Two Sentence Tuesday

What did I read this week? Well, I read the comments on my Daphne submissions. Unfortunately, there's not much I can say about them except that in the spots where they were specific they almost always contradicted each other. Comments like "I really loved the description of the setting" contrasting with "there are too many details about the setting." It's enough to make your head explode!

But, that's the way it goes...every reader is different, and the same 15 pages got scores (out of a possible 128) ranging from 92 to 128. What did I learn? Well, I knew the manuscript needed work...it will take some time to figure out how useful the comments are. A couple of things that were pointed out are things I already knew were issues but I didn't know how to fix. I was hoping I'd get some suggestions, but I suppose it's useful enough to know that I am not the only one who sees the problems. And at least one person loved it!

What did I write?

You have more to worry about than perverts watching you pee, she reminded herself. But still she pulled the hem of her shirt as low as she could, and huddled over, shielding herself from the view of any potential cameras.

How about you all? What did you read? What did you write? If you're posting your work on your own blog, just leave a note in the comments and I'll add a link at the bottom of this post.

Two Sentence Tuesday Participants:

Travis Erwin has posted his sentences on his blog
Ilana Stephens has posted hers in the comment section

My Town Monday: Rye Playland

Nan handled our MT Novel Monday last week, so we're doing a regular-old one. While the park's ice rink and some arcades are open year-round, the first official day of Rye Playland's summer season was this Saturday. On Sunday, though there were a few attractions not yet in full swing, we finally got to see the whole park with people and music and leafy trees. Lovely.

Playland in Rye, New York is about 40 minutes north of Manhattan on Long Island Sound (10 minutes from my house) and is the only facility of this type owned and operated by the U.S. National Park Service. Being open since 1928, it is the prototypical amusement park. Fortunately, it's been well looked after. The buildings maintain their original art deco style with fresh coats of paint and lots of neat gardens. There's a treelined green midway between twin promenades of arcade games and rides as well as food vendors. My inaugural funnel cake of the year was delectable! (click any picture to enlarge. gray day, though, sorry.)

In addition to wonderful kiddie rides, there are full-thrill roller coasters, including The Dragon, which is also one of several rides dating from the inception of Playland. Its age also means certain things are as they are, like the car dimensions. More 18th century than 21st. Read the warning above. Awesome.

There's also a year-round ice rink and an outdoor mini golf course. But Playland isn't just carnival-style fun. There's a wide strolling boardwalk with telescopes and benches and an enormous outdoor pool, as well as a sandy beach for bathing. There's a lake at the park's north end for short rented cruises or paddle boat rentals. Another terrific thing: since this is a public park, admission is free. There's local bus and train shuttle service available, but you'll pay between $5 and $7 for car parking. Most rides require buying ticket cards, and you'll have to purchase your own food-on-a-stick (beer, too), but access is open to all locations and to he beach and pool. The prices for boat rentals are around $10 and mini golf is $4. The prices are very reasonable for such fun, and I was happily stuffing quarters into the SkeeBall and Galaga games next to the shooting gallery. We earned enough coupons for happy-face stickers, a Chinese finger trap, and a yellow plastic duck that clicks. Cool!

Bonus Trivia: This 1988 movie used an old fashioned fortune telling machine at Playland in an integral role.

See MTM innovator Travis Erwin for links to more towns, books, and Mondays.

Mother's Day

Ladies and gentleman, may I present FARLEY, my newest namesake. She was born earlier this week on The Bag Lady's farm in northern Alberta, Canada.

The Bag Lady tells us Farley is strong and tenacious. I'm sure that means she'll be a writer some day.

Bag Lady, I am greatly honored and deeply appreciate this wonderful Mother's Day present.

The following message is for all those moms, aunts, girlfriends, daughters, grandmas, sisters, cousins and great-grandmas, including those who come to us in a blend of steps and halves, and those who come to us through marriage and other family arrangements.

You bring us love and laughter each and every day, we wish you a joyful Mother's Day.

Terrie

FRIDAY: Forgotten Book

Our pal, and recent Derringer winner, Patti Abbott, has suggested that on Fridays some of her blog buddies post a reminder of a book that caught us when we read it, but now may be forgotten by the reading public.

