How Cozy Is Noir?

The genre question used to be so easy for a mystery writer. One wrote hard-boiled private eye novels, or cozies (under whatever name). The choice was, to a certain degree, determined by one’s nationality and sex. English women wrote cozies. American men wrote noir.

Yes, I know I’m over-simplifying, but there really was, once upon a time, a pretty clear dichotomy.

Then that began to change. For one thing, with the likes of Sara Paretsky and Marcia Muller, the hard-boiled private eye was, lo and behold, a woman! No longer was Miss Marple drinking tea and knitting her idyllic English village; she’d shed a good many years and put on running shoes and some salty language and quite a lot of attitude. The world would never be the same. And then the men in the field began to learn that they didn’t have to have a bottle rye stashed in the desk and a blond sitting on top of it. They could express emotion. They could, on occasion, cry over the death of a child.

Slowly, the situation evolved into what we have now, which could be expressed as “anything goes.” Now that sounds like a huge dose of freedom. I can write anything I want, not bound by any genre rules. I can put my private eye (of either sex) in a pink suit and set him/her down in either a tea shop or a mean street corner. He/she can crack wise with every word uttered, or spout profundities. My protagonist can be gay, straight, black, white, tan, happily or unhappily married, single, or divorced, with or without kids. Heck, she can even be a kid, in a book written for adults. There are no rules.

The trouble is, rules make writing a lot easier. It’s easier to write a sonnet or a haiku than free verse, because the structure is laid down for you. You just need to fill in the blanks. Note I didn’t say, to write a good sonnet. That takes a lot of hard work and no small helping of genius. But any fool can crank out fourteen lines with the rhymes in the right places.

I’ve been writing cozies for nearly twenty years now. I knew the genre and its conventions well, and could fill in the blanks with a certain amount of style. But although the genre was a bit old-fashioned even when I began, and was beginning to metamorphose, it has certainly changed now, almost out of all recognition. The trouble is, I haven’t changed with it, or not very much. What should I do about that? I’d love to make my protagonist a little more solid, her environment a little less pleasant and more like the real world. I’d love to introduce some issues I could get my teeth into. In fact, I’d love to write like Louise Penny, who is my idol right now.

But there are problems. First, of course, I’m simply not as gifted a writer as she, and I recognize that. But even if I could do it, would I lose my readers? They’ve come to expect a certain kind of book from me. Would I alienate them if I evolved as a writer? Or should I start a new series with a different color, a slightly darker shade of pale? The thought terrifies me. What if I couldn’t find a publisher? Would I have to write under a pseudonym?

It must have been lovely to be Agatha Christie.

On the Road

Wendy Hornsby

 “Pomp and Circumstance” has been played, the bluebooks are marked, the snack stash in my desk drawer tossed; I am sprung from school until Labor Day.  To borrow the words of young Elizabeth Foster of colonialMassachusetts, after spending three arduous, tedious winter months weaving flax into linen cloth, “Oh how I welcome sweet liberty once again to me.”

In celebration, we’re taking a long road trip.  Destination number one will be my husband’s family farm in the Missouri Ozarks.  It’s beautiful there this time of year, lush and green.  The yard will be full of birds, bright red cardinals, lemon yellow orioles, iridescent green humming birds.  And bugs.  Lordy, the bugs. 

The farm gate

 Paul needs to get back to the farm regularly, to scratch horse noses and feed cows, to walk the meadows, skip stones across the Gasconade River that embraces the lower acres in a broad meander, and to renew his Missouri twang.  Some part of his heart is always there; his family has owned the land since 1838.

We have only one other planned stop to make, a family gathering.  And then we are on the road again.  We have some notion of trying to figure out the route his great-great-grandfather, Jesse, took when he led a party of thirty-eight souls out of Tennessee and into Missouri, but that is just an excuse for being on the road, wandering along some of the great rivers—the Mississippi to the Tennessee to the Duck—seeing what we see.  After that, no big agenda, no appointments to keep, no alarm clock.  

There is nothing like a road trip to clear the head and put things in perspective.   A few thousand miles on the highway can provide a bounty of that most precious and illusive commodity:   time to think.

Which brings us back to clearing the head.  Frequently, revelations come to us when we are distracted by something else, like mental hitchhikers, if you will.  For example, one day after work at the patent office inVienna, young Albert Einstein boarded a trolley for home, probably thinking abut dinner or maybe a fight he’d had with his wife.  He saw a clock tower and noted the time.  As the trolley moved away from the clock he began to muse about his changing relationship to the time registered on the clock.  And, shazzam, the theory of relativity occurred to him, and we went to the moon.

Certainly I’m no Einstein, but many of my best ideas occur in those shazzam moments.  When I get stuck while I’m writing, I have to leave it, engage the mental front burners with something else for a while:  play solitaire, see if the mail has come, take a shower, take a walk, go find Paul and ask, Whacha doin’?, write a short story.  Chances are better that the missing bit will sneak out when I’m not actively looking for it than when I am. 

I am working on a new book.  So far, I have written several different opening chapters, but I still don’t have the tone right, or the pacing, or the plot and character introductions developed satisfactorily.  Very frustrating.  Also very interesting to work through. 

