Crash

Disaster has struck our household. In a small way, I hasten to add, not like having a fire, or an auto wreck, or a major illness, but mini-disaster. Which is to say, two shelves which I personally installed in the attic/guest room/sewing studio years ago, screwing them firmly, as I thought, into the joists, have torn themselves free from the wall and flung themselves clear across the alcove.

I heard it happen, last week in the middle of a Thursday afternoon. I just didn't know what it was. You know the sound—a thousand pounds of books plunging to the floor, buckets of buttons rattling and rolling, the tinkle and crunch of broken glassware. Or maybe you don't know the sound. Maybe you've been lucky. Maybe your shelves always remain attached to your walls and your bookcases hold together in one piece at all times. May they ever continue so.

Anyway I heard it, that dreadful sound, and my first thought was that a bookshelf had let go in the upstairs front room, which we call the library (although it's where we keep the TV). I rushed to see, but all seemed calm. The cat still lounged undisturbed in the window. She gave me one of those looks, as if to say, "What?" No books had fallen. I called downstairs to Harold, and all was well with him. I thought, "It must be the neighbors again." Things have been tense over there in recent weeks, with slamming of doors and banging of furniture. Our common wall is made of cardboard. Surely it was them. And so I forgot about it.

Forgot about it, that is, until last night just before bed, when I found myself in need of a fresh topsheet and wandered drowsily up to the attic to find one. Quel horrible surprise. The shelves were flung every which way. My sewing books, as Captain Aubrey would say, were all ahoo. Cast carelessly about in the wrack of buttons and sewing tools were the toys I let the kids play with last New Year's Eve. Never picked them up. I don't go up there often.

The impression I got from the scene was one of great violence. In my sleepy state I could think of nothing but evil ghosts. Someone once told me that my attic was haunted by a malevolent spirit. I don't really believe that, certainly not in the daylight, but at half-past the hour when I normally go to sleep it seemed like a plausible idea. I ran downstairs, closed the attic door firmly after myself, and had hysterics all over Harold.

Harold promised to help me with the problem. Now he has taken an interest in the stuff that's scattered all over the attic. This morning we went to Staples and bought a set of ten cardboard storage boxes. He's going to sort my things, he says. My God, he'll put my stuff away where I'll never find it again. Excuse me. I have to go take care of this before he gets home from work. Or before the sun goes down.

© 2014 Kate Gallison

In California

I took ten days off after the Left Coast Crime conference and spent them with a long-time friend who lives in Danville.  She took me for the weekend to her country home in Inverness.  I had visited the area once before, and it is stunningly beautiful!  Here is the proof:

The view from my room

Beautiful, even in the rain

Point Reyes National Seashore, site of Saturday's hike.

Site of Sunday's hike.

The photo above requires some explanation.  It is a selfie I took in the mirror, which is two mirrors set into a corner, at a forty-five degree angle.  That means that what one sees in the mirror is not a mirror image.  It is the strangest sensation to raise one's left hand while looking in the mirror and see the woman in the mirror raise her left hand.  Try combing your hair under such circumstances some time.  Weird.

While in the Oakland Museum, I saw a wonderful film of San Francisco in
the fog.  It made me think that fog could be the most beautiful thing that
could happen to a city.  This is frame of the film.

When we crossed the Golden Gate on our way to airport, there was no fog.
I have traveled all over the world and crossed MANY bridges, but it still gives
me a thrill to cross that gorgeous one.

Annamaria Alfieri

Stop You’re Killing Me

I wanted to say a few words about the mystery website “Stop You’re Killing Me.” I use it often and was reminded of it when I read a story on the re-issue of Georges Simenon’s Maigret mysteries. I don’t remember how I first found out about SYKM, but I remember why I first needed it.

My husband I were making a concerted effort to get all of the Maigret novels and were having difficulty because volumes have been published under many different titles. For instance, The Strange Case of Peter the Lett has also been published as The Case of Peter the Lett and Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett. This is not so tricky since I can’t imagine that Simenon would write 3 different novels about Letts.

Consider, however, The Saint-Fiacre Affaire which has also been published as Maigret Goes Home, Maigret and the Countess and Maigret on Home Ground. Pretty tricky,eh? It’s no fun having fifty Maigret novels if forty of them are duplicates.

SYKM has made me look pretty savvy on a number of occasions. Even though I tell friends that I use SYKM and send them the link, they insist on thinking that I alone know the answers to all their mystery questions. One of my friends actually yelled at me, “Every time I ask you a question about mysteries, you send me this website. I don’t want the website I want you.” I try to remind people that while Moby Dick is ubiquitous and eternal I am not, so I continue to offer the website.

I’ve answered questions about what order novels in series have been written, let people know when is so-and-so’s next book coming out and come up with a selection of novels for people based on where they were vacationing. Yes, you can look up authors based on where the crime takes place. The list is not complete. I looked high and low for Annamaria Alfieri in South America and found her not. You can look up sleuths based on when they are plying their trade (the first entry under 1940s is Lauren Atwill) and on what trade they ply (Mother Vinny is there under clergy).

And given that the site classifies the mysteries in so many different ways, if all you can remember is that the series was about some female sleuth in 1940s London, you can find your book.

If you’re so inclined you can subscribe to their updates that include book give-aways and lists of award nominees (SYKM itself has won more than one Anthony). I can’t begin to imagine how much work it must be to keep this site current.

