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Themes (Welcome Special Guest Annette Dashofy)

The Femmes are proud to welcome USA Today Bestselling Author Annette Dashofy as our guest today—Annette is celebrating the release of her new Zoe Chambers Mystery, FAIR GAME (there's a school bus demolition derby, y'all) and we're all thrilled for her! Take it away, Annette!

By Annette Dashofy

In the last month, I’ve attended two conferences. First, Malice Domestic, a convention for mystery fans. Second, the Pennwriters Conference, geared toward all genres of writers trying to learn and improve their craft. Different focus. Largely different attendees. And yet, both feel like annual family reunions to me. These people, be they mystery readers or writers of poetry, nonfiction, romance, fantasy, or yes, mystery, are my tribe.

One of the recurring topics at most Pennwriters Conferences is theme. Newby writers learn they needed to know the theme of their story either before they start or once they begin revising. Experienced writers were encouraged to keep their theme in mind throughout. 

Theme. The elusive subject that many readers don’t even think about as they enjoy their favorite work of fiction…unless they belong to a book club and delve into the exploration of the book’s deeper meaning.

As an author of murder mysteries, I once thought my theme was simply justice. Balancing the scales. Finding justice in my fictional world when so often it’s lacking in the real one. 

Eventually however, I decided my theme had more to do with family. Relationships between parents and children, both loving and contemptuous. I’ve explored Zoe’s attempts to fill the void left from losing her father decades earlier while dealing with a mother who moved away to rebuild her life when Zoe was a teen. I’ve explored loss and grief and finding one’s way through both. I’ve mined my personal experiences with losing parents in dribs and drabs to Alzheimer’s Disease. 

In my latest, Fair Game (#8 in the Zoe Chambers Mystery Series), I finally solidified the true theme of my writing. It goes beyond justice and even beyond mere “family.” In the background of this story about a deceased woman’s final hours on this earth, various family issues must be worked out. Zoe takes a teenager, whose mother is a piece of work and whose father is MIA, under her wing, understanding what she believes he’s going through. Another father struggles to deal with a child who was severely injured months earlier in a tragic accident. 

And Zoe and Pete’s dear friend, Sylvia Bassi, is overjoyed that her late son’s widow has once again found love and has become engaged to a wonderful man. Alas, he lives hundreds of miles away. Zoe recognizes that while Sylvia rejoices in the impending union, she’s also terrified. Her daughter-in-law and grandchildren are moving away to form a new life in the Southwest. Where does that leave Sylvia? Zoe assures her she will always be a part of that family and tells Sylvia, “Family isn’t about blood. It’s about heart.”

As soon as I wrote the line, I got a chill. Unintentionally, Zoe’s quote hit on the true theme of my entire series. 

Family isn’t about blood. It’s about heart. 

So dear readers, do you give any thought to a story’s “theme” as you enjoy a book? Writers, what types of themes do you like to explore in your fiction? And for everyone, do you have family in your life who are tied to you by heart rather than blood? 

 

 

 

 

About Annette: 

Annette Dashofy is the USA Today best-selling author of the Zoe Chambers mystery series about a paramedic and deputy coroner in rural Pennsylvania’s tight-knit Vance Township. A lifelong resident of Washington County (PA), Annette has garnered four Agatha Award nominations including Best Contemporary Novel of 2018 for CRY WOLF. She’s a member of International Thriller Writers, the Pittsburgh Chapter of Sisters in Crime, and is on the board of directors of Pennwriters. FAIR GAME (May 2019) is the eighth in her series.

 

 

 

About FAIR GAME:

Paramedic Zoe Chambers hoped a week at the Monongahela County Fair, showing her horse and manning the ambulance, would provide a much-needed diversion from recent events that continue to haunt her. An old friend, a bossy nemesis, and a teenage crush from her 4-H days fail to offer the distraction she had in mind. But ever the caregiver, she soon bonds with a troubled teen and a grieving father.

Back in Vance Township, a missing woman turns up dead, leading Police Chief Pete Adams into a journey through her mysterious final hours. With each new clue, the tragic circumstances of her death grow increasingly muddied. 

A cryptic phone call leads Pete to join Zoe for an evening at the fairgrounds where the annual school bus demolition derby concludes with a gruesome discovery and a new case that may or may not be connected to the first. Pete’s quest for the motive behind two homicides—and Zoe’s stubborn determination to reunite a family—thrust them both onto a collision course with a violent and desperate felon.

Get your copy here!

 

 

 

Garden guilt

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

Sometime this week I'm going to go out and apologize to my garden. I spent many weeks during the late winter writing furiously, followed by many weeks of spring traveling--to Vancouver by train for Left Coast Crime, to Yorktown for Easter, to New York City for the Edgars, and to Bethesda for Malice Domestic.  Given all that, taking care of the garden rather took a back seat. I'm feeling guilty about that.

