Our Justice System

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America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say “You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.
Aaron Sorkin, The American President, 1995

The last ten days has made me marvel at the brilliance, strength, and yes, generosity of the American way of government – while at the same time grow angrier at those who abuse it.

Malik Hasan Nidal, the accused gunman in the Fort Hood massacre, demands a lawyer before being interrogated. That is his legal right – and while he (allegedly) had no trouble denying the right “to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to 13 innocent victims, in fact, Nidal hired John Galligan, a well-respected lawyer, a retired army colonel. Mr. Galligan is absolutely correct when he insists that “my goal is to ensure the defendant receives a fair trial.”

Because of course, as angry and frustrated as I am with Nidal’s actions, I know that unless our justice system can handle the very worst of those charged with heinous crimes, then we can’t ensure that anyone, especially the innocent, receives a fair trial.

But boy is it hard to keep that in mind.

And then this week, came the decision to try, in a civilian court, the masterminds of the 9/11 massacre. It is again a reflection of the majesty of our judicial system that the courtroom is but a few blocks from Ground Zero. Buildings may have shattered, but the democratic society of these United States could not be toppled.

That’s not to say that I don’t have horrific fears that Manhattan will again be targeted – but I remind myself that it’s not only physical terror that is at stake here. Mind games and targeted fear-mongering are part and parcel of the terrorist weaponry.

I haven’t made up my mind whether the administration’s rationale for trying the self-confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attack and four co-conspirators in a civilian court is correct, but I am not afraid of affording them the constitutional protections of our system. I’m not worried that our justice system is not up to the task. As President Obama said at Fort Hood, “We are a nation of laws whose commitment to justice is so enduring that we would treat a gunman and give him due process, just as surely as we will see that he pays for his crimes.”

God Bless America.

Evelyn David

Murder Takes the Cake by Evelyn David
Murder Off the Books by Evelyn David
http://www.evelyndavid.com

Research and the Muse

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by Nancy J. Cohen

A reader at one of my author talks recently said she was surprised by how much research I did for my books. She believed fiction writers made up their stories. I was appalled. No wonder some people (not YOU, of course) look down their noses at popular fiction writers. Any author would be dismayed by this observation because we put a lot of work into researching our tales.

As any reader of historical fiction knows, the writer must thoroughly research all details of the era in order to be accurate. Ditto for mysteries. I get people asking me all the time if I had been a hairdresser because my sleuth’s job details are so accurate. When I mention that my background is in nursing, they are astounded. How did you learn enough to write about a hairstylist who solves crimes for your Bad Hair Day series? Well, I interviewed my hairdresser and followed her around the salon. I visited a beauty school and checked out their curriculum. I attended a beauty trade show in Orlando. I subscribed to Modern Salon Magazine. And if I needed to know anything else about hair, I asked my hairstylist or had her read relevant passages in my manuscript for accuracy.

That’s just the beginning. Consider that I also consult a homicide detective for crime details and police procedure, even if forensics doesn’t play a heavy role in my books. Plus each story has its own topics to research. I’ve investigated such diverse subjects as medical waste disposal, tilapia farming, migrant labor smuggling, the dog and cat fur trade, vanilla bean cultivation, and more. Then there is on-site research, i.e. pounding the pavement in Mount Dora to get street details, skulking through a Turkish Bath in my swimsuit, getting a reading from a medium in Cassadaga. I take very detailed notes and photos to use in crafting my story.

Authors who use contemporary settings cannot make things up out of thin air. Besides the location, we may need to research pertinent issues to include in our stories. I always try to include a Florida based issue or something of universal interest (like Alzheimer’s Disease) to give my stories added depth. Newspapers, magazines, the Internet, personal interviews, and on-site visits are just some of the techniques we use. Probably the most fun I’ve had for research was going on a couple of cruises for Killer Knots. I challenge you to fault any of my minute details in that adventure.

But what about the vampire and werewolf fiction out there now, and other paranormal stories? Don’t those authors just make up their imaginary worlds? No, because these worlds must be consistent, and they’re often based on mythology or early Earth cultures.