 My hope is that by the time we reach that place where the Duck River flows into theTennessee, I’ll know where the story is headed.

Scheherazade: the Modern Mystery Maven

by Nancy Means Wright

When I read of another tragic loss of life in the vicinity of Bahgdad, I think back to Scheherazade and the magical, mystical tales in The Arabian Nights, and recall how a suspenseful story saved a life.

After hearing his brother’s account of an unfaithful wife, Shah Shahryar discovered his own wife in a stranger’s embrace and, fed up with women, ordered her death. “Henceforth,” he told his minister, the Wazir, “you must fetch me a new bride, then each morning, lead her to her execution.”

Such suspense already!

Frightened parents hid their daughters, and soon the only girls left in the kingdom were the Wazir’s own two daughters, Scheherazade and Dunyazad.  Scheherazade, the eldest,  was bold, beautiful, and inventive, rather like a female sleuth from a modern mystery. Seeing her father the Wazir, panicked because of the dearth of brides, she said, “Just send me, Papa, to the  callous fellow. Either I shall live–or die a death for all women (I think here of feminist Mary Wollstonecraft) and whatever happens, there should be nothing but pride for you.”

Naturally the Wazir calmed down a little.

And naturally, the Shah was captivated by the plucky Scheherazade. Yet remained resolute in his decree of death–he couldn’t lose face by going back on his word.  But he promised his shocked countrymen that the executioner would use only the sharpest axe. Entertainment for all? So here’s the big question: Would she live–or die?

Scheherazade climbed into the sultan’s bed in the most translucent of nightgowns (a little excitement here), and the couple made love as though the world might end at first light–as indeed it would for the average exploited female.

But not for our crafty heroine.

For Scheherazade had a plan. She’d awaken her lord at midnight and beg to see her sister Dunyazad for the last time. Entering the shah’s bedchamber, the sister would ask for a story to while away the final hours–and Scheherazade would take it from there.

“One day,” our heroine began, “a fisherman removed the sealed stopper from a brass jar he’d pulled up out of the deep, and from its neck a giant plume of smoke poured forth and took the form of a figure with hands like pitchforks and teeth like tombstones.”

It was the wicked Jinni, furious at the world after his “century of bondage,” and vowing that the first man he laid eyes on after his release… “should die!”

“Oh, no…”

On the story continued to its hair-raising climax.  Then stopped. 

“What happened next?” the fevered king shouted. “You can’t stop now. Go on!”

But alas, pink-faced dawn was creeping through the windows. “And now,” said Dunyazad, “my poor sister must die.” And she burst into appropriate tears.

“But if my good lord will let me live till tomorrow night,” murmured the wily Scheherazade, “I promise to tell you the end of the story.”

Whereupon the sultan, hungry for the tale yet overcome by the good smell of coffee, cried, “By Allah, I shall not kill her till the tale be told!”

So it went, night after night: Scheherazade completing the old story, then beginning a new.  The king wholly enmeshed in the storyteller’s web. A thousand and one nights, hardly interrupted by the births of seven babes (midwives there to cut the cords, but never the narrative flow).

Then one eve our heroine gathered the sweet offspring to her breast, asked for a pardon, and the sultan, like many an avid reader, came to realize that he couldn’t live without his storyteller to stimulate his imagination with romance, suspense, and conflict–because life was too dull without it.

So he ordered his scribes to write down the stories on scrolls that others might enjoy them, and told Scheherazade to teach all the would-be storytellers the art of suspense. In this way the art was passed down through the ages to this very day. For storytellers must know, he said, how to tease their readers with a provocative pause–that the latter might come back again and again to find out “what happens next.” For without suspense, the axe would fall.

Today’s Scheherazades, both female and male, have learned this, have they not? See below for a few chapter-end teasers:

“For the first time in this annoying case, he felt the vague stirring of the waters as a living idea emerged slowly and darkly from the innermost deeps of his mind.” (Dorothy Sayers)

“Jackson sat bolt upright and grabbed the nurse’s arm. ‘My wife,’ he said, ‘where’s my wife?’” (Kate Atkinson)

“My master looked at me and said, ’I fear something has happened to Severinus.”” (Umberto Eco)

“The pressure was building, he could feel it, and the parting words of the maitre d’ came back to him.//’Tomorrow’s going to be a killer.’” (Louise Penny)

“Everyone of them, including his brother, had a pistol pointed at Billy’s heart.” (John Daniel)

“‘Lock up,’ he said. // Like never before, I thought.” (Camille Minichino aka Ada Madison)

“Then he looked at the three young women on the porch. ‘This isn’t over,’ he said. ‘You may think it  is, but it’s not.’”

I thank Janet Dawson, above, for the perfect ending to this story-blog.

