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I need a new metaphor

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

I need a new metaphor.

For years, whenever I wanted to express extreme disinclination for doing something, I'd say "I'd rather have a root canal."

I hadn't ever had a root canal, mind you, but I'd heard from people who had and I knew what was involved. Didn't sound like fun. Didn't sound that different from medieval torture.

So it became my go-to metaphor.

"Have you seen Halloween XXIII?" "No, I'd rather have a root canal."

"Have you tasted my crab dip" "I'd rather have a root canal. And besides, I'm allergic."

"Hey, would you like to ride the Super Cyclone roller coaster?" "Can I have a root canal instead?"

You get the picture.

Then my dentist informed me that I needed a root canal.  The tooth on which he had filled a very deep cavity had, as he put it, "gone south." He put in a quick call to the endodontist he usually refers patients to, who was down the hall and agreed to see me right away.

I wanted to turn tail and flee, but the pain in my jaw wasn't going to get any better.  So I dragged myself slowly down the hallway.  Cue the ominous music in the background.

To my astonishment, I now like my endodontist. I mean, really, really like him. Our first visit, he told me that he'd been traumatized when his dentist ignored his complaints that the anesthetic wasn't working well enough. So he vowed never to cause his patients pain.

And he didn't. I had two root canals, about six months apart. (There seems to be a dental ordinance requiring teeth who want to have their roots canaled to behave themselves until the weekend--preferably a long weekend when you are out of town. My previous two root canals happened right after Malice Domestic and Bouchercon.) But while I wasn't eager to have another, I wasn't dreading it.

Then this past weekend, while out of town for a nephew's baseball tournament, I detected the early but unmistakable signs that another molar was going south.When I got back to town, I called my endodontist's office.

He wasn't in. I could see his partner, though.

I wasn't, initially, very happy.  I adore my endodontist.  I didn't actually know his partner. I reassured myself that my endodontist wouldn't be partners with someone he didn't see eye-to-eye with on important issues like, say, not hurting your patients. Still . . . I was anxious.

So after he confirmed that yes, the tooth was toast, I came right out and asked if he shared his partner's dedication to not causing pain. And was very relieved to hear that if possible, he believed even more strongly in it. And he was as good as his word.

Now I'm on the other side of my third root canal. I have prescription-strength Advil to deal with any post surgical pain.  I'm supposed to stick to softer foods for a few days, and not chew on the root canaled side. But I still really like my endodontists.  Both of them. So while I hope I never have to see them again, it won't be the end of the world if I have to.

Just one problem. I need a new metaphor.  "I'd rather have a root canal" just won't work anymore.

Any suggestions?

 

 

Talking about Talking!

 
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Time for our Tuesday chat--and so hey.  We'll talk about talking. Do you love it? I do. Giving speeches, and presentations,  and classes, and speaking at book clubs. I'm trying to remember the very first one I did--certainly it was in 2007-ish, the launch of my first novel PRIME TIME--oh, no, that's wrong. It was before the book even came out, at the Swampscott Massachusetts Public Library.  Yes! And in fact, I kept the newspaper clipping about it--it's on my fridge. (Wow, that's been there a long time...)

And aw, they called me a "fledgling author." (I still feel like that.)  Do you remember your first book event?

CATRIONA MCPHERSON: My first speaking event as a published author - I'm drawing a veil over those 9am phonology lectures - was in June 2005 at an independent bookshop in Castle Douglas, in Galloway. My first novel -AFTER THE ARMISTICE BALL - had just come out and the room was packed with family and friends who'd booked hotel rooms and blown up airbeds in my house. Few of them had ever been at a book launch before (I know I hadn't) and none of us knew what was supposed to happen.

Luckily the shop staff kept us right. I have no memory of what I said, but I have a clear recollection of my sister Audrey saying "I'd rather die. I'd rather be dead. Aren't you terrified?" when I was about to start speaking. Aspep talks go . . . Also, there was some heckling in the Q&A. A woman asked "Do the words flow out of your pen?" and my oldest friend (and honorary fourth sister) Catherine shouted "The words flow out of her mouth!" 

