Weather and Other Items of Interest … or Not

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Hubby and I just returned from the Central Coast (California) community of Arroyo Grande. The weather was wonderful! Sunny and gorgeous. As we drove down the coast, the ocean sparkled. People who want to visit California beaches would be smart to go in February when the weather is often sunny as can be. In the summer, often the fog rolls in, making it chilly.

The weather was quite a contrast to the previous weekend when we were in snowy Chicago. We loved that too, though. In fact, I thanked the organizers of Love is Murder, our reason for being there, for having such a lovely snow storm for our entertainment.

The reason we were in Arroyo Grande was for me to participate with the Central Coast chapter of Sisters in Crime in a library presentation–which I did, of course. I’m always up for talking about my books and meeting new people. A chance to go to the coast was a huge incentive. We used to live in Oxnard (which is near Ventura) about one mile from the beach, and frankly, I miss the proximity to the ocean.

It was in Oxnard that I first became interested in writing about law enforcement. Our first house was in a neighborhood with police officers, firemen, and Navy personnel and their families. We partied and had coffee with our neighbors and got to know them all very well. Years later, my youngest daughter married a police officer who loved to tell me stories about what happened on his shift–he even took me on a tour of the police station and on a rather scary ride-along.

In my Rocky Bluff series (much darker than my Deputy Tempe Crabtree series), I’ve drawn quite a bit on my experiences from the days I hung out with those policemen and their families. If you’re interested, here’s a video about the latest book, Smell of Death,

http://au.youtube.com:80/watch?v=B1Q_1YJe2XQ

And to bring this back around to the beach, the Rocky Bluff series is set in a fictional beach community somewhere on the coast between Ventura and Santa Barbara–with some resemblance to Oxnard back in the time when I lived there.

Traveling around to promote books is fun, though not at all profitable. What I truly like best is meeting new people and my travels have been a great way to do it.

Now, back to working on my income taxes. Ugh!

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

Fiction is easy; Living is hard

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We all know that feeling. Those times, we’ve stared at the computer screen for an hour and found that we couldn’t even compose a shopping list, let alone the next chapter of an overdue book. We’ve all experienced that panicky sensation that our muses have taken a Celebrity cruise through the Panama Canal and forgotten to take us along or even send a post card.

And then there are those moments, when I’ve worked myself up into a frenzy, when I’ve started checking the want ads for administrative assistant jobs because I don’t think knowing how to make a fabulous matzoh ball soup is a marketable skill, and something happens which essentially is a message directly from the Lord telling me to “chill, girl.”

I had one of those epiphanies a few weeks ago. I was visiting the M. Allan Fogelson Regional Branch Library in Voorhees, New Jersey, with fellow Stiletto author Maggie Barbieri. It was a lovely, lovely event, billed as “Tea and Crumpets with Mystery Authors.” The turnout was great (and the refreshments were fantastic!).

I had just started talking about my book and the creative process when a group of 10 teenaged boys joined the audience. While they’re not the standard mystery fans found at these events, they listened respectfully as Maggie and I talked about our work.

Afterwards, one of the boys shyly approached me, encouraged by a man I assumed was the group’s leader. The teen told me he was 14 and liked to write. I asked him to tell me about one of his stories. It was a fantasy tale about a young boy who was locked out of his home for three days. He detailed a series of adventures and dangers, and the surprise twist at the end — the hero wakes up and finds it was all a dream.

Later, privately, the group leader explained that these teens were from a program funded by the Juvenile Justice Commission of New Jersey. They were at risk kids who’d already entered the court system. This program was an alternative to a detention center. A final chance to turn around lives headed for big trouble. And the fantasy tale this boy wrote? Not so much a fantasy. He lived it.

My emotions were all over the place.

I was furious that any child should have to worry about where he will sleep at night. That should be a given.

I was worried about this youngster’s future. On a basic level, would he learn from the program, get an education, pursue his dream? Or would he ditch this chance and end up back in the courts? Would he be locked out of a future?

And then there was the reality check. Was this child smart enough, strong enough, stubborn enough to pursue a life as a writer? For all the thrills and satisfaction that writing brings me, I also know how frustrating and disappointing this career can be when the mail brings another rejection letter. The odds of a high school basketball player making it to the pros are .03 percent. I’d bet that those are the same odds for a high school kid making it as a professional writer.

