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What? I've Got to Go Out in the Sleet to Get My Pizza?

By Elaine Viets

           An arctic wind is howling, the sleet is lashing your windows. It's a good night to stay in. You're in your jammies and robe, Netflix is fired up, and you call for a pizza.
           But if Domino's has its way, you won't stay snug and warm. You'll have to fight the sleet and snow to pick up your pie.
         Domino's is testing a new way to deliver pizza, according to Business Insider. A self-driving vehicle will bring your pizza to your home. No, wait. To your curb. You'll have to go down those slippery front steps, across your icy driveway and slide out to the self-driving car waiting at the curb, pick up your pizza, and go back through the wind and ice. You and your pie will arrive inside, dripping icicles.

          Don't believe me? Here's the article: http://tinyurl.com/y7ecb5o6
                This grim vision of the future will be offered to "randomly selected customers in Ann Arbor, Michigan," the article said.
Ann Arbor! A place where it's cold enough to freeze the balls off . . . a pool table. (Gotcha, didn't I?)
        A Ford Fusion Hybrid autonomous research vehicle will deliver the pizza and a "Ford engineer will still be manually driving the car," the story said, "which will also be staffed with researchers eager to crack the code of how to deliver pizza without a driver — as well as observe how customers will react to the futuristic delivery service."
            Here's my reaction: It's the worst idea since pineapple pizza, the darkest development in pizza history.

            The article says, "Right now, the company's biggest challenge isn't getting a car to drive itself — it's getting the pizza from the curb to the door. In the Ann Arbor test, customers have to walk out to the parked car and retrieve their pizza from the vehicle's 'Heatwave Compartment' themselves."
            Domino's already has a system for getting pizza from the Heatwave Compartment to the front door: They're called pizza drivers, one of the most underpaid, overworked jobs in the country. Pizza delivery is dangerous – more dangerous than being a cop. Pizza drivers are held up, hijacked and hit on by scum that's been scraped off a bar stool.
        The pay is poor, and drivers are often stiffed for their tips. And pizza delivery batters the soul. Listen to Big Al the Pizza Dude. He's a character in my new Angela Richman, death investigator novel, Fire and Ashes. An important character. Eighteen-year-old Al helps bring to justice arsonists who are setting fires in the wealthy community of Chouteau Forest, Mo.
        How does he find the vital information? Because pizza drivers are invisible.
            Actually, they're worse than invisible. In Fire and Ashes, when Al delivers pizzas to a rich kid's party, Carlie answers the door – in skimpy flesh-colored underwear. She is underage, and keeps dropping her money so Al gets a good look at everything. Carlie taunts and teases Big Al. Death investigator Angela Richman worries that Carlie's older brothers, Kip and Duke, will beat up the handsome young driver for looking at their jail bait sister. Al explains why that won't happen in this scene in Fire and Ashes.

            “You don’t get it!” Al was almost shouting. “You just don’t get it. Duke didn’t see me. Kip didn’t see me. Carlie didn’t see me. I was standing right in their house, but I’m invisible. I’m the pizza dude in a polyester uniform that stinks of pepperoni.”
          “So you’re a ghost,” Angela said.
          “No!” Al was pacing again. “I’m not a ghost. A ghost used to be human. I don’t exist in their world. They can say whatever they want around me. That’s why Carlie parades around naked in front of me. She gets to tease the nobody, the nothing, and I can’t do anything about it. If I tried to grab her, I’d be in jail. If I said anything, they’d beat me senseless. They can do what they want because I’m not a person. They don’t care what they say in front of me, any more than you care what you say in front of your couch. I’m not a person. I’m a thing.”
             Angela had never heard a sadder—or more accurate—explanation of the Forest social structure.

         Domino's wants to eliminate its overworked, unpaid, teased, taunted and invisible drivers with driverless cars – devices that subject customers to the same hardships the drivers endure – for at least 50 feet.
         All I can say is – Domino's, you've got a lot of crust.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Last day to win Fire and Ashes, the new Angela Richman, Death Investigator mystery. Go to www.elaineviets.com and click Contest.

 

No words

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

Here at the Femmes Fatales we're no different from the rest of the country--we're having a hard time keeping our minds off what's happening in Houston, and an equally hard time finding anything to say about it.  Dean James, one of our Femmes Fatales members, used to live in Houston and work at Murder by the Book, and Julie Wray Herman, a Femme emerita, still lives there.  Julie and her family are fine; and Dean is very proud that Murder by the Book was one of the indie bookstores that opened its doors to people who could use coffee, wifi, AC, and a charge for their devices. More on that here.

Meanwhile, if you're wondering what you can possibly do to help, the Washington Post published a great article on just that--thanks to Kelli Stanley who brought the link to our attention.

 

 

 

 

 

Deceitfulness and Suavity . . .

