, that train has left the station.

Once upon a time I might have qualified (I prefer the term serial engagee) but those foolish days of youth and irresponsible action are behind me. For better or worse, I have grown up. (Isn’t that just too boring!)

Today, I seek power in a very different venue. The world of writing and fiction. Which brings to the forefront another, far more important question. Is Sarah Booth Delaney, my protagonist in 15 Southern mysteries, a femme fatale? I’m not sure. She meets the physical requirements, and she certainly was dangerous to her fiancé, Graf Milieu, who almost lost a leg thanks to her poking into things. (He was shot by a master criminal.) But can a sociopathic killer taking aim at a man be counted in the negative column for his fiancée? I’m not sure.

Sarah Booth loves hard and deeply, and she is not immune to the pull of amore.  But she is also aware of the consequences of her actions, and here’s why she may not be a femme fatale. She cares about the consequences. She doesn’t play fast and loose with a man’s affections, even when it is oh, so tempting.

And here’s why she may be a femme fatale—She is going to solve the case no matter what the cost. Sarah Booth serves Justice more deeply than she serves Cupid.

Love is never the end game for a true femme fatale. It is a means of getting to an end.

I did a little research on historical femmes, and let me just say that a number of them were horrifically fatal. Hooking up with Cleopatra, Mata Hari, Ilse Koch, Anna Chapman, Myra Hindley, Eleanor of Acquitane (yeah, who knew old Eleanor was such a deadly gal), Marilyn Monroe (I quibble with this choice), Belle Gunness, Lucrezia Borgia or Mary Queen of Scots could end up in a funeral procession to the cemetery. Fatal love.

I have some difficulty with Marilyn Monroe being on this list because I view her as someone life acted upon, not the initiator of evil deeds. To me, a true femme fatale sets her sights on a goal and rolls over anyone who gets in her way—and who enjoys the destruction as she rolls forward.

Sarah Booth lacks this killer instinct when it comes to men and passion. That’s not to say she doesn’t leave wreckage behind, but it isn’t done with intent.

Now her partner, Tinkie, is far more suitable to be classified as a true femme fatale, and it’s one reason she is such a good partner for Sarah Booth. Tinkie knows how to manipulate a man, and she does so with skill and a total lack of remorse. God gave her a set of tools—appearance, voice, attitude, brains, calculation—and she puts them to good use whenever the need arises.

Tinkie isn’t callous, she is simply what her mother trained her to be—a true-to-the-bone Daddy’s Girl. She was taught the art of manipulation in the bassinet, and she is a master. Tinkie, too, has no guilt in plying her talent. If a man can be manipulated, then it’s his fault for being so easy to manage. In Tinkie’s privileged world of the Mississippi Delta, women learned to manipulate as a survival skill. The hierarchy of the Delta has always been white male at the top and way down at the bottom is white female.

Tinkie’s predecessors couldn’t re-write societal boundaries—the supremacy of the white male plantation owner in all things—so they developed a system that empowered women. The iron fist in the velvet glove, as it’s called in other places. Or steel magnolias. A smart woman, forced into a structure where she is powerless by law, will flex her muscles in other ways. We use the tools we’re allowed.

But a true DG will make a man do what she wants and he will love doing it. So it’s an art with reward for both parties. (I really admire this!)

To a degree, I think all women have a bit of the femme fatale in them, and let me just say I view this as a good thing. And femmes spice up the world around them in the most interesting ways. Where would historical fiction would be without Mary Queen of Scots! Woefully boring! And good old Cleo—she made the Roman empire bow to her whims.

So let’s celebrate the femme fatale. Sarah Booth needs to take some lessons from Tinkie.  As my grandmother (who sometimes goes by the name Aunt Loulane) would say, “You can catch more flies with sugar than you can with vinegar.”

A Writer's Journey.

Catriona: I'm delighted today to welcome Jim Ziskin as the guest blogger at Fatal Acres.

