Day After Day After Day

by J.T. Ellison

I know you’ve gotten used to seeing Stephen and Alex on Fridays, and let me start with a thank you to them, for allowing me back to my old spot to say hello, and farewell.

Back in October 2011, I made the unbelievably difficult decision to step away from Murderati. Difficult doesn’t describe it, really, because my leaving was more than another author taking off for greener pastures. I built this site. And by built it, I mean I was the physical architect behind Pari’s idea to start a group blog.

Way back when, none of us knew much about websites. None of us knew anything about blogs. And while we ironed out the name (mad props to my husband Randy who came up with Murderati), the lineup, the topics, the way we wanted to portray ourselves, we tried to figure out how to make it all happen.

I’ve always been a curious lass. I started playing around with Typepad, then the preeminent blogging platform. And I made an offer to the group – instead of hiring a web designer, which none of us could afford, I’d build us a website.

From the mouths of babes…

But once the offer was out there, and accepted, I had to follow through. I learned how to code, how to run a website, how to design. Randy helped with the banner, the old header, and anything else I got myself in over my head with. And pretty soon, we had a website. It had flaws. Typepad wasn’t easy to work with. Eventually, we migrated to Squarespace, which was much easier to work with, but had its own problems.

We blogged and blogged and blogged. And behind the scenes, all sorts of shit went down.

Let’s be real, here. We started with seven artists and ultimately built to fourteen. Over seven years, there were… issues. Of course there were. It’s only natural: when you have a group of people, all of them strong-willed and wildly creative, there will be issues. Over the years, people came and went. Friends were made and lost. Battle lines were sometimes drawn, and wars were fought. Joys and successes and opportunities were celebrated. Advice was freely given. Tears were shed. We were always our best when we were supporting each other.

In other words – family. Murderati has always been a family. A big fat happy family, with brothers and sisters who loved each other to death, squabbled with the best of them, beat up bullies who dared mess with our kin, and always, always, made our curfew.

Day in and day out, no matter what was happening behind the scenes, a fresh blog would go up. And we would put aside our petty differences and excited celebrations to pay homage to the author of the day.

It was our daily miracle.

With our daily miracles came forgiveness. Humor. Sadness. Anger. Cheering. Crying. We wrenched every emotion from ourselves, shared it on this blog, all to wrench it out of you.

Day in and day out, when we posted a fresh blog, you were there.

You made our blog what it was. We wrote. God, did we write. We struggled with being fresh, with not saying things that had been said before. We taught, and we learned. We strived to be authentic, to be real. To share our lives, our stories, our world, with strangers.

But you weren’t strangers for long.

You commented. You weren’t shy, not once you did it for the first time, not at all. You chose sides. You learned. You taught. You were the reason we kept coming back day after day. You were the reason we worked so damn hard to be unique, exciting, fresh. You told us when we were being silly, and cheered us on when we succeeded. You made us laugh, and you made us cry. You held us up when we needed a boost. You stood in awe when one of us created something close to genius.

You were the reason we started this blog. You were the reason we continued on.

But you aren’t the reason we’re closing.

Yes, the numbers began to sag when Facebook and Twitter became so very important to our writerly lives. But that’s natural. We lost readers when several of us left all at once in 2011, then steadied, and maintained. We still have a big following here. The numbers are not the reason we chose this route.

The daily miracle, which we managed for seven years, finally became too much to bear. 2555 blogs. Millions of visits. Thousands of comments. An industry that’s changed, a society that’s changed. Too many soapboxes, too little time. When 14 authors spoke, people listened. When 14,000 speak, there’s too much noise to be heard clearly.

Focus has changed. Long-form writing is very time consuming. Many, many of the authors from Murderati chose the independent publishing route, and there must be work product at the end of the day, and new books released — at a punishing pace — for success. The ones of us who stayed traditional are also facing challenges. With PR and marketing budgets slashed, self-marketing became not just a tasteless endeavor, but a necessary evil. The more authors are expected to handle on their own, the more authors choose to handle on their own, the more long-form blogging went by the wayside. It had to.