. . . the markers of Macavity. Today's blog is a get-together of the six suave and deceitful (in our books) nominees for the Mystery Readers' International 2017 Historical Macavity award: Susanna Calkins, James Ziskin, Lyndsay Faye, Ann Parker, Edith Maxwell et moi.

What a line-up, eh?  Suzie brings an academic historian's training to her 17thc London-set mysteries, Jim writes 1960s journalist Ellie Stone in her hard-scrabble Hudson-river town by pure voodoo (IMHO), Lyndsay made the whole writing world say "I wish I'd thought of that" with her romantic satire on Jane Eyre, Ann has struck gold in the 19thc silver hills of Colorado, Edith has made a Quaker midwife seem like a perfectly plausible private eye, and I wrote about herrings. 

Everyone knows that the crime-writing world is one great big dysfuctional happy family, right? As well as the writers - who're not rivals, no matter what cynics would say - there's also an extended family of reviewers, bloggers, librarians, booksellers and readers who make the book world the best place to be. Indeed, the historical Macavity is named for Sue Feder, a bookseller and reviewer (who has a library named after her). And so I thought we'd take this chance to sing the praises of book-family-members who've helped us and others along the way.

 Beloved Librarian by Lyndsay Faye

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, there wasn’t much to do as kids other than squashing pennies on the railroad tracks, playing on the railroad tracks, and distressing our parents by frolicking on the railroad tracks.  So I turned to books at a very early age.  The Longview Public Library featured an enormous kids’ section, a cozy working fireplace, and two bathtubs lined with shag carpet and pillows that were hotly, even physically, contested over.

My favorite librarian, Sandra, presided over this happy realm.  One day, on the recommendation of my dad, I marched inside determined to locate the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. After searching high and low, I informed Sandra that I didn’t really think much of a library that didn’t shelve Sherlock Holmes--after all, I was only ten, and even I had heard of the Great Detective.

Oh, sweetie,” she said.  “Those are in the adult fiction department, on the mezzanine.”

Thus I graduated from the realm of whimsically furnished bathtubs to the mysterious halls of our library’s upper stories.  Sandra was there to help me navigate, always, just as she was with all the kids from my town.  Whether we ended up wanting Heinlein or Hemingway, Sandra was our sherpa.  And for generations of Longview kids, she will always be the librarian.

 

Best Booksellers: Susanna Calkins 

Before my first novel, A MURDER AT ROSAMUND’S GATE, was published in April 2013, I really hadn’t known any booksellers personally, and I had not yet learned about why cultivating positive and authentic relationships with booksellers is so very important for authors.

About three weeks after my novel came out, I headed to Malice Domestic, my very first conference as a PUBLISHED AUTHOR. I knew my panel time and my signing time, and that was about it.

So, after I checked into the conference, the first thing I did was to excitedly walk into the book room, looking for my books.

 And I looked...and I looked...and I looked.

Not one of the sellers had carried them. I’ll admit a small tear came to my eye when I asked the    booksellers at Scene of the Crime books, Don and Jen Longmuir, was there anything I could do.

And I still remember that Don went to the local Barnes & Noble, bought the three available copies, and brought them back, just so I would have books to sign at my first conference! What a lovely thing to do!

While I’ve since learned that not having books at a conference is not actually the tragedy I first imagined, I’ll never forget that incredible kindness from Don and Jen. And they will always have a very loyal customer in me.

 

Start 'em young, by Edith Maxwell

Kate Gove is the children’s librarian in the town where my sons grew up. We lived only a block from the library, and moved there when my kids were five months and three years, respectively.

Kate’s mother Kay was the head librarian, and they lived together. At work the two women dressed similarly, too, in blouses, neat skirts, nylons, and flat shoes. Kate, perhaps because she didn’t have children of her own, was always even-keeled and welcoming to children without gushing or speaking down to them. She ran splendid story hours, did messy crafts, and had an encyclopedic memory for books.

Kate didn’t bat an eye when my older son, age six, went from zero reading skills to reading an adult book on the Civil War six months later, and she helped my younger son at one point find a seemingly endless supply of novels about young people living through the Holocaust.

Thank you, Kate Gove, for supporting my children’s love of books, and helping so many kids love the library.

 

Ellie's Watson, by Jim Ziskin

It’s 1960. Ron "Fadge" Fiorello is Ellie Stone's confidant and best friend in the world. Watson to her Holmes. He runs a small ice cream sundae shop across the street from Ellie's apartment in New Holland, NY. Some readers know that the six-foot-two, three-hundred-plus-pound Fadge is the only character in the series based on an actual person. Robert “Fadge” Fariello owned Fariello’s Home of the Hot Fudge in Amsterdam, NY. That was when when he wasn’t betting on the horses, a pastime he considered his true job. He graduated from Marquette University with a journalism degree, but returned to his home town to run his father’s store, a local institution since 1925, also known as Sammy’s. This is Fariello’s about two years ago. It has since closed and is for sale.

