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Mistress of the Micky Finn

By Elaine Viets of the Femmes Fatales.

"Mistress of the Mickey Finn" is the title of my new short story in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine's November/December issue.
It's also a warning to young men.
We women are warned to be careful when we go to bars. We should never leave our drinks unattended, or some sly stranger will drug them and terrible things will happen.

But no one warns young men—and they should. Here in South Florida, a travelling gang of young women preys on well-heeled men. I found out about them from my husband Don's barber. Oscar Alci, a US citizen from Turkey, is a master storyteller. He told Don about a client who’d been ripped off by a wily young woman at a fashionable Fort Lauderdale watering hole. That story became “Mistress of the Mickey Finn.” Oscar has his own book, Short Cuts from Oscar the Barber, coming out this month. In tribute to his storytelling skills, I made him a character in my own story.
"Mistress of the Micky Finn" opens this way:

“She cleaned me out. She took everything—even my towels.”
Will Drickens’ nasal whine echoed off the marble floor in his Fort Lauderdale beach house.
The thirty-something hedge funder pleaded for help with sad, puppy-dog eyes—at least, he tried to look sad. Private eye Helen Hawthorne saw a hound with skin tanned and oiled like a Coach bag.
Will wore enough flashy designer labels to stock a mall. Phil Sagemont, Helen's husband and PI partner, had trouble hiding his contempt for their new client.

This set-up was typical for this kind of crime: Will met Donna Simon at the Perfect Manhattan. They talked for a bit, and he began feeling woozy. She paid his tab and called for his car, tipping the valet lavishly. Donna drove Will to his beachfront home in his car, and when he recovered, she fixed him breakfast in bed. They enjoyed a romantic weekend together, and on Sunday night, he couldn’t bear to part with her. Donna said she’d always wanted to spend a day at the beach, and Will told her she could stay at his house Monday. He spent his day hearing wedding bells, while Donna’s gang cleaned out Will's luxurious home.

 

In South Florida, these gangs “travel up and down the Florida coast from "Vero Beach to Miami.”
Oscar the Barber and Phil have this conversation:

“A beautiful woman will spend the whole weekend with the mark,” Oscar said.
“What about security videos?” Phil asked.
“These women are very, very smart. They are careful to turn their faces to hide from the cameras. Many have long hair, and use it like a curtain. Most security systems have such blurry images, it’s hard to see the person. The police rarely get anywhere.”
“Why haven't the police cracked down on these scammers?”
“These are the cream of the crooks,” Oscar said. “They can spot an undercover cop.”
“How?” Phil asked.
“Easy. These women have fine-tuned senses. They notice little things: the undercover cops trying to pass as rich guys buy their expensive suits at resale shops, so they’re a couple of years out of
style. They have ‘cop eyes’—they’re alert, watchful, not like someone having a drink at a bar.”

Oscar wasn't my only source. A retired Fort Lauderdale detective told me these gangs have been around since at least the mid-’80s. Sometimes they work in teams—the woman drugs the mark’s drink, then drives him home, takes whatever she can carry out of his apartment, including his pricey watches and jewelry. Her accomplice may pick her up, or she may steal the mark’s car, too. By the time he wakes up, it’s in a chop shop or being loaded on a freighter to a foreign country.

The victims of this game are men of astounding innocence. The way Will met Donna at the mythical bar is classic:

“I stopped by the Perfect Manhattan on Las Olas. Just for some conversation,” Will said.
Right, Helen thought. Conversation. The two words heard most often in that bar were “how much?” and the customers weren’t asking
the price of the drinks. The Perfect Manhattan was known for “handcrafted cocktails” for the no-holds-barred singles set. Stunning supermodel bartenders displayed their implants as they “built” twenty-dollar Manhattans and whispered, “Would you like a cherry?” with a suggestive wink and a giggle, straight out of an old-school men's magazine. The servers—all women—were expensively enhanced and barely covered.
“Donna was sitting at the bar in a black dress and pink heels. She told me they were Manolo Blahniks. Sexy as hell—little tiny roses all over and straps halfway up her legs.”
“Cage sandals,” said Helen, who knew her shoes. “They cost twenty-two hundred dollars.”
“For one pair?” Phil said.
“Donna appreciates the best,” Will said. “I asked if I could buy her a drink, and the next thing I knew we were talking. She was easy to talk to.”
Your mother should have named you Mark, Helen thought. You were the easy one.

The Pain of Loss

Today is a sad one in the mystery community. A highly respected member, Duane Swierczynski and his wife Meredith, have lost their beloved daughter Evie to leukemia. The mystery community in many ways is a small town, with many neighborhoods, but it is for the most part a supportive community. I know that today we are all mourning the loss of a bright, talented, and lively spirit. I do know the pain of losing a beloved family member. We all do. But I cannot imagine the pain of losing a child.

Please join with the mystery community in sending your prayers, thoughts, and every good thing to Duane, Meredith, and their son Parker. May Evie's memory always be a blessing.