LAURA DISILVERIO: I do get a kick out of book events. It's such fun to hang out with people who value books and writing, especially book groups!  If I'm remembering right, my first book event was at my local Barnes & Noble (still there, thankfully!) in May of 2010 when TRESSED TO KILL came out. That was my first published book, part of the Southern Beauty Shop series I wrote as Lila Dare. A local bakery, Little London, baked a cake and iced it to look like the cover of the book. It was delish! (I couldn't find any photos of that event, but here's a cake made to look like a later books--SWIFT RUN.) There were a couple hundred of my friends and family members there, and the staff was very helpful. It was a great party, really. I sold and signed a lot of books, and schmoozed with my friends and anyone else who drifted by, and gave out the bookmarks all successful authors told me were the crucial promotional item to have on hand. I had a blast! 

  Not all events are like that, of course, especially when I was knew to the writing biz. Many a time I sat alone in a book store or library, staring at the empty chairs and trying to look like I was passionately engaged with examining my nails or searching through my purse for something. I've also done events for the benefit of the one or two wonderful people who showed up.

HANK: And now we've all done so many of them--and it's such a major part of my life!

CATRIONA: I was talking to a group just yesterday. It was - get this - the 80th anniversary of Elk Grove Book Club.

HANK: And such a terrific way to make new friends.  I know I've gotten more confident about them, have you?  I used to read my speeches from typed word-for -word pages. I still HAVE the pages, new each book and different-ish for each group, certainly. But once I forgot my file of speech (yikes!) and had to do it without--and it was more than fine.  How do you handle reading versus extemporaneous?

LAURA: I have to confess to never having had worries about doing book event talks. I've got an extensive background in teaching and speaking from my former profession (which I won't mention because Catriona will make fun of me) -

CATRIONA: Never! That's not teasing; that's awe - so talking about something I'm intimately familiar with--myself, my writing process, and my books--doesn't faze me. That said, over the years, I've honed a few stories which tend to get repeated, and I've culled out the recollections or anecdotes that don't get the laugh or don't seem to interest people. So, that's a long-winded way to say that my speaking at book events has always been extemporaneous. If I'm giving a keynote speech or some such, that's a different story.

HANK: Oh, absolutely, a keynote is a big deal--and each event gets a new one. 

CATRIONA: I think I have got more confident, now I stop to consider it. I used to get a very fluffy mouth and the only reason I didn't read from a piece of paper was that everyone would see the paper trembling. I don't get that drymouth now. I still get a blotchy neck. (See pic with Santa hat!)  I usually jot notes down in the flyleaf of my book - especially the names of volunteers or bookshop staff to be thanked. My notes wouldn't make much sense to anyone else. "Beach", "Bread oven" "round the back" . . . but they kickstart me.

HANK:  What do you talk about? I give my background, how I came to be an author, how it connects with my career as a reporter. Then what kinds of books I writer, and why, and then a bit more specifics about the book. Then I have a sort of "mid-life addition to my career" element--where I talk about the challenges and joys of doing something completely new. And huh. All three of us have done that: had a career that informs our writing for various reasons, and also started writing fiction...ah, after our twenties. What do you think about that?

CATRIONA: it varies. Yesterday at Elk Grove, I talked about my indebtedness to Dorothy L Sayers and the book collections that led to QUIET NEIGHBORS being written. If I'm talking about Dandy Gilver, I've got some great researching tales ("Bread Oven"). If it's the modern novels, I talk a lot about where the ideas come from, especially since one of them came from a bakery in Carmel. Often the Q&A is the best bit.  And here's a tip: I usually hint at something "that I'm not going to go into, but ask me in the Q&A if you want to know more". Someone always wants to know more and the hush is broken. 

HANK: Oh, yes, planting a question is always good! I do, that, too. Because, there's sometimes that moment of---everyone not wanting to be the first to ask.  

  LAURA: I usually start by talking about why I became a writer and how I made the transition from my former career to writing. I talk about "the call" from my agent, and how long it took to get from starting my novel to landing an agent and then a contract. It's a mini little "you can reinvent yourself in your middle years" talk. I usually talk about my process (because I ALWAYS get asked about it), and about what the current book means to me, why I wrote it, maybe what sparked it or something interesting about the research for it. I'm almost always asked why I don't write books that are closely tied to my former profession, so I sometimes bring that up as well. No later than the 20 minute point, I open it up for questions.

