Author Archives: Murderati


changing space

When I started writing many years ago (stuff for the local paper, then magazines), I wrote wherever I had enough space for the computer. In the first house we had, that was a sliver of a back porch which we converted to an office space for our construction company. I wrote with a four-year-old zooming in and around and an infant in a playpen. If there was a square inch of floor space, it probably had a book or a toy piled on it. I think the only free space was the tiny spot where my chair fit. I don’t think it was entirely a coincidence that I excelled at finishing short projects (news articles), but floundered at anything beyond a short story length.

The second house wasn’t much larger–just arranged slightly better so that more of the square footage was usable. In that house, there was a third bedroom. The boys liked bunking together (well, most of the time, except when they were trying to kill each other), so the third bedroom became the office. I thought at the time: wow, all of this room… I’ll never use all of this room. Yeah. I know. Delusional. The construction business grew, and its need for office space grew, and pretty soon, I was back to having a zillion filing cabinets and construction stuff cluttered around and the kids still zoomed in. I had a hard time focusing, though, because that room was pretty much in the center of the house. It was the front bedroom, and when you walked out of the kitchen into the hallway, you were facing that door, and everyone in the entire universe tramped through that kitchen. Yes, including you. It didn’t help to close the door because everyone then knocked and stood there. I started writing at night just to have enough consecutive uninterrupted minutes to be able to form a thought and then actually write it down. (I have always been a night owl–but when the kids were younger and I had to drive them to school at the buttcrack of dawn, I did not have the luxury of staying up late to take advantage of the quiet. I did it anyway, and functioned for years on three or four hours of sleep.) I managed to write slightly longer projects (screenplays), but anything longer than that was impossible for me to conceive. Not just produce, but actually conceive. I didn’t have the quiet, the head space, to work out the characters and dynamics of a longer story.

When we moved to the house we’re in now, the kids each had a room and we converted the front formal dining room into an office. We still have the construction company and still have tons of stuff for it, and for a long time, it was all still piled together. When the kids moved out, there was a spare bedroom and, joy of joys, my husband moved his office there and I had this entire office space to myself. My husband had built floor-to-ceiling bookshelves for me, and I was in heaven.

Except, heaven had a glitch: the office was still at the front of the house, next to the kitchen. My husband’s new office was further away, which meant everyone in this universe and the next one over tramped through the house back to his office. Yes, even you, do not try to deny it, I saw you and the chocolate chip cookies you ate.

I had been loathe to trade offices with my husband, even though he’d offered to do so several times, because I love the size of this space and the beautiful shelves. I love the gorgeous French doors he hung for me, which was an attempt to dissuade people from walking through (doesn’t help, people come and stand at the door and watch me write) (I feel like a science project). I love the convenience (I can burn the bread really close by, which means I can put it out before the fire department gets here).

But I want the quiet.

I know a lot of people write at places like Starbucks or at a restaurant, and I shudder at the thought. I need the quiet space, the lack of movement around me. I am too easily distracted, and I enjoy talking to people, which means, I end up talking to people instead of writing. And, it occurs to me that a lot of people who go out of their home to write do so to have the stimulus of life and people around them. I have always had the universe tramping through my house, so I’m not really at a shortage for company.

So today, as you’re reading this, my husband and I are moving my office. He’s building a bigger place for himself outside. I am either packing up stuff, or purging it, or I’m at the hardware store, buying paint. This office is far away from everything else. I’m going to expend a little extra effort to make it feel like it’s mine, like it’s a sanctuary. It has a large walk-in closet, in which I’ll have plenty of storage, and a small kitchenette. My husband just built two large white-erase boards that I’ll use for brainstorming and keeping track of the big picture of the novels in progress.

Changing space is a little scary. After all, I had success here. I wrote the first two books mostly in this room, and like any superstitious writer, I don’t  want to jinx a good thing. But on the flip side, I’ve always had good luck with change, and I know the new space will give me what I crave: quiet, room apart from the busy world.

What about your ideal space? Do you already have it? If so, tell me about it. If you’ve got a fantasy of what your perfect space would be, I’d love to hear it today. You may just be my inspiration as I’m changing spaces.

What do you teach?

by Alex

I thought I’d continue JT’s topic from yesterday because, well, there’s a lot to say about it.

Instead of asking the question “Do you teach?” though, I’d like to focus more on “WHAT do you teach?”

It seems to me that we are recruited to teach these workshops and we have an appallingly limited time in which to do them. What can you really teach anyone in an hour?