Reviews–Or I Love/Hate Your Book

                                    by Laura Crum

 

            Like most authors, I think, I have mixed feelings about reviews. It can be very gratifying (and I have had this experience) when a major reviewer, like Publisher’s Weekly, praises your latest book. And it is pleasant to check your new release’s page on Amazon (as I did the other day) and find all five star reviews. But there is a flip side to this coin. My first novel, Cutter, was harshly criticized by the big reviewer, Kirkus, and as a new author, I found this very discouraging. Not to mention the very real annoyance I felt when I discovered that a long time fan of the series, who had emailed me often to tell me how much she LOVED my books, so disliked my ninth title that she posted a scathing review on Amazon. Why, what a nice thing to do to an author whose work you’ve mostly enjoyed.

            Now I don’t expect that any one will absolutely love every book I ever wrote. And I don’t mind fair criticism at all. But I know exactly why this one fan disliked my ninth book so much. The book is about my equine vet becoming pregnant and taking time away from work. It’s a fairly introspective book, as pregnancy tends to be an introspective time, and I try to portray the ups and downs that can happen to a pregnant woman honestly (as I try to portray most every thing I write about). Because this pregnant woman must also solve a trying/close-to-home murder, the story is a lot darker than your average pregnancy would probably be. And I would not fault any one who pointed out that the story has these aspects. But my one fan hated the book for a personal reason.

            She had written to me for many years and made it plain she was an active, assertive career woman who basically despised women who put their careers on hold to become mothers. She herself had never had a child and didn’t intend to. Thus she found Gail’s choice to take a leave of absence from her work in order to be a mama a personal betrayal. My former fan didn’t just not enjoy the concept of the book, she was deeply (and personally) upset by it. And though I might understand that (and I certainly did not expect that all my readers would like this book), I did find it quite annoying that this one woman needed to grind her ax loudly on Amazon.

            So this is the bad side of reviews. Sometimes someone hates your book because it touches a nerve in him or her. Its not about the book, its about the reviewer. And this is too bad. But it happens, as I think all authors know.

            However, though fulsome praise is fun—and useful for selling books– and hostile criticism is no fun—particularly when it seems to be more about the reviewer’s state of mind than the book– there is another sort of review. And its this third sort that is my favorite. Sometimes a reviewer hits the nail on the head exactly—and really gets the point you were trying to make. Maybe they don’t just LOVE the book. Maybe they enjoyed some aspects and didn’t care for others. But they are able to accurately convey (both in their perceptions and in the skill of their own writing) something that you were trying very hard to get across. These reviews just make me smile.

            Here’s an example from Funder, an endurance rider from Nevada, who reviewed my book, Slickrock, which is a mystery set in the midst of a horse packing trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Funder reviewed Slickrock on her blog, “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time”. And listen to this: “And her place descriptions are amazing! Having read Slickrock I desperately want to learn to pack. She really captures the beautiful, remote, terrifying, captivating reality of the mountains. (I could do without all the calamities that befell Gail!)”

            See, when I set out to write Slickrock there was one thing I really wanted to do. And Funder has actually found better words to describe this goal than I ever had. I really wanted to capture the beautiful, remote, terrifying, captivating reality of those mountains. I’ve spent a lot of time camping there with my horses and many of the descriptive passages were taken verbatim from my journals. I deeply hoped that readers would feel I’d brought the Sierras to life on the page, and when I read that statement on Funder’s blog, I just grinned from ear to ear. I felt like I did it—I accomplished the goal. (And yeah, it’s a good story, too, but I must admit that bringing the mountains to life was what I was after.)

            Also, my mysteries are about horses, and I’ve spent my whole life owning, riding and training horses. I know that non-horsemen may find all the horse detail trying, and I accept that. But it really touches my heart when a fellow horseperson appreciates how accurate my books are. Like this review from kel (who shows cowhorses and writes the blog, Horse Genes; kel knows the western horse world I write about as well or better than I do).

“I have been reading the Gail McCarthy series of mystery books by Laura Crum for the last 3 or 4 years. Barnstorming is the 12th in the series and Laura says it is her last. I surely hope not. Gail hasn’t reached “armchair” status yet. She is still a vibrant character with lots of life and possibilities left. The series starts with the book Cutter and introduces you to Gail and her life as a new veterinarian. I was hooked immediately. Gail ages with the series and each book presents a new life challenge for her. Very identifiable to the reader. I love books with solid, strong, believable characters and a surrounding story that is based in fact and not “guessed at” or “made up” details. Laura does a beautiful job blending the facts of horsemanship and equestrians and the fiction of murder and mayhem.

I thought back to all the books before writing this post to see if one stood out for me, but each book offers a part of her life that is important and integral to the set. I couldn’t have just one favorite. Each book brings something to the reader that makes it a favorite. Another positive aspect of the books is that Laura doesn’t go overboard with graphic details or strong language in her descriptions of the murders. When she writes of the area she is riding in the detail is so clear that you can see it. When she describes how a horse is moving you can feel it. And when someone dies, they die. She didn’t feel the need to shock the reader so that all you remember is how horrific of a murder scene it was. Even though you know the book is going to have a killer and a victim – you would be willing to ride along with Gail on her adventure.

Barnstorming was another installment in Gail’s life. She is at a crossroads and needs to see where the next phase will take her. We have all been there. She spends time riding alone on her favorite horse trying to work things out. Boy, haven’t we all been there? Then Laura works her magic and starts setting the scene for the mystery, murder and mayhem.”

