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Ink and Blood: Death in the News Room

By Joanna Campbell Slan of the Femmes Fatales

 

Yesterday, a lone gunman walked into the newsroom of The Capital Gazette, a newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, and targeted journalists. Using a pump-action shotgun, he blew out the glass window, the only barrier between the public and the editorial staff.

Experts on television and radio have been talking about soft targets, and how fragile that glass barrier was. How easily the gunman burst through it. How exposed the journalists were.

That vulnerability happens on purpose.

As a journalism graduate, I’ve worked in many daily newspapers—the Daily News at Ball State University, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Bloomington (IL) Pantagraph. No one knows the heartbeat of a town the way a working journalist does. While maintaining objectivity is paramount, knowing the community you serve is equally important. When I worked at the Post-Dispatch, people walked in all the time to talk to reporters, editors, and ad sales people. We all sat in an open bull pen. The editors and management had glass doors with blinds that could be pulled, but otherwise, there was no privacy in the newsroom. Nowhere to hide.

That was by design. We worked as a living, breathing organism. If I heard a tidbit on the street, I told my colleagues. Likewise, they shared with me. We took breaks together in a glass enclosed break room. The only space that was contained, secured, was the press room.

I loved walking back into the room that housed our printing press. Huge rolls of newsprint were off-loaded by forklifts from the train track behind our building. The paper came from Canada. It arrived on a huge spool. The press men wound it through the printing press like thread through a sewing machine. The smell of the ink and the oil hung in the air. Red lights and buzzers sounded as the press started up. Men in jumpsuits raced from one area to another, checking the impressions for clarity, adjusting ink flow, and monitoring the action.Once the press was running, the paper moved with such force and tensile strength that you could lose a limb if you got in the way. That gave a “paper cut” a whole new meaning. When the press was in action, the noise was deafening. You needed ear protection if you stayed back in the press room for any length of time. The printing press was a behemoth, a monster, that demanded feeding and tending. When it roared to life, the entire building shook.  

To think that my work was printed on that paper, that my effort was a part of that action, thrilled me. If you walked around behind our building, you could watch as the finished newspapers were bundled, tied, and tossed to news agents and carriers for distribution to our readers.

One of the men killed yesterday was Rob Hiaasen, brother of Florida author, Carl Hiaasen. On Friday morning, Carl told CNN his brother was, “the rock of our family,” who, “believed in the mission and the craft of hometown journalism."

Carl has it right. Being a journalist is much more than a job. It’s a mission. Each and every day when I worked at a newspaper, we made history, because without our efforts, so much slipped by unobserved, unremarked upon, and unrecorded. Our job was to shine a spotlight in the darkest corners of our community and demand that attention be paid. Even all these years later, I still consider myself a journalist. I still want to know why, and who, and how, and what in the world?

It’s in my blood.

Ink and blood. So we write the story of our nation today, this day, after the tragedy.

 

 

 

Those Murderous Librarians

Having been a fan of libraries ever since my father took me, aged eight, to the Elizabeth Jones Public Library in Grenada, Mississippi, to get my first library card, I thoroughly enjoy mysteries connected to libraries and to librarians. Kind of a "busman's holiday" for me, of course, since I have been a librarian for over two decades. I have also had a fondness for female amateur detectives ever since I started reading mysteries with Nancy Drew. I love older women characters as the sleuths, having grown up with a number of aunts and great-aunts, the latter of whom were definitely of the steel magnolia variety.

Charlotte Murray Russell (1899-1992) was born in Rock Island, Illinois. She lived there most of her life. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Chicago, she later did graduate work at McGill University before returning to her home to teach French and Latin before marrying. Her writing career spanned almost two decades, from 1935 to 1953. After retirement from writing, she took a job at the Rock Island Public Library where she was a cataloger. She died on her 93rd birthday.