I Want a Tiara!

Catriona writes: I've never had a guest-post title I agree with more. I want a tiara too! (It's a similar feeling to when MC Beaton told me she had just got a new opera cloak because her old one was growing shabby. Imagine wearing out an opera cloak!)

Anyway. I am absolutely delighted to be welcoming today's guest femme: the sparkling, sassy, powder-dry but warm as a mug of cocoa Ellen Byron, multi-award-winning author of the Cajun Country Mysteries, Hollywood insider, wearer of much purple and someone I wouldn't mind being stuck on a desert island with, as long as we had a means of catching shrimp.

Over to you, Ellen!

Ellen writes: I’ve never been a beauty pageant person. I get Miss America – college scholarships and all that. But local contests always mystified me. Girls competing for the title of Miss Rhubarb Harvest Festival Queen or something? What’s that about?

And then in 2015, I was at a private Christmas Eve party in Gramercy, Louisiana, waiting for the legendary bonfires on the levees to be lit, and I saw this…

This lovely young lady was the 2015 Festival of the Bonfires queen. And oh, that crown. Which is actually a tiara. What’s the difference? Simply put, a crown has a circular base while a tiara has a semi-circular base. I learned this because after gazing upon the wonder of the headgear worn by Miss Festival of the Bonfires, I became obsessed with Louisiana pageant tiaras in general.

Louisiana is famous for having more festivals than days in the year. Even discounting music festivals, which tend not to crown queens, that’s a lot of rhinestone bling. There are tiaras for everything from a festival celebrating camellias to the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival. No joke. That is an actual thing.

There’s even a hurricane festival, which celebrates Cajun culture and offers up a chance to wear this fabulous topper…

When I plotted the story for Mardi Gras Murder, my fourth Cajun Country Mystery, I was determined to translate my obsession with these tiaras into literature. So, I created the Miss Pelican Mardi Gras Gumbo Queen Festival. The winner takes home a tiara inspired by these two beauties…

My protagonist, Maggie Crozat, is as wary of pageants as I was. But like me, when she gets to see the pageant tiara up close in all its sparkly glory, she can’t help falling in love with it and even reluctantly coveting it a bit. Then, when she’s pressed into service as a pageant judge, she get’s an insider’s view of the positives and negatives that go into the contest and eventually earn one girl a chance to wear the handsome headwear.

I admit it. I’ve tried to find out where you buy these glorious creations. I thought one would make a great giveaway. (Hah! Like I could actually bring myself to give it away.) But so far, I’ve had no luck. I’ll have to satisfy myself by looking at pictures. Like this one… 

Catriona again: definitely the hurricane one for me, please. It's gorgeous and I've got the name . . .

What about everyone else? Do any of our Fatal Family own a tiara?  Inquiring minds with a slight pressure ache behind each ear want to know. 

 

Ellen's deets: 

MARDI GRAS MURDER (Available for pre-order) 

A CAJUN CHRISTMAS KILLING

BODY ON THE BAYOU

PLANTATION SHUDDERS

Winner of two Lefty Awards for Best Humorous Mystery

Agatha, Lefty, and Daphne Award Nominee

Sign up for my Cajun Country newsletter at ellenbyron.com

https://www.facebook.com/ellenbyronauthor

 

Fessing up

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

A quote from the "Frog and Peach" comedy sketch by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore:

Dudley Moore: Do you feel you've learnt by your mistakes here?

Peter Cook: I think I have, yes, and I think I can probably repeat them almost perfectly.

If I could go back in time and give a bit of advice to my fledgling writer self, one thing I'd say: start a series bible--which is, essentially, all the bits of information you create about character and locale, things you are positive you can't possibly forget. Except a couple of books down the line--or, in my case, 24 books down the line--you will.

A case in point.

In Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon, the fourth book of the series, Meg, speaking of her brother, Rob, says:

Rob had brains enough to graduate from the University of Virginia Law School.  Not at the top of his class, of course, which would have required sustained effort.  But still, brains enough to graduate, and to pass the bar exam on the first try, even though instead of studying he'd spent his preparation classes inventing a role-playing game called Lawyers from Hell. 

You'd think I'd have remembered writing that. Well, now that I see it, I do. But that didn't prevent me from writing, in The Penguin Who Knew Too Much, book number eight, the following passage:

"No one should ever talk to the cops without a lawyer," Rob said, shaking his head. I was glad to know that Rob had absorbed that much wisdom from his time at law school. Given Rob's ability to get into trouble, probably worth the whole three years he'd spent learning it, even though he'd never gotten around to taking the bar exam so he could practice law.

Oops. I didn't notice the discrepancy. But my readers did. I've heard from several over the years who have pointed it out.

What could I do? Both books were out there in print, and my mistake in my own fictional world was there for any discerning reader to see.

I thought about it for a while. And came up with a solution. In The Hen of the Baskervilles, book fifteen, the following passage appeared, clearing up--I hope--the discrepancy.