 

            I do try to make all the details in my books accurate. In Hayburner, for instance, I was writing about an arsonist, and I spent a lot of time talking to the local fire investigator to be sure I got the details right. So it tickles me that Mrs Mom, who is a horsewoman and also used to be a firefighter (and writes the blog “Oh Horse Feathers”) thought I did a good job. Here’s quote from her review of Hayburner.

 

“It all came rushing back to me- the heavy choking smell of smoke, feeling the heat of the intense flames, the noise– fires are NOISY. And when you add in bawling of cattle and screaming horses, well.. they tend to get even noisier. I read the first few pages and had to get up and go outside to kiss the ponies here. After shaking off the shock of the memories though, I could NOT put the book down. Once again, Laura skillfully weaves a tale that draws the reader in. Because her equine knowledge is so true, and she has such a strong ability to put into words what we horse people see day in and day out with our own horses, dogs, cats, and the world around us, Laura’s books are SO easy to get lost in. There is no where that the reader needs to stop and shake their head over made up bull squeeze that is just plain WRONG. You can just continue to gallop along through the book, enjoying every stride. In HAYBURNER, not only did Laura use her incredible equine and animal knowledge in general, she also did a bang up job on talking about fire fighting, arson and the tendencies of arsonists. For me, it was an *awesome* read. And the best part? Even though this book is out of print, you can read it too for .99 on Kindle. How stinkin cool is THAT?? Do yourself a favor and catch up with Gail McCarthy and see how she battles blazes in more ways than one.”

 

 

 

            Sometimes, of course, the reviewer is not a horse person. And some of these folks probably get tired of all the horse detail in my books. But…sometimes one of them gets the point I’m trying to make. Along these lines the other day I read another review of my latest book, Barnstorming, that I really enjoyed. The reviewer doesn’t say she loves the book. But she does give what I think are some very accurate insights about it, and this tickled me.

            I don’t know this reviewer—neither did the publisher send her a review copy. She reviews books on Dorothy L, which is not a site I’m familiar with, but I believe it caters to mystery lovers. My editor saw the review and forwarded it to me, with the message that this woman was a fairly critical reviewer and didn’t always like books and any praise from her was praise indeed. I read the review and was struck by the fact that the reviewer noticed what I meant the book to be about. Well, halleluiah. It doesn’t sound as if she thought it was the greatest mystery of all time, but that’s OK. I’m happy that she got my point.

            Here’s her review—perhaps you can see why it pleased me.

Lesa Holstine on Dorothy L :  

“Laura Crum’s twelfth mystery to feature equine veterinarian Gail McCarthy, *

Barnstorming,* is a mystery involving horses and murder. But, it’s also a

story about mid-life decisions, and having the courage to face life

head-on.

 

At fifty, Gail McCarthy has decisions to make. She tells her own story in

first person, present tense. She was once an equine veterinarian with a

passion for work. But, she took ten years off to raise and homeschool her

son, Mac. Now that her husband, Blue, has inherited enough money for them

to live on, she has a tough decision. What does she want to do with her

life? Blue retired happily. Does she want to go back to her job as a vet?

Does she want to just enjoy life with her husband, son, and horses? Or is

there something else?

 

For Gail, those decisions can be reached on horseback as she rides the

trails near her house. But, those trails have not been so friendly to

riders lately. One man sics his dog on them. Someone is blocking the

trails. And, some of the residents in the new subdivision near the woods

have made it plain they don’t like horses or riders in the backyards. And,

when one of Gail’s acquaintances is shot out in the woods, soon after Gail

met her on the trails, the woods and trails seem more dangerous than ever.

Did someone target Jane, or is someone targeting women riding their horses

on the trails?

 

Gail turns all her information over to the investigating police officer. As

a former vet with numerous friends in the local horse community, Gail

uncovers a great deal of information that she passes on. She’s afraid.

She’s angry. She loves those trails and her horses. And, she’s resolved to

take a stand. “I’m not standing still for this evil. I’m fighting.”

 

For those not interested in horses or the trails through the woods, *

Barnstorming* might feel as if it drags. Others will find an engrossing

story of an evil that invades a close-knit community, and a woman

determined to fight back, not allowing fear to rule her life.

 

Laura Crum’s Author’s Note in this story is fascinating in itself. She

informs readers that it’s quite possible this will be the last book in the

series. She discusses the relationship between Gail and the author, the

similarities in their lives, and the differences. The author, like her

character, may be moving on to another stage in life after fifty. She

allows the readers to observe some of that thinking process in the course

of the mystery. And, that process makes* Barnstorming *a richer, deeper

story than it would be if it was just a mystery involving horses.”

 

            From my point of view, this woman has grasped what I set out to write about in “Barnstorming”. It doesn’t sound as if she’s a horsewoman herself. Maybe she found that the trail riding passages dragged—I’m not sure. But she fully understood the way I tried to weave a meditation on “life as one grows older” into the story, and it pleases me that I was able—in this one case, anyway—to convey the message I sought to convey. Isn’t that what writing’s all about?