Fadge hired my best friend, me, and even a couple of my brothers to work at Fariello’s during our junior-  and senior-high-school days. Like Rick’s of Casablanca fame, everyone went to Fariello’s. At least on Friday and Saturday nights. The teenagers who patronized the place didn’t even seem to mind that Fadge would occasionally hit the jukebox’s reset button if he didn’t like the song they’d selected. And woe to you if Fadge caught you stealing candy or magazines. Lots of great memories in that old place.

Fadge had a tremendous influence on my life, my politics, musical tastes, and my sense of humor. He is the inspiration for a very special character in my books. Robert “Fadge” Fariello died of brain cancer at Christmas 1985, but the big guy lives on—at least for me—in my Ellie Stone murder mysteries.

 

Janice Fox – "Rocky Mountain high" research librarian, by Ann Parker

I love librarians, so asking me to pick a non-writer who's my hero was always going to lead me to a librarian. But asking me to pick JUST ONE librarian is tough. However, that said, the person I would choose to salute and offer three cheers to is Janice Fox, research librarian and historian extraordinaire, of Lake County Public Library, Leadville, Colorado.

Since my historical mystery series is mostly set in Leadville, but I don’t live there, I often turn to Janice with panicky (last minute) questions, such as: How would someone get to Leadville’s cemetery in 1880 from downtown? (Answer: Up Ha rrison and turn west on Twelfth.) And, what did the jail look like in 1880? (She promptly emailed me a dandy detailed description.) Janice has also saved me from making some ignorant “oopses,” such as when I mentioned the gray dust in Leadville. (It’s not gray, it’s orange… and she even sent me a photo of mining tailings in the area so I could see the color and describe it for myself). 

Besides being an expert and passionate about Leadville’s history, she’s just an all-around super-nice person. In short, Janice is more precious than gold and I’m grateful to her beyond words!

 

Not everyone's a critic, by Catriona McPherson

There were so very many people I could have written about: three thousand Sisters in Crime for a start; or the fabulous bloggers Dru Ann Love and Kristopher Zgorski; or publicist and all-round good egg Erin Mitchell. These three never write a critical word. They share their enthusiasm for books they love and keep quiet about books they don't love. No snubs, no sneers.  They bubble over with positive energy. And there's someone else who works hard for mystery writers: running a mystery bookclub, editing a mystery magazine, hosting some of the best literary salons you'll ever lounge at with an absinthe (not really).I'm speaking, of course, about Janet Rudolph.

Janet runs Mystery Readers International - who present the Macavity awards, publishes Mystery Readers' Journal, with themed issues on every topic under the sun, blogs on chocolate, and manages - like Dru, Kris and Erin - never to write a cross word. For writers, who have to smile (not swear) as strangers accuse us of churning them out, dialling it in and jumping on bandwagons, this means a lot. 

And those salons! It's not unusual for best-selling, award-winning writers on big national tours to make three stops in California: LA, San Francisco and Janet Rudolph's living room. Ian Rankin was just there. Kent Krueger stopped by recently. And Gregg Hurwitz. And Val McDermid. And . . . these people don't drive those twisty Berkeley hills to practise parking on a postage stamp at a blind bend. Janet Rudolph rocks!  

Summiting

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

I'm not sure when “summit” became a verb as well as a noun. “He became the oldest person to summit Everest.” Has it been that way for a very long time, or did it succumb to our modern tendency to verb nouns?

I'd look it up, but I'm too tired.

A good kind of tired, for the most part. The garage sale is in my rear view window now. I could never have done it without the incomparable Sherry Harris, who helped me price things before the sale and brought her fabulous husband Bob to help me on the day of the sale. They showed up at 7:30 and stuck it out till about 3:00, when we'd finally boxed up all the outdoor items and either stacked them in the garage for an already scheduled charity pickup or in a few cases brought them into the house to be sold online.

(Those are Sherry's book covers decorating this blog. She won't let me take her and Bob to dinner to thank them. Although I'll continue to suggest it. Meanwhile, check out her books. Quite apart from the fact that she's such a nice person, she writes good books.)

And then all day Sunday I felt blah. Physically and emotionally drained. I stayed in bed till noon. Took a two hour nap in the late afternoon. Went to bed earlyish.

Why did I feel so blah? I had a nice wad of bills in my pocket. I waved goodbye to a lot of unwanted stuff. Another big batch of stuff is slated for pickup by a worthwhile charity. And I have at least a rough plan for dealing with the rest of my decluttering. I should be celebrating, right?

Well, I was. I am. But Sunday afternoon I realized why I felt so blah.

I'd just summited . . . a foothill. I had more peaks ahead of me. Possibly higher peaks.

Since everything that rattles around in my brain eventually comes back around to writing, I realized this was a familiar feeling.

