Podge

An introduction by Zoë Sharp.

By the time you read this, I shall be in Northern Ireland on a series of photoshoots and, as I'm going to be out of email contact until next week, Stuart MacBride has very kindly offered to come to my rescue and step in as guest blogger.

If I say that Stuart is huge, that's not a comment on anything other than his literary status. He's been topping the UK bestseller lists since his first book, COLD GRANITE, hit the shelves. He is the recipient of the CWA Dagger in the Library and the Barry Award, and has also just won the ITV Crime Thriller Award for Breakthrough Author of the Year for BROKEN SKIN (BLOODSHOT in the US). All in all, he is a gentleman, a scholar and an acrobat – not necessarily in that order. (See, he searches out the most embarrassing bit he could possibly find from one of my books, and proceeds to read it out loud in front of 450 people at Harrogate, and what do I do? Say nice things about him. Mutter, mutter ….)

Without further ado, please welcome the Bearded One, and all being well I shall return in a fortnight – Zoë

And now that Zoë's disclaimer for any responsibility is out of the way, let's talk dirty*…

Podge

By Stuart MacBride

Something strange began to happen to me the moment I went full time as a writer: as Zoë says, I became a much bigger man. By which I don't mean that I became important, or special, or even taller… actually, I've been getting shorter for the last fifteen years. Shorter and rounder. For some God-forsaken reason I'm slowly turning into a pasty bouncy castle with a beard. A podge.

A sexy podge, but a podge nonetheless.

I never used to be — I used to be slim and fit and a bit of a hottie — it's the writing that's done it. Back when I worked full time for THE MAN I'd get back home from work and sit down to indulge in my dirty secretive hobby: writing. So that's all day sitting in an office, followed by all night sitting in the study making up lies about people who don't exist. Not the most active of lifestyles, but at least back then I was getting a bit of exercise walking to the shops for lunch. Now the only things that get exercised are eight fingers and the lump of gristle between my ears.

Worse yet, I came up with a new hobby: cooking. Well, I couldn't keep writing in my spare time, could I? That would just be silly. You don't take up professional dentistry, spend all day traumatising people by drilling holes in their teeth, and then go home and start hacking away at your neighbour's mouths with a hammer drill, do you? Well, not unless you want to feature on the evening news in a couple of years time. No, you find yourself a decent wholesome hobby, like drinking heavily, or line-dancing dressed up like Barney the Dinosaur.

And as my purple Tyrannosaurus Rex costume is still in the dry-cleaners after an unfortunate semolina-related mishap, I took up cooking. It started out small, just the occasional pot of mince and tatties… I thought I could handle it. I could stop any time I wanted. Then I started dabbling with more exotic things like stews, roasts, and, to my eternal shame, fondue. And then I tried the hard stuff: soup.

Mmm... soup! What could be more distracting than soup? It's like sex in a pot… Well, maybe not sex, not unless you're into scalded genitals and finding bits of diced carrots in your intimate crevasses. But there's something strangely hypnotic about the alchemical nature of combining random stuff you find in your fridge and transforming it into SOUP!

I suppose soup is a strange obsession for someone who writes police procedural thrillers that often get described as gorier than shoving a rabid weasel down a haemophiliac's trousers. But there you go, we all have our dark secrets. And the darkest of my dark secrets is the infamous MUSHROOM SOUP.

When my editors decided to take a punt on my first book, COLD GRANITE, they asked me to write a small bio to go with the photo of the thin tall bloke on the cover. So I did:

"Stuart MacBride has scrubbed toilets offshore, flunked out of university, set up his own graphic design company, worked for some really nasty marketing people, got dragged into the heady world of the Internet, developed massive applications for the oil industry, drunk heaps of wine and created the perfect recipe for mushroom soup…"

this is what goes in the soup That bit at the end has got me into more trouble than pretty much anything else. As soon as I realised I was getting more emails about the damn soup than the damn books I dropped the soup thing from the bio, but by then it was too late. Four years later and I'm still getting mushroom-soup-related queries. Seriously, these people aren't asking about recurring themes, metaphors, or the importance of cannibalism in modern crime fiction. No, they want to know about bloody soup.