I'm not a contract specialist," Rob said.  He had, in fact, never actually practiced law, in spite of graduating from the University of Virginia's prestigious law school and passing the bar exam on his first try. "But I think it'll be fine if you get her to initial an amended contract tomorrow.  If you decided it wasn't quite as involved as you expected and knocked a couple of hundred off the price, she'd probably sign in a heartbeat. You might want to run that by your own attorney, just to be sure."

"Great idea," Vern said.  "Thanks."

"Just when I think you didn't learn anything in law school, you surprise me," I said.

"Is that like an apology for telling people I flunked the bar exam?" Rob asked.

I winced.

"I never told anyone you flunked the bar exam," I said.  "I probably did tell a few people I wasn't sure you ever bothered to show up for it, but that's completely different. And for the record, you have my apology."

"But I told you I passed it." Rob didn't look angry.  More puzzled.

"Yes, but I thought you only said that to stop all of us from nagging you about when you were going to take it," I explained. "That's what I'd have done if I'd finished law school and decided I was never going to practice and taking the bar exam would be a waste of time."

"Wow.  When you put it that way, it almost sounds like a compliment." Rob ambled off, looking mollified.

And thereby, I hope, any eagle-eyed readers who also spotted the error were also mollified.

Some mistakes are easier to fix than others. Meg's friend Aida, who first appeared as Aida Morris, can be assumed to have experienced either divorce or marriage to account for her reappearance as Aida Butler. Others aren't--for example, in The Nightingale Before Christmas, as Meg and her sons are discussing their upcoming appearance in Trinity Episcopal's Christmas pageant.

“We need new costumes,” Josh had said one night.

“Can’t you wear your costumes from last year?” I’d asked. “Or are they too small?”

Jamie had shrugged.

“Mo-om,” Josh had moaned. “We were animals last year.”

Actually, since they’d been dinosaurs last year, technically they’d been reptiles. And extinct reptiles to boot. Did reptiles count as animals? I could ask Grandfather.

"Well, what do you want to be this year?” I’d asked. It wasn’t as if there were a lot of choices in a nativity play.

Unless Robyn decided to spice things up and add scenes not found in the original text. Based on the boys’ preferences, I suspected a scene with pirates would go down well with most of the participants. Perhaps instead of arriving in Bethlehem on a donkey, the Holy Family could come by boat, allowing Joseph to fend off pirates along the way. Or, better yet, what if the Wise Men could encounter a party of Imperial storm troopers—also bound for Bethlehem and clearly up to no good—and repel the them with their light sabers?

I’d abandoned that train of thought and dragged my mind back to the immediate crisis.

“So if you’re not animals, what are you?” I’d asked. “Angels?”

“Mo-o-om!” I’d been hoping neither of them would learn to roll their eyes like that until they were teenagers. “Girls are angels. And little kids are animals. Big boys are shepherds!”

As more than one reader has probably noticed--though so far only one has pointed it out--reptiles are animals. Not mammals, but definitely animals. No fix I can think of, but I'm going to give Meg a break here--she was in the middle of the holiday frenzy and not thinking straight.

And so it goes. I'm sure my readers can find any number of additional oopses. I fix what I can. And for the rest . . . I wince, acknowledge that I'm fallible, and keep going.

 

 

 

 

5 Things I Learned Pitching a Hollywood Agent

By Joanna Campbell Slan for Femmes Fatales

After years of working together, my writing partner, Brad Markowitz, and I thought we had a project strong enough to pitch Leslie Conliffe of IPG (Intellectual Property Group) in Los Angeles. Brad’s an old pro at Hollywood, having written for sit coms and worked as a showrunner. I’ve learned a lot from him. Leslie is his agent, so he called and made an appointment with her.

As you can imagine, I was nervous as a squirrel about our meeting. I’d spoken to Leslie once before on the phone, and we’d really clicked. She had liked my Jane Eyre Chronicles. But that didn't guarantee that this new idea would be met with approval. While this was business as usual for Brad, it was a huge leap outside of my comfort zone.

Actually, the whole Los Angeles thing was outside of my comfort zone. I realized it right away when we drove down Sepulveda Blvd. and I casually asked, "Who names a street after a crypt? Sepulchre Boulevard?"

Of course, Brad thought I was nuts. "No. That's Sepulveda," he said, giving every syllable its proper due. I tried to explain that when you bump people off for a living (on paper at least), such associations naturally spring to mind.

Hollywood is a slick, glamorous town. You can’t drive anywhere without seeing beautiful people. The current “uniform” in Hollywood is tight yoga pants and a sports bra. Nothing else. You see women wearing that EVERYWHERE. When I pointed this out to Brad, he nodded and said, "God bless them every one."

Fashionista alert: Stretchy pants and a midriff bra do NOT make for an outfit I would feel comfortable in. I took two outfits with me, both very simple dresses. One pink and one blue. In the end, I chose blue because it's the color of sincerity. I wanted to look professional but not stuffy. I also wore comfortable shoes, and that turned out to be a very good choice, because parking in LA is a real problem.

