Dana's Notebook

No, I didn't empty them all myself

2008-05-12T12:09:00.001-07:00

I’m in exile. In the past month, I’ve packed up my entire office (with almost twelve years worth of accumulation and accretion) and the library/guest room. This is the main reason I’ve been absent from this space for so long.

I’ve been plaguing all the local liquor stores for empty boxes because it’s an excellent reuse of the cardboard boxes they get by the tens (sometimes hundreds) every day. It’s a good thing I started when I did, because college is letting out all over New England, and every kid on every nearby campus is thinking: hey, I bet the liquor store will have free boxes. Fortunately (and let’s not be coy about this), I’m on a first name basis with most of the purveyors of booze in town. And I’m older and wilier.

So now most of my books are in the basement (there may be between 120-150 boxes, all told), the old bookcases are in the garage, and my office pro-tem is in the dining room. The cat is vexed with the disruption to her routine. I managed to put my back out. Mr. G. hopes not to make the journey from second floor to basement, loaded with 30lbs of books each time, for at least two weeks, when the process will be reversed.

It’s all in a good cause, this temporary exile. New, built-in, bookcases are incoming. New paint will be applied (hey, it needed it when we moved in, and more than a decade later…). Books have been culled and laterally recycled in some suitable fashion, and more may be sent out into the world before the process is completed.

But for now, it’s organized mayhem.

After Malice

2008-05-12T11:25:00.001-07:00

It’s been a while: I apologize. It’s all too easy to think of a conference as being “just Friday to Sunday,” but there’s prep before, travel time, re-entry…and it all adds up. Plus there’s new and exciting mayhem at home (but more about that shortly).

To recap: Malice is always a hoot. There’s always so many friends to catch up (and get into trouble) with, and new folks to meet (and get into trouble with: hi, Charlatans!). Friend and Fellow Femme Fatale Charlaine Harris (left) was the Guest of honor and friend and Fellow Femme Fatale Toni Kelner (right) ably interviewed her in front of a packed house.

My panel, “You’re History,” was fun because everyone on the panel had worked as a historian, researcher, archaeologist and had used their experiences in their books. And there were great questions from the audience, which adds to any event. In the picture are: Moderator Sharan Newman, your humble blogger, Kate Gallison, and Sally Wright; (seated) Kathy Lynn Emerson and Aileen Baron.

I think my favorite panel was the one where the Guest of Honor and International Guest of Honor(Charlaine and Lindsey Davis), Lifetime Achievement honoree(Peter Lovesy), and Toastmaster (Dan Stashower) were asked by Verena Rose about their fan mail and fan responses. The fans in some of the accounts made themselves memorable by exceptionally bad or good behavior, but everyone in the audience was riveted.

And then…there was playing hooky. Yes, I know Malice is a short conference, and there is really no time to play hooky. Except…knowing this, it becomes both a challenge and a point of honor to do so. So, on various occasions when I thought no one was looking, I went to the Newseum, The International Spy Museum (because I don’t have enough books), and the National Gallery (one of my favorite museums in the world; brilliant collection in a space that manages to be both grand and human-scaled).

Every school bus in the world was on the Mall, because it was school trip or school vacation time for EVERYONE. I had to be at my most nimble to dodge them all.

No time for love, Dr. Jones

2008-04-20T05:52:00.001-07:00

And apparently Indy can’t spare the time, because he’s too busy plastering his mug all over the supermarket. Everywhere I looked this morning, there he was, on M&Ms, cereal, the toy aisle. Sigh. It makes me long for the elegantly discreet merchandizing strategies of say, Shrek, or Ghostbusters in its hey-day.

I’m an old-school Indiana Jones fan, and I’m looking forward to seeing the new movie. But before I do, someone needs to tell me: What is an “Adventure Spoon?”

Maria Lima blogs for the Femmes Fatales

2008-04-14T11:39:00.000-07:00

Agatha-nominated author Maria Lima (Matters of the Blood) is guest-blogging for the Femmes Fatales this week. Check out her essay, "Sometimes, vampires truly do suck...and not in the good way" here. And if you're attending Malice Domestic in about two week, say hey to us both!

Stranded

2008-04-09T08:22:00.000-07:00

Last week I was stranded on a desert island. I say stranded, not because we were lacking for resources (there were a few useful bars close at hand), but because the first season of "Battlestar Galactica" started and the hotel cable didn't run to SciFi. What's a geek to do? When we'd exhausted all the possibilities with the Internet (yes, I vacation with a laptop), I came up with a brilliant plan: the nearby casino had (I assumed) big screen TVs with satellite and everydamnthing. Surely the punters there wouldn't mind if we switched it over to SciFi for an hour while the show was on? Actually, three hours, as there were a few specials on before the main event. Brilliant, right?

Fortunately, the dimwitted Pollyanna in me was bludgeoned into submission by a precious remnant of low animal cunning that informed me that being clawed to death by lizard-skinned gambling elders would not be worth the impatience. I had another rum, picked up another book, and managed to wait the extra day to watch the recording at home.