I had a conversation with an author friend recently and she said she doesn’t even do any teaching or even speaking on the subject of writing or getting published, anymore. She feels strongly that until the business model changes, we shouldn’t be encouraging people to go into writing at all.

Well, yeah, it’s rough, no doubt!

Still, I told her that I had taken scads of screenwriting classes when I first moved down to LA, some good, some bad, but almost all useful in some way, and in every class, when the Jaded Screenwriter would look out over a class of fifty or a hundred people and say, “Realistically, only one or two of you will ever make a living at this,” I would think to myself – “Well, that’s me.”

My point in telling her this was that it’s always worth it to teach just because there MIGHT be the real writer in that room who can benefit from what you say.

But looking back, I wonder if I was also making another point, which is that it really didn’t MATTER who was up there teaching or what they were saying. The critical factor wasn’t the teacher, it was ME – and what I was getting out of the class for myself. And when not in class, what I was getting out of books, and movies, and my own false starts and dead ends.

I could be inspired by just a sentence, really.

But when you agree to do a workshop, you’re committing to teaching SOMETHING. So what can you teach in an hour?

I have stolen my foundation for teaching anything craft-related from Barry Eisler. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure that he really has ever said this – it might have been my own interpretation of what he was saying. I tend to do that. But I think what he said was that “All writers are essentially self-taught, and you need to be able to break down everything you read to figure out what that author is doing and how s/he’s doing it.”

Well, that’s really all you need to know, as far as I’m concerned.

So when I walk in to teach a one-hour class, on suspense, on character, on theme, on story structure (which is my favorite thing to teach), I always start by saying exactly that: that you have to teach yourself to analyze how other writers create the elements of a story, and then I have them write down ten books (or movies, or a combination of both) which are in the genre that they are writing in and which are similar to the movie or book that they are trying to write (and GOOD, of course). It has to be ten, no less. Then hopefully there’s some overlap in the lists – that there are a number of people who name the same work, and we can use that one to analyze. I’ll also bring in a few of my own favorites as examples. So if I’m talking about story structure, I’ll walk them through a quick analysis of, say, the three act structure of a book or movie, including the stakes, the central question of the story, and the hero or heroine’s desire (external drive) and need (internal drive).

Then I’ll have them do another one or two together as a class, and then I’ll have them take one of their own and do it on their own, and have a few people share their analyses.

Same with breaking down suspense. Write down ten books/movies, choose one that a lot of people have listed, have them break down the elements of suspense that are set up and played out in that story.

Once they get the method, I tell them what they have to do is break down ALL TEN of their listed works in the same way. And then they have a template for creating the structure, or suspense elements, or whatever, in their own story.

People get it (and it’s exciting to see them get it!), I can do it in an hour, and I know that people will walk out with a practical method that they can use for virtually any element of story.

So, kids, if you feel like it – tell us what YOU can teach in an hour, or what you’ve been successfully taught in an hour.

(It’s supposed to snow in Raleigh today – fingers crossed!!)

Chaos Theory

by J.T. Ellison

I have a framed print in my office. It sits on the shelf, looming over me. It’s an image from the I Ching.

CHAOS

I_ching_chaos_3

Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be Chaos.
Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish to the crowd.

I spend a lot of time looking at this symbol, at the quote below it, thinking about what it means to me. I bought the print because I was attracted to the word. Chaos. It signifies so much. A chaotic mind. A chaotic life. A willingness to let the universe dictate your course. I didn’t know it at the time, but the I Ching explores the dynamic balance of opposites, seeking to ultimately predict the unpredictable. Bringing tranquility to a chaotic world through a mystical yet scientific method of prediction.

My Dad has books on the other spectrum of chaos theory, ones that I read with fascination. Nonlinear dynamics that are influenced by initial conditions, and grow out of their seeming non-reaction. Minute changes in the initial event can cause widespread change. Boggles the mind. It boggles my mind especially, since I’m not all the way down with Quantum Physics. It was the less esoteric term for Chaos Theory — the Butterfly Effect — that gave me a glimpse into this world. A easy way for me to understand the theory of Chaos.

A butterfly flaps it’s delicate wings, and on the other side of the world, a hurricane develops.

I see the correlation between the I Ching’s version of Chaos and the Rocket Scientists. Both seek to tame the untameable, to explain the unexplainable. But the basic thought is that no matter what happens, whether you mean it or not, you are affecting change.

I commented on Toni’s post last week that something odd happened when I watched A WONDERFUL LIFE on Christmas Eve this year. It’s my tradition, a chance to remind myself that there’s a reason for everything. But I’ve never seen myself in George Bailey. Why would I? Outside my friends and family, how have I affected change? I’m not looking to cure cancer, or change the world. I’ve always just been a girl who does her thing.