Jim writes the deliciously grungy, almost-historical Ellie Stone series, set in the early 60s in New Holland, New York; a town where it only stops raining to sleet and the liquor-store brown bags come ready-stained. There Ellie stays up too late, sleeps in too long, eats far too much pizza, drinks far far too much whisky and solves crimes. I'm a huge fan (I'm hiding it well, eh?) and I'm excited that someone else is getting to become a brand new Ellie Stone nut today, with Jim's giveaway.

Incidentally, I'm not the only fan in my family. Here's my own husband at my book launch recently!

But enough of that. Here's James W. Ziskin with the low-down on his writing journey.

Jim: I wrote my first novel at the age of twelve. Banging away on a blue-and-white Royal portable typewriter into the wee hours of the night, I succeeded in ruining more than two hundred perfectly good sheets of paper. It was a fantastically exciting book about World War I. Lots of trenches and adventures. Love affairs and fist fights. And it was a colossal piece of shit. Even for a twelve-year-old. Yet I kept the original manuscript squirreled away in my basement, behind some old ski equipment and the photo of the 1977 Amsterdam High School football team. (I'm number 43.) The manuscript -- call it Book One -- endures to remind me of where my writer's journey began.

A few years later in college, I realized that I knew everything. I wrote a modest novel about an aged English professor who is trapped by weather and is forced to spend the evening in the company of his spirited, uncomplicated, and uneducated secretary. He discovers that his life has been depressingly unremarkable. A real toe-tapper. We'll call that Book Two. It languishes in my basement beneath the first.

In grad school, I knew even more than I had known as an undergrad. I tried my hand at a huge historical novel about occupied France in World War II. I wrote most of it on the Métro and the RER during a year of teaching in Paris, where I had ample opportunity to admire the Paris sites. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Tipping the scales at more than 900 pages and 170,000 words, Book Three showed some improvement. Not a colossal piece of of shit, but rather a steaming pile of offal. My one surviving copy is moldering next to books one and two in the basement.

For a few years, I didn't write at all. I was living in Manhattan and just starting to realize how little I knew. Then I wrote Book Four, a murder mystery, in 1991. It was a major leap forward for me, but still not very good. I managed to find an agent, but she never sold it or its sequel, Book Five (1992). I was on a roll, though, and churned out Book Six (1993), another mystery, but with a new character. As things turned out, my agent didn't like it, and we parted company.

Slowly, without realizing it, I allowed my dream of becoming a writer to slip away. I abandoned my writing for fourteen years as I concentrated on my career, got married, and moved to Los Angeles. Finally, in 2007, I made a new commitment to try again, to go back and salvage Book Six. After a complete rewrite that took more than a year, Book Six emerged an acceptable manuscript. I researched agents who handled mysteries and I got lucky. In the fall of 2009, after a year and just forty-three query letters, I landed my agent, William Reiss of John Hawkins & Associates. I was sure I'd have a book deal before Christmas. But it never happened. Book Six never sold.

Undeterred, I decided to gut Books Four and Five and see if something might come of them. A year and a half later, after complete rewrites, I submitted them to my agent who shopped them around. Still no takers. Another year passed.

[Am I the only one who thinks these book titles are perfect headlines for stages on Jim's writing journey? CMcP]

At that time, I was living in India. In November 2012, I returned to Los Angeles with serious doubts that my writing career would ever get off the ground. Expecting nothing, I wrote an e-mail to my agent asking if there was any news. He answered enigmatically that there was initial interest from a publisher. It was Friday afternoon, and I had to endure a torturously long weekend before I would hear back. The following week, I learned that Dan Mayer from Seventh Street Books had made an offer on STYX & STONE (Book Four.)

It was perhaps fate, or maybe coincidence, that I learned of the sale of my first book on Lakshmi puja, the third day of the Diwali festival. (Did I not mention that my wife's name is Lakshmi?) But whoever intervened to grease the skids for STYX & STONE, I cannot discount the role that persistence, hard work, and luck played in finding a home for it.

In the months that followed, my agent made deals with Seventh Street for NO STONE UNTURNED (Book Five) and STONE COLD DEAD (Book Seven), which hit bookstores two weeks ago. And yesterday I signed the contract for Book Eight, HEART OF STONE, coming summer 2016.

For me, it took six books and three complete rewrites to break through. It may take fewer or more for another writer. But if you give up, you'll never know if the next book wasn't "The One."