Up till now I've always played the 'it's a secret I'll take with me to other people's graves…' card, but as I'm guesting here I thought, why not? Get it out in the open. Plus when Zoë asked me to fill in for her here at Murderati, she said it would be bad form to bang on about my books, and I can't think of anything further removed from tales of bloodshed and mayhem than publishing my until-now secret recipe for mushroom soup.

Ingredients — you'll need:

400g (14oz) Mushrooms sliced really thinly
150g (5oz) of dried porcini mushrooms
85g (3oz) of finely chopped leek
2 pints full-cream milk
150 ml double cream
2 cloves of garlic, mashed
Thumb-sized lump of butter
2 slices of bread, or a stale roll
1 palm full of finely chopped fresh parsley
Loads of finely chopped fresh thyme

What to do:

Start off by rehydrating the dried porcini in a small bowl of hot water, they'll take about 20 mins to plump up and soften. 3oz seems like an odd amount, but it's about half a little packet.

Next, melt the butter in soup pot, chuck in the sliced fresh mushrooms and season with salt and pepper (the thinner you slice them the more surface area they have to ooze out mushroomy goodness). Sweat down the mushrooms until they're soft and all the moisture has come out of them. Then add the chopped thyme, leeks, and garlic. Let them heat up in the mushrooms for a couple of minutes, then pour in the milk and bring it up to a very gentle simmer. Thyme and mushrooms go incredibly well together, trust me on this…

Stir and stir and stir some more...

Tear or slice up your bread and stick it in a heatproof jug. Chuck in the rehydrated porcini and a couple of ladles of the warm mushroomy milk, then liquidise it all up with hand blender. If you don't want to throw out the soaking liquid, make sure you strain it before you add it to the soup or it'll be full of grit and sand and bits of dead bugs.

Blending it all up should give you a jug of very tasty, intensely mushroomy moosh: tip it back into the pot. Add the double cream, chopped parsley, then check for seasoning — mushrooms and cream are both sponges for salt and pepper, so don't be shy about it — then serve.

If you're feeling all summery, leave out the bread and substitute a good quality, free-range chicken stock for the milk. It won't be quite as rich, but it'll be a lot lighter. You could add a slug of brandy or a couple of glugs of white wine to the mix, but for God's sake make sure you add them after the rest of the liquid or the mushrooms will soak up all the booze. This might seem like a good thing, but it'll just make them all bitter and nasty. Like an OAP with a septic leg and a colostomy bag full of second-hand chilli. You really want to be eating that?

See — I get the chance to plug my books to hundreds of new readers and instead I witter on about soup and finish with a sodding recipe. How noir am I?

* This is, of course a lie. There's no dirty talk at all in this post… Well, except for the gratuitous use of the word 'fuck' right here in the footnotes. But we're all grownups right? It's not like I'm advocating you all go out and have sex with badgers, is it?

What We Can Do

by J.D. Rhoades

Tomorrow is the official beginning of the 'holiday season" in the U.S. Of course, most of us have already seen plenty of Christmas decorations and "pre-holiday" sales, trying to capture those now-scarce Yuletide dollars.And I'm starting to hear Christmas music here and there, which will become ubiquitous after Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, this year, the season is one when people in a lot of industries, including publishing, are, as the Good Book says, "sore afraid." Publishers are talking layoffs and pension freezes. Newspapers are shutting down their book review pages. Borders, one of the big-box chains, is reportedly in trouble. Barnes and Noble's CEO sent out a memo saying that "never in all my years as a bookseller have I seen a retail climate as poor as the one we are in. Nothing even close." Monday, in a move that rippled across the book blogs like a shock wave, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced that it was "temporarily" suspending the buying of new manuscripts.

Is this the end of the book business as we know it?

Well, maybe, at least the "as we know it" part. Oh, I don't think the book business is going to end, but it's sure to go through some changes, some of them long overdue. What those changes will mean for writers and readers remains to be seen. One thing experience teaches us, however, is that the future is likely to defy prediction. That's one of the things the future's good at.