Watching the movie, I was struck by a crazy thought. This year, I’ve become the butterfly.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not having delusions of grandeur here. But my teaching experience last weekend solidified the feeling. I did affect a change, directly, on a group of students. It may not be a positive change, but it was change nonetheless. You know, I don’t have kids. I’ve never taught. My first book came out two months ago and that’s the first real communication I’ve had with the outside world in years. I’ve never been in a position to affect change. I’ve never thought that I wanted to.   

The class I taught had ten students. The goal for the weekend was for them to walk out of the class with a flash short story, 1,000 words, that had solid characters, a definable setting, and a plot. To help them get to this point, I devised a series of writing exercises that would give them all these items, utilizing pictures I’d found that I felt would cause a reaction — good, bad or indifferent. By the end of the first day, we’d built 5 characters — two men and three women, developed three different settings, and then moved into plot. I thought it would be fun to use the seven basics — Man vs. Man, Nature, Supernatural, God, Self, Technology and Environment. I made up "The Wheel of Plot", each person spun the wheel and had to write their story based on the random plot they landed on.

I had one more exercise at that point, but they’d had enough. I didn’t realize just how taxing the session had been, how far they’d been pushed. Working out of the comfort zone was the point, and man, had I ever pushed them. They’d exited the comfort zone during the very first exercise, and I didn’t realize it. A good lesson for me. I’m a working writer, which means I write daily and don’t think too much about how much I actually output. Some people write in their spare time, and need lubrication. 

I was so thrilled the following morning, when the writers read their work aloud for a group critique session. They’d performed brilliantly. The stories were strong, the characters developed. There was one that could have been submitted on the spot, and I gave an ezine suggestion right there. But the most amazing part was the pride on their faces. They’d pushed themselves, at my request, and created something that wouldn’t have existed if I weren’t there to guide them through it. Wow. That’s a heady feeling.

Harnessing chaos can be intoxicating. I’m still riding the high. I’m starting to realize that I may have affected more change than I originally thought, simply by decide to share my work. Between the books and Killer Year, I shattered the chrysalis. I’ve become a butterfly, and I’ve truly stretched my wings. I seriously doubt that there’s going to be a hurricane as a result, but maybe a stiff breeze will come of it one of these days.

My question for you — have you ever taught? Do you think writers should be writers and teachers should be teachers? We all know how a bad teacher can derail you, that forcing a student to bend to your will is never a good idea. One of the things I repeated a hundred times over the weekend was "You make the rules." Do you think that the modern MFA programs and writers workshops are allowing writers to truly stretch their wings?

Wine of the Week: Barefoot Cabernet Sauvignon, courtesy of my host for the Tennessee Mountain Writers weekend, Sue Orr. Thanks so much for everything, Sue!

————————-

AN ANNOUNCEMENT!

KILLER YEAR: Stories to Die For, goes on sale Tuesday the 22nd of January. This unique anthology is edited by Lee Child, with original stories by all thirteen Killer Year members, original stories by Allison Brennan, Ken Bruen and Duane Swierczynski, an essay from MJ Rose, introductions to all the stories by each member’s ITW mentor, and a fascinating coda by Laura Lippman. This collection is sure to please. It’s one of a kind. Come by Killer Year to read the reviews and pre-order yours today.

Are You Experienced?

As a writers, we use many tools to create our stories and characters. Many of the tool are forged from experience, from trying new things, from stepping outside our comfort zones. Some experiences just happen. Some we go in search of. They all effect our writing, some more directly than others. A hike through the Hollywood Hills might translate to the burn a fugitive feels as they escape from their prison into the wilderness. Or turbulence on a cross country flight might become a plane nearly out of control with no idea if they will make it down or not.

We’ve all had experiences, both big and small. In my case, I’ve jumped out of airplanes, been “baptized” with cold water and reindeer’s milk at the Artic Circle in Finland, and crawled around the rafters of the Silverdome in Detroit. I’ve talked with the last man to set foot on the moon in a kitchen in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, gotten the “I-don’t-think-so” raised eye from Dudley Moore when I offered to move his Bentley out of a crowded parking lot, and listened to Rusty the Bailiff – from the old Judge Wapner version of The People’s Court, tell his weekly dirty joke to anyone who would listen. (Those last two were from my first year directly out of college when I worked at a small studio in Hollywood. Fun times.) I’ve gone to the shooting range to feel the recoil of a pistol in my hand. I’ve flipped an eight-ton equipment truck on its side on the main road between Mexico City and Veracruz. I’ve ridden the S-Bahn and U-Bahn trains in Berlin for hours with no destination in mind.

