Writers Plot

DO YOU HAVE MY NOUNS?

2009-11-07T04:49:00-05:00

by Guest Blogger Mary Jane Maffini

So, do you have my nouns? Some days there isn't a single one to be heard in our house. In chat between my husband and me, nada. It's not like the dogs can eat them. They've just disappeared. Take today's morning conversation:

He, looking frazzled. "Where's my um …?"

Me, taking one eye off fascinating newspaper article featuring severed body parts. "What um?"

"You know, the …" Voice trails off again. Cute silver head is scratched. He is wondering what is wrong with his wife that she can't tear herself from the blood and gore story to answer the simplest question. "Things, the things. I need them to start the um."

"Oh right. I think I saw them on the whatzit, next to your … Did you check there?"

"What whatzit?" He is starting to get annoyed, but doesn't want to show it, at least not until he finds the things.

"What things?" I counter. He's not the only one who can get annoyed.

"I had them when I got back yesterday because I used them to open the …"

"Did you look on the whatzit?" I point upwards toward the bedroom, which has several whatzits, one of them with things on it.

Grumbling starts. "Now I'm going to be late meeting what's-his-name at--." Snapping fingers follows grumbles, trying to get a handle on what's-his-name. A noun is after all person, place or thing. The persons and places can vanish too. Snapping fingers will not bring them back, as we've learned the hard way.

Of course, it doesn't pay for me to get too uppity. It's merely a matter of time before I find myself saying "Have you seen that pile of stuff that was here yesterday? There's a lot of important er … "

"What pile of stuff?"

"You know, the, um. It was this high, over there by the you know."

"Your voice trailed off. What stuff again?"

Of course, he has no choice but to cooperate. After all, didn't I help him find those things on the whatzit just this morning? "Are you certain you didn't move it somewhere?"

"I don't think so."

"Sure you did.. It's right over by the gizmo near the the uh. Oops, watch out for the queerthing on the -- . Are you all right? Did you hurt your …?"

Okay, all this, including missing noun injuries, might be expected if we didn't own six thousand books, including at least eighteen dictionaries. Or if we hadn't both read obsessively as children. I took care of fiction, he was in charge of non-fiction. Even if I wasn't as a friend once described me 'a known talker'. So it's not like we didn't ever have a supply of fancy upscale and occasionally obscure nouns to sprinkle in our sentences, insert into conversations or meaningful questions.

Of course, what good are dictionaries when you have to check everything under S for stuff or T for thing?

I put my lapses down to the brain-frying activity writing two books this year. They each contained mountains of nouns, many of them scary if not dangerous. That must be what's edging them out. But seriously, what's his excuse? Oh well, it's not so bad, really. As long as our verbs don't start to, you know … um.
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Mary Jane Maffini is the author of the Charlotte Adams mysteries and two Canadian series: the Ottawa-based Camilla MacPhee books and the Fiona Silk novels set in West Quebec. Her latest book, Law & Disorder, the sixth in the Camilla MacPhee series, is absolutely crawling with nouns. Verbs, too.

What Did I Ever Do Without The Discovery I.D. Channel?

2009-11-06T09:16:31-05:00

posted by Leann Sweeney

I can't tell you how many times I've heard myself--and other writers--say, "If I wrote that in a novel no one would believe it." But that's what Discovery ID is all about. Delving into the unbelievable crimes that people commit. And giving me more motive material than I could ever come up with in a million years.

Lately I've been watching lots of old episodes of Dateline and 48 Hours. These shows rarely focus on anything a thriller writer would be interested in. But OMG, they are a cozy writer's gold mine. Most of these episodes deal with crimes in small town America and involve infidelity, white collar crime and almost always murder. Don't get me wrong. They have profiled some of the more recent serial killer cases, like BTK, but even that case is a fascinating psychological study of a guy who would never make a great villain in a serial killer book. Too ordinary. He hid in plain sight. Like the killer does in a cozy. Oh, I forgot the taunting part about BTK. The taunting did do him in and that doesn't happen in a cozy.

Most recently I watched a two hour saga about a woman in Ohio who had two boyfriends, seven children--oh, and a husband. She is a former beauty queen--rich and beautiful. And had been messing around for a long time. Even one of her kids belonged to a boyfriend, not her husband. One of said boyfriends killed the other. And she was tried for conspiracy. She was found guilty, had her verdict reversed on appeal and she is now a free woman. Too much drama for a cozy, I guess. But it's good to know that the stuff I think up isn't "way out there" or at the very least a stretch. When it comes to humans, I don't think there is a "stretch."

There's plenty more I love about the ID channel. "Forensics: You Decide" is great for plotting. As a mystery writer, I have to be able to spin the possibilities of how and why a crime occurs. That's where the clues and red herrings come in when crafting a mystery. Misdirection by defense lawyers or misinterpretation of the evidence is fascinating to watch. And it happens enough to create a TV show about it. I like "Solved" because it follows a case in a very linear fashion from beginning to end. For me, writing in first person, linear is important. The heroine in my story as well as the reader get to see the evidence as it unfolds. And all the directions it can lead. Yup. Love "Solved."

I haven't watched all the shows on ID--yet. But I'm about to check out the show about evil women. Every crime writer should brush up on their evil women. But I'm not so sure about the series they broadcast that deal with ghosts and psychics. I don't think I will be writing any stories like that. But I do enjoy a good autopsy program--even though I leave the gore out of my books. To know the reality of crime, the reality of violent death may not show up on the page, but to write an authentic story, to make it seem real, I need to see and hear and feel the pain some of those victims and families feel.

So thank you Discovery I.D. You are a wonderful resource.

Our most beloved

2009-11-05T00:11:00-05:00

posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

As "mentioned" here in the past, my kids have moved out. For some reason the cable bill hasn't gone down much, but the electric bill is cut in half. I never knew TVs and DVD players used so much "juice".

The kids took both bookcases from my office. That was ok. They took the dining room table. That was ok. They took the living room couch. That was so OK that I paid a mover to haul it over there. They took the big mixer from the kitchen counter, which has to be ok, since I gave it to a daughter for Christmas a year or two ago.

They have also, at various times, "borrowed" the good vacuum, both step stools, my bread machine, and of course, money. That was all ok, since I expect to get it all back. But in the light of day, one daughter snagged my Betty Crocker picture cookbook from 1961.

That. Is. Not. Acceptable. I missed it right away and had to call her to find out how long to steam snow peas. Of course she didn't answer. I found out later that she heard the call but didn't bother to pick up because I could "google it." Sigh.

Which is why I found my trusty old cookbook on my desk the other morning at work. Returned while I wasn't looking. Smart kids. It turns out that in 1961 Betty Crocker didn't know from steaming any veggies, let alone snow peas. I made it up as I went along, and they were fine.

But I was bemused to see the ratty, grease-stained, dough-encrusted, missing-the-spine cookbook among the pretty new library books on my desk. I tucked it in my tote bag, out of sight, and when I mentioned later to a friend how battered the book is, she nodded.

"Oh, it's a Velveteen Rabbit," she said.

Of course it is. I have always love that story and can't finish it without crying, which is why I don't read it aloud to visiting kiddies. And why I bought my very own stuffed Velveteen Rabbit last Easter. My BFF confided that the book was banned from her childhood home, since she grew so hysterical it took hours to calm her down. I totally get that.

And I got to thinking. What other of my books are so well-loved and so battered? None come even close. My Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is well-used but unbloodied and unbowed. My books of poetry, ditto. I don't re-read novels much, although when I do, I have almost always forgotten how the story turned out, so it's a whole new experience each time. Except with Gone with the Wind, which is one of my all-time faves, although nothing can recapture the angst I felt and the rare tears I shed when I first read it at the age of 13, the summer my parents ripped me away from everything familiar and moved the family to a small town in New Hampshire, where we were sort of the local aliens.

