WebbsBlog

2012-01-27T15:51:00.001-08:00

The Mystery of Snow Canyon

2012-01-22T17:02:00.000-08:00

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Finishing a book is like finishing a marathon.

Make that several marathons.

The idea for DESERT WIND came to me while I was watching an old John Wayne movie, an awful mess titled “The Conqueror.” In 1954, John Wayne played Genghis Khan (imagine!) with redheaded Susan Hayward as his unwilling Mongol bride. The on-film sparring between the two almost matched the heads Genghis lopped off in his pursuit of world domination.

Basically, I was watching the thing on a dare. I’d said to my husband that Wayne was a better actor than his usual cowboy or G.I. roles allowed him to be, and hubby – who could never pass up a sure thing – bet me twenty-five cents I'd change my mind after watching “The Conqueror.” We were going to order it from Netflix, but in the mysterious way of Fate, it popped up on Turner Classic Movies that very week. Five minutes into the thing, I knew I’d lost my twenty-five cents, but I’m no quitter so I stuck with it.

Good thing, too.

Halfway through the film, the host – I can’t remember who it was – began talking about the mysterious illness that plagued the cast and film crew, the same illness that was felling so many of the Paiute Indians who’d served as extras.

When the movie started again (and I'd handed over a quarter to my husband, who'd so obviously won the bet), I watched with an entirely viewpoint. Like a born mystery novelist, I was looking for clues. But there were none. Snow Canyon, Utah, the location of the movie set, was almost as beautiful as the Grand Canyon, which lay only a few miles south. The landscape looked pure and serene. Small wonder that Howard Hughes, the film’s producer, had chosen it.

Appearances are deceiving. A few years later, almost half the cast and crew who worked on “The Conqueror” were dead. Those responsible argued that the Hollywood people's heavy drinking, heavy smoking lifestyles had contributed to their deaths. But then death began to stalk the residents of the ranches and farms that lay near Snow Canyon. Deeply religious men who never smoked nor drank. Children. Babies. Women who raised fresh vegetables for the dinner table so that their families would have healthy diets.

I spent more than a year doing research on DESERT WIND, research that took me into the far northwest corner of Arizona, and the southwest corner of Utah. I visited libraries, museums, interviewed people who remembered those events --people who had at one time believed the official reason for the high death count, as well as people who doubted the official story from the very beginning.

To learn what happened and why those deaths are still argued about sixty years later (even though those responsible eventually admitted culpability), read DESERT WIND. As novelists so frequently do, I used real life as a jumping-off place for a book that examines guilt, innocence, and the concept of "plausible deniability."

John Wayne -- and everyone affected -- deserved better.

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To read an excerpt from DESERT WIND, log onto www.bettywebb-mystery.com

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Why Writing a Book is More Work than Shoveling Horse Poop

2012-01-06T04:27:00.000-08:00

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Another year, another book.

At 7 p.m., Tuesday, January 31, I’ll be at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore Scottsdale AZ, talking about my new Lena Jones mystery, DESERT WIND (to read an excerpt, log onto www.bettywebb-mystery.com). It’s much more fun to talk than it is to write so I’m sure I’ll enjoy myself.

Oops. Did I just give away the fact that writing isn’t easy? I guess I did. Thanks to good health and good luck, I’ve led a long and busy life, often working two jobs at a time. No, I’m not counting my role as a parent, because that would be the third job, the unpaid job that never ends.

Here are some of the you-get-paid-for-doing-it jobs I’ve held down over the years: go-go dancer, bartender, chicken farmer, commercial artist, car hop, job counselor, teacher, advertising copywriter, cotton picker, waitress, music critic, horse breeder, customer service representative, sales clerk, book reviewer, zoo worker, etc. But of all my various jobs, the most grueling by far is the job I’ve held for the last 12 years: mystery novelist.

Non-writers are always surprised when I tell them writing is harder than many jobs, including shoveling horse poop, which I’ll use as my example. In most jobs, you know what’s expected of you. Horse stall overflowing with poop? Turn Seabiscuit loose in the corral, get a shovel, shovel until all the poop’s gone. Put in fresh hay, lead Seabiscuit back into his stall, walk away. You’re done, and the horse is happy.

Writing isn’t like that. You get up at 4 a.m. every day for a year, write until it’s time to go to your paycheck-generating job, then 10 hours later return home and write some more. Tired? Too bad. Oh, and another thing: while you’re still working on Book One, you need to start doing research for Book Two. Research takes time, too, and sometimes you even have to hop a plane to do it. Afraid of flying? Too bad.

But finally, a year after you began Book One, it’s finished. That night you send it to your publisher and at 4 a.m. the next day, you begin writing Book Two.

Remember my saying that when the poop-shoveling is done, the horse is happy? Well, editors aren’t that easy to please. Around the time you’re grunting through Chapter Ten of Book Two, you get an email from your editor saying that Book One needs some fixin’. So you file Book Two away, return to Book One, and make the requested changes. When you send the revised manuscript back and return to Book Two, guess what? You’ve forgotten who the heck all those characters are. This means that you spend the next couple of weeks reading through the manuscript, making notes, making changes. And chances are, you’ll begin all over again – from the first word of Chapter One.

You’ll notice that I haven’t even begun to describe the complexities of the writing craft itself. For the sake of brevity, I’ll list only a few that plagued me during the writing of DESERT WIND. Keeping characters’ names straight, so that the wrangler known as Gabe on page one doesn’t become Jake on page 235. Remembering that John Wayne died in 1979, rather than 1974, which I’d originally thought. Discovering that uranium mining continues at the Grand Canyon, although most people think it was shut down years ago. Keeping the arc of action rising ever upwards, a common problem with novelists (although we mystery writers have an easy solution; we just kill someone else whenever the action threatens to slow). Stop using the same words so often (my favorites are apparently “probably,” “seemed,” “just” -- and “apparently.” And getting rid of a dozen other writer’s hoodoos.

But in the end, it’s all worth it. Two years after you began writing the first page, Book One – your perfect, perfect creation, the reflection of your very soul -- hits the streets. And there you are, wearing new clothes, scented with the finest French perfume, sitting proudly in the bookstore as your fans line up to get their first edition copies of Book One autographed.

Then the first fan arrives at your table, gives you a big smile and says, “Did you know there’s a typo on page two?”

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What Is a Real Writer?

2011-09-10T21:53:00.000-07:00

What is a real writer? After reading a very dull memoir, I pondered this question for what had to be the hundredth time. On page after page, the memoirist kept lamenting that she had written 14 novels without having any publisher offer her a contract, and she just didn’t understand why. Her parents said she was a born writer, her college teachers said she was a born writer, her husband said she was a born writer, her friends said she was a born writer, and most importantly – she herself knew she was a born writer. But after reading her emotionally flat memoir, I’m not so sure.

A real writer is interested in the natural world, even when writing her own memoir. She is interested in the way the sun moves around the earth, she is interested in the fantastical formations clouds make, she is interested in the musty smell of wet concrete after a rain, she is interested in the sting of pine boughs slapping her face on a windy day, she is interested in the sound of insects buzzing around offal, she is interested in the cowlick in a bus passenger’s hair, she is interested in the odd scar on a man’s otherwise pristine briefcase, she is interested in a child’s intake of breath just before it begins to cry… In other words, a writer’s interests stretch beyond her own flesh. She is continually fascinated with the world and all the wondrous and horrible things in it – even when she believes they don’t personally impact her. Otherwise she’s not truly writing, she’s just typing love letters to herself.

Chances are that if you’ve never been accused of being “nosy,” you’re going to have a hard time becoming a writer. Real writers are so enamored of, so obsessed with, so appalled by the human condition that even with a broken leg they’ll hobble out the door to eavesdrop on a conversation down the street. Real writers are nosy people. If something’s happening to anyone anywhere at any time, they want to know about it. And first hand, whenever possible. They want to know every sloppy detail of a friend’s messed-up love affair and how she felt when she finished the Boston Marathon. That’s why so many novelists start out as journalists (you can’t beat being paid not to mind your own business). That’s why when tragedy strikes, the first question a journalist asks is, “How do you feel?”

Real writers are interested in emotions other than their own. They want to know how you felt when your house was foreclosed on, how you felt when your son first nursed at your breast, how you felt several years later when he shipped off to Afghanistan, they want to know why you can’t stand the sight of blood, they want to know why you prefer country life to the city, they want to know how you felt when the man who raped you was found not guilty.

Real writers are emotional vampires. Allow them access and they’ll suck the emotion right out of you. Not out of malice -- far from it -- but because they need to write it down so that others can feel the way you feel, and thus develop the most precious attribute of true humanity: empathy. When real writers write their books, their stories, their poems, and their articles, they want to convey to people they will probably never meet the feelings of a complete stranger. They want you to feel that stranger’s humanity and to recognize it in yourself.

That's because real writers recognize one great truth: we are all related. Each of us has a common ancestor – the paleontologists have named her “Mitochondria Eve” -- and our many-times-great-grandmother was born around 3.2 million years ago in Africa’s Olduvai Gorge. Like it or not, we are all long-lost sisters and brothers. In opening up our distant kin's heart to us, real writers remind us of our shared humanity. Real writers will always do that -- it’s their job -- and they will continue to do it in darkness and in light, whether surrounded by laughter or by ashes.

Warren Jeffs' conviction isn't the end

2011-08-10T14:15:00.000-07:00

While it’s nice that child rapist Warren Jeffs has been sentenced to life plus twenty years, many of his followers and enablers are still busy ruining children’s lives in Utah, El Dorado, Texas, and my home state of Arizona. While I was a reporter for the Tribune Newspapers, I began covering Colorado City, which was being ruled by Jeffs’ iron hand. Horrified at what I found, I wrote the book, “Desert Wives: Polygamy Can Be Murder.” Because my claims seemed so preposterous at the time – religion-sanctioned child rape and rampant Welfare fraud – my publisher turned the manuscript over to Janet Napolitano, the then Arizona Attorney General. Napolitano found no inaccuracies in the manuscript, which was then published.

That was in 2002, folks, a full 9 years ago. During those 9 years, Neither Utah nor Arizona could make a prosecution stick against Jeffs or his followers, so thank God for Texas. During those nine years, local officials argued that that there had been no complaints about child abuse in the compound, an argument which was ironic since Child Protective Services never went into Colorado City to investigate the complaints that were being made by women who’d escaped. Why didn’t CPS go in? According to reports, Jeffs’ men – many of them armed police officers – stationed themselves at the entrance to the compound and refused CPS entrance to the homes where the abuse was alleged to be taking place.

During those 9 years, Janet Napolitano looked the other way, her successor Terry Goddard looked the other way, and now Tom Horne, Napolitano’s and Goddard’s successor is looking the other way. Horne is, however, very, very busy attempting to prosecute users of medical marijuana, which has been declared legal in the state of Arizona. Odd, that. In the meantime, escapee after escapee from Jeffs’ cult have been sharing their stories about alleged rape, sodomy, and even child homicide, but the Arizona authorities still haven’t gone into Colorado City to investigate their allegations. What are the authorities waiting for? Remember, it took only ONE phone call for Texas to act.

Among the excuses the authorities have given me for Arizona’s failure to act are these:

1. No complaints have been made about any crimes being committed against children in Colorado City.
2. But even if complaints were made and the authorities attempted to go in, it would probably result in another Jonestown, Waco, or Heaven’s Gate. So they’re not going in for the sake of the children.
3. The authorities can’t prosecute a crime without evidence, and they can’t get evidence without going into the compound. This excuse dovetails nicely with the above two excuses.

Sounds like something out of Alice in Wonderland, doesn’t it? This kind of legal gobbledygook is the reason Arizona children remain at risk in Colorado City. This sad state of affairs will continue until we – the American public – make such a fuss that Arizona politicians and law officials can no longer ignore it.

Here’s what you can do to help protect Arizona’s children. Write or call Tom Horne, Arizona’s attorney general, at 1275 West Washington Street, Phoenix, AZ 85007-2926. Tom Horne’s office phone number is 602.542.5025 or 800.352.8431; fax is 602.542.4085. Send a copy of your complaint to your local FBI office and to your local government representative.

Arizona’s children deserve justice, too.

Links (if the link doesn't work, copy it into your browser)

http://drdrew.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/27/are-women-in-flds-responsible-for-abuse/?hpt=dr_t3

http://nancygrace.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/05/former-flds-members-react-to-verdict/?iref=obinsite

Being there

2011-06-06T14:50:00.000-07:00

“Boots on the ground”isn’t just a military phrase; it can also apply to writers. After four years of library, online, documentary, and telephone research, I finally drove several hundred miles to see the scene of the crime I’m writing about in “Desert Wind.” And guess what? Putting my boots on the ground is changing the climax of the book.

I can’t give you the plot details of “Desert Wind,” only say that like the first six Lena Jones mysteries, the book is based on real life (and real death), a semi-closed case I learned about while still working as a full-time journalist. What I can also tell you is the difference in merely having the facts of the decades-old crime related to me as opposed to standing on the very ground where lives were lost. That difference is the amount of emotionality I, as a writer, can now bring to the
experience. Seeing is believing -- and reacting with outrage and compassion.

There’s also the difference between theory and fact. Theory is a picture in your mind; fact is the pungent scent of juniper and cedar. Fact is the muted din of traffic coming from a miles-away road. Fact is the red dirt you’re standing on and the sting of sand blowing into your face. Fact is the rough texture of lava spewed millions of years ago from a now-extinct volcano. Fact is the salty taste of sweat dripping into your mouth as you stagger up a steep incline to view a sage-dotted valley below.

In other words, fact is a sensory experience, not an imagined one. Writing teachers tell us that to set a scene, you must use all five senses: smell, touch, sound, taste, and last of all, sight. You’ll notice that I put sight last. Thriller writer David Morrell once said at a conference I attended, “In writing, sight is over-used. To really deepen a scene, to bring it alive, I use the sense of smell.”

Could I have imagined the scent of juniper and cedar if I hadn’t traveled to the place where the true events in my book actually happened? Oh, sure. I’m a writer. I can imagine all sorts of things. But would I have known there were juniper and cedar trees in the area? Of course, if I’d concentrated on the flora and fauna instead of history. And I could have imagined the color of sand, the feel of lava rock, the taste of sweat -- all of which I’ve experienced before, but in different places at different times. Yes, I could have recalled them from my own life and re-imagined them, but would I have experienced that sensory overload all at one, followed immediately by the emotion that swept over me as I viewed the scene of the crime?

I doubt it.

Originally, I had planned to set the final pages of “Desert Wind”in a motel room because I’ve always liked the sterility and anonymity of motel rooms. The un-personality would be a nice contrast, I thought, to the bloody events that had gone before. But after standing on what I now consider to be sacred ground, I decided to let the ghosts in, to pay them their due, to let them speak in the same voices they’d used as I stood in their footprints.

In the end, being there made all the difference.

Where I Write

2011-05-29T19:52:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, when I finished “Desert Wind,” the 7th Lena Jones mystery, I let out a big WHOOP! My husband came running. “What’s happened now?” he asked.

“Done, done, done! Isn’t it wonderful?”

After a long silence, he finally said, “Actually, it’s pretty horrible.”

Hubby is still alive because he wasn’t talking about my book; he was talking about the state of my den (see picture), which, I’ll admit, was horrible. You see, I don’t generally clean up as I go, at least when it comes to writing. I don’t edit until I finish my first draft, and I don’t tidy up my work room until I’ve written “The End.” If you think I’m exaggerating, take a close look at that picture. See? That’s around a year’s worth of papers and dust bunnies scattered across the floor. My den is usually so awful that my husband, who himself isn’t known for being a neaknik, refuses to enter except in dire emergencies, such as heart attacks or fires.

Well, okay, to be honest, last year he did come in when I was having a gall bladder attack, and dragged me to the hospital, where I stayed for five days, finally emerging without said gall bladder. And before you ask, yes, I’d written for two days while doubled up and moaning. Turned out some of my finer passages, too.

Anyway, as my husband surveyed the sump pit that is my den, he said, “Don’t move,” then disappeared, returning a few minutes later with a camera. “Smile for the birdie.” I did, and he snapped the picture. When he looked at the digital display, he decided that with me in it, I hid too much of the mess, so he snapped the next picture with me out of the way. We both like that one better.

Yes, the walls of my den really are red. Almost the color of dried blood, if you will, which I think is quite fitting for a mystery writer. As far as the mess goes, I’ve always worked well in messes. Those of you who’ve ever taken a tour through a busy newsrooms know that journalists aren’t known for the neatness. We. Don’t. Like. To. Throw. Things. Out.

Just call us the hoarders of the writing world.

Where do YOU write? And how neat is that place? Feel free to respond to this blog and share the nasty truth about your writing habits. I promise not to tell anyone what a slob you are.

The Temptations of Research

2011-05-11T07:23:00.000-07:00

Finally.

After almost a year and a half of slaving, DESERT WIND, my seventh Lena Jones novel, has been sent to the publisher. Now I’m working on my 10th mystery, THE LLAMA OF DEATH. This probably explains why I haven’t been blogging like I should, although I’ve tried to keep up on Facebook.

We writers are strange creatures. Although of necessity we keep up with important current events (“BIN LADEN DEAD!!!” “TRUMP DROPS THE F-BOMB!!!” “NEW BARBIE DUE OUT!!!”), at the same time we’re almost like hibernating bears while working on a book. But instead of going to sleep, we enter a waking dream-like state where we live entirely in our heads, coming up for air only for trips to the potty and other necessary forays outside our dens. When our friends run into us at the grocery store or dry cleaners and attempt to engage us in conversation, we stare at them through glazed eyes and say something like, “I’m so glad your little Brucie was chosen honor student of the year, and did you know that an Argentine duck has a 17-inch-long penis?”

We don’t even notice when our circle of friends starts shrinking. Until, of course, that day when we pack up our manuscripts and ship (or e-mail) them off to our publishers. Then we look around and wonder where everyone disappeared to.

That’s the situation I find myself in right now. When I call a friend, they ask, “Betty who?” After a pause, they add something like, “Oh. I thought you were dead.” Once I convince them I’m not a ghost, we play catch-up.

Speaking of ghosts, I actually wrote one into DESERT WIND. The ghost’s name is John Wayne. That’s right. John Wayne, the movie actor. What happened to Wayne in 1953, while he was filming THE CONQUEROR, is a major plot point of DESERT WIND. And Mr. Wayne created a problem for me. About halfway through the first draft, I realized that I was committing the major writing sin of “telling, not showing.” After all, the man died decades ago. So in order to show the pertinent portion of Wayne’s life, I set pivotal scenes in different decades, thus turning what could have been a contemporary novel into a semi-historical one. Which, of course, meant tons of research.

Here’s the trouble I have with research. I LOVE it -- madly, crazily, goofily LOVE it. In another life, I was probably a historian, so I’ve always had a hard time putting the research down and just writing the book. But oh, the things you learn while plowing through sixty-year-old magazines. For chapters set in 1953, I learned not only about the era’s major events (Red Scare, anyone?), but also what songs people were listening to. You see, history isn’t just made up of the big things -- history is also the “little” things, and to a great extent, those “little” things are what we notice. Most of us aren’t in the White House War Room, and most of us aren’t Arizona ranchers trying to figure out why our cattle are suddenly dying. And goodness knows, most of us aren’t movie stars sauntering through a film set in a remote desert canyon. We’re just normal, everyday people out shopping, trying to figure out what kind of skirt to buy (in the 1950s, we’d have bought a skirt with a poodle appliqued on it).

Despite all those historical temptations, I finally finishedDESERT WIND. I’d planned to take a month off to just sit around reading other people’s books, but you know how writers are -- finish one book on Monday, start a new book on Tuesday. So that’s what I did.

Now I’m knee-deep in research on llamas, those lovely Peruvian creatures who hum when they’re happy (bet you didn’t know that, did you?). But as soon as I finish THE LLAMA OF DEATH, I know there won’t be any vacation -- I’ll just plunge straight into the research for DESERT REGRET.

Oh, I can’t wait!

The Koala of Death

2010-07-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

Writing THE KOALA OF DEATH (debuting August 15) was like being mobbed by a pack of puppies -- a giggle a minute. Sure, there were a couple of murders along the way, and poor zookeeper/sleuth Theodora “Teddy” Bentley faced her usual woes with misbehaving animals and humans, but regardless, writing KOALA earned me some of the biggest laughs of my life. Most memorable, I think, was the scene where Teddy gets attacked by a surly flamingo while taking part in the Gunn Zoo’s Great Flamingo Roundup. On second thought, maybe it was the scene where Teddy gets roped into appearing on a local TV program with some of the zoo’s exotic animals, whereupon a lemur and a wallaby... Oh, well, I’ll let you read that for yourself.

Teddy’s workplace is fun, but so is Gunn Landing Harbor, where she lives on a houseboat with D.J. Bonz, her three-legged dog, and Miss Priss, her one-eyed cat. Her eccentric boat-dwelling neighbors are a treat, too, as is her much-married, ex-beauty queen mother, and an obviously fraudulent “animal psychic” named Speaks-To-Souls. In fact, Teddy’s entire world in KOALA was such a gas that writing it was like being on vacation in a place where I, in my too-busy real life, couldn’t possibly manage.

But that’s the fun of writing, isn’t it? We write about the worlds we’d like to visit, not necessarily those we actually live in (not that I’m complaining; life in Scottsdale, Arizona, isn’t all that miserable). That’s partially the reason we read, too. Housebound and can’t manage a cross-country trip through China? Read Peter Hessler’s COUNTRY DRIVING; A JOURNEY THROUGH CHINA FROM FARM TO FACTORY. If you want to know about the trials newspapers are facing these days, read Jon Talton's DEADLINE MAN, about a columnist working at a dying newspaper; it'll make any former reporter weep. Sick and tired of the entire 21st Century? Read an 18th century adventure/sci-fi blend, such as Diana Gabaldon’s OUTLANDER series, or even Gibbons’ THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Or -- and this is how mystery writers like to take their “vacations” -- lose yourself in a historical mystery, such as Eric Mayer and Mary Reed’s ONE FOR SORROW, which is set during the Byzantine Empire. It's the first of a remarkable series.

But back to present day and THE KOALA OF DEATH. Fun as Teddy Bentley’s world was to write about, the book didn’t come into being without a few problems. One of those problems appears to be ongoing, because today, I had the funniest experience. Literally. Midway through writing a scene in DESERT WIND, the 7th Lena Jones mystery, I noticed something unsettling; the scene was hilarious.

Now, anyone who’s read the Lena Jones books knows that although they tend to be pretty grim, the private investigator does have a sense of humor. But those books are still dark, very dark, not at all the proper place for the frothy, nitrous-oxide-on-the-brain stuff I’d been writing for the past eight pages. So what the heck was going on? Had Lena’s anger management therapy finally started to work, and had she finally begun to see the world and all its outrageousness through pink-tinted glasses?

While that would be nice, I suspect that the answer is far more simple: Teddy Bentley has been giving relationship advice to my notoriously relationship-phobic detective.

Be that as it may, KOALA has been getting some great reviews. Here are just some of them.

“A sleuth with a wealthy background and a great deal of zoological knowledge and brain power. From mucking out the cages to carrying a lemur with a loose sphincter onto a TV set, Teddy’s adventures will appeal to fans of animal-themed cozies.” Library Journal

“Webb warmly evokes the unconventional worlds of zoo and marina. Readers don't even have to be animal lovers to enjoy watching, say, a pushy television host get her comeuppance from a mischievous lemur.” Publishers Weekly

“Teddy’s second adventure will appeal to animal lovers who enjoy a bit of social satire with their mystery.” Booklist

“An engaging array of quirky characters, human and animal.” Kirkus Reviews

To read more about THE KOALA OF DEATH, visit www.bettywebb-zoomystery.com

To read more about the LENA JONES series, visit www.bettywebb-mystery.com

To find out if Betty will be signing or holding a writers workshop near you, visit
http://bettywebbssignings.blogspot.com

A Very, Very Big Mystery

2010-06-09T09:11:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows anything about me is aware of the fact that I read a lot of mysteries. Noir, thriller, suspense, historical, cozy, occult... you name the sub-genre, I read it. So I was fascinated to find out that Fred Ramsay, author of the popular Ike Schwartz mysteries, recently released a non-mystery about -- all things -- Judas Iscariot. You know, the guy the New Testament says betrayed Jesus.