So what can we do? Well, as writers, we do what we always do: we keep our heads in the work, write the best books we can, and try not to let the fear get to us.

But what we can all do is give books this year for Christmas, or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Festivus or whatever.

A book is a great gift. It provides hours of enjoyment at a relatively low price. Consider the time it takes to read a book. Divide that by the cover price. Now do the same thing for the time it takes to watch a movie divided by the cost. Don't forget the cost of the popcorn. See what a bargain a book is?

And a book can be a much more meaningful gift than, say a tie or a sweater. If it's a book you like, you're sharing a little piece of yourself along with the book. Or it's a chance to introduce somebody you care about to something new, as, for example, author Carleen Brice points out in her campaign designating December as "Buy a Book by a Black Author and Give It To Somebody Not Black Month" so that people can "explain to white friends, neighbors, coworkers, classmates that there are books without Ebonics, and that books by black authors are much like any other book." I have to say, I'm tickled by the URL of Brice's blog: http://welcomewhitefolks.blogspot.com.

Other sites have sprung up promoting this idea, such as buybooksfortheholidays.com, and the fine folks at Indiebound are making a big push for independent booksellers to be proactive over the holidays because, as they put it in their ad "A scented candle never changed anyone's life."

And while you're giving to family and friends, give some consideration to the men and women serving overseas. Check out Booksforsoldiers.com and maybe send a little bit of comfort and joy their way. Because among the constants of military life are boredom and loneliness, and books are good for easing both of those.

While none of us can save the book industry single handed, we can each do our small part. And, of course, if you want to give a book by your favorite Murderati author, I don't think any one of us will mind.

Happy Holidays, whichever ones you celebrate!

Who To Query?

By Louise Ure

This month I’m all about query letters here at Murderati. For the first installment, check out this post from two weeks ago about how to craft a query letter. The question for today is: Now what do I do with it?

First of all, take a deep breath. You’re about to embark on perhaps the most fraught-filled leg of the journey to publication. You’re opening yourself up to criticism far beyond any of the yammerings of your writer’s group and you need to steel yourself.

Start here: The simple answer to the question is, you send your query letter to agents who are most likely to be responsive to your work.

That means they’re agents who deal in your genre, who are looking for new clients to add to their roster, who are passionate about your work, and who you believe have the clout and the contacts to make you an advantageous sale.

But how do you find them?

If you’re like me, you had no education or grounding in the publishing business before you started to write. I’d never met a living author (was there even such a thing?) until I started writing my own books. I had certainly never met an agent.

The good news is that the information is out there and easily available – online, in libraries and bookstores, and in person.

– Try Agent Query for the addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of reputable literary agents, plus additional information, including an agent’s previous publishing experience, education, former agency affiliations, former agency address, titles sold, past and present clients, genres and special interests.

– Or Query Tracker which includes a neat program to track all your queries then pool the results to provide aggregate information on an agent’s genre-specific acceptance/rejection history and response time.

– Try Preditors & Editors, Writer Beware and Absolute Write for the “Worst 20” lists and alerts to agent scams.

– Most literary agents have their own websites now, including information about recent sales, client lists and policies.

– You can also check them out with the national organization, The Association of Authors’ Representatives, Inc.

– A couple of good print versions of the information are: Chuck Sambuchino’s, 2009 Guide to Literary Agents or Jeff Herman’s (brand new as of November 11, 2008) Guide to Book Publishers, Editors & Literary Agents 2009. I particularly love the Jeff Herman book.

– You could subscribe to Publisher’s Marketplace, an industry newsletter which announces deals, sales, reviews, and which agents are selling work. Online subscription is $20.00 a month, but it’s a month-by-month contract so you shouldn’t have to fork out much to get enough information to get you started. And pay special attention to the page where they talk about which agent has moved to a new house or started their own agency. Those are the ones most interesting in building new client lists.

– Check out the acknowledgements page in published novels. Most authors include thanks to their agents and editors.

– Join Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Romance Writers of America, or International Thriller Writers. Even if you don’t live in a big city, you can participate in Internet Chapters of the organizations or build relationships with member-authors by email. Ask them who their agents are and how they like working with them.