It was worth it.

Vacation was a good break: restful, no sun burn (I use a level of SPF that would block a nuclear flash), loads of books, and no appointments besides dinner and a couple of trips to the gym. Coming back to 40 degrees and rain only underscored the niceness of not being cold and rained on for a week.

And on a sadder note...

I found out that Robert Fagles passed away last week. Some of you may remember that I held his translation of The Odyssey responsible for keeping me alive during a hairy moment with a train-load of football fans in England years ago (you can check that story out here). While I may have had a soft spot in my heart for Professor Fagles for that reason, I also appreciated his translations. They got people excited about reading Homer and Virgil for the pleasure of the storytelling and the language.

Ahht Cahh

2008-03-28T08:59:00.000-07:00

This is one of the many reasons I love living in a town with an art college. You encounter random art on the way to breakfast.

My other favorite was spray painted on the asphalt inside the cross-walks downtown. It was a stylized image of a llama with the instructions “Quadruped Xing only.”

Tradition

2008-03-24T05:55:00.001-07:00

Creepy and amazing

2008-03-20T11:18:00.000-07:00

That's what BigDog is. It's a gasoline powered quadruped robot funded by DARPA and developed by Boston Dynamics. These robots "have rough-terrain mobility that can take them anywhere on Earth that people and animals can go." Check out the video here.

What creeps me out is the noise the thing makes and the look of it. It's got an eerie resemblance to a spider (it's the legs), and for a while, I thought it was two humans, participating in some kind of performance art. Armor that sucker up, put a weapon on it, and I wouldn't want to see it marching up my hill.

What amazes me is its lifelike mobility. When it slips, you feel sorry for it because it moves so much like an animal--you've slipped like that before. You can practically feel it. The control it has in recovering is mind-boggling, as is the way it can mimic different types of gait. Besides watching it move on ice, the thing that I can't stop watching is the lab test where it leaps over the obstacle and gets all four "feet" past the mark. The computational power and engineering behind this is staggering.

All references to The Terminator, the works of Isaac Asimov, or the walkers in The Empire Strikes Back are appropriate.

Blog zombie

2008-03-19T07:59:00.000-07:00

It’s not often that a web comic can combine three of my recent favorite things, but I suppose that’s why xkcd is on my desktop. Usually I agree with the Elaine character (yay! A brunette!), but this time, I have to go with Zombie Feynman.

The BR Pile

Max Brooks, The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead

What I loved about this book is its sheer density and comprehensiveness. The logic Brooks uses to make his arguments for the effectiveness of certain weapons and strategies is so carefully considered that you can imagine years of long nights arguing in bars about zombies, zombie movies, and zombie lore. If you can’t be there, making that kind of argument with your friends, this is the next best thing. It’s the kind of humor book that gets so detailed, so serious, so engrossing, that you forget that it’s fiction: I actually found myself thinking, “okay, I’ve got a machete, but what about a range weapon?” From the historian’s point of view, it was also interesting to see his take on why the Roanoke colony was abandoned… It’s not a giggly-type humor book, it’s more of a parody and satire, much in the same vein (hur hur hur) of one of the best zombie movies ever, Shaun of the Dead.

Chris Ayres, War Reporting for Cowards

Through a series of misconceived choices, all made to avoid trouble or conflict of any sort, Chris Ayres found himself embedded with Marines in Iraq in 2003. A financial reporter for The Times (London), Ayres is uniquely unqualified to be a war reporter. He makes no bones about being a coward, he is hugely incapable of imagining life on the front lines, and he’d much rather be in Hollywood, reporting on the financial side of making movies. Ayres has a turn of phrase and a capacity for self-revelation that is at times unnerving. Sure, it’s hysterical: the man goes to Iraq with twenty pairs of Calvin Klein underpants and a bright yellow tent with a large red cross on top—practically a bull’s-eye. But there are moments of pure poignancy, when he’s talking about the fear, the madness, the boredom, and the discomfort, where you have to admit to yourself, “wow, I don’t think I’d do any better in that situation.” A really fantastic book (this one happens to be nonfiction) can make you do that.

So that's why I go to the gym...

2008-03-17T09:21:00.000-07:00

I've been playing around with scenes for a new book. I haven't had that one aha moment, the one where you know what the book is about and where it needs to go, and all the blind groping is damned depressing. But, like every other writer, I keep plugging along, hoping for that moment. It will mean a bunch of hard work, but as long as I have that all-important goal, it'll be okay.

Doesn't matter: Sunday is gym day.

On the elliptical trainer: grind, grind, grind. Stare at the large televisions showing sports I don't care about and news items that aren't news items. Snarl, snarl, snarl.

On the weight machines: ick, ick, ick. The weasel who was there before me did not wipe them down after he worked out. Find a paper towel and crank up my music. La, la, la.