Most of the participants in Forgotten Books have revisited novels, which makes sense since many of Patti’s blog buddies are fiction writers. You know I write fiction. I certainly read fiction, but I am also an enthusiastic non-fiction reader and a huge fan of oral histories. I want to read how people felt and what they thought as history swirled around them.

Today my forgotten book is The Great Divide, Second Thoughts on the American Dream, by Studs Terkel. Like many of Terkel’s books, this one is a series of oral histories, essays if you will, on conditions in the United States at the end of the Reagan Era. The stories point out the divides among us: social, racial, religious, political, and, most starkly, economic. In a time when unemployment hovered around ten percent, and when the national debt was far too large, when unions were busted and farmers abused, many Americans seemed not to understand how it happened or how it could be fixed.

The Great Divide was published in 1988. If you can find a copy, pick a few sections at random. Compare then and now. Could be interesting.

Patti would also like me to “tag” one of you to tell us about a Forgotten Book on your blog next Friday. Since I don’t generally “tag,” I am hoping that someone will volunteer in the comments of this blog. It’s a refined “tag.” Just think of a book you read and tell us why you liked it. And since this is not a school book report, there is no required number of sentences.

This link will bring you to Patti’s list of today’s Forgotten Book participants.

Terrie

A Writer's Brain

I wrote the first draft of my first mystery in six weeks. When I tell people that, they are shocked and envious. But here's the rub: I'd spent the previous several years working on another writing and research project, a project I could not finish because medical issues got in the way. All that time, while I couldn't write, couldn't even really read, I suspect my brain was busy working on the murder mystery. I just wasn't physically able to write anything down, or even vocalize it, until I got all the weird electricity in my head under control.

I am an epileptic. Or, in modern, politically correct language, I have a seizure disorder. This puts me--at least according to epilepsy.com--in great literary company. Unlike Dostoevsky or Dickens, however, I've never had any desire to inflict my disorder on one of my characters. No one reading my fiction, at least to this point, would diagnose me as an epileptic writer.

Epilepsy is a pain in the tush. I probably had my first seizures in my teens, but they were "absence" seizures, "partial" seizures or dizzy spells, nothing that presented in a fashion recognizable to my friends and family. I didn't have my first grand mal seizure (or, again with the more politically correct label, "tonic-clonic seizure") until college. The first drug they put me on--Dilantin--I was massively allergic to. I have no recollection of the three weeks before they discovered the allergy but for brief flashes, most of which involve doctors.

But then they put me on another drug, Tegretol, which worked fabulously for fifteen years. Until it slowly began to fail, which caused the medical problems that prevented me from finishing my dissertation. In 2005, I went on Lamictal. That's when I wrote my academic mystery. Followed, in the space of about eighteen months, by a rough draft of my second academic mystery, and a first, second, and final draft of the beading mystery that eventually found a home with an agent. The rough drafts of each book took progressively longer. I believe that's because by the time I got to the beading mystery, I'd run out of all the stuff that had built up while the Tegretol was failing.

Then came the hives. Six months consumed with trying to find their source didn't leave a lot of time or physical or mental energy for writing. Eventually, they figured out that the Lamictal had caused the hives, and I had to go off of it. Then they put me on Keppra. Once the hives went away, I could write again, though not nearly at the level I'd been working at while functionally medicated.

In a couple of weeks I have to go get my brain recalibrated. I go into the hospital for five days, they hook me up to electrodes and videotape me while I sit around doing nothing. This is because the brain noise is now too loud for me to write, too loud even to allow me to read more than a few sentences at a time. It has taken me hours to write this post--a far cry from a whole mystery in six weeks!

So when I read about Tolstoy, and Carroll, and Dante being epileptics, I wonder whether they would have been as prolific, and whether they'd have written such interesting things, if they'd lived in the era of EEGs, anti-convulsants, and videotaped hospital stays. Maybe I'd be a better writer if I stopped taking medications for a while and went off somewhere where all the walls were padded and I couldn't hurt myself if I had a seizure.

Or maybe I'd just be out of my mind with boredom, and unable to write at all.

Malice (Way After) Thoughts

I had intended to post these thoughts last Wednesday, just a few days after coming home from Malice, but I was deluged with client work and chores.

Attendance

This was my first Malice. In fact, except for some Edgar Week panels I attended in 2000, this was my first conference. I loved it! There were lots of panels, lots of attendees, and lots of inspiring talk about writing and reading and mysteries.