For example, my proposed paranormal series is based on Norse myths. I have several texts on the subject and took extensive notes so I can understand their creation theory. I wrote down the different gods and goddesses, because they play a part in my story as well. For this tale as well as Silver Serenade, my upcoming futuristic romance, I needed to name spaceships, weapons, and/or military personnel. Using the Internet to look up ranks in our own military gave me a model. I also have a collection of Star Trek and Star Wars Sourcebooks which are great inspiration for weaponry, ships, propulsion and such. So even for fantasy, research is necessary. Science fiction is even more exacting because you’re extrapolating what might be plausible in the future or exaggerating a current issue from the news.

So please have more respect for fiction writers. We do extensive research, and a truly gifted writer will not let it show because you’ll be swept into the story. A good work of fiction is like a stage show, with all the blood and sweat and tears going on behind the scenes. All the audience sees is the fabulous performance.

Nancy J. Cohen
Killer Knots: A Bad Hair Day Mystery
Silver Serenade: Coming soon from The Wild Rose Press
Website: http://nancyjcohen.com/
Blog: http://mysterygal.bravejournal.com/

Mysteries and the Return to Adolesence

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Steven Rigolosi is the author of the Tales from the Back Page series of mystery and suspense novels. Each book takes an ad on the back page of a New York City newspaper as its starting point. Who Gets the Apartment? won the David (awarded by the Deadly Ink convention) for best mystery of 2006. Circle of Assassins followed in 2007. His latest, Androgynous Murder House Party, just came out in June. He can be reached at srigolosi@yahoo.com, or followed on twitter at twitter.com/srigolosi. He lives in Northern New Jersey. He does not wear stilettos, but Robin Anders (the hero/heroine of Androgynous Murder House Party, might.

Like Maggie Barbieri, I used to be an editor of college English textbooks. For those of you who haven’t seen an English textbook lately, I can tell you that a lot of them go on at length about the process of writing and the writer’s mindset. I used to think, “Geez, everyone should stop talking and thinking about writing, and just do it.” Part of my thinking (back in the day) had been that every individual writer follows a very different process, so attempting to force one particular method down someone’s throat seemed unwise and destined for failure.

I used to wonder, too, whether writers really think about themselves as writers all that much, or whether they are more focused on the work they are writing. I used to think of myself as a product-oriented person, not one who thinks much about himself as a Writer. But I think that may be a self-deception, because each of my books (I’ve written three so far) has gone through progressively more drafts, which means that I am secretly a process-oriented person too. For example, with my third and most recent, Androgynous Murder House Party, I slogged through five drafts. (Editor’s only note on first draft: “Cut 100 pages.”) And now I’m afraid to start on the fourth because I know it’s going to take me six drafts and I’m feeling kind of tired.

I had another epiphany, too: Being published is like returning to the worst of your adolescence. By putting your work out there, you expose yourself to all kinds of scrutiny, and you start to have the same types of doubts that plagued you as a teenager. Here are the questions I find myself asking of no one in particular:

1. Will people think I’m nuts? As mystery writers, we spend a good deal of time plotting ways to kill people, creatively and with panache. We also need to create some pretty creepy characters to provide good motivation and propel the story along. So during my dark nights of the soul, I ask myself, “Will my family or colleagues think I am plotting to kill them? Will they think that my narrator is a thinly disguised version of myself?” Most likely nobody gives my mental stability a second thought, but surely some do. I mean, think about Stephen King. Haven’t we all wondered at some point if the man is as warped as the books?

2. Will people like my books? We get so invested in our books—we want people to love them and their characters. Certainly we want people to buy our books, so that our contracts can get renewed, but mostly we want people to read them and enjoy them. So I work myself up into a state, even as I turn in my final manuscript, that for whatever reason someone out there will not enjoy my book and that I will have wasted his or her time. And I know that has happened, and I wish I could apologize to the poor reader who would have been better off with Janet Evanovich, but all I can say is, “I did the best I could.”