I brought along a big portfolio-sized leather purse so I would have everything I needed, neatly tucked away. The one hiccup I didn’t plan for was that Brad borrowed my favorite fine point ink pen and then somehow gave it to a waiter! This shouldn’t have been a crisis. (Are you laughing yet?) But I’m excessively fond of those Pentel RSVP Fine Point pens. When I discovered we didn’t have it, I felt…naked. Betrayed. Unprepared, even. But I persevered.

The morning of our meeting, I walked from my hotel (the Crescent, and I loved it!) to Whole Foods to buy a gift bag (an adorable jack-o-lantern with candy corn teeth from Papyrus) and wrapping paper (white with spider webs), because I’d brought Leslie a small gift, a Jane Eyre/Lowood Academy LaCrosse Team tee shirt. The world needs more Vitamin C, as in Cute.

Thus armed, Brad and I arrived at the IPG office and were ushered into the conference room. A few minutes later, we were joined by Leslie and her assistant, Emma. (And yes, Leslie loved the gift. I wished I'd brought a big bag of candy corn, too!)

Here are five things I now know about pitching a Hollywood agent.

1. Your pitch needs to be commercial. Brad and I worked for two years, coming up with an idea that was uniquely ours, topical, and saleable to a verifiable audience. As Leslie wrote in an article for LinkedIn, even if she likes an idea, she might not be able to represent it because “every time I decide to work with a new client time is taken away from an existing client and project, and I must believe that I can continue to give the same amount of quality attention and personal dedication to all my clients, new and old.”
2. Your pitch needs to be well-honed and dramatic. Brad and I had put long hours into deciding exactly how to package, explain, and deliver our idea. In the end, we decided that he would introduce me, and I would paint a scene for Leslie, a snippet that would entertain and entice her.
3. You need to practice, practice, practice. I learned from being a motivational speaker that when you are nervous, words fly out of your head. I went over and over what I wanted to say, speaking the words, and imagining how it would be. I actually stood up and walked through it in my hotel room several times. I must have done well, because Brad said I commanded the room.
4. You should bring supporting materials. I printed out a set of figures from Forbes Magazine that showed exactly how commercial our idea was. In other words, I defined the size and buying power of the market we hoped to attract. Having the sheet in front of me made talking about it a snap, and I was able to leave those numbers behind with Leslie.
5. Your pitch is only the first step. As with most agencies, a lot of people have to vet the proposals before the agency will consider new projects. Even if IPG does greenlight our idea, they will still have to figure out how they will “get in a room” or “get us in a room.” ("Getting in a room" is industry lingo for getting the opportunity to pitch someone who can turn our idea into a television feature or series. And yes, if we get in a room, we’ll go through this all over again.)

Were we a success? Brad had warned me that it might be a very short meeting. I knew going in that Leslie had a jam-packed day. I also knew I would have to prove that I could deliver, but I wouldn’t get to do that unless our idea immediately grabbed Leslie’s attention. At every step, I reminded myself that at least I’d be able to go to my grave saying, “I pitched a Hollywood agent! Wow! Is that cool or what?”

Again, you ask, “Was it a success?” We spent nearly three hours with Leslie. Two and a half were talking about our idea. So yes, I think it went as well as it possibly could. As for what happens next, we’ll have to wait and see.

Small Details

 

 

 By Joanna Campbell Slan

I have always been fascinated by small things, and after my mother took us to see Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle in the Museum of Science and Industry, I was hooked. Since I grew up poor, I couldn’t run out and buy all the tiny stuff I wanted. Shockingly, miniatures are expensive. Very, very expensive. Right now on Etsy, you can buy a miniature piece of Santeria Spiritual furniture (a chest of drawers) complete with voodoo items for $125. And that’s mainly a cute piece. A petit point bench is selling for $160. Are you beginning to get the picture? The joke in the mini world is: "The smaller the item, the bigger the price tag."

To me, the fun in miniatures is making the stuff. Particularly when I’m turning trash into treasure. Last year I decided to create a spooky scene to enter in the annual Halloween scene contest run by Miniatures.com. My concept started with a paper Starbucks coffee cup that my husband, David, had thrown away. It reminded me of a stove. An old round stove. If you have a stove, you are well on the way to a  . . . kitchen. Yeah. I decided to make a cooking scene, one that any tiny witch would be proud of. Because I wasn’t down in Florida, our home, I had to make do with any cheap materials I could scrounge up quickly. My imagination really went into overdrive. Here’s what I used:

 1. The stove is a Starbucks cup.

2. The spider web is wire and thread.

3. The spider is clay.

4. The saw is the cutting edge from a box of foil or plastic wrap.

5. The hand coming out of the trapdoor is clay.

6. The butcher block table is a bunch of pieces of wood glued together and cut into a square.

7. The rag with a hand print. I cut a cork into the shape of a tiny hand and used red ink to stamp it on a paper towel.

8. The cat is all polymer clay.

9. The cow skull is paper mache.

10. The “glass” jars are strips of plastic packaging taped in a tube shape.

11. The eyeballs are clay.

12. The broom is dead grass tied to a stick.

13. The witch’s hat is an empty tea bag painted with acrylic paint.

14. The basket is paper.

15. The green candles at the top of the cupboard are straws. Inside each is an LED light (up at the flame). Then I dripped green wax into and around the straw.