Aspiring writers think of getting published as the ultimate goal. The peak accomplishment. They struggle, and if they're good and smart and lucky, they achieve it. Then what do they find?

More peaks. You're published, but have you gotten good reviews? Any reviews? Is your book selling? You've managed to get published—now there's staying published. Does your publisher want your next book? Can you finish the next book on deadline? Will readers like your second book as much as the first, or will they write you off as a one-hit wonder? Can you get a signing in your local bookstore? Why aren't you making the bestseller lists? Or nominated for awards? Or--?

Conventional wisdom has it that if one member of a writing group gets published, the group is doomed unless the other members also manage to get published within a reasonable time. And while there are plenty of exceptions, it often happens. I can understand why. To a writer longing for publication, the problems her published friends are dealing with sound like wonderful problems to have. Enviable problems. First world problems! Why are these lucky published writers still whining?

Because enviable problems are still problems. And not until you summit the peak of getting published do you even see all the other daunting peaks ahead of you.

So that's what I was feeling on Sunday. I'd summited the peak of holding my yard sale. A reasonably successful one, Sherry assures me. But ahead of me lay more peaks. More work. Separating the unwanted stuff that's good enough for donation from what I should just trash or recycle. Getting the donated stuff picked up. Figuring out how to sell the stuff that wasn't suitable for a yard sale. For example, we put out all the vintage patterns with prices lower than what similar patterns were selling for online. Not sure we sold a one. There are definitely people who want them, but they didn't come to my yard sale. Online is the answer. More work.

I didn't even want to think about it on Sunday.

This morning I'm taking a deep breath, and working very hard on changing “yes, but” to “yes.”

So when someone says, “Congratulations! You're getting published!”

The right response: “Yes. Thank you!”

Not “Yes, but my Amazon numbers aren't good . . . yes, but my agent isn't happy with my proposal for the next . . . yes, but someone gave it a one-star review.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Enjoy the peak you've conquered.

And when someone says to me “Hey, you survived your yard sale!” the right response is not “yes, but not everything sold” or “yes, but I still need to finish decluttering my basement” or “yes, but it was so much work.”

“Congratulations! You survived your garage sale!”

“Yes. Thank you. Hallelujah!”

p.s.

Garage sale or yard sale? Tag sale seems specific to New England. I tend to use yard sale and garage sale interchangeably. Am I weird?

I'd look it up but . . . still a little tired.

 

 

Wide World of Writing

by Leigh Perry / Toni L.P. Kelner

I realized something wonderful last week.

I was at Gen Con, which is THE convention for tabletop gaming. Board games, role-playing games, card games... This year was the 50th Anniversary, and over 60,000 attendees descended upon Indianapolis for the four-day extravaganza. Yes, you read that right: over 60,000.

Now I've spent many happy hours playing tabletop games ranging from Monopoly and Life, to Dungeons and Dragons, to Trivial Pursuits, to Munchkin and Uno. But the real reason I went was for the Gen Con Writer's Symposium. The Symposium is one of many programming tracks associated with Gen Con, meaning that it's a sideline for the con. But remember, the con itself was 60,000 people--this sideline included several thousand attendees. Under the watchful eye of Marc Tassin, who runs the show, we had signings, readings, and of course, panels about the writing process. It was the programming that made me think of something.

Now when it comes to my author-related appearances, I mostly stick to mystery conventions, with science fiction & fantasy conventions a close second. Now and then I go to a romance convention, too. But the writers at Gen Con are a whole 'nother breed. There's not a huge mystery presence--as far as I know, the only mystery writers were me, my husband Steve, and Author Guest of Honor (and Former Femme) Charlaine Harris. Most of the rest write SF&fantasy, but there were horror writers, nonfiction writers, romance writers, and authors of children's books. And unsurprisingly, given the setting, many of them write for the gaming industry: games themselves, game-related novels, game background material (known as fluff, by the way), and so on. But when it came to setting the program, Marc didn't segregate us by genre or style or anything like that. Which was absolutely right.

When it came down to it, no matter what writers write, we're more alike than we are different.

We all worry about pacing, writer's block, cover designs, marketing, foreshadowing, structure, dialog, interactions with editors and fans, that all-important first page. Sure, there are some genre-specific issues: mysteries tend to start with a murder, for instance, and romances usually have happy endings. But overall, we writers all have the same sets of concerns and issues. That's kind of wonderful. It's reassuring to know that while my writing may be solitary, there are bunches of other writers struggling with the same problems I am. Sometimes their solutions work for me, and vice versa, but even when they don't, it's good to not feel alone.

So even though our books are shelved far apart at the bookstore, when it comes to the work, we writers are all part of the same tribe.


FYI: Gen Con--and the Writers Symposium--happen every year. The next show will be August 2 through 5, 2018, back in Indianapolis, Indiana. And the city loves Gen Con!