3. Is this stupid? Many of us write to entertain our readers, to give them a pleasant sense of escape. To accomplish that, we have to turbo-charge reality, making our fictional worlds a lot more event-filled and interesting than our everyday lives. We have to push plots pretty far sometimes, which always makes me wonder, “Are people going to roll their eyes and think this is ridiculous?” It’s always a fear, but it’s something we have to do to move our work beyond the mundane and into the realm of entertainment. And it’s always amazing to see how that all-important suspension-of-disbelief-o-meter has literally millions of settings, one for each reader, with no two exactly alike. We want our readers to have a good time, but how do we do that without insulting their intelligence? Oh, I lose sleep over that one.

4. Hasn’t this all been done before, and better than I’m doing it? I’m so thrilled to be writing in a genre I love, but I find it intimidating as hell. I am most definitely subject to the anxiety of influence, wondering if I can ever do anything different, unique, better than the greats. How do I work within the formulas of the genre but give them a different spin so that readers have an engaging read—and so that my agent will continue to represent me and my publisher will continue to want to invest in my books? I get a little depressed when I read something really fabulous, new or old, because I wonder if I’ll ever have someone think so highly of my work. And yet that sort of insecurity spurs me forward, forcing me to think more carefully about the work, the words, and even the marketing.

So how does this all figure into Androgynous Murder House Party? In a nutshell, the book has two very different mysteries to solve. The first is of the traditional variety—a key figure in a circle of friends is murdered, and the person’s ex-lover decides to investigate. Nothing new there. The second is of a more mind-melting variety: The reader has to figure out the gender of each of the six main characters. The fact that they all have androgynous names like Robin, Lee, Chris, and Alex doesn’t provide readers with many clues, so they have to use context, conversation, and behavior to figure it all out.

And all the questions above apply. Will people think that Robin Anders, my narrator, is a veiled representation of myself? God, I hope not, since Robin is a pill-popping, pretentious snob. Will people like the book? The reviews have been good so far, with some raves, but also with a few people saying they found the book “too clever by half” and too “cutesy.” (That last adjective really threw me for a loop. “Nasty”–perhaps. But “cutesy?”) Is the book stupid—could any of it really happen in “real life”? Of course not, though interestingly I haven’t heard any criticism (yet) that it’s too over the top, though it clearly is. And of course Sarah Caudwell has done an androgynous narrator already, so what have I really contributed to the genre? I hope I’ve done a new and different take on the Caudwell scenario. Her cast is a loving if impatient group of friends, while mine is composed of a bunch of back-stabbing, greedy egotists. Someone recently described Androgynous Murder House Party as “an episode of Friends in which everyone decides they hate each other,” and I just loved that.

Of course, my last and final question is: Will the Stiletto Gang ever invite me back to do another guest blog, after I’ve gone over the maximum word count and exposed my twisted mind to the innocent and unsuspecting mystery-reading public?

Steven Rigolosi

A Good Babysitter Is Hard to Find…

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Child #1 has become quite the in-demand babysitter around these parts. She’s mature, responsible, and actually plays with the kids, not to mention that in-between age where she’s too young to drive and have a really major social life, but is old enough to stay up late and be responsible with other people’s precious cargo. All of this adds up to the fact that she’s got a lot of steady jobs and that people fight for her Saturday-night services. Even Jim and I have to get in line if we want her to babysit for her brother, the boy known affectionately as child #2. Her clients treat her very well, stocking their refrigerators in anticipation of her arrival, pre-ordering pizza and anything else she might want to eat for dinner, and warning their children that they’ll be going to bed early and without fuss, lest they incur the wrath of the babysitter. To top it all off, she makes a small fortune, often getting upwards of $70 or $80 for a weekend stint.

Makes me want to reconsider my career path. But then I remind myself that I really don’t like kids, can’t stay up late, and am not that responsible. Better to leave it to the professionals.

But as she was taking off for one of her most recent gigs, I got to thinking about my days as a babysitter. A few things came to mind:

1. There were no television shows on after the 11:00 news with the exception of Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert, and the Late, Late Movie on ABC which was always a movie about a babysitter who gets killed after the 11:00 news and Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert ended.

2. Nobody ordered me any food. I was usually left with a brick of Velveeta, some “macaroni” (what pasta was called before it became fancy), and a jug of apple juice and told to wing it. One night, I ingested so much Velveeta that I proceeded to throw up the instant I walked in the front door of my own house. I have not eaten Velveeta since and just typing the word Velveeta makes me queasy.