HANK: Do you read from your book? I rarely do--in fact, I don't unless I am specifically asked. And although I've seen that be a big hit with other authors, I have also seen it be a complete disaster. 

LAURA: I only read if asked. I've got a theater background and enjoy reading (and I've been told I do it well), but I've always found it boring to be read to, so I don't do it usually. I also think some people have their own concept of the characters' voices and don't want the author's voice imposed over that.

CATRIONA: I do read, usually. And try hard to give it some drama (see pic with major drama being given!) But I edit and mangle the bit I'm reading to make it work. If someone's trying to follow along they usually give up quite quickly. Sometimes, if it's after lunch, or it's late and/or hot I ask if the audience wants a reading and gauge the response. And I suspect there's an accent component in play. Ending a reading at a cliffhanger moment is a low trick - that I use every single time!

HANK: But of course! And finally, there's the question I always get asked. Where did your name come from?  What question do you always get asked?

 

CATRIONA: Will Dandy Gilver ever come to America? And the answer is no. Miss Marple belongs in St Mary Mead, Inspector Morse belongs in Oxford and Dandy belongs in some wind-lashed, rain-soaked corner of Scotland, trundling around in her Morris Cowley.

LAURA: I always get asked why I don't write spy thrillers, given my background. I have to explain that 1) I'm actually handicapped by the fact that I had a security clearance because I can't use anything I know, and I'd have to submit all my manuscripts to an office for a security review and 2) I don't generally like spy fiction. It's not enough about character for me, and some of the absurdities that are passed off as "real procedure" make me cringe. Physics, people, physics! Too many authors and movies do things with spy satellites that aren't even possible by the laws of physics. Okay, I'm off my soapbox now.

HANK: So what about you Femmes and readers? What are your secrets for a successful event?

A decluttering update

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

I took a break from the basement and the decluttering project in general this weekend to escort one of my nephews at an out-of-town baseball tournament. And between moments of frenzied activity--like that involved with getting a fully clad and equipped player from the hotel to the field half an hour away by 7:15 to warm up for an 8 a.m. game--I had time to think.  Some of my thinking, I admit, amounted to gloating that my basement was three hours away, giving me an unimpeachable excuse for not working on it. But I also had time to muse on the resemblances between decluttering and writing.

And I realized that especially in my basement, decluttering isn't so much like writing as it is like revising and editing.

I'm a big fan of revision. I don't write good books. I write crappy books, either too long or too short, containing pages of back story and telling instead of showing and all the other sins that beset working writers. And then I revise and polish them into some degree of goodness.

If I look at it in that light, the basement isn't a hell-hole, a human-made disaster, or a reason to audition for an appearance on Hoarding: Buried Alive. It's just a rough draft in worse shape than usual, and thus badly in need of a stern editorial pen.

There's a phrase many of us use in editing: killing the puppies.  William Faulkner said it more elegantly: “In writing, you must kill your darlings.” But I think "killing puppies" more accurately captures how painful and horrible it can feel. You're reading your draft, and you come across a scene that has made you glow with pride every time you read it.  It's beautifully written. You just know it will move your readers to laughter or tears or (best of all) both in quick succession.  You remember the day you wrote it--how you nodded to yourself when you finished, or maybe leaped into the air with a fist pump. Or maybe you remember how long you labored over it, how much exacting research it took, how much soul-searching and painful self-revelation.

But now you're reading it in context, and you realize that no matter how beautifully written it is, how moving, how hard you worked to write it, how much time and energy you spent researching it . . . it's a darling. A puppy.  It does nothing whatsoever to advance the plot; in fact, it brings the plot to a screaming halt for way too many pages.

You try to rationalize. It helps with the character development. It helps with the pacing. It's important local color. It's one of the best things you've ever written.

It's a puppy.  Put it out of its misery.