On second thought, maybe Judas, which is published by Perfect Niche Press, isn’t really a non-mystery. Christianity is know for its many mysteries, such as -- if Christianity is a good thing, then why can so many of its followers do bad things? But one of it’s greatest mysteries is Judas’s behavior towards Jesus. How, I have always wondered, could an apostle who actually knew Jesus sell him out for thirty pieces of silver? Decades after I learned about the thirty pieces of silver in Sunday school, the question still baffled me. But Ramsay’s book, Judas, gives us a possible (perhaps even probable) answer.

Here’s what Ramsay says spurred him to write his surprising -- and wonderful -- book.

“I never liked the notion promoted by the authors of the gospels, that ‘the devil made him do it,’” Ramsay wrote, in an exchange of emails. “ It is much too facile and in my view disingenuous. I do not blame them for using him that way. Their purpose in writing was to tell the Jesus story. But a full account of the human frailty, misjudgment, and wrong thinking which led to the Easter event would not do much in drawing people to a growing Christian faith. It was simpler to dump on one guy.”

Before we go any farther, let me add that Ramsay is an ordained Episcopal priest and a firm believer in the Christian faith. He has never believed, though, that faith should short-circuit the brain. As an example, he reminds us of a failing of one of Christianity’s most-beloved figures. Biblical accounts tell us that the apostle Peter -- now referred to as “Saint Peter” by a large number of Christians -- denied even knowing Jesus three times the night Roman soldiers arrested Jesus.

“Remember, Judas was not the only one to betray Jesus,” Ramsay says. “Peter had his moments that night as well.”

Possessor of both a critical mind and a Ph.D. in Anatomy (he taught at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine), Ramsay did considerable hands-on research for Judas.

“What I know about religious studies I gleaned from reading, six trips to the Holy Land, and when all else failed -- and because I am an unreconstructed intuitive -- I made up,” he says. “Hey, I write fiction. You want facts, go to school; you want a story, go to the library. Seriously, I did my research and if I wasn’t sure about an event or phenomenon and couldn’t get a line on it, I left it out. I wanted to present Judas as a person with an agenda as strong, from his point of view, as that of Jesus. I believe that most professing Christians share that position with Judas. We want to do God’s thinking for him. We have a better plan. We want to read into the scriptures those ideas that support our notion of rectitude, not what God intends. Listen, how many people do you know really believe in turning the other cheek, in loving their enemies, who will give a beggar his second coat, etc.? We are more like Judas than any of us would be willing to admit.”

Which is one of the many reasons Ramsay was apprehensive about his novel’s reception. “The problem I saw with this presentation of the Gospel story (for that is what it is) lay with the positioning it vis á vis mainstream thinking,” he says. “Where the story intersects the Gospel, it is orthodox and conservative. No laughing Jesus here, no Mr. Nice Guy Rabbi Jesus working through a metaphorical Gospel. He is who Christians have traditionally maintained he is: the
second person in the Trinity. That is not a strong selling point to a post-modern mainstream publisher. On the other hand, because I, in effect, let Judas off the hook, it made the book unacceptable to the conservative mainstream Christian press. A dilemma.”

The dilemma made finding a publisher difficult, and almost impossible, Ramsay admits. “The audience I wanted to reach, the marginal Christian, the non-believers, would have a hard time sorting through a mixed message. My friends on the right insist that only the message as delivered should be used to evangelize. My friends on the left insist that the Gospel as delivered is not marketable to a post-modern world and cite the Jesus Seminar and other ‘scholarly’ sources to support their own disbelief. One agent who critiqued the book (before turning it down) said ‘If you make Jesus gay, I can sell this thing.’ I said, in response, ‘I may well be going to Hell, but not for that, thank you.’ You see the problem. It is the same in many aspects of twenty-first century America. One has to either be for or against——right or left, one’s faith should be biblically inerrant or wholly metaphorical. So we don’t debate, we yell at each other. We march for and against. It is a knee-jerk society and people my age despair for a country that has lost its sense of civility and willingness to consider alternatives without judgment.”

Judas took Ramsay many years to write. Because of the political/religious polarization in so much of American life, it took almost as long to find a publisher.

“I started writing it in 1996 or 97, before I retired,” he says. “I had no writing skills so the first drafts had all the beginner’s mistakes and then some. Eventually I worked through nearly two dozen rewrites, had professional editors and theologians look at it. So from start to final edition, fourteen years. Then, I took it to the Southern California Writers Conference and was told by the staff member to whom I submitted pages for an advance read and critique, that I had a Best Seller on my hands. Wow! I had an agent then -- a bad one whom I finally had to fire. It took nearly another year to find a legitimate agent who flogged the book to all the major houses. On the basis of the feedback they received from various acquisition editors I rewrote large sections of the book. They still couldn’t sell it and after two years, [my agent] finally gave up and dumped me as a client. I tried to sell it myself to smaller houses but failed.”

The book finally found a home at Perfect Niche, a subsidiary of Poisoned Pen Press.

Readers with an historical and/or theological turn of mind, might find Ramsay’s approach to the character of Judas, as well as other figures in the Gospels, interesting -- to say the least. Where in the world did Ramsay get all that stuff? Even more puzzling, how was he able to write a completely different account of Judas’s life, yet keep it from conflicting with the story told in the Gospels?

“The advantage that comes from writing about Judas is that we know little or nothing about him,” he answers. “We know his name, what he did, that he was one of the Twelve Apostles, the only disciple Jesus ever called ‘friend,’ and he was trusted with the money. Anything else is a gloss. I write about Mary from Magdala as well. Again, we know very little about her. Tradition has her as a prostitute. But there is nothing in the Gospel to support that notion. What we do know about Mary was that she stayed with the disciples to the end, was (maybe) the first to witness the risen Lord and was relieved of seven demons by Jesus. Her story, included in the book, uses these bits of information to assemble a plausible history for her. She suffered from multiple personality disorder (it is suggested) and that disorder led her into situations that might be considered by a conflicted society (the first century Israel) as less than moral. All bases covered. See, I believe every tradition is based on at least some bit of reality. That the later church decided to ascribe an immoral life to her had to have some connection to fact. That it became enlarged and distorted is the nature of history.

“So it is with Judas. He did a terrible thing. What sort of person, given what we know about him, would do that? Once I jettisoned the ‘devil made him do it’ excuse, it was just a matter of creating a plausible character -- one whose motivation would be consistent with the act. Key word: plausible. The trick here was to assume that Judas was a person of his time and culture. That’s critical. Assuming he was Jewish at some level, and remember, ‘Jewish’ meant many things to many people in the first century. (The Mishnah, which would define Judaism for the next ten or fifteen centuries was not yet formulated. There were the same sorts of divisions in Judaism then as we see in Protestantism today.) But there were commonalities and certainties and universal expectations. Judas would respond to them in predictable ways given the right circumstances.”

Ramsay considered the laws and customs of the time when portraying another character, too. “Consider Caiaphas, the High Priest, who is also painted a darker villain than perhaps he should be. In that culture, someone presuming to be God or of a divine nature akin to God was a blasphemer of the worst sort and because the God of the Hebrew Scriptures was viewed, generally, as an angry one given to punishing the entire nation if He sensed any slippage in their adherence to His Law, to promote such an heretical notion would bring certain retribution from the Almighty. Thus the high priest can say very reasonably, ‘Better that one man die than the whole nation suffer.”

In other words, context should be considered before rendering judgement.

“Certain behaviors were expected of Jews,” Ramsay says.” The people who followed Jesus then, had two choices: Believe and (possibly) be damned, or leave his company. Many did the latter. If you were to stick around, the next choice you needed to make was: what sort of Messiah do we have here? 1.) Elijah? A forerunner -- not much will happen except the nation will slowly swing over to this new configuration. 2.) Moses? Who (without an army,) will lead us out of bondage -- some how some way, or 3.) David? Who will mount an army and slay the Philistines (the Romans.) and restore the kingship. None of them picked up on to Jesus’ central proclamation: that it would be through a change of hearts that the Kingdom would be achieved. So they dithered. Judas, I supposed, took what for him was a logical next step -- one I expect many of us would agree with -- recruit support from within the existing power structure. It was a reasonable idea then. It is a reasonable one now.”

Here Ramsay points out something else that some readers of the Gospel may have not noticed.

“Remember, Joseph of Arimathea and (we think) Nicodemas were members of the Sanhedrin. It was not like some inroads had not already been made. In retrospect (assuming that was what he did -- thirty pieces of silver, etc.) it makes perfect sense to stumble into a trap that creates the very situation Jesus knew must somehow face.

“That Judas and Jesus had a special relationship is, for me, a given. That he was an outsider viz the other eleven (or at least the Galilean contingent) is evident. That he was a scapegoat used by them to shortcut the dynamics of the Easter narrative, pretty evident. Remember, all the Gospels were written backwards. That is; their only purpose is to take the listener/reader to Easter. There was no interest on the part of their authors to establish an accurate chronology or historical record. There is precious little detail about anyone except Jesus. Their sole aim was to create a proof text for a risen Christ. Jesus was handed over to the authorities at the connivance of Judas and that was that. So, moving along -- the devil made him do it. He was a bad guy the whole time, etc. .. .done deal. Except: read Peter’s account of Judas’s activity in Acts 1:16 through 1:26.

“What I wanted to do, and I hoped succeeded in, was to write a plausible account. A story line that not only retold the account of the betrayal in human terms, but reconciled some of the discrepancies in the Gospels as well. For example in the traditional rendering, the events of the Passion narrative occur within less than a 24 hour period. Jesus is arrested, tried by Pilate, by Herod, by Pilate again, flogged, beaten and crucified. Thursday night to Friday noon. Can’t happen. Not enough time. But having him celebrate Passover with the Essenes on Tuesday gives us the time for all those things to happen.

“We are a culture that is fascinated with evil and I thought if I wanted to lure people over from the (sort of) dark side, Judas was the guy to do it. Jesus, in the book, is a character who, I hope is intriguing without being overwhelming. It wasn’t intended as a ‘Jesus Book.’ I thought that might be too much. Non-believers would not touch one of those, but a Judas book? So, with that in mind, it was easy. Where the story intersects the Gospel, with one or two exceptions, I drew from Luke’s Gospel. In the foreword I cite a few other inclusions.”

At the back of Judas, are a number of discussion questions, each designed to make the reader think even more deeply -- are perhaps argue more strongly -- on what he or she has read.

“The Study Guide was an afterthought,”Ramsey says. “Some folks asked if I would do a teaching on the book. I thought if I had something to put into their hands, it would be more meaningful. I am, as I have indicated elsewhere, an intuitive. Things like lesson plans, outlines, notes are foreign to me. Connie Collins [who designed the study questions] has had extensive experience in organizing teaching sessions, bible studies, and exercises. She has studied at Biola U, worked for Robert H. Shuller and other high profile ministries. It was a good fit. When the book was published by Perfect Niche, we folded the study guide into the book. I guess I hoped it would help market it.”

We can only wait and see. And hope. Because this is a book that deserves to be read.

Among other books, Frederick Ramsay is the author of The Ike Schwartz Mysteries, Impulse(chosen as One of the Hundred Best books of 2006, by Publishers Weekly), and Predators: A
Botswana Mystery. Read more about Dr. Ramsay at http://www.frederickramsay.com

Writers' Totems

2010-03-01T05:18:00.000-08:00

“Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity,” from Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers,
by Susan Shaughnessy

At a recent conference, a writer said, “Writers are the most superstitious people in the world.” I laughed and told him he didn’t know what he was talking about. Then I walked away in search of a more interesting discussion. After all, I’m the least superstitious person I know. Life is merely a matter of cause and effect, so what good does superstition do? Black cats, broken mirrors -- it’s all nonsense. When I arrived home from the conference, I said as much to Hubby, who was slumped in front of the TV. “Let’s go take a look at your desk,” he said, getting up and leading me into the den.

Here’s what he pointed out.

My desk has four tiers. On the top tier are photographs I took of the Sonoran Desert, plus a photograph of a cowgirl riding in Scottsdale’s Parada Del Sol who looks just like Lena Jones, the narrator of my Desert Lost and other mysteries. On the second tier stands a pink pig with green Mardi Gras beads and a tiny jade “good luck” horse on a string around its neck. The pig was bequeathed to me by a crime reporter friend who died recently; she said she hoped it would bring me better luck than she’d had. Next to the pig stand two plastic, one-eyed aliens once served with a MacDonald’s Happy Meal; they scared my son, so I took them for my own. Keeping the pig and aliens company are a small plastic koala, an anteater, and a wombat -- creatures who feature in The Koala of Death, to be released in late August. On the tier below stands a bobble-head Elvis waving an American flag (Webb family tradition says he’s a distant cousin). Next to Elvis is a fairly detailed replica of a Crusader (my mother’s family, the Riddells, are more uppity than my dad’s, and claims that one of our ancestors rode on the First Crusade).

But now we get to the really good stuff. On the bottom shelf -- the computer monitor shelf -- is a cross made of rushes that I was given on Palm Sunday in Bosham, England, while researching a book. Snuggled next to the cross is the feather of a raven, which I found in the same field where the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. Perched on top of the computer stand itself are the following: a ceramic figure of Buddha; two hand-painted rocks, one showing “The Man in the Maze,” the god whom the Pima Indians say created the world, and another raven, which is considered to be a messenger from the Spirit World by some American Indian tribes. Also on the stand are a carved bear, another important Indian figure, and a tiny plastic polar bear I found in the parking lot at the Phoenix Zoo. A small piece of quartz I picked up in an Arizona canyon sits next to them. Flanking everything are two plastic chuckwallas, reptiles common to the Sonoran Desert. And my mouse pad? It’s that kitschy painting of dogs playing poker. The bulldog is slipping an ace to what appears to be a yellow Lab. Those two don’t rely on superstition; they make their own luck by cheating. Now my eyes track right and up to the big file cabinet next to my desk, where I see a two-foot high plaster statue of Elvis with a plastic lei around his neck, a penguin, a giant anteater with her baby on her back, and a zookeeper doll with a squirrel monkey hanging around her neck and a koala clutching her leg.

“I’ve heard you mumbling and praying at your computer, too,” Hubby noted. “You couldn’t write without praying or being surrounded by those totems you call your ‘little friends,’ but if your totems work, they work, right?” Then he returned to the TV and the documentary he’d been watching about Einstein, who once famously said “God doesn’t play dice with the Universe.”

Hubby is a Quaker, so he’s tolerant of other people’s religions -- or lack thereof -- and most definitely he’s tolerant of plaster Elvises, one-eyed aliens, and painted stones. While I’m not certain that the objects on my desk qualify as “totems,” the next time I hear someone calling writers “superstitious” I think I’ll keep my mouth shut.

“No workplace can be truly alive until we see the divinity within one another, until we experience behind the breastbone the breath of life, until we insist that our work will not be the humdrum product of a sleeping spirit but a glorious monument to who we really are.” John Cowan, from The Common Table.

Writers and their characters

2010-01-21T06:53:00.000-08:00

“A writer begins by breathing life into his characters. But if you are very lucky, they breathe life into you.” from Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers, by Susan Shaughnessy.

* * *

After finishing my 10th novel (The Koala of Death)and touring on my 9th (Desert Lost), I decided to take a break, to do nothing but read escapist literature and watch trashy TV for two weeks. My resolution lasted for the entirety of Friday morning. By Friday afternoon, I’d started work on my 11th novel.

This inability to “not write” sometimes scares me, but truth be told, when I’m not writing, I miss my fictional friends. I hope they miss me, too, because no matter where I go, I’m always looking around for stories to give them, unique characters to set them against. When I’m writing a Lena Jones mystery, I view the world through her eyes. “What would Lena think about this?” I think. Following automatically, comes another question: “What would Lena do?” I’ve even caught myself in the middle of a conversation with someone, saying, “Well, as Lena said the other day...” Then I catch myself. There is no Lena. She’s a fictional character who exists in six -- going on seven -- mystery novels.

But then I catch myself again. Yes, Virginia, there is a Lena. That wounded but brave woman who takes up one-third of my waking life has become as real to me as my friends and family, and in many ways, has even become my moral guidepost. If Lena sees something that offends her, it offends me, too. If she sees something that makes her laugh, I laugh. Situations that make Lena sad make me sad. I may have created Lena Jones, but at the same time, she is also creating me. As I travel with her through the badlands of Arizona battling killers, child abusers, cutters and polygamists, Lena’s outrage sensitizes me to the suffering of others. “You see?” she appears to be asking me. “You see what they’ve done?”

Lena’s not an easy gal to be around. No matter. None of us would be “easy” if we’d been found at the age of four, lying by a Phoenix street after being shot in the head, and afterwards enduring a childhood filled with foster homes and other horrors. But we writers can learn from our most troubled of friends, can't we?

Still, it’s always a relief when I get to spend time with my zoo series character, Theodora “Teddy” Iona Esmeralda Bentley, the zoo keeper who always seems to be stumbling over dead humans. Teddy is a much less complicated person than Lena, and my days spent with this houseboat-living zoo keeper are humorous and relaxing (until another dead body shows up). When I’m volunteering at the Phoenix Zoo, I’ll see a squirrel monkey doing something outrageous, and I think,“Oh, man, I’ve got to tell Teddy about this!”

Writers are crazy. We build castles in the air, then move into them. We create characters, and have conversations with them. But isn’t that the fun of being a writer -- to walk alone into a small room and within minutes, be surrounded by a crowd of fascinating people, some of whom you dearly love?

But that’s also the scary part of being a writer: sometimes our friends take their time showing up, and the hollow sound of an empty room can be terrifying. Now that I’ve started on Desert Wind, the 7th Lena Jones mystery, I wonder -- will Lena talk to me this morning? Or will she run away when I call her name? Writing is hard. Very hard. Some days we writers sit at the computer and nothing happens. But still we sit, with our fingers hovering over the keyboard, waiting for our “imaginary” friend to appear out of nowhere and start telling us a story.

That friendship and those stories are what we writers live for.

* * *
Gail Godwin, on writing when depression strikes: “It goes just as well, but it takes twice as long. I made a deal with myself. I said, “I’ll just come up here every day.” The artist Phillip Guston told me this once when he was having a bad patch: “I go to my studio every day, because one day I may go and the angel will be there. What if I don’t go and the angel came?”

Writer Abandoned at Truck Stop

2009-12-13T09:31:00.000-08:00

I almost decided to title this, “Why No Two Book Tours Are Alike,” but in journalism, they teach us to title like we write -- short and to the point.

On Sunday, December 6, it looked like the California leg of my DESERT LOST book tour would go well. As hubby and I pulled out of Scottsdale and headed for San Diego, the temperature was mild and the sun was shining. Everything was so perfect that I crawled into the back seat and dozed while Hubby drove.

Somewhere in the Arizona desert between Casa Grande and Yuma, Hubby decided to gas up and use the restroom at a Love’s truck stop. When he exited the car, he asked if I needed to use the facilities, but I was groggy and just said no. As soon as he disappeared into Love’s, however, I rethought the situation (all those empty, sand-blasted miles stretching ahead), so I hopped out of the car and made my way to the Lady’s Room.

When I exited, no Hubby. After searching the truck stop from gas pump to storage room, I asked a friendly-looking trucker to double-check the Men’s room, but Hubby wasn’t in there. At that point, I thought it might be a good idea to stop looking for Hubby and start looking for our car, a green Isuzu SUV. But that, too, had disappeared.

No Hubby, no car.

Being well-trained in crime detection, I was able to figure out the following: Hubby, thinking I was still asleep in the Isuzu’s back seat, had simply continued on to California without me. I fumed for a while, then decided to alert the authorities. I reached for my trusty cell phone and discovered -- no phone. Like a ninny, I’d left my handbag in the car. No phone, no money, no credit cards, no nuthin’. Fortunately (for me, anyway) a Highway Patrol car pulled into the truck stop to ticket some poor wretch caught speeding down I-8, so once Mr. Trooper had written out the citation, I told Mr. Trooper my tale of woe.

“Oh, don’t worry, Ma’am,” Mr. Trooper said, “We see this sort of thing all the time. Um, by the way, did you two have an argument?”

He asked for my car’s license number, but I couldn’t remember it (could you?). I did remember, however, that it was an Isuzu and was green, with a Boston Marathon sticker on the back (due to my son, not me). After Mr. Trooper put out a APB on careless Hubby, he advised me to stay where I was. “Don’t want to go wandering off into the desert, do we, Ma’am?”

No, we didn’t.

An hour and a half later, Hubby showed up. He’d managed to make it 70 miles down the road before he got lonesome and tried to have a conversation with me. Noticing that I seemed unusually quiet, he’d taken a quick look over his shoulder, and discovered that I wasn’t there. Hubby isn’t prone to panic, but he did admit to me later that he’d had a few bad moments before he caught sight of a Highway Patrol car on the side of the road, and a trooper writing the usual speeding ticket (Warning to those about to travel on I-8 between Yuma and Casa Grande. Don’t speed. You WILL get caught). When Hubby approached him, Mr. Trooper 2 said, “Oh, yes, we’ve been
looking for you for more than an hour. Better go back for your wife before she gets madder than she already is. And be prepared to duck.”

Not being an idiot, Hubby followed instructions.

That was Day One of my book tour. On Day Two, the Storm to End All Storms rolled into
Southern California, and considerably dampened the turnout at Mysterious Galaxy. The storm continued all the way to Anaheim, where I had my second signing at the Canyon Hills Library, a favorite of mine (they love the Lena Jones books there, and enjoy discussing polygamy). Day Three dawned nicely, so the signings at Mystery Bookstore, in Westwood, and Book ‘Em, in South Pasadena went well. Day Four started off just as well, and we had a nice visit at Mysteries to Die For in Thousand Oaks...

Then Hubby got hungry.

We stopped at a small fish restaurant, which for legal reasons I won’t name, and Hubby ordered shrimp. Quite a bit of shrimp, in fact. Since I’d been stuffing myself on Oreos in the back seat for a while, I declined, and settled for some Diet Coke. With our early dinner finished, we headed back towards San Diego & the California/Arizona state line so that we’d arrive in Tucson in plenty of time to visit the zoo (Anteaters!), and then show up at Clues Unlimited for my Saturday
signing with Elizabeth Gunn (“Cool In Tucson” and others). However, just as we reached Encinitas, Hubby turned green. Kind of a chartreuse, actually, not a color I’ve ever cared for.

So we stopped at a seaside motel, where Hubby took up semi-permanent residence in the tiny bathroom and I gamboled on the beach. By next morning, he had lost considerable weight, while I had amassed a nice collection of sea shells and pretty rocks. As I started to pack up again, he informed me that, no, leaving the immediate vicinity of a bathroom wasn’t a good idea, and I’d better tell the people at the front desk that we were staying another night. So I did. I also called Chris at Clues
Unlimited and told her what was happening.

The next day I collected more seashells and more pretty rocks, and made friends with a golden retriever and a Heinz 57-something. While strolling along the main drag, I also discovered that Encinitas has lovely restaurants, several therapeutic massage parlors (no, not THAT kind, get your mind out of the gutter!), and a nice yoga studio that also sold incense and relaxation CDs. I bought a relaxation CD (bells, flutes, etc.), then drove off to Target for a portable CD to play it on. After a lovely Italian meal at the restaurant down the street, I stretched myself out on the motel bed and practiced relaxing while Hubby continued to savor the delights of the motel bathroom.

Now it's Sunday and we’re back in beautiful downtown Scottsdale. Hubby isn’t quite as green as yesterday, but he’s not exactly lively, either. Me, I’m feeling fine. And my new relaxation tape works beautifully.

One more thing. My new website is up. It’s at www.bettywebb-mystery.com

DESERT LOST debuts Dec. 5!

2009-11-13T08:15:00.000-08:00

If you'd like to discuss any of the ideas below or to request my personal appearance at your group, email me at webbscottsdale@aol.com I promise to reply!
_________________________________________________

GREAT NEWS! Library Journal has chosen DESERT LOST as one of the Top Five Mystery Novels of 2009!!! This is a major kudo, folks, and I'm as thrilled as I can be.

