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The Pilling Field

by Elaine Viets of the Femmes Fatales.

Our cat Mystery looks like a cuddly stuffed toy. Until I tried to give her a pill. At seven in the morning, I was fighting with a 13-pound hellcat armed with a set of steak knives.

Mystery takes Atenolol for a heart murmur, and the vet says as long as she swallows her daily pill, she'll stay healthy. Usually my husband Don pills the cat. We discovered after many bloody battles with slashed skin and permanent scars that Pill Pockets and other benign tricks do not work.

Our vet finally put us out of our misery. We shot her.

This handy device is a pill shooter. Slide the pill in the rubber tip, hit the plunger, and shoot the pill past that flapper cats have in their throats that shoots the pill back at you.

Don is a master pill shootist. He pills the cat every morning. He and Mystery have a routine. He picks her up and pills her, then she eats breakfast. Usually, it's a peaceful process. Sometimes the clever cat hides the pill in the white speckles in our granite counter top, or buries it in the sofa cushions. But Don usually manages to pill her.

The vet says she's in excellent health at age 11.

I don't have Don's masterful touch. The last time I tried to give a liquid antibiotic to our striped cat, Harry, he spewed the stuff on me. I had to shower and wash my hair.

Don was out of town Monday morning, and I was in charge of the pilling. I knew the pill wouldn't be as messy as the liquid medicine. I'd just follow Don's routine. At breakfast time, I picked up Mystery and made soft, calming, cooing sounds. Mystery clamped her jaws tighter than a miser's purse. I pried open her mouth and shot the pill in. She flipped around, raked her claws across my chest and spit out the pill.

Round one to the cat.

I retired bleeding to my room while Mystery and her cat pal Harry howled for breakfast. I brooded. A cat with a brain the size of a Ping-Pong ball had outwitted me.

I had to pill her to keep her alive. She would swallow that pill.

I had one advantage: No pill, no breakfast, and she was hungry.

I let Harry and Mystery yowl while I worked on my strategy. I refilled the pill shooter, then put Harry and his cat food in my office and shut the door.

Now it was Mystery and me. I planned to put her in a cat burrito – a sort of homemade straitjacket made from towels.

My burrito wasn't as tight at the one in the illustration. She fought like a wildcat while I wrapped her up. During the battle, she forgot to clamp her jaws shut. I rammed the pill shooter past the feline pill ejector and she swallowed it, then clawed her way out of the burrito.

Mystery finished her breakfast about the time I finished mopping up the blood.

Win Brain Storm, my new Angela Richman Death Investigator mystery. Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author and Femmes Fatale says, "Elaine Viets has written the exciting first book in a multilayered crime novel series. Angela Richman is not only an investigator but a victim in this complex novel of crime, punishment, and medical malfeasance." Thomas & Mercer is giving away 100 free Brain Storm e-books on Goodreads: enter here.

 

 

 

Dear Fredric Brown: Thanks for the Teapot

by Toni L.P. Kelner / Leigh Perry

I confess. I'd nearly forgotten it was my day to post something here at the Femmes. My nephew Sean is visiting, we're doing some preparation for a vacation trip at the end of the month, my daughter has two weeks of camp that she has to pack for, I'm trying to finish a short story. And I downloaded Pokemon Go a couple of days ago. To make up for this, I thought I'd pull out an essay I wrote for the Readercon program book a couple of years ago. (Readercon is a lovely local science fiction convention, and I'm sorry to have missed it this year because of all the aforementioned reasons.) One of the honorees that year was mystery and science fiction author Fredric Brown. He's not a household name these days, not even among mystery and SF readers, but I do adore his writing. And htis is why.

***

My affection for Fredric Brown dates back to a trip I took to New York City right after I graduated from college. My vacation included a visit to the legendary mystery bookstore Murder Ink. I wasn’t that big a mystery fan at that time, but my father was, so I made a point of tracking down the store so I could find him a souvenir. Now I don’t even remember what I ended up buying for him, but I do remember what I took home for myself: a Black Box trade paperback edition of 4 Novels by Fredric Brown.

The omnibus included the mind-twisting Lewis Carroll homage Night of the Jabberwock; early serial killer novel The Screaming Mimi; thriller Knock Three-One-Two; and the Edgar-award winning The Fabulous Clipjoint, which was Brown’s first novel and the beginning of his Ed and Am Hunter series.

After reading those four novels, I was hooked. In fact, I spent years tracking down every one of his books I could find. That wasn’t easy in those pre-internet days, and many of the books I found were far out of my price range. But each book I managed to get my hands on, whether another novel or collection of his short stories, was a delight.

Along the way I’d discovered that Brown was just as wonderful when he wrote science fiction, but I still prefer his mysteries. His crime plots were tricky, and the characters vivid, but I think he excelled at settings. When he set a story in summer, I wanted to turn up my air conditioning; when he set a revenge thriller in a big city, I wanted to lock my doors to keep the lowlifes out; and when his characters hunted a killer at a carnival, I wanted to take a ride on the Ferris wheel.

It wasn’t just the places that were vivid--the time in which the stories were set was just as engrossing. Though Brown wrote contemporary fiction, by the time I found his work, those times were history to me, and the backgrounds were so detailed and true that they were like snapshots of the past.

Now Brown didn’t write about brilliant detectives like Sherlock Holmes, sweet little old ladies like Miss Marple, or aristocrats like Peter Wimsey. Okay, he wrote so many stories that some of his characters were like that, but mostly he wrote on the darker, grittier side of detective fiction. There were some private eyes, but mostly when I think of Brown’s work, I think of working people, people just barely making it from paycheck to paycheck. And I think of drinking--those people drank whiskey, rye, bourbon.

So with all that, why am I thanking Fredric Brown for a teapot, of all things? It’s because Brown inspired me to write something I never would have written without reading his stuff.