16. When it’s dark, there’s a light coming out of the stove, the candles, and the trap door.

17. I printed out an old chart about bugs and put that on the shelves.

18. The cupboard is cut from mat board, like what's used to frame pictures. The little witch on a broom was created by using a punched image as a stencil and filling it with wood putty. When it was dry, I painted it. String is glued down to the top of the cupboard to add dimension liked carving.

19. Cheese cloth dyed in strong coffee is the open weave fabric on the shelves.

20. The floor is paper clay, except for the trap door.

21. The pots are paper with wooden handles.

22. The plate on the butcher block table is a pull top from an almond milk carton. The fingers and eyeballs are clay. The cleaver is metal from a wine bottle, inserted in a wood dowel.

23. The basket with green balls is a nutshell that’s been sanded smooth.

24. The cauldron is clay. The “steam” is a bit of cotton batting.

25. The fancy bottles are stacked beads.

26. The plant in the pot on the top shelf is that bit of green plastic you get when you buy sushi. (Never throw it away!)

 And one last thing: The green bubbles are witch's stew. (Gorilla Glue covered with green acrylic paint.)

NOTE: Femmes Elaine Viets interrupting here. Joanna's miniature made a big impression on me. I voted for it.

The Miniatures.com contest runs from now until Sunday, Oct. 28 at 11:50 p.m. EST, and you can vote every 24 hours. Here’s the link:   https://wshe.es/CHKxTObS

To see more ideas about miniatures and how to make them, visit Joanna's  pinterest page: https://www.pinterest.com/jcslan25

 

 

You Can't Please Everyone

by Leigh Perry / Toni L.P. Kelner

A reader recently gave my book The Skeleton Paints a Picture on Amazon a one-star review, and it hit me hard. Let me start by explaining that one of the characters in the book is Indigo, who is gender fluid, and I use the personal pronouns they and them to refer to them. The reviewer did not like this, and he or she said:

I understand what Leigh Perry was doing with the "they" and "them", however I ended up reading and rereading and trying to figure out how many she was actually talking to or about. Too much work for me when I read for enjoyment. I have loved all the other books but if I see this in another book, I will not read anymore.

My first reaction was vexation. No author likes one-star reviews. But I've been at this for twenty-five years, so I've had one-star reviews before and will almost certainly get them again. I generally just shrug my shoulders, make a rude gesture toward the screen, and move on.

And to be fair, in a way the review was helpful. The reader laid out exactly what it was that he or she objected to. It's like a review of The Avengers which says, "There are superheroes in this movie--I don't like superheroes, so I'm giving this movie a bad rating." That way, other viewers won't be upset. There are plenty of other movies without superheroes, and there are plenty of books without gender fluid characters or the use of the singular they.

Still, I felt bad that I'd disappointed and confused somebody who says he or she was a long-time reader of the series. So I started trying to think of how I could have handle the situation the next time I include a gender fluid or non-binary character.

I should start by explaining how I decided to use the singular they. Honestly, it's not a new approach. I first ran into it in 1984, when I was a production editor at IBM. One of the technical writers there explained that while it was technically ungrammatical, it was better than assuming all banking customers were men. I got what she was saying, but years of English class had me a bit leery until I heard a linguist's lecture in which he explained that it wouldn't be the first pronoun shift we'd had. You used to be only plural, and we dumped thee and thou in everyday use a long time ago. Moreover, re-purposing an existing word is a much easier linguistic shift than creating new ones. (Or using he or she or he/she.) Plus I knew that the majority of gender fluid people prefer the singular they.

Most important to me, there's the real Indigo. The character is based on an online friend of mine, a talented artist who is a big fan of my books, and the real Indigo prefers they and them. They kindly said I could use he if that would be easier for me, but that would have been inaccurate. Indigo isn't a he. Or a she.

So I went with the singular they.

I knew that not everybody has encountered this usage before, so my next step was to consult my editor. She approved of the choice without hesitation, and promised she'd be extra careful while proofing the sections where Indigo appears to make them as transparent as possible for the reader. Honestly, Indigo didn't show up in that many scenes anyway.

Yet, here was a reader who couldn't keep up. So what could I have done differently? According to web sites discussing LGBTQ issues, there are other approaches:

• Use the neologisms ze/hir/hir. As in, "Indigo picked up zir backpack because ze needed to leave." I could probably get used to this once I got the spell checker to behave, but I don't think it would it have been any less confusing that commonly used words.
• Don't use pronouns. As in, "Indigo picked up Indigo's backpack because Indigo needed to leave." That would make it plain who I was referring to, but it's also incredibly awkward sounding. While I could reword some sentences to make it less so--"Indigo picked up the backpack because it was time to go,"--it was still going to be stilted.
• Alternate he and she. As in, "Indigo picked up his backpack because she needed to leave." I find that a lot more confusing--just writing that sentence confused me.
• Use it or he/she. Just no. Not ever. Those are considered offensive to trans and gender non-conforming people.