The only book that comes close to the Betty Crocker's condition is my King James Bible, the Masonic one that belonged to my father, who died suddenly when I was four. I have hauled that Bible from church camp to church camp, women's retreat to women's retreat, youth group meeting to youth group meeting. I'm not a holy roller by any means, but I do love the KJV. I might not understand what the heck those prophets were saying, but I loved the words they used.

So...do you have favorites? What's your Velveteen Rabbit?

Obsessive Writer Stymied by NaNoWriMo

2009-11-04T05:34:27-05:00

In the early years of my writing, when I was first learning about discipline and obsession, I became very faithful to my schedule. Having come to writing from working in a law firm, where my time was measured out in tenth of an hour doses, and being the busy mother of two small boys, my writing time was limited and I knew I had to make it count. I had thought that I could write while the boys napped--very optimistic of me. I quickly discovered that their schedules rarely synchronized, and that I was most likely to have pieces of available time when they were with a babysitter.

When I did have time to be at my desk, I was obsessive about being sure that I stayed there and made the time count. I'd assign myself a number of pages or a number of words that had to be accomplished that day, and wouldn't leave my chair until I reached that goal. During my ten years in the unpublished writer's corner, I got very good at discipline and a whole lot better at my craft. The boys got older and went to school. And with three unpublished novels in the drawer, I had learned to write. I happily settled into a routine where I would write while they were in school, and then shove the stories away while I drove them to little league or karate, while I coached soccer, and while I perfected my role as the homework police.

Along the way, I learned that the process was different for each book. While storycraft and discipline were fundamental, each individual story and set of characters seemed to have their own rhythm. Sometimes a book would take a nice, tight nine months from start to finish and just seem to work. Another book would take a year and a half and some days feel like I was dragging out each word and nailing it to the page so it would stay there while I went back and got another word to go with it. Sometimes the plot that I'd worked out in my head before I began the book would stay the same; sometimes my characters, those willful creatures of my imagination, would start acting up and take the book in an entirely new direction. I learned to listen to my characters and trust them when they were being willful. I learned that at some point, in most books, I would lose my way--usually somewhere between chapter sixteen and chapter nineteen--and that eventually this would sort itself out and the book would get finished.

Writing is a solitary occupation. It requires many, many hours spent all alone, in a room, living in your head. I turned out to be good at that. Possibly I have a low thirst for living. Certainly I can spend six to ten hours a day at my desk, year after year, and not feel deprived or lonely. I have learned that I have to cut the cord and leave the desk from time to time. And I also learned--most surprising of all--that though we become writers because we have a great capacity for solitude, once we are published, we are suddenly expected to become charming and polished public speakers. Outgoing. Articulate. Interesting. This can require a major mental shift, from that tight cocoon of writer and keyboard and imagination and character's voices inside the head, to an audience that needs to be entertained and enticed to buy a book.

One of the most frequent comments I heard, when I joined the traveling author's circuit, was from people who used to say: "I've always wanted to write a book, and someday, when I have a free weekend, I'm going to." That really pushed my buttons. Here I was, day after day, month after month, and year after year, sitting there in my chair, trying to craft compelling fiction, and these people were going to do it in a weekend. Admittedly, everyone's process is different. There are authors who write much faster than I do. But I began to wonder how fast I could write a novel if I really pushed myself hard. Then came the empty nest shocker, and it pushed me over the edge. My older son was leaving for college. The younger, seeing that he was going to be left home alone with the homework police, promptly started applying to boarding schools, and within three weeks, I had one at Wesleyan and the other at Exeter.

At first,I used to stand in their rooms and snivel. But we old yankees aren't really the sniveling type, and so I took a deep breath, and that January, I decided to see how fast I could write a novel. I wrote ten to twelve hours a day, every day, and in 4 1/2 months, I'd written a 485 page police procedural. It was as close as I've come to an ecstatic state in my writing. I lived and breathed that novel. Went eagerly to my desk every day to see what my characters were up to. And when it was done, when I'd typed THE END, and assumed I would go back to my usual, more rational, schedule, I realized that I was lonely and sad. I had become so obsessed with my characters, so close to them after spending every waking moment with them for months, that when the book was done, I felt like they'd deserted me. A few months later, I had to start the second book in the series so I could go back and spend more time with them.

After my taste of obsession, I became more rational. Life, in the form of my mother's stroke and slow decline, and a 2 1/2 year project co-writing a true crime, made more demands on my time. I learned to balance my love of gardening and cooking with my love for living inside my head. But the urge toward obsession is always there. I am absolutely rapt when I can live in story, when the plot unfolds and the characters reveal themselves, and I can see it all unreeling in my mind.

Which brings us to National Novel Writing Month. I've just come into the end zone on a lengthy edit of a suspense novel. I've lost all perspective, and while I love the book, I can't tell whether it is good or not. (If someone would volunteer to read it on screen, I'd be thrilled) I thought NaNoWriMo would be the perfect way to practice a little controlled obsession and put some space between me and this book. Instead of starting something new, I decided it would be fun to dust off a partly written novel from the past. So, for the first three days of November, I reread the first eighteen chapters of this unfinished book. It's not a mystery. Indeed, I'm not sure I know what it is. Perhaps it is a fairy tale. Perhaps it's romantic suspense. Probably it will never see the light of day. But as I reread those long ago chapters, I found I was totally caught up in the story again. I wanted to rush through meals, skip grocery shopping, blow off going to the gym, so that I could sit here and read.

But this is an unfinished novel. And I'm not an outliner, so I have no notes from when I was creating this story to tell me where I'm supposed to go next. So here I sit, on the 4th day of NaNoWriMo. I have no idea where to go next. I can't remember who Cousin Severin, who just rang the doorbell, is. Harry's in the hospital, having been poisoned, and I'm hoping he'll be okay. I don't know if Alicia is mean and petty or downright dangerous. Whether Mrs. Whitfield will survive until the wedding. And whether Detective Garrity will show up and ruin everything, spoiling Tommy and Callie's second chance for happiness.

It should be an interesting month.

IN THE LAND OF PLENTY

2009-11-03T05:57:21-05:00

Posted by Lorraine Bartlett, and her alter ego Lorna Barrett

When people think about poverty in the United States, they tend to only think about the urban poor. Certainly you don’t have to look far in a city of any size to find poor people. But the vast majority of this nation’s poor (or is the PC term now disadvantaged?) don’t live in cities. They live in small towns and along rural highways.

I’d never given the subject much thought until I traveled out west. Sure I’d seen ramshackle homes and kids with dirty faces in my home state of New York, but nothing prepared me for the abject poverty I saw on the Arizona Indian reservations. When I returned home from that trip, I began to notice just how many people in my own state easily fit into that “abject” category of the disadvantaged.

None of the characters in my latest Booktown Mystery has ever known poverty. My heroine, Tricia Miles, doesn’t really think of herself as wealthy, but she is. She came from money. She received a large inheritance from her grandmother, and a hefty divorce settlement. So when she learns that people in her own Village of Stoneham are dependent on an emergency food pantry, she’s rather shocked about it. After all, the village streets are lined with beautiful Victorian homes, nice tract homes, and a revitalized main street that brings in the tourist trade.

In the current economic times, with unemployment going sky high, many middle class families are finding it difficult to make ends meet. Not only are food pantries serving the urban and rural poor, now they’re being asked to serve people who in the not-too-distant past were supporting them.

In Bookplate Special, the third in the Booktown Mystery series (which is released today), Tricia attends the opening of the newly expanded Stoneham Food Shelf. Here she learns that looks are deceiving, and how she can help those going hungry in her own town.

The holiday season is fast approaching, but hunger knows no season. I hope that my readers will be touched by this storyline and motivated to help their local food pantries, not just during the holidays, but all year round. Charles Dickens may have said it best, in A Christmas Carol, when three gentlemen called on Scrooge to make a donation to the poor: “We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.”

The need for donations (non-perishable food items and monetary) has skyrocketed. If you can, I hope you’ll consider donating to your local food pantry so that those who are hungry (children, adults, and the homeless) will have won’t have to face the holiday hungry.