Earlier I mentioned stories set in a carnival. Ed and Am of that series were carnies for several of their adventures, and others of Brown’s stories were also set in that milieu. Honestly, I have no idea if Brown ever worked in on a midway himself, but those mysteries certainly had the ring of authenticity. Or maybe the calliope of authenticity. They were definitely compelling enough to send me off to a carnival or two. A year. More if I was lucky.

Plus I started looking for nonfiction books about carnivals and carnie life. It was after reading Eyeing the Flash by Peter Fenton, a memoir of a man who because a carnival game agent, that I got an idea for my own carnival mystery story. It was totally unlike anything I’d ever written before, and enormous fun to work on. “Sleeping With the Plush” was published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine in May 2006, and in 2007 I won the Agatha Award for best short story.

I’d dreamt of winning an Agatha ever since I started writing mysteries, and getting one was a high point in my career. And whether or not he would appreciate the honor, I give Fredric Brown credit for my Agatha teapot.

Thank you Fredric Brown!

Dandy Gilver and Some Questions

Lot of travelling going on this week: I’m on a UK blog tour to celebrate the launch, on Thursday, of DANDY GILVER AND A MOST MISLEADING HABIT.  And I’m also on a flight to Edinburgh right now (or maybe I’ve just landed).

This is the eleventh case for gently-born private detective, Dandelion Dahlia Gilver, and her co-detective Alec Osborne. In it, they're summoned to the Lanark moor in the depths of February 1934, where a spot of arson in a convent chapel on Christmas Eve is still a mystery, and two inmates from a nearby insane asylum are still at large.

Last week, wondering what people would like to know, I put out a plea on Facebook and got a slew of great questions from fans and newcomers alike. Yesterday, I covered the convent, inspiration, titles, California, Scottish dialects, writing challenges and bloopers [LINK]. Today it’s the asylum, the cover and characters human and canine

 

Meg Mims How in the world did you research the insane asylum!!! Wow. Ruth Nixon How do you go to a convent and then end up in a insane asylum?

You know me, Meg. An honours graduate from MSU* I think you need to get protocols much more accurate in a modern story (#thinks# Is this the best way to break the news to my psychiatric nurse sister that I’m going to be asking her to read a standalone draft for authenticity? Probably not.) but in the 1930s in Scotland, asylums were not uniform in their practices. I made good use of that leeway.

As to how it happened, Ruth, I went out to the Lanark moor to “look at” Glenbuck. The quotes are because the village was obliterated by open-cast mining and Glenbuck House was demolished, leaving only its gateposts. It’s the closest thing Scotland’s got to a ghost town. But while I was out there tootling around, I remembered and pondered the fact that there was not only a notoriously brutal orphanage – Smyllum – in Lanarkshire but it’s also the site of Scotland’s high security state psychiatric hospital, Carstairs. And Carstairs began life as a refuge for shell-shocked soldiers. The nuns, orphans, and walking-wounded of WWI took over.

Smyllum

*Making Stuff Up

 

Fiona Sharp  I am intrigued by the 'insane asylum' . Do you think opinions have changed towards people with mental health issues?

Fiona, I’m so glad that you recognised the term as Dandy’s and not mine. It’s one of the challenges of writing historical fiction – to use the language that was unexceptional then but is unkind and thoughtless by modern standards.

The short answer is that opinions haven’t changed enough and policy hasn’t uniformly changed for the better. In Dandy’s day, shellshock – what we would call PTSD – was accepted as something that “the officer class” could succumb to but I don’t think the ordinary soldiers got much care or understanding when the horrors of war broke them. Even today, there are people who don’t believe that battleground PTSD is a “real” war injury.

I find it very sad that people seem unable to get past fear and empathise about mental ill health. For example, I’ve never been depressed but you only have to see someone with depression – and really look – to recognise it as a monstrous thing. And while a stranger in the middle of a psychotic break is frightening for onlookers, it doesn’t take much to imagine how much more frightening it is for the sufferer.

One thing that was maybe a bit better in Dandy’s day was that there was asylum in the old-fashioned sense. There was the possibility of retreat and sanctuary in ordered surroundings. “Care in the community” has been underfunded into such heartless chaos.

 

Karlene T. Barger and Fran Vella "Who designs your gorgeous covers? Did you get to make suggestions about the cover? Did it turn out the way you imagined it?"

Onto happier things. Isn’t it lovely? It’s designed by Jessica Hische, an artist from San Francisco and I love her work. (I love Andrew Davidson’s US covers too.) And, no, I don’t step in on these. I knew Jessica's nun would be a triumph and it is!

 

Helen Taylor I've loved the last few books, when Dandy's maid Grant has got in on the action. So far Dandy's husband has mostly been a tolerant (if grumbling) presence in the background, but I think he has more potential. Do you plan to give him a more prominent role in one of the cases?

I adore Hugh! But the problem of any long-running series is that the cast of characters you adore gets longer and longer in each book and, once you’ve added the “monster of the week” characters for that individual story too, there’s a multitude. Sometimes when I’ve read a book form deep inside a series, some apparently random person flashes across the background for no obvious reason. Then I find out it’s someone everyone loves and wants to see every time. I’d rather make sure my books can be read in any order as stand-alones.

BUT, there’s a work-around . . . short stories! I’ve just written one short with Grant in the starring role for the third Sherlock anthology edited by Les Klinger and Laurie King Echoes of Holmes. And my plan for the flight I’m on right now was to take a crack at one for the Malice domestic anthology, Murder Most Historical. I was thinking of Pallister, the butler, but since you mention it, Helen, I’ll try Hugh. (I might be sitting slack-jawed in front of Miss Congeniality 2, mind you. No promises.)