After considering the possibilities, I still think I picked the only solution that worked for me: the singular they. The words already exist and pass through the spell checker, those passages read naturally, it's not insulting, and it's about as clear as it's going to be. And again, they is what Indigo uses.

So this is my message to that reader, whoever he or she--or they--might be. I did the best I could with a language that isn't a perfect match for reality. I'm sorry you couldn't figure it out, but I don't have a better way to handle a gender fluid character.

Now I admit it occurs to me that what the reader is really saying is that he or she doesn't want gender fluid characters in the books he or she reads. I hope that that's not the case, but if it is, then by all means, don't read any of my books in the future. I'm going to continue to put all kinds of characters into my books, and you never know when I'm going to insist on fooling around with grammar to make it work.

I hate to lose a reader, but honestly, every choice a writer make runs the risk of alienating a reader. There is no book that everybody loves, likes, or even tolerates. Or to quote Ricky Nelson's song "Garden Party":

You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself

 

 

 

 

B & Bees Kneeses

It's getting to the time of year - summer a faint memory behind us and Christmas* a faint prospect ahead, that short breaks start to seem like a great idea. And what could be better than a short break in a nice B&B? Thirty days in jail, that's what.

Okay that might be overstating it a bit. When a B&B is good, it's very very good but when it's bad it's . . . hilarious. 

I can never decide which are worse: bad British B&Bs  - candlewick bedspreads, those wee tubes of Nescafe and fag ash in the fried eggs; or bad US B&Bs - gingham love-hearts hanging from the door handles,  excruciating  social hours at teatime and the proud announcement of "today's coffee". My memory of "today's coffee" doesn't go beyond hazelnut and maple but my travelling companion swears he remembers spiced orange and toasted coconut. Not together, but still.

Anyway, to celebrate the launch - today! - of GO TO MY GRAVE, which is set in a posh B&B, I've whittled away at some happy memories and compiled my top five remarkable (for various reasons) B&Bs. (Some names have been omitted to protect the incompetent.)

No. 5 Hog Heaven

Glebe Farm at North Creake in Norfolk (the UK one) is a winner. It's beautiful outside with its warm red brick and a cottage garden. beautiful inside with its Bloomsbury hues and books galore, beautiful all around with its coastal walks and stripy lighthouses. Mary and Jeremy make great (coffee-flavoured) coffee and tip-top fry-ups and then they leave you alone.

In fact my best experience at Glebe Farm was when they literally left me alone. I asked about a particular date. They said they would be away. Then they emailed again with a suggestion: would I feed the cat and fry my own bangers if they didn't charge me? Would I? I was in hog heaven. I commandeered the kitchen to make a pork pie for Val McDermid (another blog and not a short one) and once I'd worked out how to turn the telly on (a task that gets more complicated every time the tech changes) and how to put the many colour-coded bins out (ditto) I've never been happier. Mary and Jeremy might have had regrets, when they came home to a freezer full of leftover ham stock, but not me. 

 

No. 4 Knick-Knack Central

At the far reaches of the other end of the scale is a place I spent a few nights in in London. There was one letting bedroom, so crammed with knick-knacks it was hard to find enough flat space to charge a phone. Also, none of the family members - I think, although they could have been anyone - got the memo that the en suite bathroom was for the B&B guest alone. Maybe that was a teething problem - I know they hadn't been at the venture all that long because my fifty quid a night was still a novelty. I know that because they say in the garden under an open window arguing about what to do with it. And the landlady tidied the linen cupboard just outside my bedroom door at one o'clock in the morning. How loud can that be, you're wondering. Depends on the number of bangles she's wearing, is my reply. 

Worst of all in this truly abysmal establishment was breakfast. The advert said "continental selection of croissants, spreads and preserves served at your leisure". What that meant was one of the many tiny tables in the room had a basket of little pastries in packets, with all the writing in various exotic languages. They puzzled me for a while until I worked out that they were airline food, saved from flights. And not recent flights either: the last two digits of six digit consume-by dates are the same the world over.

 

No. 3 Local Heroine

One of my favourite B&Bs sounds the same on paper: one letting room, make your own breakfast. But this cottage in Pennan on the Aberdeenshire coast couldn't be more different in real life. The make-your-own involves a fridge, a toaster and home-made marmalade that could wipe out the competition at any WI in the land. The room is spacious, the bathroom unoccupied and outside is this:

[Husband blogger's own]

And the phone box from Local Hero. What's not to love? Susan cheerfully gives over half the downstairs of a not-very-big cottage and lets guests sprawl all over her garden. There don't seem to be any rules or restrictions. There are certainly no wee signs.