Not that my garden requires daily attention. I like to think of myself as a Darwinian gardener. It's all about survival of the fittest plants. I try to avoid planting anything that requires undue cosseting. I know myself by now--sooner or later either a deadline or a trip will cause me to abandon any prima donna plants to the not-always-tender mercies of Mother Nature.  So I try not to acquire delicate plants, plants that require special fertilizer or pest control measures or even regular watering.

My father was a much better gardener than I am, and capable of working like a dog over his plants, but still, there were things he never bothered with--roses being the prime example. Was he simply not fond of them? Or did he have, to a much milder degree, my Darwinian fatalism: "no matter what I do they will never thrive, so why bother?"

I confess: I do keep a few roses. I don't do well by them. I'm not going to spray them with anything that would affect the bees, so sometimes disease blights them. Since my neighborhood is heavily deer-infested, I mostly grow them in planters on the balcony, and in a particularly cold winter I'll lose at least one to frozen roots. I probably shouldn't bother with the roses at all. But I like roses. I also feel guilty about all the ones I've killed over the years.

But that's a small, ongoing guilt. A bigger guilt this spring is that I haven't given the garden more than a lick and a promise. Haven't cut back things that needed cutting back. Haven't cleaned up winter debris. Haven't planted any new bulbs or plants--no, not even stuck a few cheap annuals in a pot.  I'm about to remedy that, but still--sorry, garden.

Even that's not the main reason I feel the need to apologize to my garden. You want to know the biggest guilt trip? I haven't appreciated it enough. In spite of my neglect, the garden went on about its business.  Things put out leaves and eventually bloomed, and I wasn't there appreciating it.

I wasn't out there documenting the arrival of the first snow drops, crocuses, and early daffodils. I didn't get filthy from lying on the ground trying to take the perfect shot of the pink-and-white daffodil against the sky. I didn't inhale enough hyacinth and lilac scent. I got a few glimpses of the huge purple azalea before heading off to Malice, and by the time I went out to take another look at it, the blossoms were fading.

I'm sorry garden. I'm going to work on doing better.

 

You Know You Love Books When . . .

By Elaine Viets

Yep, I'm a bookworm. Always have been. As a kid, I read ten books a week. I read so many books that my mother was worried I wasn't "normal." She made a deal with me: if I'd join the Girl Scouts, I could keep reading all the books I wanted.

So I did. I dutifully worked toward my scout badges, and even went camping in the woods, where I slept on a tree root and the mosquitoes ate me alive. That's how much I loved reading.
Now that I'm grown up, my friends are readers, too, and we love to swap tips on the latest books. One list that I belong to is the Cozy Armchair group, and we spent a day finishing this sentence:

You know you love reading when . . .

. . . you have something in the microwave for three minutes and you take your book in the kitchen to read while you are waiting.

. . . you forgo a shower because you need to get back to your book.

. . . you look forward to doctor and dentist visits because you know you will have some good reading time while you wait.

. . . you stay up till 3 a.m. to finish "just one more chapter."

. . . you miss the crazy 2.5 hour commute via train, subway and bus, because you can't read a book while driving in the car.

. . . even though you need items for your house and updated clothing, you still ask for Amazon gift cards on holidays, so you can buy even more books.

. . .your paperwork for taxes and medical bills is a hot mess but your reading log is up to date and so organized it would make Martha Stewart proud.

. . . if you take a book into the bathroom, you're in there for so long that your significant other has to knock and ask if you are okay in there!

. . . someone cancels their plans with you and you don’t mind because it means you can read.

. . . you have knitting and crocheting patterns that you can do while reading.

. . . you have a Kindle Fire, a backup to the Kindle and a backup to the backup. All of which are kept fully charged at all times. You get nervous when the charge on any Kindle gets below 90%.

. . . you name your children or your pets after your favorite character.

. . . you go on vacation and have one bag for clothes and the other for books you brought along.

So Femmes readers, how do you know that you love reading?

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Finding Pleasure

Today on Femmes Fatales, debut author, Grace Topping, joins us to talk about Finding Pleasure. Hey, Reece Witherspoon, are you listening?

For a number of years, my family and I lived in a home built in the 1950s. As was typical of homes built then, the bathroom had pink fixtures and black tile. Not a terrible combination and something we could live with, except for the garish plastic toilet seat that came with the house and didn’t match the rest of the pink. So you might imagine how pleased I was after an extensive search to find a good quality toilet seat in the right shade of pink. To say it made me happy is an understatement.