Catriona again: Comment to win a signed copy of STONE COLD DEAD - you won't be sorry to get to know Ellie Stone. Also, Jim's been too modest to tell you, but NO STONE UNTURNED is on the shortlist for an Anthony this year. yay! You can find out more at www.jameswziskin.com

 

 

 

Memorial Day in photos

by Donna Andrews.

I've been spending this Memorial Day at Rehobeth Beach and Assateague Island, trying out a new camera. I've been wanting a digital single lens reflex camera for a while, but until recently, using one required focusing through the view finder, which is harder for someone with eyes like mine--can't get my eyes close enough with my glasses on, and with the glasses off, everything's blurry--and yes, I know the view finder adjusts. Just not enough to correct for my eyes!. But they've finally started making DSLRs that let you sight through the screen on back.  So I got one, and brought it along to my nephew's baseball tournament this weekend.

It's great for getting shots of kids in action, even from across the baseball field, but you'll have to take my word for it-- not planning to break my ban on posting pictures of the nephews and their friends.  But I can share some of the other shots I took over the last couple of days.  Still learning, but so far I think the new camera's a success.

 

Romance and Urban Fantasy, deep in the heart of Texas

by Dana

Oh, hey--this came in the mail today!  I can't tell you how excited I was about being featured on the cover of Crimespree Magazine!

(If you don't already have a subscription to Crimespree Magazine, may I suggest you run out and get one, stat?  The current issue features interviews with Kristi Belcamino and J.D. Rhoades, short fiction by Bryan VanMeter, and awesome reviews of movies, books, and comics!)

Back to our regularly scheduled blog--Stick a fork in me, sweeties, because I am done.  One week and three loads of laundry later, I'm still recovering from my Texas adventure.  Seven days in Dallas for the Romantic Times BookLovers Convention. It was an overwhelming week, partly for the sheer size of the convention, partly because of the amazing talent of the writers I met, and partly because I was under a deadline as well.

I was in the urban fantasy track, and participated on a panel called “Keeping it Real: Balancing Reality and Fantasy in UF.”  It was captained by Nicole Peeler (left, who organized a flock of great UF panels), and moderated by Jaye Wells—Rachel Caine, fellow Femme Charlaine Harris (not shown), and I made up the rest of this panel. In all the UF panels, it was like getting a refresher course in the planning and art of writing romance, fantasy—writing anything.  

It was a treat to hang out with friends I get to see infrequently and to meet folks I've been in awe of for ages, like Patricia Briggs (left, next to Charlaine), Rachel Caine, and Chloe Neill.  

And did I mention the readers?  This is Saturday's Giant Book Fair; one unofficial estimate put the number of readers at 2700.  It was a joy, pure and simple, to see that many folks eager to find their favorite writers, discover new ones; I saw a lot of parents with their kids looking for new series.  Awesomeness.

It was hard to drag myself away from the crowd to get back to work on the short story I had to finish, but that's part of being a writer.  I decided that finding time to work in between panels was a little bit like a writer's retreat—no extra housework, no tabbies braying for kibble—and I managed to finish the story.  The working title is “Burning the Rule Book,” and the new Fangborn novella will be available from 47North early next fall.

What's Between the Covers?

 

By Elaine Viets

Invitations to weddings, bar mitzvahs and graduations. Prescriptions and plane tickets. Bills and photos.

These are just a few things that librarians find in books, some checked out by patrons and others donated to the Friends of the Library.

Get librarians talking, and they’ll tell you wild stories about their genteel-seeming profession. I discovered this when I researched Checked Out, my latest Dead-End Job mystery.

Librarians have found everything from maple leaves to money –- sometimes major money. In Checked Out, South Florida private eye  Helen Hawthorne is hunting for a million dollars possibly hidden in a book at the Flora Park Library. Helen goes undercover as a volunteer at the library, the former home of Gilded Age society beauty Flora Portland, and searches through thousands of donated books.

How the heck do you lose a million dollars in a library book?