I’m not trying to boast about anything here…hell, who would want to brag about crashing a truck and causing a major, multiple hour traffic jam? What I am trying to reinforce is that we all have experiences in our lives. As I mentioned before, big ones and small ones. Sometimes we need to recognize them and take advantage of them. They add to the texture of who we are, and, therefore, add to the texture of the stories we write.

A lot of the experiences I listed are things that just kind of happened to me. Sure I put my self in a position for them to happen, but when they did, they were often a surprise to me. Some, though, I made happen. Jumping out of a plane, for instance, and going to the firing range.

One of the most important experiences in my life, as far as my writing is concerned, was something I made happen. It was a class I took in college.

The class was beginning acting, and my teacher was fantastic. She was kind, supportive, and encouraging. We would perform scenes from famous plays. Sometimes it was two or three of us. Sometimes it was a monologue we would do ourselves. My teacher would really push at us to understand the character we were playing. We would even improvise scenes that had nothing to do with the actual play with these famous characters, forcing us to make up the dialogue on the spot. That meant really getting into the characters head, and acting how we thought they should act.

She did something else that was also really cool. She’d have us write character essays about the role we were taking on.

As you might imagine, I dove deep into that. I wouldn’t just write a dry character description, I would make it something else entirely, something that really exposed the character in an interesting way.

The one I remember the most was when I did a monologue from Our Town…I think from the third act. I was George. For the character essay, I decided to write it as a prose scene between a newspaper report and George at a diner many years after the end of the play. I actually think that character essay was one of the best things I wrote in college.

That class continues to be invaluable to me. I had actually done a little acting in high school and community theater before that, but that particular class really focused things for me. The lessons I learned back then are directly responsible for the characters I create and the dialogue I write today. For example, I’ll act out scenes to myself using some of the improvisational methods I learned.

My point is this…some experience happens to you, some you make happen. Soak them all in, and take every advantage possible.

As a sub-note, enrolling in an acting class is something all writers can do, and the benefits will be great. Don’t worry if you think your not any good. It’s not about your ability as an actor, it’s about what you learn when you have to “become” someone else.

I’m sure many here have other suggestions for active experience. Would love them if you want to share!

OFF TOPIC: I’m sure JT, Toni, and Rob will be talking about this in their posts, but next Tuesday the KILLER YEAR ANTHOLOGY edited by Lee Child hits stores. It’s a fantastic collection of crime and thriller stories, and all four of us have contributions in it. It’s been getting great reviews! Hope you consider picking up a copy.

Live it up,
Brett

If You Only Knew the Power of the Dumb Side….

by J.D. Rhoades

After five thousand years of
civilization…we could all use a break.

-Tagline
from a forgotten 70’s movie.
 

Oy. January. January may actually rival August for my least favorite month, despite (or maybe because of) my birthday being this month.  The fun of Christmas is over,  the bills for same are rolling in, and it finally got cold in North Carolina.  So when those midwinter blues set in, it’s time to shake them off with something fun. But this kind of malaise requires a special kind of fun: dumb fun.

Planet_terror_poster1
The other night, we rented
“Grindhouse.” If you’re not familiar, “Grindhouse” was a movie released last
year by directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez that was intended to
be a tribute to those great low-budget features of the late 60’s and 70’s, the
one’s that played in the low-rent, low-class theaters like the old Sunrise in
my home town. You know the ones I mean: the ones where your feet stuck to the
floor with every step because they rarely, if ever, mopped the place. The ones
where you threw Atomic Fire Balls at the screen whenever the film broke, which
was about every other movie.

Actually, “Grindhouse” is two
movies, in honor of the fact that the old cheap-seats cinemas were running
double features more often than not. In this case, the two movies  are Tarantino’s “Death Proof” featuring Kurt
Russell as a homicidal stunt driver, and “Planet Terror,” Rodriguez’ entry in
the killer-zombie-virus genre.

About “Death Proof”, the less said
the better. I didn’t know it was possible to be that bored by a Tarantino
movie, and I’m a huge Tarantino fan. But “Planet Terror”– now that was some
great lousy cinema, right  there. It had
everything a low budget horror flick needs: scantily clad women, zombies, gore,
more zombies, stuff blowing up for no apparent reason other than it looked
cool, zombies blowing up, homicidal lesbian doctors, and a one-legged stripper
who replaced her hastily engineered peg leg with an assault rifle that
propelled her high in the air when she fired the grenade launcher attachment at
the ground.