The Tuesday Chat...What we're reading--and writing!

Happy Tuesday, Femmes! Can you believe summer is almost ov…okay, we won’t say it. Hank’s in Massachusetts, Laura in Colorado, and Catriona in California (which sounds like some kind of double dactyl or something)—and we figured it was time to catch up!

What book is on the top of your on nightstand pile?

Hank: Jessica Strawser's ALMOST MISSED YOU. Loving it! The pile is monumental, though. Ree-diculous.

Laura: I'm currently reading MAGPIE MURDERS, largely based on recommendations from Jungle Reds regulars. I have to admit that I am so far underwhelmed, but I have faith that it will have an amazing twist or some such to justify the raves from people I respect.

Hank: Oh, I loved it! Interesting. Eager to hear.

Catriona: Ha! I like the way you ask about the top book on the tottering pile. You know us. It's ED’S DEAD by Russel McLean. He's moderating me on a panel at Bloody Scotland in a couple of weeks and I'm reading back (so if he asks me a tough question I can meet fire with fire).

What manuscript-in-progress is in your computer?

Laura: The manuscript in progress is a women's fic novel called The Queens of Hart's Landing. It’s about an Alabama town obsessed with beauty pageants the way small towns in Texas are gaga over high school football. It's about three women who were major pageant winners in different decades and how that's affected their lives since.

Catriona: None! Zip. Rien. Nada. I'm on summer break with one book handed in and another first draft finished and waiting for my return. It's a weird feeling.

Hank . Ahhh....well, it'd be another standalone, and more I cannot say. Until, possibly, maybe, later this week or two. Maybe. Please cross fingers.

Which of your books is newest on bookstore shelves?

Catriona: The Reek of Red Herrings (US) and A Spot of Toil and Trouble (UK). Both Dandy Gilver stories. One is about fisherfolk and one is about Shakespeare. No prizes for guessing.

Hank: SAY NO MORE is about come out in paperback! Very exciting. Everyone still reads paperbacks, right?

(Catriona: I do.

Hank: Whew.)

Laura: CLOSE CALL came out last September.

Anything new about that? ( Did you get a great review or an award nomination or a pat on the back from someone or anything like that?)

Hank: Well, yeah! SAY NO MORE is an Agatha, Daphne and Mary Higgins Clark award nominee--and a Library Journal Best of 2016. (Just saying. In case you want to pre-order.) AND it includes a special, first-time preview of...well, it's a surprise.

Laura: CLOSE CALL was a Top Five mystery of the year pick by Library Journal. Not surprisingly, that made me very happy! The kudos for your book, Hank, were so well-deserved. It's my fave of yours to date.

Hank: Aw, thank you!

Catriona: I got a newspaper review for A Spot of Toil and Trouble that made me smile - "unfashionably civilised fiction". :The Reek of Red Herrings is up for a Macavity Award at Bouchercon. It's won an Agatha and a Lefty this year already. A hat trick would be very nice indeed.

Which of your books is next to come into the world?

Laura: In just a couple of weeks, on Sep 8, THAT LAST WEEKEND comes out. It has kind of a gothic feel with secrets from the past, a castle B&B imported stone by stone from France, and five women friends who have endured tragedy and now must solve a murder in order to move ahead with their friendships. Pre-order now to have it the day it comes out.

Hank: That sounds terrific. (And I already pre-ordered, of course. Here’s the link.)

Catriona: How timely! The Weight of Angels (UK)/ House.Tree.Person (US) - same book; don't buy both - is just about to hit the shelves on the 24th of August / 8th of September.

Hank: Okay, so here's the surprise. TRUST ME, my first standalone, a psychological thriller, will be out in 2018. And the first three chapters are in the Say No More paperback!

Catriona: Oh, man. I can't wait for that!

(Hank: Thank you! Can I send it to you? And you, too, Laura? Asking for a friend.)

Your next book--How do you feel about that?

Catriona: I'll tell you how Karin Slaughter feels instead. She feels that it's "unnerving and suspenseful" and my "best yet". So I feel pretty chuffed. Those cover quotes from grown-up writers really do help when you send a book out into the woods with a basket of treats for Grandmama.

Hank: Freaking out. Thrilled. I love this book. And I cannot cannot cannot wait to hear what you think. It is still me, very me, but very different. Mercer Hennessey, a free-lance writer, is writing a true crime novel about a murder trial, and...more I cannot say.

Laura: I'm always excited when a book comes out. Even after 21 books, it never gets old.

Are you working on something that will come after that? What is it?

Hank: Yes. Yes, Many many words written, but all in my head. And another Jane Ryland book is under contract, so that is brewing, too.

Laura: I'm always excited when a book comes out. Even after 21 books, it never gets old.

Catriona: Sort of. There's that first draft waiting for me . . . does it have a title yet? I can't remember if I thought up something to put on the first page before I printed it. Yes, I did. A Bible quote, I think. Now ask me which one . . . The Bible is even worse than Hamlet for being full of quotes, right?