Helen’s PI client, Elizabeth Cateman Kingsley, says the million dollars is a  valuable watercolor that belonged to her late father. It’s a John Singer Sargent painting called "Muddy Alligators." In his 40s Sargent switched from painting society beauties to ugly alligators.

I love this painting, "Muddy Alligators." You can practically see the deadly gators writhing and whipping their tails.

This painting is deadly in other ways. In Checked Out, at least one person is murdered for the elusive artwork. Helen has to find the missing million dollar watercolor before it leads to more deaths.

In this scene, Helen is helping Blair sort books in the Friends of the Library intake room.

 

Helen was glad she was wearing latex gloves. So far this morning, she’d encountered used tissues, wriggling silverfish, and a squashed spider stuck to a back cover. Now she had to deal with this smelly novel.

Foundation of Doom fell open to page 457 and Helen saw the source of the stink.

"Ick." She tossed the fat book in the trash can for infested books and slammed down the lid, as if it could crawl out.

"What’s wrong?" Blair asked, looking over the top of her equally tall stack. Today, her brown hair was twisted into a tight knot and her long, lean body encased in a dirt-colored pantsuit.

"Someone used a strip of bacon for a bookmark," Helen said.

"It could go with the fried egg I once found in a book," Blair said.

She opened a mystery and found a recipe card. "Look at this," she said. "A recipe card for mango curry chicken. No name on it, but the recipe looks tasty. Think I’ll keep that."

"What else have you found in books besides bugs and recipes?" Helen asked. 

"Oh, the usual," she said. "Shopping and to-do lists, airline boarding passes, birthday and sympathy cards. You expect to find those, along with people’s mail. I’ve found brochures on treatment options for cancer, leukemia and Parkinson’s disease in books. I hope those books weren’t part of the sick person’s estate.

"Once, I found a dirty gym sock that had been used as a bookmark. Banana peels are fairly common. And sand. Lots of sand."

"Real beach books," Helen said.

"The sand is annoying, but it doesn’t have six legs," Blair said. "You should ask the librarians. They love talking about the strange things they find in books."

"Ever find any money?" Helen asked.

"Oh, yes. I found seven dollars once. Of course, I donated it to the Friends. We have one library patron who uses a dollar bill as a bookmark. Sometimes he leaves the dollar in the book when he returns it. The librarians at the checkout desk always give it back to him the next time he comes in. He says it’s cheaper to use a dollar than to buy a bookmark."

Helen wondered about that. Her bookmarks were either free or to-do lists and airline boarding passes.

"I’ve found some lovely pressed flowers and leaves," Blair said.

And I’m desperate to find ugly "Muddy Alligators" before someone else dies, Helen thought.

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

Win my "Catnapped!," my lucky 13th Dead-End Job mystery. Click on Contests at www.elaineviets.com

Not Quite A Dream Come True

by Toni L.P. Kelner / Leigh Perry

I can't honestly say that acting as Toastmaster of Malice Domestic 27 was a dream come true for me. Okay, I've been attending Malice annually since Malice 3--that's twenty-five Malice Domestics, if you're counting--and sure, I wonder what it would be like to sit on a panel with the various honorees. Like this panel:

Yeah, here I am with Charles and Caroline Todd--the son/mother team that makes up author Charles Todd, Sara Paretsky, Ann Cleeves, and Malice Chair Verena Rose. We were talking about fan mail and other interactions with readers, and as you can see from the picture below, we had a few laughs.

That was pretty sweet. Later on, I got to hang at the hotel bar with friends like Sid the Skeleton.

I admit that was nifty. The next night was the Agatha banquet, which I've always enjoyed. Normally it's all fun times, but this time, I had to work. Still, there were consolations.The dessert--chocolate mousse in a chocolate tea cup--was tasty, even if I had to share it with Sid.

Speaking of tea cups, I got one to bring home.


They were giving a bunch of them away, like to Sara and Fan Guest of Honor Bill Stark, but still, it's nice.

Plus I had the chance to share drinks with Kris Zgorski of BOLO Books and Ginjer Buchanan, my now-retired editor.

As you can see, they got a little rowdy, but that was okay. Speaking of rowdy, Charlaine Harris and Dana Cameron were hanging around, too.