But despite my first-timer’s impression, attendance was apparently down from previous years. What does this mean? Does it reflect the reduced interest in cozies and traditionals that we keep hearing about? A reduced interest in reading in general? Or was it perhaps just due to a tightened economy? If the first, should I put my amateur-sleuth mystery in a drawer and start writing a thriller?

No. After more years as a book publishing professional that I care to admit to, I know that trends come and go. Like plots, there are only so many, and like miniskirts, each one always comes back into style. I’ll continue to work on my book, and when I finish it, I’ll start another—perhaps in the same subgenre, perhaps in a different one. If it doesn’t sell now, I’ll have something ready to go when the publishers are interested again.

Renewed Determination

Malice is a readers’ conference, not a writers’ conference. The panels are slanted toward readers, there are no agent pitch sessions, there are no editors prowling the hallways. But I accomplished my purposes: (1) to support my friends who were up for awards, (2) to meet in person some of the people I’ve become friendly with online over the past several years, and (3) to chase away the last shreds of doubt and guilt over my decision to devote substantially more of my work time to my own book and less to client projects. Perhaps next year, when I’ll have two books ready to circulate, I’ll go to Sleuthfest or Bouchercon, but this year I’m extremely happy I chose Malice.

David Skibbins Wants You

One of the panels I attended, “Devious Devices: What Makes Their Sleuthing Unique,” included David Skibbins, author of the Tarot Card Mystery Series, featuring amateur sleuth Warren Ritter. Skibbins’s first book about Ritter, Eight of Swords, won the Malice Domestic/St. Martin’s Press Best First Mystery Competition in 2004. The second book in the series, High Priestess, is currently available in paperback; the third book, The Star, is out in hardcover; and the fourth, Hanged Man, is coming out in August. A pretty standard publishing history. Until now.

Skibbins is inviting his fans to help write book five. After he posts a chapter on the blog on his website, fans can leave comments with suggestions about where the book should go next. The suggestions can be about anything—characters, plot twists, red herrings, whatever. Sound intriguing? To join the fun, just hop on over to Skibbins’s website.

Reality Check

The weekend of Malice Domestic, Washington, D.C. recorded the highest number of murders in one weekend in many years. On Saturday alone, four people were shot within a period of four hours. According to yesterday’s Washington Post, 18 people were murdered in the month of April. If you’re writing a light-hearted or humorous murder mystery, this really makes you stop and think.

Are We There Yet?

A major topic of conversation among the people who drove to Malice was how utterly horrible the last leg of the trip was. With all the money we’ve been spending on the conflict in the Mideast and toilet seats for Air Force One, why can’t we afford to put up a few highway markers in our nation’s capital? I ended up in bumper-to-bumper traffic halfway back to Baltimore because I didn’t realize the highway I was on was the wrong one. I had to pull off the road and look back over my shoulder at the sign marking the highway’s entrance to figure out what route it was. Later on, after having trouble finding the correct exit, I ended up in the Pentagon parking lot, stopping a very kind man in a uniform that had lots of stars and stripes and bling. His directions were perfect.

Perhaps this is why attendance at Malice was down this year? Perhaps some no-shows are still wandering, lost and hopeless, up and down and around Washington.

Women of Mystery Meet Ellery Queen

Welcome to Two Sentence Tuesday.

We are proud to announce that Women of Mystery contributor Meredith Anthony has a story “Murder on the Main Line” in the July issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

This is the second month in a row that a member of Sisters in Crime New York Tri-State Chapter has been represented in Ellery Queen. As you may recall, Meredith Cole had the honor in June with her story “Exercise is Murder.” Do I see a trend?

Here are two lines from “Murder on the Main Line,” which I read on Sunday.

Bitsy’s hyperaware senses, as tuned as a cat’s, were on full alert. But even so, she almost missed the arrival of Luke and presumably Aaron late that night.

And here are two lines I wrote this week.

“Someone mentioned to me that it was far more likely that Vi’s extracurricular activities were the cause of her death." So much for my despising gossip, here I was quoting Calysta as if she was the Guttenberg bible.

So let’s have it, ladies and gentlemen. What did you read? What did you write?