Russell didn't become a librarian until after she quit writing, so I'm cheating slightly to include her among librarian writers, and her main character wasn't a librarian. But I love her books, so I'm including her. Her chief series character, who featured in a dozen books, was Miss Jane Amanda Edwards. Jane, a fortyish spinster, lived in the rambling family home in Rockport (probably Illinois) with her younger siblings, Annie and Arthur. Jane is what is often known in books of that era as a "managing female." In other words, she's bossy. She's also nosy and loves solving murders, often to the dismay and irritation of the Lieutenant George Hammond of the city police. (I have always thought that George has a crush on Jane, but she's too blind to see it.)

Jane keeps control of her siblings' lives. Annie is a bit neurotic, you see, and Arthur, the virtuous brother (Jane always insists he's a good, upright, respectable man), would rather be at the bar, drinking and carousing and chasing after women. Jane has her hands full with the lively Arthur, of whom she always believes the best. After all, she runs Arthur's life, so he must be good, right?

Jane narrates the books, and her wit is acerbic, and her self-assurance is almost unshakeable. She seems blind to Arthur's weaknesses but, at heart, she knows he would really love to cut loose and have fun. She has no doubt about her abilities to solve mysteries, and she plunges into cases with considerable aplomb. I chuckle out loud every time I read one of Jane's adventures. They are highly collectible and can be difficult to find. Luckily, I have a complete collection. The Rue Morgue Press reprinted one of the titles, but unfortunately only one.

Russell also wrote several mysteries with another series detective, which I've not yet read. If you love nosy spinster detectives with acerbic wit, have a look for Miss Jane Amanda Edwards.

 

Low Down Dirty Vote!

I've had a slightly awkward relationship with the 4th of July in the eight years since I got here. For a start, we lost that one so why am I celebrating? And it's summer so the fireworks can't start till really late. (On the 5th of November, which is UK Firework Night, you can kick off at five because it's pitch black already.)

Don't get me wrong; I embrace the 4th with everything I've got:

Here's me floating in a friend's pool on the 4th, full to the tonsils with barbecue. And I know all the words to The Star-spangled Banner. (I learned them years ago to sing for an American friend who was at my house for Thanksgiving. She listened and clapped and then revealed that no one sings the anthem at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Who knew?)

But this year is different. I finally feel like a functioning cog in the wheel of American independence from monarchy and a full part of the celebration of democratic freedoms. Why? I'm still not a citizen. My greencard is still running down. I still can't put fruit on the same plate as bacon. 

BUT.

I've got a short story in LOW DOWN DIRTY VOTE, an anthology coming out this Independence Day. Its theme is fighting voter suppression and all of its proceeds go to the ACLU. I am more honoured than I can easily express to be in there with such short-story maestros as Travis Richardson, such politically savvy pals as Kris Calvin and such imaginative interpreters of the theme as Jim Ziskin. Ray Daniel, Ann Parker, Alison Catharine, David Haggerty, Mariah Klein, Derek Marsh, Camille Minichino and Mysti Berry, the fantabulous editor. All have written rousing, touching, scorching, belting, astonishing stories.

But don't take my word for it. Read them! I'll send a copy to someone who comments here today and you can see for yourself what an unexpectedly rich seam that apparently very specific brief was for my ten fellow writers.

Me? I took the chance, when Mysti offered it, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the lifting of a massive anvil of voter suppression. In 1918, women - some women - got the vote in Britain. Here's my lovely niece, Megan McPherson, celebrating the century in Edinburgh this spring. 

Small print: please comment by midnight PST on Friday, to go into the hat for a copy of LDDV and I'll pick a name and post the book out on the 5th. Good luck and happy Independence Day when it comes.

Mirror, Mirror

By Elaine Viets

What if we didn't look in mirrors all day? Early Colonial Americans didn't.
I've been reading a fascinating debut novel called The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, a debut novel by Katherine Howe.