Can you believe how lucky we are?

Hank: I think of it every day. EVERY day. When I have a good idea, or figure out a sentence, when I talk with a good pal, or meet a happy reader, or just sit at my computer and cannot believe I get to be an author.

Laura: Lucky, lucky, lucky. Like Hank, I think about it daily. Okay, almost every day. Having spent this past weekend in NYC, teaching at the Writer's Digest conference, seeing Hank and Hallie Ephron and other writing friends, talking writing and books with other people who think they're important--I am blessed and very conscious of it.

Catriona: Ha. No. I've got a character in The Weight of Angels/House.Tree. Person who inherited a fish and chip shop. As part of the publicity I'm writing a newspaper article about Scotties chippies (as they're affectionately known). So guess what my research for the article has been? Yep.

Hank: Wow. Eating fish and chips for research. Catriona, you’ve got this writing thing nailed.

Femmes, how would you answer anyone of the above questions? Reading, writing, appreciating? And happy Tuesday!

Adventures with audiobooks

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

Lately I've been so busy that I haven't been getting in much reading. But, since some of my busyness involves rather a lot of driving, I decided to give audiobooks another chance. Yes, another chance—I've had a checkered past with audiobooks.

One of the first audiobooks I tried—possibly the first--at least 15 years ago, was Don Winslow's California Fire and Life. Started listening to it to while away the time while using the elliptical torture machine at my gym, and never before had I actually regretted the end of my workout! Or set such a fast pace!

And then I came to the end of the next to last disk—an ending that left the listener in a real cliffhanger. I popped out the finished CD and inserted the new one, and . . .

The disk was bad. I cut my workout slightly short, rushed home to change into street clothes, and raced to the library. I probably sounded a lot like the possessed kid in The Exorcist when I lurched in glassy-eyed, intoning that I needed a paper copy of the book NOW.

Great book though. Highly recommend it. Just don't start listening or reading it if you're not sure the ending's there.

Took me a few years to work up my nerve to try another audiobook. Not till 2010, in fact, when Deborah Blum was coming to our local MWA chapter to talk about The Poisoner's Handbook. I wanted to read the book before the meeting, the better to introduce the author, and all the library had available on short notice was the audiobook, so I gave it a try.

And at first I was really enjoying the book, until the point—early on, maybe in the first chapter—when Blum quoted a statement from a French prosecutor. Quoted him in English, so I saw no need for the narrator to use a French accent in delivering his words. A very exaggerated French accent, reminiscent of the Looney Tunes character Pepé Le Pew. But it was only a passing annoyance, and I pressed on, hoping that no more French prosecutors would appear.

Alas, the next chapter featured a German-American suspect. The narrator's German accent was a bizarre cross between Sergeant Schultz of Hogan's Heroes and Boris and Natasha Badinoff from Rocky and Bullwinkle. I gave up. I returned the audiobook and bought myself a paper copy.

As an afterthought, this week, I checked the same digital audio out of my local library to refresh my memory. Was it as bad as I remembered? Well . . . not quite, though I still wince and think the reader made—or perhaps was encouraged to make—some bad choices.

Recently, though, I was motivated to give audiobooks another try when at Malice Domestic I won a copy of the audio version of Alexia Gordon's Murder in G Major as a doorprize when I sat at her table at the banquet (thank you again, Alexia!). I inserted the first CD with trepidation—after all, this audio book thing hadn't exactly gone well before.

At first I was a little worried. I loved the way the narrator did all the many Irish voices. But it took a few chapters to get used to the rather flat, almost harsh way she voiced Gethsemane Brown, the protagonist. (Is that really how the English and Irish hear us?) Still, after only a couple of chapters, I forgot my quibbles and lost myself in a story that was not only well told but well read.

So now I'm kind of on a binge. Mostly a non-fiction binge, because I'm in the middle of writing a book. I've listened to three books by Amy Stewart--Wicked Plants, Wicked Bugs, and The Drunken Botanist. On a couple of weekend trips, when it wouldn't interfere too much with my plotting, I've listened to a couple of Peter Robinson's books, and have quite firm opinions about the various narrators. Currently I'm in the middle of Caroline Alexander's The Bounty: the True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty, read by the superlative Simon Micawber Prebble--his real, full name!-- whose rich, resonant voice could make cereal box ingredient labels worth listening to.

Just one thing about audio books: they're too easy. I still have a hard time thinking I've really read a book if I haven't turned the pages. Anyone else have that curious reaction?