3. The pay stunk. I was paid a dollar an hour, regardless of the number of children involved. That meant that sometimes, several families in the neighborhood would dump all of their kids on me at the same time, meaning that they each only paid about .33c an hour for me to watch their little darlings, none of whom were potty trained. One time, I had eight children. (Remember, this was in the day when people had more than 2.3 children per family.) They all needed to be fed, bathed, and put to bed. Oh, and there was a dog. Who also wasn’t potty trained. I went home with $4 that night, even though the house was cleaner than when the parents left and I had taught one of the kids French. But only the curse words.

4. It was the early days of Saturday Night Live. That means that I saw every classic skit, the first time it aired. I watched Dan Ackroyd play Julia Child, and John Belushi do “chee-burger, chee-burger.” And I saw Elvis Costello play his first American gig, singing “Watching the Detectives” in all of his skinny jeaned, pigeon-toed glory. I was in his thrall. When I wasn’t worried about getting slaughtered by a babysitter-killing axe murderer.

5. I kept the house dark. I thought it would be a good idea to turn all of the lights off while babysitting. You know, to let the babysitter-killing axe murderer know that nobody was home so don’t bother to come looking for the babysitter to kill. I didn’t account for the robbers who would love to let themselves into a vacant house and steal all of my aunt’s estate jewelry.(I babysat for my cousins on a regular basis.) No, that didn’t cross my mind.

6. I wasn’t allowed to use the phone, touch the thermostat, or fall asleep. That made for a conversation-starved, freezing and/or overheated, sleep-deprived teenager. Ever met one of those? They’re not much fun to be around.

Sound like hell? It was. That’s why I’m so glad that people nowadays, in their quest to live normal lives outside of their children and have relationships with their significant others, have come to value the services of a good babysitter.

So what are your babysitting stories? Please share.

Maggie Barbieri

How Writing Changed My Life

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When reading Maggie’s wonderful post about how writing saved her life, I have nothing to compare. However, when I began thinking about it, I realized writing has truly changed mine.

Many of you know I married young, raised five children, husband was gone a lot with the Seabees and when he retired the grandkids started arriving. I worked on and off through the years, wrote things like PTA newsletters, plays for my Camp Fire Girls, etc. I’ve always been a voracious reader and wrote short stories when I was a kid. While the kids were young tried my hand at two novels which were rejected almost immediately, tossed them out and decided I probably didn’t have what it takes.

While babysitting grandkids I managed to write another historical family saga. It went through lots of rejections but after tons of rewrites, it was finally accepted for publication. I wrote another which was also accepted.

By this time, hubby and I had moved to the foothills of the Sierra where we now live and is the setting for my Deputy Tempe Crabtree novels. I switched to mysteries and wrote several of my Rocky Bluff crime novels–the first one published as an e-book, long before anyone had a clue what that was.

Rather than go into the whole long history of my writing and publishing, these are the things that changed my life because of writing.

1. I doubt I would have learned how to use computers as early as I did if it hadn’t been for my writing. I got so tired of typing and retyping my books I was ready to try anything to make it easier. Of course I had to have lots of help from the fellow I bought the computer from.

2. I was one of the founding members of the San Joaquin chapter of Sisters in Crime and I’ve made so many friends there. I still attend the meetings whenever I have the opportunity. (I also belong to the L.A. and Central Coast chapters and have friends in both.)

3. Once my first mystery was published, I attended my first Bouchercon there I met
so many wonderful people in the mystery field–authors and fans.

4. I’ve since attended other Bouchercons, Left Coast Crimes, Mayhem in the Midlands and other mystery cons and made more friends. Going to one of these events now is like attending a family reunion. It’s so much fun to see people I know and enjoy being around even if it is only once a year.

5. To get to all these places, hubby and I usually fly. I used to be a bit nervous–now I think of it as an adventure–even when I end up having to spend the night in an airport because of a missed flight due to weather, or being the last flight into Chicago during blizzard.

6. Together, we’ve visited places all over the country we’ve never seen before and probably would never have gone to if it hadn’t been for the mystery cons.