– Go to conferences. Even the fan-based cons like Bouchercon have lots of agents in attendance and lots of authors you can talk to about their agents. And the smaller, writer-oriented conferences can be superb opportunities not just to hear about an agent but to spend time with one.

Some miscellaneous but equally important advice:

Start with a list of 50 potential agents and send out ten at a time, starting with your “All Star” favorites.

There’s no magic number of agents to query and no assumption of how long it should take. Plan on sending out 1-100 letters over the course of a month to a year.

If you haven’t heard from an agent you’ve queried in a month, go on to the next on your list.

Do include some agents on your list who say they are not accepting unsolicited manuscripts. Believe me, they’re still reading all query letters and yours might just meet something they’re looking for.

Don’t bother with Fedex or overnight delivery of your query or sample pages. It makes no impression on the agent, other than to think you waste money.

If an agent asks for exclusivity – personally, I’m against giving it, but it’s up to you – limit the time for the exclusive review. Four to six weeks at most.

Avoid literary agents who charge a reading fee. The professional ones would never ask you for it and the unprofessional are not the ones you want representing your book.

Don’t pay for a “customized list of agents” based on reading your work. I know there are lots of internet offers out there for services like this, but honest to God, aren’t you the best person to know what your work is like? It’s like asking someone with an online Baby Book to name your child.

Save all your rejection letters. First of all, they’re nice to look back on when you’re happily published. In the meantime, they might teach you something. Is there an overriding theme in the rejections? If their criticism rings true to your ears, you may want to take another look at your novel. Are they all form letters? Maybe your query letter needs a tune up to more clearly demonstrate your style or the uniqueness of your story.

Remind yourself that rejection is not personal; that if an agent didn’t love the sound of your book then she probably wouldn’t have been a passionate advocate for it.

Reward yourself at every step along the way. For having the guts to send out a query in the first place. For sending out ten more. For getting a request for a partial. For getting a request for the full manuscript. Hell, reward yourself for reaching the milestone of 21 rejections. Or 50. Or 100.

Never give up. Never give up. Never give up.

I know that several of our ‘Rati members got their agents through other, less traditional, means, so there are undoubtedly other sources, tricks and tips that I’m not thinking of here. What say you, ‘Rati? Any other good advice? Or do you want to share the worst rejection letter you ever got?

And now a word from a reader

I met Lee Kelley via email nearly five years ago. She'd read The Clovis Incident and loved it. Next thing I knew, my book had been reviewed in the Vroman's newsletter. For the uninitiated, Vroman's is Southern California's largest independent bookstore. It's a glorious place.

Since then, I've had the pleasure of corresponding with Lee and even meeting her in person. She's one of the unsung heroes in our mystery community. An active supporter who works at a general bookstore, but isn't an employed book seller per se.

I asked her to write a little something about mysteries and herself because I suspect there are a lot of people like Lee (though none exactly like her of course!) who give to our community daily though we may never be fortunate enough to know their names.

Have a blessed Monday,

Pari

———————————————————————————————

Thank you, Pari, for inviting me to Murderati! As the current gatherer of mystery tales for The Scene of the Crime email newsletter for Vroman's bookstore in Pasadena, I can't think of a better place to be.

Actually I work in the accounting office, but because I'm such an avid reader, I've been happy to review books for the mystery newsletter for seven years. Recently, due to staff changes, I've assumed a much larger role in the production of this genre-specific publication which is separate from the store's more extensive newsletter.

Generally, I comment on and recommend books that are extremely current, time-wise, with the printing of the newsletter, but am considering a corner for books that I reviewed in the past that remain on our shelves today. I hope the store lets me do that because it's another way to push authors and their endeavors.

A little about me: I started reading at age two and never looked back. In grade school I devoured all the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew stories. I read my first "adult" mystery when I was around fifteen or so. It was The Moonstone by the English author Wilkie Collins and was published in 1868. Many people consider it to be the precursor to the "modern" detective story. I was entralled with it and pretty soon was reading every mystery I could get my hands on.