Fortunately, disposing of the corpse of a murdered literary darling is relatively easy.  You clip it out of the main body of your manuscript. You paste it into a document of its own. You reread it, savoring its literary excellence.  Then you save it. You haven't really killed it, you see--you've just put it into hibernation. One of these days, you are sure, you will find a use for that bit of brilliant prose, and until then, it will be there waiting for you.

Unfortunately, I haven't found such an easy and compact way of dealing with the darlings in my basement. After all, if these things played an active (even if only decorative) role in my life, they wouldn't have ended up in the basement, would they? And I can't very well paste them into a document and store them in the cloud until I either need them or forget about their very existence. They're here, underfoot, taking up physical space and mental energy, and I have to deal with them.

Thank goodness for the upcoming sale, for recycling, and yes, the trash can. Still, it's an emotionally and physically grueling process. And one I've always thought I was very bad at, packrat that I am.

But maybe redefining it will help.  I'm not cleaning, decluttering, purging, whatever.  I'm just editing my stuff. I may be a packrat, but I'm pretty damned good at editing.

See you later. Got some editing to do.

 

 

Welcome to the World of eSports

By Joanna Campbell Slan 

Question: At any given time, three percent of all the Internet traffic in the world is comprised of what?

Answer: People playing League of Legends (LoL).

Reluctantly, my husband and I were dragged into the world of professional eSports when our son got involved with Team Dignitas, a professional League of Legends Team. Like a lot of kids, Michael loved video games. Luckily, he was able to turn his passion into his profession, because today he’s the Vice President and General Manager of Team Dignitas, the eSports division of the Philadelphia 76ers.

Right now, you’re probably scratching your head and thinking, “What in the world is eSports?”

You know it as video games. But this isn’t your Pacman or Tetris of old. The Huffington Post calls eSports the fastest growing industry today.

Sure, there’s a debate over whether it qualifies as sports or not, but the US government agreed it does when they granted us the first ever Visa for an eSports player. Soledad O’Brien thinks it’s a sport, too.

And traditional sports teams, such as the Philadelphia 76ers, are buying up eSports teams, because they see eSports as having a bright future.

How big is it?

In 2015, 36 Million people watched 2015 League of Legends (LoL) World Championships as compared to 33 Million people who watched the 2015 BCS (Bowl Championship Series).

• The eSports market ($92 Billion market size) has surpassed both the recorded music and movie industry in gross sales.
• Over 100 Million people play LoL each month.
• Sure, Jimmy Kimmel joked about it—but he certainly took a lot of flak for it.

Here’s how it works with LoL, which is just one of the many eSports out there:

• Each team has five players, who play “champions” or characters with specialized abilities.
• The players have positions: Top Lane, Jungler, Mid Lane, AD Carry (Attack Damage), and Support.
• The players are known as Summoners and are called by their Summoner Names. Our team players are Ssumday, Shrimp, Keane, Altec, and Big. (Big formerly went by "Baby Eater," but the powers that govern eSports were not too pleased with that name. Hence, he's now "Big.")
• The game is won when a team brings down the Nexus of the opposing team.

What’s life like for a pro gamer?

• They command salaries up to $500,000 a year. (One retired pro player, Imaqtpie makes $4 Million a year streaming.)
• They live in a team house. Ours is a $4 Million mansion in Brentwood, California, complete with swimming pool and sauna.
• Our players have a professional chef who’s on call 24/7 and a house manager.
• Two coaches work with them.
• It’s very stressful. Their mechanical ability has to be top-notch. Most players average six keystrokes a second while playing.
• On game day, they play in the Riot studio in Los Angeles, California. The games are streamed on Twitch.

Like a lot of specialized activities, LoL has a language all its own. Fortunately, there are professional casters (broadcasters) who all the games.

Currently, Team Dignitas is 5/1, which puts us as Number One in the team standings. Believe me, it's a LOT more fun to be winning than to lose! You can see highlights from one of our more recent games here.

Do you know anyone who plays online video games?

All Hail Broke Loose

By Elaine Viets

 "A severe storm brought gigantic hail to parts of Oklahoma and Texas," the news story began. "Golf-ball sized hail fell . . ."

That's a hail stone an inch and three-quarters in diameter, according to the National Weather Service.

How was hail measured before golf balls were invented?