IN THE EVIDENCE OF THE TEETH

2009-11-02T07:00:00-05:00

Posted by Sheila Connolly (who hopes all you mystery writers recognize that clever Dorothy Sayers reference!)

I'm having a tooth pulled today. No, I won't share with you with the gory details–in fact, I expect to do my best to forget them ASAP. But this is just the latest adventure in my troubled relationship with my teeth.

I have lousy teeth–soft, fragile, and far from pearly white. In part this is hereditary, because both of my parents had rather yellow teeth, so I guess I was doomed from the start. I'm afraid to consider bleaching, either professional or the handy home version, because that would probably just further weaken whatever feeble enamel I've got. Or I'd manage to turn the teeth into an approximation of military camouflage pattern. I'll settle for dingy.

I really thought I could hang on to all my teeth. My mother did, and so did her mother, to the age of 94. My grandmother grew up in the early years of the 20th century, in a family that wasn't affluent, so I can't say what kind of dental care she received early in her life. Maybe she just had good tooth genes, but whatever the circumstances, her teeth stayed with her. Clearly she didn't share her genes with me.

In appearance I inherited my father's teeth, including the gap between the front two, which miraculously closed without benefit of orthodontia when my wisdom teeth came in, all at once, in my senior year in college. Yes, I still have all four wisdom teeth in place–with a few fillings.

My mother always made sure I had good dental care. I still remember my first dentist: Doctor Manuel Album, Jenkintown, PA. He had won awards for pediatric dentistry, and I started going to him when I was five. I was not his favorite patient: I didn't mind the drilling so much, but I was consistently terrified when surrounded by adults looming over me with large hypodermic needles. And they never let me prepare myself–I guess they thought moving in fast was better. I disagreed. And I got through the drilling part by thinking, what would [favorite cowboy of the moment] do? Cowboys are brave and stoic–"It's just a scratch"–which is a handy role model when you're sitting in a dentist's chair. (Note: the saving virtue of Dr. Album's office was that it was right around the corner from the Peter Pan Diner, to which my mother and I would adjourn after my appointment for an ice-cream soda.)

Obviously the pattern was set early. I have teeth that are woefully susceptible to cavities. I always brushed them regularly, and I had fluoride applications back when that was exceptional. I had regular check-ups. None of it mattered. My teeth kept betraying me.

Memorable occasions of my life have been marked by tooth failures. The day of my first date with my husband, I was eating an egg for breakfast and wham, a molar fell apart. I went on the date anyway (stoic, remember?), and the rest is history. On my way to my first writers conference, a filling came loose, and finally gave up the ghost while I was eating a piece of chocolate cake. In Australia we were visiting a distant relative in Sydney; I bit into a piece of cheese, and another tooth crumbled. Do you see a pattern here? So help me, I don't crunch ice or open bottles with my teeth. I don't chew gum or even think about eating caramels. All of these incidents have taken place while I was chewing on something soft. I think my teeth hate me.

To be fair, I've known that the soon-to-be late lamented tooth was gearing up for a showdown for quite a while. First the twinges, then the pressure sensitivity. My dentist filed down a few things and said, maybe that will work. It did, for a while. then the twinges came back. He took x-rays: no abscess, nothing visible. Just another tooth giving up on me. Given my track record, I fully expected it to explode at Bouchercon, but it kindly held off until I got back. At which time I decided I was tired of both the constant dull ache and the worry about exactly when it would betray me, and went to an endodontist. He was very nice, and had lots of really cool high-tech instruments, but the bottom line is, the tooth is beyond salvage. Cracked through and through. Time to say goodbye.

I feel like I've failed, even though I've done everything right. But into every life some rain must fall, and apparently it's raining on my poor tooth. At least my daughter grew up as part of the fluoride generation, and will never share my dental horror stories. Lucky girl.

Ave atque vale, Tooth #15. You will be missed. (But at least I hope I won't end up looking like the lovely lady below!)

DIG IN to BOOKPLATE SPECIAL

2009-11-01T06:45:52-05:00

by Lorraine -- better known as LORNA BARRETT

What do you get with murder, good eating (with recipes), and a phantom pumpkin smasher? Get ready to chow down on one honey of a BOOKPLATE SPECIAL! While it's already been sighted in a number of bookstores across the country, the official release date is Tuesday, November 3rd.

In BOOKPLATE SPECIAL, Tricia has put up—and put up with—her uninvited college roommate for weeks. In return, Pammy, has stolen $100, among other things. But the day she’s kicked out, Pammy’s found dead in a dumpster, leaving loads of questions unanswered. Like what was she foraging for? Did her killer want it too? To piece the case together, Tricia will have to dive in head-first.…

You can check out an excerpt on my website--click here!

I'll be signing in a bunch of places in the Rochester, NY area in November and December. For a list, click here!

For my kick-off, I'll be signing books at Barnes and Noble in Greece Ridge Center on Saturday, November 7th, 2-4 p.m. Since the book features a food pantry, I'm encouraging my readers to bring a non-perishable food item for the Greece Ecumenical Food Pantry. Those who do will receive a free (unpublished, limited edition) short story written by me! (Those who don't bring anything, but still want the story can make a donation.)

Can't make it to Rochester (and let's face it--we are kind of off the beaten track)? I'd love to send you a bookplate for your copy of BOOKPLATE SPECIAL. Just send an email with your name and address to contest @ LornaBarrett.com (to avoid spam, I put spaces in that email address--just take them out, and it'll go through fine).

The Mystery of the Plot or the Plot of a Mystery--Take Your Pick

2009-10-30T09:43:19-04:00

posted by Leann Sweeney

With pressure from my editor to turn in a new book much sooner than I ever have before, I have been plotting in the last week as I await the latest verdict on my rewritten manuscript. I have been distracted by my cat Agatha's battle with illness, but now that we have reasons for her failure to bounce back from infection--she has heart disease--I am saddened but a little more focused.

I once had the feeling that no one came up with a story the way that I did, that other writers are better organized or smarter or just good at it. But as I began to attend writer's conferences in the '90s, I learned of the great debate among writers: to outline or not to outline. And I believe that every time I have spoken for groups or on panels, that question comes up. Do you have an outline? For me, the answer is yes. But that wasn't the case with my first book. I always call that the book that wrote itself. It seemed so easy back then.

If I thought about a plot, I honestly have to say, I could come up with maybe two sentences at most. That's usually my "What if...?" question. For example, with the first cat book, that question was "What if a cat was allergic to a person and not vice versa?" But I draw a blank if I try to think much past the first mystery questions. There's nothing there. But I have found that if I begin to write, that suddenly the ideas begin to flow. This isn't the type of outline that you learn in grade school with Roman numerals. It's a narration of a story that comes from ... well, I have no idea. Okay, I have one idea. Human beings are storytellers. I just happen to be able to tell a story better if I write it down rather than if I just spit it out.

When I took a class from Elizabeth George in the late '90s, I was amazed when she talked about her plotting method, which as it turns out, is exactly like mine. I write a very long narrative synopsis that often has events out of order and doesn't make much sense to anyone but me, and then I begin to write the book itself. After about fifty pages I return to that synopsis and begin to revise it according to what I have learned about the characters and the story in those first fifty or hundred pages. It works for me and apparently it works for E. George. And I'm willing to bet this is how plenty of writers work.

The best part about this method is that I have a road map. When I get in trouble, I always go back to my original synopsis and re-read it. The answers are always there. The original ideas are so sound that it truly amazes me. Characters--especially new ones--do want to take a writer to places they shouldn't go. There's some fun in that, and it probably does help me develop that particular character better, but for the most part, it's a waste of time. When that happens, I always end up writing myself into a corner.