In short, “Planet Terror” was dumb. It was GLORIOUSLY
dumb. I laughed till my sides were sore.

Now I like a smart, sophisticated
entertainment as much as the next
feller. But lord help me, every now and then I just like something
dumb-but-fun. And in mid January, when the cold winds whistle ‘round the
corners of my old pile of an office building, and everyone but me seems to be
coming down with something, it just seems like a good time to turn off the
frontal lobes and indulge in some nice mindless cheesy amusement.

Note: This is the sort of thing
that some people refer to as “guilty pleasures,” but I don’t believe in feeling
guilty about my pleasures. So I just call them what they are: dumb, but fun. So
here we go.

In music, the epitome of
dumb-but-fun is the Ramones. Ramones music wasn’t exactly whatRamones_2
you’d call complex. What it was most of all
was propulsive. Everything was geared to create a sense of urgency, from Joey’s
staccato, machine-gun repetition of lyrics ("Twenty-Twenty-Twenty-four
hours to go…"), to bassist Dee Dee Ramone’s warp-speed bass to guitarist
Johnny Ramone’s buzz-saw guitar attack.

It was the lyrics, however, that
really made the Ramones what they were. Joey wrote words like "Guess I’ll
have to break the news/That I got no mind to lose/ all the girls are in love
with me/I’m a teenage lobotomy," and the mathematically challenged verse
"it’s the end, the end of the Seventies/It’s the end, the end of the
century…"  And Joey hung onto the mike stand as if the band’s sonic assault
were about to blow him off the stage and delivered lines like "The KKK
took my baby away" with a total seriousness that, paradoxically, made them
all the more hilarious. The Ramones were rock and roll made goofy.

Destroyerlogo2
But, you say, this is a site about
reading and writing. What about books?
Oh, there are plenty of dumb books around. But for sheer outrageous mindless
amusement value, it’s hard to beat the Destroyer series of pulp adventure novels by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy.  In the
series, which must be over 200 books by now, police officer Remo Williams has
his execution faked by a secretive government organization called CURE. After
this, he becomes a secret agent, and  a
disciple of Chiun, the only living master of the oriental martial art of
Sinanju. And what a martial art it
is: “A master can hold his breath over an hour, rip steel doors from their
hinges, dodge bullets, overturn a moving tank, outrun a car, seem invisible –
you get the idea. They have mastered the full potential of the human body.” Oh, and there’s a bonus, since of course the Sinanju training turns you into the world’s greatest lover. But you have to be careful, because most Western women will not be able to bear the intensity of Sinanju style lovemaking and will, in fact, go insane.

Now that’s
dumb. But fun. Largely because the books refuse to take themselves too
seriously, and the banter between the haughty Chiun and Remo is hilarious.

So, fellow Murderati and assorted
spectators–chime in. What are your favorite examples from music, literature,
and film that are dumb dumb dumb, but
fun, fun fun?

Ghosts Must Do Again


By Ken Bruen

AND GHOSTS MUST DO AGAIN …

Those lines by Auden continue with

WHAT GIVES THEM PAIN

What brings those lines to the forefront of my mind are the posts by Dusty and Alex about sometimes hating writing. Oh horror, heresy etc. A writer not always loving their craft. Arthur Miller, well into his 70’s, said every morning he sits in front of the blank page and

Feels … terror.

I don’t think any of the writers I respect ever said it was easy.

There are mornings, when I see a ton of email, I give a sigh of relief as it means I can defer actual writing for a bit. If I skip a day, for whatever reason, and don’t actually write, I feel guilty and no rationale will eradicate it.

There’s no real mystery, pardon the bad pun, to writing. You just sit down and do it.

Right.

How hard can that be?

And writers block … they say, think of your bank manager, and you’ll be back on track.

The days of blankness, when I really don’t have a single thought in my head, I just barge and blitz through it.

Blood from a stone.

Above my desk is a quote from Somerset Maugham. Now I don’t think he meant it as a curse but that’s how I interpret it, it goes

“The compulsion to write and no talent.”

Jesus wept.

I had always believed that if you wanted to write, you must have some talent, however vague or latent.

One of the finest books on writing is, Becoming A Writer by Dorothea Brande and a passage in there goes

… an inclination to reverie, a love of books, the early discovery that it is
not too difficult to turn a phrase – to find any or all of these things in one’s first adolescent consciousness is to believe that one has found the inevitable, and not too formidable, vocation.

Wow, is that ever the road to ruin

As in … I want to, therefore I can.

Fook.

Malcolm Bradbury makes a wonderful point

“Good writers are generally, first and foremost, good readers.”