Because let’s be honest – at the end of the day, we’re writers. You want us to be writing books, right? Not blogs about how to write books. Right? Right?

(I keep telling myself that. One day I may even start believing it.)

When we started Murderati, I had an agent, but hadn’t sold my first book. I’ve now written twelve novels, sold fourteen novels and published nine, with the tenth coming in September, have a new Samantha Owens underway, a standalone I’m editing, a non-fiction I’m writing, have indie pubbed two short story collaborations with NYT bestsellers Alex Kava and Erica Spindler and have started writing with the esteemed #1 NYT bestseller Catherine Coulter. A lot of work, these past few years. It’s easy to understand why I don’t long-form blog much anymore.

Murderati played a huge part in all this, and I will be forever grateful for the massive leg up.

When we started Murderati, I used to agonize for a week over my post, and wouldn’t put it up until Randy had read it and promised me I didn’t sound like a dork. Now I write long form non-fiction for money, and Randy doesn’t see it until it’s actually done and ready for print.

When we started Murderati, I was unbelievably concerned with how I came across to the world. I hated sharing even the tiniest parts of me, a person I saw as boring and uninteresting, chose to stick solely to writing topics. I kept me apart from that JT Ellison girl.

Eventually, through this blog, I came to accept myself. All the parts of me. Even the parts I didn’t want to share with the world. Especially those.

When we started Murderati, I was in the beginning stages of trying to have children. Sadly, seven years later, I’ll share this – it wasn’t meant to be. The grief I experienced after multiple miscarriages, failed IVFs, all that nastiness, was what drove me away from this blog in the first place. I was a walking hormonal wreck. I couldn’t process my emotions in public. Hell, I couldn’t process my emotions in private. And then, when things were starting to form a scab, we lost Jade, Thrillercat, who you all know was my jinn. I went right back into that hole. Ah, it makes me cry, even now, thinking about all of this.

I could have let it consume me. God knows I wanted it to.

But I had a deadline.

I put my head down and wrote three novels in a row (WHERE ALL THE DEAD LIE, A DEEPER DARKNESS and EDGE OF BLACK – even the titles scream what was happening to me) that dealt with loss. Loss, and pain, and horror. And it got me through. It got me through. Pouring my soul into those books… it got me through.

I started yoga the week after I stopped writing for you. I took all the time I spent on Murderati and channeled it into my practice. Into healing. Into finding myself again. Every day, when I get on my mat, I set my intention. Four words. The things I want for myself.

Calm. Graceful. Kind. Focused.

It worked. It’s still working.

Now, when I come back to the page to bid you adieu, I do so as a strong, healthy woman who takes herself a lot less seriously than she used to, who is dedicated to her family and friends, to her health, to her work. I’m writing with joy again, with laughter, with humility and excitement. I blog over on my own website, a place I call the Tao of JT. I have a decent-sized Facebook page, and we have a ball. I’m on Twitter, as @thrillerchick. I send out a monthly newsletter, and if you’re not signed up, please do.

I don’t have Murderati anymore.

But if I’m lucky, I still have you.

I dedicate this blog to all the writers of Murderati. All of the friends of Murderati. All those who’ve come and gone.

And all of you.

Thank you for letting me come into your homes for seven years. Thank you for cheering me on, for making me cry, and for understanding. Thank you for making me the writer — the woman — I am today. Thank you, from the bottom of my soul.

I won’t say goodbye. I’ll just say… See you around.

xoxo,

(Stop by this weekend for two more goodbye posts – from our own Allison Brennan and Toni McGee Causey!)