In the 1690s, two of Howe's ancestors were accused witches in Salem. In Deliverance Dane, Howe writes about a Harvard grad student who learns the women in her family may have been real witches -– for generations.
The novel's vivid descriptions of daily life in the seventeenth century made me wonder about life without mirrors.

For centuries, mirrors were for the very rich. Only in recent history have the rest of us used them. Now they're everywhere, from mirrored sunglasses to decorator accents.
How many mirrors do you have in your home?
We have one in the hall entry, in the dining room, a full-length mirror in the living room, a wall mirror in my dressing room, and mirrors in the bathrooms.
There's hardly an area in our home where we can't see ourselves. We can't even walk down a street without finding our reflection in a plate glass window or mirrored building.

But in the seventeenth century, mirrors were luxuries. There was no plate glass. People could go for weeks without seeing their faces, except maybe in puddles.

Were they happier without mirrors?
Would we be happier if we weren't constantly surrounded by mirrors? The day after Thanksgiving, when your gut flops over your belt, do you want to see that? After the holidays, do we want to be constantly reminded that we need to lose five pounds? We can watch ourselves age on a daily basis.

What if we couldn't see ourselves all the time?
Would we obsess about aging so much if we didn't look at ourselves as often? Would we need to get our faces lifted if we rarely saw them?
Would we be happier if we weren't constantly reminded that we're carrying a little extra weight?
It's something to reflect on.

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

Win my forensic mystery, Ice Blonde. Click Contests at www.elaineviets.com

Mixed Emotions - 25 Years After the Fact

by Toni L.P. Kelner

This month is my twenty-fifth anniversary of being a published mystery writer. In June of 1993, Zebra Books (now known as Kensington) published Down Home Murder, the first in my Laura Fleming series set in a small North Carolina mill town. There's an eccentric extended family based on my own, and in combating my own homesickness at the time it was written, I included a lot of local color and Southernisms.



I bring this up for a triple of reasons. First, I'm both delighted and amazed to still be in the mystery-writing game twenty-five years later. I haven't achieved all my writerly goals, but I've hit quite a few plus some I didn't ever expect.

Second, in commemoration of this, JABberwocky and I will be hosting a giveaway of the Kindle ebook edition of Down Home Murder starting on Thursday, June 21, and ending on Monday, June 25. That's a FREE download!

Third, I find myself with very mixed emotions about Down Home Murder.

On the good side, I'm proud of the characters and the setting and the language, and fairly satisfied with the plot. Most of the themes still ring true to me: finding one's place in one's family, love/annoyance relationships with relatives, the fact that the South and Southerners are not the stereotypes one might expect. And I couldn't write about the South without talking about racism, which is just as much an issue as it ever was. And therein lie the mixed emotions.

Full disclosure here. I was raised in a family that had some serious issues with racial prejudice, particularly involving people of color. I recognized this as wrong very early on, and continue to try to move away from it. In Down Home Murder, I thought I was being very modern and liberal. And maybe for the time, I wasn't too bad. But when I read some of those scenes with an older and I hope more knowledgeable, eye, I'm extremely embarrassed.

Early on in the book, Laura Fleming--Laurie Anne to her family--meets up with her Aunt Nora at the hospital to visit Laura's grandfather. Aunt Nora mentions that they paid for a private room so Paw wouldn't have to share because you never know who you're going to get in a room with you. And she looks significanty at a woman of color. Laura bristles, but says nothing because she knows Aunt Nora didn't mean any harm.

Let me reiterate. The woman was freaked by her father possibly sharing a room with a person of color, but Laura understood she didn't mean any harm. And at the time, I understood, too. But now... Nope, I don't understand. In fact, I want to tell Aunt Nora that she was being a racist jackwagon.

That's not even the worst of it. Later on, Laura finds out that her favorite cousin Thaddeous has joined the Klan in reaction to a white girl's body being found dead in a traditionally black section of town. Laura is horrified, which soothes me somewhat, and she tells him so. But she still socializes with him and talks with him, and doesn't tell anybody what he's doing. Later on, Thaddeous does see what a racist jackwagon he's been, and opposes the Klan publicly. But still... I'm mortified by that plot point. I would like to think that Laura was enlightened for the time, but I know darned well that for today, she was at the very least normalizing horribly racist behavior.