Amen.

In my experience, the best writing comes at a personal cost, when the words have to be gouged from your very soul and for that reason, they ring true.

There are the bleak dark days when you write and think

“Christ, this sucks.”

You do it anyway.

Then sometimes, not too often, you hit on magic, the words jell, the writing sings and you don’t need a critic or another person to tell you it’s good.

You know and there is no better feeling on the whole planet.

In its very rarity, lies its conviction.

Recently, finishing up a new book, it was the usual slog, the uphill battle and then, voila, I hit paydirt, a whole page of dark alchemy. I didn’t stop to wonder where it came from, or what put it into play, I just went with it.

Then the acid test, how did it read the next day.

God almighty, it was even better than I thought.

After more than twenty books, I’ve had that feeling maybe three times.

The edit came back a few weeks later with that whole passage deleted and the comment

“This doesn’t work at all and is not up to your usual standard.”

Deflation?

Take a wild guess.

And then you have to shrug, mutter, however darkly

“The hell do I know?”

The end question

“When is a writer done?’

Like, retiring?

For me, it’s when they prise my cold dead fingers from the keyboard.

My wife used to say, on being asked what it was like to live with a writer

“It’s not a problem as long as you know you’re only part of the plot.”

Is there anything else I’d rather be doing?

No.
                                 

January has come in cold and wet, no surprise, it’s expected. But on Jan 4th, I was up at the crack as usual, had me first cup of coffee, got stuck into my writing and didn’t actually raise the blinds till nearly 7.15 and went

“Holy hell.”

Snow.

And heavy snow.

We don’t do snow in Galway, unless you mean one of the many terms for cocaine.

My daughter is 15 and she has never seen snow, apart from movies, Christmas cards and her Geography books.

But the real deal, never.

We went out into the yard and her eyes, lit up in wonder, truly enchanted at it.

She was lit up for the whole day.

Next day, it was gone and her face, like she’d lost something truly precious, and she asked me

“Will it come back?’

I didn’t know

I said

“It might.”

Like the snow, you never quite know what any day will bring.

Lou Boxer, undefeatable organizer of Noir Con sent me a beautiful card with the greeting

Leaves tremble

Roots remain still

Blessed be.

Later in the day, I meet with an ex –nun, who used to work at The Magdalen and after she left the convent, she wrote a superb play on the laundries. She is a fine poet and we went for coffee to celebrate her new book of poems. They are quite extraordinary, and later, I’m still so taken with them, that I write her a long email , extolling them. She phones me and asks would I be willing to write an introduction to the collection.

I would.

And did.

Because of the nature of my books, I am perceived here as anti-clerical, despite the fact that I taught my daughter her prayers in Irish and one of my closest friends is a priest. It seems incredible now that when I attended Trinity, Catholics had to secure permission from the bishop.

I went to meet with him and he was a notorious bully. I asked if I might have permission to attend and he snapped

“What’s wrong with our own Universities?”

I tried to explain that the course I wished to follow was only available at Trinity.

He refused me permission.

I went anyway and I remember a friend commenting

“You’re like … excommunicated.’

Woe is me.

On the outside, which is a place I think writers thrive.

Least I do.

The final word I’ll leave to my Rabbi, David, who shared with me, from The Talmud

“Learning is more important than action-

When the learning leads to action.”

And lest I got too deep, he added

“Logic is neat

Life is messy”

This morning, I was up earlier than usual and you guessed it

Praying for snow.

A line of Bruce from Thunder Road uncoiling in my head, jelling with Auden

“The ghosts of all the girls you sent away."

KB

Objectionable content

by Pari

You’d think a traditional mystery writer would know how to keep her nose clean. And yet every book I write contains elements that someone, somewhere, finds objectionable.

Usually, I can anticipate the problem spots. In CLOVIS, I figured it would be the UFO theme, and, yes, the talking cat. "Is this a mystery or science fiction?" people wanted to know. "Is this another cutesy kitty book? " "Do you believe in UFOs?"

In BELEN, I knew I’d catch some flack about the religiosity vs spirituality theme. And guess what? The worst review I got for that book came from the Salt Lake City Tribune. Coincidence? I’m just sayin’ . . .

With THE SOCORRO BLAST, I thought people would object to the idea that our current national paranoia squirts out, in unbecoming ways, even in small towns. 

But . . .

An early ARC reader identified another potential problem. She wrote, "You realize, of course, the trouble you’re going to get into with the bulk of the organized Jewish community over this novel!"

Um, no, I hadn’t.