On the mats: crunch, crunch, cr--huh? While my brain was unplugged, a thought has taken root. It's not the big answer I was looking for, but it is a way to do a scene I've been thinking about without it being a cliche. It tells me a little more about my characters. It gives me another edge of the story to work on. It fits.

Startled looks from the other sweaty people: I've been singing along with my iPod. Audibly. For those of you who don't already know, I should never, ever sing in public (or anywhere else).

But it's worth it: now I've got another angle.

Read these essays now!

2008-03-13T07:43:00.001-07:00

Fellow Femme Fatale Donna Andrews' March 11, 2008 post on the Sisters in Crime website deserves your attention on many levels. And so does her essay "Ask not what SinC can do for you," which is here. Go Donna!

Go to Oline Cogdill's blog, and scroll down to March 2, 2008. (You can and should read the other stuff on the way: I'll wait.) And when you're done, read a version of this talk here. Lee gave a version of this talk at the Virginia Festival of the Book a couple of years ago: he had me at "punctuated equilibrium."

BSG 2008

2008-03-10T13:17:00.000-07:00

Okay, I just found out that the premiere of the fourth and final season of "Battlestar Galactica" is April 4 at 10:00pm on SciFi. Yes, I'm behind the times, but it's self-preservation of a sort.

I can't tell if I'll make it until then to find out what the FRAK is going on.

I can't tell if I'll make it after the end of the season, knowing there'll be no more BSG.

The only thing I know is that if the ending lives up to the first 3.5 seasons, it will be astonishing.

If you don't know the new BSG, get the DVDs, study up. I don't care if you're not into science fiction, it's not about spaceships and aliens. This is some of the best writing on TV these days. Ever.

Trust me: these aren't your parents' Cylons.

Or are they?

Project Runway--are you kidding me?

2008-03-07T12:30:00.000-08:00

(***Contains Spoilers***)

All right, it's not so much to do with writing, reading, or what trouble I'm planning, but here's a rant for you. I like a couple of reality competition shows, primarily "Project Runway" and "Top Chef," mostly because you get to see the transformation of an idea into a physical thing, which I think is way cool. And it's someone else doing the work, so, yay, a mental margarita for me. If they could do it well for writing, I wish they would, but it's not much fun to look at the top of someone else's head when she's scribbling feverishly, and fabric is pretty, so for now, we'll stick with design and cuisine.

I just watched the finale episode of "Project Runway" and I'm totally buggin'. Christian? Are you kidding me?

No doubt, he has talent and he has a definitive look. *One* look, and very nearly all of the same color. I mean, hey, I'm no one to talk about someone going into the ultraviolet, dark and gothic, but jeez, C., be a darling and throw in a couple of jewel tones.

Rami's show was clunky with a palette that confused the hell out of me. Yes, I'm a sucker for someone who can drape, but what he showed at the "three-look" contest with Chris was incoherent and heavy, and his runway show was worse. I thought Chris's look, yes, even with the hair extensions, told more of a story, fit together well, and was really lovely. I think he should have gone to Fashion Week. I found myself looking at his designs and saying "me want."

And, for the record, why were the judges freaking about using hair extensions as a trim? Why is that more gross than wearing them on your head? What's the difference between that and yak hair or something else? What was the difference between that and the FEATHERS on Christian's last gown? Yrrrch. Yes, I think Chris could have pared back. Yes, I think he did it for shock value, and could easily have gotten the same look (or a more restrained one) using other materials. It blew up in his face and I think it distracted the judges.

Jillian, IMO, should have won. I liked her stuff a LOT. It was strong, it was feminine, it was historical and modern and there was a lot of innovation in it. The line was coherent and it was couture. The judges said they were surprised by her silhouettes, but then damned her with words like "wearable" and "accessible," which is pretty much a death knell. And, to me, utterly nonsensical as a put-down. I think the pret-a-porter interpretation would have been boffo.

::stomps off in a model-ly huff::

The BR Pile

2008-02-27T07:50:00.000-08:00

Patricia Briggs, Moon Called

Moon Called is the first of the books I’ve been reading to get better acquainted with the contributors to Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, and there were two things that particularly stood out for me, in addition to the clean, compelling writing: Mercy (Mercedes) is a skin-walker outsider who is caught between her allegiances to two werewolf clans. As a protagonist, she’s neither a martyr nor a sap, and while she makes good use of her powers, she’s not a superhero or a preacher. This is incredibly hard to do with a character. The other thing that I thought was a cut above was Briggs' take on werewolf reproduction and its hazards—and why the world isn’t overrun with werewolves. I’ll be reading the next books in this series for sure.