DESERT LOST will debut at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, December 5, at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore, in Scottsdale, Arizona. Then I’ll be leaving on my whirlwind California tour, returning in six days to begin work on DESERT WIND, the 7th Lena Jones mystery. To find out if I'll be in a city near you, check my signings blog at http://bettywebbssignings.blogspot.com

Found at the age of four lying beside a Phoenix street with a bullet in her head, private investigator Lena Jones was raised in foster homes, where she was starved and raped. Yet somehow she survived and became a Scottsdale police officer. After being shot up in a drug raid, Lena opened Desert Investigations with her friend Jimmy Sisiwan, a full-blooded Pima Indian. Now she’s hunting down her biological parents at the same time she’s hunting down killers.

In DESERT LOST, Lena discovers that the polygamists she first faced down in DESERT WIVES have opened a small colony in Scottsdale. This time, Lena finds out that when one man can have 10 wives, 9 men will have none. And the prophet of Second Zion knows just how to get rid of the competition -- even when the "competition" is comprised of boys as young as 14. But why do their mothers not protect them? When Lena finds out the answer, she is even more shocked.

As in all the Lena Jones books, an Authors Note reveals the facts behind the fiction. One of them: polygamy is on the increase -- and popping up in cities, not just rural areas.

Expecting a rush on both my polygamy books, Poisoned Pen Press has re-released DESERT WIVES with a new cover and a new Authors Note.

The reviews of DESERT LOST have been wonderful -- even stronger than the reviews for DESERT WIVES! Here are just a few DESERT LOST reviews.

LIBRARY JOURNAL --Webb lays out the details of polygamy and cult life in this fast-paced sixth series entry that will appeal to readers who enjoy gritty Southwestern mysteries. No one writes quite like she does.em>

BOOKLIST -- STARRED REVIEW: This is a complex, exciting entry in a first-class series.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY -- Clear-cut characterizations help a complicated plot flow smoothly. As Webb points out in a note, polygamy still spawns many social ills, despite the recent, well-publicized conviction of Mormon fundamentalist prophet Warren Jeffs.

MYSTERY SCENE MAGAZINE -- In her brilliant sixth outing, Arizona PI Lena Jones is confronted by the horrors of polygamy and the toll it takes on its victims.

And to top it all off, my Lena Jones novels were discussed on the prestigious Huffington Post on November 4. Lena hit the big time!

So much of Lena's success is because of you -- Lena's readers -- and for that, Lena and I thank you, thank you, thank you!

To celebrate the release of DESERT LOST my web site is undergoing a major redesign. Check it out at http://www.bettywebb-mystery.com If it's not finished by the time you read this, keep checking back. Those web sites are killers to work with!

Judging from the cards & emails I've received, many of Lena's fans are aspiring writers. Sometimes they contact me at webbscottsdale@aol.com for writing advice (and I always respond), so here's some more advice, beginning with a quote:

“It’s easier not to write than to write. But write for a certain number of hours every single day, every day, no matter how you feel. Only by logging in those hours do you become the kind of writer you want to be – even if you have to spend those “writing” hours just staring at the blank computer screen. The logjam will eventually loosen, but only if you are there to nudge it along.” from Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers, by Susan Shaughnessy.

Researching and writing material like DESERT LOST isn’t easy -- especially when your writing day begins at 4 a.m. and usually continues until noon (I retired from full-time journalism 4 years ago). Many of my readers are under the impression that these books just roll out easily, but that has never been the case. For me, writing is like opening a vein. As I was writing on DESERT LOST, I kept a journal about the difficulties of the writing life. Below are some excerpts from that journal.

I can’t, I can’t, I just can’t...

The writing has gone horribly for weeks. It seems like ever day I’ve sat there in front of the computer screen waiting for inspiration to come. But it never did. I wrote anyway.

At first, the words I wrote were bland and the sentences clunked along like lead boots. It seemed like my characters wouldn’t do anything I wanted them to do, the plot seemed predictable, and the theme -- if there was one -- was so well hidden even I couldn’t find it.

I wrote anyway. Every day. From 4 a.m. to noon. All the time, I felt depressed and no longer believed in myself or my work. I decided to accept the fact that I was nothing more than a typing robot, a writer with no talent -- just a writing habit.
It was my writing habit that kept writing, not me. I’d been doing this for so long, that I couldn’t stop myself. The morning that I came down with that horrible stomach thing? I wrote between trips to the bathroom. The day I had the argument with my friend, I wrote to make myself stop crying.

But I wrote anyway, thank God. Because eventually, I wrote my way through the crap, and fought my way through to the good stuff.

People talk a lot about writers block. As a journalist, I've never believed in it. After all, if a reporter tells her editor she’s blocked and can’t write a story that is due at 3 p.m., that reporter gets fired. Above my desk is a plaque given to me by Arizona PressWomen. It says: THE ULTIMATE INSPIRATION IS THE DEADLINE.

I’ve found that to be true. Writing is NEVER easy. People who are experiencing what they interpret to be “writers block” often believe that if writing starts getting painfully difficult, there’s a problem. So they turn their backs on their computer and run away. Bad move. The truth is that writing is almost aways painful. Sure, every now and then you get a thrill when everything is working great and the words just flow. But I’ve found that feeling of ease and exhilaration to be very, very rare. Mostly you just slit open a vein, then sit in front of the computer and wait for the blood -- and words -- to flow. Still, what do you do when the words won’t come?

A long time ago I read an inspirational piece that said 95% of the secret to success is to just "show up.”

I truly believe that. When the words don't flow for me, I still sit there at the computer every bit as long as I do when the words DO flow. This means that I go to my computer at 4 a.m. every morning and sit there until noon -- regardless of whether the words are flowing or not. And guess what? Those words begin flowing after I’ve sat there for a hour or so. One caveat: by “sitting there” I don’t mean checking my emails or surfing the net. No, I mean sitting there, hands hovering over the keyboard, staring at the story that is giving me heartache. When I continue to do that, no matter how silly or heartbreaking it all seems, my "block" eventually disappears. Why? I have no idea -- it just does.

The lesson I've taught myself? Don't run from the pain; embrace it. In other words, just show up. Eventually, something magical will happen -- if you just show up.

The fact that DESERT LOST is now on its way to the stores is testament to the fact that “showing up” works. Lena Jones knows that life can be hard, and I -- her creator -- know that writing is just as hard. In the long run, though, both life and writing are worth every painful, bloody hour.

To close, I’d like to quote from the wonderful columnist Erma Bombeck, now deceased: “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’ ”

Erma showed up.

Writing Weirdness

2009-09-02T06:43:00.000-07:00

"A writer begins by breathing life into his characters. But if you are very lucky, they breathe life into you." from Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers, by Susan Shaughnessy

"We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art." Henry James

"The creative power, which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book, quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape, keep one at it more than anything." Virginia Woolf
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Last week I noticed that the scene I was working on was running too long and seemed to have no point. Yet I couldn’t stop writing it. Teddy Bentley, my zookeeper/sleuth from the humorous "The Anteater of Death," was trying to tell Zorah, the Gunn Zoo director, that she’d just discovered something important about the koala keeper who’d just been murdered, only to have Zorah refuse to let her talk. The more Teddy tried to impart her information, the more quickly Zorah interrupted her, even stopping at one point to take a telephone call.

Now, since I begin my writing day at 4 a.m., I’m used to writing nonsense. It usually takes me about an hour before I wake up and begin to make sense, but I’d been writing this mess for two full hours and the scene just kept getting longer and longer without making any sense at all! But, taking my own advice, I persevered. By 8 a.m. I was writing fanatically, giving Teddy more pleas to be heard, more interruptions by Zorah. Then suddenly -- Eureka!

I realized that I’d finally, and unconsciously, typed a sentence that made the entire scene make sense. Not only that, but the sentence was so funny that I darned near fell out of my chair laughing. That seemingly "pointless" scene had tied together two separate plotlines into one neat package, while delivering a punch line worthy a stand-up comedian.

Sometimes our unconscious mind knows what it’s doing long before our conscious mind does. In that, the unconscious mind is like a wild beast. We have to have the courage to let the Wild Beast do its beastly thing. Later, our conscious mind -- our editor mind -- can go back and tidy up the rough spots. But without the Wild Beast’s snarlings and flailings, there would be nothing to tidy up -- just a blank page.
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"One day you will read what you have written and see that it is absolute dog shit. So just write some more dog shit." Anonymous

"By perseverance the snail finished the race." Anonymous

"That Anonymous guy really gets around." Betty Webb

Writing After Vacations (or Other Distractions)

2009-08-10T06:40:00.000-07:00

From a Writer’s Digest cartoon:
First writer at cocktail party. "I’m working on my new novel."
Second writer: "Neither am I."
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One of the hardest things a writer has to do is resume writing after a break, due to vacation, illness, or even something as seemingly connected to the creative process as hold a workshop at a writing conference. This year all three things happened to me at separate times, and, oh, the woe, before I could get into gear again.

What happens, I think, is that when we’re off doing something else, the usual "thought tracks" in the creative part of our minds change course. Or erode. Or something like that. Instead of thinking about what our characters are going to do next, we’re thinking about whether we’ll make our flight on time, if the nurse will arrive with the pain medication before we start hurting again, or perfecting the talk/workshop we’re giving next morning at the conference. So much real stuff is going down that our fictional "lives" fade into the background.

Then the day comes when we arrive home to face an empty computer screen. I don’t know about you, but for me, starting writing again after a few days’ or weeks’ intermission is even harder than starting from page one. My usual writing schedule (4 a.m. to noon, seven days a week) is off track, and I feel twitchy, not creative. Instead of pouncing gleefully on the keyboard every morning, I have to drag myself there.

But we drag ourselves there anyway, don’t we? That’s because writers write. Fortunately, after a few miserable days, the old schedule and the old joy finally kick in. We find ourselves recovered from our malaise, and not even the very real charms of the Sonoran Desert in full bloom or the purple heather of the Scottish Highlands can lure us away from the fictional exploits of our own heroes and villains.

That’s probably because every writer -- deep down -- is as nutty as a fruitcake. We not only build castles in the air, we move in to the damn things!
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"Perseverance is not a long race; it’s many short races, one after another." from Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers, by Susan Shaughnessy

"They can’t yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him." Ernest Hemingway

"The most effective way to do it is to just do it." Anonymous

The problem with creativity

2009-06-07T12:40:00.000-07:00

Today I sat at my computer for a full eight hours, attempting to write on The Koala of Death before anything really happened. Eight hours of zilch! But when things finally did begin to happen, the ideas were pure gold. The eight hours before that, however, were ghastly. Clumsy sentences that went nowhere. Hackneyed ideas that had been used time and time again by other writers. Cardboard characters that refused to come to life. Nothing but junk, junk, junk.

Poor Koala!

Non-writers often believe that creativity is easy, that it's something we were "born with", that we just sit down and ideas automatically come to us as easy as switching on a light. But we writers don't have built-in light switches. We're just human beings -- complex people who have lives outside of our writing. We have relatives who are in trouble, friends who are ailing, spouses with whom we are quarreling. Heck, we may even be going quietly nuts all by ourselves!

The mistake so many beginning writers make is that they think they need to work out their problems and "get clarity" before starting to write.

Experienced writers know that when we approach the stories we're working on, we approach them with a load of personal baggage that would break an elephant's back. Yet still we write. Three-quarters of what we turn out during those difficult times may turn out to be crap, but it's that one-quarter of gold that keeps us writing.

* * *

"You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."

JACK LONDON

"This stretch of the river is named Hell’s Half-Mile."

JOHN WESLEY POWELL

"The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply written; it’s a dreadful, awful fact that writing is like any other work."

From Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers,

by Susan Shaughnessy

Inspiration for Writers

2009-05-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

Writing is hard. The more we write, the more we realize that.

In recognition of the special challenges we writers must face every day -- fear of rejection, fear of not being understood, and most of all, fear that the words and ideas simply won’t come -- I’ve decided to weekly post words of encouragement both from me and from others. Enjoy, and take heart.

"Writing is a path as full of darkness as it is of light, and so the way ahead is hard to see. There are so many ominous shadows, unpredictable gusts of wind, unexpected blinding shafts of sunlight. It’s easy to get lost, to trip over our own hidden roots, or plunge unaware into unexplored caverns in our psyche. As writers, we hardly ever know exactly where we’re going. The only thing that most of us know how to do is deep putting one foot after the other in the darkness and trust that eventually we’ll get there." From Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers, by Susan Shaughnessy

"When the well’s dry, we know the worth of the writer." Benjamin Franklin

"How do I work? I grope." Albert Einstein

Three years ago, exhausted from the horrific research that went into my 2008 Lena Jones novel, Desert Cut, I decided to take a time out and write something considerably lighter. Thus emerged The Anteater of Death, a humorous mystery set in a zoo that featured Lucy, a giant anteater from Belize, and her keeper, poor-little-rich-girl, Theodora "Teddy" Iona Esmeralda Bentley. I didn’t really expect much from the book other than the fun of writing it, but Anteater has taken on a life of its own.

Anteater was released in November 2008, and since then, I’ve toured the Southwest and given talks on both the writing life and -- yes -- giant anteaters and other zoo animals. The reading public seems to have taken Lucy to heart, so much so that this past weekend The Anteater of Death was awarded Best Mystery Novel of 2008 by the Arizona Book Publishing Association.

At first I was shocked. Anteater wasn't about anything important, other than "Be kind to animals," and "Support your local zoo; feeding all those animals doesn't come cheap." But then, after I thought about it for a while, I found the answer.

In these financially scary times, people want a little relaxation. When we don’t know if our paycheck will arrive with a pink slip, we need something that lets us escape from our anxieties. And while I’m not decrying the heavy subjects my Lena Jones books explore (polygamy, mental illness, child abuse, the destruction of the Southwestern desert, etc.), I understand that books often dismissed as mere "cozies" serve an important place in this world.

Maybe more now than ever before.

For information on Anteater,check www.bettywebb-zoomystery.com

For information on the Lena Jones mysteries, check www.bettywebb-mystery.com

The Detective Novel -- Making the Tradition Your Own

2009-03-27T11:09:00.000-07:00

By Vicki Delany

I’ve recently finished reading a very interesting book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale. It’s a true story about a sensational murder in the town of Road, in England in 1860. Mr. Whicher is Jack Whicher, one of the very first detectives on the London police. One night in July of 1860, a three-year-old boy was removed from his bed, taken outside, had his throat cut, and was stuffed into an outdoor privy (aka outhouse). As the house was tightly locked that night, and there was no sign of break and enter, suspicion immediately fell on inhabitants of the house, family and servants. After an initial incompetent investigation by the local police (which refused, for matters of delicacy, to question the family) a detective from the brand-new Scotland Yard was called.

And, not incidentally, the detective novel was born.

Summerscale explains that Wilkie Collins’s great book The Moonstone was influenced by the Road House case, and Collins’ detective, Sergeant Cuff, is considered to be a fictional version of Inspector Whicher. The Road case contains the staples of mystery fiction as we know it today: the large family with hidden passions and secrets, the nosy villagers, the incompetent (or just outwitted) local police, the big-city detective.

The Moonstone is, arguably, the prototype for all detective fiction being written today.
Including my own, the Constable Molly Smith Series, of which the second, Valley of the Lost, was released by Poisoned Pen Press in February.

I am a great lover of British Police Procedurals (Ian Rankin, Susan Hill, Peter Robinson, Aline Templeton, Stuart Pawson are among my favourites). When I decided to switch from writing standalones to a series, I wanted to write the sort of book I love to read so much: the traditional police procedural.

One problem – I have no law enforcement experience whatsoever. None. Zip. Nada. I used to be a computer programmer and then a systems analyst with a big bank, not much police work there. (Although I am qualified to identify potential money laundering and terrorist banking activity!) And as a Canadian, writing a Canadian series, I’m in a somewhat difficult position regarding policing, as most of what I read is either British or American. And Canadian policing can be very different.

Here’s an example. Canadian police are not allowed to carry their guns when off duty. Most Americans, I believe, are required to do so. The British police don’t carry guns normally, and have to take special steps if they need one. At the end of In the Shadow of the Glacier (the first book in the series), when Constable Smith isn’t in uniform she has only her cell phone and stiletto heels with which to defend herself.

As Camille said in her essay below: Don't write what you know. Write what you want to learn. Where could I go to find out about Canadian policing?

I wrote to the police force of the town that is the inspiration for the fictional village of Trafalgar B.C., explained who I was and what I was trying to do. To my considerable surprise, and delight, they wrote back and said they’d be happy to help. It was as easy as that.

Over the next months, my contact answered all my questions - he even went around the station taking pictures to send me - and when I arrived in town he gave me a tour of the station (including the cells complete with prisoner), introduced me to everyone, and arranged for me to go on a couple of walk-alongs with the beat constable. I met a female officer who was happy to answer all my questions about the special difficulties women face on the job. Later, I met a police officer for the town near where I live at a book signing and she arranged for me to accompany one of their officers on a ride-along. Nice, eh? On the other hand, I wrote to the police in the town where I used to live asking for help and got a very terse note back, basically telling me to get lost.

When I told one of my crime-writing friends about that, he suggested that in my book I have a character transfer in from said town because he couldn’t stand the incompetence and corruption. I resisted the urge to do so.

I wonder where Wilkie Collins got help for his books.
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To learn more about Vicki Delany, check out VALLEY OF THE LOST and other novels from Poisoned Pen Presssee the exciting trailer at You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOJ4m391LZQComing May 2009 - GOLD DIGGER: A KLONDIKE MSYTERYwww.vickidelany.com http://typem4murder.blogspot.com

And for more information about mystery novels and writing, be sure and read the other posts below.

"Malice in Miniature"

2009-02-23T07:03:00.001-08:00

Author Camille Minichino explains her approach to Malice in Miniature

I love a good argument. Ask anyone. Not a fight, mind you, but an argument or true debate— a set of statements in which one follows logically as a conclusion from the others. The best distinction I've heard came from a fifth-grader in a kids' logic class that I taught: when you argue it's about one thing; when you fight, it's about everything.

The problem is that too often I have a preferred outcome in an argument. I'm rooting for a team or a political candidate or for my friend's daughter who's standing at the debating club podium. It's nerve-wracking and I'm inevitably emotionally distressed over the process and the results.

What could be better then, than reading about a debate that's been over for one hundred and fifty years? The result is part of history; it does me no good to whine, "if only … !" I can immerse myself in long passages of beautiful, persuasive discourse based on reason, with no stake in who wins. Heaven!

So, what's not to love about the Lincoln-Douglas debates?

In Malice in Miniature, the third book in my new miniature mysteries series, the citizens of my fictional town of Lincoln Point, California, reenact one of the seven famous debates preceding the 1858 senatorial election in Illinois. In fact, Lincoln lost that election, but it's too late for me to care.

As I've created it, Lincoln Point is obsessed with our sixteenth president. There are quotes from Honest Abe on the city buildings; the main thoroughfares are Gettysburg Boulevard, Springfield Boulevard, and Hanks Road; the town is bordered by Joshua Speed Woods on one side and Nolin Creek Pines on the other; the indie coffee shop is called Seward's Folly. You get the picture.

It seemed natural that the citizens would have a debate reenactment, where actors auditioned for the coveted roles of Lincoln and Douglas. This was one of my favorite books to write. My protagonist, Gerry Porter, visits the city hall often in the book, and hears would-be actors reciting lines from the debate. It was a chance to pull quotes from the texts of the debates and feel I was part of their history.

It did come as a surprise to me that I ended up reading so many Lincoln books for this series, especially for Malice in Miniature. How did that happen? Didn't I choose to create a fictional town so I wouldn't have to do research?

My first series, the periodic table mysteries are set in the real city of Revere, Massachusetts, where I grew up. I got tired of having to call my relatives and childhood friends every time I needed information. Is Tuttle Street still one way? How many trees are in front of the high school? Is there a mailbox anywhere on Malden Street? One of the books, The Boric Acid Murder, is set at the Revere Public Library. I was forever calling the staff, who were most cooperative. "Please go to the window in the reading room and look north," I'd say. "What do you see?"

I wonder why I always set myself up for the same kind of challenge: doing research, as well as creating characters and structuring a mystery?

I think it's because I like to learn while I'm writing.

There's a common myth: write what you know. But what fun is that? Sure, you have to be interested in what you're writing. I know physics and wrote a physics-based series. Making miniatures is my hobby, and I love writing about them.

But if you write only the parts you already know, it could come out flat and pedantic.

There wasn't a lot of research involved in the elements themselves in the periodic table mysteries; I already knew enough about hydrogen, helium, and so on. So, in each book, I chose another theme or setting that I could learn about. In The Carbon Murder, it was horses and the equestrian world; in The Oxygen Murder it was documentary filmmaking. In other books, I've taken on racing cars, EMTs, a television crew, and the business of (human) coyotes.

I'm on my thirteenth novel, the fifth in the miniature mysteries. I'm still learning.

I think the best advice to aspiring writers should be: Don't write what you know. Write what you want to learn.

Anyone want to argue with that?

Dual authors write DEATH ROLL

2009-01-05T05:47:00.001-08:00

As readers of this blog know, recently there have been three -- three, count 'em -- three new series set in zoos. The first to appear was Death Roll, a dual effort by Marilyn Victor and Michael Allan Mallory. Their experience brings up a question: How do friends write a book together and remain friends?

About the authors

Michael Allan Mallory works with computers in the information technology field, which allows him to support his cats in the lavish lifestyle to which they’ve grown accustomed. Writing exercises the other part of his brain and allows him to make use of his degree in English literature. An avid animal lover, he’s interested in the welfare of wildlife and the conservation of animals. Michael is a member of Mystery Writers of America and the American Association of Zookeepers.

An animal lover since she could walk, Marilyn Victor is a zoo volunteer and fosters everything from dogs to rats for an animal rescue group located in the Twin Cities. At the moment she shares her home with an over-indulged Bichon Frise and is hoping to soon add a pair of cockatiels to the family. She is currently serving as president of the Minneapolis/St. Paul chapter of Sisters in Crime. Visit them at http://www.blogger.com/www.snakejones.com

Marilyn: Although we’d been friends for over fifteen years when we began writing Death Roll, we’d never written together. It was new territory. At the time there were no other zoo mysteries on the shelves and we were excited to leverage my experience as a docent at the Minnesota Zoo.

Michael: In fact, our only previous collaboration had been disastrous: tennis. We stunk. When most people play tennis they try to best the other player with some out of reach shot. Not us. We were so bad we could barely get the ball back and forth across the net. Our one goal was to volley as many times as we could without missing, so we wouldn’t have to keep starting over. This meant hitting the ball so the other player actually had a decent chance of sending it back over the net, keeping the game alive.

Marilyn: Which pretty much describes the way we write together. With Death Roll we worked out the premise, major characters and created a general outline. Then one of us took the lead, wrote a few chapters and lobbed—er, e-mailed them to the other, who added some spin, put in more body English and sent it back across the net. We moved on to the next chapters until we reached the end. After the novel was completed, we went over it again to smooth out the rough edges and fill in any holes.

Michael: A big advantage of a writing partner is having that second person who can suggest things you might not see. One of our favorite examples of this occurs in the last half of Death Roll when our protagonist, zookeeper Snake Jones, is at the local police station trying to view the evidence against a friend who has been arrested for murder. We didn’t know quite how this scene was going to play out or how we were going to resolve an issue regarding the murder. However, in the second draft, Marilyn added photographs of the crime scene in the evidence folder, realizing there would be some. It then occurred to me that we could use those photos to provide key information about the crime, as well as illustrate Snake’s knowledge of wildlife behavior, further establishing her character. Two in one!

Marilyn: Another advantage of a collaborator comes when one partner runs out of gas. Both of us at one time or other have tossed up our hands and said, “Here, you take it! See what you can do with this mess.” A fresh set of eyes can make a difference.

Michael: Ah, difference. Yes, there are differences. The biggest challenge of a writing partner comes when your ideas don’t mesh together, and one person wants to go one way with the story and the other wants to go somewhere else. We’ve both mounted spirited defenses for our version of the story or how a certain character ought to behave, sometimes winning, sometimes compromising. Flexibility is the key to a successful and harmonious collaboration. In our case, though we both cared deeply about Death Roll, our friendship mattered to us more, which meant egos had to be put on a leash.

Marilyn: Even when our beautiful words were mercilessly slashed by the other, we knew it was for the good of the project. And that’s what makes the collaboration successful, that both of us care more about the quality of the end product rather than whose words made it so. Take this blog entry. After writing and re-writing, I couldn’t tell you who wrote what.

Michael: Haven’t got a clue.

Zoo mysteries. Why now?

