Writers Plot

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

I went to a meeting this morning and the people who had stopped at the nearby Starbucks were sipping cups of caffeine. Nothing notable there. But the cups--ah, the cups! They were red and festooned with mittens and snowflakes and other tree ornaments. They smelled like morning but they looked a whole lot like Christmas. The Starbucks customers assured me that holiday music was playing to get everybody in the mood. Imagine--seven weeks of Christmas carols and "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas." Yikes!

Not that this should surprise me. As I write this, there are 44 days til Christmas 2009. That's 1062 hours and counting til Santa comes down the chimney (if he can navigate through the wood stove set on the hearth) and fill our stockings with joy.

I realize there is a recession and the stores are worried that they won't make enough money from frugal buyers. They feel they have to ramp up the holiday cheer to get us all in the mood. But sheesh--they started in September. I know this because I was in one of those dollar stores and was able to snap up rolls of Christmas wrapping paper for a buck each. I still have a handsome supply of wrapping paper in a closet upstairs, along with bows and the like, but I cannot resist a bah-gin, as we say in New England.

Of course the stores had to start decorating early because they had finished up with the back-to-school sales by the Fourth of July and the summer clearance sales ran in late July.

I admit I'm addicted to the local chain of Christmas Tree Shops, and no month is complete without a foray into the aisles to see what's on sale. Even those iconic stores don't decorate for Christmas until Halloween is over. Thanksgiving apparently doesn't have enough cachet to hold a place in retailers' hearts. Just turkey and pies. Ho hum, not jingle jingle in the pockets.

So--have you got your shopping done? Gifts wrapped and stashed? Cards addressed? Not me. Most years I do some Christmas shopping while I'm on vacation, so family can expect some gift from Hawaii or Alaska or wherever we have traveled during the year.

This year we got as far as upstate New York, and sure enough, I did pick up a few things there. But it's not a good idea to wrap them and hide them in closets or under the beds, because I will certainly forget them--either where I put them, what's in the brightly wrapped packages, or even that I ever bought them to begin with. Many years I am surprised around Easter to come across some gifts I have absolutely no recollection of buying. Lists are helpful, but too often I lose the lists, too.

But I actually love Christmas and look forward to the season every year--the cold snap that brightens my cheeks, the store clerks before they burn out from dealing with the public, the twinkly lights, and my annual humming-along with "The Messiah" (only in the comfort of my own home, of course).  So I agree with the sentiment--"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas."

If only they weren't singing it in July.

Welcoming New Baby With Joy and Concern

Posted by Kate Flora

Quarry, the seventh anthology in our yearly collection of crime stories by New England writers, arrived on my front porch last week, box after box of strong, beautiful, new-born books. Although it is the seventh book in the collection, the process never gets old. I'm as excited about the arrival of this new book as I was so many Novembers ago, awaiting the arrival of Undertow, our first anthology. I'm curious to see how the stories will strike me on a third or fourth reading. How well they'll work together. Whether we've successfully put them into the right order, into a balance which will please and intrigue the readers who pick it up and send them forward, curious, to read the next story.

The invitation to participate in this project as an editor came from Susan Oleksiw, a writer whose work, vision, and drive I greatly esteem, eight years ago. Would I like to participate as an editor in assembling a collection of crime stories that would take a snapshot of the New England writer's mind? It was an intriguing idea--to sit on the editorial side--and I accepted the invitation. We thought it was a one-time project, but our delight in the book, and our pleasure had getting to introduce readers to fine stories, and in discovering talented unpublished writers, made us want to do it again. And again.

Along the way, our third editor, Skye Alexander, left the region for Texas, and was replaced by a fine local writer, Ruth McCarty, who had been one of our own early discoveries.

They have been a rich and wonderful eight years. I couldn't imagine, on that cold winter day when we sat and looked at our first set of submissions, what a joy it would be nine months later to watch a signing line of our authors--several of them first timers--holding the physical book that had their work in print. It was that pleasure and excitement--theirs at being published, mine at getting to share their work with readers--that has led to six more collections.