As I got older my tastes changed. Now I read everything from classics to westerns, from fantasy to mystery. Though my favorite genre is science fiction, I continue to supplement my craving for good literature with mysteries.

Naturally Pari is one of my favorite authors; I've lived in New Mexico and can see the places she writes about. I also am a major fan of Tony Hillerman and he will certainly be missed. Dick Francis is another favorite.

I particularly like psychological mysteries. The workings of the mind have always fascinated me. It's true that often in this kind of mystery you know who the perp is. As far as I'm concerned that doesn't take away from the pleasure of the book because then the fun of reading becomes following the protagonist and shouting, "No, you idiot! It's the other guy!"

In mysteries, modi operandi and motives frequently seem familiar, but it always amazes me how an author can make them seem fresh. I think what makes the difference is the characters. If the writer truly knows the characters and environment, then the scenarios become new. Sure, there may be murder and mayhem in every story, but because the characters are unique, so is the tale.

Reading mysteries satisfies the need-to-know gene in me. What really happened? Where did that come from? How was that done? And why, in the name of all that's obvious, can't that detective figure out what's going on?

Well, it's probably because he's not as smart as we are — we, the readers — who devour the book and sort the clues from the comfort of our chairs as we immerse ourselves in the world of the author.

Cowboys want to die with their books on.

I'd like to pass on with a book in my hands.

****************************************************************************************************************

Thank you, Lee.

HEY!!!! If readers, writers, booksellers, agents, editors and publishers aren't enough to make you thankful this holiday season, I've got another bit to brighten your day:

Cornelia Read will be joining Murderati beginning Saturday, December 6. She and our marvelous Alex Sokoloff will alternate posts weekly. Join me in giving her a big 'Rati welcome!

comfort reading

by Toni McGee Causey

Somewhere, there is a woman, sitting in a room, three days past a rape. Her bruises are turning purple and in a few more days, they're going to be that greenish hue of ghouls. She hasn't looked in a mirror, yet, but the swelling is starting to abate, and she can open her jaw without the execrable pain. The screaming is almost entirely in her head, now. The stitches hurting her remind her she's alive and she's not really sure why people keep telling her that, as if that's a good thing. She's not sure she wants to be. There's been just enough time to get past the initial shock, the stunned chaotic business of having lost any sense of strength in the face of the world. She has had just enough time to be processed, and there should be a stamp for her forehead: file # 56449A221.

Oh, people have been caring. They have been very professionally caring. All of the people, scads of them. They have been very careful not to touch her or move too fast. Everyone is diligent about addressing her respectfully, using her name, always making sure she feels like an individual. She can see it, see in their eyes how she is now different. The opposite of the person on the other side of the desk, where there are things like strength and weapons and confidence.

And right now, she is finally alone, though the moat around her has turned into an ocean, and the screaming, it just keeps on coming. For a few minutes, not having to deal with anyone else is good. A relief. But then there is the silence, and in the silence, it all happens again. She cannot close her eyes, because it's all happening. Again. She cannot talk to someone, because the screaming will break free. Or the tears. Either may kill her.

She needs. Needs. To be somewhere else, other than here. Other than this thing she's become. Needs to be able to step outside of her skin for a little while. Maybe a long long time.

She's going to go to her bookcase and pick up something. Maybe it's something where the woman kicks someone's ass. Maybe it's one where the good guy wins. Or the DA is brilliant. Or the girl comes of age and has confidence. Whatever it is, she gets to step outside of the bruises and the cuts and the broken bones for a little while. She gets to live a different ending. A different beginning. Have a safe place to be. And somehow, maybe, have a little hope that this thing, too, will pass.

Write a story for her.

~*~

Somewhere, there is a man, sitting in a hospital room. His wife has cancer, and he's been there, every day, before and after work. Except now, he can be there full-time, since he's lost his job. He's spent days seeking help, trying to find a way to keep her there, to make sure she has the care she needs, when all of his benefits are gone. He's filled out more paperwork in this one week than he's done in a lifetime, and only barely understands half of what they've told him, if that.