2008-12-13T09:13:00.000-08:00

By Ann Littlewood, guest blogger, author of Night Kill, published by Poisoned Pen Press

Betty Webb’s The Anteater of Death; Death Roll by Marilyn Victor and Michael Allan Mallory; and my own Night Kill—what’s up with three zoo mysteries in two years?

Jacqueline Fiedler set Tiger’s Palette in a zoo ten years ago, but few mysteries have used this setting since then. Animals in mysteries are common enough—Donna Andrews writes a series featuring exotic animals, and multitudes of mysteries have domestic feline and canine characters. But lately we have this spate of zoo mysteries, all different, all chock full of wild animals.

I can’t tell you why now because I’ve always wondered why not. It’s puzzled me that zoos haven’t been standard fare in the mystery world. Just think of all the ways you can kill someone off! I have the advantage of working twelve years as a zookeeper, but, really, anyone can see the potential. If being chomped by lions, tigers, or crocodiles doesn’t do it for you, there’s always poisoning from snake or spider bite, trampling via zebra stampede, evisceration by sloth bear or cassowary, and the many creative ways elephants have found to vent their frustrations on uppity upright primates. If all that gore is too dismaying, how about veterinary injections gone wrong, zoonoses (diseases from animals), or garden-variety work accidents?

As for characters, any zoo will have keepers, management (already with the conflict!), volunteers, grounds keepers, maintenance staff, a board or a city council or both. Take note that people work with animals because they love them and, sometimes, in addition, because they are…how to put this…not necessarily gifted at interaction with their own species. Hang out at a zoo and it won’t be hard to develop characters with an abundance of passions, opinions, and convictions who are a bit odd around the edges. Don’t overlook the unpredictable and unfathomable General Public, and that reliable source of stress, animal rights activists.

Zoos have all this to offer the mystery writer, but wait—there’s more! Humor? Mix visitors—adults or children—and animals, and humor happens. (Ask me about the raccoon eggs.) Animals reveal personality and character to those who take the time to watch, and they can be way more ornery and quirky than any bunch of office workers. As just one tiny example, not to go into X-rated detail, but we had this domestic bunny hopping around loose on the grounds, see, and this jungle fowl rooster, and, they had this, um, relationship… Or would you believe a weasel with a (live) pet mouse? Probably not, but I have witnesses.

What about the potential to develop story lines around serious issues? Conservation and animal care both offer boatloads, but there’s also… No, I’m stopping there. Better to save a few great ideas for my next zoo mystery.

Ann Littlewood was a zookeeper at the Oregon Zoo in Portland, Oregon, for 12 years, working with a wide variety of mammals and birds. After a stint in corporate America, she is delighted to be back in the zoo world, at least mentally, writing the Iris Oakley mystery series. To learn more about Ann, visit her web site at www.annlittlewood.com

The story behind "The Anteater of Death"

2008-10-23T06:25:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you just need a laugh.

While I was immersed in the research for Desert Cut, the darkest of all my Lena Jones novels, I grew so gloomy that I stepped up my volunteer work at the Phoenix Zoo. At least the monkeys always made me smile. One day, while watching several irate female monkeys gang up on the misbehaving Alpha male, I remarked to a fellow volunteer, “Somebody should write a book about this.”

“But isn’t that the kind of thing you do?” she answered.

“Hmmm.”

Later, while eating lunch by the Giant Anteater enclosure, I began toying with the idea. A mystery centered around monkeys? Maybe. But at that point, Jezebel, the zoo’s star Giant Anteater gave a squeak and began chasing Zeke, her baby. After she caught him, the two wrestled in the dirt until the exhausted tot climbed up on his mother’s back, dug his talons into her dense fur, and dozed off.

Hmmm, I thought, as I munched my quesidilla.

People who’ve read the writing tips on my blog know that I write from 4 a.m. to whenever, so in the case of Desert Cut, that meant starting the day with a whopping dose of noir. After several hours of writing dark-and-gloomy, I’m usually so emotionally exhausted that all I’m capable of doing is collapsing on the sofa to watch Jerry Springer reruns.

The afternoon after my multiple hmmms, I began fiddling around with a humorous short story titled, The Anteater of Death, my reward for sticking to the gruesome research that fueled Desert Cut. In that first inception, Anteater was meant to be nothing more than a diversion, a giggly little trifle to entertain myself with after I’d done my real work. But writers write. And sometimes they don’t know when to stop. In the following weeks, the short story became a novella and eventually evolved into a full-length novel about an innocent anteater named Jezebel who gets framed for murder. How can an anteater commit murder, you ask? Easily. When attacked, Giant Anteaters rise up on their hind legs to their full five-foot height, unfurl four-inch talons, and disembowel their unfortunate assailants.

Lovely.

My writing day shifted to accommodate two books. Mornings, I worked on Desert Cut, which details the human rights abuses inflicted on millions of women and girls throughout the world. In the afternoons I deserted Jerry Springer to tickle my funny bone with The Anteater of Death. This unplanned novel starred a spunky Phoenix zookeeper named Theodora “Teddy” Iona Esmeralda Bentley and her friend Jezebel, a possibly homicidal Giant Anteater. In the morning, tears; in the afternoon, chuckles.

One day at the zoo, while telling Jezebel how inspirational she’d been, I realized I was producing a possible series, and at that point, I saw a problem looming because of Anteater’s real-life location; call it the Jessica Fletcher/Cabot Cove Effect. After so many murders in Cabot Cove, who would be crazy enough to visit? Fearing that all the fictional dead bodies I was piling up at the Phoenix Zoo might scare away our own prospective visitors, I created a fictional zoo outside a fictional California coastal town and moved Teddy from her hot Phoenix apartment to the houseboat where I’d once spent an idyllic summer. Thus the tiny village of Gunn Landing was born, and with it, the Gunn Zoo and a Giant Anteater named Lucy. In contrast to the orphaned Lena Jones, I burdened Teddy with an embezzling father and socialite mother. I also gave her a three-legged dog and a one-eyed cat, let her houseboat develop a few leaks, and for spice, introduced her to handsome Sheriff Joe Rejas, of whom Teddy’s snobbish, ex-beauty queen mother mightily disapproved.

My Anteater problems weren’t over, though.

Aware of my reputation as a noir writer, I asked Poisoned Pen Press – which wanted to publish the series – if I should use a pen name. After batting the problem around for a while, editor Barbara Peters decided it was time to show readers my “softer side” and emerge (albeit only temporarily) from the noir closet.

“In person you’re a pretty amusing gal,” Barbara said. “Why hide it?”

So I won’t. Throughout the Gunn Zoo series, I promise to amuse. But that doesn’t mean Lena Jones and her many problems will disappear. Lena returns in Fall ’09 with Desert Lost, where she runs into more problems with Arizona polygamists (first covered in 2002’s best-selling Desert Wives). But because I am now free to be amusing, Lena will start sharing the bookshelves with the much less complicated Teddy Bentley.

Does Lena mind?

I doubt it. Last night, out there in the dark and gloomy Arizona desert, I’m pretty sure I heard Lena chuckling.

Seems Lena needed a laugh, too.

How I Write A Book -- Final Installment

2008-10-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

Okay, now I’ve come clean about how I actually write that first draft. And, as I’ve admitted, my first drafts are little more than stream-of-consciousness scratchings that continue on for around 200-300 pages. So now what?

The first thing I do is go back over that first draft and make a list of everything included in each chapter -- page length, day of scene, scene setting (office, desert, harbor, whatever), who is in the scene/s (I always put characters’ names in caps), and what actually happens. For "The Anteater of Death," my new book (to be released November 1) a sample chapter listing looked something like this:

Chapter 12. Pgs. 132-148. Tuesday a.m. In zoo and on houseboat. While feeding the animals at the zoo, TEDDY sees child fall into bear pit, jumps in to rescue him, almost gets killed by RIO, the Andean bear. Saves child. Goes home to MERILEE (her houseboat), makes list of people who might have killed GRAYSON. CARO (Teddy’s socialite mother) stops by, begs her to quit zoo and marry rich guy. TEDDY and CARO argue until CARO leaves. Then SHERIFF JOE (Teddy’s boyfriend) stops by, tells TEDDY to stop meddling in murder case, that she might get killed. TEDDY refuses, JOE leaves, both furious and terrified for her.

By the time I’ve done this with each and every chapter, I have an idea of where the "flat" spots in the book are, and where I’ve set too many back-to-back scenes in the same spot (a good mixture of outside and inside scenes are necessary to keep readers from getting bored with the same old same old). At this point, I frequently start shuffling scenes in order to keep the tension in the book (also known as the Arc of Action) consistently on the rise. Sometimes I take out entire chapters and/or scenes because they don’t really contribute to the Arc of Action. And sometimes I delete characters for the same reason, or because two characters are too much alike. As a general rule, I usually cut about one-third of the characters that I started the book with. Now that the chapters have been "shuffled" (their order changed), I write new "connectors" -- commonly known as "transitions" where needed. THIS IS DRAFT TWO.

Once I’m satisfied that the book is steadily rising in tension along the Arc of Action and that no absolutely unnecessary chapters, scenes, or characters remain in the book, I start the actual "writing." Because remember, that original first draft is a total mess, lousy with passive voice, passive verbs, sentence fragments, ass-backwards sentences, and God knows what all. So I fix the language to the best of my ability. THIS IS DRAFT THREE.

Once Draft Three is finished, I print out the entire manuscript and read it from start to finish. Does the story continue to move forward, with constantly rising tension? Are there any plot holes? Do the characters remain true to themselves? Are they different enough from each other? Have I used all five senses in doing my descriptions (smell, hearing, sight, touch, taste)? Have I set up each scene quickly, in a journalistic manner (who, what, when, where)? Chances are, I haven’t in some areas, so I go back and fix what needs fixin’. And I also do some final fact-checking (such as making certain that Giant Anteaters have no teeth). THIS IS DRAFT FOUR.

Now onto DRAFT FIVE, where I tighten the language even further and fix every typo I can. When I’ve done that, I send the book off to my agent, who then forwards it to my publisher.

At that point, my editor usually asks for a few minor changes -- and I make them (Barbara Peters knows more about mysteries than I do!). After I've sent those changes to her, she looks them over, then sends the manuscript off to be copy-edited. And we're on our way!

Yes, this is a long, complicated process, and it usually takes about a year. But as soon as I've found a quicker, easier way to write a book, I'll let you know!

By the way, check out the interview with me on Suite 101. It just won an Editor's Choice Award!http://mysterycrimefiction.suite101.com/article.cfm/writers_rituals_betty_webb

If the link doesn't come up when you click it, just cut and paste it into your web browser.

How I write a novel

2008-09-10T11:40:00.000-07:00

There are dozens of ways to write a novel, but here’s the way I do it.

Step No. 1. I sit down at my computer. Does that sound obvious? Well, it isn’t. I’ve talked to scores of people who wanted to write books, and many of them were full of ideas -- plot, character, marketing, etc. Unfortunately, only a small minority had actually sat down at their computer and started the book. Of that small minority, only a smaller minority wrote with regularity. Quiz all the other I-wanna-write-a-book folks on the reasons why, and they usually mumble something about not having enough time.

Sure, time’s a problem for all of us. Families, jobs, personal commitments -- they all conspire to wrest our writing time away from us. Before I retired a couple of years ago, I was a journalist, working an average of 60 hours per week. I also had (and still do) a family, pets, and a falling-down house -- all of which needed my attention. But gee, I was always so tired! When I came home from work -- journalism, with its daily deadlines, is one of the most exhausting of all professions -- all I wanted to do was find some place dark in which to curl up into a foetal position. Writing? Fugitaboutdit.

But I wanted to write. REALLY wanted to write. After examining my time-crunch problem (I worked 9 a.m. to frequently 11 p.m., plus sometimes on the weekends WITHOUT comp time), I came up with a solution. I’d write BEFORE I went to work. Thus began my 15-year habit of getting up at 4 a.m. EVERY SINGLE DAY, writing until 8 a.m., when I got ready for work. Excruciating? Oh, yeah. There were mornings when I was so sleepy and miserable that I sat at my keyboard and wept in self-pity. But I kept to my self-imposed schedule anyway. As the months (and years) wore on, that 4
a.m. curtain call became easier to answer. My tears dried up and the words began to flow. It didn't happen overnight. And it took discipline. Writing Tip No. 1: If you don’t have discipline, forget about writing a novel; write a poem. Writing Tip No. 2. Once you’ve established your writing schedule, DO NOT VARY IT, although home and the world will give you millions of reasons to do so. Ignore them all.

Okay, now that you’ve developed the discipline (John Wayne called it “grit”) that it takes to write a novel, here’s Step No. 2. Write an outline of your novel. Yes, yes, I know. You’ve heard many successful authors scoff at the idea of an outline. But hear me out. Once I decide to write a novel, I start making an outline. Who killed whom and why and possible sub-plot(s). This is (I call it) Wonder Time, because it’s so much fun. During Wonder Time, ideas and characters come fast and furious while I try on characters’ names, jot down possible settings (doing a little fun research as well). Once I’ve assembled my cast of characters and put them, say, in a little desert town outside of Phoenix, I come up with my “arc of action” (a penciled graph showing how quickly the action will escalate). Then I figure out what three scenes are the most important -- and I place them equidistant on the arc of action. Then I write everything down so I won’t forget: Here’s what happens in Chapter One; here’s what happens in Chapter Two; here’s what happens in Chapter Three... and all the way to the end, which is usually somewhere around Chapter 25. FUN, FUN, FUN!!! This is Wonder Time, remember. I’m not actually writing, you understand, I’m just playing around.

Step No. 3. Using that wonderfully detailed and thrilling outline, I start the actual writing. Chapters One, Two and Three go pretty fast because I’m all fired up, still loving my brilliant outline. FUN, FUN, FUN!!! However, somewhere around Chapter Four, the fun begins to pall. I’ve come up with a few new ideas (and characters) that don’t fit in my so-called “brilliant” outline. Disgusted, I file the “brilliant” outline away and don’t look at it again. Gosh! I’ve managed to either incorporated the best of all possible worlds -- by having my outline and
throwing it away, too -- or the worst of all possible worlds. And now is when the going gets tough, so this old toughie gets going. I start forcing myself to slave away for a minimum of four hours a day, not knowing where I’m going and or when (or if) I’ll get there. It’s not a happy time, but I’ve built up so much momentum, I can’t stop. In fact, sometimes it’s downright miserable. I begin to doubt my talent. I begin to doubt my story. Oh, yuk! Frequently, I get so scared that I sneak a look at that old filed-away outline and write a few scenes from it. Then, when the energy
kicks back in, I file the outline away again, and charge ahead. Writing Tip No. 3: Keep writing, even though when you feel that your “muse” has deserted you; if you keep writing long enough, your muse will come back. Conversely, if you stop, she’ll abandon you forever for someone with more grit. The muse never alights on writer who aren’t already sitting at the keyboard. I dunno why, maybe Ms. Muse just has a thing for electronic gizmos.

Step No. 4. I write all the way to the end of the first draft WITHOUT stopping to read what I’ve written. Why? Because first drafts always suck. They’re supposed to suck -- that’s their job. A first draft is nothing more than the skeleton of a novel, and skeletons ain’t pretty. Drafts Two, Three, Four and (God help us all) Draft Five are where you prettify that ugly old first draft. Believe me, if I ever stopped writing and took a hard look at what I was writing, I’d be so appalled that I’d never be able to continue on to those magic word, “the end.” Yes, I know it’s
tempting to go back and rewrite some of those more clumsily worded phrases and paragraphs, but it’s my advice -- here comes Writing Tip No. 4 -- don’t do it!!! If you go back and read the awful dreck you’ve written, you’ll be tempted to slash your wrists (or, at the very least, have plastic surgery, change your name, and leave town). Besides, once you start full-scale editing (and you’re months away from that), all those pretty little passages you’ve reworked just might be the first to go, so why bother messing around with them in the first place?

Next week: Step No. 5 (if I haven’t depressed you enough already!).

Thoughts on writing

2008-08-24T09:07:00.000-07:00

I just returned from teaching a two-hour writing workshop in the cool pines of Northern Arizona, and some of the comments I heard up there made me rethink this crazy business of writing. So for my next four posts, I'm going to discuss some topics that came up. Feel free to chime in. For starters...

Writing is hard. Getting published is even harder.

To write a book, you first have to come up with a marketable idea, then develop the discipline to actually sit down and write the darned thing. Along the way, you have to learn how to write (more about that later). Once these things are accomplished, you have to maintain your momentum in order to shepherd the manuscript through the agenting and publishing process -- and then develop the stomach necessary to hit the tour trail and talk about your book until you're blue in the face.

Being a writer as well as a creative writing teacher has taught me that if a writer lacks any one of the above qualities, his chances for success are slim.

Let's start with the first quality -- the marketable idea. Heck, anyone can come up with an idea. Your three-year-old can. But is the idea a marketable idea? Most of you know that besides being a mystery novelist, I am also a book reviewer (and have been for 20 years), so I've read just about every plot imaginable, from face-eating aliens, to frail femmes being menaced by brutes, to charming serial killers, to chipper urbanites in search of love, to angst-ridden coming-of-agers contemplating their navels while trying to figure out what life is all about.

There are NO new ideas. There are, however, old ideas made newly marketable -- and what makes an old idea marketable is to give it a fresh spin (the face-eating alien is the protagonist's mother, the chipper urbanite in search of love is an iguana at the Bronx Zoo). Also necessary is a lead protagonist who makes us want to stand up and cheer for him while he's undergoing all the trials he's faced with during your 65,00-85,000 word manuscript. By the way, I didn't choose that word count arbitrarily; it's the standard word count for the average "first novel" manuscript. Anything less and the MS would be a novella (few publishing prospects there!) and anything more would hike the book's production costs so high that some publishers will be disinclined to take the financial risk.

Let's say you've come up with a new spin on an old plot (man comes home from a long business trip to find his wife surrounded by admirers, has a jealous fit, kills them, etc. -- a la The Odyssey). Now it's time to write the book. Oh, excuse me. Sorry. Now it's time to learn how to write. Yes, you can learn how to write by writing, but you can learn even faster if you read a few good books on writing (the library has dozens -- make friends with your local librarian). For instance, when I was writing my first novel, I read something like 20 books on novel-writing, then studied my manuscript carefully to see if I'd done the "do"s and didn't do the "don't"s. I'd done ALL the "don't"s! Seventeen drafts later, using everything I'd learned in those books, I was able to sell my manuscript (but that was seventeen drafts on an old Smith-Corona portable typewriter!).

The learning curve can be further sped along by taking a college-level writing course taught by the right instructor. Make sure you check out the instructor's bona fides, though. Some instructors teach writing from a strictly literary point of view instead of teaching practicalities. Some instructors specialize in the practicalities and leave the literary stuff to the writer's own taste and conscience. How can you tell the difference? By reading what the instructor has published, that's how. This is very, very important, because you don't want to wind up in the hands of someone who has contempt for the type of writing you want to engage in. If you want to write a commercial novel -- thriller, mystery, romance, sci-fi, etc. -- try to find someone who teaches the particular type of commercial fiction you want to specialize in. If you want to write a slower-paced, jewel-like literary novel, find an instructor who specializes in that form. But whichever type of instructor you choose, make certain he or she has actually PUBLISHED the kind of material you want to write. You don't want a theorist; you want someone who knows FROM EXPERIENCE exactly how to write a novel.

If you don't have a college or university nearby and for whatever reason you can't avail yourself of the various writing conferences that take place around the country, try a critique group. I am a great believer in critique groups because each of us, no matter how experienced, needs what is called a "first reader." The ideal "first reader" is a person who does not love us, who owes us nothing, but who reads a lot. When worse comes to worse, though, and you can't dig up someone who fits that description, let your spouse read your manuscript. But spouses can be problematic. Sometimes they love us too much to provide sensible feedback (sometimes they hate us too much, but that's an issue best left to your marriage counselor). Ideally, you'll be better off with a well-read person who isn't emotionally invested in either your success or failure.

Which brings us back to critique groups. A GOOD critique group will act as your "first reader." Let's say you're very proud of your Chapter 4, wherein Uhoh, the runaway orangutan from the Taiwan Zoo, finds Louisa, the orangutan love of his life, and the two swing happily by their tails from a tree in the lush Sahara Delta. You've worked on this chapter for three weeks, and you think you have Uhoh's complex emotions down just right, his fears, his longings... and you are especially proud of the artistic way you've described his curly fur and blue-and-white-striped snout. Not only that, you think the scene were Uhoh first meets Louisa is one of the most tender love scenes you've ever read. At least that's what your wife told you, and since she says you're a real tiger in bed, she ought to know.

If you're in a GOOD critique group, someone will point out to you that orangutans don't have tails, that there is no true delta in the Sahara, that orangutan coats aren't curly, and orangutans do not have blue-and-white-striped snouts (you've confused your primates).

The more educated eyes that see your manuscript, the better. Chances are, each member of the critique group will have a different area of expertise, thus can catch you out when you screw up. My own critique group -- the Sheridan Street Irregulars -- includes a computer expert, a retired FBI agent, an attorney, a private investigator, an ex-cop, a veterinarian, an actress, a business executive, and a prison guard. Past members of the group have included a private school headmaster, a judge, a social worker, a hobby shop owner, a physician, a house painter, several housewives, a gardener, a photographer, and various and sundry members of other professions and occupations. They knew things I didn't. Although I research the hell out of each of my books, there's always going to be some tiny little thing I didn't think to check. Good critique groups rock!

Now let's talk about BAD critique groups.

A critique group goes bad when one person decides he or she knows more about writing than anyone else in the group, and elects himself/herself the Grand Poobah. Be leery about involving yourself in this kind of group because it can do more harm than good. Usually, the Grand Poobah knows little about professional-level writing -- he just thinks he does. Unfortunately, a beginning writer might not realize that the Grand Poobah is critiquing out of ignorance, and takes all that hot air for gospel.

What makes a good critique group? For starters, a good critique group is made up of a circle of writers who respect each other and know that there are different ways of saying the same thing. They are people who read widely in different genres, and recognize that the other writers in the group have, too. No one is a blowhard. No one is mean. Each writer is careful to make his critique SPECIFIC, not vague (Example of a good critique: "I think Joe's character needs more depth in this chapter. Maybe you should let us see his thoughts more often. For instance, what made him fall out of love with his wife in the first place? If you let the reader know what first attracted Joe to her and what has now changed, you might be able to approach their break-up in a more realistic way."). And a good critiquer should always be quick to COMPLIMENT the good parts of a manuscript while remaining truthful (but not hurtful) about the weak parts.

Can't find a critique group? Start your own; that's what I did. I hung fliers in all my branch libraries, and joined a few local authors associations, where I let them know I was looking for other writers. In the end, I actually put an ad in my community newspaper. Next thing you know, I had a critique group. That was 20 years ago, and we're still going strong.

Suggested rules for critique groups:
1. When being critiqued, do NOT defend your work. Just listen quietly.
2. The critiquer should NOT ask questions of the person being critiqued; this leads to what can become an acrimonious, time-wasting back-and-forth argument.
3. DO set a timetable for the length of a critique, because some people can talk forever.
4. Critique in a clockwise (or counter-clockwise) direction. This keeps up the flow, and makes certain EVERYONE critiques (very important).
5. Stay away from vague statements, such as "I like this" or "I hate this," leaving that as the sum total of your critique. Good critiques, like good writing, are always specific.
6. Don't critique typos and grammar wowsers. Mark them up, but keep your critique comments to the writing itself, otherwise you'll be there all night.
7. In the Sheridan Street Irregulars, we do not read manuscripts out loud and critique from that. Why? Because agents and editors aren't going to hear writers reading their work aloud -- they're going to see only the printed page. Therefore, we SSI'ers print out enough copies of our manuscripts so that each member can take one home, go over it during the week, mark the MS up, and have their comments ready for the next meeting. We limit these handouts to 20 pages per submission, otherwise we'd be critiquing manuscripts 'til Doomsday.
8. Although back-and-forth talk (and defense of manuscripts) is frowned upon during the session itself, at the end of the evening, after everyone has been critiqued, it is fine to ask questions about a particular critique. But again, never, ever defend your work; that kind of thing just causes bad feelings. It's pointless, too. If you haven't managed to make your manuscript clear to your readers, then you need to rework it.