 

 

A change of plan

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been creeping along in my decluttering. The plan was to use a company that comes in, takes photos of your stuff, writes the descriptions, posts them on their online auction site, runs the auction, and then supervises a pickup day—local pickup only, no shipping. I've been working steadily for months, diligently sorting stuff, boxing up what I want to get rid of, and storing it in the garage. And the chaos has been getting to me. So about two weeks ago I decided that even if I hadn't quite finished all the decluttering, maybe it was time to get the sale scheduled. Deadlines motivate me; so I figured having a date for the sale would help me finish the decluttering.

That's when I found out my understanding of how the auction company works was slightly faulty. Yes, they photograph your stuff and write the descriptions and run the auction, etc. Just one catch—you have to arrange the stuff neatly so it's ready to be photographed.

I don't have room to arrange the stuff neatly. I'm running out of room to stack it all in boxes in my garage. Remember it's not just my stuff, from my overfilled basement and garage. There's also a lot of stuff from my parents' old house—all the stuff my brother and I didn't want but couldn't quite bring ourselves to throw away or donate. I was momentarily daunted by the realization that the plan I'd come up with for unloading all the stuff wasn't going to work. But only momentarily. You don't manage to finish novels—twenty-six of them so far, not counting unpublished efforts—if you daunt easily. I focused on coming up with a new plan.

So apparently I'm having a garage sale.

I may still save some of the nicer things to be sold through the company that runs the online auctions. Anything that qualifies as a collectible, for example, might benefit from the wider exposure. But the vast teeming hoard of stuff goes into the garage sale. Or sales. It might take more than one. Shudder.

Yesterday morning, after six months or so of sorting stuff, boxing it up, and stacking it in the garage, I began hauling a whole lot of it back into the house to make enough room to start setting up the borrowed tables for the garage sale. For a while there, it felt as if I was going backwards. Stuff was coming back into the house, cluttering my living room. But by early afternoon, I'd achieved the day's goal. Table #1 is now set up in the garage.

A more resolute (or more foolish) person would have cleared some more room for tables #2 and #3, and begun arranging stuff on the tables, and probably would have ended the day groaning in pain, soaking her sore muscles in a hot tub, and popping Advil like there's no tomorrow.

But I'm a writer. A novelist. Which means I know something about the long haul. So I ran errands and took a long, refreshing nap.

It's a balancing act, writing a novel. You have to keep your eye on the ultimate goal—not just the moment you type “The End” on the final page of a manuscript, but the even better moment when you hit “send” on a manuscript that's revised and polished and as good as you can make it. But you also have to pay the same amount of attention to the short term goals. Doing today's quota. Followed by tomorrow's quota, and all the daily quotas that, strung together, get you to “the end.' And you have to balance the need to make each page, each paragraph, each sentence the best it can be with the equally important need to keep moving forward.

Being a writer also helps me feel philosophical about the change in course on my decluttering. It feels suspiciously like what I've had to do a time or two when I figured out that one of my book drafts had a serious—perhaps even fatal—plot flaw. No use forging ahead until you fix the problem. You think it through carefully. You figure out the solution. And then you work like a dog to get things back on course.

Of course, in a book, there's no heavy lifting required. Getting ready for the yard sale? Arg.

When I realize one of my drafts needs some serious revision, I remind myself that good books aren't written—they're rewritten. And that revising a book is not like writing one from scratch. You know your characters. You've done your research. You have a good idea what needs to happen. You just need to make it happen a little better. Or a lot better. Same with the yard sale. It's not as if I'm going back to the starting point. I've already decided this stuff is all leaving. I don't have to revisit all those decisions. I just have get the leaving to happen in a slightly different way.

And since cleaning is one of the most effective means of writing avoidance, the fact that I have a book to write should help motivate me to spend more time on my decluttering. Luckily writing is also a very effective means of decluttering avoidance. So I'm hoping to emerge from the next few weeks and months with a clean house and a polished final draft.

Wish me luck!

 

 

 

Enough

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

So, how goes the deluttering, you may ask. (Then again, you may not.  You may be as sick of hearing about decluttering as I am of doing it. I can understand that.)

Slowly. The main reason for that is that I've been pretty busy writing, which I hope many of you will consider good news. The literary work to be known as Toucan Keep a Secret is progressing nicely. The basement hasn't quite ground to a halt, but it's progressing at a snail's pace.

But progressing, not standing still. I remember the lesson I learned the year I wrote two books while my dad was seriously—as it turned out, terminally—ill. There were days when I had little or no time to write, and less than no motivation. Some of those days I wrote anyway. Some of those days I just blew it off. As a result, with the book I was working on when Dad died, I got behind and had to scramble to meet my deadline.

Although yes, I did meet my deadline.

And then I sat down and did some thinking about what I'd gone through during that year. I realized I could write funny books while dealing with difficult life situations. It was harder, but I could do it. I realized that the days when I lost myself for a while in my writing were much better than the days when I said “I just can't.” And they weren't just better because I made progress in the book. They were also better because losing myself in my fictional world was one of the best possible ways of escaping the increasingly dark things happening around me.