Can’t believe it’s my turn

By PD Martin

Can’t believe it’s my turn now. It’s really happening. This is it…my last Murderati post. What is worthy of my last ever post on Murderati? The plain truth is nothing. There’s no way I can fully commemorate this occasion. But I’ll give it a shot 🙂

Atlhough, being one of the last in line, I can just plagiarise everyone else’s ideas on what to cover! The long goodbye posts from Murderati and ex-Murderati have talked about how they came to Murderati, what it’s meant to them, why they felt it was time to say goodbye, and some of the things they had bookmarked for future posts. Great ideas, guys. Thanks! Here’s my take…

To be honest I have no idea how/why my name came up in the Murderati ranks but I was thrilled when JT asked me if I wanted to join. Thanks JT or whoever suggested little old me. I think my biggest fear in those early days was blogging once a fortnight. What would I say? How could I keep it fresh and interesting? While I had a blog on my website, before Murderati my blogging was sporadic to say the least. To my surprise, I found that for the most part it was actually pretty easy coming up with blog posts and topics. There was probably only a handful of times when I was like ‘What the hell am I going to write about this time?’

Murderati has meant so much to me (it’s hard for words to express how much). I’ve really enjoyed reading others’ posts and being part of this community. But like some of my fellow Murderati have talked about, at times it felt like blogging and Murderati was taking away from my writing time. Last Thursday one of our commenters said to Zoe: “Sorry to see you leave this blog. It’s been a pleasure reading your posts. However if it means more novels from you then I support the decision wholeheartedly.”

And I guess that’s the aim for most of us at Murderati. I think I could blog once a month, but once a fortnight (plus being part of the Murderati community by reading and commenting on others’ posts) has become more difficult. But as Alex said in her last post, it was scrambling to find ‘replacement’ authors that seemed to be happening too often and took a lot of time, too. The logistics of running the blog and keeping it going also took time.

That being said, I am a fan of the longer blog posts (as opposed to the Facebook bites we’ve been talking about) and intend to kick off my once a month schedule at www.pdmartin.com.au/blog. I’ve been trying to work out how to do it – stay on Thursdays but once every four weeks? No, I’ve decided the most logical thing (largely to make sure I don’t forget!) is to post something on the first of every month. I will post a link to that monthly blog on my facebook page and on the Murderati facebook page or just head on over to pdmartin.com.au/blog sometime after the first of each month if you want to keep reading my blogs. We’re also talking about maybe starting up a Murderati discussion board given we know quite a few of our Murderati community members aren’t on Facebook. What do you think?

Like Zoe (words of the week) and David (juke box heroes), I had also invested in my future Murderati blogs. Whenever I thought of a potential topic, I’d open up a Word doc I’ve got called ‘Murderati schedule’ and jot down the idea. Here are some of the topics I had written in that file:

Travelling with children/toddlers (based on my recent trip!)
The arch nemesis in crime fiction
The US political system versus Australia’s (not getting into personal politics, just comparing the systems – e.g. here in Oz we have like six weeks of campaigning before the election and that’s it, plus voting is compulsory (you get fined if you don’t vote).
Tools of the trade (e.g. Scrivener).
What’s in a name? Character names and what they mean.
Self-editing tips.
More Aussie guest authors (previously I’ve had guests of Kathryn Fox, Lindy Cameron, Katherine Howell and Angela Savage and I was planning on asking these Aussie authors to appear on Murderati, too: Louisa (LA) Larkin, Leigh Redhead, Robin Bowles, Alison Goodman and Tara Moss to name a few. Look them up…you won’t regret it!

I’m also going to ‘borrow’ Gar’s idea from his last post — thinking about some of the posts I’ve written here and linking back my favourites. Some of my favourite posts are:

Writing ones
More personal ones

Finally I’d like to say thanks to JT and Pari for starting this blog way back when and for including “The Aussie” in the mix. What’s amazing about my Murderati experience is that I’ve NEVER met any of my fellow Murderatis. How weird is that? It also speaks to the power of fiction (especially crime fiction) to bring people together from different parts of the world, and the power of the internet to make the world a smaller place.

So it’s goodbye from me. Although I’ve rarely posted music/videos, the song that kept playing in my head as I wrote the close of this post was the ‘Goodbye, farewell’ song from the Sound of Music. I was going to link to it here, but as unfortunate timing has it a couple of days ago I was diagnosed with pneumonia and I’m loading this post from a transient Internet connection in hospital and I’m having problems finding a decent YouTube link of it. So, you’ll just need to play the song in your heads, Rati 🙂

Goodbye, farewell…

FINGERS CROSSED

by Louise Ure

Farewell to all my ‘Rati friends. And fingers crossed for continued murder, mayhem and crime in your life. And I mean that in the nicest way possible.