On another subject: The most important advice I have to give in this post about writing concerns your reading habits. Want to write a mystery? Then read at least 10 mysteries that have been published this year, and among those 10, read the Edgar, Anthony, and Agatha winners of this year. The same approach is true whether you want to write a romance, a sci-fi novel, a thriller, or what have you. Too many beginning writers haven't done their homework by keeping up on the changes in their chosen genres. Commercial fiction -- especially thriller, mystery, and romance -- has changed enormously in the past 10 years. Even in the past five! So stay current in your reading. After all, you don't want to spend a year of your life writing the type of book that's been outdated for decades, do you? Writing is a profession, just like any other. Would you go to a doctor who hasn't picked up a medical journal in 10 years? Would you hire an engineer who hasn't kept up with important stress findings in the past 10years? No, you wouldn't. So hie thee to the library and ask that wonderful librarian what are the best books OF THIS YEAR in your chosen field. A librarian will never steer you wrong.

NEXT WEEK: Sitting down to write that book!

Interview with Vicki Delany

2008-08-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

Vicki Delany is the author of In the Shadow of the Glacier, Scare the Light Away, and Burden of Memory. We talked recently about her writing life -- past, present, and future.

BETTY WEBB: When I read the set-up of In the Shadow of the Glacier, I thought, “Ohmigod, why hasn’t some one thought of this before? It’s such a GREAT idea!” Want to address that?
VICKI DELANEY: The draft dodger memorial idea was, as they say, ripped from the headlines. That actually happened, although to a lesser degree than it does in In the Shadow of the Glacier. The fictional town of Trafalgar is based on the real town of Nelson, British Columbia. One of my daughters lives in Nelson, and I just love it there. Nelson was a major settling place for Vietnam era draft dodgers fleeing the U.S. for Canada. A lot of them still live there. About 2 years ago, someone offered the town a statue. It showed two people greeting a draft dodger. It was, in fact, pretty innocent. But it was immediately controversial, and the news even spread as far as the New York Times and Fox News. And people in Nelson were genuinely worried that it would negatively affect the tourist trade. The town didn't accept the statue and that was the end of that. But I thought... um, I wonder what would have happened if the story kept growing. And thus I wrote it into the book. One thing that I didn't touch, although I may some day, is that once again Nelson is taking in U.S. 'refugees'. Although this time they are 'war resisters', deserters from the U.S. Army who don't want to go back to Iraq. They are not getting as friendly a reception from the government as they got in the '70s and I believe that the first of them has been ordered deported.

BETTY: Are you personally familiar with some of the anti-war protesters who fled to Canada in the 60s and 70s?
VICKI: Not really. I have met former U.S. draft dodgers, but I don't know anyone well enough to say they're friends.

BETTY: Where do you live? Spend much time in British Columbia?
VICKI: In June of this year, I moved to Prince Edward County, Ontario. That's about two hours east of Toronto. It's a beautiful area, very rural, still full of farms and small towns. There is a field of wheat the other side of my driveway and a field of corn across the road. I live in a hundred-year-old farmhouse. I retired last year and sold my house in Oakville (very suburban, took the train into Toronto every day) and spent a year traveling across North America. Most of the year I was in Nelson, where I worked on the new book, Valley of the Lost, and made friends with the Nelson City Police and the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) who helped me a lot with the book. But a year was enough to be living in other people's houses and so I bought this house. I have to be very focused to write - all or nothing, so to speak. I write amost every morning while I consume a LOT of coffee. I usually put in three to four hours and then put the writing aside for the day. As you know, there's more work involved in having a writing career than writing, so throughout the day I'll do the other things, such as write for my blog, proofreading, arrange signings etc. etc. I find that since I've stopped working full time, I don't spend any more time writing, but I have a lot more time for promotion.

BETTY: You have a very unusual female police officer, Constable Moonlight “Molly” Smith in In the Shadow of the Glacier. She lives with her mother, doesn’t have a car, has a sappy real name, and she CRIES. Were you nervous about portraying such a character?
VICKI: Molly sort of evolved to be the way she is. When I started the series, I intended it to be a lot darker than it turned out. I found that I just can't write too dark. For example, Sergeant Winters was intended to die at the end of the first book, sending Molly to the big city in search of vengeance. Instead he's now the other main series character, and she's still on the force. I recently heard that 23 percent of police officers in British Columbia are women, so although there are still pockets of male officers resentful of women in the job, it is getting easier for women officers to BE women. Molly still lives at home with her parents, but that isn't because she's childish. Her fiancé was killed in a tragic and preventable incident and Molly came home to put her life together. She then realized that she wanted to be a cop, and applied to the force in the town where she lives. To her, and everyone else's, surprise, she got in, and she just hasn't gotten around to finding a place of her own yet. When the series begins Molly is 26 years old. I have three daughters in their twenties, so I guess Molly is the way I view young women today. Strong, confident, high-achieving, but with teddy bears on their beds and antique tea-cup collections. Molly has the additional baggage of the death of her fiancé hanging over her. Her career is going well, but her emotional life is a mess.

BETTY: And how about poor Molly/Moonlight’s mother, Lucy, known to her friends as “Lucky”? She’s a sensational character, too. Tell me about her.
VICKI: Molly's parents are from Seattle and came to Canada when her father got his draft notice. Her mother, Lucy, who everyone calls Lucky, is still very politically active, whereas Molly's dad, Andy, just wants to settle into a quiet, peaceful middle-age. Lucky is very much like a lot of women I know, still fighting for social justice, still as passionate as they ever were. Lucky's involvement in every environmental or political issue in town causes a lot of embarrassment for the young police woman. But at the heart, Molly's family is very strong, very supportive, and thus she is still living with her parents while she tries to sort her emotional life out. I see the relationship between Lucky and Sergeant Winters as one of the focal points of the series - they should be antagonists, but they respect each other too much, and that respect, plus the personality of Molly, draws them together. Oh, yes, Molly's name. The name on her birth certificate is Moonlight Legolas Smith. Remember her parents were hippies. Moonlight because of the moon shining on fresh snow the night she was born, and Legolas because her parents were Lord of the Rings fans (aren't we all, who were young in the '70s). Molly's brother, who is a lawyer with an oil firm, is named Samwise. In the second book, Valley of the Lost, Andy Smith thinks: Lucky’d taken Moonlight’s change of name as a personal rebuke, but Andy figured that she had to do it if she wanted to be taken seriously in the police world. You couldn’t be called Moonlight when your colleagues had four letter names like Paul, Dave, John.

BETTY: Molly’s relationship with John Winters, her superior officer, is also unusual. He is VERY much her superior, thinks she should still be on the beat, not working a homicide, and yet he still want to be on a first name basis with her -- which implies equality.
VICKI: Nothing deep there. It is normal in a small-town B.C. police station for everyone to call everyone by their first name. In the presence of the public, particularly young people, they will use rank and last name, but not amongst each other. Although some of the more traditional guys might call the sergeant, Sarge.

BETTY: At the beginning of the book, the little Canadian town of Trafalgar sounds like a town most people would love to live in -- but by the end of the book, we’re not so sure. Tell me about that town and what went into designing it.
VICKI: As I mentioned above, Trafalgar is based on the real town of Nelson, B.C. Nelson is in the B.C. Interior (meaning not near the ocean). It is very isolated - an eight-hour drive from both Vancouver and Calgary. The nearest city is actually Spokane Washington. The town is surrounded by wilderness and mountains so the isolation plus the geography give it a very insular feeling. It is a very arts town, full of artists of all types, and a lot of young transients drift through. On the other hand, the town has begun to attract the wealthy early-retired types which is driving up property values and squeezing out the transients and struggling artists. Which also raises issues of environment vs. development. When I was in Sedona, Arizona last year at the Well Red Coyote Bookstore, the store owner introduced me by saying that Trafalgar reminded her a lot of Sedona. The biggest difference between Trafalgar and Nelson is the crime rate! They haven't had a murder in Nelson in years, there has never been a bank robbery, the streets are completely safe even in the middle of the night, hard drugs are not a major problem (marijuana is the area's number one industry though! - more about that in another book) and the only recent gun incident the police could recall to tell me was someone shot up someone's car and the police figured it was a warning. So please, don't let events in Trafalgar stop you from visiting Nelson, my favorite place in all the world.

BETTY: What was the hardest part of the book to write?
VICKI: The hardest part in general was probably trying to get Molly right. She's new to the police, is still on probabation, so she had to be pretty green and nervous. And then she's thrown into this murder investigation which is way over her head. I wanted her to make mistakes, but not mistakes that might make her look, to her superiors as well as to the reader, like an idiot. I made her very unsure of herself, always second guessing herself, but with a rock of self-confidence
lying underneath all of that.

BETTY: I always ask this question on my blog: Give beginning mystery writers some advice, whether it be about the writing itself, finding a publisher, or letting the world know about the book once it’s published. You can discuss each item, if you wish.
VICKI: My main piece of advice to the beginning writer is be persistant. You simply can't give up. If you start a book, finish it, don't give up half way thinking that it isn't working - finish it and make it work. Then start a second book while the first is doing the rounds of the agents and publishers. If the first book can't find an agent or a publisher, finish the second book, and send it around while working on the third book. And while you're writing - read. I think this is something you emphasise as well, Betty. You can't write in a vacumn. You have to know what's out there, what other people are writing, what's popular, what works and what doesn't.

BETTY: I hear you’re writing a follow-up. Can you tell us when it’ll come out and what it’s going to be about? Will Molly and Winters return?
VICKI: The second in the Smith and Winters series is titled Valley of the Lost. It will be released in February 2009 from Poisoned Pen Press. In addition, I'm taking a leaf from Betty Webb's book, and writing a second series. The first book is called Gold Digger: A Klondike Mystery, and will be out from Rendevous Crime, a Canadian publisher, in April 2009. It is a historical series, set in the Klondike Gold Rush, and is, I hope, a comedy. Gold Digger is a good example of the importance of persistence. It was written even before my first book from Poisoned Pen Press, Scare the Light Away. I got a contract for it almost right away with a publisher of historical non-fiction in the Yukon. Whereupon it languished for more than a year before the publisher went out of business. After that I found an agent for it. The agent did nothing with it for another year, and eventually I placed it with Rendevous Crime. These days, I'm working on the third Smith and Winters book, as yet untitled, but it has a lot of skiing in it.

BETTY: Your series is set in Canada, but published in the U.S. for an American audience. Does that present you with any difficulties?
VICKI: When I do book tours in the U.S. I often talk about the differences between U.S. and Canadian policing. One of the main differences, and there are many, is that Canadian police officers are not allowed to carry their guns when off duty. At the end of In the Shadow of the Glacier, Molly is in civilian clothes and all she has to defend herself with are her cell phone and her stiletto heels. So I have a tricky job of explaining to my U.S. audience why certain things are happening, without appearing to be explaining. On the other hand, some American readers think that Canadian police must be just like the British, and wonder why John Winters is 'just' a Sergeant and not a DI. I'd like to add that I got a lot of help from members of the Nelson City Police and the Nelson detachment of the RCMP. I have no background in law enforcement at all, so I wouldn't have been able to write the book without help.

To learn more about Vicki and “In the Shadow of the Glacier,” check her web site at
www.vickidelany.com (which has pictures of Trafalgar!), or visit her blog at http://typem4murder.blogspot.com

Polygamy and DESERT WIVES

2008-07-05T07:03:00.000-07:00

The recent events at the Texas polygamy compound have never been far from my mind as I write Desert Lost, (coming September 2009) the follow-up to my Desert Wives: Polygamy Can Be Murder. The Texas court's decision to return all the children to the compound -- regardless of the charges leveled against their parents -- is appalling. But these are the same type of decisions made by Arizona's Child Protective Services, when young girls have fled from forced marriages to blood relatives; the girl, if caught, is almost always forced to return home.

These CPS and Texas court decisions have been made in defiance of the fact that in Texas and Arizona, both polygamy and incest are illegal. The Texas court's argument? That the allegations haven't been proved -- the same as the findings by Arizona's CPS. The upshot of the situation is that seven years after Desert Wives was published, nothing has changed. The polygamy compounds continue to get by with child rape, incest and Welfare fraud.

People who haven't read Desert Wives are generally unaware of the many Welfare fraud practices in the compounds, so I'll explain it here. After all, the compounds are raking in YOUR tax dollars.

Simply put, here's how it works. A sixteen-year-old "child bride" gives birth to a baby. Since she is not legally married (the "marriages" on the compounds are merely "spiritual," which is to say, no marriage license is ever issued), her child is illegitimate. And what do illegitimate children get? Welfare. The girl is driven to the appropriate government office to fill out the Welfare forms; on the line where she is supposed to put the name of the baby's father, she writes UNKNOWN, thus committing a felony. By the way, there is no record of any government office investigating the truth of these forms when they are filled out by polygamist girls -- an odd lapse in protocol.

Once the Welfare application form is completed, the wheels of government bureaucracy begin to turn, and eventually the legally-unwed girl receives her Welfare check (approximately $250), which she endorses and turns over to the child's father, who cashes it, then gives the money to the compound's prophet. Neither the young mother nor her child will benefit from that money.

But this isn't the only check -- and the only illegitimate child -- the girl will receive. If her child is born with disabilities -- a common occurrence in incest-ridden families -- that child will receive additional government money (SSI or SSDI checks) for life. The average polygamy household in the compounds is around 10 wives, although households of 75 wives are not that uncommon. (But for my example, I'm staying with the 10-wife number.) If each of the 10 wives has 10 children, that's 100 children in one household. This would make the average Welfare take from the household $25,000 PER MONTH. And that money comes straight from the American taxpayer, namely you.

The irony of all this is that women on the polygamy compounds -- regarded as little more than cash cows by their prophets -- have fewer civil rights than any other social/ethnic group in America. They cannot own property. They cannot inherit. They cannot protest when they are traded to another man. They cannot protest when the prophet sends them to a compound in another state (leaving their children behind). But perhaps most painful of all, these young mothers cannot even call their children "their" children, because polygamy children are taught to regard ALL females as their mothers; the children are not allowed to form closer ties with their natural mothers than with any other woman. This effectively keeps true family ties weak, so that they can be more easily controlled by the prophet.

One of the questions the Texas authorities had about the families was: why so few boys? Desert Lost, my upcoming Lena Jone mystery, answers this question, but to play fair on this blog, I'll give you a big hint right now.

Around fifty percent of all children born are male, making the sexes fairly evenly matched in number. If a male is allowed to "marry" 10 females, this means 9 males will go without females. It is therefore incumbent upon such polygamist societies to get rid of the surplus males -- especially once they turn 18 and are no longer eligible for Welfare payments. Desert Lost is about the various ways the compounds get rid of their "surplus".

The polygamy compounds are money-making machines. Their prophets can cry "religious freedom" all they want, but the main reason for their continued operation is because of the enormous amount of government money they are able to amass. In short, polygamy is good business.

For the prophet, at least.

* * *

Stay tuned for information about The Anteater of Death (November/December 2008), a new mystery series, which takes place in a Central Coast California zoo, and stars (besides Lucy, a giant anteater) zookeeper Teddy Bentley.

Interview with mystery writers Mary Reed and Eric Mayer

2008-04-27T12:51:00.000-07:00

The husband and wife team of Mary Reed and Eric Mayer published several short John the Eunuch detections in mystery anthologies and in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine prior to 1999's highly acclaimed first full length novel, One For Sorrow. Their protagonist's adventures continued in Two For Joy (2000), a Glyph Award winner in the Best Mystery category. Two For Joy also gained an Honorable Mention in the Glyph Best Book Award list and in addition was afinalist for the IPPY Best Mystery Award. Three For A Letter (2001), Four For A Boy (2003), and Five For Silver (2004)followed. The latter two novels were nominees for the Bruce Alexander History Mystery Award. Five For Silver won the 2005 Glyph Award for Best Book Series. In June 2003 the American Library Association's Booklist Magazine named the John the
Eunuch novels as one of its four Best Little Known Series. Their most recent novel is Six For Gold. Seven For A Secret has just been released (April 2008).

Betty Webb's interview with Mary Reed

Betty: Your John the Eunuch series is -- to put it mildly -- unusual. In a day where sexy heroes and heroines and the standard, you've actually got a guy with no, um... ? Tell me when the idea for him came to you and why you decided to risk it.

Mary: Strange to relate, it was as the result of a very tight deadline. Mike Ashley was organizing an anthology devoted to historical mysteries and rang us up one afternoon to ask if we'd care to contribute. Naturally we said yes. The snag was it had to be researched, a plot constructed, and written in less than a month. And the first question to be addressed was what era would be suitable? Eric is interested in the Byzantine period and had a number of books about it, so the
research material was already to hand. But then who would be our protagonist? Well, we decided to make our sleuth Emperor Justinian's Lord Chamberlain, making John a powerful man in his role as Justinian's advisor. Many men of high rank at the time were eunuchs, so John was also set among their ranks -- but we also made him a man who had been a mercenary before being captured and wounded so badly, so he is able to take care of himself and those he cares about. He is not at all the conventional notion of a eunuch as a simpering, effeminate, chubby fellow with a treachorous nature, and in fact dislikes such eunuchs intensely. Given all this angst it is no
wonder he occasionally has bouts of black rage, which most of the time he keeps controlled, presenting what we would call a poker face to the world. The court was officially Christian, so John was given another burden, that of worshiping Mithra, as did many military men. Exposure of his religion could well mean execution so this is something else lurking in the background. To add to his difficulties, Empress Theodora hates him and would like to see his head separated from his shoulders, so between that and his proscribed religion, not to mention court intrigues and ever present danger on the streets, John is a man who has power and wealth and yet is
in as precarious a position as any beggar.

Betty: Did you have trouble selling a novel based on such a hero?

Mary: Oddly enough, no. How it came about was one of those instances where luck played a part in publishing, which happens more often than some writers will admit. Some years ago the MWA newsletter mentioned Poisoned Pen Press had been nominated for a 1998 Edgar for their A-Z Murder Goes...Classic. PPP was a fairly new venture at the time and in writing to congratulate them on their nomination we boldly asked if they also published fiction. It turned out editor in chief Barbara Peters had only recently been complaining about a lack of mysteries set in the Byzantine era. Aha, we said, we have a manuscript with that very setting, would you be interested? The press asked us to send it and it was accepted within a few weeks. In the event some rewriting was needed before it became the first original work of fiction they published,appearing in 1999. It should be pointed out, though, that we're talking about what was then a small publisher. Whether we could have interested a major publisher is hard to say.

Betty: Your method of working is also unusual. Tell me how you and Eric work.

Mary: We begin by batting ideas around. There are always some floating about unused anyway so it isn't hard to come up with them, but the question is whether they are any good -- and whether they are sufficiently different from what we've done in previous books. Once we decide on what the story will be about in general terms -- the model for the girl in John's wall mosaic shows up or he is sent to Egypt to find out why sheep are committing suicide, or has to investigate a murder during a plague -- we start outlining and researching. Those two things fuel each other. We start looking up what we need to know for the parts of the story we already have in mind, and as we read we come across things we didn't know, which suggest new avenues for the story to follow. We discuss and exchange notes and outline revisions until we have a scene by scene outline. Of course, as we write the outline can change drastically but at least we have something to go on. Once we have the outline we begin writing individual scenes. Sometimes I will write the first draft and sometimes Eric will do that. We are often each writing the first draft of a different scene at the same time. Once the first draft is done by one of us it is sent straight across the office to the other, who then rewrites it and sends it back. We trade scenes back and forth until we are both satisfied. So we both, at some stage, write the whole book, which probably means we don't really save as much writing time by collaborating as one might think.

Betty: Do you two ever have spats over how a book (or chapter) should go? If so, how do you work it out? The creative temperament is notoriously testy.

Mary: Ya got that right! However, we agreed long since if one of us feels very strongly a certain scene should be in the novel it will remain, though it may be rewritten a little to address the concerns of the naysayer. Conversely if either of us feels a certain scene should not be in the novel it goes out. This situation does not happen too often, fortunately, although as Eric has been known to remark it helps if your doors have industrial strength hinges. However, it should be
noted that occasionally, when there is an impasse, we involve our editor in the discussion and, in effect, she gets the tie-breaking vote.

Betty: Seven For A Secret has been getting great buzz. Tell me about the book, how you came up with it, how it plays into the entire series, and how it's being accepted by the critics.

Mary: Seven For A Secret came about because we were always asking ourselves about someone depicted in the wall mosaic in John's study. We have, from book one, shown him confiding to the young girl pictured but we never explained, either to readers or ourselves, who the model for the figure had been. So this book answers that question. In addition, we wished to write a book in the
classic tradition, in which the detective pieces together the story behind the murder from his interviews with characters. We both prefer classic mysteries of this sort to action-packed books and we have always leaned towards the classic model. We wanted to really affirm that preference this time. Reviews have been excellent so far, including a starred review from Library Journal. For those interested there's a page of extracts at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/sevrev.htm

Betty: About how many Eunuch books will there be in all? Do you foresee an end? Or a -- to use Hollywood terms -- a spin-off?

Mary: We'll keep writing them as long as readers want to read them! There are many adventures to be told, not only about John but also the lives of some of the supporting characters -- Felix, the excubitor captain, for example, and Isis, the Egyptian madam, though the one I have my eye on is Peter, John's aging servant. He's already dropped a few intriguing hints about his early life, you know.

Betty: Is there any other period of history you'd be interested in as a series setting?

Mary: Strange you should ask because in fact we have already written the first novel in what we hope will be a new series. It is currently on the market so we'd be very glad to hear from interested entities! It's set mainly in London in 1895. It is a mystery with a bit of woo woo but that's all we can reveal at this point.

Betty: Your books are very popular, yet you guys don't tour much (if at all). Want to address that?

Mary: We have concluded touring is not for us for a number of reasons, while occasional book signings have not been very productive. We've also noticed many writers have been experiencing the latter situation this past year or so by all accounts so we are not alone in our focus on online promotional efforts. There are many opportunities and new possibilities show up constantly. For example, during the past year or so there has been an explosion of author blogs, virtual tours, and book trailers. Then, too, online promotion suits our temperaments better. We have no ego and abhor "in your face" methods of promotion. We therefore practice the subtler sort. You won't see us tooting our horns in our newsletter (see, slipped a mention of Orphan Scrivener in there!) although we do have a section we dub Necessary Evil, wherein we mention such BSP as there is to hand. But this is usually short and always sandwiched between two essays -- we write one apiece each issue -- whose topics wander all over the landscape and quite often are nothing to do with John and his world or writing or publishing. Among other matters we have written about garden gnomes, wallpapering, the Newgate Calendar, Roman cabbages, and
detectives on stamps. Though we take our writing very seriously, we also invariably poke fun at ourselves, something not common in authorial newsletters. Thus our unfortunate subscribers never know what they will be reading next but we hope it will be entertaining at least.

Betty: Maybe you could give us some details about your online promotions.

Mary: It takes a fair bit of time but it helps when you have to be online to do your ordinary work anyhow! We go in for more subtle forms of promotion, the simplest form of which is signature lines. But not just any old siggy line! Each is written to fit the post above it by connecting comments made or the general topic in some way with the novel. Sometimes of course there isn't a connection, in which case the reader will be informed "(Title), guaranteed to be free of dancing rats", if twirling rodents were the topic of the post. So every signature line is different, and hopefully readers will be tempted to read each rather than sliding their gaze past them.

Contributing to elists is an important avenue for online promotion. But it's equally important to make certain something useful or interesting or thoughtful is contributed to the list, not just a flyby trailing a banner saying our novel is out, buy it now. This is insulting to the reader and does the writer no favors either. Finding comments to contribute is easy enough when we are talking about mysteries, because we are onlist as fans of same rather than only to publicize what we are
doing. Beyond that we contribute articles and reviews to appropriate venues, where the bio line promotes our works. Also interviews, such as this one! With so many magazines, review sites, and newsletters online the array of subjects to talk about is vast. Many are quite outside the areas of writing and mysteries, so pastures anew are ploughed that might otherwise lie fallow. With this sort of promotion we can share our ideas and knowledge with different segments of readers. For example, I am currently contributing occasional reviews for the Golden Age of Detection elist. They are archived on our website and also now appear on a British historical mystery site, but my signature line is merely my name and our website because if interest is raised that's the best place to provide information to the reader.