He'll try to get a second mortgage for the house. Sell off the second car, trade his in for something cheaper. The savings–such as it is, there's not much with two kids–is gone. The retirement will go next, and that might last a month, at this rate. They don't qualify yet for any sort of Medicare or help. His sister is at his house, boxing up stuff to sell. Doing it while the kids are at school, so they don't see.

The screaming is almost entirely in his head, now. The anger, the rage, the helplessness. His wife's asleep, and sleep is so rare with the pain she's in, he can't risk turning on the TV. She's been in too much pain for him to leave the room, though.

He's lost. He sees it in the eyes of the nurses, sees it in the eyes of the administrator. The woman running the accounts payable office. He's become this other thing, this person he doesn't know, and right now, for a little while, he needs. Needs. To be somewhere else but here. Someone else but him.

He'll slump down in the God-awful chair they have in the room, punching a pillow that one of the orderlies found for him, and he'll crack open that favorite paperback he grabbed on his way out the house this morning. For a little while, he gets to be a hero. He gets to fight crime or solve problems, save the world or save the girl. For a little while, he gets to have hope.

Write a story for him.

~*~

A lot of people in the industry are scared right now–things look bleak. If you're pushing through NaNoWriMo or that draft on deadline or beginning a new project, you may be at that part of the process where you're feeling exhausted–or scared to begin. Writer fatigue and fear are hard to combat in the face of a lot of bad news, and especially hard to slug it out when it looks like the possibility of selling is dwindling to nothing.

And this, ironically, is when we need story the most.

Story-telling has been around for millennia for a reason–we need to connect. We need to both transport somewhere other than our own daily circumstances and to connect to others, to know that someone out there understands us. Understands our fears, our desires. We need to escape, without physically abandoning our family and friends. Stories do that. We need the hope, the connection, the dream.

Write a story for us.

~*~

Tell me about a book that you read during a bad time, something that–for whatever reason, be it light or serious–just got you through the day.

The anti-food post

by Alexandra Sokoloff

The eating season is upon us.
Deck the halls with lots of calories. My favorite blogs, usually so rich
with information about writing or politics or sex, have suddenly started
posting recipes. Fa la lala – feh.

I
hate that part of this season.

Food
makes me uncomfortable. Oh,
I’ve dined in some of the world’s best restaurants, I can appreciate a
five-star meal, I know the difference between great food and merely tolerable. A well-crafted piece of sushi can
give me just as many orgasms as the next person.

But
honestly, when it comes to eating, I’d really just rather – not.

Now,
this is a combination of things.
You grow up in California and chances are, if you’re a girl, a typical meal is
a steamed artichoke, a cube of tofu, and a six-hour workout afterward.   You grow up in California as a
dancer, and you can lose the tofu in the above equation.   There’s a highly-sought after
acting coach in L.A. who starts all his classes with the admonition: “Wanna be a professional actor? Then you can’t eat.”

I’m
a perfectly healthy eater now, and I guarantee I know more about food combining, amino acids, and
getting the optimal protein out of a meal than anyone here. I’m also just healthy in general,
thank God. But when I was
younger I spiraled through every eating disorder on the books.

And
I wasn’t alone. When I was at
Berkeley, you couldn’t go into a women’s restroom without smelling vomit.

Oh,
TMI for some of you?   But I
thought we were writers, here.
There’s no such thing as TMI for a writer, right? TMI is pretty much our job
description. And eating disorders
are a serious problem for far too many girls in our culture, and increasingly,
boys as well.   If you’ve
written, say, a couple dozen characters in your writing career so far, and you
haven’t written a character who has a problem with food, or weight, you’re
probably not being very realistic.
Think about it.

I
never write a female character without considering what her relationship is
with food and weight and body image. It may never come to the fore in a
particular story, but it’s as much a part of building a character for me as
family dynamics, birth order, all those things we routinely factor into
characterization.

I
mean, please, have you ever met a woman for whom food and weight WASN’T an
issue? Think about THAT.

So
I’m here to tell you what I know.