Merrit Buckland What was your inspiration for developing Dandy Gilver. She is such an interesting character. Deborah Lacy Who does Dandy admire most in her world?

I have no idea where Dandy came from, Merrit. She’s sure as sugarlumps not me. I made up her name, her family and servants, her address, her looks . . . but her character? She just arrived: embarrassed by displays of emotion, disapproving of nosiness (bit of a drawback for a detective), almost completely kind but a bit brisk with it. I’m very fond of her, I can tell you that much.

Deb, that’s a great question. I’m stealing that for the next time I moderate a panel. And I know this sounds like a shameless plug for the latest book, but one of the nuns Dandy met in St Ultan’s is probably the most admirable individual she’s ever come across. “Goodness personified”. I didn’t think of it at the time, but now it strikes me to wonder if I wasn’t maybe doing a bit of hommage to Canon Avril in Margery Allingham’s The Tiger in The Smoke.

Penny Walton I'd love to know more about Bunty, please. Was she based on your own dog?

Oh Penny, I’m such an extreme cat person. I like individual dogs: the late, great Harry Rizzo for instance, but I’ve only ever wanted cats in my life for real. Dandy has a dog because toffs are much more likely to be dog people. Cats are a bit middle-class in Britain. And she has a Dalmatian because I knew such a daffy and decorative dog would annoy Hugh no end. I’ve had a lot of fun with Hugh and Dandy’s disapproval of each other’s approach and their total blindness to the failings of their own canine darlings.

Harry Rizzo: a fine dog

Thank you very much to everyone who sent questions. Ant more questions, anyone?  I'll be up in the middle of the night, jet-lagged and ready to talk . . .

 

 

 

 

Jingle all the way

by Donna Andrews.

I’m a non pet owner by choice.  I’ll skip the long explanations on why—let’s just say I’m allergic to cat fur and dog walking.  But I enjoy other people’s pets, and I’ll even take care of my friends’ pets when they need it.  Like this past weekend when my friend Barb Goffman was moving, and was worried that her dog, Jingle, would escape through an open door during all the chaos of packing and loading, I was happy to take him for a couple of nights.

That’s Jingle to the left. She got him a few years ago from the shelter.  The vet estimated that he was maybe four years old and was probably a beagle/basset mix.  In other words, a bagel.

In many ways he’s a model dog. He chews squeak toys to bits, but ignores furniture and shoes and all the other temptations many dogs succumb to. He’s scrupulously house trained. He’s very friendly. Doesn’t beg for human food, although he will try to guilt you into a doggie treat. In most ways, the perfect canine house guest.

Well, there is the barking.  As a software engineer would say, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. If you want to sleep late with Jingle around, you need to draw all the blinds very tightly shut at night.  Otherwise, he’ll begin defending the house against evil intruders as soon as it’s light. He chased off a vicious squirrel at 5:45, and a few chipmunks soon after that. The neighbors’ golden retriever will think twice about passing by my house again—well, assuming he even noticed.  He was pretty intent on his walk, and my front window is rather far from the road. Every knock, every ring of the doorbell or telephone produced loud, peremptory, persistent barking. I do hope at least a few prospective burglars cased the joint during Jingle’s stay and took me off their target list.

There’s also the fact that he’s a total escape artist.  Barb’s fence can’t contain him, and we’ve been working for several years on hardening it.  I knew mine was no match for him. (I keep telling Barb she should rename him “Houdini.”)  So you can’t just turn him out in the yard—you have to walk him.  More accurately, you take him out into the yard and brace yourself so he doesn’t pull you off your feet or dislocate your shoulder when he takes off after one of those evil squirrels.  Next time he comes to stay with me, I’m thinking of getting some kind of wagon and letting him haul me around the yard.  Good way to help him burn off some of that exuberant beagle energy.

But apart from those two small things, we got along great.  Barb warned me he’d want to sleep in the bed with me—she doesn’t let him, but that doesn’t stop him from trying with the various dogsitters who’ve stayed with him.  So I dragged his bed up to my bedroom and prepared to be stern when he tried to jump on the bed.

He followed me upstairs, sniffed my bed, sniffed the dog bed, then trotted downstairs and curled up on the purple velveteen beanbag chair. Which has lost a lot of its beans and greatly resembles a very large dog bed anyway. He appears to have divided the nights between that and the purple velvet couch. Also much of his days. (If you begin to suspect a theme in my décor, yes.  I like purple. And velvet.)

Then, Sunday afternoon, when Barb let me know she and the movers had arrived in her new house, which is about an hour away, I braced myself for the trip.  Because the final thing that makes Jingle just a little short of perfection as a canine visitor is that he doesn’t like car rides.  He loves hopping into the car, but as soon as the car begins to move, he whines. And whimpers.

Constantly.

Barb knew this was going to be a problem, so she got a prescription for a tranquilizer, in the hopes that it would calm him down enough to make the trip more bearable for everyone.

I gave him the tranquilizer half an hour before our departure, following the instructions on the bottle—1/2 to 1 pill, 1/2 hour to 1 hour before departure. I went for the whole enchilada, since in a test run the half pill didn't even slow him down.

Alas, even the whole pill had very little effect.  For the first half hour, I kept hoping that maybe I’d taken off too soon, and it would kick in any minute.

I also tried a variety of tactics to discourage the whine. I tried sternness: “Jingle! Hush!” I tried coaxing: “It’s okay, Jingle, honey.” I tried the radio—neither music nor talk calmed him. I tried singing to drown him out.  I even tried whining along with him. No effect.

He would quiet down if I petted him or scratched behind his ears—but only while I was doing it.  If I took my hand away, the whine would start up again. And trying to drive for an hour and  quarter one-handed . . . not a good idea.