Much love,

Louise

Pain and growth

by Pari

Title#1
Adventures in colonoscopy-land

(Are you still reading?)

If you are, you’re already doing what I wanted to write about. Though it may have been fun to take you through the bends and kinks of my innards, my main goal today is to look at when we do things we don’t want to do because we know we need to. (Yes. I’m making an assumption here that this blog is worth reading.)

Title #2
Who died and made us all Puritans?

Decisions such as undergoing colonoscopies, closing down long-running blogs, or, frankly, opening ourselves to parenting, all require faith. They rest upon the idea that putting ourselves through some kind of pain — or struggle — will ultimately result in something good.

Title #3
The Puritans were wrong

We’re not all a bunch of losers who constantly need to atone through physical hard work and emotional self-flagellation. But most of us also aren’t going to get very far without putting ourselves in a position to experience pain, sadness, or regret . . .

This last week has been a really difficult one for me. Each unhappy event can be directly traced to a decision I made voluntarily, one I knew would try my body/heart at some point:
the colonoscopy
the upcoming end of Murderati
becoming a parent

And yet in the trials of these experiences, I feel only gratitude for having made those decisions because I know I needed to — for my health, for my future writing career, for my wholeness as a human being. Stepping into risk with my eyes open allows me to embrace all the unexpected good that goes along with that action. Difficulty doesn’t equal negativity. It doesn’t always equal growth either.

It’s just not fun.

However, I do believe that a certain amount of pain is necessary in a fully lived life. The urge to protect myself from it is powerful, but the urge to grow and learn is stronger. And I’m very grateful for that.

Questions:
1. Do you remember a moment you decided to do something you knew would be difficult/painful, but you did it anyway?
2. Was it worth it?

THANK YOU

by Brett Battles

The problem with not being able to do my Murderati farewell post until late in the month is that much of what I would normally say has already been said. At the risk of repeating at least a portion of what others have written, I owe JT a debt of gratitude for asking me to be a part of something great…something that has become an institution. And to the rest of the then current member—most prominently, Pari—my undying thanks also for backing the idea of asking me to join.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. I believe the last time was last summer when I guest posted about my jump into the independent publishing world. When I first started with Murderati, I was a traditionally published author with, I believe, two books out. My career was looking up and I was just about to take the step into full time writing. Actually, the span from my traditional publishing life through the independent phase of my career clearly demonstrate the vast changes in the publishing industry Murderati has been around to witness and report on.

Looking back through all the post here—and by no means am I talking about just mine—is like taking a walk through living history. The ups, the downs, the highs, the lows, the triumphs, the uncertainty, the just plain excitement of being published. It’s all there. And I am so grateful for having been able to be a part of it.

Of course, the most important part of Murderati has never been those of us who were writing the posts. It was all of you—the readers and commenters who helped create this wonderful community. I personally want to thank you all so much.

I’m glad to hear an archive of the Murderati posts are going to remain up and accessible. If nothing else, some future grad student could use the info found here to write a pretty damn good research paper. Hell, maybe even a book. Not that we know anything about books here.

As I write this, I have a glass of beer beside my computer. Really, I do. Let me take a moment, raise it in the air, and say, “Thank you Murderati, every damn one of you. To remembering the past, while forging ever forward!”

AND IN THE END

by Stephen Jay Schwartz

And in the end

the love you take

is equal to

the love

you make

These powerful words

from the Beatles

Their last statement, on their final album, Abbey Road.

Let it Be was released later, but recorded earlier.

Abbey Road, their final thoughts. Life and music and politics and love. Kinda like the final thoughts of a bunch of authors I know.