When
I was at Berkeley girls in the dance department taught each other how to puke;
it was part of the curriculum. If
you were overweight, you were warned, and if you didn’t lose the weight, you
were bounced from the program.
Period.   That’s the
job.   And I doubt all that
vomit was coming just from the dance department.   There were a few sororities at Berkeley, too,
marginalized and mocked though they were.   And a lot of women, in general.

But
throwing up is just hard, and after a bout with it I just learned not to eat
much. Dieting starts as a
chore, it grows into an obsession, and then it just starts to feel like life. It feels GOOD.

That's something I don't often hear discussed. We hear about anorexia being a control issue, and a self-esteem issue, but I think it's more of an addiction issue.

I’ve
never been so anorexic that I’ve threatened my health or lifestyle. But I've been a dancer for a long
time and also have taught dance, and in case you haven’t picked up the National
Enquirer lately, for dancers, and actresses, and maybe every celebrity, anorexia is a pervasive problem. I've had
to pull students aside and have THE TALK with them, and I've been pulled aside
by my teachers, myself, because of my occasional flirtations with
"Ana". The thing people don't talk about is that anorexia FEELS good. You're constantly high as a kite
from endorphins produced by starving yourself and you don't want that feeling
to go away. You feel light and happy and in control. Then it starts to mess
with your mind and you get convinced you're LOOKING as good as you feel, even though your
bones are starting to show.

In
fact, I think it's useless to try to treat the issue without acknowledging the
pleasure aspect of it. (And
there’s a whole book about the addictive spiritual aspect of anorexia – Holy
Anorexia. It’s a rush of endorphins probably
not unlike heroin.)

There’s
a great article on the issue here, Addiction and the Eating Disorders, that also says that
food restriction reduces anxiety – and I myself can attest to that.

But
anorexia affects more than just dancers and actresses. Girls binge and purge, they
starve themselves, they work out compulsively, or they overeat themselves into
obesity and social oblivion.

The
alarming rise in the use of steroids by teenage and younger boys has been
linked to a male version of body dysmorphia too.

Eating
disorders are often linked to sexual abuse traumas. It’s not necessarily a cause, but often so related that if
you’re building a character, that’s something to look at.

Maybe
I’m just being perverse, the devil’s advocate, with this compulsion to shine a
light on the darker side of what for so many people is a holiday pleasure, the
ritual gorging…

But
what pleasure really is there in being so obese you have to book two airline
seats if you want to travel?

What
pleasure is there in eating if you’re compelled to throw it all up afterward,
or starve yourself for weeks, or work out to the point of injury?

Myself,
I’d rather be able to button my pants the day after Thanksgiving, and I don’t
think that’s because of any mental condition. It just FEELS better.

There's a little more to all this eating than comfort and joy, is what I'm saying.

And
lest you think I’m overlooking the obvious irony – I’m very well aware that
this is what people call a problem of success. Our culture is so abundant that instead of being worried
about starvation and malnutrition, we are burdened with the increasing health
problems caused by obesity and eating disorders.

So
what about you all – honestly? Do
you ever think about your characters’ relationships to food and weight and
appearance when you’re writing?
Do you yourself take unmitigated pleasure in your food, or do you have
“issues”? Have you never given a
second’s thought to weight or appearance?

Or
is there maybe a flip side to the holiday eating orgy for you as well?

A Colorado Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

by JT Ellison

I have always been a fan of books and legends surrounding King Arthur.

He doesn’t exist, not really. He’s a legend, probably based in truth, but with nor primary source material to prove that anything we know about him is true.

Favorite King Arthur books
How can we as a culture embrace a legend so fully that it become part of the vernacular?
Vampires and werewolves count?

Welcome “Cancer Is A Bitch” Author Gail Konop Baker

"I want to be brave. I want to be big. I want to be gracious and cool.
I want to be the Audrey Hepburn of cancer."

I am the
Accidental Memoirist. I never planned to write a breast cancer memoir, never
planned to get the cancer that would prompt that.