7. Alone, I’ve been to Alaska twice. The first time, I went to visit a school in a tiny village and was driven there on a frozen river. The second time, I stayed with a Native woman I’d met and visited a school in Wasilla.

8. I was fortunate to be asked to be an instructor at the Maui Writers Retreat in Maui–and took hubby along–he who didn’t think he ever wanted to go to Hawaii and had the time of his life while I worked.

9. I’m on the board of directors for the Public Safety Writers Association and I’m the program chair for their annual conference in Las Vegas and I’ve met the most fascinating experts in the public safety field as well as top notch mystery writers who’ve agreed to come and teach.

10. If I wasn’t a mystery writer I might be like some of my friends who are my age who mostly talk about their ailments, their grandkids (I love mine and my great grandkids but I have to many I’d monopolize the conversation if I told about each one of them), how bored they are, or gossiping.

So, you can see, my life has really been changed by my writing.

Marilyn

Going the Distance

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In the past Evelyn David has posted two blogs a week at The Stiletto Gang. That was because Evelyn David is really two people: Marian Borden and me, Rhonda Dossett. We write under the pen name “Evelyn David.” Going forward, we will just be writing one blog, on Mondays. We’re hoping to use the extra time to write our next novel. So how do we write together? And why?

In addition to the obvious perils of two people working together on any project, much less a book, we also live half-way across the country from each other – Marian in New York, I’m in Oklahoma. We haven’t met in person. For the past … I’m not sure how long now, five years? Six years since we started writing together? I just know we were both younger when we began and had no idea of the possible pitfalls. Because we were clueless about what could go wrong, we just did it. We wrote a book together. We wrote together just using email. No phone calls until after we had sold our first story. I think that made a difference. Writing to each other is different than placing phone calls. Exchanging emails gave us the time and space to put down our ideas and respond to the other’s questions and concerns in a fuller manner than what happens when we talk on the phone. Plus, with emails you have a record for reference later.

We had fun during the writing process. The pain came later when we got involved with publishers, agents, and the business side of writing. The publishing world is not for wimps! And definitely not for quitters! You have to really want to see your book published to go through the pain of rejections from agents and the sheer mind-numbing, snail’s pace of getting a simple yes or no from a publisher. Four to six months for a response is not unusual. In what other industry or profession is that kind of time delay even a possibility? And royalty payments to authors? If you’re lucky and your publisher pays on time (which is apparently not the norm), you’ll see a check every six months. Often it’s more like nine months between checks. And if you’re not getting four figure advances, that’s a long time between paydays. Don’t quit your day job.

Publishing isn’t fun, but writing is! Especially with someone who shares your sense of humor and work ethic. We divide up the scenes, then pass them back and forth so much that in the end, it’s “Evelyn David’s” writing, not Marian’s or Rhonda’s. We both love writing dialogue – that’s the candy for us. Setting the scene, plotting the action sequences, that’s more difficult and rewarding in another way. I write by seeing and hearing the words in my mind first, much like watching a movie screen in my head playing in my head. Then I put the words down on paper – or rather use a keyboard to type them into a Word document.

We each write all characters, although I confess to having favorites. “Mac Sullivan and Rachel Brenner” are our main human characters, but I love writing “Edgar” and “J.J.” best. It’s always a treat when I get first crack at one of their scenes. If you ever watched the old tv series, Gunsmoke, you’ll understand when I say that “J.J. and Edgar” are Mac Sullivan’s “Doc and Festus.” On the surface they argue and appear to dislike each other. But underneath everyone knows (except maybe the characters) there’s a bond developing.

There’s a bond between co-authors. If you write a book with another person, at the end of the process you will have traveled a journey together that is unique and not completely understandable to friends and family looking on. From start to finish, it takes “Evelyn David” about 8 months to write a book. We both have day jobs and we’re terrible procrastinators, so we probably, if pushed to meet a deadline, could write one in half that time. We dither a lot before we get started, try to solve the world’s problems, angst over the stresses of the publishing world – then finally settle into writing a couple of chapters a week. Around the end of the first third of the book, we crash headlong into a wall (others call this writer’s block). It might take us two or three weeks to get past that wall, or around it. Then things usually move much quicker, with the last few chapters coming in a rush. Believe me, there is nothing better in the world than typing the words “The End” on that last page of your finished novel.