And what a beautiful, complex set of songs the Beatles left for us in Abbey Road. From the whimsical Octopus’s Garden to the dark, atonal Because, and the long medley that begins with You Never Give Me Your Money and climaxes at The End, with wild tangents along the way, growing, evolving, escalating toward those final words, the words that sum it all up, that boil it down to the essential truth: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

When I was in college, in music school, I used to skip my sight-singing & ear-training class and hide in the campus music library where I listened to Abbey Road, over and over and over again. Upon receiving my D in the class, my instructor asked me why I rarely showed up. I told him what I’d been doing. He stared into space for a moment, then nodded. “I can see that,” he said. “You picked good teachers.”

The Beatles were diverse, ever-changing, impossible to categorize, and full of surprises.

When I look at the seven-year life of Murderati I can’t help but think about the music of The Beatles. Billed as a site where mystery-thriller authors marketed their books and shared stories about their adventures in publishing, Murderati grew into something more, a collection of diverse voices sharing their opinions on everything under the stars. Filled with surprises, Murderati was diverse, ever-changing and impossible to categorize. Exactly the kind of organization/disorganization I can relate to. And, like The Beatles, the members of Murderati are deliciously talented. I’ve sat amazed and overwhelmed by the insightful discussion I’ve read here. The dialogue and dialectic. It’s the Algonquin Round Table of the mystery sect, and I feel fortunate and honored to have had a spot in the room.

I’m lucky I got in when I did, to have a few years to write my 111 blogs. A number, by the way, that has always been magical for me. Three ones. It has become a tradition in my family to wish each other “Happy Anniversary!” each time we see the clock change to 1:11. It began with my wife and I after we took a romantic trip to Santa Fe and spent an evening at Ten Thousand Waves in a hot tub under the stars. The number on the door to our private room was 111. The “Happy Anniversary” was our little ritual and it spread to the kids when the kids came ’round.

So, it’s seems symbolic that my final blog for Murderati is 111.

I’ve always loved the fact that Murderati was a living thing, a place where artists moved into and out of. Authors came and went, but their words remained. It’s refreshing to know that the words will always be there, archived, for us to reference years into the future. Murderati remains as a testament to our time, to the world of publishing as it was. It’s a fascinating freeze-frame of the state of our art as things moved into the digital age. The excitement and fear of this moment are captured in our postings. Murderati exists as an historical reference to one of the greatest times of change ever experienced in the world of publishing.

I’m glad a number of past authors have come by to say goodbye. These are the folks who were here before and during my time, and I’ve missed their voices on the blog. It feels like a family reunion.

I only feel sorry that the site can’t continue as it has these past seven years, so that current readers of the blog could experience the joy of becoming Murderati bloggers themselves. It seems unfair to them, most of all.

I will miss this place.

But it doesn’t have to be so serious and sad. Even The Beatles, with their heavy message at the end, let us know that the final word, after the final word, was something else entirely.

Fourteen seconds after the end of The End comes the strike of a chord and the start of a silly little ditty called Her Majesty. A slap-happy, tongue-in-cheek drinking song that ends on the upbeat of an incomplete measure and reminds us that The Beatles, as deep and inventive as they were, simply wanted to have fun.

Because, if you’re not having fun, what’s the point?

I hope you’ve all had fun here. I have. I hope you’ve allowed yourself the opportunity to be silly and whimsical. I certainly have. Sometimes humor offers the greatest insight. After all, it’s the flip-side of tragedy, and no one knows that better than the authors and readers of the mystery-thriller community.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, the yellow submarine has arrived, and there’s room for one more.

Happy Anniversary!

* * *

(Remember to pop by this weekend for postings by past-Murderati authors)

* * *

Oh, and if you’re going to attend the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC this weekend, I’ll be moderating a panel called “Crime Fiction: Secrets and Spies” with Philip Kerr, Eric Van Lustbader and Tom Epperson on Sunday at 12:30. And I’ll be signing at the Book Soup booth, also on Sunday, at 3:00 pm. Hope to see you there!

Lost For Words

Zoë Sharp

The title for this, my last ever Murderati post, came easily. And then I was stuck.

I’m all out

of clever things

to say

I am genuinely lost for the right words to express how I feel about the end of this era. Part of me is desolate. The friends I’ve made on Murderati have been wonderful and I hope we won’t lose touch but I fear that may happen so easily. Time just seems to disappear. The last time I turned around it was Christmas. Now we’re well into Spring and CrimeFest in Bristol is only weeks away.