And my family got all dressed up, which was a treat.

 

So I guess I should thank Verena and the rest of the Malice Domestic Board for inviting me, even it it wasn't exactly what I dreamed it would be.

It was way better!

What You See--is what you write?

Hank Phillippi Ryan:  Are you busy? Yes, I know you are.  But today my dear pal, the wonderfully talented author Wendy Tyson, has some lovely advice. So take two minutes, okay? Read this. Then go on with your day--maybe in a different way.

 

Moving to Be Still

By Wendy Tyson

 

I recently watched a TED Talk by Tracy Chevalier, a favorite author of historical novels, including Girl with a Pearl Earring.  The talk, titled “Finding the story inside the painting,” was about just that—drawing inspiration from paintings.  Tracy said, and I’m paraphrasing of course, that she needed to find a way to center herself when visiting museums, otherwise she got “museum fatigue”—that point at which your mind drifts and you find yourself walking zombie-like through a museum, thinking about anything other than the artwork. 

Her solution was to slow down and focus.  By concentrating on just a few paintings, she is able to contemplate the story behind the painting, creating a fiction that satisfies (somewhat) her need for understanding and bolsters her appreciation for the artwork itself.  That, according to Tracy, is how Girl with a Pearl Earring came to life.

I love this TED Talk, not because I am an artist or an art connoisseur, but because of the basic message: slow down and focus.  Living near Philadelphia, I am blessed with the conveniences born of an urban environment, but with those conveniences—with modern life in general—come the myriad of things vying for attention (or so it seems!): email and texts and the Internet and instant messaging and apps…the list goes on. 

We can no longer take even an elevator or a taxi without being bombarded by the news. 

And then there are the demands of people.  I’m not talking about family, friends or coworkers, but just the pressures created by living in close quarters with so many other people—the pressure to share space, to always be considerate, to sit in traffic for ninety minutes just to move forward fifteen miles.  Congestion, the alter ego of urban convenience.  Some days, it’s hard to think through all the mental clutter, much less feel creative.

That’s why I love to travel.  Like Tracy, I’ve come to realize that the best way to wake up, to stop moving zombie-like through the demands of everyday life, is to slow down and focus.  When the daily grind becomes too much, I can think of no better way to slow down and focus than to fly away.

A few years ago, we spent three weeks in Greece.  We rented a house in Corfu, an Ionian island near the Albanian border, and spent many days wandering the ancient fort town of Kérkyra.

I remember clearly the morning we disembarked from our ferry.  We (my three sons and I) had flown to Athens from Philadelphia, where we met my husband who was already abroad.  After a few days in Athens, we took a bus to Patras and a ferry to Corfu. 

Stepping off that boat onto a lush green island surrounded by emerald-colored waters was magical enough, but the quieting in my brain, the immediate ahhh that I felt course through me, the incredible silence of those days in Corfu—that’s what I remember most. 

 

I wrote often there.  Our Internet connection was poor, the television shows were all in Greek and other than from the few American or British people who were stopping in Corfu while on a cruise, we heard almost no English. 

 

We were cocooned, forcing us to slow down and focus.  My senses were on high alert, truly a gift for an author. 

 

And so many places to hide a body!  I could stop and ask, “What is the story here?” and seek to understand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve since traveled as a family to other parts of the world and throughout the United States, taking advantage of any opportunity to be still.  But it was Marcel Proust who said, "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."  

I love my urban life near Philadelphia, but the perspective provided by these trips has helped me not only to be a better writer while I am away, but to discover ways to quiet the mental clutter and slow down—finding the story in the everyday—while I am home.

******************** 

Wendy Tyson is an author, lawyer and former therapist whose background has inspired her mysteries and thrillers.  Wendy has written four published crime novels, including Dying Brand, the third novel in the Allison Campbell Mystery Series, which was released on May 5, 2015. 

The first in the Campbell series, Killer Image, was named a best mystery for book clubs in 2014 by Examiner.com.  Wendy is also the author of the Greenhouse Mystery Series, the first of which, A Muddied Murder, is due to be released just in time for spring 2016.