He also calmed down a little bit if he was allowed to put his front paws on the console between the two front seats, bringing his head to a level with mine so he could gaze at whatever I saw . But however comforting he found this, it made the driver—me—very, very nervous. What if we stopped and he went flying? So I tried to discourage it. He had a perfectly lovely dog bed on the floor of the front passenger seat—silly me, I thought he’d curl up there and pass out from the sedative.  If I’d known how reluctant to settle down he’d be, I’d have made Barb the present of a crate, and I think I will before the next time Jingle has to travel.

He also became less vocal if I turned the air conditioning on full blast and let him press his nose up against it.  I don’t know whether he likes the cold air or whether the air vent brings in interesting smells from outside, but it distracted him.  Sometimes for a whole minute at a time.

About half an hour into the trip, I could tell the doggie downer was starting to affect him. Not that he stopped whining, but he became less steady on his feet and mostly curled up and whined lying down.

I wish I had a videotape of the two of us sailing down route 7, Jingle curled up in the passenger seat, whining and whimpering nonstop, me singing “Werewolves of London” at the top of my lungs to drown the whining out.

I don’t know which one of us was more relieved when we arrived at his new home.

But he’s there now, exploring every corner of his new house and yard, barking furiously at a whole new set of dangers, and no doubt hoping he never has to ride in a car again.

And on my very calm, peaceful drive home, I did my Polyanna thing--remember the book and movie Polyanna, in which the title character played what she called the Glad Game? Which consisted of always finding something to be glad about in any situation, no matter how bleak.

I'm glad Jingle is safe in his new home. I'm glad he had a largely peaceful and uneventful visit with me.  And I'm glad that the drive with him reminded me why I'm much better as a doggie aunt than a doggie mom.

July Book Reviews & Music Faves

 

 

by Mary Saums

 

You know what I love the best about summertime? AIR-CONDITIONING. It's just about too hot to breathe down here. So when I'm done working and come inside for the day, the first thing I do is hit the fridge for an ice-cold San Pellegrino.

 

 

AAAaaaaaaaaaahh .......

 

Then, after a few chores and a shower, and Katiepie (aka BIG) has been brushed and petted to Her Supreme Highness's satisfaction, the two of us kick back.

 

I read, she supervises.

 

 

 

This month, I got back into my fiction groove with the latest Benedict Jacka novel.

 

 

 

BURNED is the 7th book in the Alex Verus series, set in a contemporary London that has a secret magical community with its own counsels, laws and hierarchy going on. Similar to Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden books. Alex is a diviner, a rare gift among the mages. This allows him to see into all possible futures that result from an action, thereby allowing him to scoot past futures which include, say, getting beaten up or dying. Pretty handy.

 

He has been a good boy lately, minding his own business. That's why he's so shocked when he learns someone in the Counsel issued a death warrant on him. He has seven days to figure out who did it, why, and how he can convince the politically-oriented counsel members to re-evaluate the execution thing. While dodging bullets and flames and other pesky magician tricks.

 

I enjoy this series for the setting and the great writing. Favorite character: Arachne, the gentle, philosophical seamstress who also happens to be a gigantic spider.

 

 

 

 

THE HERETICS OF DE'ATH by Howard of Warwick

 

First, a few warnings:

Humorless, persnickety historians - DO NOT READ THIS BOOK

All others -  DO NOT DRINK WHILST READING LEST THOU SPEW FORTH LIQUID THROUGH THINE NOSTRILS 

Oh my goodness, what a silly silly book. It's a complete spoof of medieval monk novels. Anyone who loves medieval mysteries, like dearly beloved Brother Cadfael, and has a slightly demented sense of humor will love this book. It's different. It's something of a mixture, part Black Adder, part Monty Python, part old British stage comedian routine. You can practically hear the cymbal crash after each really bad joke.

To get an idea of the writing style, treat yourself and go to Amazon to read all the entertaining book descriptions. 

I cracked up when I saw the title of the second book, THE GARDEROBE OF DEATH.

 

 

I hate to think what the murder weapon might be. 

 

 

And now, for a completely different kind of monk -

 

 

 

RISE AND SHINE: Awaken Your Energy Body With Taoist Alchemy and Qi Gong

by Pedram Shojai

 

A while back, I talked here about THE URBAN MONK, the latest book by Pedram Shojai. Which I loved. RISE AND SHINE, published in 2011, is every bit as wonderful. In plain language, Shojai explains Taoist basics. Don't let the words "Tao" or "Qi Gong" scare you off. This is a book of simple explanations on how to slow down your life so you can think. On how to push the crazy world away and give yourself a mental break. How to be at peace.

 

I highly recommend both books.

 

 

The idea of pushing away the craziness of the world brings me to a different kind of recommendation. Lately, I've enjoyed a new habit I'm incorporating into my after-work routine.

Happy music. It's something that's easy to forget, that music can lift your spirits in ways nothing else can. Usually, I play certain standbys that I MUST hear often. Then I scroll through the rest and pull out a few other favorites. 

What got me started with this was hearing the very end of the song "Mornin'" by Al Jarreau one day on the radio. I'd forgotten what a great uplifting feel it had. Got home. Downloaded it.

Let me tell you - on good speakers, this track will cure all illnesses. :) Seriously, the chords, inversions, whatever - everything works together to create happiness. 

Give it a try. Find music that elevates You.