She went on with: "This is the first that I’ve seen a Jewish character telling it like it is, and ‘they’ are going to have a big fit! . . . expect the usual comments: anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, self-hating Jew, etc. etc. . . ."

I was stunned.

Sure, Sasha has major issues with her cultural and religious identity. She’s absolutely merciless in her reaction to one of her nieces, so much so that the woman can seem like a caricature. And, it’s true that Sasha and her mother have a very difficult time respecting that her sister has embraced a much more conservative form of Judaism.

That’s the point of the book!
EVERYONE has prejudices and intolerances.
It’s also a fact that we’re often hardest on those nearest to us, those we’ve known the longest. All this emotional baggage we carry becomes magnified during family crises.

On the surface, SOCORRO is a traditional, amateur sleuth mystery.
It’s a fun and interesting read.
Many people will leave it just at that.

But the truth is, I want it to be more . . .
I want it to make readers think about our personal and societal biases/fears in this post-9/11 era. I hope SOCORRO has more depth, more potential for discussion, than my first two. So, I asked UNM Press to include reader questions at the back of the novel.

I’ve even gone one step further. My sister (who holds a PhD in education) and I developed a webquest project for college students and book clubs to explore these issues in depth. While the project is in its infancy, I planned it as a supplement to the book from the get-go.

You can probably imagine my first reaction to the warning from that kind mystery reader.
It was sorrow.
I’d missed the mark, gone too far.

Then I thought about what it means to be a writer. I thought about WHY I wrote THIS particular book. I looked at the letter from New Mexico’s First Lady, Barbara Richardson, that she sent along with her blurb. In it, she wrote: "I thought the manner in which you brought in the discussion of such issues as discrimination and racism was very thought-provoking. You make the reader aware of feelings that possibly lie very close to the surface of one’s own emotions."

Wow. Mission accomplished.

Now, I’m clear. I was true to Sasha’s character and her development. I was true to her story.

My questions today are:
1. Why do some fiction writers bother taking risks with subject matter in their works?
2. Do all writers do this on some level?
3. Why not play it safe, try to make everyone happy?
4. Can you think of any examples of writers who’ve taken risks, who’ve spotlighted something a particular group of people would rather not face?

This should be an interesting discussion . . .

P.S.
THE SOCORRO BLAST goes on sale this Wednesday. I can’t tell you how excited I am!

The_socorro_blast_2

breathing sanctuary

A little over a week ago, Andrew Olmsted had someone post his final blog; it was something he’d prepared in the event of his death. Andrew was a Major in the army, stationed in Iraq. A sniper bullet killed him and Capt. Thomas J. Casey on January 3rd, and Maj. Olmstead–a regular blogger–left words behind for his readers, friends and family.

Words.

In his post, Maj. Olmstead asks that no one politicize his death and use it to make any pro or anti war arguments, and I think that greatly reflects the man he was. What struck me, though, and has stayed with me for days, is the description of himself he put up in his sidebar. It is the description of his philosophy, the thing he’d want the world to know about him:

"This is a vanity site that gives me the opportunity to comment on current events, or anything that catches my eye. What I post here is intended to put my thoughts on particular issues up for discussion; I do not pretend to be infallible or anything close to that. When I post something, it is what I believe, but it may be based on inaccurate information or faulty analysis. Where that occurs, I look to my readers to help me find the facts and improve my analytical abilities."

I did not know him, but I would have liked him. In addition to intelligence, he obviously had a sense of humor:

"But all the tears in the world aren’t going to bring me back, so I would prefer that people remember the good things about me rather than mourning my loss. (If it turns out a specific number of tears will, in fact, bring me back to life, then by all means, break out the onions.)"

I couldn’t begin to say for certain whether or not his words brought comfort to his family and friends, but I would imagine they did. I think one of the major drives in this fundamentally isolated society we have is a desire for connection, to know that we somehow have left our thumb print on the psyche of the world. It’s one of the reasons blogging has become so popular.

Years ago, before blogging, there was "online journaling" where everything was hand coded. By the time I joined into the fray, there were probably a whopping two or three thousand online journalers. The group got so large, they were able to stage conventions where they talked about how to journal, how to write the entries, topics of interest, etc. We all joined "journal rings" which were the result of cutting edge software that allowed a reader to move from one journal to another. These rings were generally organized around something the journalers had in common: location, political affiliation, eye color. And everyone proceeded to put their life online, much to the horror and shock of their parents and family and friends. The press would occasionally note the trend, and more often than not, the article would have the air of "what are these crazy people up to?" about it. And mostly, people wondered why on earth journalers would want to put their lives up for all the world to see.