Later, when we moved to a newer home, I searched and searched for a piece of artwork to hang over our bed. With the walls in our house filled with my husband’s nautical prints, I refused to have anything nautical in our bedroom. Nothing I found seemed right. Searches in art galleries turned up nothing that appealed to me. Online searches flopped. Then one day while making the rounds of our community yard sale, I saw the perfect piece propped up on a neighbor’s driveway—a print of a John Singer Sergeant painting of three Dutch women clad in wooden shoes looking out to sea. It was lacking a frame, but it was the perfect piece for our bedroom. I loved it. For the grand sum of five dollars, it was mine. It didn’t matter that it would cost a fortune to frame—it made me happy. 

So what’s so exciting about finding a pink toilet seat and a five-dollar print? What it says about me is that I can still find pleasure in little or simple things.

You might ask what that has to do with writing mysteries? On April 30, my first mystery, STAGING IS MURDER, was published. I started it ten years ago, so to finally reach this point is quite thrilling. In an ideal world, it will become an instant best seller, selected by Oprah for her book club, made into a Hallmark TV movie, or optioned for Hollywood by Reece Witherspoon.

It would be great if even one of those things happened. But being realistic, I doubt my cozy mystery is going to hit the big time. It will give me pleasure hearing that people enjoyed my book, read reviews that say some good things about it (and learn from the things readers didn’t like), and be invited as a guest to some book clubs. In comparison to having my book made into a Hallmark TV movie or adapted by Hollywood, having someone say they loved my book might be a little thing. But it will give me immense pleasure. And sometimes that’s enough.

But if you hear Reece Witherspoon is looking for me, please give her my contact information.     

What simple things bring you pleasure? Let us know in  the comments. And let Grace know on social media--

http://www.gracetopping.com

https://www.facebook.com/GraceToppingAuthor

https://twitter.com/gtoppingauthor

 

And check out her new book, Staging is Murder

Laura Bishop just nabbed her first decorating commission—staging for sale a 19^th century mansion that hasn’t been updated for decades. But when a body falls from a laundry chute and lands at Laura’s feet, removing flowered wallpaper becomes the least of her duties. 

To clear her young assistant of the murder and save her fledgling business, Laura’s determined to find the killer. Turns out it’s not as easy as renovating a manor home, especially with two handsome men complicating her mission: the police detective assigned to the case and the real estate agent trying to save the manse from foreclosure.

Worse still, the meddling of a horoscope-guided friend, a determined grandmother, and the local funeral director could get them all killed before Laura props the first pillow.

 

Grace Topping is a recovering technical writer and IT project manager, accustomed to writing lean, boring documents. Let loose to write fiction, she is now creating murder mysteries and killing off characters who remind her of some of the people she dealt with during her career. Fictional revenge is sweet. She’s using her experience helping friends stage their homes as inspiration for her Laura Bishop mystery series. The first book in the series, Staging is Murder, is about a woman starting a new career midlife as a home stager. Grace is the current vice president of the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime, and a member of the SINC Guppies and Mystery Writers of America. She lives with her husband in Northern Virginia.

You think you hate proofreading now!

by Kris Neri with the Femmes Fatales

I’ll admit it — when I see bad grammar and punctuation online, such as in a Facebook post or a comment to a news story, I long to take a red pen to it on my own laptop screen.

Yes, I am part of the Grammar Police Force — correct and serve.

I teach a lot of online classes for the Writers’ Program of the UCLA Extension School and various Sisters in Crime chapters. My assessment of a class begins with the students’ introductions. When I see clear writing that generally follows standard punctuation and grammar and spelling by most of the class members, I assume that’s going to be a good, hardworking class that will make strong progress.

When I see broad range of poor language skills, I assume that most of the class won’t work as hard as they need to if they’re going to make it to publication.

That might sound unfair, but it’s almost always been true. They still get my best, but I often won’t get theirs.Now, I’m not talking about mistakes. We all make them. I know I sometimes go too fast and make flubs. When I catch my own, I cringe. I’m talking about the people who don’t cringe. Those who write run-on sentences with no punctuation, or capital letters, or strange punctuation that makes no sense; the people who continually confuse “your” and “you’re,” or “there,” “they’re,” and “their,” or “it’s” and “its.”

I struggle with how much grammatical instruction I should provide. I’m hired to teach novel planning, character development, and other topics, along with general craft building. When that’s done well, it’s a difficult enough job, albeit a satisfying one. I haven’t been hired to teach remedial English.

I’ve finally come down on the side of writing general remarks to the entire class, rather than singling out any one offender. I figured that it was enough to give a gentle collective nudge. Sometimes that’s worked. I’ve had students apologize for letting their own standards slip, vow to improve, even to the extent of sharing which grammar books they’ve purchased, or which online sites they’re using to improve their skills.