So it is with trepidation that I offer this book to modern audiences. I'm still proud of a lot of the book, and goodness knows, if I were writing it today, it would be a very different book. I hope that readers will forgive me my earlier ignorance as an artifact from a quarter of the century ago.

 

 

Mourning Bourdain and Spade

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

I wasn’t a Kate Spade fan. I had nothing against her, mind you, I just never quite understood the phenomenon, probably because I’m someone who likes to stuff my stuff in one fairly plain, utilitarian black leather shoulder bag and use that until it falls apart. But her work brought a great deal of joy to some of my more fashion-minded friends, and I mourn with them. And besides, updating John Donne for the times, any one’s death diminishes me.

I was closer to being an Anthony Bourdain fan, because the times I caught his shows, I liked them. Liked him. Made a heretofore unfulfilled mental vow to track down the show and binge it, maybe read his books. He was up there with Peter Walsh, the clutter guru, on the list of people I would like to meet and yet dreaded meeting. Walsh might make me give up stuff I wasn’t ready to give up. Bourdain might make me eat something I wasn’t ready to eat, something theoretically delicious whose ingredients included insects and fungi and unknown substances of great peculiarity. But I know people who had adventures with him, considered him a friend. I mourn with them. Maybe I’ll finally do that binge watch—though a TV binge is always a little melancholy when you know there won’t ever be any more.

I find myself remembering  something my brother told me, long ago, shortly after he began working as a therapist.  Keep in mind that this was long ago, and I might not be remembering his words accurately, and also that I’m filtering them through the mind of a novelist not that of a trained clinical psychologist. I asked him if he didn’t find it stressful, working with people who were anxious, depressed, or wretchedly unhappy for whatever reason.  He said that, no, it wasn’t—because by the time he saw them, they’d made the decision be get help. Taken the first step toward healing.

I don’t remember how that conversation continued. We may have talked about the very different experience of therapists who work with people who hadn’t taken that step. People who had been involuntarily committed. People who were in therapy because their parents insist, or their partner or parole officer. People whose first experience with a therapist was in a jail, when the duty psychologist was called in to figure out if they were drunk, high, crazy, or just pretending. People who hadn’t yet taken that first step, and maybe never would. Or who had taken that first step and then balked somewhere down the road.

Any very public death provokes a bewildering flood of reactions, ranging from tearful eulogies to blunt criticisms. I’ve seen posts criticizing Bourdain for holding and expressing prejudice against the overweight. Having seen the video clip used to support this contention: it was ten years ago, and to me has the feel of Bourdain stringing along a controversial figure to see how far he would go and generate provocative television. Then again, maybe he really did feel that way, not just ten years ago but right up to the end. Doesn’t mean he deserved to die; only that he ended his life with some growing and learning undone. I can’t remember what negative things were said about Spade but again, nothing that would suggest the planet is a better place without her.  I’ve seen both criticized for selfishness-- for not thinking of the effect their suicides would have on their family and friends. For weakness—“I made it out of depression; why couldn’t they?” And for failing to get themselves into treatment—but how do you know they didn’t? Maybe behind the two sets of headlines are two therapists, second-guessing everything they ever said to their famous yet wounded patients, grieving that their efforts were in vain. There are definitely two families and two sets of friends beating themselves up, wondering if there was something they could have done.

We may never know if Bourdain and Spade never took the first step, took it and balked along the road, or if perhaps took it and hung in there with unimaginable mental pain for years. None of our business anyway.  And no, their deaths aren’t more important than the 45,000 other people who commit suicide every year in the U.S. Just more visible. 