 

Here are the first few of my Gotta-Haves:

 

 

LOVE AND HAPPINESS

CAN'T GET NEXT TO YOU

HERE I AM

 

 

MORNIN'

AFTER ALL

 

 

USED TO RULE THE WORLD

SPLIT DECISION

TAKE MY LOVE WITH YOU

IF YOU NEED SOMEBODY

 

 

MISS YOU

DEAR DOCTOR

JUMPIN' JACK FLASH

 

JOHN LEE HOOKER & CARLOS SANTANA

 

THE HEALER

 

JOHN LEE HOOKER & BONNIE RAITT

 

I'M IN THE MOOD

 

 

JAMES BROWN

 

GIVE IT UP, TURN IT LOOSE (Live version)

SEX MACHINE

PAPA DON'T TAKE NO MESS

 

 

STAPLE SINGERS

 

RESPECT YOURSELF

I'LL TAKE YOU THERE

(really, everything of theirs makes me happy)

 

CROWDED HOUSE/NEIL FINN

 

SHE WILL HAVE HER WAY

LAST ONE STANDING

FALL AT YOUR FEET

FOUR SEASONS IN ONE DAY

(Neil Finn is a genius. Fun surprises and musically unique)

 

 

If you have particular favorites that lift your spirits, please share!

 

 

Tell us what you really think

by Donna Andrews.

As anyone who knows me or follows my posts on social media has probably already figured out, I'm not a big fan of surveys. Even on those occasions when I do have something I want to say to a business, I don't always want to fill out a whole survey just to say one or two specific things.

Take the Grand Hyatt in New York, for example. It's the hotel where MWA holds the Edgar awards these days, so I've been there a time of two. I really love the Grand Hyatt. Love the space. Love the location. Wonderful staff. Beautiful rooms.

There are just two teensy weensy things that get my goat when I stay there, neither of which is something the staff or management can easily do anything about: the lights, and the toilet paper holder.

The Grand Hyatt is a very modern, very chic, very beautiful hotel. You can tell that some very good designer spent a lot of time making sure even the smallest details fit into the elegant whole. I get that, I really do. I just wish the designer had done a field test on the bathrooms. The toilet paper is a single elegant sweep of shiny metal, with an ever so small curved bit on the end. Very in keeping with the whole theme of elegant, modern simplicity. But when you reach for the toilet paper roll, there's nothing to keep the paper from falling off the roll and skittering across the floor.

After the first time or two, you remember to be careful. You approach acquiring a few sheets of toilet paper with the same careful precision that you'd use when adding one last card to a five-story house of cards.

When you're awake, that is. If you're making a middle of the night bathroom run, odds are you're going to forget and end up chasing the roll across the floor. And if you're making that middle of the night trip, you're probably already irritated from dealing with the light switches. Which aren't traditional switches—let's all them tap plates. They're little flat panels with an area you press to turn the lights off, and area to turn them on, and sometimes an area in the middle for I forget what. This works great if you're looking at the panel. Not so great if you wake up in the middle of the night and are trying to find the light switch so you won't break your neck going to the bathroom in the dark. Even if you remember the existence of the tap plates, you end up feeling around for them in the dark, and . . . is on the top or the bottoms? I usually just get irritated and smack the area around the head of the bed repeatedly until I happen across the right part of the tap switch. And then, instead of the discreet single lamp to illuminate your path, voila! Every single light in the room is on.

I love the Hyatt; I really do. I just wish their designer hadn't gotten quite so cute with the light switches and the toilet paper holders.

Just as I love my Honda. When my previous Honda, a 1999 Civic, began showing its age—at around age 15—I replaced it with a 2014 Honda Civic. My requirements of a car are few but important. I want it to get me where I'm going in reasonable comfort and safety. I don't want it to break down or cost me a whole lot in repairs. When I got the 2014 model, I had a third requirement: I wanted to be able to play music from my iPhone or iPod through the speaker system.

That last bit hasn't worked out so well. The biggest reason is that as soon as I hook my idevice to the speaker system, it begins to autoplay the first song in my music library. By first, I mean the track that is alphabetically the first in the more than 8000 tracks in my iTunes library. I don't mind that first track . . . at least I didn't at first. It's a nice, slow ballady song called “A-Hunting We Will Go,” from the Eveningland album by Hem, a Brooklyn-based folk/indie group. It's a nice song, but I'm getting kind of tired of it. But it will keep on playing unless I pick another song to play or pause the playback. Doing either requires picking up the idevice, and opening up iTunes, because while the speaker system has limited ability to navigate through the songs in your idevice, it has no on-screen stop button.  Trust me; I've looked.

And there are times when stopping the autoplay is pretty mission-critical, because if I don't find the time to deal with it before the four minutes and seventeen seconds of “A-Hunting We Will Go” run their course, the next song up in the queue is the audio of a George Carlin routine, whose title iPod tactfully renders as “A*****e, Jackoff, S*****g.” (Those of you who own his album A Place for My Stuff have probably heard it already. For the rest of you—it's funny, it's incisive, it's very blue. Contains a lot of the same words you'll find in his “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” monologue.)

And did I mention that one of the frequent circumstances under which I hear “A-Hunting I Will Go” is when the nephews are riding with me, and want me to plug in my phone and let them play selections from my music library—or worse, search the airwaves for something more to their taste that could very well take more than four minutes to download.

I don't ask much of my speaker system. I'm not expecting perfect, high-end sound quality. I just want to stop the music with a single tap on the system screen, instead of having to pick up my phone and perform complicated maneuvers that could make me wreck the car if I don't wait for a stoplight.

For the time being, I've deleted “A*****e, Jackoff, S*****g” from iTunes, but I have no confidence that iTunes will respect that decision. I'm convinced that one of these days iTunes, with predictable cyberlogic, will notice that a track that was included in an album I bought is missing from the listing, and will restore it. Probably when the nephews are in the car. And when that happens, I hope I have the presence of mind to use the third method of stopping it from playing: hitting the off button on the speaker system. Let there be no music at all until we can navigate away from the late, great, but highly inappropriate Mr. Carlin.