The National Weather Service official list for hail sizes ranges from pea-sized -– that's quarter-inch hail -– to softball-sized, an ice chunk four and a half inches in diameter.

Just don't confuse quarter-inch hail with quarter-sized hail, which is one-inch hail.

My personal favorite on the list is teacup-sized hail – three-inch hail. That's extremely accurate description. A hail storm can sound a lot like crashing crockery.

Grapefruit-sized hail is four inches around, but it's hard to image getting hit by a fat, squishy grapefruit would hurt much.

The National Weather Service has another hail size chart. It starts with money -– three-quarter-inch hail is the size of a penny -– and goes up to the Kennedy half-dollar. That's one and a quarter inch hail.

After JFK, hail sizes are golf balls, pool balls (as in pool table, not swimming pool), baseballs, and softballs – all of which have to hurt.

The National Weather Service says, "Imagine a baseball dropped from an airplane flying at 30,000 feet ... imagine that baseball reaching speeds of 120 MPH as it falls to the ground ... and imagine you're under it!"

Game over, folks. "Hail causes $1 billion dollars in damage to crops and property each year."

I can imagine that, but when you get in to the big leagues of hail, a whopping four and three-quarter inches, the best the weather service can come up with is a CD.

A compact disk? That doesn't weigh anything.

Fortunately, the weather service had the uh, stones, to describe the largest recorded hailstone, which landed in South Dakota. That whopper "had a diameter of eight inches and weighed just under 2 lbs. This was after the resident that found the hailstone put it in the freezer but had a 6 hour power outage and some melting likely occurred."

"It was nearly the size of a volleyball!" the weather service said.

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Win Pumped For Murder, my 10th Dead-End Job mystery, in hardcover. Click Contests at www.elaineviets.com

Those Daring Girl Detectives

I've written here before about how discovering Nancy Drew inspired my love of mysteries. Nancy led me to a host of other juvenile detectives, and I read as many of them as I could find. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I first began reading them, many of these series had already been dropped because their sales were lagging. Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and the Bobbsey Twins were still going strong, however. It seemed that the days of the juvenile detective were numbered. Juvenile mysteries continued to be published, but there were rarely any new series in the vein of the classics. Most of them, from what I remember, were stand-alones.

Children's publishing these days is vibrant. The bookstore shelves are full of fiction for children and adolescents of various reading levels. What I don't see that often, however, are mysteries with young detectives, other than Nate the Great, for example. Series sleuths in the mold of Nancy, Frank, and Joe are somewhat passé, it seems. Recently I went on a ramble through the shelves at a chain bookstore looking for mysteries -- no paranormal mysteries, just plain mystery/detective stories -- and I didn't find many series books. That of course doesn't mean they're not out there, but this chain didn't have many in stock. I saw some classics, like Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh and The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. I saw a number of paranormal mystery series, too.

Happily for my quest, I did discover one relatively new series by a young English writer named Robin Stevens. Her series is set in 1930s England -- nostalgia calling for the original Nancy Drew books! -- and features two thirteen-year-old girls, Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong. The setting in the first book is a girls' school named Deepdean. Hazel, who has been sent from Hong Kong by her madly Anglophile father to be educated in England, narrates the stories. Her best friend, Daisy Wells, is the quintessential aristocratic golden girl who does her best not to let her intelligence shine through and make her unpopular. In the first book, Murder is Bad Manners (aka A Most Unladylike Murder in the UK), Hazel finds the body of one of their teachers. She runs off to report it, and by the time she is back with others, the body has disappeared. Only Daisy believes Hazel actually found a body.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Not only is it a good detective story, with clues in the classic manner, it also has an interesting setting. Through Hazel's eyes we get to see both the bad and the good of the English public school system (what we in the US would call private schools). If you are an adult who enjoys reading books like this, try the series, and if you have young readers who are looking for mysteries without ghosts, zombies, vampires, werewolves, and other scary creatures, this might be just the ticket. The tradition of Nancy Drew lives on.

 

by Laura DiSilverio

As many of you may know, my family and I were lucky enough to spend three weeks in England, Scotland and Iceland in late May and early June. We got back last week. This blog may be the equivalent of "come over and see our slides," but this was such a once-in-a-lifetime experience for us that I want to share some of it with you (and hear about some of your most memorable vacations).