I've just come from a launch event at River Run books in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for the newest collection. Three of our authors read from their stories, and each one had such distinct voice, such an inviting sense of mystery, and each was different. It's always fun to watch an audience being read to. People love to hear writers read their stories. I can see it in their faces and in the sighs of pleasure when the author finishes. Tonight it was Norma Burrow's "Confessions of a Telemarketer," which begins: "No one in their right mind would give a postal worker a hard time. Their tendency to go "postal" is well documented. However, it is socially acceptable to harass and be rude to telemarketers over the phone. I am here as a telemarketer to ask you, Do you have a death wish?"

With a start like that, who wouldn't need to finish the story? Norma will be reading again next week at Water Street in Exeter, New Hampshire.

Our authors even get creative about marketing the book. Vincent O'Neil, a Malice Domestic award-winning author who has a delightful caper story in the collection, even sent us prospective posters. Up in Farmington, Maine, attorney Woody Hanstein, who has had stories in most of our collections, is putting out the word about the collection in his homegrown internet newspaper, the Daily Bulldog. Maine Librarian John Clark is spreading the word in the library community. Next week, John and Woody will be talking about Quarry at the Farmington Library. And there are more events in the works.

So, with the excitement of a new book and all this lively activity, why am I concerned? Because it has been a hard year for booksellers and for publishers. I'm a natural born worrier, and I'm worried that despite a big push and a wonderful product, I may not be able to sell enough books. And if I can't sell the book--good as it is--then next November, the happy little Level Best Family won't be welcoming another new baby. 

Sure, seven children is enough. They're beautiful, talented, entertaining, thoughtful, inspiring, and unique. But there is a whole world of stories out there, established writers to celebrate and new writers to discover. Life won't be the same if I--and my partners Ruth and Susan--aren't spending many hours reading them and shaping another rich collection.

And, by the way, you can order your copy of Quarry here.

The Generosity of Cozy Authors

Posted by Lorraine Bartlett -- also known as Lorna Barrett

Last week I sent out my quarterly newsletter.  In it, I offered a large print edition of my first Booktown Mystery, MURDER IS BINDING.  (My editor's assistant had been tidying the office and found an extra copy--so I figured, why not give it away?) The catch?  Readers had to tell me (in 50 words or less) why they wanted/needed a large-print edition of the book.

Whoa, was I  unprepared for the onslaught of requests.  Some of them were downright silly ("I just turned 40 and I don't want to wear reading glasses to read for pleasure") while some were heartbreaking ("I have terminal cancer. . .")

I never said this was going to be a "picked from the hat" contest, as I really wanted the book to go to someone who needed it--not for some frivolous reason, so it was a no brainer to divide the requests into two piles:  "Worthy" and "Better Luck Next Contest." And I could have just chosen one name from the worthy pile and sent them the book.  But I wanted to do more than that.

So I asked a bunch of my friends, also cozy mystery authors, if they could help me out and donate one of their books.

Let's pause for a moment and think about what an utterly outrageous request this really was.  These were MY readers and MY contest, and I was asking my pals to part with a $25 book. We don't get cases of these books.  We're lucky to get two copies of the large-print editions of our books, and more often we only get one.  What would they get out of helping me out?

I'll tell you what, the satisfaction of doing something nice.

There are a lot of nice people out there, doing good for a lot of people, but they rarely get thanked for it in a public forum.  That's why I want to SHOUT OUT LOUD about the generosity of my cozy author friends:

JULIE HYZY

LEANN SWEENEY

DEB BAKER

SHEILA CONNOLLY

SARAH ATWELL (2 books!)

Because of these friends, four more people, one small library, and a nursing home, will have a happier holiday.  (Most of the requests came from unemployed people wanting to give books to their elders with vision problems.)

I'm reminded of the ending of the movie "It's A Wonderful Life," where Clarence the angel gives George Bailey a copy of Tom Sawyer.  In it he wrote:  "George, no man is a failure who has friends."

I think that goes for women, too.

DO BLONDES HAVE MORE FUN?

Posted by Sheila Connolly

At Boucheron recently I was hanging out with a terrific group of women who all write in the same genre, traditional mysteries.  (You know who you are!)  In fact, many of us write for the same publisher.  All are talented, interesting people.  And I realized that most of them are blonde.