Plotting isn't difficult for me, but what always comes up in the plotting is that piece of the story that I know absolutely nothing about. I usually research when I get to that part of the manuscript, but this, too, is time consuming. So for my new idea that will require a quick turnaround, the book I am plotting now, I am doing the research upfront. Or trying to. That doesn't mean I won't come to a screeching halt during the writing and say, "Expletive deleted! I don't know squat about that! Yikes!" But I am hoping that this particular mystery plot will be much better detailed ahead of time than any I have done before. I do not have the luxury of thinking through plot points before I go to sleep or when I'm in the shower or as I am driving to appointments--all the things I take a lot of time doing. Nope. This book requires speed writing, something I am not familiar with. Ah, another challenge. It is about the journey, isn't it?

Age hath murdered sleep

2009-10-29T00:44:00-04:00

Posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

I rarely have trouble sleeping. Or at least, getting to sleep to begin with. I just park myself in bed, set the alarm, and pick up a good book, which I read until Morpheus catches up with me. I often fall asleep with my glasses on my nose and the light blazing. Sometimes, in a reversal of roles, my kids would quietly remove my glasses and turn off the lamp.

Over the years my husband and I have shared our bed with three different dogs (all large and space-hogging) and occasional cats brave enough to stalk across the pages of whatever great books we're reading.

When we got married, the toughest thing to get used to was sleeping with a World Class Snorer. He would alternately gurgle, snort, smack, and roar, except when he stopped breathing for a while. Not a long while, but still.

I got used to it, more or less.

I asked him to get tested for sleep apnea. He didn't. Finally, a few years ago, he stopped smoking and the noise level in our bedroom dropped precipitously. The cats got braver. (Our pets tend to snore, too. Go figure.)

A few weeks ago, when he complained to our doctor that he was always tired and napped a lot in the daytime, she sent him for a sleep study. I was surprised to learn that he actually still does have mild sleep apnea. So she prescribed a CPAP machine, which is supposed to provide a better air supply, allowing him to sleep through the night and awake refreshed and ready to rock.

Uh huh. The company called and made an appointment to come to the house and set him up.

Uh oh again, we thought. Our bedroom was pretty messy, with clothes strewn about, baskets of laundry (clean and otherwise), and more than a few dust bunnies.

We spent the weekend straightening the place out, gathering armfuls of clothes to donate to a worthy charity, clearing off the dressers and the chairs. I wasn't home when the fellow came yesterday, but I was bemused to learn that he had not left the living room. Which fortunately was pretty neat.

At bedtime, my husband went upstairs and set up the machine on his side of the bed. I finished cleaning the kitchen and some other minor chores, so when I got up there, he was asleep. He was wearing the mask and the machine was quietly pulsing away.

He rolled over and I swear the man looked like he was going snorkeling. Which, trust me, he would never do. (I would, but that's a whole different blog.)

I'd like to say the night passed uneventfully, a fine sleep was had by all, and we both awoke rarin' to go. I'd be lying.

In the first place, I was awakened several times by leg and foot cramps. I have had these for a while now. At one point I was given quinine to relieve them. It worked, sort of, so I was dismayed when the doctor said it had been pulled from the market because of side effects. People dying, or some such glitch.

So I eat bananas and potatoes for the potassium. Doesn't work. My friend said to quaff a sports drink at bedtime for the electrolytes. I hate that stuff. I bought some leg cramp cream to apply after the cramps have started, which defeats the whole idea.

Another friend said to put a cake of Ivory soap under the sheet at the foot end of the bed. Didn't work either.

So I was awake with leg cramps and saw my husband disconnect the machine and go back to bed without it.

Back to the drawing board. I can live with his mild snoring, as he has learned to live with mine. But I sure could use some advice about preventing these wretched cramps. Anybody? Help?

Priuser Than Thou

2009-10-28T08:13:08-04:00

Posted by Kate Flora

I live in a green neighborhood. Not green as in the color of the leaves. Right now, our leaves are red and yellow and orange and multicolored and even today, when it is cold and rainy, the world is breathtakingly beautiful. Outside my bedroom window, the ginkgo tree is making its stately progression from tender green to pale yellow. Today, it is a bright, luminous yellow. Any day now, though, we will have a hard frost, and within a few hours, every leaf will have fallen.

Last week, a storm with high winds brought down the annual carpet of pine needles. Driving back into the neighborhood after a trip out of town, the streets were all cushioned with a thick layer of russet, softening the sounds of tires and the remarkably loud crashing of falling acorns.

In our neighborhood, though, there is less need than many places for cushioning cars, for we are Prius central. Take a walk through the neighborhood, and those silent stealth cars will creep up behind you, scaring the dickens out of you when you turn and see one bearing down on you, soundless and implacable.

A digression: I'm a conscientious walker. Unlike so many of the people I see perambulating and jogging, in dark clothing, I walk like my mama taught me, facing traffic in our neighborhood without sidewalks, and I pay attention. Too often, I see young mothers out with strollers walking at dusk on the wrong side of the road, plugged into iPods or chatting on cell phones, here where the overhanging trees make dark tunnels and the narrow road winds sharply around curves. I want to shake them, or ask if they are intractably stupid, or call social services.

All I want to do to the Prius is put a bell on it, like a bird lover might do to a predatory cat.

But--true confession--there is something about the Prius that brings out the worst in me. I know the car is doing good for the environment, but there's something a little smarmy or ostentatious in the way it's distinctive shape declares that it, and its owner, are good. More than any other car except those driven by inattentive young women on cell phones, it is the Prius which likes to get in the passing lane and poke along at 55. So I find myself looking for the misbehaving Prius. So far, my Prius sightings have included the one that was weaving wildly through traffic (Doesn't Toyota repossess if they do this?), giving rise to the phrase, "Faster Than A Speeding Prius!" The one that blew down the street emitting a cloud of the smoking driver's cigarette smoke for the rest of us to breathe. The one that threw discarded lottery scratch tickets out the window. And just yesterday, the aggressive Prius that passed another car on a blind hill where there was a double line. I'm so impriussed.

Don't they know that if they're going to drive an ostentatiously obvious "I'm Setting A Good Example " car, they have to set a good example?

If you've had a good Prius sighting, please share.

It's a mess

2009-10-27T07:37:37-04:00

Posted by Lorraine Bartlett (also known as Lorna Barrett)

My office is a mess. There are piles of paper everywhere. I can barely find anything. And yet, I don't feel motivated to tidy up. Why? Because I have nowhere to put anything.

Every once in a while I get the urge to purge. The thing is, I'm too sentimental to throw out stuff that just isn't worth saving. Is there any reason to have a box of safety pins on one's desk? Okay, I needed one the other day and for the first time in a million years, didn't have to go hunting for one. (That's one brownie point in my favor, right?)

Because I didn't have a flat surface to work on, I recently bought a little wooden TV table (quite sturdy, too), and guess what? Now IT'S covered with papers and stuff. (You can tell this picture was taken the day I bought it, right?) I bought it so I could work on my postcards (which I'm sending out on Friday) and it worked great, but once I finished putting all those stickers, labels and stamps on the postcards, I should have taken the table down and put it away (although where that particular "away" is, I don't know). But, there it sits right next to me, looking like a place a cat should go, get comfy on, and knock all the papers on the ground.

Of course, this untidiness has spread beyond my office. Sometimes I find it easier to just go write on my laptop in the dining room. But of course, that entails more than just the computer. I have a wireless mouse (because I can't stand that little pad on the computer) and an auxiliary keyboard, because I can't seem to type on the one that came with the laptop. The keys are too close together. (I don't understand how anybody can text. Then again, they don't write full words or sentences, do they?) And I must have my notebook with the manuscript to date in it, colored pens for making notes, and my yellow pad for writing down those notes. That takes up one whole half of the dining room table.

Don't talk to me about the kitchen. When you run two households (and have just closed one down for the winter), you have double the staples. I found homes for the olive oil, ketchup, mustard and Worcestershire sauce--but what about all those pretzels, cookies, crackers, and potato chips (only still around because the bag hasn't yet been opened. Once that happens--poof! Gone!)? I'll tell you where they are--living on my kitchen counter. The space I finally cleared when analog TV went the way of the dinosaur. (Okay, I am thinking of buying a flat screen and getting cable in there. I mean, shouldn't I be entertained while I'm slaving over a hot microwave?)