Terrie

Home in the Rockies – My Town Monday with a Mystery Twist

"New" mystery novelist, Beth Groundwater lives where I’d like to: Colorado Springs. What a breath-taking place! (Not just because of the high altitude.) That area of Colorado looks like God’s creative laboratory – filled with massive swaths of experimental mountains – some are sky-high murderous slices of stone split apart; others are gigantic boulders strewn about the land; and still others look like dribble castles where titans hide. One location after another, each appearing totally alien to the next. Travel a few miles and you’re in the Garden of the Gods. Then head for Manitou Springs. Estes Park, anyone? What a setting for a mystery!

Beth’s Colorado based mystery, A REAL BASKET CASE, won broad attention as an Agatha Award Finalist for Best First Novel. In this up-and-coming series, the amateur sleuth makes baskets and fills them with native-based elements: turkey feathers, wildflower honey, blue cornbread and a teasingly dangerous “Scorned Woman” salsa/hot sauce mouth-burner. Can you taste the setting? Need a glug of beer or some of Colorado’s carrot-apple juice with protein powder to restore your lost electrolytes? Beth’s got them all close at hand.

The sleuth’s home is nestled among scrub oak and ponderosa pine. Beth uses that setting to capture examine her protagonist’s mood. “A squirrel scampered along the rail of the redwood deck. The creature seemed to know what direction to take – unlike herself.”

After the sleuth witnesses a climber falling to his death in the Garden of the Gods, the vision haunts her like a foreshadowing of her fate. Cruel and absurdly cool.

I plan to revisit Colorado Springs often, with Beth’s help. Care to join me?

(Thanks to Travis Erwin for inventing this opportunity to wallow in settings. To read more, link to Travis’s blog: http://www.traviserwin.blogspot.com/.)

Free Comic Book Day!

Tying all the strands together with this macabre playing card by a comic publisher? Priceless.

I know this might not be your cuppa Frappachailatte, but there are free comics being given out across the nation today in the thousands. There are usually tons of titles available, both new and established. And you don't even have to be deserving! Tell your immature (or graphic-appreciative) friends and kids you like today.

Here's the FCBD website with a store locator. I will be toodling out to The Phoenix in Scarsdale to see what choice morsels are available.

In other odd news, playing cards with the faces of missing and murdered New Yorkers are being distributed in jails as a new way to collect leads. Per Fark, "Oh yeah, I killed the 8 of clubs. You can stop searching now."

A Note on Networking at Malice

This is a tidbit on getting some publication momentum by scoring a review from a famous mystery writer. If I can do it, so can you!

I'm just back to earth from the Malice Domestic Conference in D.C. As an Agatha Award nominee for Best Short Story, I found myself for a brief moment in the company of Peter Lovesey, the Malice Domestic Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. This was planned on my part, devious gal that I am... We swapped email messages prior to Malice. Putting on my cheeky alter-ego persona, I had asked if he would care to read my short story. He was, as I suspected, a gentleman. Yes, came the answer. I sent him my story in a WORD attachment, post haste.

He replied with a comment that I'd like to tattoo on my chest - maybe my forearm for easier reading. At any rate, this is what he wrote:

"Delicious story, Nan. Sharp, witty dialogue, sparky characters and a neatly turned plot. In fairness I must see the others before casting my vote, but yours sets a high standard. Thanks for letting me have this preview. And good luck with it!
~ Peter"

Can you hear me dancing now? Tapping away! I am the proud owner of a credible endorsement of my ability to write. From his lips to an editor or agent's ears! Now to use it in my query letters. (Tee, hee, hee!)

My point? You can make connections for yourself. You don't have to be born under the right stars or happen to save some editor's cat from becoming road kill. Go to conferences. Do your homework and find a Significant Writer who will be at the conference - someone with whom you share some common ground. Have a short story or a few pages that you can offer to send via email, or establish a pitch that works in a crowded gathering. Just be polite. Accomplished writers can turn out to be very approachable. They remember the pain of finding a publisher and/or an agent. And, they can always say "Sorry" if they're not interested.

In the spirit of fair play, I said I would keep Peter's appraisal secret until after the Malice voting. I didn't want to turn the competition into a political-style campaign. Had no desire to sway any votes, except by the merits of my story. I hoped to hear if the story worked for him. And, boy were his comments ever welcomed!

Hope this helps you make some connections and leads to some quotable gold!