Well, then there's blogs. Eric has had one a while now but again writes about subjects all over the landscape and little about our writing as such -- but the book cover is there as a hint and a link to our website. Links are another way to get word out, exchanging them as well as asking they be listed on appropriate websites. This once led to a rather comical juxtaposition. A site devoted to Turkish travel gave us a link on the right side of the page and on the left was an ad for condoms...Then too virtual tours via blogging are increasingly popular, and so are guest blogs. We just did our first guest blog for Bev Myers, a fellow Poisoned Pen Press writer, a week or so back. Myspace and Youtube are getting a lot of attention right now. Author videos and trailers are the big thing at the moment and these are often mentioned as good sites to upload them, but my feeling is these sites have too high a noise level, and how does the individual author attract attention among the thousands of others there? Plus there is one aspect that can ruin the effort:
the unconsidered detail. For example, what if the accompanying music chosen is anathema to the viewer? Half a bar and they're out of there! But obviously other authors feel differently, so it is certainly an opportunity to consider.

Then there are e-newsletters. Our Orphan Scrivener is unusual in that it does not talk much about us but rather offers two essays an issue, again usually about topics unconnected with our writing (that's dealt with on our website, mentioned in the OS signature line) sandwiching such news as there might be. Newsletters can also be listed on other sites, just as we offer lists of mystery-related newsletters and author freebies on ours.

Speaking of freebies, they don't have to be physical entities. Ours is a reading guide to our series, provided on our website. Online freebies can be a challenge but besides reading guides or teaching online courses, mystery authors' sites offer such items as novel extracts, short stories, newsletters, serials, writing tips, recipes, and even a paper doll with appropriate outfits!

Opportunities to promote online are all over cyberspace if we can but see them. For example, many libraries list "if you like this book you will enjoy that one" or have bibliographies devoted to fiction dealing with specific topics. Generally we find a polite note asking if they would consider adding our series to their historical mystery list on their next update results in an obliging we will be happy to do so. And the same can be done with sites devoted to the location or subject of the work. The latter however is not something we go into. Our hero is a eunuch as is historically correct but we never emphasize the fact or go into great and gloating detail, an approach we find repugnant. There are many such men, often in this condition as the result of birth defects or, more commonly, war wounds so while there are certain avenues we could exploit in that line we won't do so. We treat John's condition in a matter of fact way, as he does, allowing him dignity despite the horror of what happened to him. So when writers complain they have problems promoting their work we just smile and say, well, try it with our protagonist!

Another example of what I think of as sideways promotion involves content not directly connected to our work. Our site offers libraries of free etexts of classic ghost and supernatural stories and Golden Age mysteries. It's time consuming tracing these etexts, especially as when I am looking them up I am always tempted to immediately read novels or short stories I have overlooked. For us it is a labor of love, but if someone is seeking this kind of reading these collections may well bring them to us and perhaps creates interest in our own work. If not, well, they've got other fine reading instead!

The website is a writer's most important resource. No matter where you live, it's there 24/7 and is useful in many ways beyond promotion. For example it can be used as a calling card when pitching projects or entered for awards. We've done both and it worked well. As you've doubtless gathered, we strive to offer content of a varied nature. So for example visitors can play Doom Cat (an interactive game written by Eric), assemble a jigsaw featuring the handsome cover of Five For Silver, or read about our protagonist's religion Mithraism. There's a bibliography of our scribbles, an archive of Orphan Scrivener newsletters, and Other Stuff. There is a lot more writers can do by way of online promotion, but this gives a good indication of the type of promotion we do for John and our other work.

Betty: What's up next for John?

Mary: We're thinking about that right now. While we have not got it completely wrestled to the ground yet, the eighth book will be set some years before Seven For A Secret, but taking place after the events of Four For A Boy, in which John first met Felix, captain of the excubitors, Isis, the Egyptian madam, and Anatolius, that feckless lad, but before One For Sorrow. It will be set during the Nika Riots, when Emperor Justinian was almost deposed. In keeping with our desire to give each book a slightly different feel, the next one will have a background more closely involving actual historical events than previous novels, while at the same time revealing more about how John and Felix came to be friends and how they rose to their current high positions.

Betty: You’ve give so much excellent, detailed advice that I almost hesitate to ask this next question, but heck, I will anyway. What other advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Mary: Advice for writers? Practice your craft, persist, and be patient and polite. Don't take rejection personally and above all keep your sense of humour well to the fore. You're going to need it!

If you’d like to learn more about Mary, Eric, and their creation, John the Eunuch, check their website at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite and Eric’s blog at http://journalscape.com/ericmayer

Interview with Janette Rallison

2008-03-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

From Betty: Although this blog is mainly dedicated to mystery writers and mystery writing, I’ve decided to make an occasional exception when my readers might gain something from an author who works in another genre. Since many mystery fans and authors are thinking about writing in the Y/A (Young Adult) field, I thought my friend Janette Rallison, a very successful Y/A writer who publishes under various names, would be the perfect person to start with.

Janette wrote her first story when she was six years old, but became serious about getting published when, as a young mother, she rediscovered that writing was much more fun than cleaning the house. Over the years, and countless dirty fridges later, she has published Playing the Field; All’s Fair in Love, War, and High School; Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Free Throws; Fame Glory, and Other Things on My To Do List; It’s a Mall World After All, How To Take the Ex Out Of Ex-boyfriend; and Revenge of the Cheerleaders, which is now in the bookstores. Janette’s children who keep her well supplied with plot ideas, sometimes even making cameo appearances in her novels. In fact, she attributes her long and successful writing career to complete avoidance of housework

Betty: Janette, how many genres have you written in?

Janette: I've written in romance (What the Doctor Ordered by Sierra St. James ), science fiction, (Time Riders by Sierra St. James) young adult fiction, (How to Take the Ex Out of Ex-Boy Friend) and I'm working on one right now that will be a young adult fantasy. But that said, really all of my books are romantic comedies. I like romance and humor so much that I always tuck those elements into my stories.

Betty: How long did it take you to get published?

Janette: I first published in 1996, and I was lucky. My manuscript was accepted to the first publisher I sent it to. But I'd been writing--learning and practicing the craft--since I was old enough to hold a pencil.

Betty: Why write in the first place?

Janette: Writers are always asked why we write. I think people are creative by nature and we look for ways to express ourselves. For some people it's scrapbooking or sewing or gardening. For me, it's inventing characters and spending months obsessing over details of their imagined lives. Yeah, I know, it sounds sort of insane, but it's more fun than doing housework.

Betty: What made you choose young adult fiction? Is there something particularly rewarding about young adult fiction that you don't find in, say, books about serial killers?

Janette: I write about teenagers for a couple of reasons. One is that I really believe kids need fun books--books that they want to read on their own, as opposed to most of the books they're forced to read in school. Kids can learn to love reading if you give them entertaining books. Also, writing about teenagers is fun. They're at such an emotional and vulnerable stage in life. It makes them the perfect subjects for comedy. For example, if a teenage girl is at a department store bra shopping and a couple of guys from her school walk by she will be mortified to the point that she will either a) dive under the pantyhose display to hide or b) transfer schools altogether. If an adult woman were in the same situation she would wave at the guys and tell them that Sears was having a great sale on underwear.

Betty: Are there any particular challenges in young adult fiction that you don't think you'd have in another genre?

Janette: One of the big challenges in young adult fiction is the fact that you have to have the main character solve their own problem. This makes some action/suspense stories hard to realistically pull off. In real life if some suspicious, creepy guy is stalking Tina Teenager she is going to tell her parents about it and they'd do everything to protect her. Ditto for the mysterious package that shows up on her doorstep. The parents would take care of it. Young adult writers have to find ways to take the parents out of the equation so the main character has to face down that villain themselves. This is why YA is populated with so many orphans. You also see a lot of single alcoholic moms. YA fiction is sort of a wasteland where parents are concerned.

Betty: Do you have an agent?

Janette: I have an agent, and I recommend that just about all writers get them. A good agent will not only know be able to circumvent the slush pile for you, but an agent will know which editors are looking for your kind of story. Plus contracts and royalty statements are written in some apparently foreign and undecipherable language, so it's good to have them to look over those. I found my agent because several people at my SCBWI (The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) writing group recommended her. Conferences are good places to find agents, plus they'll help you learn the writing craft better.

Betty: What is the largest market for your books?

Janette: I would say anyone who has a sense of humor, but most of my readers are teenage girls. I hear from a lot of teachers that kids who hate to read, love my books. I suppose it sort of makes me the Captain Underpants for teenage girls.

Betty: You have a big family. How long married, how many children?

Janette: I've been married for 22 years to the same wonderful guy. I'll never divorce him because he's the only one who can fix the computer. We have five kids, ages 20- 5 years old. We also have enough cats to qualify me for eccentric-cat-lady status. They've all been strays that the children adopt.

Typical scenario at my house:
Kids: Hey Mom, we found this new cat in our yard!
Me: Put it back. We're not keeping it.
Kids: We named it Peppermint!
Me: No, you didn't. It has no name because it's not ours.
Kids: Look, Peppermint is purring. She likes you.
Me: Shoo! Shoo! And stop shedding at once.

Yeah, that's pretty much how we've gotten five cats. And my husband is still speaking to me. (Didn't I tell you he was a nice guy?)

Betty: How do you balance your writing career with your busy family life?

Janette: The nice thing about writing is that it can be done in chunks during your free time. I've written a lot during gymnastic meets, soccer games, and nap time. On some days I've only been able to write a page or two, but if you can write just one page a day, you can produce a novel by the end of the year. My kids think it's pretty cool that I'm a writer. My oldest daughter gave me a lot of plot ideas--generally things that were happening at her high school. ("Mom, you'll never guess what Rochelle did. You've got to put it in a book.) My younger kids like naming the bad guys after people they know.

Betty: Have you thought about exploring any new genres?

Janette: Oh yeah. Authors get ideas for all sorts of different genres. I'm itching to do more fantasy--and I'm a hopeless romantic--so I'm sure I'll do that genre again sometime, and I'd like to see if I could do action too. I don't think I'll ever write horror though. The thing that a lot of readers don't understand is that it takes a long time to write scenes and the author has to vicariously live through the emotions of the main character to make the scene realistic. It might take a person a few minutes to read a chapter--but the author lived that chapter for perhaps weeks. It's bad enough writing sad scenes. You're at the computer sobbing for no apparent reason, which is something that people don't understand when they call to remind you that your son has Boy Scouts at 7:00 that night.

Betty: Hmm. I notice you didn’t mention mystery.

Janette: Actually the fantasy I just turned in has a mystery in it. It's not a “high fantasy,” though. It's about a girl from our day who has an incompetent fairy godmother who misunderstands her wish and sends her back to the Middle Ages. There is a mysterious black knight who has beaten all of the country's knights and has been challenging the prince. No one knows who he is or what he really wants and the heroine has to figure it out before the king decides to use her as bait to find out the knight's identity. That sounds kind of weird, but it makes sense in the novel.

Betty: What's the next book we can expect to see from you?

Janette: I have two coming out in 2009 and I'm not sure which will come out first. There’s the fantasy novel I just told you about, working title A Fairy Godmother's Guide to Saving Troubled Teens. The second book is called Just One More Wish and it's about a girl whose brother has a brain tumor. He wants to meet the actor who plays Teen Robin Hood before he goes in for surgery so his sister sets off for Hollywood to find him and convince him to come back with her to talk to her brother. They're both going to be great books.

Betty: Have you had any unusual experiences connected to your writing?

Janette: I've had to make some bizarre phone calls while I've researched topics for my books. Once I had a character who was a doctor and I wanted him to give one of his patients statistics about STDs. I did some research on the Internet but couldn't believe the numbers because they were so high. I called two different STD hotlines to try and verify the numbers. It felt really awkward.

Me: Hi, um, I'm a writer and I wanted some information on STDs . . .
Them: (Sounding jaded) Sure, right honey. You're calling for a friend. We understand. What are your symptoms? I've called doctors, vineyards, pool halls, motorcycle shops, botanists, combustion labs, police stations, and the Italian embassy. I once had to call an entomologist to find out how many times a fly throws up per second. And in case you didn't previously know that, yes, they do. That's what flies are doing as they walk around on your counter tops.

Betty: What writer's organizations do you belong to? Who is your "first reader," the person (besides yourself, of course) who sees your manuscripts first?

Janette: Well, I'm not sure anyone is still reading this because they've all just logged off to disinfect their counter tops, but I belong to SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators), IRA (International Reading Association), ARA (The Arizona Reading Association), ALAN (Assembly on Literature for Adolescents), ANWA (American Night Writers Association) and another informal critique group. My critique groups get to read parts of my books while I'm writing them and then I send the manuscript to my parents. It's nice to get a lot of feedback. I know if a bunch of people have a problem with something then it needs to be changed.

Betty: What advice can you give aspiring writers?

Janette: Quit now--I already have enough competition. But if I can't convince you of that, I would tell aspiring writers to read a lot of books on writing. You'll save yourself a ton of time in revisions if you can learn from others first.

To learn more about Janette Rallison and her books, check out
http://www.janetterallison.com/
http://janette-rallison.blogspot.com/

Desert Cut -- the new Lena Jones mystery

2008-02-01T20:03:00.001-08:00

"Webb’s dark tale of a clash of cultures is emotionally draining and intellectually challenging."
Kirkus Reviews

"Betty Webb is a smart, sharp and savvy writer whose sensational Lena Jones series entertains, enlightens and educates. Webb's best yet, DESERT CUT is a harrowing, gut-wrenching read; thought-provoking and spiked with social outrage, it will remain with you a long time." Julia Spencer-Fleming, Edgar finalist and author of ALL MORTAL FLESH

"Mysteries don’t get more hard-hitting than this. Betty Webb is a first-rate investigative journalistwho has taken on one of the most controversial topics I can imagine. Fiction and reality intersectin a devastating way. Readers will be talking about DESERT CUT for a long time to come." David Morrell, New York Times best-selling author of THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE and CREEPERS.

The story behind DESERT CUT

I’m thrilled that the new Lena Jones mystery published by Poisoned Pen Press is getting such positive attention -- especially considering its volatile socio-political subject matter. Not only did I write about a dark, real-life subject, but I did so while my family and friends begged me not to. They feared the risks were too great -- and maybe they are. But how could I turn away from the subject and the riveting, heart-pounding mystery that goes along with it? No, this isn't "just another book" about undocumented workers sneaking over the U.S./Mexico border -- DESERT CUT isn't about that at all.

If you thought my account of modern-day polygamy in Desert Wives was shocking, it was kindergarten stuff compared to the material in DESERT CUT. Thanks to Desert Wives and some other books that came after it, people now know polygamy is practiced in small, isolated compounds in the U.S. But few people -- mainly physicians and social workers -- know that the procedure I describe in DESERT CUT is being practiced in the U.S. today, albeit secretly. It emerged approximately 3,000 years ago in the area now known as Saudi Arabia, quickly spread to the rest of the Middle East, then dove south into sub-Saharan Africa. Since I don't like secrets, the Author's Note in DESERT CUT lists every country where it continues to be practiced. The list is nothing short of shocking.

Politically touchy, yes. But first and foremost, DESERT CUT is a mystery. And what a mystery! Fans are already asking me how I came up with such a twisty plot. That’s easy to answer; I write for (and read) the newspapers! That’s where each one of my books on polygamy, spousal abuse, racist video games, and desert land-grabs originated -- the daily newspapers. About ten years ago I noticed a rash of oddly-written newspaper accounts of court cases involving child abuse. I say "oddly-written" because the exact kind of child abuse was never described, only hinted at. As a long-time journalist, that un-journalistic delicacy caught my attention, so I began investigating. What I discovered horrified me.

Knowing that there’s no point in writing a mere socio-political rant -- that would be boring, both for me to write and you to read -- I inserted this procedure into the middle of what the critics are calling "Webb’s best mystery to date." If you haven’t read DESERT CUT yet, you’ll find a little Western history in the guise of Geronimo, some vicious modern-day in-fighting as Lena navigates the cut-throat production meetings of Hollywood, you'll visit a small town with a big secret, and yes, you'll meet a few more girls on the run from their arranged marriages in an Arizona polygamy cult. But it's Lena's shocking discovery about her own past that has so many readers talking.

Now back to the touchy socio-political aspects of DESERT CUT. As I said earlier, the procedure described in my new book is still being practiced. In the Middle East, in Africa -- and now in the U.S., although our State Department is doing everything possible to cover it up. The government has its own reasons to keep this problem quiet, and the savvy readers of DESERT CUT will be able to figure it out.

I was greatly heartened by the spontaneous eruption of outrage when Desert Wives was published. So many of you wrote to me and asked what you could do to join the fight against polygamy. Your calls to the Arizona attorney general, and your letters to the governors of Arizona and Utah had everything to do with the eventual capture, trial and conviction of polygamist leader Warren Jeffs. Nothing could have been accomplished without YOU.

Perhaps it’s time we work together again, this time to stamp out the horrific practice I wrote about in DESERT CUT. One voice -- my own -- simply isn’t enough. It will take a thousand voices, maybe even millions, to make our government face up to this problem, as well as the other governments where this practice is commonplace. It's been done before. Recently, a Saudi woman -- the victim of a vicious gang rape -- was sentenced to jail and 200 lashes. Her crime? Being alone with a man. Only the outrage of the world's citizens kept the Saudi government from carrying out that sentence.

So maybe we can do this, too. Maybe our outrage can stop the practice I've revealed in DESERT CUT. Maybe it's time. Write me and let me know what you think.

For more information about DESERT CUT and other Lena Jones mysteries, check my website.

It's at www.bettywebb-mystery.com

When I'm in your area, please drop by and visit. Your continued support means everything to me. I will be posting some of your letters and comments on this blog. I hope we talk soon.

P.S. As an added gift to you, the reader, scroll down to the end of this blog (but take some time to read the interviews with some terrific mystery authors), and see pictures of the great Sonoran Desert near my house.

Donis Casey interview

2008-01-18T19:00:00.000-08:00

BETTY: You have a new book out and it’s creating quite a stir. Tell me about it.

DONIS: The Drop Edge of Yonder is the third installment in my historical mystery series featuring Alafair Tucker, a woman in her 40's who lives with her husband, Shaw, and their 10 children on a prosperous farm in Muskogee County, OK, in the 1910's. The Drop Edge of Yonder is about Mary, Alafair's second child, a naturally happy person -- until one evening in August of 1914, when she wakes up on her back in the middle of a field, staring at the sky and thinking about the Fourth of July. At first, she can't remember where she is or how she got there, or why she's thinking about the Fourth of July. Then it dawns on her that she's just witnessed a murder, and been grazed in the head by a bullet, to boot.

Have you ever been in a situation where you know the answer to something, but you just can't grasp it? Mary knows she holds a vital clue that will help solve this murder, and she feels that if she can just be left in peace to think about it and perhaps write about it in her journal, the answer will naturally float to the surface. The only trouble with this plan is her mother. Alafair doesn't have the slightest intention of leaving her in peace, mainly because she doesn't have time. The murderer is still around, and he seems to be trying to eliminate anyone who might be able to finger him. Alafair is desperate to keep Mary safe and do whatever she can to help identify the killer, so she hovers, and prods, and snoops, and generally drives Mary to distraction. Alafair may be annoying and relentless, but these are just the qualities it's going to take to save Mary from a killer.

BETTY: Sometimes having a “civilian” sleuth can be a problem for a writer. I mean, how does the civilian ask all those questions? And why would anyone bother to answer, anyway?

DONIS: Alafair is the most amateur of sleuths. In fact, she doesn't care at all about being a detective. What she does care about is getting and keeping her mobs of children out of trouble. But fortunately for me, her children and their friends manage to get themselves into a lot of trouble, and need their mother to get them out.

The fun thing for me about this series is that each book features a different one of Alafair's newly-grown children, and each child is different, with different interests and reactions to situations, different ways of handling things. And each one has to be handled differently by his/her mother. The first book, The Old Buzzard Had It Coming, was about Phoebe, Alafair's 4th child, a gentle and tractable girl who gets involved in a murder investigation, and is only too happy to have her mother's help to solve the mystery. However, the second book, Hornswoggled, features Alice, Phoebe's fraternal twin, who is headstrong and willful in the extreme, and doesn't in the least appreciate her mother's efforts on her behalf, even if Alice has fallen for a man whose late wife was knifed in the chest and dumped in the creek.

BETTY: Tell me something about your writing experience before you came up with the Alafair series. And while you’re at it, tell me why you decided to make women and their concerns figure so prominently in your books.

DONIS: I've written stories, poems, and books, fiction and non-fiction, all my life. But this series is different than anything I ever wrote before. I had never written a mystery, nor had I ever written about a traditional woman before Alafair came into my life. I'm quite the Baby Boomer, very much the feminist and professional in my younger days. Alafair represents a major departure not only in my writing, but in my view of the world. There was an article by Erica Jong which appeared in Publisher's Weekly last April, entitled Ghetto (Not) Fabulous, which struck me as expressing very much the mindset I was in when I created Alafair and her world. Allow me to excerpt a sentence or two: "Critics have trouble taking fiction by women seriously ... deep down the same old prejudice prevails. War matters; love does not. Women are destined to be undervalued as long as we write about love. ...We may glibly say that love makes our globe spin, but battles make for blockbusters and Pulitzers ...Unless we value the bonds of love as much as male territoriality, we are goners ... let's celebrate our femaleness rather than fear it. And let's mock the old-fashioned critics who dismiss us for thinking love matters. It does."

Love certainly matters to Alafair. And she doesn't think for a moment that being loving makes you weak. It makes you tough as nails. It gives you teeth and claws, and can make you dangerous. And maybe intellect isn't the highest form of knowing. Maybe intuition is the keenest observational sense of all. Alafair doesn't have the slightest doubt that this is so.

I was asked once which character in this giant family I identify with most strongly. I had to think about it, because of course all the characters have elements of me in them. I very much identify with the oldest daughter, Martha, because I'm the oldest, too, and I know just where she's coming from. But I think I feel the most empathy with Alafair herself. I think Alafair is me, if I were totally different than I am. She has all the traditional strengths and virtues I wish I had, but don't.

BETTY: How long does it take you to write a book?

DONIS: The Drop Edge of Yonder is a book that was years in the making. All of my books contain many incidents that actually happened, small and large, in my family or my husband's family... or someone I heard about or read about or knew slightly. But Drop Edge is particularly full of actual events. The murder itself is taken from something that happened in my family in Arkansas during the Civil War. The climax was inspired by an article I read in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal over thirty years ago, about an incident that happened to a British soldier who had been posted to Palestine after World War II, when he was attacked by a Jewish insurgent who refused to die, in spite of being beaten, shot, and stabbed numerous times.

BETTY: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

DONIS: For aspiring writers? Hmmm. I don't think that there's anything mysterious about being a writer. If you write, you're a writer. However, if you want to be a good writer, you have to practice practice, practice. It's like any art. The more you do it the more skilled you become. I also think that the best writers are prolific readers. Learn from the masters. As for getting published - become the best writer you can, never give up, and trust the process. If you're good enough and persistent enough, you'll get published.

One of my favorite quotes about writing is from a little book called The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield :
"Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got."

Interview with Donna Andrews

2008-01-03T07:45:00.000-08:00

BETTY: You seem never to have met a pun you didn't like. Tell me about that, and when it started. I believe your first few books in the Meg series didn't use them.DONNA ANDREWS: Murder with Peacocks was named rather by accident--I couldn't think of a title for it that I liked, so I called a friend and told her I needed a title for the book. "Which book?" she asked, knowing I had several projects in the works. "Do you mean the murder mystery with the peacocks?" I immediately decided that Murder with Peacocks would make a great title--I thought it would signal to the reader that this probably wasn't a gritty, noir novel, and maybe even hint that it was supposed to be a funny book.

Originally, I was calling the second book The Puffin Caper. Ruth Cavin, my editor, hated that. She suggested Puffins on Ice --which to me sounded like an Icecapades routine--picture Brian Boitano or Scott Hamilton in a tuxedo with a puffin mask. So she asked me to submit some other titles. I brainstormed furiously. I drafted my friends into brainstorming. We came up with a remarkable number of puffin-themed titles, mainly by taking existing titles and, well, puffinizing them. A sampling:

Lord of the Puffins. The Sound and the Puffin. As I Lay Puffin. Zen and the Art of Puffin Maintenance. The Puffins of Killamanjaro. Gone with the Puffin. Puffinheit 451. Tell Me How Long the Puffin's Been Gone. To Kill a Puffin-bird. A Puffin for Leibowitz. A Puffin for Adano. Cry the Beloved Puffin. David Puffinfield. Bleak Puffin. A Tale of Two Puffins. Far From the Madding Puffin. The Puffin of Casterbridge. Wuthering Puffins. Puffin and Prejudice. Return of the Puffin. Tarzan of the Puffins...