And why is it the linen closet is too small for a house this size? How come my extra bedspreads need to live on the dryer for months at a time? Maybe I should toss something out, but what? One day I might need that beach towel that says BIONIC WOMAN (complete with Jamie Sommers apparently running on a beach). I have a lovely hand crocheted (in some Southeast Asian country) full-sized tablecloth (still in the wrapper) that my mother-in-law gave me ten or twelve years ago. Should I toss that to make room for the $4 bedspread I got at a yard sale (that seems immune to cat barf--and washes beautifully)?

Okay, let's face it; we all have too much stuff. Is there an antidote? If you've got one, please share, because I'm being cluttered to death.

RAMBLINGS

2009-10-26T07:00:00-04:00

Posted by Sheila Connolly (or what's left of her)

I think I left my brain in Indiana. Bouchercon in Indianapolis was wonderful, as no doubt every blogger in the blogosphere has told you, and I won't repeat it here. The best part was the chance to meet and talk with so many people I know only on-line, or at most see once or twice a year. It's nice to know that the writers' community is made up of real people–and they're great!

Since I was headed west, I took a detour of a few days to visit my sister, who lives in western Kentucky. Although she's my only sibling, and we're from a family made up of only children and orphans, I don't see much of her. Time was she used to come visit me, in Pennsylvania and in Massachusetts, but since the birth of her first grandchild three years ago, she's been a part-time caregiver for him, which limits her mobility. Since I had never met the young man, and since I hadn't visited her since her son's wedding in 2003, I thought it was my turn to make the trek.

I flew to Indianapolis and rented a car, and took off southward. First revelation: there's a lot of corn in Indiana. My sister had given me directions by way of a state highway, rather than the big roads, which proved a very pleasant choice (especially for driving in an unfamiliar area–did I mention I am directionally challenged?–in an unfamiliar car). It took me through small towns and...cornfields. Alternating with soybean fields.

Now, a year or two ago I wouldn't have paid much attention to this, other than noting that the corkstalks were brown and bare. But since I've been writing about food and organic crops recently, and since I've seen the movie Food, Inc., and since like so many people in this country are creeping up on Type 2 diabetes, I've found my attitude toward corn has changed. I won't preach (much: read the labels on the processed foods in your supermarket and see how often they include corn syrup, usually high on the list), but I this time I was much more aware of the names of the seed vendors posted by each and every field. There were a lot of them. It's a big business in this country.

And don't get me started on soybeans. Their cultivation nationally can be more or less summed up in one word: Monsanto.

So I spent 176 miles each way amusing myself with internal rants about food production in this country. But the other noteworthy thing I noticed was how empty the roads were. I have lived on the East Coast much of my life, with a ten-year detour to California, and those roads are crowded! There are people everywhere, and most New England roads are based on Indian trails and cattle paths, and usually take you through the middle of a quaint old town where there's a five-way intersection with little signage. Lots of fun.

Indiana was peaceful, as was the bit of Kentucky I drove through. Although the roads were usually two-lane, there were few impatient people riding my back bumper (good thing, because there were few areas where one could pass). Even the truckers were polite. Everyone followed the speed limits (gasp!), and the changes were clearly posted as you approached then left the towns scattered along the route. The towns themselves were usually small, with a lot of Victorian buildings, although there was no shortage of strip malls. But compared to some parts of the East Coast where the strips malls are continuous and the town centers non-existent, Indiana was positively rural. All in all it was a very pleasant drive, and I didn't even get lost. [Note: I asked Mapquest how to get where I was going, and it gave me two pages of detailed instructions. But it could have been boiled down to a few lines, and all the middle ones could have been compressed into "Follow Rt. 231 wherever it goes."]

In Kentucky I did have a chance to spend some quality time with my great-nephew Carter. God, that makes me feel old! I remember when I was about Carter's age, meeting my youngest great-aunt (on my father's side), who seemed impossibly old to me. Doing the math now, I find she was only in her seventies then. (I'm not!) Anyway, Carter is a charming, articulate, intelligent, capable young man, I'm pleased to say (BTW, my sister reads this blog). He is skilled at both crafts and sports (great hand-eye coordination for his age) and we had fun.

We spent part of our time together watching daytime children's television. Obviously, since my daughter is now 24, I haven't paid much attention to this lately, so it was interesting to see how programs have changed. I'm happy to report that there is much more educational content these days (e.g., Little Einsteins), and Carter followed raptly and could sing along.

Back in my day (in the Dark Ages, when we had only a very few black-and-white channels), we were stuck with a few cartoons, Romper Room, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, a handful of Westerns (mostly with singing cowboys), and the so-called funny men like the Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy. I discovered early that I hated the funny men–they were mean and dumb. I liked Westerns, and I enjoyed Mr. Wizard (ah, the budding forensic scientist in me).

But now I find I have mixed feelings about contemporary children's shows. They provide stimulation and some education, but they're still electronic. Children need to interact with people, including their peer group (note: Carter does attend group day-care a couple of days a week). They need to socialize, and the characters on screen, no matter how smart or cute, aren't real.

When I was a few years older, my friends and I used to engage in acting out our favorite shows during recess. In a way it was the best of both worlds: we watched our shows (the ones with people, not cartoons), but then we shared them second-hand with each other, and we all took roles and went beyond the scripts. I sincerely hope that this generation of children doesn't lose the capacity for creative, interactive play.

Anyway, then I went to Bouchercon and played with my friends. It was a great ten days, overall, and I'm still shoveling out the accumulated stuff on my desk and the backlog of emails. I only wish I could find my brain.

My Agatha is Sick

2009-10-23T09:26:21-04:00

posted by Leann Sweeney

I write about cats and even before I wrote a cat series, my other series had a great cat named Diva. I have loved animals all my life and was always bringing home strays when I was a kid. I even brought home a newborn litter of possums after nearly falling on them in the woods. we had birds and dogs and rabbits and once we even had a cat. But the cat didn't last. Why, I wasn't sure. But my grandparents had a cat named Inky and I used to chase him all over their house--and get bitten and scratched regularly. Inky wasn't a fan of grabby children.

The first week my husband and I got married we went out and adopted two kittens: Fanny and Ralph. What a crazy pair they were. But when they passed on, we went for indoor dogs and outdoor cats. I even raised Shelties for several years. My daughter also begged for a Bichon and I didn't have to be convinced. My daughter was a preteen then and I didn't think ahead. I got to keep the darling but less than brilliant dog when she went off to college.

But when my daughter left me the Bichon, it didn't keep me from feeling as if I had a very empty nest,and I decided to fill it with cats. First came Indigo, the Himalayan. No papers, just a beautiful kitten who needed a home. I didn't stop there. Next came Agatha, whom I bought at a cat show because I couldn't bear to leave her there as a show cat. She was scared to death and who knows what would have happened to her. She's a tiny cat, and has never weighed more than seven pounds. Then I found Archie at the grocery store where he was scrounging for food. Home he came and all my husband could do was roll his eyes and give in. I did manage to give the next rescue, a Persian, to my daughter and her husband and they adore him. Three cats are enough for us.

When we went away on our recent trip to NYC, I hired a petsitter as I always do. I warned her about little Agatha, how the other two cats tend to bully her, that she can be very shy and hide. I made one call home while we were gone and the petsitter said everything seemed fine. And I thought so, too ... at first.

I noticed right away that I had to hunt Agatha down when we came home. She usually comes out of her hiding place as soon as she hears my voice. And then I got busy with rewrites, but I wasn't too distracted to notice that Agatha didn't join me in bed two nights in a row. Now that's not right. So I made sure the other two kitties didn't bite her or jump on her and that she stayed safely by my side. And I was still busy with those damn rewrites. Too busy. Agatha, I suddenly realized, was sleeping way too much.