Well, one thing is better … having someone to shares that long journey with you.

Rhonda
http://www.evelyndavid.com

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

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by Susan McBride

One of the questions that writers are asked most frequently has to be, “Where do you get your ideas?” I remember hearing Denise Swanson once tell someone, “I order mine from J.C. Penney,” which I thought was pretty funny. Personally, I pluck mine from the Idea Tree which grows right beside the Money Tree in my backyard (oh, man, don’t I wish!).

Okay, seriously, I find ideas everywhere all the time. It’s almost impossible for me to go out anymore–or to take a shower or get on the treadmill–without the seed for a plot planting itself in my mind. When I first began writing seriously post-college, I’d cut stories from the newspaper that intrigued me, usually those concerning a missing person or a baffling homicide that got me thinking, “What if it had happened this way instead?”

That’s how I wrote AND THEN SHE WAS GONE, my very first published mystery. A little girl had gone missing from a public park in broad daylight in Plano, Texas, with loads of people around watching T-ball games; yet no one had seen a thing. That bothered me to no end until I had to sit down and write about it. The next Maggie Ryan book to follow, OVERKILL, had its plot loosely based on a school bus shooting in St. Louis. Something about being able to control what happened in my fictional tales had a soothing effect on me, like justice did win out (even if it doesn’t always in real-life).

Once I started writing the humorous Debutante Dropout Mysteries, I couldn’t exactly use such heart-wrenching real-life stories as my jumping-off point. I had to tone things down a lot (although there’s no on-the-page violence or much of anything graphic except emotion in either GONE or OVERKILL). BLUE BLOOD, the first in the series to feature society rebel Andy Kendricks, involved the murder of the loathsome owner of a restaurant called Jugs (think “Hooters” with a hillbilly theme). I’d gotten so sick of seeing ginormous Hooters billboards all over Dallas that it felt pretty good to exterminate Bud Hartman, a sexist and hardly beloved character. Next, in THE GOOD GIRL’S GUIDE TO MURDER, I offed a Texan version of Martha Stewart after watching one too many of Martha’s holiday specials and feeling like an inadequate dolt. I must admit, that felt very cathartic, too.

When I was asked to write THE DEBS young adult series, I had to change my mind-set. I mean, I wasn’t going to kill anyone in those books (except maybe with dirty looks and reputation-destroying words). Then I got to thinking about the teens and twentysomethings I know, and I realized that technology might have changed since my high school days but emotions had not. So the ideas for the plotlines in THE DEBS; LOVE, LIES, AND TEXAS DIPS; and the forthcoming GLOVES OFF stemmed from relationship issues. Who hasn’t experienced a friend’s betrayal, a broken heart, a mother’s ultimatum, or a dream dashed? The best part about writing those novels was getting to re-enact some of my high school drama via the characters in the book…and getting to have my debs say all the witty and acerbic things that I wish I’d said in similar circumstances. Ah, sometimes it’s really therapeutic playing God, at least on the page.

When the chance came to write THE COUGAR CLUB, I leapt at it. I’d been dying to write about women my age who happened to date younger men (I only dated one but I ended up marrying him). I’d gotten sick and tired of the way the media portrays “Cougars” as desperate old hags with fake boobs, tummy tucks, spray-on tans, platinum hair, and Botoxed features. My friends in their 40s and 50s who’ve dated and/or married younger guys are smart, successful, classy, and real. So I came up with the idea of three women who’d been friends in childhood but slowly drifted apart through the years because of jobs, marriage, children, and distance. When they’re all 45, they end up coming together again as they each hit huge potholes in their respective roads. What they help each other to realize is that true friendship never dies, the only way to live is real, and you’re never too old to follow your heart. These are the middle-aged (but hardly old) women I know. Heck, the kind of woman I am.