You get the idea. I chose a dozen of the best, sent them in, and after some weeks was told that Marketing had decided to call the book Murder with Puffins, for series continuity.

I was a little worried then that I'd be stuck with a formula--Murder with Large Ungainly Bird of the Year, to paraphrase something Dan Stashower said. So when thinking of a title for the third book, I picked Revenge of the Wrought Iron Flamingos, thinking that if they changed it, at least they would have to change it to Murder with Wrought Iron Flamingos, since there are no real, live flamingos in the book. Luckily they liked my original title, and I was able to talk them into Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon, the following year. The puns began with We'll Always Have Parrots, and continued with Owls Well That Ends Well and No Nest for the Wicket. The Penguin Who Knew Too Much, which came out in August 2007, breaks the run of puns, but I'm going back to a pun with the next, which last I heard was still titled Cockatiels at Seven.

Sometimes the bird comes first and I have to work on a pun, and sometimes I think of a pun and then figure out a way to involve that bird in the book. And I'm always looking for good avian puns--I'm thinking of having a contest for possible titles next year.

BETTY: How many books in all have there been in the Meg series?
DONNA: So far there have been eight books, with number nine, Cockatiels at Seven, in the works for an August 2008 release. And Ruth Cavin, my editor at St. Martins Minotaur, has approved my idea for the tenth book, which I'm now researching so I can start writing soon. That's one of the great things about having done so many books--by now, Ruth has figured out that I can probably be trusted to complete a book within shouting distance of the deadline--and that it will bear at least a slight resemblance to the initial idea she approves. There have also been two Meg short stories, one in Chesapeake Crimes 1 and the other in Death Dines In. I keep a list of the books and short stories in the series here:
http://donnaandrews.com/faqs.html

BETTY: An ornamental blacksmith is a pretty unusual protagonist. How'd you come up with her?
DONNA: Two things influenced my choice of a profession for Meg. One was that at the time I began writing Murder with Peacocks, I was working at a nine to five desk job. It didn't leave a vast amount of time free for writing, and I could see that if I were a mystery protagonist, I wouldn't have a lot of time free for sleuthing. So I wanted to give Meg a profession that would allow her a lot more control over her
schedule--a profession, for example, that would let her take the summer off, in Peacocks, to plan three family weddings. And about the time I was trying to decide on a profession for her, I was probably going to a craft fair--because I go to a lot of them. I am a craft fair junkie. Anyone who walks into my house can tell. I should probably be looking for a twelve-step program. Anyway, I liked the idea of making Meg a craftsperson, and then it hit me that if she was a blacksmith, no one would quibble with the notion that she was strong enough and resourceful enough to take care of herself when, as happens more than once in the series, she goes head to head with the villain. I always hate it when an otherwise strong, competent and independent heroine has to be rescued in the climax of the book by the hero. I wanted Meg to be able to do her share of the rescuing. Including having a sword fight with the villain in one book.

BETTY: Discuss the animal tie-ins to each book (especially, God help us, the penguins).
DONNA: Well, we talked about the birds in the title, so I guess you mean all the other animals that seem to be weaseling their way into the plots. W.C. Fields is supposed to have said "Never work with children or animals." But he was an actor, and well aware of the danger of being upstaged. I don't have to worry about that--I'm more like the director who inflicted the children and animals on Fields. It's not a problem if children and animals try to upstage Meg--she can handle them. So while I suspect she'd sometimes rather have fewer animals around, she's not likely to get her wish.

Spike, for example, the small canine furball who first appeared in Murder with Peacocks, is here to stay. Technically, he belongs to Michael's mother, but Mrs. Waterston dumped him on Meg and Michael, on
the suggestion of her allergist, several books ago, and it's beginning to look as if they are going to be stuck with "The Small Evil One" indefinitely. I usually try to give Spike a small but vital role in the
books, but never doing anything that a small, bad-tempered little dog wouldn’t normally do, like bite someone or bark at something big enough to gulp him down like an hors d'oeuvre. She'd never admit it, but even Meg's getting rather fond of him by now. Or at least resigned to having him around.

It also looks as if the penguins from The Penguin Who Knew Too Much won't completely disappear from her life, now that I've given Caerphilly its own zoo and handed it over to Dr. Montgomery Blake, celebrity
naturalist and animal welfare activist. I'd been wanting to use penguins for a while, but I didn't want to have to take Meg to Antarctica or some other suitable penguin habitat. For one thing, I'm a southerner, and doing the necessary research would be a real pain, and for another, I know that much of the humor in the Meg books arises from what her family and friends are doing--and I couldn't plausible transport the whole crew to a cold climate.

But while I was in Omaha for Mayhem in the Midlands, I went to the Henry Doorly Zoo and saw the little blue penguins, and realized that I didn't need to take Meg to the penguins--I could bring the penguins to her, courtesy of a bankrupt local zoo that needed a temporary home for its penguins. And as long as I had a zoo full of animals needing new homes, why not have a few more of them wash up on Meg's doorstep, and voila! A plot was born.

BETTY: You also have another series, which you term a "technocozy." Exactly what is a technocozy?
DONNA: It's a term my editor at Berkley, Natalee Rosenstein, coined to describe the unique nature of the Turing Hopper series. It's a traditional mystery, but set in the world of people and companies that use technology--a modern urban setting--rather than in St. Mary's Mead or Cabot Cove. But the characters are traditional--cozy--characters rather than tough, hardboiled ones.

Although it's not what I consciously set out to do, I realized as I was writing the Turing books that one thing I liked about them was that they pitted a group of allies who were basically nice, normal people--well, okay Turing isn't a normal kind of person, but she is a fairly nice one--against the rather dark and noir world of cybercrime. Cybercrime is profoundly the opposite of nice--pornography, gambling, identity theft, spam, phishing--almost makes you homesick for a simple murder. So for me, writing them is not only about seeing good triumph over evil--it's also about seeing nice and normal triumphing over big, scary, impersonal and nasty.

BETTY: I'm almost afraid to ask how you came up with Turing Hopper, but the devil's making me do it. How in the world....?
DONNA: I have no idea. I sometimes say that it would require years of psychoanalysis to figure it out. I think it arose partly from my desire to use computers in fiction in some accurate and yet innovative way--much of what you see about computers or any kind of technology in books is either Luddite paranoia or Tom Clancy style technoporn. I wanted to do something different, more realistic, and more interesting. But the core idea of the Turing series--that the protagonist would be an artificial intelligence who has become sentient and begins sleuthing when the programmer who created her disappears--no idea where I came up with that.

BETTY: You must be a bit of a computer whiz, yourself. Explain, and talk a little about the Turing Hopper books.
DONNA: I'm not so much a computer whiz as a computer aficionado. Computers fascinate me--the wonders they can perform and the simple things that are beyond them. The way they have insinuated themselves into so many aspects of our lives, for good and ill. The way people--myself included--have such strong feelings about what are basically inanimate objects.

And the last five years I worked at my day job, one of my main functions was as a translator between the marketing and computer divisions of the company. I tried never to get so immersed in the nitty gritty of
technology that I couldn't pull back and explain what they needed to know about it to people who were less fascinated than I was. I think that's a skill that I put to good use in the Turing books. I try to write them so my tech-savvy friends find them accurate while at the same time readers who don't like or understand computers will still be able to read them without any problem.

One thing I try to do in the Turing books is feature a crime that has tendrils in both the real world and the cyberworld. If it was only in cyberspace, Turing wouldn't need her human friends to solve it, and if
it was only in real life, Turing would be left out. But when you have something like credit card fraud or identity theft or skullduggery around role-playing games--something that crosses into both worlds--it
makes for a much more interesting mix of Turing's skills and those of her human friends Maude and Tim.

Tim's a particularly important part of the equation--he's a complete technophobe who can barely operate his cell phone, so whenever anything comes up in the course of a Turing book that readers might find confusing--never fear: before too long, Tim will get up his nerve to admit that he has no idea what Turing and Maude are talking about--and the reader can learn along with him.

BETTY: I note that you were born and raised near in Jamestown. We have a connection, then. One of my ancestors was in Jamestown in the 1600s (Anthony Minter). How does coming from such an incredibly historic area impact your writing, and in which book did you make use of it? Have you ever thought about writing a historical about the area?
DONNA: I’m from Yorktown, and yes, growing up in such a richly historic area has had an effect. I have had thoughts or writing something set in colonial times, but long exposure to Yorktown, Jamestown, and Williamsburg has made me very aware of how much work it is to make things really, truly historically accurate, so I haven't tried it yet. But I did use historical re-enactors in Revenge of the Wrought Iron Flamingos. And that experience probably made me more interested in writing something set in the colonial or revolutionary period--I realized how many more people are interested in reenacting the Civil War than the Revolution. The Revolution don't get no respect! We need to fix that!

Another thing I discovered while writing Flamingos was that growing up in Yorktown made me very aware of aspects of history that most people don't know about. Even the vocabulary I used, for example--I had no idea whether normal people knew what a pannier was, or redoubts, or who Baron Von Steuben was. I had to rely on my critique group to tell me what was common knowledge and what I needed to explain so my readers wouldn't be totally lost.

BETTY: What's your next project?
DONNA: My next writing project is the tenth Meg book--which I won't say a whole lot about because it's still in the planning stages. Though the next thing the public will see is Cockatiels at Seven, the ninth book, in which one of Meg's friends dumps her two-year-old son on Meg--"just for a little while." When her missing friend doesn't return to claim little Timmy after twenty-four hours--and hasn't answered her home phone or cell phone--Meg goes looking for her. She's not sure whether her friend has been killed, or kidnapped; whether she's on the run from the bad guys or maybe even from the police--but she's determined to find out. Even if she has to do her sleuthing with the two-year-old in tow.

I also have a couple of short stories coming out soon. One will be in an anthology, Unnatural Suspects, edited by Dana Stabenow--each story has to feature a murder in a fantasy or science fiction setting. The other will be in Moonlight and Mistletoe, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner, a sequel to their New York Times bestselling anthology Many Bloody Returns. I also had a short story in the September/October 2007 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and an essay in House Unauthorized, a collection of essays about the TV show House. At the moment, the Turing series is on hiatus, but the up side of that is that I have more time to do short stories, which is a lot of fun.

And I'm scheduled to be one of two guests of honor--William G. Tapply is the other--at Murder in the Magic City, which will be held in Birmingham, Alabama on February ? 2008. And of course I'm planning to
hit other conventions during the year--Left Coast Crime in Denver, Malice Domestic, Mayhem in the Midlands, and Bouchercon in Baltimore. So it's shaping up to be a busy year.

BETTY: What kind of advice do you have for beginning writers?
DONNA: Read several million words in whatever genre you're trying to write. Be prepared to write a million words or so before you get published, because that's sometimes what it takes. Find the right critique group-- even if it's only you and one other person--a group where you care about what the other writers are writing, find value in what they have to say about your writing, and go home fired up to work. And start doing your homework about the publishing industry before you finish your book, so you know how to tell an honest agent or editor from a crook who's trying to take advantage of your passion to be published.

To learn more about Donna Andrews, log onto...
website: http://donnaandrews.com/
blog: http://donnaandrews.typepad.com/donna_andrews/
mailing list: http://donnaandrews.com/mailinglist.shtml

J. M. Hayes interview

2007-11-28T09:44:00.000-08:00

J. M. (Mike) Hayes is the author of the popular Mad Dog and Englishman mysteries. We recently sat down to chat about his books and the writing life.

BETTY: Tell me a little about your new book. I hear it's another “Englishman” mystery.

MIKE HAYES: Sheriff English and his oddball, born-again Cheyenne brother are back for the fourth Mad Dog & Englishman mystery. Think Joel and Ethan Coen working with Garrison Keeler to make The Silence of the Lambs and you'll have the tone of the series. It's set in an imaginary Kansas county where English has been getting re-elected by small margins for years. Sheriff English is also known as Englishman. His half-brother, Harvey Edward Maddox, starred on the local football team where he earned the Mad Dog nickname. Since the glory days of his youth, Mad Dog has evolved into the local oddball—hippie, black power advocate, leader of the grape boycott, and now, a born-again Cheyenne. The boys' mother claimed to be half Cheyenne and half wildcat, though her Indian portion turned out to include Sans Arc, Mexican Cowboy, and Buffalo Soldier portions, as well as Cheyenne. After deciding he was a natural-born shaman, Mad Dog officially changed his name, and stuck the sheriff with his nickname. Once you've got a Mad Dog you've got to have an Englishman.

BETTY: Sounds like fun, and more than a little weird. How’d you come up with the idea for the series?

MIKE: I came up with the idea for Mad Dog & Englishman after the peaceful village where my father was born, Arlington, Kansas, went through the trauma of its first murder. My imaginary Buffalo Springs, Kansas is considerably less idyllic, but I thought it was interesting to consider how a community, in which things like murder never happen, reacts when one does, and how an under-funded and ill-prepared law enforcement agency goes about investigating such a horrific crime. For my own purposes, I thought it would be even more interesting if the sheriff's brother was the most logical suspect, and also happened to be determined to solve the case himself, though using Cheyenne Shamanism instead of police procedures. Then, to keep things moving, I decided to confine the book to one frantic twenty-four hour period. I wasn't expecting to write a sequel, as you'll discover in Prairie Gothic, Plains Crazy, and now Broken Heartland, when you watch me juggle a pair of characters who inconveniently share a name, but I've stuck with the formula in each of those books. Nothing ever happens in Buffalo Springs, but when it does, expect a Murphy's Law squared kind of day. With this addition to the series, that's four days, one each in summer, winter, spring, and fall, when all hell has broken loose in Benteen County, Kansas, and Sheriff English—an honest cop without much help or modern investigative equipment—sets out to find the villain and save the town while his brother, Mad Dog, gets in the way, draws suspicion, and otherwise
complicates the sheriff's efforts to bring the guilty to justice.

BETTY: I love that kind of competition, and you do it so well. For readers who are unfamiliar with the new book, what’s the plot of Broken Heartland?

MIKE: In this book, it's fall—Election Day—and Sheriff English is facing a particularly difficult opponent. His campaign is complicated by an accident during a high-speed chase in which his deputy collides with a school bus carrying the local teen choir. Mad Dog, who was in the Black Hills on a vision quest, has had a premonition instead. His brother is in immediate danger. The sheriff's college-age daughters, at separate schools, awaken with a similar sense of dread and, like their uncle, hurry home to protect Englishman. The sheriff, of course, sees his family as the ones in need of protection, especially when someone begins shooting up the local high school and a private army seizes control of a nearby farm and starts taking hostages. In other words, it's business as usual—another Murphy's Law day.

BETTY: I know writers hate to be asked this question, but where did you get the idea for Broken Heartland? Inquiring minds want to know.

MKE: The 2004 election was one of the most polarizing in our nation's history. Shortly before the election, Thomas Frank wrote a best-selling book titled What's the Matter With Kansas? My third Mad Dog & Englishman book, Plains Crazy, had just been released and my wife and I went back to the Great Manhattan Mystery Conclave in The Little Apple, Manhattan, Kansas to promote it that fall. It was an interesting opportunity to compare the book's observations with the Kansas I remembered from having grown up there, as well as the one we were visiting. We went to another GMMC just before the 2006 election. I felt sure I was seeing more of the heartland I knew than the one in Frank's book. In fact, some dramatic changes came about in that election. I decided to combine the political threat Frank described from the religious right with Englishman's re-election campaign. The result became Broken Heartland.

BETTY: That brings up an interesting point. Just what is it about the Religious Right that sets so many people's teeth on edge?

MIKE: Among other things, our religious right bears a striking similarity to the fanatics who attacked us on 9/11. They are as certain that their world view is the only correct one as al-Qaeda is about theirs. And, in some cases, as willing to do desperate and despicable things. The men who attacked the federal building in Oklahoma City did so because they believed the United States had to be punished for what happened at the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco. Another "Christian" sect in Kansas sends protesters to the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming those men died because God hates America for not wiping homosexuals off the face of the earth. People like these, who operate completely outside the realm of logic and reason, are frightening. We're never quite sure what they're capable of. The fact that some "Christian" fanatics have killed because of their beliefs convinces other people that every Evangelical Christian is similarly dangerous. Like all generalizations, that's too simplistic and inaccurate. The next thing you know, people will start thinking their local Cheyenne Shaman is capable of murder . . . No, wait. They do that in Benteen County all the time.

BETTY: A chilling, chilling plot that resonates with newspaper headlines today. So what's next for the Englishman? How do you top something like Broken Heartland?

MIKE: I'm working on a book that will let me split time between (home) the Kansas I grew up in, and (home) the Southwestern desert I've lived in since I transferred from Wichita State University to the University of Arizona. Englishman's daughters have grown up over the years I've been writing this series. One of them has inherited her father's interest in law enforcement and, though she doesn't know it yet, may be about to get an opportunity to work in Southern Arizona. Unless that story throws a twist at me I'm not expecting, I'll then be able to write mysteries in either location, or both, depending on my inclination. And since I live in Arizona, it makes sense to write books about the place where I can
most easily promote them.

BETTY: A lot of novice writers visit this site. What is the best advice you can give them?

MIKE: More than one would-be writer has asked me what the secret is to getting published. The only one I know is to already be famous, or infamous, and therefore, someone a publisher believes will tomatically sell enough books to make a profit. Since most of us don't bring fame to the table—and the infamy option, though always open, remains a place we'd prefer not to go—we're stuck with hard work. There are natural writers who sell their first article, story, or book, and everything they write thereafter, but they're the exception. Most of us have to master the trade and we can only do that by reading, evaluating what we read, and practicing and perfecting our craft. That takes patience. My first sale came after six years of rejection slips. But, by the time I was ready to submit my first novel, it was picked up by the first agent I approached and bought by the first publisher to whom she submitted it. Then that publisher dropped their line of suspense novels and, because my parents were thoughtless enough not to set me up with a generous trust fund, I was another ten years finding the time to reinvent myself and write the next novel that would sell.

If you want practical advice, I'll lead with patience. Next, you must read. How-to-write books can be a great help, but if you want to sell a mystery, read mysteries. You have to know what's being published and make an effort to understand why. Writing classes can be of assistance, as can writers groups that aim to advise and assist their members (e.g., the Society of Southwestern Authors). Somewhere along the way, you have to learn the rules. Then, you must not allow yourself to be constrained by them. Ultimately, the first rule of good writing is that there are no rules (except that what is written must work for the reader). And while it may be harder to sell something that's odd and not quite like anything else on the shelves, those are the books readers remember and remark on and eventually turn into classics.

Find a critique group—other writers and would-be writers who are willing to exchange honest opinions and evaluations of each other's work. And don't waste your time on members seriously below your skill level. Critique groups take lots of your time, but they can provide invaluable and near immediate feedback. To be useful, a critique group must gain you as much as you give it.

Resist the urge to self-publish. As with all writing rules, this doesn't apply to everyone. But, especially in fiction, self-publishing is more likely to harm a writer's career than aid it. Many legitimate publishers now reject the self-published out of hand because they believe those writers lack the patience to endure the editorial process and may resist necessary revisions. This may seem unfair, and there are certainly bad books published by respected houses, but putting the average book through a vetting process makes a real difference and few individuals are able to market their work, no matter how good, as effectively as even the least of the small publishing houses.

That's it. That, and write the very best you can. When you show your work to others, do so only after you've revised and proofed and made it the absolute best it can be. And then, if you're rejected, keep trying. You only have to find one publisher who appreciates your work. It's a tough road, harder still under current conditions, but I firmly believe quality writing still gets recognized and finds its way into print. Give it your best shot, as many times as it takes.

For more on J. M. (Mike) Hayes and his books, visit http://www.jmhayes-author.com.

Interview with Lev Raphael

2007-08-14T04:11:00.000-07:00

Betty: You're the son of Holocaust survivors. How has that affected your writing? Your life?

Lev: It's probably the most significant aspect of my life, in that I grew up very young with an intimation of unspeakable tragedy that wasn't distant but had affected my parents directly. It made me even more of an outsider than I was as the child of immigrants. Conversely, it inspired a drive to be a writer, and a teacher and it also fueled my concern for social justice. Did it help lead me to mysteries? Perhaps, since my childhood was filled with gaps. And lately, I've
discovered some unsolvable mysteries in my parents’ war years I hope to write about in one form or another.

Betty: Tell us about The German Money and how you were able to write it without falling apart. Or did you?

Lev: It's the story of three adult children of a Holocaust survivor whose will freaks them all out in various ways. The emotions of the story weren't difficult but the plot was, and even harder than that was finding the voice. That's partly why it took me twenty years from start to finish, through various versions of the story. Then I was lucky to have a terrific editor who helped me put the finishing touches on it. That's I think why it was a Booksense 76 pick, a Jewish Book
Council book (which meant a tour during Jewish Book Month), published in England and Germany, and why an independent producer has been doggedly trying to make a movie out of it.

Betty: You seem to be a man of many enormous contradictions. You are gay and write wonderful gay-themed mysteries, and yet in The German Money, you have a touching straight love story. You write about the Holocaust, yet have a German publisher and a German tour. You write literary fiction, mysteries, short stories, and non-fiction for young people experiencing rough times (Especially "Stick Up for Yourself!). You are a literary critic, and yet go ahead and put your toe in the fiction waters. Tie all this together for me.

Lev: I guess you could say I'm a Jewish author with a catholic career? :-) I don't see my career in terms of contradictions but more as a reflection of diverse interests going way back. I've always read very widely, from second and third grade on, when I loved science fiction, history, biography, natural science--and so my reading over the years has shaped what I like to write. I started with short stories way back when, moved to psychology, novels, literary criticism, reviews, a children's book and kept going from there. I never know where my career will lead, because this past year I stumbled onto an idea for a novel set in the Gilded Age-- a period I've always loved--and spent a very intensive six months researching and writing the book. It's all tied together by my curiosity, my love of learning, my enjoyment of challenges and newness.

As for the German publisher, I've now had two German book tours, been treated very well there (http://www.levraphael.com/europe_photos.html), and expect to go back since I signed a contract for a book about growing up with Germany as a presence in my home and then what it was like to actually go there. My wish for any writer is German translations and a tour. They see writers as cultural figures, and touring there is a real honor.

Betty: Tell me about Hot Rocks. It's no secret I loved it. And your protagonists... tell me about Nick Hoffman and Stephan Borowski.

Lev: Nick Hoffman heads for the steam room after a tiring workout and finds out that the man lying there isn't just resting or asleep, but dead. Since he discovered the body, and because he has a somewhat unsavory reputation because he's been involved in murders before, he's a suspect. That sends him into a justifiable panic, which he resolves by pursuing the case himself, along with his sidekick, Juno Dromgoole, who the Chicago Tribune called a "sex bomb" and I like to think of as Bette Midler with a PhD.

A big, expensive health club is the perfect setting for a mystery--all that devotion, anxiety, intensity, work, passion, fatigue. The place is electric. And there are groups and cliques within the larger community. It's a closed world with rules and customs of its own, and there's a fascinating transition--you enter in one set of clothes and then you strip and don a costume of some kind to be part of it. More than truths are bared, and more than flaws are concealed. How could you not want to set a mystery there?

As for Nick, he's a put-upon, highly literate English professor who just can't understand encountering murders on a quiet college campus when he was never even mugged growing up in New York His partner is the writer-in-residence, and both reflect different aspects of me: Stefan's more serious, Nick has a comic view of life.

Betty: Tell me about your radio show.

Lev: After an NPR show I did reviewing for folded, I was on a local radio station for two years, much of which I spent doing my own radio show where I interviewed authors. They loved it because I always did my homework, and I got to produce it too, and learned some valuable skills, along with making some goofs--but luckily the show wasn't live. I had great guests of all kinds--historians, novelists, mystery writers, literary critics, reviewers--the requirement was a well-
written, interesting book. Linda Fairstein was on it, so was Ellen Hart--and luminaries like Erica Jong, Julian Barnes and my favorite, Salman Rushdie (his publicist contacted me!). That was my highlight and I folded the show not so long after. It was a tremendous amount of work, and took away from my own writing. But for a time I was also a DJ since the station played jazz, world music, etc. and so in the break for my show I played something cool and commented on it. That was a hoot.