So, are these minor but highly annoying exceptions to my otherwise very positive views of Honda and the Hyatt worth filling out a survey for? If you hate surveys the way I do, maybe not. There probably wouldn't even be a single question in the survey that would let me talk about them.

But I could write them a letter.

Or maybe I'll just send them a copy of this blog.

 

 

My first garage sale

by Donna Andrews.

Given that this is the Fourth of July week, I should probably write about something patriotic and inspiring. Something soul-stirring. Something that would make you laugh and then bring in those sentimental tears at the end.

But I'm drawing a blank on soul-stirring, and I think instead I'll write about my first garage sale. No, not the first I've ever been to, but the first in which I've participated as a seller. I've been to yard and garage sales—particularly while researching Owls Well That Ends Well, which features a giant yard sale--but never sold stuff at one.

The garage sale came about because my friend and neighbor, Barb Goffman, is relocating to Winchester, which is a cheaper place to live. She's found a great house, with a fence that should do a better job of keeping her dog, Jingle, from roaming, but still, it's going to be a bummer not to be able to call her up on five minutes notice and say “Want to hit Mama Wok?” Or “I'm having a pizza craving.” But the move is happening, and part of the move plan was to have a garage sale to unload stuff she doesn't want to pay to move, so . . . garage sale! Saturday, July 2, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

I was a little bummed when I found out that my baseball-crazy nephew was in a tournament nearby—playing two games Saturday, which I'd miss. But I could follow the game, thanks to an app called Game Changer—although Game Changer only works if a parent on the spot taps every play into it, so a belated thanks to Matt's mom, April.

We enlisted Sherry Harris to organize us—since Sherry writes the wonderful Sarah Winston Garage Sale mystery series, we figured she was a lot more expert than we were, and maybe she would even find organizing us useful research. And then we asked our friends if any of them wanted to join in the fun, and Kathryn O'Sullivan, who writes the Colleen McCabe mystery series set in Corolla, North Carolina, joined in the fun, so we could legitimately call it a multi-family yard sale. Kathryn and Paul were bringing the furniture—they had a lot of surplus and every good yard sale needs furniture—and reserved a van so they could haul the furniture over. Barb's contributions were largely practical—she had a snowblower and a clothing steamer, plus tons of mystery books that she reluctantly weeded out of her collection. And I had mostly a lot of vintage stuff that was leftover at Mom's house after she moved up here and she and everyone else in the family had taken away everything we wanted. A varied yard sale.

Sherry and Barb and I gathered at Barb's house on Friday to price things. Actually, mainly Sherry was pricing things, because she's the garage sale expert, and we learned to accept it meekly when she told us that however much something might have cost, five bucks was the most we could expect people to pay for it at a garage sale. My job was mainly to carry things out into the garage. Oh, and I was sorting the books by type (hardcover, trade paperback, mass market paperback) into boxes so we could haul those out in the morning to line the driveway. The first sign of trouble came when I suddenly realized my knee hurt. I didn't remember twisting the knee or bumping it, but we were all rushing about so much that I could have. I tried to limp on, but it was getting worse and worse. There was a stretch that afternoon when I couldn't put weight on my leg without excruciating pain. I iced it and elevated it and Adviled it and tried to be useful sitting down.

Then we heard from Kathryn that the truck company had arbitrarily changed the reservation on their van from Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon, by which time the garage sale would be over. So they were only going to be able to bring the furniture that would fit in their car.

My knee improved enough (or the Advil dulled the pain enough) that I was able to drop by and pick up some tables that my friends Kathy and David were going to lend me for the garage sale. Kathy rounded up the tables for me, and I waved at David, who was doing something to a tree (presumably a dead tree) near the back of their yard. Kathy warned me that her sister had had a yard sale at their house over Memorial Day and hardly anyone had showed up. I decided not to share this knowledge with Barb, Sherry, or Kathryn.

And at 11:15 Barb texted me that she was calling a cab to take her to the hospital because she was suffering excruciating back pain. Normally I would have offered to drive her, but given the knee, and the fact that someone had to be there to open up the garage at 7:15 to finish the setup if she was still in the ER, I stayed home and tried to get some sleep. Though it did occur to me that maybe if I took her to the ER, I could have them look at my knee while I was at it.

Saturday dawned. I managed to get there by 7:15, and parked beside some of the early arrivals they warned us to expect. I smiled graciously at them while reminding myself how Meg dealt with the early arrivals in Owls Well That Ends Well. (Read the book to find out!)  I limped around on a cane that I might have put into the yard sale if it hadn't occurred to me, even before the knee injury, that having a spare cane around was not a stupid thing.

Barb's back pain turned out to be a kidney stone. Anyone who has ever had a kidney stone knows exactly how she felt, and if you haven't had a kidney stone, I hope you never find out. Bob, Sherry's husband, pitched in to do some of the work that Barb and I weren't able to do, including driving around to post the signs.

And thank goodness people came. And left with stuff. Not as much stuff as we'd hoped, and there was a great deal of bargaining, but we all decided at the outset that our goal was not to make vast sums of money—it was to get other people to pay us to haul away the stuff we no longer wanted. And we all went home with less stuff that we came.

Alan Orloff, who had also lent us tables, dropped by to check on our progress, and some of the yard sale customers were thrilled to hear that they were hanging out with four—and briefly five—mystery writers. Bookmarks made their way into customers' hands, and several people suggested maybe we should have brought books to sell. It's an idea for next time. Because there will be a next time. I still have stuff. Kathryn and Paul still have furniture they'd like to unload. We're thinking fall.

Of course, we hope the next garage sale won't be quite so fraught with peril. Barb's kidney stone. My knee. And remember my friend David, who was doing something to a dead tree when I went by to borrow tables? The dead tree retaliated, apparently--a piece of his equipment fell and he, too, spent Friday night in the ER. Also Saturday night.