I’ve got a zillion ideas floating around my brain for the next books I need to write (namely, a young adult novel that isn’t a DEBS book and another stand-alone novel to follow THE COUGAR CLUB). The hardest part for me is getting the ideas down on paper for my agents and editors to see in a way that makes sense and conveys all the nuances I’m imagining. But enough about my Idea Tree. I’d love to hear from y’all. Do you order from J.C. Penney like Denise? Cut out pieces from the newspaper? Eavesdrop in restaurants? Inquiring minds want to know!

A Writer’s Whirlwind

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With my current publicity photo as proof, you can see that while some authors get writer’s block, I get stumped!

Hurricane Ike was due to hit the Louisiana coast near Lake Charles on September 12, 2008. I boarded up the windows and delivered my wife Raejean and our dog to my mother’s house on higher ground. Forecasters predicted the storm surge would put River Road under three feet of water (and two feet under our house, which sits on eight-foot pilings on the Calcasieu River near the I-10 bridge). Throughout the night, I watched the water rise, rip our dock apart, and slosh past the predicted mark under our house to engulf equipment I had placed on sawhorses. Then the churning water lurched up the stairs until there was six feet of water under our house. At daybreak, I remembered promising my neighbors to feed their cat, so I waded through rushing, neck-deep water with wind-driven rain stinging my face.

Ike, the third most destructive hurricane ever to make landfall in the United States, left us with thousands of dollars worth of damage and one magnificent gift, a two-ton cypress stump that drifted over our “hurricane” fence from the swamp that had been clearcut in the 1920s. Five days later, a neighbor boated me to the head of River Road, where Raejean picked me up.

That meeting was its own miracle, because Raejean and I had dated for two months in 1983, when I was teaching at Lamar University, then didn’t hear from each other for twenty-two years. One morning, I opened my e-mail and there she was again. After a whirlwind romance, we married on January 4, 2008.

The birth of A Savage Wisdom has its own drama. By 1992 I had published two small-press novels and thought I could interest a major press in the story of the only woman executed in Louisiana’s electric chair. After researching the Valentine’s Day crime of Toni Jo Henry—a drug addict and prostitute by 14—I realized that she was not a sympathetic character.

Instead, I became interested in how an innocent person could transform into a cold-blooded murderer, so, in my “imaginative reconstruction,” I reversed much of her story, making her an ingénue and the novel a study in deception. After four years of work, I knew it was the best novel I would ever write.

I submitted it again and again to agents and editors who all said the same thing: the writing is brilliant, but we don’t think we could sell this because it’s not really true crime, nor is it a murder mystery or any other sub-genre we know of.

After seven years, I decided that my next best chance would be to secure a major-house publication through one of their contests, so I packed it off to a competition sponsored by two well-known New York publishers.

I was thrilled when I heard that Savage was one of five finalists. After another wait, I was dejected by the news of its second-place finish. But here’s the shocker: the first-place novel was not even listed among the original five. What happened? I believe the final editors saw that a friend’s manuscript was not among the finalists and overrode the initial screeners’ decisions.

Two years later, I saw that a movie based on Toni Jo’s life would be released in
2008. Thinking that interest generated by the movie would increase sales, I luckily found a small press, Thunder Rain, willing to publish Savage quickly.

The novel has done exceedingly well in Louisiana, and in May of 2009 it launched as a Kindle book on Amazon.com, climbing three times to #5 in the competitive True Crime/Murder & Mayhem category.

Dr. Norman German
Winner of the Deep South Writers’ Contest, and author of A Savage Wisdom (Thunder Rain Publishing.
http://www.asavagewisdom.com/

Writing Can Save Your Life

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We’re writing about writing this week at the Stiletto Gang. After a very happy Hallopalooza, and a great big shout-out to Southern Evelyn David for thinking this up while working her tail off at her day job, we’re settling back in to posting about the things we love, the things we think about, and the things we’d like others to love and think about. So this week it’s writing and I have a lot to say.

Not that that’s different from any other week.