Betty: Who are you reviewing for these days? What do you look for in a book?

Lev: I've cut back heavily on my reviewing to get more books done. I review mainly for a public radio station in East Lansing, MI and my favorite recent book is Troublesome Young Men by Lynne Olson about the disastrous Chamberlain government in England and how it failed to prevent WW II and then when it entered the war, botched that, too. Tory rebels unseated the government and Churchill became Prime Minister. The book is exciting, dramatic, beautifully told
and intensely moving. It's filled with passion and a must read for history buffs. I look for books that have some of those qualities, I look for books that aren't "much of a muchness," for books that make me think or dream, for books I want to share with people and read aloud from, books that make me happy I've read them or even make me wish I'd written them!

Visit Lev Raphael’s website at www.levraphael.com

Interview with author Camille Minichino

2007-08-05T06:59:00.000-07:00

I met Camille at this year’s Mayhem in the Midlands, when I was telling a group of writers bellied up to the bar about my life-long problem with math, chemistry, physics and all things science. Camille, in a modest little voice, confessed that she’d received her Ph.D. in physics from Fordham University, and written several books based on everything I was afraid of. More to be polite than anything, I told her, gee, they sure sound interesting (yeah, I have been known to tell a whopper or two), never suspecting she’d give me one. When I left Mayhem with a copy of THE NITROGEN MURDER, I was convinced I’d never understand it, let alone, like it.

Boy, was I wrong! I not only loved THE NITROGEN MURDER because of Camille’s clear,
non-condescending style, but I adored Dr. Gloria Lamerino, Camille’s amateur sleuth, an eccentric, super-smart physicist who lives above a funeral parlor. Who knew science could be so fascinating and funny?

And for you aspiring authors out there, take special note of Camille’s advice in the final four paragraphs.

INTERVIEW

Betty: You're the kind of person I used to scream and rum from -- a physics teacher. Just the though of physics, chemistry, algebra and any other of the sciences gives me a case of hives. So why do I understand -- and love -- your books?

Camille: See? Isn't science fun? It's all in who gives you your first introduction to math and science. I was lucky enough to have wonderful teachers who forgot to tell me that science was hard or that girls wouldn't be able to do it. By the time I was old enough to hear those myths, it was too late; I was hooked. I love it when someone reads my books and says, gee, that's not so hard is it? I don't know why physics and chemistry especially get such a bad rap. They're about what our universe is made of and how it works. Physics and Chemistry are what WE are made of,so how can they not be on every talk show?

Betty: How many of the "element" mysteries have there been so far? You > say there might be 109 cases in this series. Mind explaining that to those of us who are science dunderheads?

Camille: I've done 8, in order, from THE HYDROGEN MURDER to THE OXYGEN MURDER. In each I one take an interesting (and potentially deadly!) aspect of the element and build a mystery around it. Right now there are 112 (3 news ones in the last ten years!) elements with names. This translates into about 11 television seasons, if anyone cares to produce them! But I digress. The elements are our best shot at figuring out what are the basic building blocks of our universe. If the universe were leveled today, what would you need to rebuild it? The answer is: the elements of the periodic table.

Betty: Is your amateur sleuth Dr. Gloria Lamerino based on you? If so, how'd you dare do it? And if not, why not?

Camille: Lots of "coincidences," like Italian-American background and general world view of course. But Gloria is persistent (an amateur sleuth has to be!) and I'm not. When things get tough, I quit. And there's another clue as to how easy the sciences are. I stayed with them. No disciplined memorization required in physics, for example. If you forget how the law of gravity works, just drop something and watch.

Betty: Why is Gloria living above a funeral home?

Camille: Because some people think physics and physicists are boring (see above), I thought I would give her a funky place to live. Also, this arrangement of a funeral parlor with the family living upstairs is very common on the east coast where she lives. I have a cousin who is a freelance embalmer (but that's for another time) and I get great stories from him.

Betty: While I love Dr. Gloria (what a ballsy scientist!), I hear you've come up with a new sleuth and series. Tell me about that.

Camille: My other big interest, besides promoting science and technology literacy, is miniatures -- making dollhouse furnishings, stand-alone scenes, and roomboxes. My new protagonist, Geraldine Porter, a retired English teacher, is a miniaturist and amateur sleuth. Maddie, her 10-year-old granddaughter came out of the blue to be her partner, so now I have a granddaughter/grandmother series! The first one, MURDER IN MINIATURE will be out in February.

Betty: How in the world did you go from a science lab to dollhouses?

Camille: Science is also all about modeling. Atoms are not "real" in the sense of being hard little objects. They are a device, a way to "explain" certain behavior of materials. That is, the world behaves AS IF there are these things we've given the name atom to ... it's all a fiction, like dollhouses and mystery novels! But they all "work" for us in that they give us an understanding
of ourselves and the universe and that's what they have in common with art, music, and all human endeavors. OOPS, I'm getting way too liberal artsy here, sorry.

Betty: I hear you've begun blogging yourself. Tell me why.

Camille: I have this fear of being left out! I celebrated my &)-th birthday (typo intentional!) this year and I feel it's important to stay current. I hooked up with other hobby mystery writers at killerhobbies.blogspot.com. It's a nice way to showcase my miniatures, too. You can see some of my little creations there as well as on my own website. My latest project is making manuscript pages that are 0.7 inches wide by 0.9 inches long (roughly!) to represent an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet, for a 1-inch scale scene. I'm using a small section of text and printing at a reduced size. Trial and error got me to a nice layout. You can't exactly read the text without a magnifier, but even with the naked eye you can tell it's a manuscript page. I'm making hundreds of these to spread around the desktops and floors of office scenes.

Betty: What kind of advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Camille: Advice part one: do whatever it takes to get your manuscript in the best shape that it can be. This usually means that people other than your maid of honor and your mother need to read it and tell you it's wonderful. It also usually means many hours of editing and critiquing, alone and with others. This is hard for many adults to swallow. They're already good at something, and have often been paid well for that knowledge or skill. Why bother starting from scratch to learn another skill? They think that simply a good idea and a few cool turns of phrases, set to paper, should be enough, and when it isn't ... fugeddaboudit.

Advice part two: network, network, network. Take classes, join Sisters in Crime (plug), hang out with people in the business, learn how to prepare a killer proposal package, and get hugs when the rejections start coming in.

My first book took 60 years to write. But my actual focused time was more like 2 years, during which I took classes and networked with other writers. I sent my first packages to agents and publishers in September and got my first acceptance the following April. Seven months. Like a premature baby. I did 2 books with this small press, then tried again to get an agent and had 5 offers that time.

Though parts of this business don't make sense (ahem), I'm very glad I'm in it. I'm glad I survived the blow that all my degrees and advanced age didn't entitle me to anything in the new world I was entering ... I took it as an exciting new adventure, which it has been. And getting invited to your blog spot, Betty, has been a great reward!

* * *

To find out more about Camille’s “elemental” murders, check out her website at
www.minichino.com. For more writing tips, check the archives of this blog, where new interviews and/or writing tips are posted weekly.

Report from "Malice Abroad"

2007-07-17T08:59:00.000-07:00

Poisoned Pen’s Malice Abroad took place Saturday, July 15, 2007, and featured Rhys Bowen, Aaron Elkins, Sharon Kay Penman, Nicole Mones, Alan Gordon, Jon Talton, Carol Goodman, and the always superb Barbara Peters, who organized the conference.

Although not billed as a writers’ conference, the authors at Malice Abroad jammed so many great writing tips into their talks that any in attendance who didn’t take notes missed some great advice.

For instance, while being interviewed by Barbara Peters, editor in chief of the Poisoned Pen Press, Carol Goodman, author of “The Sonnet Lover,” set in Italy, said, “Although I’ve traveled in Italy quite a bit and even spent an entire week in a villa like the one in my book, I still made up a fictional place -- just in case. My advice to anyone setting a novel in a city they don’t live is to describe only a couple of places, such as a church, in detail. That will give the reader the flavor of the area, without the author taking too big a chance to screw up.” Other books by Goodman include “The Ghost Orchid” and “The Lake of Dead Languages.”

Although Alan Gordon’s books are set in medieval France (“The Lark’s Lament,” “Thirteenth Night,” etc.), and he travels there frequently, he confided that an author doesn’t really need to travel the globe to come up with a book. “My neighborhood of Queens, New York, is one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the world, and a lot of my ideas actually begin there. Then I just transplant that nugget of an idea to the south of France. And the 13th century!”

Jon Talton sets all his novels (“Concrete Desert,” “Cactus Heart,” etc.) in his home town of Phoenix, because as he said, “That’s where the corruption is. In the desert, those who control the water control society. Talk about motives for murder!” Talton, also an acclaimed journalist, then warned, “I’m growing increasingly alarmed by people who brag that they don’t read newspapers any more, that they get everything they need from the Internet. But I can assure you that the people who run this country do read the newspapers, because that’s where the issues are discussed in depth by experts, the people who actually know what they’re talking about. Are we going to allow only our rulers to be fully informed?”

Not surprisingly, that common writer’s affliction -- the Dark Night of the Soul -- came up more than once during the conference. Nicole Mones, who sets her books in China (“Lost in Translation,” “The Last Chinese Chef,” etc.), talked about the writer’s loneliness. “The time between books can be very dark because you don’t know if you’ll ever get published again. I was in a particularly dark time when I got an email from Barbara Peters asking me, ‘Are you still writing? I’m looking forward to reading one of your books again!’ That made all the difference in the world to me.”

But the conference wasn’t just about the Dark Side. Sharon Kay Penman (“Prince of Darkness," “The Queen’s Man,” etc.) got a few laughs when she said, “Being a writer is great, because you can play God in your books. Whenever someone gives you a hard time, you can just kill them.”

Peters laughed, then said, “Mystery writers are always going around in public talking to themselves, so I’m always waiting for one of them to be hauled off by the guys with nets. Especially since those mutters are usually about various ways to kill people without getting caught.”

Aaron Elkins, who’s traveled all over the world to research the settings in his books (“Little Tiny Teeth,” “Unnatural Selection,” etc.), said, “Well, mystery writing can be a dangerous profession in many ways. Your characters take over your life, and if you’re not careful, they can get you killed. For instance, when I was going down the Amazon, I actually encountered that big spider I used in ‘Little Tiny Teeth.’”

The high point of the eight-hour conference (besides the authors, of course) was the hat contest judged by Rhys Bowen (“Her Royal Spyness,” “In Dublin’s Fair City,” “Evanly Bodies,” etc.) just after tea. But amidst the applause and laughter, Bowen offered some advice of her own. “It sometimes helps develop a character if you can keep her as close to yourself as possible. For instance, in my new series about Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, many of the things that happen to Georgie actually happened to me. Therefore I was able to use some of my own observations about the English class system. And it’s not pretty.”

On my way to the north woods!

2007-06-30T05:04:00.000-07:00

It's 115 degrees in Scottsdale, so I'm loading the dogs, cats and hubby into the SUV and heading up to a small cabin in the piney woods of northern Arizona. This is supposed to be my vacation, but one look at my luggage shows me I'll be doing more work than relaxing. A laptop. Six pads of yellow, legal-sized paper. Something like 20 black gel pens. Two shopping bags full of books (and I'm only reviewing three for Mystery Scene). Obviously, I'm a workaholic.

Since I finished "Desert Cut" a couple of weeks ago, I've been roaming around aimlessly, trying to figure out what to do with myself. I can't start on the next Lena Jones book until my editor decides which of the four ideas she'd like me to develop into a full novel. So other than the Small Press column for Mystery Scene that I'm tidying up, I'm not writing anything. This is a bit traumatic for someone who is used to getting up around 3:30 or 4 every morning and writing until 11 or 12, taking a break, then returning to the toil.

Out of frustration of not being able to write about Lena again yet, I've been coming up with ideas for a new series. Male protagonist for a change? A female again? First person? Third person? Someone living in the sticks or in the big, bad city? West coast? East coast? The hearty heartland? Cozy? Noir? These are all the decisions a writer has to make before writing down that first sentence -- or maybe that first sentence itself will inform the writer what kind of book it's going to be. Books do tend to boss writers around.

I was talking to James Sallis once, and he told me that the idea for "Drive" came to him in one image: a man sitting against the door of a cheap motel room, with blood flowing towards him. Out of that one image came a small masterpiece. If you haven't read "Drive" yet, do so. To my mind, it's flawless. The Washington Post, L.A. Times, Entertainment Weekly, and other media agree with me -- they voted it one of the Top Ten novels of the year.

Back to my own writing frustrations. I have about six file drawers full of ideas for novels, so I'm not exactly lacking material. The problem is that right now I'm loathe to make that emotional decision as to which idea I want to throw my heart and soul behind. Since writing a book take over your every waking moment, you have to make certain it's exactly the right project. And the project has to fit in with whatever Lena Jones I'll be working on next (I have a suspicion which of my LJ ideas my editor will want developed, but I've been wrong before). So I guess what I'm really thinking about is writing TWO BOOKS at the same time.

Geez, I must be nuts.

Writing Tip #2

2007-06-22T04:35:00.000-07:00

After finishing "Desert Cut," I decided to clean my den -- oh, what a mess! Three years of research lying all over the floor (yes, it was originally filed and stacked neatly, but in the heat of writing...). Anyway, while shoveling away the debris, I found this little piece I wrote to one of my Creative Writing students at Phoenix College, who was afraid she was suffering from "writer's block." In case it might help someone else (it did that student) I quote the note verbatim.

It occurred to me after you left what your problem with writing actually is. You're afraid to fail, therefore you can't get started. Most beginning writers are afraid to fail because every time they start the process of writing, a little voice says, "Boy, that's terrible stuff!" You have to learn to ignore this voice.

Every good writer is two people: a writer and a critic. Both entities are invaluable, because without the writer the story would never be told, and without the critic, the story would never be told well. But sometimes -- especially with beginning writers -- the critic is so anxious to start work that he enters the picture too soon. Instead of letting the writer tell his story in the long, sloppy, rambling style in which all heart-filled first drafts are written, the critic rushes forward and says, "Let me fix that mess!"

The critic is right, of course. That first draft really is a mess. The problem is, though, that the critic is right at the wrong time.

To write anything, a writer must be very unjudgemental about his first draft, because to turn out anything worthwhile, he must write from his heart in an almost stream-of-consicousness manner. He cannot let the mechanics of the English language get in his way. He must worry only about telling his story, getting the action down, capturing the feelings and memories, creating characters who come alive. While doing this, he cannot worry about adjectives or adverbs or double negatives or even the passive voice. That's the critic's job, and the critic's time hasn't come yet.

It is only after the writer has completed his entire first draft (not just the first paragraph, first page, or first chapter!) that the critic should be allowed to start work. If the critic does begin working too soon, the writer shrivels up and frequently stops writing entirely. Why? Because the moment the critic steps in, the writer leaves -- the Creativity Room is too small to hold both of them at the same time. Which is fine, because critics can't write anything worthwhile, anyway. Unlike the far braver writer, a critic is so caught up in the mechanics of writing, that he has trouble creating. The critic always takes the "safe" tried-and-true path. Therefore, his prose is wooden, his characters stereotyped, his plots cliched. Why? Because critics are much too worried about making all the mistakes they know are lurking out there for unwary writers.

So only let your WRITER do the writing. Only your WRITER can speak with the authentic voice of your heart and soul. Then, when your WRITER has completed his project, tell your critic that it's time to get to work. After all, the critic's job is to bring the cool, clear voice of knowledge and intellect to bear upon your project. The critic will find all those non-sequiturs, passive verbs, superfluous adjectives and sloppy sytax that the writer indulged in. Like a surgeon, he'll slice away the worst passages, and do a little nip and tuck on the rest.

The critic, when called upon at the RIGHT time -- but no earlier -- will fix the mess the writer has created and will make it truly beautiful.

But only when it's time.

Feeling better now!

2007-06-11T07:05:00.001-07:00

Now that the awful business of creating the Author's Note detailing all my research for "Desert Cut" (due out Feb. '08 by Poisoned Pen Press) is finished, I'm back to normal -- or whatever passes for normal for a mystery writer/journalist.
The time for breast-beating is over. Now it's time for writing tips.
One of the most frequently-asked questions of a writer is, "Where do you get your ideas?" In my case, the answer is simple. As a journalist of 20 years, I get my ideas from the newspapers. My first book, "Desert Noir," came about after reading an article in the Scottsdale Tribune (where I was worked as a feature writer). The article said that an 80-year-old-woman refused to be moved from her house when a big sports stadium was slated to be built on her land. The old woman had been born in that house, as had her father and grandfather, so it wasn't just a "house" to her, it was a link to her heritage. Yes, the multi-millionaire owner of the team that would be using the sports stadium was going to pay her for the house, but only what the house was actually worth, which wasn't much. This meant that the frail old lady would not have enough money to buy another home in a decent neighborhood -- just in the worst, crime-laden slums of Phoenix. She'd probably have to move into a trailer on the other side of town, away from the friends of a lifetime.
After the team owner upped his offer (but not by much), the old woman's family finally persuaded her to take the money, so she did -- not that she had any choice. To help the multi-millionaire team owner along, the city had invoked "eminent domain," the law by which any government (and often private) entity can grab any private residence to use for their own use and profit. The old woman moved out, and was dead within the year. Her family said her heart was broken.
Besides being furious about this whole disgraceful mess, I was intrigued by it. What happens when private ownership conflicts with the great amount of monies that can be made from a land grab? The morality (or immorality) of the issue was fascinating. I began to research eminent domain, and the research eventually turned into "Desert Noir" -- my first mystery novel. (No, I didn't kill the multi-millionaire; that would be too easy).
To get ideas from newspapers, you need to pick and chose wisely. If the headline screams SERIAL KILLER CAUGHT! you can pretty much count on the fact that hundreds of other writers out there will base books on that headline. So never pick the obvious. Pick a smaller story, something where interesting people are doing instresting -- if weird-- things. If the headline says something like, SCOTTSDALE MOM HOLDS METH PARTY FOR KINDERGARTENERS, you might be onto something. But even then, you have to be careful. Find a "theme" in that local story which will resonate to someone on the other side of the country. Debauched kindergarteners will, that's for sure.
Another good way to get ideas from newspapers is, when reading a story, ask yourself, "What kind of person would do such a thing?" This question could arise from a story about a wedding gone wrong (bride runs off), a house break-in (thief takes only the woman's shoe collection), a messy divorce (husband dumps port-a-potty contents into ex-wife's living room), an unusual bank robbery (robbers dressed in Nixon masks), a disputed parking ticket (parker chews and swallows ticket)... the list goes on. Once you've decided what kind of person would do such a thing, ask yourself -- who is the best person to tell this story? In other words, what point of view should you choose? The person who ate the parking ticket? The officer who gave the ticket-eater the parking ticket? The ticket-eater's wife (or husband)? His mother? His coach? His cell mate (if the parking ticket altercation resulted in arrest)? The judge, who has his own problems?
Every day's newspaper holds enough story ideas to fill a bookshelf -- if you just turn your imagination loose on all these unhappy, misbehaving people.
Another great area of the paper to find ideas (and one of my favorites, by the way), is the Dear Abby column. Read the question to Abby, but never, never, never read Abby's answer. YOU are the one who will provide the answer. Just let your imagination play with the dilemma the person is experiencing. Dear Abby, my sister-in-law keeps making passes at my huband. Dear Abby, I think my husband is gay. Dear Abby, I just found out... See what I mean? Come up with a picture of what the letter-writer must be like, and what it must feel like to live with his problem. Give him a family, and give everyone in that family a unique personality -- then center the story around the original question asked by that Dear Abby letter. Guess what? You've got a book!

Writing Author's Note for "Desert Cut"

2007-06-10T18:29:00.001-07:00

Sometimes writing makes you cry.
When I wrote my mystery, "Desert Wives: Polygamy Can Be Murder," I was furious at the way women and children were being treated on Arizona's polygamy compounds. As difficult as the subject was to approach in an "entertaining" mystery-novel manner, my anger got me through the book. When I wrote the six-page Author's Note detailing my research, however, I cried all my way through it.
The same thing has just happened to me now with my new mystery, "Desert Cut" (due out by Poisoned Pen Press in February '08). Only this time, the exerience is even harder.
Energized all through this past year by my fury over a certain situation, I finished writing "Desert Cut" yesterday. Since four in the morning, this morning, I've been working on my Author's Note.
And crying.
I'll bet you didn't know reporters cried. Well, they do -- but they don't usually let people catch them at it.
Just when I thought I couldn't take the misery detailed in "Desert Cut"s Author's Note any more, Jimmy Webb, my police chief cousin in Michigan, sent me a wonderful email which coincidentally touched on the issue "Desert Cut" is about. After reading his email, I cried even harder -- although for a different reason. And then, surprisingly, I found the strength to go on.
There are no coincidences.
Jimmy's email reminded me that sometimes there is something you are called to do, no matter how bad doing it makes you feel. Because it's the right thing to do.
So that's what's going on right now-- I'm working hard and feeling bad, in hopes that someday "Desert Cut" will make a difference. Just like "Desert Wives" did.

Clarification

2007-06-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

June 9, 2007
This is just like working for the newspaper -- you type in something that's not quite clear (or just flat out wrong) and immediately someone is either on the phone to you or on your blog to correct you. What fun! My friend Sharon Magee, also a writer (you should read her wonderful book, "Geronimo! Stories of An American Legend," published by Arizona Highways), just pointed out that the Hohokam Indians actually built the first canals in Arizona. That's true. They started digging them about 1,000 years ago. Their descendants, the Pimas, developed them still further. Eventually, along came the engineers at Central Arizona Project to take all the credit. In Mesa, Arizona -- about six miles from where I live -- there's a canal museum that time dates the history. And just a little more than across the street from me are the Pima themselves. Only now instead of digging canals, they're running the casino (as well as taking classes at Scottsdale Community College and doing all the other things the rest of us do).

A mistake already!

2007-06-09T12:27:00.000-07:00

Time: about 10 minutes after I made my first post. I see that my last line says, "take pit on me."
Oh, dear. That's supposed to say, "take pity on me."

You see, now, why I need pity!

Webb's Blog

2007-06-09T11:44:00.000-07:00

June 9, 2007

I have just completed the manuscript for the new Lena Jones mystery, Desert Cut -- which will be released by Poisoned Pen Press sometime in February 2008 -- and I've decided to celebrate by creating this blog. I'll admit that I'm a little nervous about the entire enterprise, because although I've been a reporter for more than 20 years and have written (and had published) five books as well as thousands of feature articles, this is a whole new deal for me.

So I'm going to ask for your help. Tell me what you'd like to have me discuss on this blog. Maybe you'd like to know more about me, about my books, maybe even a few things about writing.

For starters... here goes! Betty Webb's first official blog.

I live in beautiful, downtown Scottsdale, Arizona, which means that I live about a half-mile from the Pima/Maricopa Salt River Indian Reservation. Last night my husband visited their casino (no, neither of us gambles, but the Pimas put on a rockin' seafood buffet on Friday nights. Plus, I jump at any chance to visit the Rez.

Throughout history, the Pimas have been very peaceful people. During the Anglo migration westward, Pima farmers sold the crops they raised to the pioneers. They managed to farm out here in the desert because of the series of canals they built, canals so sophisticated that in the 20th century, Arizona engineers used the old canal beds to create new, high-tech canals to bring water from the Colorado River.

Those of you who have read my Lena Jones mysteries know that Lena's parter, Jimmy Sisiwan, is a full-blooded Pima, although he was raised by his adoptive Mormon parents in Utah. Up until 1978, when the Indian Children Adoption Act was passed, it was common to adopt Indian children (by the way, Indians prefer to be called Indians -- not Native Americans). Now orphaned Indian children are raised by their extended families, thus they learn about their wonderful heritage. In the future, this blog will feature pictures of the Pima Reservation , as well as pictures of many of the sites mentioned in the Lena Jones books -- Desert Noir, Desert Wives, Desert Shadows and Desert Run. And shortly, of course, Desert Cut.

Living in the desert is a wonderful experience, but it does have its challenges. That's why the Pimas had to dig all those canals to survive.

Well, that's it for now. Let me know some of the things you'd like discussed on my blog. And if this comes across as one big mess, have pit on me. I'm a newbie here, myself!