  Wendy is a member of Sisters in Crime and International Thriller Writers and she is a contributing editor for The Big Thrill, International Thriller Writers’ online magazine.  Wendy lives on a micro-farm just outside of Philadelphia with her husband, three sons and three dogs.  Visit Wendy on Facebook or at: www.WATyson.com .

 

 

 

LAUNDRY LIST

It’s wonderful to get home, knowing I can stay put for a few consecutive days. I don’t have to do my laundry overnight and repack it. My last stop here, I posted about washing my clothes, and got an astonished response.

“You do laundry?” readers asked. I don’t know if they were genuinely astonished, or if this was a tongue-in-cheek question, one of the perils of the Internet.

Yes, I do laundry. And though the washloads are way down from when I was taking care of a family of five, and I know my husband and I don’t change clothes in the middle of the day, it still seems astonishing to me how much there is to fold when the dryer stops.

(By the way, I also prepare meals, shop for groceries, and pay my bills, among other mundane chores. I confess I don’t clean my house; I do pay someone else to do that, and to mow the lawn.)

Though in our new-ish house the laundry room is much larger, I dream of the perfect room in which to work. It would have a permanent rack with self-regenerating hangers, a broad suspended nylon mesh sheet on which to spread my sweaters, and a vast counter on which to fold. Then the piles of clean clothes would be automatically delivered to our bedroom, which is as far from the laundry room as you can get in this house.

No matter how long and hard I work on keeping us clothed in a clean and presentable fashion, our dogs start the decoration process by choosing the closet as a preferred place to sleep. They thoughtfully leave hair on low-hanging garments. I take Rocky, Scrunch, and Colt everywhere with me, in a sense. They have even been to Portugal and Poland.

Short of throwing away everything after we’ve worn it a few days (a la Jack Reacher), there seems to be no dodging this part of life. So you know where I’ll be this morning, measuring detergent and peeling off dryer sheets. Oh, I hear the beep! Another load is done.

Charlaine Harris

Ruth Rendell (1930-2015)

Ruth Rendell, who died recently at the age of 85, was one of the greatest crime writers of her generation, along with the late P.D. James. Rendell's first novel was published in 1964, and her final book will be released this fall. In a career spanning half a century, she published prolifically, and for a lesser writer that could mean the publication of more than a few sub-standard works.

Not so Rendell. Her productivity was truly amazing, but even more so, in some respects, is the high quality she sustained throughout her career. Yes, there are some "lesser" Rendells, but they are far outnumbered by the first-rate ones.

She is perhaps best known for the long-running series of books featuring policeman Reginald Wexford. He debuted in From Doon with Death in 1964 and appeared in 23 more books, most recently No Man's Nightingale (2013). There are many fine novels in the series. Simisola is one of my favorites. It is stunningly good, I think, and there is a gut-wrencher in the last line of the book. Hard to pull off, but Rendell did it well.

In addition to the Wexford books, there were the "other" Rendells -- the stand-alone crime novels that many of her fans often found too disturbing to read. One of them, A Judgment in Stone (1977), is high on my list of best crime novels of the twentieth century. It has a memorably chilling first line: Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write. You know the ending when you start the book, yet the suspense of getting there is almost unbearable. Rendell writes brilliantly about the devastating effects of illiteracy and the link to crime.

In 1986 Rendell adopted a pseudonym, Barbara Vine, though it was never a secret. The first Vine novel, A Dark-Adapted Eye, won the Edgar Award for Best Novel and was a finalist for the Gold Dagger, given by the Crime Writers Association in the UK. It's another tour-de-force, and I think it's a must read for anyone who wants to be well-read in the genre. The follow-up, A Fatal Inversion, is another stunner. One of my favorite Vines -- besides these two -- is The Chimney Sweeper's Boy, a fascinating dissection of character.

Rendell was fascinated by abnormal psychology, and she turned that fascination into a legacy of brilliant, often disturbing, crime novels. At heart, I think she was an anatomist, in the way that she could dissect character and get at the core of what made her people tick. You could never mistake a book by Ruth Rendell for that of any other writer. She was truly one-of-a-kind, and we as readers are the richer for her amazing body of work.