I don’t know what I can do to help that child – and the millions of others like him. Writing – his and mine – can be one answer. For him, it can be a way of channeling his emotions and using words, not violence, to handle the frustrations of his life. For me, writing can be a way of exposing the underbelly of life, with all its glory and despair.

I always end my library talks with the explanation that I write mysteries because I want the good guys to win. How I hope that there can be the same neat, clean resolution for the real-life story I heard in Voorhees.

Evelyn David
http://www.evelyndavid.com/

Where Have All the Bad Guys Gone?

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Guest Author Sheila Curran joins us today.

Back in the day, I wrote a murder mystery. As in – back in the day – before I was published. Looking back, I realize the problem. I am a terrific wimp when it comes to violence, since I will absorb all information about such things and imagine them happening to me. As my dear friend Julianna Baggott said to her children when they wanted to watch a scary movie with her, “I get scared playing CLUE.”

Me too, which is why I don’t think I could bear to do the research involved in creating a convincing murder-mystery. It’s the way I am. There’s a deep niche in my brain that collects danger, disaster, death and destruction, and a long slippery chute by which all things happy drop through a trap door, never to be seen again.
Despite, or perhaps because of, this character flaw, I have to say that the most common complaint/compliment I hear from readers is this inability to murder those who deserve it. I speak of the many letters I’ve gotten having to do with a particular character in my first novel, DIANA LIVELY IS FALLING DOWN. Readers are vociferous, they are unequivocal, and many of them are after blood, or at least justice. You see, my protagonist, Diana, is married to an overbearing, some might even say vile man. As my most recent email, from an eminent, internationally known scholar of comparative religions, proclaimed “And as for Ted–what a shmuck! A really memorable literary asshole!”

One of my first letters came from a federal prosecutor in Arizona who was deeply disappointed by my ending, only because he felt that Ted had gotten off far too easily. (Of course, I reminded him that this is what sequels are for.) Sweet little old ladies with names like Eustice and Bertha write to ask why I would have neglected the opportunity to ‘cut off the man’s balls and hang him up to dry.’

Certain reviewers and friends alike have quibbled that surely there did not really exist in nature a villain as bastardly as Ted, while others still have congratulated me for finally ‘outing’ what they see as a fairly pernicious trend among certain people who manage to be both successful at their subject area but complete failures when it comes to those things for which their careers don’t give awards, say kindness, generosity, a propensity to ask others (including their wives and children) about themselves, that sort of thing.

Now, on the other hand, I have many many professor friends who are the opposite of this. I’m married to one, my very best boy friend, who is, at this very moment mixing me a martini and cooking dinner. I hang out with the good ones, and there are many. However, I must report, gentle readers, that there does exist, both in nature and way more frequently in culture, such a creature as Ted.

If you clicked on the links above, you may have noticed my vile husband contest. First, I apologize that the deadline of December 31st, 2005 has come and gone, but the truth is that 1.) I didn’t get a single entry and 2.) I don’t have the technical wherewithal to change the date or details of the contest without falling into the rabbit hole known as the learning curve of internet protocols.
Poor web management aside, I’m flummoxed. Is there not a single woman who can tell me a story I might share with others? (Believe me, I will change his name and yours too.) I myself have seen real, live, vile husbands on other women’s arms and wondered how in the world they managed to STAY MARRIED. In fact, it was curiosity about that general question, the witnessing of some seriously difficult husbands and just the slightest bit of imaginative fairy-wand-waving that made me write the book in the first place. (The fairy-wand thing came from my niece, Tasha, who, when she was in second grade would wave her hand through the air at people she didn’t love a whole lot and say, with a flourish and a pointed finger “POOF, you’re gone!”)

So that’s the sort of mystery I’m bent on solving. Where have all the vile husbands gone? Has some group of geriatric vigilantes come along and hung them out to dry, their most precious valuables removed for safekeeping? Or have I set the bar too high, asking for a completely vile person when no one is exactly such. Even Ted had his strengths, which will, if I ever publish the sequel, be tested. The poor man will already suffer at least a short exile to Wales, sans alcohol and professional status, plus shallow in-laws, wandering wife, and a baby-on-board.. Until then, I leave it to my hosts, women with gumption, gumshoes and at least a little glitter, to bravely go where few before them have gone, into the Ass-Hat-Sphere, magnifying glasses in hand, to seek revenge, or even revelation, of the crimes no one, or at least no one in my cyber-circle, is willing to commit. (At least to memory.)

Sheila Curran