Kirsten Holmstedt, Band of Sisters: American Women at War in Iraq

I grabbed a copy of Band of Sisters on my way to the cash register. I’d heard good things about it and knew that it was about women in the military in Iraq, but I didn’t realize it wasn’t a compilation of first-person narratives. My bad, I could have figured this out by flipping through the book, but Holmstedt’s flat writing style kept getting in the way of these accounts for me. What does work and what is important about the book is the stories of the women themselves, honest and moving accounts of soldiers, sailors, Marines, pilots, nurses, and reservists in Iraq. Like their male counterparts, their reasons for going were varied and personal; unlike the men, it seemed that these service members’ quest for excellence is made harder by gender-based prejudices. Read this alongside Love My Rife More Than You, by Kayla Williams.

A correction: I listed Barbara Schading and Richard Schading, A Civilian’s Guide to the U.S. Military on the TBR pile. I'm using that for reference, not so much a read-through kinda book. What I should have listed was War Reporting for Cowards, by Chris Ayers, which I was reading at the same time. I'll let you know what I think about both.

And a word about the music I list on my landing page. I tend to consume music by individual songs, organized to suit a particular book (or activity). So whatever you’re seeing on that front page is what is keeping my typing or keeping me going at the gym, and that’s why there may be some repetition. I’ll post more about my music consumption and my WIPs later.

But this never happened at the Tate

2008-02-22T12:26:00.000-08:00

This weekend, I went into Boston with Mr. G for a much-needed break from the to-do list. One of our destinations was the recently opened ICA, Institute for Contemporary Art/Boston.

I like museums, and particularly art museums. I get recharged by them. And even if I prefer my art to predate 1900, I’ve had enough encounters with modern art to know it’s good for you. Shakes up the system, makes you look at the world anew. A tonic.

Alas, “shakes up the system” was the operative term.

There was an exhibit at the ICA called “The World as a Stage,” which was several pieces exploring how the audience and stage interact and create each other. Good stuff. But there was one installation, "Rotating Labyrinth," which was my undoing. It was concentric rings of angled mirrored posts, which reflected the outside of the ring, you (wherever you were), and the reflections of the reflections. It was a bit like being inside a zoetrope. I started cackling like mad and jogging around inside the rings, watching all of the reflections blur the “real world” and the “reflected world.” Wow! Cool!

Reflection. Recursion. Existentialism. Warped reality. Light and shadow.

Dizzy…

It all caught up with me: I might have been giggling like a demonic three-year-old, but I no longer have that childlike capacity to keep my head after prolonged twirling. I staggered out of the installation, and minutes later, was still light-headed. The problem was, most of the art, even the building itself (being located right on Boston Harbor), is geared toward light, movement, shadows, challenged perception. I imagined the security guards laughing as they watched security footage of other adult children careening around the room, banging into mirrors like sparrows into a bay window.

I lurched into another room and was confronted with what I believe was a twelve-foot tall bronze statue of spider.

An abrupt about-face didn’t help my wooziness, but it got me out of there. I hate spiders, Jock, I hate ‘em!

Thing is, if I hadn’t overdone it with the mirrors, I would have really had a great time. There was another piece, charcoal on wires, that was captivating. Ethereal. Audio visual art that was hysterical and challenging. I just have to manage how I interact with it all.

Lesson learned. It’s time to start treating art like the potent drug that it is. I know my limits.

Read Oline’s blog

2008-02-21T06:13:00.000-08:00

If you’re not already following Oline Cogdill’s excellent blog, in which she reviews many mysteries and comments on the mystery world, you should be. Oline’s got a thoughtful take on every subgenre and has been a champion in reviewing paperback originals (including mine) when other reviewers won’t. She’s also a lovely person.

So please subscribe to her blog in the Sun-Sentinel or make a point to check in regularly. Spend some time there. You’ll be glad you did.

Thanks!

Dana, Emma, Amy, Gerry, Margaret, and Spooky versus the Zombies

2008-02-13T10:22:00.001-08:00

My friend and fellow Femme Fatale Charlaine sent a copy of a quiz about surviving a zombie apocalypse to FafFF Toni and me. Being incapable of resisting anything resembling a standardized test, I took it. You can take it here.

Apparently I have a 41% chance of surviving a zombie attack. I admit it: I was miffed by this number, but that’s what you get for being honest about your abilities. And I probably would make decisions that were sentimental rather than geared to cold-blooded survival. But…still. I fancied my chances were better than 41%. I got really annoyed.

Eventually I realized I was taking a made-up test about a fictional situation altogether too seriously. Getting agitated over nothing, you might say. Sheepish me. Must cut down on that half cup of coffee I consume in a week.

But then it hit me—in this hypothetical situation, how would my fictional avatars do? I retook the test five times, trying to answer from the point of view of each of my protagonists (from books, short stories, and WIP). Here are their descriptions and the percentage chance they have against a full-on zombie assault.

Dana Cameron (mystery writer and archaeologist, Beverly, Massachusetts): 41%

Emma Fielding (archaeology professor, a small Massachusetts town): 43%.

Not surprisingly, Emma is most like me. She got a few points more because she’s probably better at stocking her emergency supplies than I am and lives in a much smaller community that I do. Zombies seem to prefer cities.