Vacay Recap

We had an absolutely splendid three weeks in the UK and Iceland. We visited castles and cathedrals, enjoyed several West End plays (met David Tennant!), hiked, dodged terrorist attacks (we were in England for both recent attacks), took my youngest to see her birthplace in Harrogate, were moved by works of art in many museums, shopped, ate scrumptious food (even tried haggis), whale-watched, celebrated our 24th anniversary, marveled at waterfalls and glaciers, took bazillions of photos, went into shock at the prices in Iceland, and enjoyed each other.

Lessons Learned

I appear to be in a reflective time of life, and I returned from this vacation with a few "deeper" ponderings.

Much of life's good/ill fortune is random, a matter of timing. We were at the site of the London terrorist attack just a couple of days ahead of when it happened. The fact that we weren't involved, weren't injured or killed, was not due to any planning we did, or superior  intelligence or savviness on our part. We got lucky. That's a somewhat sobering reflection for those of us (moi!) who like to believe we're in control of (most) aspects of our lives, and that if we plan carefully enough, do enough research, take the right precautions, we'll be okay. Not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Memory is a fickle thing. If you'd asked us to draw a map to our house in Harrogate, a destination I drove to/from every day for two years, we'd have gotten it wrong. We managed to find the house, but there were a couple of turns we had completely forgotten. Ditto for finding our way around the town. Granted, this was all sixteen years ago, but still. We did it every day! It makes me wonder what other "truths" in my life have been distorted by faulty memory.

Driving on the "wrong" side of the road does not get easier with age. We experienced far more stress driving in the UK this time than the last time we were there in 2001. Sigh. We have resolved to travel more in the near future, rather than putting it off until a time when a bus tour may be our only option!

My family is my greatest blessing. I am unutterably grateful that the four of us (me, hubby, and two teen daughters) were together 24/7 for 22 days and sincerely enjoyed each other for 98% of that time. Sure, there were brief moments of testiness where we went to our separate corners and read (me), played computer chess (Tom), or watched Netflix on our phones (girls), but they were few and greatly outweighed by the pleasure we took in each other's company.

So, where are you headed this summer? What are your best (or worst!) vacation memories?

Musical history

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

Yes, the decluttering continues. And one day this week I tackled a chunk of the job I'd been dreading: the LPs and 45s.

I know in many circles vinyl is coming back. But it's not coming back into my life. Sorry, audiophiles, but that's just the way it is. So my sorting wasn't really to figure out which records to keep and which to consign to the sale pile. They're all going into the sale pile eventually. I didn't want the vinyl, but I wanted to figure out how much of the music I still wanted.

So I went through them. I nodded with satisfaction at the favorites that I knew I'd already replaced with CDs or MP3s. In a few cases, I shuddered and hurried the album onto the sale pile—did I ever really like that enough to buy it?

Most fell somewhere in between. So I started a list. Two lists, actually. Albums I liked well enough that I might want to replace them if I hadn't already—I haven't gone through the CD collection yet. And individual songs I liked well enough that while I could live without the album, I might want to replace the song. A remarkable number of those.

Remember when sometimes you'd buy a whole album because of one song? Maybe because you loved that one song so much you hoped you'd love the whole album? Or maybe you loved that one song so much that you had to have it, even if you couldn't find a single, so you bought the whole album?

I think I had at last a hundred of those. Plus a hundred and fifty singles. I've always been more of a song listener than an album listener.

In a few cases I was reminded of songs I used to love, listened to the snippet available in iTunes, said yes, I need that again, and pressed the buy button. In most cases, I have already or will soon look up the song up on Amazon and iTunes. If I don't need to have it right away, but it's available, digitally, or on a CD, I can bear to let go of the record.

At the end, I had a long list of songs and albums I might want to replace and about twenty physical LPs or singles that appear to be out of print. (Or is that out of press? Whatever the word is for vinyl that's only available secondhand.) Although it's possible I was just getting tired toward the end of the sort, and didn't do as good a search as I should. I've put those twenty aside for now. I'll do further research later. Followed by some soul-searching—do I really want it? Or am I just reluctant to let go because it's unavailable, or only available secondhand at an exorbitant price? For the few things I really want, I can get my hands on a USB turntable, digitize them, and let the vinyl go.