To my surprise, I’ve also had other students argue with me about how unimportant grammatical standards
are. One student taking one of my classes, who was a school teacher herself, once told me, “That stuff doesn’t matter anymore.”

Really? I believe it still matters to the futures of young students being educated in our schools — including her students — but I can also tell you it also matters in publishing. If you don’t have enough personal pride to care about the quality of the work you’re presenting, you should be practical enough to realize it will matter to the decision-maker reading it.

I’ve recently had a new novel accepted for publication — Hopscotch Life, featuring quirky protagonist, Plum Tardy. Knowing that I’ll soon receive my editorial letter and be expected to make my novel sharper than it might be now, followed by copy-editing, to make it as grammatically pristine as possible, I thought I might share some of what an author faces, so that the newer writers reading this will know what they’ll be expected to do once their work is accepted for publication:

During the writing of your novel, of course, you’ve made your storyline as tight as it can be, answering all story questions, making sure every thread has a payoff, and especially, eliminating any potholes. And then, you’ll get into the serious proofreading. Only after you’ve made that manuscript as clear as possible do you send it off to your agent or editor. Keep in mind that the quality of the work as a whole is often being judged by the grammar. If it’s unreadable, they’re not even going to try plowing through it.

At some point, most likely, you’ll get good news about your novel. Then, sometime thereafter, you’ll receive your editorial letter. 

That’s when the surprises come. That funny line that you were so happy with and which you thought was so well delivered? Well, the intelligent person editing your novel doesn’t get it. That haunting passage you believed every reviewer would quote? She thinks it’s overwritten. On and on it goes. Questions about aspects you believed worked perfectly keep coming. 

On the purely language level, you learn that despite your earlier proofreading efforts, you’re told there are missing words that you didn’t pick up on because your mind just filled that word in during your reading, and extra words your mind just skipped over. And as for the prose — don’t kid yourself; there will be some awkward phrasing.

So, you perfect the storyline again. If you’re lucky it won’t require too much rewriting. Whether it does or not, at some point you’ll come back to proofing and making sure your grammatical standards reach an excellent level. 

Only, despite your efforts, it’s still not perfect. Close, maybe, but not completely, absolutely flawless. After that rewritten manuscript that you’ve proofed until you blind yourself, you’ll get more chances to find more flubs. There will be page proofs and the galley to read.

It gets ever harder to proof your own work because you become too increasingly familiar with it to see anything wrong. I try reading from the end, line-by-line backwards. And still, the occasional flub finds its way in. Thankfully, there’s a copy-editor available to catch them. 

Finally, the book goes to the print, and eventually, it’s released into the world. And you know what? Any errors that you missed will jump out at your reader, who brings fresh eyes to it. And that reader is going to write to you — and sometimes the reading world — about any mistakes she finds in your novel. 

That’s ultimately why grammatical, punctuation, spelling, and style standards matter — because they matter to that reader and/or reviewer.

Do you really want readers saying that you didn’t care enough to make your writing as clean and memorable as it could be?

How about you readers…are you the grammar police, too? Or do you think I’m making too much of nothing. Writers, what are some of your proofreading tricks?

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Are You Turning Into Your Parents?

 

By Elaine Viets of the Femmes Fatales.

"What's the fastest way to get to the highway from here?" my husband asked me.
"The most direct way is US 1 to Broward Boulevard, but this time of day, I like to take Bayview to 26th Street to 4th Street, which turns into 3rd Street after it crosses the railroad tracks. That way you'll bypass the rush hour traffic."
As soon as I said those words, I knew I'd turned into my parents. My father never took the straight way to any place. He always knew a back way there, and as a kid, I was convinced his shortcuts actually took longer. But now I do the same thing – I'm always looking for a side route, which I'm convinced will get me there faster.

My mother kept a rag bag to clean up spills. As a kid, I grumbled when she didn't use paper towels like other moms. Now here I am, with a collection of rags in my kitchen closet. I tell myself I'm being environmentally friendly, but I know better. I've turned into my mother.

My stern German Grandmother Viets used to cut up old correspondence for scrap paper. Now I do the same thing. I'm recycling, I say. At least I haven't picked up her habit of cutting out the insides of greeting cards and then re-using the outer shell.
So far, I haven't picked up any habits of my Grandma Vierling, a sweet woman who loved to cook and kept her home spotless. But I keep hoping.
So what about you, readers? Do you have your parents' habits? Which ones?

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Looking forward to seeing everyone at the Malice Domestic mystery convention in Bethesda, MD. To find out where the Femmes will be appearing, check out Catriona's blog here: https://femmesfatales.typepad.com/my_weblog/2019/04/isnt-it-malicious.html