Amy Lindstrom (Washington Post reporter, outside Washington, D.C.): 32%.

Amy didn’t do as well as I thought she would, considering how smart and resourceful she is; she’s also in pretty good shape. I think what hurt her was living in a densely populated community and she would probably try to rescue more people. Altruism is not a quality respected by zombies.

Gerry Steuben (private investigator and werewolf, Salem, Massachusetts): 70%

This was an interesting one for me: is Gerry is changed or is he in human form? Who would win, a zombie or a werewolf? An astronaut or caveman? But since he’s pretty hard to kill , and is an ex-cop, he’d do okay. It’s just that damned inclination to heroics that brought his score lower.

Margaret Chandler (gentlewoman, a 1720s Massachusetts coastal town): 52%.

This took me by surprise, though it shouldn’t have. Margaret’s household would have been self-sufficient for a week or so at a time; longer, if she was at the farm. There would have been guns in the house, and she would be capable of learning to use one. There were no police or hospitals to run to. And no need to run far (in corsets?) to find her household, who would have been close by. Yay, Margaret! (Note to self: must explore concept of 18th-century zombies…)

Spooky (covert operative, outside Washington, D.C.): 90%

No surprise here: if Spooky were confronted with a zombie attack, she’d survive. More than that, she’d probably thrive, establish a post-apocalyptic settlement with herself at the helm, eventually taking over most of the mid-Atlantic region, with an eye to New York and Boston. Purely as a precautionary measure; she’s really a creature of simple needs. But I wouldn’t under any circumstances allow her to become a zombie…

Vampires in New England

2008-02-07T10:06:00.001-08:00

Yeah, it caught my eye, too.

Although I no longer am active in the field, I try to watch out for local archaeology stories. This headline took me aback: “State Archaeologist to Lecture on Vampires.”

Huh wha—?

The announcement didn’t reveal much, but a description of an earlier lecture did. According to Connecticut State Archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni and folklorist Michael Bell, there was a locally-held belief that certain corpses were supernaturally responsible for causing outbreaks of tuberculosis in the 18th and 19th century. The corpses were exhumed and mutilated; in some cases, the heads were removed, ribs broken, and femurs placed cross-wise over the chest. The term vampire wasn’t used to deal with these suspected corpses until the late 19th century (when, it seems to me, sensational literature would have prompted and provided the term). While the practice of grinding the bones of the exhumed and mixing it into a drink for other members of the family may strike us as purely superstitious, it might have been an imitation of how people learned to fend off smallpox by pricking the skin with a bit of diseased tissue. Logically, in the absence of modern scientific understanding of TB, that makes sense. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.

This article reminded me of a couple of things. One was a professor who commented on an early paper of mine. “Always be gentle with the past,” was her note for a remark I made criticizing 17th-century medical techniques. It was a quiet rebuke, but it made a huge impression on me: people in the past didn’t do things randomly, there was a belief and science structure involved. It’s also useful in looking at other modern cultures and subcultures. There are reasons for cultural behavior, even if we don’t see them immediately.

The other thing the story reminded me of was the power of fear. I think about those people two hundred years ago, feeling helpless in the face of an epidemic they didn’t fully understand, and how they chose to address it. Civility is such thin veneer, and the animal underneath is programmed for survival. I wonder what would make me behave similarly.

Well, that was cheery. I can’t provide chocolate, but books, books will help…

On the BR stack:

Nick Hornby, Slam

If you’re a fan of Hornby’s other work—About a Boy, High Fidelity, How to Be Good—and I am, check out Slam. The story is told from the POV of fifteen-year old Sam, who thinks he’s just about got life figured out when he gets, well, slammed with it. Slam deals with many of Hornby’s usual themes (avoidance, youth, popular culture, life’s conflicts); it’s a slow burn, but if you hang in there, by the end, you’ll be more than satisfied with the book’s quiet revelation.

Rumiko Takahashi, Inuyasha

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this blog and the Femmes Fatales’ blog, I’m a long-time fan of comics. I picked up the first volume of Inuyasha because one of the students I met in Alaska recommended the anime to me. I don’t know how faithful the ani-manga version is, but it’s got what you look for in manga: student Kagome is transported to another world where she discovers she possesses the power to overthrow the demons attacking villagers there. Pretty standard setup but I enjoyed the chaotic nature of the demons and the sheer weirdness of their abilities (the “net of hair” was my favorite). Plus, I love the translations of the sound effects: “dokun dokun” is a heartbeat and “shurururu” is a pear flying through the air.

It's beautiful!