 

            

Why I Have Nothing to Say

I was wondering what I was going to blog about this week when I realized I had nothing to say. I found that hard to believe. Anyone who knows me knows I’m never without an opinion about something.

 Not my fault. It’s the world’s fault. Things have happened that are so wonderful  they strike me dumb. Things I never believed I’d see. And things so awful I thought I’d never see them again. It’s incredibly terrific that a U.S. President says endorsing gay marriage is the right thing to do. What can I say about that? A real Christian talking about real morality.

 But then there are the things so awful I thought I’d never see them again. The right-wing big-government—as long as it’s a fascist government—freaks have come back to preach patriotism while they work to destroy the country. Joe McCarthy has returned. The House UnAmerican Activities Committee so long gone has re-emerged in the un-American activities of the Republican radicals.

 I know what they look like. When I was a college editor back in the olden days, I wrote an editorial they didn’t like and they sent one of their lackeys to investigate me. We laughed at him and he went away. And then the Sixties came crashing in and changed everything forever. We thought.

Now the mean-spirited and just plain dumb are scratching for power because the uppity women and the uppity lesbians and gays took all that equal rights stuff seriously. They use the word “freedom” to mean power for the few. And they use the words “The American People” to mean their kind of people and no one else. They hope Americans without health insurance will go away and die  and they hope the  economy will fail.

Traitors. UnAmericans

And look who’s running for President. A vapid high-school bully who actually says “ha-ha” when he laughs.   

 A  thief who stole companies and jobs and self-respect and giggled all the way to the bank.

 I suddenly realized why I’m speechless. I’m overjoyed and enraged at the same time.  It’s very confusing.  

Textbooks, Bah!

N.b.  This is a bit contentious.  I welcome negative feedback.

Apple is plotting the demise of printed textbooks.  A good thing, I say.  Not only are textbooks a heavy expense for school districts and college students, they’re often the next thing to useless, and they can cause confusion and unnecessary bad feeling.  I envisage the day when students from first grade to PhD will have their own personal electronic libraries, and all teachers will have to do is show kids how to think (and choose sources, paraphrase, insert footnotes, create bibliographies).  Idyllic?  Maybe so for first grade, though greater student choice would be a blessing even at that level, but certainly for high school students and college undergraduates who are now herniating their discs under the weight of books that are heavy physically and light-weight intellectually.

I taught at the junior college level in three subject areas:  writing, literature, and world history.  The last five years I taught English composition, I didn’t bother to order one of the dreary textbooks available, though there was a departmentally required style manual.  I taught report writing using the students’ own writing as text.  It worked well.  When I needed an example of a professional essay I photocopied it.  Even that would not now be necessary.  I stopped teaching literature when I moved half-time to the history department, but I would have enjoyed teaching lyric poetry from a personal anthology instead of somebody else’s.  As for world history, the biggest blessing would have been getting rid of the dreadful collections of documents we used when we were trying to show students how historians work with sources.

World history (grandiose title) is a catch-up course for freshmen with a bad background in history.  Some of them came out of high school thinking Genghis Khan and George Washington were contemporaries.  Our course was called World Civilizations, which meant we focused on the Big Boys:  Mesopotamia and Egypt, India, China, Europe starting with Greece, with a glancing reference to Moslem North Africa, Zimbabwe and Mali, Peru, the Mayas, and the Aztecs. Calling the course Some Topics on Some Aspects of Some Civilizations would have been honest but difficult to fit into the slot available for course labels.  We taught as a team because nobody could pose an an authority or even as competent in all those complex areas.  Hey, students have to start somewhere.

We struggled for years with the published collections of source documents and then gave up and began photocopying the sources we wanted to use, collecting them into a “book” the department sold through the college bookstore.  It cost considerably less than the print volumes.  This worked better, but it was still very limited and uneven.  Apple may make it possible for the people now teaching that course to construct their own e-book and make it available on-line or in disc format.  Since events in the real world affect what should be taught, such an anthology of sources could be altered quickly.  For example, our current problems with Iran would make material on Persia interesting to students, not least those in the reserves or the National Guard.

The ideal would be to create a collection of sources tailored to each student’s needs with a handful of documents at the beginning that the whole class could look at to learn how historians use sources, and the problems they run into when they rely too heavily on one witness’s viewpoint.

Despite their amazing ignorance, stdents do develop a passion for history.  Unfortunately, it often takes the form of a passion for reenacting the Battle of Waterloo, but, heck, passion is passion.  A student who read Wellington’s Despatches, memoirs of the battle, letter collections, records of the financial markets that June, and Napoleon’s pep-talk to his troops would have a much better understanding of Waterloo–of how those people got to that field in Belgium in June of 1815–than a student who slept through a lecture.  He (the pronoun is probable) might even want to learn how to read French.

For myself, I was alway frustrated to find that the collections of historical sources available to us stressed religion and politics, including war, while cheerfully overlooking agriculture, the arts, science and technology, international trade, marriage and the family, plague vectors, and other aspects of daily life.  There’s more to human history than the battle of Waterloo, but it’s said that the field of battle produced brilliant crops for decades afterward, which is an answer to one agricultural problem.