Writing for Murderati has been hard in the way that I find all writing hard — because I want to do my best and therefore I sweat and swear over it. I can’t bring myself to do a ‘I couldn’t think of anything so here’s some rehashed old stuff’ type of post. Sometimes I felt I missed the mark entirely but on those occasions when you seemed to like what I’d written it reminded me so strongly why I do this. Not just the blogging but the whole writing thing.

After all, there are far easier ways to make a living.

I’ll never shake that feeling of wonderment when I get kind comments on my writing and my books on Facebook or via email. I hope very much that I’ll continue to hear from everyone — writers and readers and all the friends I’ve made.

But Facebook — and more especially Twitter — is designed for one-liners rather than anything more substantial. Are we losing the longer more thoughtful — and more thought-provoking — blogs to this Brave New sound-bite World? And is that what you prefer?

How many of you still read blogs regularly, or how many of you have graduated to grazing from your Twitter or Facebook feeds?

One of my favourite parts of blogging here has always been choosing a Word of the Week. Well, as I won’t be doing that here any longer I thought I’d leave you with a selection:

Adoxography — the art of skilled writing on an unimportant subject.

Batrachophagous — one who eats frogs.

Charientism — an artfully veiled insult.

Defenestrate — to throw out of a window.

Exsibilation — the collective hisses of a disapproving audience.

Filipendulous — suspended by a single thread.

Gymnophoria — the sensation that someone is mentally undressing you.

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian — pertaining to extremely long words.

Inaniloquent — saying foolish things.

Jumentous — smelling like horse urine.

Knismesis — light tickling.

Lethologica — the inability to recall a precise word for something.

Mallemaroking — the carousing of seamen aboard Greenland whaling ships.

Nudiustertian — pertaining to the day before yesterday.

Onychophagy — the habit of biting one’s fingernails.

Petrichor — the smell of rain on dry ground.

Qualtagh — the first person you see after leaving your house.

Recumbentibus — a knockout blow, either verbal or physical.

Skoptsy — the act of self-castration.

Tarantism — an urge to overcome melancholia by dancing.

Ultracrepidarian — one of speaks or offers opinions on matters of which they have no knowledge.

Vigesimation — the act of killing every twentieth person.

Wanweird — an unhappy fate.

Xenobombulate — to malinger.

Yclept — by the name of or called.

Zabernism — the misuse of military authority or bullying.

Thanks to Unusual Words for these. That’s all from me, folks. Thank you all so much. It’s been a blast hasn’t it?

Hope to see you on the Other Side.

The Last Juke Box Hero

By David

Confession: My favorite part of every posting was picking the music for the end.

When I was a kid, I dreamed of being a DJ, and I’d actually record myself on my eight-track spinning singles in my basement, introducing the bands, announcing the tunes, every now and then venturing a particularly catchy B-side (God, am I dating myself).

Later, I was one of those geeky dorky dweeby dudes who couldn’t share mix tapes and CDs fast enough. I have two friends who say they almost need entire rooms—or outbuildings—to warehouse all the music I forced on them. I always saw it as the perfect postcard, the best way to say hi and what’s up and lay my own trip out there without getting too, well, weird.

But hey, I’m weird. Just check out the tunes, you know that much.

I always got a kick out of sharing some of the obscurities I posted here—yeah, that’s me, the guy who’s always into “the best kept secret in …” (which explains my writing career, in more ways than I’d like to admit).

And so, in trying to determine what tune should conclude my stint here at Murderati, I was my usual exuberant, over-indulgent self, having too much I wanted to share, and only one last chance to do so.