 

No. 2 Lord, give me a sign!

In contrast, somewhere in New England (I'm not being discreet; it was a whistle-stop tour and it's all run together) is what my travelling companion and I call The House of A Hundred Signs.

That's unfair. We didn't count the signs outside our room. Inside our room, there were "only" sixteen. We'd already noticed the sign thing on this trip and taken to totting them up. Ahem:

1. No smoking (fair enough)
2. Do not use washcloth to wash face.(?)
3. Do not lie on coverlet (mkay)
4. Do not lean against this wall when passing through door (no one would, unless trying to read the sign)
5. Coffee (propped up in front of the coffee-maker)
6. Please ask innkeeper for cream
7. Cookies (propped up in front of cookie jar)
8. Please use plate when eating cookies
9. Do not consume cookies in bed
10. Let whirlpool tub fill completely before turning on jets
11. Do not overfill tub
12. Do not use whirlpool after 10pm
13. Breakfast is served between 8 and 8.30 (half an hour!)
14. TV remote (propped up in fornt of guess what)
15. TV Guide (guess)
16. Turn key to lock door (shocker!)

There was no sign saying "after breathing in, breathe out and repeat". If I travelled with my own laminator, I'd have donated one. My best guess about The House of A Hundred Signs is they paid for a bulk order of the things as part of a start-up package and wanted to get their money's worth. 

No. 1. On A Dark and Stormy Night . . .

Picking my all-time number one B&B was a challenge. Nobottle Grange in Northamptonshie, Nightingale's Inn in Ashland, OR. and Bosillian House in Grampound village in Cornwall were all contenders. But the best night I've ever had in a B&B, by far, went as follows: driving back from Skye to Galloway at night, through hammering rain, exhausted and dejected, we turned a corner and saw a sign - "bed and breakfast + phone number". There was no reception. We kept driving. Five miles farther on, half a bar appeared. I phoned. They had a room. We turned back.

It was a B&B. we expected that. It was also a castle. A turreted, crenulated, stone-mullioned castle. Now, some castle-dwellers' response to two bedraggled and scruffy late arrivals dripping on their mediaeval parquet would be to put down paper. These people? They gave us towels and shooed us into the kitchen (vaulted) for soup. They put hot-water bottles (stone) in our bed (four-poster - the real kind, with wood-worm holes) and filled a bath the size of a Buick in the nearby bathroom (round, because in a tower).

We slept like rocks, woke to a foggy morning, were served a fry-up in a red-velvet and cobweb dining room, then took off at five miles an hour with the full beams on. 

I can't tell you the name of this place because I never heard it. And I can't point you to its location because, afterwards at home, we couldn't find it on the OS sheet map. They certainly don't have a website. I've got a sneaky suspicion that the sign with the phone number was for some cottage on the drive that we missed in the dark and bad weather, and that the soup-serving, bed-warming, bath-drawing castle-dwellers were just very hospitable to random strangers. I've always hoped we didn't offend them by paying.

Of course, there's another less likely but somehow more compelling explanation. One that would account for the fact that in the years since that night, Google Earth has never let us stick a pin in the place again. That's why we call it  - my travelling companion and I - the best B&B that never was. Possibly.

 

 

*Speaking for myself. Other winter festivals are available

Meet the new Femme

Today the Femmes are welcoming our newest member, LynDee Walker, with an interview. Readers, meet LynDee.

Dean: Welcome to the Femmes, LynDee. What was the first mystery you ever read?

I’m going to go with the first Encyclopedia Brown book, because I was in love with that series as a kid and have such fond memories of it. I loved going along with Encyclopedia, chasing clues and trying to figure out what happened before he did. 

Toni: What was the first book you LOVED?

There were so many, it’s hard for me to point at a first with certainty. I was the kid who actually got grounded from reading because it was the worst punishment my mom could come up with for me. I absolutely adored Mrs. Piggle Wiggle from the first chapter of the first book and have read them all a dozen times and shared them with my children, and I have early memories of reading worn copies of The Haunted House by Peggy Parish and The Dollhouse Murders by Betty Ren Wright so many times I still knew lines by heart when my littles read them.

Donna: How does a book start for you—a character, a murder method, a plot twist, a random bit of dialogue?

Depends on the book. I’m revising my eighth novel now and I think I’ve had every one of those at some point. With the first one, Nichelle was just there, locked in a car trunk trying to figure her way out. I was loading the dishwasher and said right out loud to the silverware caddy, “I can’t write a book!” But, she wouldn’t go away, so I decided to try, and almost ten years later, here I am still at it. 

 

The first in my new Faith McClellan series actually came from the old “write the book that scares you” adage in a way: I love my littles with the fire of ten thousand suns. I have a pretty good handle on what’s happening in their lives because they know they can talk to me about anything. But the thing that keeps me up at night these days is the unknown, uncontrollable “thing” I don’t see coming, the twist of fate that could upend my whole world. I’ll have more on that when the book launches because the way it went from that idea to the book that’s coming out is a twisty tale in and of itself. I find ideas in random places, for sure.