So what would be lost with the demise of the textbook?  The publishers and authors would have something to say, no doubt.  Right now, the publishers of high school texts in science and history particularly can be and are bullied by states like Texas into dishing up pabulum the Texas legislature will swallow, so let us not overvalue the content of these works.  They do have monetary value.  Quite a lot.  Other related questions arise:  how does Apple propose to compensate the owners of intellectual property students will now access directly–a specific translation of Gilgamesh, for instance, or multiple translations of the Gospel of St. Matthew, or the recently discovered journal from the voyage of the Beagle.  At least with printed textbooks, there was a system of acknowledgement and compensation.  In the case of our photocopied anthology, direct acknowledgement of all print sources and a price that guaranteed we would not profit from selling the “book.”  (This was in the olden days.)  So who, apart from Apple, will profit from Apple’s non-textbooks?

Another problem is the loss of “community” students will experience if they’re not all locked into the same version of things.  People who think of education as indoctrination will find that disturbing, but it’s an honest loss.  Do students need a textbook slant on, say, the Civil War (I beg its pardon, the War Between the States)?  One kind of indoctrination that was firmly in place when I was a student will be less likely to happen–dealing with an important subject by omitting it from the textbook, as apparently now occurs in some biology texts with respect to evolution.  My high school American history text barely mentioned slavery except as a minor contributing cause of the Civil War.  The same text mentioned the amendment that gave women the vote, but there was no discussion of the long and arduous process by which women got the vote.  Gosh, it must just have been a gift from kindly male politicians.  Imagine that.

The demise of textbooks is a complicated issue, but I welcome it, and I don’t much care whether students wind up carrying a Nook or a Kindle, although that’s another problem.  From the point of view of student-readers, either will do.

Don’t Buy the Myth of Writer’s Block

“Writer’s block is bunk.” That’s not exactly what acclaimed mystery author Loren D. Estleman recently said at a Michigan writer’s conference, but it’s close.

The problem with even using the term, he said, is that it’s a supremely unhelpful way of saying something very basic and ordinary: you’re stuck.

I totally agree. When you say you have writer’s block, you turn a minor problem into something major like depression or even cancer. Suddenly you’re beset by a grave affliction. When writers say they have writer’s block, a normal, unremarkable part of the writing process becomes debilitating.

I’ve felt this way through my thirty-plus years as a published author, through 22 books in many genres and hundreds of stories, essays, reviews and blogs. Like Estleman, I believe that we all get stuck sometimes in our work, no matter how experienced we are — and Estleman’s published 60 books. Stuck isn’t a bad thing. It just means we haven’t worked something out, we haven’t answered some question in the book, or maybe we’re headed in the wrong direction.

I do what Estleman suggested, and what I’ve advised my creative writing students over the years: I leave the writing alone and don’t obsess about it.

You’re stuck? Don’t panic. Give the problem to your subconscious to figure out. Work on something else or don’t do any writing at all. Focus outward: the gym, a movie, dinner with your spouse, drinks with some buddies, walking your dog, home repairs, a car trip, gardening, working on your tan, cooking, going out, reading a new book by your favorite author — anything that will absorb you completely and make you feel good.

Of course, sometimes being stuck is connected to secrecy and revelation. It can mean we’re afraid of what we want to write, afraid of revealing too much about ourselves (or someone else), afraid of what people might think. That fear of exposure is shame, or the dread of shame. Calling it writer’s block confuses the issue, disguises what’s really the problem.

Unfortunately, there’s a small industry devoted to helping people overcome “writer’s block,” to keep them from turning into Barton Fink, stuck on that one sentence. And because the culture loves stories about blocked writers like The Shining, there’s a perverse kind of glamor associated with this “condition.” It’s dramatic, it’s proof of how serious a professional you are. And hey, writers are crazy anyway, so of course they can’t do their jobs.

Let’s face it, since most people hate to write, especially in this age of texting, “writer’s block” connects with non-writers much better than when you say, “I’m working on my book, it’s going great and I’m having fun.” You risk sounding arrogant. Saying you have writer’s block brings you back to earth. It comforts people who don’t write, because it confirms their perception of writing as drudgery and even torment. But why should it be that way?

Eeyore’s Birthday Party

by Taffy Cannon

The surrogate Eeyore, a placid miniature donkey in an enclosure in Pease Park, took it all in stride.

I was a little more surprised, though I’d been hearing about Eeyore’s Birthday Party for years.  This annual end-of-April celebration in Austin, Texas, is one year shy of its own 50th birthday, and friends always spoke of how much fun it was, featuring events for both children and adults, with a distinct underpinning of the hippie counterculture that lingers pleasantly in Austin.  They talked about costumes and body painting and drum circles and balloons. A certain similarity to Grateful Dead concerts came up, and the local friend with whom I went wore an original Grateful Dead t-shirt older than most folks in the park.