So postmark this one, save it for later, play it in bits. This is my Murderati Mix Tape, with samples of a handful of the bands and singers and songs I had bookmarked to share but never got the chance, such as:

Ani DeFranco singing “(Fuck You and Your) Untouchable Face”

Dee Dee Bridgewater with Jimmy Smith performing Horace Silver’s “Filthy McNasty”

One Nation with Victory covering Roxy Music’s “More Than This”

The Sons of the Pioneers singing “Tumbling Tumbleweeds”

Vinicio Capossela (“The Italian Tom Waits”) performing “Ultimo Amore”

Los Straitjackets with “My Love Will Go On” (the “love” theme from Titanic)

Punk girl band Sleater-Kinney with “Start Together”

The Raindrops doo-wopping with “The Kind of Boy You Can’t Forget”

Kay Starr, with the Charlie Barnet Orchestra: “Sharecropper’s Blues”

Bonnie Raitt absolutely killing Randy Newman’s “Feels Like Home”

Randy Newman killing as well with, well, Randy Newman (“Shame”)

Sash! performing the hypnotic dance classic “Encore Une Fois”

The Bobby Fuller Four performing “Let Her Dance” on Shivaree

Renee Fleming with “Soave sia il vento,” a stunning tercetto from Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte

Ultravox with the punk anthem “Saturday Night in the City of the Dead”

Slim Whitman singing the classic “Cattle Call”

Cleveland’s The Outsiders performing “Time Won’t Let Me”

Cleveland’s Joe Walsh (and ELO’s Jeff Lynne) kicking it with “Wrecking Ball”

Meg Hentges with the gay teen anthem “This Kind of Love”

A great video mash-up with the Nicholas Brothers tap-dancing to The Contours’ “First I Look at the Purse”

Guitarist extraordinaire Johnny A with “Oh Yeah”

Carmen Consoli with the plaintive, aching “Tutto su Eva”

Little Willie John (God, what a voice): “Leave My Kitten Alone”

Noel Coward (God, what a voice): “I Went to a Marvelous Party”

The jazz geniuses Ninety Miles: “Black Action Figure”

Bryan Ferry covering the Everly Brothers’ “The Price of Love”

Willie “The Lion” Smith performing the breathtaking “Echoes of Spring”

Fiona Apple’s haunting “Red, Red, Red”

The first four minutes of Bernard Hermann’s score for The Day the Earth Stood Still

Brazil’s Nação Zumbi (what The Who would have sounded like if Pete Townsend were Brazilian, not British) performing “Hoje, amanhã e depois”

And finally (for this set), this old chestnut titled “The Cruel Sea” performed by The Dakotas, from that bastion of surf culture, Manchester UK (yes, this one’s for you, Gordon):

There were, of course, also songs with a crime theme I wanted to share, such as:

Anita O’Day with the Stan Kenton Band: “And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine”

Steely Dan: “With A Gun”

The incomparable Raul Malo covering “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress”

Brave Combo with a killer cumbia version of the Mission Impossible theme

Gypsy wedding band Fanfare Cioçarlia performing the James Bond Theme

The (okay, not so obscure) O-Jays: “For the Love of Money”

Richard Thompson: “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” (how does he sing and play like that at the same time?)

Alabama 3 with the theme from The Sopranos

The Eliminators with “Dawn Patrol” (inadvertent theme for the Don Winslow novel)

John Hiatt with “Tennessee Plates”

Anita O’Day (again), this time with the Gene Krupa Orchestra: “Murder He Says”

And then all the sad goodbye songs I thought might bring a tear, a chuckle, or a sigh:

Bettye Lavette with “Let Me Down Easy”

Annie Lennox with my favorite version of Cole Porter’s “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye”

Café Tacuba and Celso Piña with “Aunque No Sea Conmigo” (Since You Will Not Be With Me)

Shivaree (the band, not the TV show): “Goodnight Moon”

Merle Haggard: “Someday When Things Are Good (I’m Gonna Leave You)”

John Lennon. “You Don’t Know What You Got (Till You Lose It)”

Otis Redding: “You Don’t Miss Your Water (Till Your Well’s Run Dry)”

Raul Malo (again—God, what a voice), this time with J.D. Souther’s “You’re Only Lonely”

Santana with Alejandro Lerner (LOVE this song): “Hoy Es Adios”

Jimmy Buffett and Roy Orbison, “Beyond the End”

Emmylou Harris, with a song by Steve Earle, produced by Daniel Lanois: “Goodbye”

* * * * *

And with that, I bid adieu to all of you in this, my Murderati incarnation. I’ve made a lot of grand friends here, friends I intend to cherish in other formats and other locales, on the Murderati Facebook Page and beyond—beyond the end.