Finally the idiot writer calls the vet and by this time, Agatha can hardly stand up. I blew it. Big time. When they tested her blood, her white cell count was through the roof and she was very anemic. And, she had a fever and only weighed five pounds. Five pounds. I have never felt so guilty in my life. They kept her because they couldn't get a urine sample but the vet wasn't just talking about an infection, she was talking about cancer. I cried all the way home and waited for the call.

Turned out she did have a urinary tract infection, a very bad one, but they still could not rule out the cancer possibility. She got an IV and an antibiotic shot, and that first evening I thought I'd caught it in time. But the IVs fooled both Agatha and me. Pretty soon she was going downhill again. So for the last ten days, I have been waking her up to make sure she eats, offering her tuna water and kitten milk to drink and giving her that soft spot next to me every night. She's hungry, but she doesn't wake up on her own to eat. So I've been doing this every two hours in the daytime. I thought she'd bounce back, but I was wrong.

Finally today, she drank plain water on her own for the first time in ten days. I'm taking that as a sign she's rallying. I have to. She's is the sweetest, most gentle cat I've ever owned. And if you were to ask me which of my three aging cats--they're 12, 13 and 14--would live the longest, I would have said Agatha. She's the one who loves to play the most. Maybe that's why I was in complete denial that anything serious could be wrong. She goes back to the vet next week for another antibiotic shot and will have to have another one after that. Then they will look for a possible hidden cancer. This is not the kind of research I ever wanted to do for a book. But I have learned that when cats crash, they crash hard and fast.

And now that the rewrites are done and off to my editor, I can spend as much time as possible making sure she eats and gets a little exercise. But she is sleeping all the time. I miss my funny Aggie, so think good thoughts for her and I will never, ever let this happen again. I promise, Agatha.

Swimming against the tide--and the tide is winning.

2009-10-22T00:49:00-04:00

posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

When did my life spiral out of control? Every now and then I chat with someone about my work, writing, whatever, and she (it’s always a woman, never a man) says, “How do you do it all?”

My response usually is, “You should see my house. Or not.” And I was only half joking. Because in the past few weeks, it has become apparent that I am not really “doing it all” at all, and I’m floundering with the rest of it.

It’s like one of those good-news-bad-news jokes. And the joke’s on me.

The good news: I finally finished last year’s taxes and I’m mailing them only six days after the drop-deadline (as we say in Sisters in Crime).

The bad news: It took me a whole weekend to sort out all the paperwork so I could fill out the tax forms. Which means (more bad news) I am falling behind on the final (I really, really hope) draft of the cancer book.

The good news: I am working on the final, final draft of the cancer book.

The bad news: I didn’t know until a couple of days ago that I have to compile a complete bibliography of every source I used in researching the book. Articles, books, chapters in books, web sites, webinars…thousands of them, over the past 12 years. Okay, I’m a reference librarian and I should have known better; I can certainly document everything, but the sources currently consist of piles of photocopies, internet printouts, and books—in no particular order. Can I do the bibliography? Sure. I know where everything is (as my daughter says), I just don’t know how deep. The reference materials for the book consist of:

· Two big plastic bins sorted by chapter/topic, with a few whole books for good measure

· A plastic crate filled with papers, in no particular order except that the ones I used most recently are probably on top.

· Several piles of papers sorted not by topic but by draft

· A whole lot of e-mails stored on my old computer, the one that takes about 15 minutes to boot up, and no, I’m not exaggerating—that may be an optimistic estimate

· Some articles in a different file on the same aging computer

The (related) good news: we really do have an empty nest, which means I have two more rooms to fill with boxes and crates and temporary office space (bless wireless!), and the (related) bad news: there are piles of books all over my small office, because each daughter took with her one of the office bookcases.

It’s all my own fault. I taught them to love books and they needed lots of space to store them, although if I were being totally honest, I’d admit that one daughter will fill a complete bookcase with her collection of (mostly) horror DVDs.

The good news: I do have two very nice bookcases to use for my office but (the bad news) I don’t have time to move furniture and fill it with books. (See the first sentence in this blog.)

I was thinking about this the other day, standing in front of the library bulletin board trying to find a space to post a concert flyer. Everybody and his babysitter has a sign on that board, offering house cleaning, dog walking, poison ivy removal, tutoring (math and languages are especially hot), editing services, and the like. (An aside—townspeople are generally respectful of their neighbors’ flyers, but we once had a surreptitious war between pet services, whose owners removed ads for the competition.) You know how those ads have little tabs with the phone number you can tear off just in case you don’t have a pen and a scrap of paper handy? Most of these ads have them, but only one has been completely stripped of the tabs. The clutter control patrol.

Go figure.

Everything Is Illuminated-or--new hope for revision

2009-10-21T05:00:00-04:00

Posted by Kate Flora

Thank goodness there is no copyright in titles, because despite other writers having used it before, it just seems to fit my blog today.

Last week, my husband Ken and I went on a road trip. I had to go to Indianapolis, for Bouchercon, the biggest of the national mystery conferences, because my friend, and publisher, Jim Huang, was among those running it and introducing some very cool innovations, and I love Jim. Also because my friend, and publishing partner, Ruth McCarty, was receiving a Derringer Award for her flash-fiction short story, "No Flowers for Stacy," published in DEADFALL: Crime Stories by New England Writers (Ruth is the gorgeous blonde in the photo at left, along with the phenomenal Clark Howard, Linda Landrigan of AHMM, Janet Hutchings of EQMM, and Jim Doherty from the Short Mystery Fiction Society.) And I went because my seventh Thea Kozak mystery, Stalking Death, was coming out in paperback.

We decided we'd get on a plane, overshoot the midwest, and land in Colorado for a few days of hiking in the Rockies before flying back to Indiana. When we left, Boston was cool, autumnal, and blazing with fall color. My gardens were still cranking out the last of the season's flowers, a huge box of bulbs (900) had landed on the front porch, and it was a hard time to be heading out of town. But Ken loves mountains, and I love Ken, and it seemed like we were in need of a vacation.

Fast forward to Denver, where we picked up a car and headed up to Boulder for a few days to get used to the altitude. (I'm one of those wimps who get headaches and other symptoms if you take me above sea level.) Horror of horrors, instead of golden leaves and other shades of autumn, everything was covered with snow. After discovering that our reservation was fatally screwed up and the Boulderado was full, the kind staff helped us out, and we ended up in a strange, fun, spacious...and alas...SMOKING...room. Unable to breathe the air, we head out, crunching around charming downtown Boulder. We went for dinner at Colterra in Niwot, and the next morning, after a fantastic breakfast at the hotel, we headed out for a hike.

Here is where things get illuminated. Even when it's premature and unwanted, the first snow of the season is magical, and it illuminates, and delineates, things that we otherwise might not see. As we crunched along some of the many trails around the city, we saw not just the expected beauty of Colorado, but dozens of small, unexpected things we otherwise would never have noticed. Patches of snow making a pattern of white puffs against reddish gravel. Snow limning the edges of shiny green leaves. Piled up atop the dried seedpods of plants.

Surprised leaves, falling prematurely from trees, make stunning and surprising patterns of color against the stark white, the bright yellows and reds popping against the clean snow, spears of green and delicate seedpods that would otherwise blend in with the surrounds grasses clearly delineated. Even rocks are suddenly changed by crisp outlines of white.

There's a common saying that travel is broadening. I like to think of it as sharpening. And when it works best, illuminating. I had a lovely time seeing all my mysterious friends at Bouchercon. I'm very glad I went. But what I still have with me, as I'm sitting at my desk trying to revise the manuscript from hell which needs to go on an 80-page diet, is a newly tuned-up vision. A re-vision, if you will. When I'm working scenes, I'm reminded to think about how things look and feel and smell, as well as what the right words are. And I'm happy to be back here in my chair, now that everything is illuminated.