Catriona: Is it too intrusive to ask . . . what’s your writing dream? 

It’s not too intrusive as long as it’s not too hokey to say…I’m living it. Being here for my littles and getting to do this thing I love while working with a publisher that champions the books and helps them reach readers—that’s all I’ve ever wanted from it. I’m a lucky girl, indeed.

Joanna: What does your working space look like?

Since my birthday in August, it’s looked like a super cool desk that adjusts so I can sit or stand, nestled in my favorite corner of our sunroom, which happens to be my favorite room in the house. Before that, it was wherever I could find a place to sit with my laptop, but with a two-books-a-year schedule starting, my family made over the sunroom into an office for me as a gift this year, and I love it. I have a mug my oldest made last year holding pens, a speaker for the music I must have when I’m drafting, and a little basket with seasonal flowers in it. 

Marcia: What writers influenced you? Who are your role models?

Oh goodness. So many! I grew up reading the various voices of Carolyn Keene in different iterations of Nancy Drew, which drew me to smart heroines, I think, and I love Stephen King for his unflinching prose and Laura Lippman’s Tess Monaghan for her perfect imperfection. 

Kris: What's your writing process like?

I never know where the story is going. I get an idea that I start with, and then I just sit and write to see what’s going to happen next. That’s the fun of it for me, discovering the story along with the characters. And days like today, when I’m cleaning up rabbit trails as I revise, I have to remind myself that this is what makes it fun. I think writing a book is the same amount of work no matter how you go about it: I might get a draft finished quicker than friends who plot and outline, but I also have a lot more cleanup after the fact than they do.

Hank: What was your biggest break?

The Agatha nomination Front Page Fatality garnered for Best First Novel. I was so shocked when I got the call, I told poor Marian Lesko she must have the wrong person a dozen times, and some days I still don’t quite believe it. But I’m so thankful for the wonderful readers who thought enough of the book to nominate it, and for the wonderful writer friends I made in that group. Plus, I got to meet Margaret Maron, who has long been a favorite author of mine, because she moderated our panel at Malice.

Elaine: Tell us about your book already!

My Nichelle Clarke series is about a determined young reporter who has the job I used to do, friendships like ones I’ve been fortunate to find, and a sense of justice and nose for the truth that sometimes came in handy and sometimes caused trouble for me in my former life as a journalist. Nichelle gets herself in quite a bit of trouble chasing answers for her readers, but she has a kind heart and a quick wit that make her a lot of fun to write, and I’m overjoyed with our new publishing home and looking forward to many more of her stories. 

The Salem Witches: Have We Got It Backwards?

 

By Elaine Viets

One of my favorite reads this time of year is Katherine Howe's The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. Howe's ancestors, Elizabeth Howe and Elizabeth, Proctor, were two of the accused witches in Salem, Massachusetts.

Historians are still trying to explain the Salem witch trials. I've heard reasons from mass hysteria, to "tensions between competing religious populations, or "long-standing envy between family groups," or that the accusing girls ate moldy bread, "which can cause effects similar to those of LSD."
Howe's book addresses an interesting question: What if the accused in Salem really were witches?
The crimes which the Salem witches were accused "usually reveal how narrow the colonial world really was for average people," Howe writes. The witches were accused of "making cows sick, or milk go sour, or for the loss of personal property."

Salem has embraced its 17th-century tragedy and turned it into a moneymaker. Howe has a unique view of today's cartoon witches, starting with those pointy hats.

The "tall pointy part derives from a fifteenth century hennin, and the wide brim is a simplified form of an English wimple," Howe wrote. That's what old-school nuns wore. It was "common middle-class women's headgear in the late Middle Ages, basically."
A hennin looked like this:

And the black cats? They're "just a stand-in for a familiar. But they weren't always only cats," Howe wrote.
"A familiar is a devil or spirit in the guise of an animal, that did the witch's bidding . . . a little girl who was accused told the court her mother gave her a snake for a familiar, which she suckled from a wart between her fingers."
Many cat owners, including me, might tell you there are days when I believe my cats are devils in disguise, but a witch riding a broom with a snake coiled on it just doesn't have the visual impact of a black cat.

About those brooms. We've got them backwards, Howe wrote: "The broom stuff is crazy. So a medieval witch on her way to a sabbath would strip off all her clothes. Then smear her naked body with flying ointment, straddle her broom with the straw end up, which is important because that's where the candle goes so that you can see when you're flying in the dark . . . "
How's that an image for your neighborhood Halloween party?

All those witches' brooms are pointing the wrong way. The broom straw should be in front, with a candle on it like a supernatural headlight.
It's bats, right?
Happy Halloween!

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Justine is no devil's familiar, but she's one hell of a show cat, and the pricey pedigreed kitten has been kidnapped. Helen and Phil have to find the cat and figure out who killed her owner. Win Catnapped!, my 13th Dead-End Job mystery. Click Contests at www.elaineviets.com