Keep up the good work, Stop You’re Killing Me.

©  2014 Stephanie Patterson

No One Is Coming to Clean Off My Desk

On the night table: March Violets (Philip Kerr)

I guess Will Gardner won’t be sweeping the clutter off my desk in a spectacular gesture of jealous rage after all. 

I’m going to miss that fantasy.

And God knows, I’m going to miss Josh Charles. 

Maybe I should have issued a SPOILER ALERT, but I can’t imagine that anyone who’s a fan of The Good Wife still hasn't watched Sunday’s episode or is still completely unaware of the shocked, horrified and furious response that accompanied his departure. I got my hair colored Tuesday (shock, that blond isn't natural), and my stylist and I talked about nothing else for two hours.

Before Sunday night, I'd been focusing my attention elsewhere, on some first class procrastinating about planning for my meeting tonight with members of a writers group at my local library. Most of them are new writers. Many of them aren't writing mysteries. Many of them probably don’t even read mysteries.

So instead of planning, I was obsessing. Come September, I’ll have four novels published. Just four. Who am I to impart wisdom? If I were wiser, I would have begun writing before I started to lose my nouns.

And then Will died, reminding me with a punch to the solar plexus how attached we get to characters.

In visual media, the character creation is collaborative; for Will, it required the considerable skills of the show’s writers and the actor. Novel-writing is generally not. Not unless you’re so famous that you have uncredited co-authors, or you consider a collaboration you and your internal Little Editor, who tells you that whatever you just wrote is 1) trite, 2) overblown, 3) illogical.

The novelist has to come up with not only the words, but also the way they're performed: The cadence of the dialog and the accompanying behaviors that evoke that character. Heck, we even have to supply the costumes.

Mostly we learn about character by doing it wrong. When we write our first books, we often cram every tragic flaw and misery we can think of into our characters, or load our protag up with enough backstory to grind the action to a halt every other page. Or we convince ourselves we’re being spare when what we have is a roomful of dull people who all sound alike. Or that a ‘wacky’ woman is the same as charming.

Gradually we begin to understand what all those books on how to create characters were talking about. We want to write real life, but real life and fiction are very, very different. No character comes into a book without a purpose. No bit of dialogue is meaningless. Conflict is cherished. And unless you’re writing a ‘hero versus nature’ novel, that conflict has to come from the characters.

So, I think we’ll talk a bit about characters tonight. About how and why readers become attached to them. We enjoy a clever plot, but the novel's world is made real by its characters.

I’m feeling better about my meeting. 

But there's still too much clutter on my desk, Will.

Sheila York

Copyright 2014

Note: If you never watch The Good Wife, there was a terrific scene last season in which Will got so upset with Alicia — his former lover — that he raked everything off the top of her desk in one glorious motion. 

Left Coast Crime: The Right Crime Conference

A sell-out crowd of crime writers and their fans converged on Monterey, California last weekend.  For me, it was the best such convention I have ever attended: Professional, organized, full of warmth and camaraderie, and replete with talented and enthusiastic people.  I loved it.  Here are a few photos of the festivities:

The panel Murder Across the Pond, which I moderated.
All historical novelists writing about England.

Louise Penny and Cara Black

Lisa Brackman, nominated for Hour of the Rat
and Tim Hallinan, nominated for his
hilarious Junior Bender series.

At the banquet with Jeff Siger, nominated for
Mykonos After Midnight

From Monterey, the gracious and dear Ken Isaacson, whom many of you know from MWA, and his charming and beautiful wife Silvia gave me a lift to SFO Airport, where I caught the BART to Walnut Creek and the home of a long-time and dear friend.

When I first saw the Bart Station in the airport, I was envious.  Why don't we have this in New York, I wondered--sleek, attractive public transportation inside the main terminal.  I asked at information and found that I had to buy a ticket for $10.40 from the machine against the wall.  Piece of cake, I thought.  I buy NYC Metrocards and Metro North tickets from such machines all the time.

Wrong!

The first machine I approached was this one that takes only cash.  I decided to wait for one where I could pay with a credit card.

Bad decision.

The picture on the machine indicated that one put in the credit card face out.  I did.  A message told me that my card could not be read.  I tried again with the same result.  Repeated with two other cards, with the same frustrating result.  I went back to information, where the attendant demonstrated how I should hold the card, exactly mimicking what I had just done six times.  I went back to try again.  Seeing me still struggling, the attendant left her booth to help.  She reversed the card, put it with the strip facing her.  Voila!

The next step was hilarious.  The screen pops up telling you are automatically buying a ticket for $20.  Next to the left-hand buttons are the words:

• Subtract $1
• Add $1
• Subtract 5 cents
• Add 5 cents

To buy a ticket for $10.40, I had to press the A-button ten times, and then press the D-button eight times, at which point I could buy my ticket for the right amount.  I laughed out loud.  That's California for you.  They get the hard stuff right, like building a great train to the airport, and then when it comes to the small details, they manage to come across as completely loony.

Molly met me at Walnut Creek and took me to her home on the campus of the Athenian School in the foot hills of Mount Diablo, which looks like this:

I am very happily ensconced here until Monday morning.  If I have to buy a Bart ticket on my way home, at least I have successfully completed the training program.

Annamaria Alfieri