2008-02-04T12:20:00.001-08:00

Here's the preliminary cover art for Wolfsbane and Mistletoe--ain't it gorgeous? I love all the color and detail. The book is due out in October 2008, and I'll give you more details when I have them (trust me). A list of the authors contributing includes:

Donna Andrews, Keri Arthur, Patricia Briggs, Dana Cameron, Karen Chance, Alan Gordon, Simon Green, Charlaine Harris,
Toni L.P. Kelner, JA Konrath, Nancy Pickard, Kat Richardson, Dana Stabenow, Rob Thurman, and Carrie Vaughn.

I'm really looking forward to seeing these stories!

An open thank-you note to Edgars judges

2008-01-31T10:58:00.001-08:00

(The nominees for the 2008 Edgar Awards were recently announced. Congratulations to them all!)

Dear folks,

Thank you for your incredibly hard work over the past year. Recently, I had the privilege of serving on a Best Novel committee, so I know what the job entails. It is an honor to be asked to participate, and it is an unparallelled opportunity to immerse yourself in the work of the field. I thought of it as a masters class in crime fiction and that proved to be the case.

I don’t need to tell you, it was also a serious amount of work. In some cases, you had to allocate large amounts of space in your home to house the books—on the order of 500+ for Best Novel—and real estate is a consideration that probably didn’t occur to you until the process was already underway. Like me, you probably had to come up with an organizational system so you could find books under discussion, keep track of what titles you had and had not received, and then keep track of your opinions of the work. There’s also the organization of the teams, and the tireless work of the chairs in wrangling the judging process itself. The paperwork, the email, and the books take over your home and your life. Spouses and family members probably spoke longingly of free weekends and reclaiming the dining room at the same moment you were signing for boxes from FedEx, UPS, and DHL, each containing at least 25 books.

It was all in the name of an excellent cause, as you well know. You took on the role as a service to the crime fiction community. You gave up a year of your writing life—probably a bit more, near the end, reading and thinking well into the night—and probably you worked this around a day job, book promotion, private life, and myriad other things. But it’s so very worth it. I got to read widely across nearly every subgenre in crime fiction. I was introduced to authors I didn’t know and needed to. I got to know the folks on my team, who were thoughtful, educated, opinionated, honorable, professional writers, all of whom were dedicated to making our short list of nominees and winner the very best possible. I believed that acting as a judge is partial payback for the support I’ve received from the mystery community and an opportunity to make MWA stronger in its representation of us, our work, and our readers.

I’ll bet that inevitably, when discussion of the books came up, individual tastes came into play. So did the determination of what “mystery” and even “novel” means. But in my experience, and from what I’ve heard from my friends who also served, most personal differences are set aside and civil—not to say cool—discussions followed. These were not simple, easy choices we made. It is not an easy thing to love a book that others don’t care for. You wish you could have a short list of ten, twenty, fifty, and still there would be excellent books left unmentioned.

And always, always, it seems there will come a perfect storm of dissatisfaction after every nomination announcement. Personal favorites were left off the list. Popular books were left out. Bestsellers were left off or over-represented. One genre or gender was ignored or favored and when politics comes into the discussion, spitting and hissing ensues. Yes, there are biases at the cultural and industry level; that may be why you signed on, to consider and try to think past it. Lots of folks, in the sturm und drang after the nominations are announced, remind us to congratulate the nominees. A few might remember what the judges try to do, so fairly, in such a complex situation.

Last year, there were three women nominated, and three men. Americans and Europeans. Their books had contemporary and historical settings and were written in styles ranging from the traditional to the gritty to the political. They were all excellent mysteries and wonderfully written. You’d think that this would be about the most balanced mix you could hope for, right?

I think so. But people still kvetched. And people will kvetch every year. That’s fine, kvetch away. Some years I don’t know the nominees, sometimes I don’t agree with the choices, sometimes I ADORE them. But I know, every year, that the Edgars judges work their butts off, juggling their personal preferences with their opinions as writers and readers (for we were all readers and lovers of mysteries, first) while trying to listen hard to the arguments of the rest of the committee. Taste, opinions, rules. It’s not an easy path to navigate.

So please allow me to thank you for taking the time to do this work. And to thank the MWA Board and Committees who try, every year, to keep the faith and honor the best work in the community.

The "BR Pile"

2008-01-29T16:19:00.001-08:00

This is me trying something new. You will, I hope, have noticed I’ve started listing what I’ve got on my TBR (to be read) pile on the home page of this site. My plan is to do a brief review of the book the next time I blog, thus moving them to the “been read pile.” Last year at Edgars Week, I really liked what Stephen King said about writing four hours a day and reading four hours a day. I don’t know if I’ll be able to manage that, but I like the idea of trying. And I’d like to blog more often than I do. The reviews won’t be long, a couple of sentences, but I’ll tell you whether I enjoyed it, thought another book did it better, etc. I’d like to hear what you think, too.

So by taking the things I’ve been reading, then writing about them, I’ll get through the ginormous pile of books I have TBR, and maybe turn you on to a subject or writer that you haven’t met before. Here goes.

