Tag Archive for: Wendy Lyn Watson

Live Like There Is No One Watching

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I had the pleasure of spending the weekend in Bethesda, Maryland, at the Malice Domestic convention this past weekend, where authors and fans alike gather to talk books, meet each other, and yes, down a glass of wine or two.  It was fantastic.  I got to meet and see people who I have only known on the “interwebs,” like the amazing Joelle Charbonneau (author of the Skating Rink mysteries and a new series from Berkley Prime Crime), the gorgeous Avery Ames (author of the Cheese Shop mysteries and now an Agatha winner!), and the lovely Ellen Byrreum (author of the Crimes of Fashion mysteries featuring sleuth Lacey Smithsonian).  As we have all written about in various ways, writing is a solitary and sometimes lonely undertaking, so seeing people who do what you do—and others who enjoy what you do—is an uplifting experience.
I participated in a panel on Sunday with the aforementioned Joelle, Wendy Lyn Watson, and Donna Andrews, moderated by librarian and fan Patti Ruocco.  The theme of our panel was mysteries set in academia and the audience was terrific.  During the question and answer period, only one person had a question and it was regular Malice attendee Doris Ann Norris, who asked if the lovely and talented Joelle—a professional singer and actress—could sing us a tune.  Joelle was at a loss, not sure what to sing.  I asked her to sing my favorite show tune of all time and she obliged, breaking into “My Favorite Things” from THE SOUND OF MUSIC.
When I say the girl can sing, I mean THAT GIRL CAN SING.  But that didn’t stop a number of people in the room, myself included, from joining in lustily.  By the end of her rendition, the entire room had joined in, with author Vicki Doudera, jumping up and throwing her arms out wide a la Julie Andrews.  When I had entered the room earlier, I was tired and looking forward to going home.  When the panel ended, I was exhilarated and wishing I could stay longer.
It reminded me of the old adage to live like no one is looking.  When we let down our walls, and give in to the joy of a particular moment, happiness follows.  I was also reminded of this just this morning as I took a long walk along the Hudson River with my good pal, Annie.  Annie is a preschool teacher who had the incredible idea to introduce her class to the great masters of the art world.  Using prints, she showed her students—most under the age of five—Monets, Van Goghs, Matisses, and a host of other painters so that they could figure out which ones “spoke” to them.  After they spent some time learning about the great masters, they were to use any medium they wanted—oils, watercolors, or crayons—and “paint” a picture based on their favorite artist or one of his works.  She said that the art that was created was astounding and as a result, she decided to do an “art show” during the preschool’s annual golf outing/fundraiser this past weekend.
The art was put on display in a large room with windows facing a bucolic setting in the Hudson Valley.  Annie was admiring the art when the grandmother of one of her students, an artist herself, approached her, clearly moved by the work the preschoolers had done.  She remarked that artists strive to keep a childlike perspective because in that perspective is a freedom that one loses as one gets older.  Artists, like all of us, become more inhibited, or more constrained, or more cautious in the risks they take.  Children just DO.  They let it fly.  And the results are what artists strive for and chase throughout their adult lives but have long before let go.
As a person, I’m pretty uninhibited, as you have probably gleaned from previous posts.  If I feel like dancing, I do.  If I want to break into song, I will.  But I do have my doubts and my inhibitions and sometimes that spills over into my writing.   My first draft has to be perfect or I doubt myself.  I parse every word of a previous paragraph before proceeding with a new thought.  I don’t let it fly, like I should.  So I’m going to channel the experience of singing a show tune in front of a group of forty people and think about a child with a set of watercolors imitating a Vermeer when I sit down to write.  Writing should be a combination of joy and freedom, not inhibition and caution.
Now if I could just convince myself of that!  What do you do to make yourself do the things that should bring you joy but that may not, given your own inhibitions?
Maggie Barbieri

A Vegas Show Chicken in the Underbrush

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Wendy Lyn Watson writes delicious mysteries with a dollop of romance. Her first cozy, I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM: A MYSTERY A LA MODE, will be released on October 6. To pay the bills, Wendy teaches constitutional law to college kids. She’s also an avid fan of 80s music, horror films, and (of course) ice cream. You can find her on the web at http://www.wendylynwatson.com/

When I first contacted the Stiletto Gang, this whole blog thing sounded like a good idea. I mean, everyone’s doing it, right? How hard can it be?

Ha!

Let’s face it, y’all are strangers. You don’t know me from Adam. This is my chance to make a first impression, and I better make it good. So what to say? About 93 different topics came to mind, and they all sounded totally stupid. Or brilliant. But probably stupid. I was paralyzed with indecision.

So I asked the universe to send me a sign, and it did.

With a leisurely Labor day afternoon ahead of us, Mr. Wendy and I headed to the 380 Greenbelt, a rather utilitarian Texas park that meanders along a trickle of water that one might call a river (if one had never seen a real river before). We parked the Family Truckster; schlepped across the tarmac like the boring middle-aged couple we are, Mr. Wendy toting a folding chair in each hand and me clutching a plastic grocery bag with some almonds, a couple of diet sodas, and our paperbacks; and set up camp in a little plot of shade right at the edge of the sad tributary and away from the other park-goers.

We had just gotten settled in, Mr. Wendy dozing in his chair, me munching on the almonds, when I heard a rustling in the underbrush behind me. I looked around, expecting a squirrel, or perhaps an armadillo. Imagine my surprise …

I asked the universe for a sign, and it sent me a chicken.

But not just any chicken. This was one of those fancy chickens with an absurd explosion of feathers sprouting from the top of his head and a cascade of snowy plumage springing from his backside. This was a Vegas show-chicken.

Strike that.

A feral Vegas show-chicken.

I couldn’t help wondering, “What’s his story?” Was he lost? Had he escaped some chicken gulag? Why did he limp? Did he have chicken friends in the park? Or was he flying solo, one chicken against the world? Was he scared of the people who wandered past him, carrying kayaks and blaring boom-boxes? Or did he hope that one of those people would scoop him up and tote him back to civilization, give him a nice shady coop where he wouldn’t have to worry about coyotes or his next meal? And what would become of him? Could such a fancy chicken possibly survive in the wild?

Some writers–indeed, some of my favorite writers–write about exotic people in exotic places doing exotic things. I, however, am drawn to ordinary folks living ordinary lives in Everytown, America. Like the heroine of I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM. Tally Jones is a small town divorcee, struggling to keep her ice cream parlor afloat and her rag-tag family out of bankruptcy. On the surface, her life is perfectly normal, but unbeknownst to her the people she’s known her whole life are harboring secrets. Those ordinary people are capable of both heroism and treachery, and Tally has to learn that bad guys don’t always look like bad guys.

That nice elderly man who fed his wife rat poison? That high school tennis coach who gave a kidney to one of his players? That soccer mom who made a million bucks by stripping in front of a webcam? Those are the stories that really affect us, because they come out of the blue. They sneak up on us, ambush us, and force us to question our assumptions about the world we live in.

So here’s my advice to you: keep your eyes open. You never know when you’ll stumble across a moment of mythic drama right smack in the middle of your grocery store’s produce aisle. Or a brilliant bit of poetry on a bathroom wall. Or perhaps a Vegas show-chicken rooting around in the underbrush.

Wendy Lyn Watson