But he's home now and doing well, and Barb's been feeling okay, and my knee is slowly getting better. And since my nephew's team won both its Saturday games, I was able to see them play on Sunday—and not just play, but take home the championship. Maybe the family luck is turning.

And it was a lovely day of baseball—no overzealous parents or unsportsmanlike coaches, no unpleasantness, no drama apart from the very normal kind you get from a hard-fought championship game with a close final score. Nothing like what you'll find in my upcoming book, Die Like an Eagle, in which Meg has to solve a murder connected to her twin sons' coach-pitch baseball league.

So I snuck in a small patriotic note after all—at least if, like me, you consider baseball the great American pastime and the perfect way to spent part of the Fourth of July weekend. A small patriotic note and a very short plug for the upcoming book (release date August 2, 2015, and you can read the first chapter here.)

I hope all of you had Fourth of July weekends far less filled with injuries and other dramas!  (But if you didn't . . . we're all ears.

Teachable Moments. No, really.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Trusting you all had a Happy Fourth! We had kids and grandkids galore--so adorable! and perfect in every way-- and I kept track of the new arrivals by taking photos of the growing pile of discarded shoes as everyone headed to the pool.

We had a couple of “teachable moments"—like when Grandchild two threatened to throw a remote control into the pool if his father didn’t do—something, I forget what it was. I said: “Try it, Bub.” (“Bub” is not his name, but it seemed to convey a certain grandmotherly menace.) “Trust me, you won’t be happy with what happens next.”

Not sure if that is proper grand-parenting, but he didn’t throw it.

Then there was the “I’m not going to to the parade” gambit. Which I answered with—“Oh, gosh, that’s too bad. We’re all going, and we’ll miss you.” He decided to go.

Wonderful friend of the Femmes Alice Loweecey’s post also deals with helping kids learn. But in a very different way. She’s better at it than I am. (And her new book is ready to pre-order! See below..)

Make your own Pedestals

          By Alice Loweecey

 

Lance Armstrong.

Wait! I promise this won’t be depressing.

Really, I do. If you can’t trust an ex-nun, who can you trust?

When my kids were little, we got them hooked on bicycling and the Tour de France.

[

We entered family bike races. When Armstrong beat cancer and returned to racing, we held him up to our sons as an example of athletes who win without drugs.

I know. I know.

My kids play multiple sports. They also coach and referee. As the doping scandals in the Tour escalated, we still held up Armstrong as the epitome of a “clean” athlete.

I know. I know.

When Armstrong got nailed and made the “I’ve been caught” face, I admit to wanting to heave a bicycle through the TV screen.

 

But the joy of bicycling isn’t touched by rampant Tour de France doping.

[

Being parents, we turned the fallen idol scandal into a teaching moment. It’s our job. (It’s also our job to embarrass our kids in public. We take that part of our job very seriously. A good parental snogging does it every time. Hee hee hee.)

 

 

We told our kids not to let one lying sack of **** ruin their trust in people. We told them how most people are honest and many athletes reach the top of their craft without cheating and doping. We told them to prove to themselves they could reach the top of their craft honestly.

We stopped the teaching moment there, because the “parental decibel” was kicking in: That level of a parent’s voice where the kid tunes it out. (You get cynical and experienced after two kids.)

When I started writing with the goal of publication, I knew I had to up my game. I read craft books. Donald Maass and Browne & King, anyone? Can’t get any better than those. I heard about the “one million words” and it daunted me, so I put numbers out of my mind.

I finished a book. Then I rewrote it. Five times. Front to back. Probably reached that million mark. I put writers on pedestals, but for their skill, not their personal lives. HP Lovecraft, because I love his work despite the fact that he was a bigoted git. Patricia Wentworth, because her books have characters who are real. And Dickens, because… everything.

Nobody’s perfect. And that’s the important point, isn’t it? Nobody’s perfect. Perfect characters are boring. One of my favorite Dickens characters is Sydney Carton from A Tale of Two Cities, and a character doesn’t get much more flawed than Carton.

Professional bicycling will survive the doping scandals. Great books will rise above their sometimes flawed writers. I may have many flaws as a writer, but my only drug of choice? Coffee, of course! And you? Coffee? Red Bull? 5-Hour Energy? 10 miles on a bicycle to get the energy flowing? How do you make your own pedestal?

HANK: Absolutely. Coffee. How about you, Femmes? And how would you have handled Bub? Or the Lance affair?

 

“In Nun But the Brave, the third in Alice Loweecey's page-turning Giulia Driscoll mystery series, Loweecy pulls off an incredible balancing act, whipping up the perfect blend of humor, suspense, and poignancy. I lost track of how many times this book made me laugh out loud, even as I rooted for Giulia and double-checked to make sure my doors were locked. Henery Press has a reputation for publishing great cozies, and Nun But the Brave is no exception!” –Jess Lourey, Lefty-Nominated Author of the Murder by Month Mysteries “Giulia is a sympathetic, well-drawn character who has built a full life for herself after leaving the convent, but appealing touches of the former nun remain.” – Booklist

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABOUT ALICE

Baker of brownies and tormenter of characters, Alice Loweecey recently celebrated her thirtieth year outside the convent. She grew up watching Hammer horror films and Scooby-Doo mysteries, which explains a whole lot. When she's not creating trouble for her sleuth Giulia Driscoll or inspiring nightmares as her alter-ego Kate Morgan, she can be found growing her own vegetables (in summer) and cooking with them (the rest of the year).

THOUGHTFUL DAY

I doubt if anyone is glued to her computer this morning to read blogs, least of all mine. But I want to share my thoughts with you about the Fourth of July.