What nobody mentioned was just how big Eeyore’s Birthday Party was, thousands of celebrants in a park of truly Texan proportion, covering some 42 acres.  Despite a respectable number of planned activities, everywhere I looked, folks were doing—well, a few decades ago, we’d have said they were doing their own thing.  Which covered a lot of ground in this, the largest gathering I’ve ever been part of that wasn’t political in nature.

I happened to be in Austin on the right weekend this year, and the decision to attend was relatively spontaneous. But I was a little fuzzy on the details of Eeyore’s original party, the one written by A.A. Milne nearly a century ago.  I did know that Eeyore is one of the gloomiest creatures in children’s literature and a particularly unlikely icon for spring revelry, so I asked a few folks about the particulars. They weren’t really sure either, though balloons were generally mentioned.

I went back later to the source material, my own four-volume set of what I always think of as The Pooh Books, the Dutton 208th printing from 1954 with Ernest H. Shepard’s wonderful drawings.

And I discovered that Eeyore’s party actually took place off the page, though it was reported to be quite nice, in an afterword to the story “Eeyore Has a Birthday.”  That the only balloon mentioned was one which popped when a running Piglet put his foot in a rabbit hole and fell.  That Pooh intended to give Eeyore a pot of honey but accidentally ate it first.  And that Eeyore, the ultimate master of Making the Best of Things, took the empty pot and busted balloon and turned them into a toy.

Strictly speaking, this could be considered bad writing.  Telling about the party rather than showing it.  Spending so much time leading up to the denouement that it had to be squeezed into a couple fast paragraphs at the end.

But what it really means is that Milne left the entire party to be conjured up in whatever fashion the reader might choose.  Which the English students who held Eeyore’s first gathering back in 1963 took full advantage of, serving honey sandwiches with lemonade and beer, and dancing around a maypole.  Folks have been improvising and elaborating on that basic theme ever since.

In 2012, some tie-dye-attired attendees seemed old enough to have been college students half a century ago, when it all started.  And there were just as many infants as octogenarians, with every imaginable celebratory age in between. The drum circles for which Eeyore’s party is known were enormous and free-flowing, with participants joining in, drumming in communal rhythm for a spell, then drifting away.  Little girls in perfect party dresses carefully carried balloons, while adults danced in sophisticated professional costumes.   Body painting ranged from random smears administered onsite to elaborate art tableaux, frequently showing a great deal of skin, it being nearly May and already over 90 degrees.  And the athletic events ranged from the traditional egg toss to a team sport I’d never previously encountered, touch football on unicycles.

Touch football on unicycles.

Which goes to show that sometimes what you leave off the page can be every bit as amazing as what you include.

When The Editor Says Changes Must Be Made ….

Lea Wait, here. I just returned from a book festival in New York State, weary after meeting and greeting and driving many miles to do so.  My husband welcomed me home with a hug, a glass of wine, and the words, “It’s here.” 

I knew exactly what he meant. My next couple of weeks have just been preempted by the manuscript I finished in March: the sixth mystery in my Shadows series that I hope you’ll be reading next March. My editor’s been studying it line by line for the past month, and now it’s winged back to me to fix the major and minor mistakes she’s found, eliminate the dull spots she located, and add in a tense moment or twelve that I’ve thought of in the meantime.  I haven’t looked at the red-penciled pages yet, but I’m sure she’s made improvements I agree with on almost every page.  I’ll look at her marks and groan, wondering how I could have made such stupid mistakes, or written so awkwardly. Some of her comments I’ll disagree with. Some sections of the book I’ll re-write completely, either based on her suggestions, on my own inspiration, or on a combination of both.  

Both my editor and I want the manuscript to be as strong as it can be, and at this point it’s a joint venture. I welcome improvements.

I’ve had editors in the past who made almost no comments. I’ve also had editors who made only very large, overall comments. One mystery editor felt I’d made an ”inappropriate individual” the killer. Sure, I’d explained why he’d done the deed. Of course, I had red herrings, and other suspects. But she just didn’t like that he was the guilty one.  If she was going to publish the book, I’d have to make the killer someone else.  So I did. I added in another character, starting in Chapter 1, and wove that character all through the book, leaving everything else pretty much the same. It only took a few days, actually, and was an interesting exercise.  Strengthened the book too:  one more suspect. 

Another editor looked with smaller vision. She had almost a phobia about commas.  She went through my manuscript, every time, and took 95% of my commas out. The first time I had a small fit.  I’m not in love with commas, but when I put one in, it’s for a reason. But The Great Comma Elimination was clearly not up for discussion. I found myself wonderfully vindicated when, after all other editing was finished, the copy editor went through and put all my necessary commas back in.  After that I didn’t question any eliminated commas on the first editing rounds. I just made sure I had the same copy editor.    

My most frustrating experience with an editor was with one of my children’s books. The editor decided the book was too long, and said the first 50 pages must be cut. Totally. I fought that one. Hard. But it was no use. My problem was, of course, that a lot happened in those 50 pages.  By cutting fifty pages I had to cut several characters, and what I felt was important depth to the main character’s back story, which was now being “told” instead of “shown.” The cut pages also eliminated an entire geographic location which I’d hoped to include for historical reasons. Gone. None of the  ”compare and contrast” I’d hope the book would illustrate. The book is a strong one, but I still feel those first pages would have added a depth it never regained.