The Final Jukebox Hero of the Week: Who else, with what else—and a tease for Stephen’s final post this Friday:

A GOODBYE TOAST

by Alafair Burke 59.

That is the number currently next to my name on the list of Murderati archives. This will be the 60th and final post. I started to connect the end of Murderati to the increasing pressure on all artists to build a platform for themselves in 140-character snippets, but then I bummed myself out. Instead, I read through my 59 previous posts and remembered how lucky I was to have Murderati as a place to share whatever happened to interest me with a community of smart, supportive people who — whoa — like books!

Some of my favorite posts were kind of nutty, like this one about writers and their doppelgangers. https://murderati.com/blog/2010/2/1/literary-look-alikes-who-are-the-doppelgangers.html

I subsequently changed my mind about Michael Koryta, who is now more Aaron Paul than David Duchovny, but the Laura Lippman – Sweet Polly Purebread comparison holds up.

Some of my favorites were about process, like the time I confessed to doing a true rewrite of my eighth novel. https://murderati.com/blog/2011/9/12/rewriting-v-editing.html

I’m starting my tenth now and hope to write it only once. I spent a lot of time talking about my dear, sweet pal, Duffer, who inspired this post about literary animals. https://murderati.com/blog/2010/5/24/are-you-there-dog-its-me-margaret.html

And I was lucky enough to use my space at Murderati to interview some of my favorite people: Lisa Unger, Jonathan Hayes, Denise Hamilton, April Smith. How amazing it that?

Though it’s hard to say goodbye to this wonderful party, we maintain the relationships built here. I’m forever grateful.

Spring Winds

by Pari

It’s spring in New Mexico. For some parts of my large state, that means mercurial shifts in temperature with low 80s one day and upper 40s the next. For the southern part of the state, it’s a breath of beauty before scorching summer sucks what little rain might have fallen back into the air before it ever hits the earth.

However, there’s one thing that spring means for everyone and everything in NM: hellatious winds. We’re talking all the levels of Dante’s hells combined into one. Daily gusts from 60 or 75 mph. Winds that strip fruit trees of their fragile whites and pinks. Blizzards of petals slapping sand-blasted faces and swirling into banks at sidewalk curbs. Highways closed due to zero visibility. Soil transformed into angry clouds of murky brown.

I can’t sleep this time of year. Winds roar at night. It’s not the weird banging of branches against my bedroom walls, it’s the unsettledness of the world that gets to me . . . The lifting up of things better left on the ground, the battering of new plants just trying to set in before the ravages of drought-ridden summers . . . It’s the horrid knowing that someone’s smoldering cigarette butt, carelessly cast out of a car window, will destroy mountainside forests that took centuries to grow.

This year, I’m thinking more about the winds than usual. They usher in a new season, presage change. When I take my long walks after work, the violent movement of air forces me to keep a stronger center so that I don’t get pushed off the sidewalk into the street. There’s powerful symbolism in that for me. So much of my life is changing drastically: A long marriage facing its end, shifts in culture and responsibilities at work, the end of posting on a blog I’ve loved and nurtured for seven years.

And yet I feel much less adrift in the middle of all this flux than I ever have before. With my knees bent and my body lowered against the gusts, I’m building in a certain — new — ability to sway rather than break.

I don’t like when people tell me that with one shut door, others open. But in typical contradictory style, I also do feel the optimism intrinsic in movement, the blessed knowledge that the only constant is, indeed, change. I’m sad with the end of my marriage, of Murderati as we know it, of what I thought I knew about myself on some levels. Yet I look bright-eyed to the future, to possibilities in these most windy of life days.

Questions for today:
1. What is spring like where you live?

2. Have you ever noticed a sense of internal centeredness when you would’ve expected otherwise?

(And yes, I know this is the long goodbye this month, I just had to give everyone a break with a more general post.)