The Northern half of Evelyn David and I talk about this quite a bit and she was the impetus behind a talk I gave in Tennessee last year that I called “Writing Can Save Your Life.” See, I didn’t started writing in earnest until I turned 39. It seemed like I had passed through my thirties thinking “I’ll write later” when I was finished potty training, house breaking, and doing lots of little things every day that added up to big things when the day was done. I kept putting it off until a rather round birthday approached and I realized “I am middle aged. I’d better get moving.” So I started to write and cranked out Murder 101 in a year, focusing on little else. I started Extracurricular Activities while sending out query letters to agents until the wonderful Deborah came knocking. And I continued writing while I waited to hear from the wonderful Kelley that indeed, she wanted to publish my books. I was so glad I decided to write.

Fate had a different idea of how my story would turn out, though, for on the day that I received my contracts for the first two books in the Murder 101 series, I was also diagnosed with cancer. And not just any cancer, “a bad one” as an acquaintance would say when my husband told her about the news. But instead of focusing on how bad the situation was (and it was) and how I should have been able to focus on the happiness of seeing my dream come true (that’s life, baby), I continued to write. I wrote through three rounds of chemo, one horrendous surgery, twenty radiation treatments, more chemo, two biopsies, a clinical trial, more chemo, and finally, the clinical trial that changed my prognosis from dire to positive. Because as bad as Alison Bergeron’s life may seem to those of you who read about her in every installment, she has never had cancer and she never will.

What she has is man trouble, murder trouble, and dog trouble. She falls down in too-high heels, a lot. She says the wrong thing at the wrong time and zigs when she should zag. She deals with life’s little problems, which to her, seem like huge problems. That’s why I love her. And that’s why I write.

I love writing, but in particular, I love my characters and try to do the best by them. Because as bad a day as I am having, I can make theirs that much better. I can get out of my own head and into somebody else’s. I can let them live happily ever after or make them hit a giant bump in the road, a bump that will soon by smoothed over. They have their ups and downs and hopefully, always end in “up.” But ultimately, I always know what’s going to happen to them, and that kind of control is hard to come by in the real world.

I have been on a lot of medicine and have been attended to by the smartest people the best insurance in the world can get you access to. I’m lucky that way. But I’ve also been supported by devoted family and friends and despite what I have had to go through, been able to do what I’ve always dreamed of doing: write. Writing is my passion and it gives me purpose. Without it, I don’t know how I would have survived.

Do what you love every day. It doesn’t have to be writing, but if it is, make it a point to escape for a moment or two every day and go to your other “world.” Because for me, in a very real sense, writing saved my life.

Maggie Barbieri

Some Tidbits About My Latest Book

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For the entire month of October I was on a virtual book tour where I jumped from blog to blog every day except on the weekends.

Though easier than a regular book tour in that I didn’t have to dress up and drive off to various book stores, I did have to spend a lot of time on the computer writing about Dispel the Mist and answering interview questions.

I probably had more fun writing Dispel the Mist the any of my other Deputy Tempe Crabtree mysteries. In every one of the books in this series there are always Native American elements both mystical and real. This latest book was conceived after I learned about the legend of the Hairy Man. The Tule River Indian Reservation is very near where I live. When I learned the Indians not only had a legend about a Hairy Man, there also was an ancient pictograph of him and his family in a rock shelter called The Painted Rock.

Once I started asking questions about the Painted Rock site I was invited to go on a field trip with the local anthropology class and take a look at the Hairy Man. It isn’t ever going to be a tourist attraction. The rock shelter is a huge boulder with other boulders piled ontop making the cave where this painting and many others are located on the rock surfaces. It is very difficult getting down the boulder to enter the cave like entrance. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the much younger college students who helped me down, I’d have never made it.

The paintings, though faded, are still quite discernible despite the fact they are thought to be between 500 and a 1000 years old. I was definitely inspired at that moment.

The Hairy Man has an important place in Dispel the Mist. The story centers on the suspicious death of a popular county supervisor who has roots in both the Indian and the Hispanic communities. There is controversy over a hotel complex the Indians want to build alongside the highway and a licensed group home for developmentally disabled women in an up-scale neighborhood.

Tempe is haunted by unsettling dreams that may or may not be prophetic.

For a look at the Hairy Man on the Painted Rock, take a look at the book video for Dispel the Mist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmZhaJgHUxo

Marilyn

http://fictionforyou.com
http://www.mundaniapress.com