CONFERENCES

2009-10-19T02:42:00-04:00

Posted by Sheila Connolly

When you read this, if all goes as planned I will have returned, bleary-eyed and spent, from my second foray to Bouchercon, perhaps the biggest of the mystery conferences. It’s a heady experience that goes on for days. There are panels with authors you have worshipped from afar (hey, I’m on a panel—worshippers welcome!). There are publishers’ parties. And there are many lunches and drinks and dinners with friends who you get to see only once or twice a year at events like this.

B’con is big. Really big, like two thousand people, many of whom are authors. The rest are agents, editors, publishers, and readers. Imagine that many people crammed into a single hotel, reeling madly from one room to another (those who don’t stop in the middle of the flow to greet a long-lost friend, thereby creating a monumental traffic jam). No light, no air, sparse food, but oh, the energy generated by so many talented people in one place!

As it happens, I’m on the committee managing the New England Crime Bake, an annual conference produced jointly by the local chapters of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America. This is a very different event. For a start, it’s about one-tenth the size of B’con. (I have the greatest admiration for those stalwart people who put together B’con—and I don’t want to join them!) This points up a difference in conference philosophy: large or small? What are the pros and cons?

I have found that the writers community is welcoming, supportive—and a heck of a lot of fun. But not every writer wants to throw him- or herself into a vast maelstrom of people. It’s daunting, it’s stressful, and it can be overwhelming. If you don’t pace yourself, you may find you want to crawl back to your hotel room, get in bed and pull the covers over your head. Except that you have three roommates, because you have to keep the cost down. Maybe you don’t like to drink alcohol, and all the interesting people seem to be clustered in the bar. Maybe you get completely tongue-tied when you find yourself in front of a Major Author, and slink away in embarrassment. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

On the other hand, in a small conference you can actually talk to people, who don’t all seem to be rushing off to meet someone else at the other end of the vast convention hotel. You can find them. There are fewer panels and seminars—but that means less agonizing about which one you really, really want to attend.

This year’s registration for Crime Bake has been unusual and interesting. For one thing, in a year when some conferences have been cancelled for lack of interest, Crime Bake has topped all previous numbers for its eight years. For another, half of the people are first-time attendees. It makes sense: better to get your feet wet at a small conference, if you’re a new or aspiring writer. But whatever the reason, it’s heartwarming to see so much enthusiasm for this conference.

But this “success” raises a question: do we want to grow, or do we want to keep the event intimate? Everyone has been happily surprised this year, but we have to make decisions about hotel space almost immediately. Is this year a fluke, or does it signal a trend?

Whatever the reason, it’s a good conference. And so is Bouchercon. They have different goals and meet different needs. And if you’re trying to become a writer, or if you simply love being around writers, and you can afford it, try to go to conferences. They’re worth it!

Jeff Markowitz: An Interview with Cassie O'Malley

2009-10-17T07:55:00-04:00

By Guest Blogger Jeff Markowitz

I caught up with tabloid reporter and amateur sleuth Cassie O'Malley recently at the Eggery. The Eggery is nothing special - that is, of course, unless you like your eggs over easy, thick slabs of homemade bread dripping with butter, bacon extra-crispy, home fries extra-spicy, and coffee so rich you can smell it from your car. Between bites of eggs benedict (actually, as a result of a typo on the menu, they were eggs bebedict, but that's another story entirely), Cassie agreed to answer a few questions.

Jeff Markowitz: You've built up something of a cult following with your stories in the Jersey Knews.

Cassie O’Malley: Is that a question?

Jeff: Let me start again. Does it surprise you that you've become something of an underground sensation?

Cassie: I can't say it's what I set out to write about, but it could be worse. You know, there will always be people who are interested in stories about space aliens and sea monsters, about psychic spy rings and Siamese triplets.

Jeff: You’ve had some remarkable stories in the magazine. But I haven’t seen your byline in quite a while. Is everything okay?

Cassie: Most people would call it writer’s block.

Jeff: Is that what you call it?

Cassie: I guess I’d say I’ve been in a bit of a slump.

Jeff: How do you deal with that?

Cassie: Tullamore Dew.

Jeff: Huh?

Cassie: Irish whiskey

Jeff: You mentioned that tabloid stories weren’t the kind of stories you originally wanted to write. What did you set out to write?

Cassie: When I was a student at Princeton, I had it all figured out. I was going to be an investigative reporter, walking the halls of power in Washington, a force for truth, beauty, and the American way, holding politicians to their promises by the power of my words, exposing the hypocrites and the cheats and becoming rich and famous in the process.

Jeff: What happened?

Cassie: Life happened. Or more to the point, death happened.

Jeff: Death happened?

Cassie: I married my college sweetheart, and less than a year later, he died in his sleep. You know, when a man dies in his sleep, we console ourselves with the conventional wisdom that it’s a peaceful way to die. And yet, that quiet winter morning, some few months after relocating to our condo in Doah, snow falling silently on the Pine Barrens, a dog barking in the distance, I rolled over to give Rob a good morning kiss and he was dead, terror frozen permanently in his eyes and in my memory.

Jeff: I am sorry. That was fifteen years ago?

Cassie: Yes, fifteen years ago. Or yesterday. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

Jeff: Do you mind if I change the subject? Recently, you've gained some attention for your activities as an amateur sleuth.

Cassie: Yes. I have.

Jeff: How did that happen?

Cassie: I was working on a story when I found the first dead body. I just figured I ought to follow the story to its logical conclusion.

Jeff: What can you tell us about your new case?

Cassie: It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder is a warm and fuzzy Christmas story. You see, my new boss gave me this crappy assignment at the shopping mall. Then Big Mack turned up dead in the men’s room, his throat slit. One of the mall security guards, a real putz looking for fifteen minutes of fame, says he caught Big Mack with stolen property, and in the ensuing struggle, Big Mack suffered the fatal knife wound. The police are skeptical, but Big Mack’s son, the even bigger Little Mack is determined to avenge his father’s murder.

Jeff: And you say it’s a warm and fuzzy Christmas story?

Cassie: Well, maybe it’s not so warm and fuzzy after all. But it is a Christmas story.

Jeff: Someone told me you used to have your own blog.

Cassie: I wanted a place to tell people I wasn't just a character in a book. That I was a real person. With hopes, dreams, ambitions. Disappointments. That the Cassie O'Malley Mysteries were real stories, my stories. And that you were just a pseudonym. My invention. The fictional author.

Jeff: So which is it?

Cassie: Yes. Which is it?
------------------------------------
Jeff Markowitz is the author of the Cassie O’Malley Mysteries, an amateur sleuth series set deep in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. His latest release, It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder, is now available. “If you’ve ever been to a shopping mall during the Christmas season, you understand the urge to kill.” Jeff is a proud member of Sisters in Crime and the Mystery Writers of America.

Rewrites Used to Be Fun

2009-10-16T09:08:56-04:00

posted by Leann Sweeney

For the first time in seven books, I met face-to-face with my editor to go over her take on my latest cat mystery--the first draft I'd sent to her two weeks before. I've met with her in person, once at a conference and once just for a nice lunch and visit. I adore her and love meeting with her. She seemed nervous. I was not. My writing group is tough, I've grown alligator skin and I figured I knew what she was going to say anyway. For the most part, I was correct. She's got a good sense for the overall "feel" of a book and she found this one reflected a little too much on the author's problems. The author is me, of course. And yes, it's been another rough year, health-wise. I keep waking up and thinking the fibro and the Lyme and the fatigue will suddenly disappear. It just never does.

"Make your heroine nicer. Make the book funnier. And I'd love to see what the characters are wearing and what they look like," she told me. None of this is any different than what I'd heard before and is usually pretty easy to fix. So I began rewrites as soon as I returned from my trip to NYC. But I was unprepared for the comments on the page. Many, many, many comments. And for the first time they stung. I felt as if I'd written a piece of junk even though she'd told me the plot was very solid, very clear and that she had no problems with it. But the voice talking to me through those little "comment balloons" seemed so critical. I felt awful. What used to be the best part of writing had suddenly turned into a bashing that hurt.