Sorry Darling, Must Dash. Ta Ta....

Maybe it's a leap, but this water-skiing squirrel reminds me of the busy mobile professional I used to be, assisted by bluetooth, wireless, cable, and cellular. I'm not quite a technophobe now, but I did figure out that spending all day juggling twelve things simultaneously keeps me from sleeping at night.

I'm sure I'm not the first. Oprah's bound to have had guest speakers on the subject. But...duh...it's only just occurred to me that bedtime is the only time my brain isn't otherwise occupied. So - because I haven't yet entirely fried them - my brain cells work double time to squeeze out a couple of epiphanies before I succumb to slumber. Which I never do, of course, because epiphanies are way too exciting. (I should have known it was Colonel Mustard. The candlestick's in his camera bag....)

To wean myself off Ambien, I've resolved to do one thing at a time and keep head-noise to a minimum. No more turning pages while eating lunch. I've tossed the headphones. Shut off the phone. Walk right past my silent PC on the way to bed. On my hour-long commutes by car, I no longer listen to Mozart's Requiem. Nor to audio books and Garrison Keillor. Instead I let my mind wander, and wander it does.

The only problem - a significant one - is that my memory's shot. How to record stunning revelations doing 75 on the Thruway?

While I confess to having written the occasional note on the back of an envelope (I now welcome traffic jams) I've been trying to figure out a safer way to recall brainstorms. Which brings me right back to technology. Get a recorder, friends enthuse. With Dragon Naturally Speaking you can digitize your musings. Voice-write entire manuscripts.

Forget that. Characters continue to live in my keyboard. But since plot twists come at desperately inconvenient moments - in the wee hours and on wheels - I've done two things. For those middle-of-the-night ponderings, I put a notebook and pen under the bed. For the car, I use Jott with my cell phone (yes, with headset) to send myself text emails of my own, spoken, ideas. Yeah, yeah, I'm still an egghead.

Jott's free. Conversion to text is spookily accurate. I can speed-dial Jott's toll-free number, discuss my inspirations, and get a near-perfect text version by email. (See The Washington Post or Network World.)

I suppose that talking to myself while driving - even with the headset, officer - makes two things I'm doing at once. But then, I never could keep a resolution.

- Lois

The Long Haul

The other night, I was talking to someone about my frustration with my current WIP. It's now just about 68k long. Plenty long enough for a mystery (especially since there are a good 4k worth of spots where my manuscript currently says things like "TRANSITION" or "DESCRIPTION"), but nowhere near the 85k it needs to be as standalone romantic suspense. And yet, it's not finished, and it's too long to be category-length even if it were.

Here's the problem: I'm tired of writing this story. I like the characters, I'm still excited by them and their predicaments, but I'm ready to be working on something else. Usually, I can control my ADD, but at this point every word is a fight. The thing is, I'm too close to the end to give up now and go work on something else. I have to finish it, then put it away for a bit while I work on something else, then come back to it. I know that's the only way I can make this work.

What do you do when the story stalls? When your characters rebel and tell you they don't feel like coming out to play? When turning on the computer irritates you?

Criminally Brief

Just a short note to tell you about last night. I went to the Mystery Writers of America Agents and Editor’s Cocktail Party. I was planning to meet my pal and fellow Sister in Crime, Anne Marie Sutton. Even before I found Anne Marie, I ran smack dab into Cheryl Solimini, an old friend from Sleuthfest 2006. Cheryl’s mystery novel, Across the River, won Deadly Ink’s Best Mystery Award and will be released by DI Press on June 24th. I can’t wait to read it since I am so familiar with the New Jersey geography that is central to the story. You know I’ll be telling you more as soon as I get my hands on a copy.

The Women of Mystery blog was well represented. It’s always super terrific to see Laura, Clare and Catherine in person and not just on the blog.

I turned away from a serving tray and there he was, the inimitable James Lincoln Warren from the Criminal Brief blog. James introduced me to Angela Zeman, a former Criminal Briefer, whose blog entries I much enjoyed. If you love reading or writing short stories, you should visit Criminal Brief. The eclectic mix of writers talking about the craft frequently sets my mind a-whirling. And that's always a good thing.

And yes, I did manage to pitch and collect a few business cards, but for me, talking with these friends made the evening a grand and glorious time.

Terrie