Valerie Plame Wilson, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House

I probably don’t have to tell you that this was Valerie Plame Wilson’s account of how her name was leaked to the public while she was a covert officer for the CIA. You’ll remember the news: think Scooter Libby, yellowcake uranium from Nigeria, the sixteen words, the Iraqi war. It was interesting to compare this book (and its redactions) to other books, including Lindsay Moran’s book Blowing my Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy, and The Politics of Truth, by Wilson’s husband Joseph Wilson. I was reading it primarily as part of my research on how spying works, but I found it much more useful as an examination of current events. She’s very careful to document her arguments—she’s had to be—and I was convinced. This is a case of a person who’d worked hard to serve her country, and then was exposed as a political retaliation.

Susanna Jones, The Missing Person’s Guide to Love

I met Susanna years ago, and I’m hooked on her work. Her other award-winning novels (The Earthquake Bird and Water Lily) are entrancing, beautifully written, and, well, creepy. You’re increasingly unnerved while you read them and slowly learn that things aren’t quite as the narrator understands—or wants—them to be, yet you can’t set them aside. In this one, a young woman leaves Turkey for the funeral of a friend she hasn’t seen in years, one with whom she was convicted in an arson case as teenagers. The story’s reality unravels as she tries to find out what happened to a girl who vanished just before.

Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner, eds., Many Bloody Returns

An anthology of vampire stories with birthdays as the theme. What I particularly liked about this was that I got to see mystery-writing friends tackle vampires as characters (if they hadn’t already) and I got to check out some great writers from the supernatural and urban fantasy world. I admit, I’m a sucker (oh, dear, really didn’t mean that) for collections and anthologies, because of the sample factor and you learn new authors to check out. The cool thing about this experiment is that each author offered a completely different interpretation of “birthday” means to vampires. Love that. This New York Times bestseller will be followed by Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, to which I’ll be contributing a story.

Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

This is one of the books recommended to me by my friends in Takotna, Alaska. A boy travelling to visit his father is stranded alone when the small plane he’s in crashes. Brian has to survive with the clothes on his back and the hatchet his mother gave him. This is a YA story, and I found some of the situations a little grim at times (okay, I never should have seen The Lion King, and am told to avoid Bambi) but what I loved was that Brian drew from common sense, logic, and his suburban upbringing—TV, rides in the park, school classes—to survive. Stay calm. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Keep busy. Make a plan. Be mindful, because a tiny mistake in the wilderness can kill you. There are worse lessons to take away from a book.

Surprise!

2008-01-19T08:06:00.001-08:00

I’m a red-head again. Well, kinda. But I did finally get my hair done and that was loooong overdue.

No, that’s not it. But there is something different…

Oh, the web site!

Yep. New year. New projects. New web site.

Hot new look. Same quality posts. Same up-to-the-minute news. Same low, low price.

But wait, there’s more! There are a few new features. Check out the front page, for example, to see what I’m reading and listening to these days. And I’ve updated the FAQs and the “About” page.

I’ll also be adding some new pages as time allows. I’m planning on incorporating a section “For Writers” and adding readers guides to the “Books” page. I’ll let you know when they’re up and running. Watch this space.

Thanks to Mr. G for another groovy implementation. Thanks to Janet Reid for her boffo comments.

Year's End 2007

2008-01-07T05:53:00.000-08:00

December is all a bit of a blur. It started off with a lot of business and a lot of fun; the annual Holiday Party at Kate’s Mystery Books was in full swing (l. Raven winner Kate herself, below, me, Toni Kelner and her daughter Maggie). It was also an opportunity to load up on more books, which…isn’t really a problem for me (or for you, I suspect).

I also made a quick trip to New York, and then spent the rest of the month editing my werewolf story ("The Night Things Changed") for Wolfsbane and Mistletoe (edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner, coming October 2008!) and revising Exit Interview. Then Christmas came along and it was as though we were making up for me being a hermit the past two years. Christmas Eve, we hosted about twenty people. Christmas Day, we went to two parties. December 26: breakfast with friends. December 27, 28, 29: dinner with friends each night. December December 30, drinks with friends. December 31, curled up in a ball and consumed large amounts of fondue.

Okay, consider me caught up.

During the rest of that week....

There was lots of cooking and cleaning.

There was some writing.

There was time for fun with puzzles.

There were a few trips to the gym, but there was more consumption of cheese and champagne.

And now back to work.

Here’s wishing you all the best in 2008!

(Thanks to Toni for the cool BSG action figures and to Charlaine for the puzzle!)

Getting my mise straight

2007-12-14T07:59:00.001-08:00

I am the last person on the planet to have read Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. There are several reasons for this. I like eating out and I didn’t want to know how the sausage was being prepared. And I’d seen a couple of the TV shows, and I found Bourdain’s punk-rock machismo fun, but wearying. But recently I was hanging with fabulous Tess Gerritsen, talking foodie talk, and she said I had to read it, so...