We come into this world with shouts and exclamations and we go out with someone (hopefully) saying a few words over our grave. A couple of centuries ago, the in-between of those two stages pretty much guaranteed that the world we lived in would at the very least know us: as a society, we tended to stay put. We lived near extended family, traditionally had the same friends all our lives, the same neighbors. But now, we’re often separated from family and friends by miles or continents, we move around for jobs, we have MP3 players or cell phones shoved in our ears, computers on when the family comes home for dinner (if they even all manage to get there at the same time), and a world full of news of mismanagement and war and loss and need. It’s hard to feel connected.

Words.

Friday, JT posted about the refuge she felt at the library and Saturday, Alex posted about a writing retreat, and it reminded me that we are breathing the sanctuary of words.

I got a letter a few weeks ago that meant a lot to me. A woman wrote that her mom was dying of cancer and things there had been incredibly tense and difficult; she’d read my book and in the middle of all of that heartache, she’d laughed until she cried. If I could have ever chosen a few words to say about me at the end, I would choose her letter. I know the things (the life philosophies, the themes) that creep into my writing on what I’d like to say to and about the world. But if all that fails and I’m gone and the only thing the world sees is what my writing says about me, and it’s that laughter is a gift to share, then I’m good with that.

Words. Sanctuary. Refuge. Remembrance. Future.

When we write, we hope to entertain. Connect. We’d like to consider what we have to say to the world and look at our writing as a venue. But I think we also know that the words have a window back into our soul. So what does your writing say about you? Readers, what does your favorite author’s books say about them?

Retreat

by Alex

I’m out of town this week at this writers’ retreat: www. Weymouthcenter.org RGB was talking about synchronicity this week – here’s one for you.

I’ve been to this retreat once before – it’s a fantastic thing. Any North Carolina writer who applies for the Artist in Residence program can spend up to two weeks a year at Weymouth. (Sorry, no photos – there’s only dial up, here! Which means much, much more writing gets done, of course…)

I got sucked into this wonderful program by the Raleigh mystery writers (I should say goddesses or divas!) I hang with: Margaret Maron, Sarah Shaber, Diane Chamberlain, Katy Munger, Kathy Trocheck and Diane Chamberlain. We’re more a regular lunch group than a critique group, but when we go on retreat, which we’re starting to do frequently, we convene at night to brainstorm on any problem that any one of us is having (and of course, compare page counts).

Weymouth is an amazing place – a 9000 sq. foot house on 1200 acres (including several formal gardens and a 9-hole golf course) that’s really three houses melded together. It was a “Yankee Pleasure Plantation” in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the fox hunting lodge of coal magnate James Boyd. James Boyd’s grandson James rebelled against the family business to become, what else? – a novelist. Boyd wrote historical novels and his editor was the great Maxwell Perkins (“Editor of Genius”), and in the 1920’s and 30’s Weymouth was a Southern party venue for the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, and Thomas Wolfe. That literary aura pervades the house, especially the library, with all its photos and portraits of the writers who have stayed at the house.

It’s a fantastic place to write – pages just fly. And for me it’s particularly great to be here because I’m presently writing another haunted house story – two professors take a group of psychically gifted students into a house with a history of poltergeist manifestations. And Weymouth is the model of the house I’m using, so here I am, inside my own novel.

The synchronicity I mentioned before is that the other mystery writers scheduled a Weymouth retreat months ago, and we came down to the house on the very day that my characters were moving into THEIR haunted house.

I’m telling you, writing is a little scary.

More than a little scary, in this case. My pages are going well, but I am writing about a haunting, after all, and every time I turn around there’s knocking on the walls (the pipes in the kitchen), weird manifestations (a team of horses trotting by with a buggy on the road outside) and rooms that are just literally too creepy to go into after dark. Last night I had to go all the way back upstairs, across the upstairs hall and around to the front stairs to get to a room I wanted to go to because I was too freaked out to cross the Great Room in the dark.

It’s good, though – I wake up with whole scenes in my head. And given my deadline (talk about scary) it’s being lifesaving to have this turbocharged atmosphere to work in.

I’m lucky – unlike authors with children and day jobs, I don’t have that much to have to escape from in my regular life – I write full time and theoretically I can do just as much or more at home as I could on retreat, because I have all my books and files and library all around me. But this whole experience has sold me on the writers’ retreat thing. There’s nothing like committing to nothing but writing for a certain number of days. The work you get done is exponential, and your subconscious gets loaded up with all kinds of new images that will undoubtedly work their way into some other story.

But if you don’t hear from me next week, you’ll know why.

The house got me.