End result: my sale pile is the larger by half a dozen boxes. My bank account will eventually be the smaller if I decide I really need to buy more than a few of the songs that have been trapped on vinyl for the decade or so since I've had a reliable working turntable. And I took a day-long emotional journey.

Because your music collection is more than just music—it's also a part of your past and your soul. The album you used to put on when you were blue, because it fit your mood. The catchy tune you used to hum when things were going great. The song you kept hearing over the radio that fateful summer. The voice that got you through a bleak winter.

So yeah. I want a lot of this music back. I can't believe I've done without so much of it this long.

 

Life on a Small Island ... Homecoming

by Marcia Talley

After a three-day/two night crossing of the Gulf Stream from the Bahamas, my husband and I made landfall at Georgetown, SC – oh, the shrimp right off the shrimp boat, among other delights!!

Then we meandered up the Intracoastal Waterway for two weeks visiting friends along the way, and as of last Tuesday, docked Iolanthe in Whitehall Creek near Annapolis, where we called an Uber and hightailed it home.

Every homecoming has been a surprise. Two years ago, we discovered that a squirrel had gotten in sometime during our absence, burrowed into the living room sofa, and died. Last year, I’d been home for a couple of days when I got down on my knees in the guest room to look for something, pulled up the bed skirt and there – inches from my nose – lay a second desiccated squirrel, fortunately not as aromatic as the first. Since then, we’ve had the chimneys capped.

Problem solved. Or so I thought.

This year I opened the pantry.

You've heard the saying, “When cat’s away the mouse will play?” I have no idea how they got in, or how long they’d been at it, but a team of mice ate every bit of rice, beans, lentils and popcorn; decimated the spaghetti, penne pasta and elbow macaroni; feasted on Triscuit and saltines; managed to munch their way through three (3!) two-pound packages of Sucanat and then, presumably on a sugar high, proceeded to frolic about the kitchen strewing flour everywhere. (For some reason, they didn’t touch the Quinoa spaghetti. When I pointed this out to my husband, he said, “I rest my case.”)

This would never have happened if Tommy, our excellent mouser, hadn’t passed away.

Can anyone lend me a cat?

In the meantime, I’m getting well-acquainted with the pest control guys both here and abroad. Thank you Troy and Scott!

Freezing in the Summer

by Leigh Perry / Toni L.P. Kelner

It was the hottest of times. It was the coldest of times.

As I write this, Boston is just getting past a wicked hot spell, with temperatures well over the norm for this time of year. So that's the hot part of my mis-quotation up above. For the cold part, there's the book I just finished edits on, The Skeleton Paints a Picture. The book is based on the snowiest winter on record in Massachusetts, when the show got so deep I started to feel as if it was physically impossible for that much snow to ever melt.

It did, of course, by the middle of July. (No, I'm not kidding. Here's a link for July 2015.)

The book isn't actually set during the nightmare winter of 2014/2015, but that's what I kept thinking of when writing those scenes of wintery aggravation. Streets narrowed by the plowed snow as towns ran out of places to put it, and cars plowed in so thoroughly that they were barely visible. Mountains of snow, in which grocery disappeared for months. Cabin fever I'd never experienced before.

Check out these pictures:

    

I cannot imagine how long it took to dig that car on the right out of that snowbank. (By the way, the car in front of me that didn't clear off the top of their car? It would be a dandy motive for murder in a mystery.)

 

 Making snow angels doesn't work so well with snow this deep.

 

Now, our slide didn't get shorter. The show just got that much deeper.

This is the world I've been remembering and picturing while outside, it was sweltering. If you think this is a bit of a mental disconnect, you're absolutely right. And it's not my first. I've written Christmas stories in the spring, ice stores in the summer, and lovely autumn weather during the worst of winters.

So if you ever see a writer who seems to be dressed for the wrong season, it's a good guess that we're writing for very different weather.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So yeah, throwing in a body lost in the snow only seemed right.