It was a fun book, not nearly as shocking as I’d been lead to believe (I once worked in a restaurant, and more importantly, I’d read Orwell’s superb and horrifying Down and Out in Paris and London). And yes, the attitude was there, but surprisingly, that was one of the things I related to. The way Bourdain describes a hot and heaving kitchen in the middle of a meal service reminded me of being in the field, on that last afternoon when you’ve got half a dozen crew-members clamoring for your attention, important visitors on the way, a reporter wanting an interview at the same time the porta-potty tipped over, someone’s started bleeding, and someone else has just made the most important discovery of the whole season right before a Shakespearian-class nor’easter opens up on us.

(Yes, I have to mention archaeology in every post. It’s in my contract.)

I dug the way Bourdain told those kitchen stories, and, frankly, related to the swagger that comes from trading war stories with those who’ve been there.

There was another element of the book that stuck with me, and that was the constant quest to keep one’s mise (Fr., pronounced ‘meez’) straight. A mise-en-place is the set-up that a chef has at his station, the collection of ingredients needed to prepare a range of dishes. Those little bowls of stuff Jacques Pepin always has lined up and ready to go as he cooks? That’s his mise.

Writers have their own mises, too. And honestly, sistah, my mise is in the weeds.

Before any project, I clear out my office, clean off my desk. I haven’t kept up properly since before Alaska. Which was September. It’s in a gruesome state, but I can deal with that. What’s really messing with me is that my iPod somehow lost my playlists. I don’t really need a lot to write, but I do need my music, and the playlists have come to really define how I work. When I’m in the middle of something big and need that little boost, and don’t get it…it gets ugly. Remember the scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? “Volume! Clarity! Bass! We must have bass!” That kinda ugly.

I’ve gotten so addicted to my iPod that I can hardly function. I tried to tell Mr. G that I couldn’t possibly go to the gym without it—I couldn’t even work, how can I go to the gym?—but he didn’t seem to think that was a good reason for ditching.

It took a while, but I was able to reconstruct the most important playlists. The office remains to be done, but before that can happen, there is something else, something even more likely than my office to mess with my mise…

The holidays.

Good night and good luck.

Donuts and werewolves

2007-11-13T11:43:00.001-08:00

I just handed in a short story (at the moment, it’s called “The Apocalypse Before Christmas”) for the anthology about werewolves at Christmas time that’s being edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni Kelner. When I get done writing a fight scene, I feel tired and beat up. If I’ve been writing about food, I usually get hungry. When I get done writing a sex scene…well, you get the picture.

This time, I ended up craving donuts.

Donuts and werewolves aren’t traditionally associated in the literary canon. And food doesn’t figure largely in the story I wrote, but Salem, Massachusetts does. I put in a lot of local landmarks into the story, and that brought me back to when I lived and worked in Salem. Archaeology goes better with donuts and working with local contractors, I learned about Ziggy’s and Sons.

The thing that really fixed Ziggy’s in my heart and imagination happened very early one morning. I got there when they first opened and they had just started cooking donuts. The guy at the counter asked. “What do you want me to make for you?”

It was a question I should have been prepared for. If you, Homer Simpson, could have any donut in the world, what would it be? What is your fantasy donut?

It was just too big a question.

I stared at him, then stammered out a request for some chocolate and jelly-filled. And some plain (to me, the mark of a good donut place is how they do plain cake: the basics count). I can’t really say the guy gave me a scornful look, but I know I was shamed by my own lack of creativity.

Driving home, the smell of donuts warm from the deep fry almost sent me into a frenzy. I ate at least three before my friends woke up, and then I had another with them. Just to be sociable, I told myself. But the big white gap in the cardboard box spoke for itself.

I don’t really have a problem. I’ve got it all under control. I can stop any time I want.

I was determined that merely mentioning Ziggy’s in the story wasn’t going to drive me there, because contrary to what I wrote above, I don’t eat a lot of donuts. But apparently, just the fact that I kept mentioning Ziggy’s (and how I wasn’t going to go) proved too much for my husband and it suddenly became a mission. We popped by bright and early Saturday morning, braving a blisteringly cold Atlantic wind, and found, to our howling dismay, that Ziggy’s doesn’t open on Saturday. Donut interruptus. It was not to be, cheri.

Sunday morning, we went back, determined to score a jelly-filled or die trying. The trophies from the hunt can be seen, above, along with some Halloween gear (several gifts from Toni; they’re big on Halloween, chez Kelner). And yes, there is a little werewolf peeking from behind the stack of doomed donuts.

Having indulged, I can’t get donuts off my mind. It’s getting bad.

Apparently it is not the moon that wakes the beast in me.

Awooooo!

P.S. Karen Laubenstein, one of the Board Members of Sisters in Crime in Alaska, was kind enough to send me this picture of me with the Anthony for PBO. I had the chance to meet Karen in person in Anchorage, and really enjoyed talking with her. She took many of the great photos that adorned the daily B’con Newsletter. Thanks, Karen!