When I speak to groups I’m often asked if I’m hurt by editors’ changes. (Not if they improve the book!) And if  I agree with the changes editors ask for. As with the changes I mentioned above, usually I do. Hey — the boss is usually right!

But there have been times when the editor(s) have not been right, and, yes, those times I’ve stood firm. The time an editor suggested I change a reference to Monhegan Island to “a real island.”  Or when I described a Maine blizzard in 1838 in which “drifts were above the heads of the younger school children.” An editor wrote in the margin, “Snow doesn’t get this high.” After due thought I wrote back, “In 1838 Maine it did.” The line stayed. 

Directions to places in Maine have sometimes been questioned. (Yes, they were traveling East – not north.)  One editor pointed out helpfully that a woman in one of my historicals was always wearing a blue dress. I’d forgotten to describe different clothing?  No, I wrote back.  She only had one dress. 

I’m a firm believer in critique groups, in critical “first readers” (mine is my husband,) in agents who give feedback, and in editors. Having a manuscript published without first having someone who is trained evaluating it dispassionately and pointing out its weaknesses would be like a woman dressing in her best, applying makeup and combing her hair — and never looking in a full-length mirror before she went out into the world. 

Today I’m unpacking, writing this blog, catching up with other paperwork, and looking forward to tomorrow, when I’ll open that envelope from my publisher, and begin again to make that book the best it can be. I owe it to myself and to my readers, and I’m lucky to have an editor who believes my book and its readers are worth her time, too.

I hope you’ll think so next spring, when SHADOWS ON A CAPE COD WEDDING is published.

The Mystery Writer’s Hat

Many years ago I attended Navy Officer Candidate School, which was at that time in Newport, RI. After being commissioned, I stayed on in Newport to take a class, as did my roommate Joan.

It was fun exploring Newport, with its Colonial-era waterfront and the big opulent mansions of the robber barons, the places they called “cottages,” like The Breakers, Marble House, and Rosecliff.

I was from Colorado and Joan from Texas. One night we got the urge for Mexican food. We found a restaurant in Newport that purported to serve Mexican food. We didn’t recognize it as such. So we learned early on to stick to the indigenous cuisine.

Newport-style clam chowder served on the wharf tasted great. We could get a bucket of clams for not much money at a place called Salas on Thames Street. For a few bucks more, just down the street at the Boat House, we could get a lobster dinner. Then there were the big sandwiches the locals called grinders. For dessert, we’d go on “cream runs” to the Newport Creamery.

One Saturday afternoon Joan and I were strolling through some shops on Bellevue Avenue, near the section of Newport with all those fancy houses. Joan knew I wanted to write mysteries. When she spotted the hat, she plucked it off the display and plopped it down on my head.

“There,” she said. “Now you look like a mystery writer.”

Indeed, I did.

I bought the hat. I still have it.

A Trio of Mystery Writer’s Hats

The mystery writer’s hat is a gray wood fedora with a pleated black band, and a soft brim to tilt down over my face.

I wore it for my book jacket photos, and a photo shoot for an article that appeared in a magazine. Sometimes at book signings, people will ask me where my mystery writer’s hat is.

I haven’t worn it in a long time. But I took it out of the closet so I could take a picture of it, along with some of the other mystery writer’s hats I have.

Mystery writers wears lots of hats – the sit-at-the-computer-and-write hat, which may be invisible but frequently has me running my hands through my hair. Maybe there’s some sort of inspiration in that particular act. There’s the booksigning-and-convention hat, which is where I’ve worn my fedora in the past. Then there’s the research hat.

In the picture, the hat on the right is one I had made while I was writing the ninth Jeri Howard book, A Killing At The Track. It’s a horseracing book, so I’d immersed myself in the Sport of Kings. Since one of my characters was a woman who trained racehorses, I located a woman trainer and followed her around the track, soaking up material and local color, such as that Thoroughbred who was about to bite me because I dared to pet his companion animal, a goat.

I decided I wanted a cap like the ones the jockeys wore. When I mentioned this to the trainer, she said, “You mean a jockey’s helmet cover?”

“Yes, that’s it!” I said.

She steered me to a woman at Golden Gate Fields who made helmet covers, and I had this one made, in red and yellow, the colors on the book cover. I even wore it at signings.

The current research hat is the one on the left. It’s a train engineer’s cap. I’m working on the train book – Death Rides The Zephyr. I’m immersing myself in this history of that particular train, poring over timetables, menus, diagrams of railroad cars, old photographs.

And I’ve been riding historic trains, imagining what it would have been like to take a cross-country trip on a sleek stainless steel superliner, eating off railroad china in the dining car, gazing at the beautiful scenery from the Vista-Dome.

Nothing like a good engineer’s cap to get me in the mood to write a train mystery.

And just maybe, when I start doing signings for the forthcoming book, What You Wish For, I’ll start wearing that mystery writer’s hat again.

I got what I wished for, and worked for. I’m a mystery writer.