That’s it. No wisdom to offer. Just sharing in the general sadness. And hoping that if I ever know someone who’s suicidal, I’ll recognize it and help them take that first step.

Right now I’m glad I went into fiction rather than psychology. I blow it in a draft, the worst that happens is that my editor makes me do a major revision. Only fictional lives hang in the balance when I sit down to work.

Favorite Mystery and Detective Stories

Over the years I've read thousands of mystery and detective stories, and I occasionally make lists of some favorites. I am sharing that list here, but I warn you that it is far from complete. There are many more I could add, such is the wealth of the genre (and its sub-genres) over time. There is one book not in the list, because it's not an adult mystery novel, but it is the one book that started me on my path to become a devoted mystery reader. Here is that book, the fifth book in the Nancy Drew series. I purposely picked this cover because I read the revised version from the 1960s. I have a special fondness for this book, although it's not my overall favorite from the series. But it got me started.

Here is a list (pardon the spreadsheet format -- it was easier to organize that way). They're in alphabetical order by the author's last name, but the first book on the list is my all-time favorite crime novel. Coming in at #2 is the Elizabeth Peters book on the list. How many of these have you read?

Margery	Allingham	Tiger in the Smoke, The
Donna	Andrews	Penguin Who Knew Too Much, The
Robert	Barnard	Skeleton in the Grass, The
Nicholas	Blake	Beast Must Die, The
M. E.	Braddon	Lady Audley's Secret
James Lee	Burke	Stained White Radiance, A
Dorothy	Cannell	God Save the Queen
Sarah	Caudwell	Thus Was Adonis Murdered
Agatha	Christie	Sleeping Murder
Ann	Cleeves	Raven Black
Wilkie	Collins	Woman in White, The
Michael	Connelly	Concrete Blonde, The
Robert	Crais	L.A. Requiem
Deborah	Crombie	Dreaming of the Bones
Elizabeth	Daly	Murders in Volume 2
Diane Mott	Davidson	Catering to Nobody
Susan	Dunlap	Last Annual Slugfest, The
Aaron	Elkins	Old Bones
Frances	Fyfield	Question of Guilt, A
Elizabeth	George	Great Deliverance, A
Anthony	Gilbert	Tenant for the Tomb
Sue	Grafton	"C" is for Corpse
Martha	Grimes	Lamorna Wink, The
Jane	Haddam	Cheating at Solitaire
Carolyn	Haines	Them Bones
Dashiell	Hammett	Maltese Falcon, The
David	Handler	Woman Who Fell from Grace, The
Cyril	Hare	English Murder, An
Charlaine	Harris	Secret Rage, A
Carolyn G.	Hart	Southern Ghost
Joan	Hess	Much Ado in Maggody
Patricia	Highsmith	Talented Mr. Ripley, The
Reginald	Hill	Wood Beyond, The
Dorothy B.	Hughes	In a Lonely Place
Arnaldur	Indridason	Silence of the Grave
P.D.	James	Shroud for a Nightingale
John	le Carre	Spy Who Came in from the Cold
E.C.R.	Lorac	Bats in the Belfry
Ross	Macdonald	Galton Case, The
Charlotte	MacLeod	Rest You Merry
Margaret	Maron	Bootlegger's Daughter
Ngaio	Marsh	Overture to Death
Lia	Matera	Good Fight, The
Sharyn	McCrumb	She Walks These Hills
Val	McDermid	Place of Execution, A
Barbara	Michaels	Houses of Stone
Margaret	Millar	Beyond This Point Are Monsters
Patricia	Moyes	Johnny Under Ground
Marcia	Muller	Wolf in the Shadows
Sharan	Newman	Cursed in the Blood
Sara	Paretsky	Burn Marks
Robert B.	Parker	Early Autumn
Iain	Pears	Instance of the Fingerpost, The
George	Pelecanos	Night Gardener, The
Anne	Perry	Face of a Stranger, The
Elizabeth	Peters	Crocodile on the Sandbank
Ellis	Peters	Virgin in the Ice, The
Ian	Rankin	Black and Blue
Elizabeth	Redfern	Music of the Spheres
Ruth	Rendell	Judgment in Stone, A
Stephen	Rigolosi	Outsmarting of Criminals, The
Mary Roberts	Rinehart	Yellow Room, The
Gillian	Roberts	Caught Dead in Philadelphia
Peter	Robinson	In a Dry Season
S.J.	Rozan	Winter and Night
Dorothy L.	Sayers	Nine Tailors, The
Steven	Saylor	Catilina's Riddle
Rex	Stout	Some Buried Caesar
Josephine	Tey	Franchise Affair, The
Charles	Todd	Murder Stone, The
Kathy Hogan	Trocheck	Every Crooked Nanny
Barbara	Vine	Dark-Adapted Eye, A
Jacqueline	Winspear	Maisie Dobbs