When you know people primarily on-line, through their blogs or through writers lists, you don't think much about appearance.  We do share a lot of personal information:  I could probably tell you which ones are married, which have children, which are still working at day jobs.  I could even tell you how many pets they have and what kind(s), or their favorite foods.  But until you meet them at a conference, you have no idea what they look like.

Well, this batch was blonde.  Guess what:  I'm not blonde.  I felt like a goose in a swan convention.  A "herd" of swans?  (Hey, it sounds wrong, but I looked it up.)  There are probably pictures to prove it.

Why did I notice this?  A few million years ago, when I was an art history major in college, I wrote a senior thesis about Victorian Genre Painting.  In case you're unfamiliar with that (believe me, most people are), it was a style of painting that became popular when the middle classes in the later nineteenth century found they had some disposable income and started buying art, mainly as wall decoration.  Quite a few of these pictures included the very people who were buying them:  the English bourgeoisie.  (Gee, kinda like cozies, eh?)  The characters depicted were affluent members of the class, often seen in comfortable home environments.  At the same time there was a "story-telling" element, and quite often a moral message.

My particular focus in the thesis was how Victorian painters depicted women in that era (I wrote this during the height of the feminist wave).  The overall theme was "home=good".  Women were represented as the keepers of the hearth, helpmeets, and mothers.  And to emphasize this, there was the antithesis of this image:  the fallen woman.

The picture that best sums this up was painted by one Arthur D. Lemon, titled "Pure Innocence/Pure in No Sense."  It was a dual picture.  On one side was a charming child at play; on the other, a prostitute.  And both were blonde. (I'd love to show it to you, but it's so obscure that it doesn't appear anywhere on-line.)

Blonde or fair hair is often associated with childhood.  In addition, it is (if I recall my college biology classes correctly) also the result of recessive genes, so a "true" blonde is a relatively rare phenomenon, unless you happen to find yourself in Scandinavia.  So if a woman chooses to lighten her hair color, she is doing it (a) to invoke in others pleasant associations with early childhood, or (b) to stand out in a crowd (think Marilyn Monroe).  According to my in-depth research (i.e., I googled it), commercial hair bleach first emerged in a major way in the 1880s-90s, which corresponds to the period of Lemon's picture.  I would guess his lady of the evening wanted to be noticed.

Of course, hair color today runs the gamut from natural shades to neon, so a blonde hue is pretty mainstream.  And then there's the age factor:  many of us are "of a certain age," as the French would say. (TheFreeDictionary tells me that means a woman who "is no longer young but is not yet old."  Unfortunately, with ageing comes grey hair. We live in a youth-oriented culture, and nobody wants to be branded as "old," even if they're only forty. 

Take a poll among any group of women:  how many are sporting their own natural hair color?  Not many, I'd bet.  I plead guilty, and my grandmother went to her grave at 94 with dyed hair.  My mother dyed her hair; my sister dyes hers.  I resisted for as long as I could and finally gave in when I felt like I was fading into the wallpaper.

But I didn't go blonde, because it would look entirely fake on me.  Instead I opted for a tribute to my Irish forbears and chose a warm brown with reddish highlights (let's ignore the fact that the only Irish family members I knew had dark or sandy hair–not a redhead in the batch). At least I don't look blah and washed-out.

So to come back to my original question:  why are so many cozy writers blonde?  We want to look younger than our chronological age?  I don't think that applies. For one thing, many of us think that we're better writers now than we would have been twenty years ago, so we don't need to go back.  Besides, our readers don't look at author photos when they buy our books.  Is it because we want to stand out from the crowd?  I'm happier with that idea.  Maybe the blondes are saying, look at me!  I'm smart, I'm articulate, and I like what I'm doing.  It's a great group to hang out with–even if you're not blonde.

 

COMING ATTRACTIONS: LAURA CHILDS

Please join us here on Writers Plot next Saturday, November 14, when Laura Childs will be our guest.  Laura is the author of the Scrapbooking Mysteries, Tea Shop Mysteries, and Cackleberry Club Mysteries. She'll be talking about how she became a mystery author.  Her latest book is Tragic Magic (#7 in the Scrapbooking Mystery series).

Don't miss it!

DO YOU HAVE MY NOUNS?

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.
-------------------------------------------------------------
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?

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

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

Posted by Kate Flora

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.