There’s a famous speech from “Newsroom,” delivered perfectly by Jeff Daniels, in which he derides a coed’s assertion that America is the greatest country on earth. It’s sobering, because the USA is behind on so many levels, when it ought to be leading the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyzDRc34l2g

And I think the writers for the show made some great points. In many ways, our country is resting on its laurels instead of moving forward.
Maybe the Fourth should be a day to emphasize that? We made such a great beginning; we should not stop moving toward improvement.

Despite all that, I want to take a minute to say that I think citizens of America are very fortunate, and I am proud to be counted among them. We seem to have lost clarity of vision, and unity of purpose, but still we are the most optimistic nation on earth, and achieving the American dream is still possible.

Let me point out that the American dream is not world conquest. The American dream is that by hard work and determination, someone who starts from a very humble beginning can achieve security and a good life . . . and by “a good life,” I mean one free of financial hardship and deprivation.

So, today, let’s think of how far we’ve come, how good that is; and let’s plan on throwing off divisiveness to go even farther.

Charlaine Harris

Kevin did it

by Kris Neri

There’s a terrorist living in my house. No, not one of the awful people who bomb strangers. I spelled that wrong. I’m living with a terrier. The words are spelled similarly, and while terriers certainly don't create outright terror, they do create a bit of havoc. 

After losing our beloved Cocker Spaniel, Annabelle, some months back, we decided to adopt a new dog. Our choice is always to rescue, since so many discarded pets need homes. And once again, we decided on a small dog. We’ve had dogs of all breeds, and variations of breeds, and all sizes in the past. And we’ve loved them all.

But our Maine Coon cat, Philly, is now sixteen years old, and though he’s in great shape for his age, he’s moving a little slower than he used to, and he doesn’t he pop up onto furniture as fast. He’s an unusual cat. On one hand, sweetly gentle. When he goes outside on the patio with us, the birds don’t even fly away. He watches them as they peck the ground for birdseed, just a few feet away. But he never approaches them, and certainly never attacks. And yet, when we used to have him in our bookstore, and large dogs came in with their owners, Philly would give them a smack from the countertop, immediately asserting his dominance over them. So we knew he would never be afraid of a larger dog. It’s just that we believed if the play got a little rough when we weren’t there, our old boy could easily jump up on a chair to get away from the little roughhouse.

We didn’t know that some small dogs can fly.

The one we chose proved to be even smaller than we expected to find. At the shelter, they told us she was a Chihuahua and Cairn terrier mix. Although I certainly knew what a Chihuahua was, I couldn’t even call up an image of a Cairn terrier. And at that time, the word “terrier” didn’t strike fear in my heart.

Someone at the shelter named the little charmer Rosie, and we thought it fit, so we kept it, although we decided her real name is Rosebud. It also turns out that it doesn’t matter that we couldn’t recall anything about a Cairn terrier, because most likely there’s not much Cairn in our little Rosie-stew. From the shape of her head and body, and the strength of her tiny shoulders, we’re convinced now that she’s more likely a Jack Russell terrier mix.

We once saw a TV show on Jack Russell terriers that left no doubt that the breed was outright crazy, and we sure weren’t nuts enough to take one on. Only it seems we did. After decades of experience with dogs and cats of all kinds, we’ve encountered our first terrorist…uh, terrier, and found that requires an unexpected learning curve.

Her antics were small enough to start with. She knocked over the basket in our closet that we use as a hamper and made a bed of our dirty laundry. And ripped up used tissues in bathroom wastebaskets, or unrolled toilet paper. I never found it strange when cats unrolled TP, but somehow I find it strange when a dog rips of a section and carries it around. 

Joe was so determine to deny any connection between whatever havoc we discovered when we came home and his adorable little Rosie, he gave her an alter ego. He decided that the havoc we’d find was created, not by Rosie, but by “Kevin,” named for the little boy in the "Home Alone" movies. It was always, “What did Kevin do today?” Until, of course, he had to admit there was no Kevin, just Rosie.

We find the little squirt on tabletops. Now, we’ve had cats who’ve raided countertops, and dogs big enough to stretch up and steal from tables. But we’ve never had a dog who walked on tables before. We finally had to admit, from the placemats knocked askew, that she checked out our tables all the time when we weren’t there. But now she does it when we are there. One day I glanced into our dining room from the kitchen in time to see the dog on the table and about to hurl herself onto our sideboard — where we keep several breakables — before I shouted her name. Now when we leave the house, we have to squeeze the chairs tightly to the table, or better still, lean them into the tables to keep the little monster from climbing up there. Our home looks like a banquet, where all the seats are saved. 

Otherwise, our table looks like this:

Or worse.

Since then I’ve seen her use my desk’s surface as a springboard toward climbing on a high windowsill. Not even our cat ever did that, not even when he was younger. And don’t get me started on everything she’s stolen from tabletops, desks, and nightstands.

Terrorists…uh, terriers, we’ve learned, are smart, energetic, and cannot stand to be bored. Nope, no boredom here now; not for any of us. And training them is said to be a challenge. No kidding.

On the other hand, terriers are as playful as puppies, and even if Rosie can seem to defy gravity better than a spider monkey, she’s brought an unexpected measure of fun into our household that we apparently needed.

She’s also brought interest into an old cat’s life. After we lost Annabelle, he sank so deeply into grief, nothing we tried brought him out of it. Until we introduced “Kevin” into our midst. Now, he follows her around as if he can’t wait to see what she’ll get into next. It’s like pet performance art. And though Rosie does thoroughly dominate us, she doesn’t dominate Philly. That he’s still king in our household allows him to keep piling up those old-cat years.

The obvious solution is crating, but we have radically different opinions about that. One of us regards it as a sensible solution, while the other considers it pet-jail. No point of compromise there.

So we accept regular visits from Kevin as the price of having fun little Rosie in our lives.

Pet owners, do you have any “Kevins” in your lives?