 

The Name Game

Catriona writes: The only decision easier than "Will I have the author of PICKED OFF (Henery Press, 5 June) as my guest at Femmes Fatales, when her new book comes out?" was the choice of topic. Linda Lovely (yes, really) writes about a character called Brie Hooker (yes, really) and so the first question on everyone's lips is . . . . What's in a name? Right?

Now, if I had known the story I might have hesitated. But Linda is as lovely as advertised, and as funny as she's wise as she's helpful. Writers and fans of mystery fiction, read on . . .  

When I start reading a book, it takes a while for me to “know” characters and how they fit in a story, especially if a novel features a large cast. Unfortunately poor character naming strategies (or lack thereof) can make it even tougher for readers to get up to speed. As an avid reader, my “research” tells me many authors assign characters the first names that pop into their minds. And what’s wrong with that? It’s fiction, after all, shouldn’t authors pick names on a whim?

Not if the result is reader confusion and/or irritation. For starters, I with authors wouldn’t throw out names that look and/or sound alike—Dan and Don, Don and Ron, Elsie and Ella.  The English alphabet gives us 26 choices for the first letter in a name so why do some authors insist on giving main characters names starting with say “A.” Anna…Alice…Alex…Andy…Alecia… and so forth. (Belatedly, I sympathize with my mother who invariably called Don by the name Ron and vice versa when I made the mistake of simultaneously dating two young men with similar-sounding names.)

My reading progress also can be stymied by names that appear out-of-synch with a novel’s time period or culture. What are the odds a woman in medieval Europe would be named Madison or Zoey?

Sometimes an author’s choice of names may be fine, but then he haphazardly jumps between the hero’s given name and his nickname. Say the hero is named John but he was stuck with the nickname Barney because he used to hide in a barn whenever he wanted solitude. If he’s Barney in one sentence and John a paragraph later, my response is probably, “Huh?”  

Then there’s the adoption of long unpronouncable names that make me stumble and stutter even when my reading doesn’t entail moving my lips. Naturally I give a pass to authors who live in other countries where the names that seem “foreign” to me are akin to Smith in America. [Catriona: I loved The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but every character (in my head) was called Muhhhh and lived on Muhhhh Strasse]. Still tongue-twisters make my head hurt and slow my reading.

So how can authors choose character names wisely? There are tons of resources on the web to set authors on a make-it-easy-on-the-reader path. For instance, the Social Security administration lists the most popular names chosen for male and female babies by decade from the 1880s to the 2010s. So it’s a piece of cake to make sure the name of your 1890s heroine is appropriate. Other sites let authors browse names associated with different countries or cultures. If you do a Google search of say African-American baby names or Irish baby names, you’ll be rewarded with dozens of optional resources.

Need to name an animal in a book? You can find top-notch ideas for that on the internet, too. For example, The Seeing Eye and other website offers suggestions on the best names for pooches. (One or two-syllable names are best, and the names shouldn’t sound like commands. E.g. Dogs can get confused, too, by rhymes such as Bo and No and Kit and Sit.)