I counted up the days on which I'd written nothing—I have a spreadsheet where I log my word totals, so I knew not only how many of them there were but precisely when they were. I figured out that if I'd written one page—a single page, just 250 words—on each of those days when I said “I just can't,” I'd have been many pages farther along by the time I neared my deadline, and those last few weeks would have been considerably less hellish.

So I'm a big fan of “just do a little.” I can't possibly clean the kitchen today, but I can set the timer for 15 minutes and make a dent in it. It would take all afternoon to weed the flowerbeds, but if I do 15 minutes on that, at least I've made a start. The whole house is a mess—okay. I can pick up and put away 25 things that are not in their proper places. I'm trying to apply this wisdom to the decluttering.

The good thing about tidying and weeding and decluttering is that for the most part they don't take a very big part of my brain. While I'm doing them, I can work on plot twists. I can ponder character development. I can even talk through dialogue. Well, not while weeding the flower beds, lest the neighbors become alarmed. But during the early, planning stages of a book, I can get a lot done on both writing and decluttering, simultaneously.

Then I hit the draft stage. Suddenly I need to be at my desk, fingers flying over the keyboard. At least on a good day they fly. On a bad day they hang there twitching while I stare moodily into space, muttering and frowning, until the words appear. In draft mode, my daily assignment is not to write for a certain number of hours but to finish a certain number of words. If I dash them off in record time, I can keep going to put a few pages in the bank for less creative days. Or I can knock off and take care of neglected chores. Or I can just chill. But on the days when the words don't come easily, if it takes me from 7 a.m. to several hours past midnight to finish my quota, that's how long I write.

Doesn't leave as much time for decluttering.

But I don't need much time to do just a little.

And now, back to that draft.

That Last Weekend

by Laura DiSilverio

                This is my last Femmes Fatales post before release day for THAT LAST WEEKEND (Sep 8, thanks for asking), so I thought I'd share a bit about how I came to write the book and a link for pre-ordering it (in case you haven't already). Click here. Thanks so much! Pre-orders are hugely important to a book's success. Who knew, right?

            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"This stand-alone novel by the author of the Bookclub Mysteries and the Incubation series is well plotted, its mystery compelling, and its outcome unexpected." (Booklist)

From Whence Springeth Ideas?

                When talking to other authors, I'm always interested in learning where the seeds of a particular book came from. I don't usually ask the generic "Where do you get your ideas?" question, but I do like to know how an author began to find his or her way into a specific novel. Did she get an idea for a compelling character? Did he envision a climactic scene? Did she have a theme she wanted to play with? Was there an object,  setting,  overheard conversation, or  newspaper story that started the story growing in the author's mind?

                You probably think this is leading to a discussion of where I got the idea for THAT LAST WEEKEND, and you're right, in part. For this book, I had a particular plot element I wanted to include, a twist that I thought was interesting and surprising. Of course, I can't tell you what it was, because that would be a major spoiler! That plot element became the cornerstone I built the book around. It required a specific dynamic between the characters, and they began to take shape in my imagination and in my notebook. (Yup, I work with a spiral notebook, old-fashioned pencil and paper, when I'm conceptualizing a novel.)

You've Got to Have Friends

                I wanted this book to be about more than solving a murder mystery--I wanted it to be about friendship and how friendships change, evolve, strengthen and sometimes run their course. So I set about creating a coterie of friends, five women, who met in college and spent their first spring break together at an atmospheric B&B, the Chateau du Cygne Noir (Castle of the Black Swan) in North Carolina. They continue to meet there each year for a girls weekend, even after they graduate. That stretch of time, the ten years between when they're eighteen and twenty-eight, was important for establishing their group dynamics and the nuances of their friendship.

                Then, tragedy strikes. (No spoiler there--it says so on the book jacket, and it's a murder mystery, after all.) The events that occur on that tenth weekend severely test or damage the women's friendships. They largely go their own way for another decade, until something happens to bring them back to the Chateau du Cygne Noir. Why would they return, you ask? Good question. They all have different but powerful motives for reuniting, and different expectations for their time together. Does something else go badly wrong? Yup. Uh-huh. Of course it does. 

What's It All About, Alfie  Laura?

                So, from that one plot cornerstone, a novel grew. It's about friendship and personal accountability, and the role chance and intention play in our lives, and about holding on to relationships that matter, and letting go of things that hold you back. At least, I think that's what it's about. It might be about something different for you, and that's great. If so, I'd love to hear about it when you've finished reading it.

                Want to read THAT LAST WEEKEND early, before it's even released? Leave a comment today.  I have exactly one early copy of the finished book which I will send to one lucky commenter.  Yay!

(I apologize in advance for not interacting in as timely a fashion with commenters today, but I'm on the road, driving to Alabama to drop my daughter at college. I'll try to check in this evening. Thanks for stopping by.)