But this was much more about me than anything she said straight to me or on the page. I've noticed that I've become hyper-sensitive lately. All my husband has to do is look at me a certain way, and I start crying. My granddaughter's birthday was this past weekend and not being there in person made me cry, too,even though we Skyped in to watch her open her gifts. But I wasn't completely aware of how affected I was until I had writer's group and brought a revised chapter with my nicer heroine who just isn't as funny as she should be. "Make this funnier" is not a good suggestion. At least for me, that means it will be less funny than ever before. Anyway, my group tore that particular chapter apart. If I had been unaware of a crisis of confidence before, it all came out on Tuesday night. Five times while I was receiving criticism, I almost cried. I never cry at writer's group. I love it. But not this week.

But as Yogi Berra would say, this was deja vous all over again. It made me think of all the rejections I used to get. I'd cry when I got one--no, weep is a better word--and the next day, I would wake up mad as hell. And determined. I spent all day Wednesday determined to make that chapter the best one in the book. Then I sent it to one of my critique partners. She loved the rewrite. Thought I'd fixed every problem and done an excellent job. Whew.

I guess why I'm writing about this because those early experiences--no matter what they were about, be it writing, or mothering or learning how to quilt--have value that I sometimes forget or take for granted. I needed to be reminded what hard work writing is, that perhaps these crying spells are related to stress and insecurity. And that I have no reason to be insecure. Oops, sorry. I do have a reason.

I'm a writer.

I could use a little help here, or where's a chef when you need one?

2009-10-15T00:14:00-04:00

posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

As mentioned a few weeks ago, the Bracken offspring have now moved out. Yes, after almost 40 years of marriage, we are now cooking for two again. Darned if I can remember what we used to eat "way back when", before the first daughter was born in 1976.

I had been looking forward to having more space, room to spread out our cluttered stuff, clearing the counters and having them still clean hours later. I am no Happy Homemaker, scrubbing my days away cheerfully, wearing my high heels. When cleaning, I tend to snarl, so it's bemusing to realize that I'm actually looking forward to cleaning the house, room by room, painting walls and ceilings (if we can get the sticker residue off, from posters and pictures and glow-in-the-dark stars, oh my!).

But the meal thing is daunting. Tonight I realized how far we had sunk. I got home late, having missed dinner, and asked Ray what he'd had for supper.

"Soup," he said. "Chicken noodle soup." From a can. Campbell's. He mashes saltines into soup, all soup, even homemade.

So I was on my own and found myself also eating soup. Tomato soup. From a can. Campbell's. Now I admit I like it, especially with cheese crackers or oysterettes. But really--we're talking serious sodium here. And did you realize that one of the top ingredients in Campbell's tomato soup is sugar?

My husband is diabetic, and I have threatened...no, call it "announced"...that I will take over meal planning. Healthy meals. Homemade, not from boxes or packages. No more cardboard mac and cheese.

When I married him, he had been in the service for years and before that his mother, a great cook herself, never taught him to make anything. He knew how to make one thing when we met. Here's the recipe:

Bachelor Slop

Boil water. Mix in instant rice, then top with drained tuna and a can of cream of mushroom soup. Enjoy. Yeah, the only thing that got cooked was the water.

That was a relic of a brief period sharing an apartment in San Diego with a couple of friends.

I actually like to cook, when I have time, but I hate to get home at 7 pm and find out nothing has been done about a meal. My retired husband does most of the grocery shopping, which just adds to the frustration, since he doesn't pay much attention to the produce aisle beyond bananas, potatoes and onions. His idea of a salad is lettuce poured from a bag and topped with bottled dressing. He loves Spam. Well-balanced, no? Something from the fat group, something from the sodium group...

He does have a slightly expanded repertoire now: he can cook hamburgers, hot dogs, pancakes, kielbasa, meat loaf, and spaghetti with bottled sauce. His favorite vegetable is canned green beans. He preferred mashed potatoes until our hand mixer died.

He likes beef. I can slip chicken (white meat only) past him, as well as pork chops, and we both like ham. I make chili, beef stew, homemade soups, Spanish rice, and various meat-and-potato casseroles. He likes Tex-Mex flavors.

We have slow cookers in three sizes.

Here is your challenge: send me your recipes that are simple, don't include any fancy ingredients (but I do love cilantro), don't require a lot of fussing, and that taste fabulous. Extra credit if you can figure a way to get him to eat fish (tuna is fine but he has also started to order white fish like haddock at restaurants and sometimes it isn't even breaded.)

So, my cookin' friends: Help!

What Color is Your Autumn?

2009-10-14T05:00:00-04:00

Posted by Kate Flora

I'm a compulsive lover of words. I probably have more books about words, rhyme, language, word origins, the derivation of peculiar expressions, etc., than most people have cookbooks. It's not my fault. It's hereditary. Puns and word games and discussions of interesting words were common dinner table conversation growing up. One of my most cherished books is my Rodale's Synonym Finder, a gift from my mother. And I still have tucked away in my files a list that lived on our refrigerator when the boys were young, with the heading: "Don't Call Your Brother Stupid, try...." followed by a list of dozens of words that might more accurately describe the irritating behaviors of a younger brother.

Another list that lived on the refrigerator was a list of words for winter. I was thinking of that list this morning when I looked out into my yard at the lovely array of fall colors, softer or more faded than the hot colors of summer, but so eye-catching and soul stirring. I wanted a list of words for autumn, and, more particularly, for the colors of autumn, for all those siennas, rusts, ochres and Bordeauxs that catch my eye and warm my landscape.

Look up yellow, and the range of options runs from rich words like golden, aureate, honey, saffron, tawny, topaz, or flaxen, to the far less appealing jaundiced or sallow. For russet, there are delicious, evocative words: chestnut, coppery, foxy, auburn, fawn, cinnamon, maroon, while rust elicits tarnish, corrosion, erosion and wear. Brown, interestingly enough, while a word that suggests dull or dirty, or plain and earthy, spawns a lovely list of synonyms, including brick, sorrel, terra-cotta, ginger, hazel, chocolate, mahogany, walnut, henna, auburn, musteline, dusky, fuscous, bronze, and copper, as well as the unlovely beige, dun, ecru, tan, dark, and drab.

What about red, that rather plain little word? Given a choice, who would not prefer crimson, cardinal, rubescent, rufous, amaranthine, vinaceous, claret, scarlet, vermillion or titian? Even the more negative--ruddy, florid, flushed, blowsy, carroty, febrile, or sandy--are still vibrant. And perhaps even more fun is to look up purple. After a few insipid choices--mauve, orchid, lavender and violet, the words start leaping off the page. Imperial, regal, noble, majesty, brilliant, radiant, splendiferous, ornate, seguing, at last, into the overblown. Grandiose. Pretentious. Stilted. Lofty, fulsome. Hyperbolic. The book, alas, does not give us words for plum or burgundy.

There are often two different takes on autumn. On fall. There is the sad view that it is the season which marks the end of warmth and vibrant life, a melancholy which leads us forward into the cold landscape of winter. This sense of ending is captured in Carl Sandburg's poem:

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.

The other view is that it is a crescendo, a culmination, the harvest season and a time of bounty and richness and fecundity. That sense of things is captured in a poem like Keat's Ode to Autumn, which goes:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;'

There is a writing exercise I give my students sometimes, taken from John Gardner, which asks them to describe a building seen, first, through the eyes of a man who has lost his son in the war, without mentioning the war, or the son, or death. Then to describe the same building, at the same time of day and time of year, through the eyes of someone newly in love. It might be fun to translate that exercise into fall. Describe a fall landscape through the eyes of someone for whom the season does represent death and despair, endings and decay, and the too swift passage of the years. Then describe the same landscape through the eyes of someone who sees life as abundant and full, and fall a passionate crescendo.