I must confess I didn’t look for any advice for animal names when I realized I’d need to name occupants of a veritable Noah’s Arc—goats, horses, mules, pigs, coyotes, peacocks, etc.—for my new cozy mystery series set on a goat farm. For fun, I gave family members a chance to select the animals they wanted named for them. My attractive niece Tammy gave her name to a pot-bellied pig, while my sister Rita awarded her name to a mule (no comment).

So have fun naming your characters—animal and people. Just keep a lookout for potential reader confusion. For my Brie Hooker Mystery Series, I created an Excel Spreadsheet that lists every character of consequence. It can be sorted by first or last name. That helps me avoid getting into a starting letter rut. I also keep a lot of other details on the spreadsheet with columns for age, hair and eye color, height, distinguishing characteristics, and relationship—including if I’ve killed them off or sent them to jail in an earlier book. It’s a big help when my mind goes blank.

Guess I shouldn’t sign off without saying a word or two about my own Nom de Plume since people often ask me if Linda Lovely is my “real” name. It is. Legal and everything. I was born Linda Mae Willis. Not too bad except every third girl in my grade school was named Linda. Of course, that also tells you I was born in the 1940s or 1950s when Social Security records list Linda as second only to Mary as parents’ top choice for a girl’s name.

When I married Dan Lovely in college, Lovely became my legal last name and also my pen name. (I worked part time for Plymouth Traveler Magazine while in school.) A few years later, when we divorced, I had loads of Linda Lovely bylines, and I’d learned to deal with the Lovely surname side-effects. Back when Deep Throat came out, leaving phone messages was a real pain. Men often heard Linda Lovelace was ringing them up no matter how carefully I pronounced my name. That meant I either got immediate call backs or silence from men who figured it was a joke.

When Tom Hooker and I married, I kept Linda Lovely as my legal and pen name. I mean Linda Lovely Hooker was not an option. The hassle of a legal and a pen name change weighed in, too. However, to make amends to my Hooker relatives, my new heroine is named Brie Hooker. She suffers a bit of kidding as a result, but as the heroine of a humorous cozy mystery she good-naturedly shrugs it off.

Catriona: Guilty as charged in every first draft I've ever written, Linda. I had a Lola, Lloyd, Lovatt, Louis pile-up in one book, and a character called Lavinia Ross, Lavinia Dunnoch, Lady Lavinia, Lady Love and LL in another I was writing at the same time!

 Linda's Bio: 

Over the past five years, hundreds of mystery/thriller writers have met Linda Lovely at check-in for the annual Writers’ Police Academy, which she helps organize. Lovely finds writing pure fiction isn’t a huge stretch given the years she’s spent penning PR and ad copy. She writes a blend of mystery and humor, chuckling as she plots to “disappear” the types of characters who most annoy her. Quite satisfying plus there’s no need to pester relatives for bail. Henery Press just released PICKED OFF on June 5. It’s the second humorous installment in her new Brie Hooker Mystery series set on a goat farm in Upstate South Carolina. An active member of Sisters in Crime, Lovely served as her local chapter’s president for five years. She also belongs to International Thriller Writers and Romance Writers of America.

The writer as gardener

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

I'm coveting coneflowers. And caladiums. And heliotrope.

Welcome, summer. Thought you'd never get here.

I didn't get a very timely start on my gardening this year. Partly it was the weather, which kept veering back and forth between unseasonably hot and unseasonably cold, while dumping down so much rain that I occasionally contemplated seeing if I could grow waterlilies at the bottom of the yard. And partly it was my schedule, working hard on back-to-back deadlines so there would be both a summer book and a Christmas book this year, on top of a lot of family stuff that included losing Mom.

There were good reasons why I didn't get much gardening done in March, or April, or May. But at the moment, I'm wishing I could hop in my time machine. Surely I could find a few spots where an hour of so of weeding and planting would produce marvelous benefits by now.

Ah, well. Next year.

Next year I'm going to mark my calendar so I order the caladiums while there's still a good selection. And the coneflowers—I'm a sucker for a particular kind of pink coneflowers that the plant breeder Monrovia has developed—either “Pink Double Delight”or “Double Scoop Bubblegum.” (That's one of them at the top.) Only found a few this year, and got them in later than optimal. Next year I'll put in the heliotrope plants sooner, so I have more time to enjoy the intoxicating, almost too-sweet fragrance. Next year I'll sweep the deck and clean up the planters early, so they're all ready to tuck plants and bulbs in. Next year I'll weed regularly as soon as the weeds appear, and de-dandelion the yard more often, and--

Gardeners are optimists.

Writers are, too. We have to be. Only an optimist could sit down, open a brand new blank document (or take out a blank sheet of paper, for those who do things the old fashioned way) and not panic at the thought of how many hours of work lie ahead, how many words typed and erased and retyped and edited and reedited, until the blank document turns into a book.

I'm getting close to opening that blank document. Right now, I'm still working on my outline—I'm not as much of a planner as I used to be, but I still like to have at least an approximate idea of where I'm going when I launch myself into a book. And I have to take a research trip—the book will be set on a cruise ship on which Meg's grandfather is giving lectures about wildlife and the environment, so I'm taking a short cruise. And almost as soon as I get back from that, I start the draft. I have the date marked on my calendar. July 1.

Which means in a few weeks, I will once more have way too many excuses for neglecting the garden. So now's the time to tackle whatever garden chores I want to get done before I go into draft mode, in which I walk around with my head in my own fictional world a good bit of the time and barely notice the weeds.

I still have a few unfilled pots. Wish I could find someplace that sells love lies bleeding. Maybe a few more scented geraniums? Did the black-eyed Susans survive the winter? For some reason, they don't survive in my yard—the deer might be to blame—but the clump I stuck in a large pot on the deck has lasted several years. Maybe another daylily or two—it's definitely the deer to blame for my not being able to grow day lilies except in planters on the deck. And--

Don't mind me. I'm still deep in gardener mode. Writer mode happening soon enough.

Ice Blonde Is Here

"Juliet left the house in a blue velvet strapless dress, high heels and a light-blue velveteen jacket" and disappeared at 11:42 p.m. It's below zero.
Juliet Du Pres, the daughter of a wealthy Chouteau Forest family, sneaked out of her house to go to a high school holiday party with her forbidden boyfriend, Dex, a low-rent mechanic's son. Despite the cold mid-Missouri weather, she refused to wear warm clothes – it would spoil her look.
At the party were drugs and booze, along with rivals for Juliet's dazzling ice blonde beauty. On the drive home, Juliet had a fight with her boyfriend, jumped out of his car, ran into the woods near her house and disappeared in the snow.
Now Dex is missing, too.
Where is Juliet? What happened to Dex?
Was Juliet kidnapped? Murdered? Or is she hiding out with her high school stud?
Ice Blonde is my third Angela Richman adventure, after Brain Storm

and Fire and Ashes.

This third Angela story is a short, tightly written novella set in the dead of winter. The chilling descriptions are guaranteed to cool you down on the hottest summer day.
Angela risks her job to investigate Juliet's disappearance. She soon uncovers more mysteries:
Why was Juliet given a big bag of white powder at the party? Was it cocaine – or something more sinister?
Why was Brock, a party guest who put his fist through a wall, suddenly packed off to Switzerland?
The whole Forest is searching for the missing Juliet, except her two friends, Bella and Daisy. Do they know that Juliet is alive – or dead?
Chouteau County death investigator Angela Richman writes: "Did Juliet run away from her strict parents? Was she suicidal? I prayed the LaRouches' delicate snow princess was still alive. The last thing I wanted was to do my job – to examine Juliet's frozen body."

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Order your copy of Ice Blonde here: https://tinyurl.com/y9y6g7l7