But in January
2006 after soon after completing my second novel about a woman who finds a lump
in her breast and thinks she might have breast cancer and wonders if she’s
lived a meaningful life and sent it off to my then-agent, I went in for my
annual mammogram and was told it was “suspicious.” A week later I was having
surgery and while I was waiting for my own results, I received an e-mail from
my agent (who didn’t know about my health scare) that said something like, I
don’t really like the breast cancer novel. I’m not sure I care whether that
woman has breast cancer or not.

Ouch!

But the writing
disappointment was a minor blip compared to how the diagnosis flipped my world and my sense of
self upside down. I was about the healthiest person I knew. I never got sick. No
aches or pains. I ran. I practiced yoga. I ate mostly vegetarian, whole grain
and organic. I was the person others consulted for health and anti-aging tips.

I felt like a
fake, a fraud. Even after I was told it was non-invasive and they got it all
out, I knew because I was relatively young, I was at high risk for recurrence
and I felt panicked and paralyzed. I couldn’t write, couldn’t think, couldn’t
do anything other than Google health sites and obsess about recurrence rates
and make homemade batches of organic facial creams. I even thought about
starting an organic facial cream company for vain hypochondriacs like me. I
asked my husband to bring home an electro magnetic field measurer (I’m still
waiting for that… do those even exist?). I suggested we move to Utah and live
off the land (even though I don’t know the first thing about gardening or
farming).

Finally after
weeks and weeks of this, my husband pressed a journal into my hands and said,
“You have to write this down.” I shook my head. I was not a journal keeper,
never had been and I did not want to write any of this down. But one day I
picked up the journal and a pen and without even thinking, I started scribbling
my deepest rawest craziest most intimate thoughts into this journal.

The first lines
were: “I’m sitting topless in the oncologist’s office on Valentine’s Day.
Cancer is a Bitch.” Once I started writing the words just flooded out. I shook
and wept and fell asleep and woke up and wrote some more. The ironic thing is,
as I poured these crazy thoughts out, I thought I would never EVER show those
words to anyone. I thought this was a way I didn’t have to burden my friends
and family with my crazy thoughts. (And now you can go buy them on Amazon right
now!) Eventually I wrote those thoughts into an essay I called CANCER IS A
BITCH and sent it to some trusted writer friends who said it was powerful and I
should do something with it. But what was it? What would I do with it?

Soon after that I
read that Literary Mama was looking for columnists and on a whim I pitched it
and they said yes and I started writing the column Bare-breasted Mama. To be
honest, it was painful to write and I felt naked, like I was exposing myself
both physically and emotionally, the responses from readers were so soulful and
many hadn’t even had cancer but they either knew someone who had or just
responded to the midlife issues about motherhood and marriage and career that I
wrote about. They thanked me for making them laugh (because believe it or not
the book is funny!) and cry. Their words gave me the courage to keep writing
and opening up and eventually leave my then agent and pitch the idea of a
breast cancer memoir to a new agent.

Next thing I knew
I had a new agent, a new book, a new lease on life.

So
not only did I not realize I was a writing a memoir but I also didn’t realize I
was writing my way out of my crazy funk. A while I know that the word cancer
scares people and they wonder why they should read about it. I have learned
from my readers that the funk I describe in my book and ultimately emerged
from… could be a divorce, losing a job, a bad injury, anything that knocks you
down and makes you wonder how and when you will get back up.

And I did….
eventually. Got back up stronger and more determined than ever. As a result,
since my diagnosis two years and ten months ago, I have written a book, finally
launched my career and my two daughters to college, run two half marathons,
gone to yoga boot camp and Italy (for the first time!) and trained two yellow
lab puppies. But more significantly, I discovered that the more I opened up,
the more the world opened up to me.

So why not? I say
most days now. Why not live more urgently, more openly, more curiously, more
honestly, more lovingly? Why not be the person I always meant to be?

_________________________________

Gail Konop Baker’s work is published or forthcoming in Literary Mama, Talking River Review, The
Potomac, Mota, The Danforth Review, Madison Magazine, Yankee Pot Roast, Wisconsin Trails, Xanadu,

Womansong, Pudding Magazine, Glass Review, and an anthology funded by the Ohio Arts Council. Her Literary Mama column "Bare-breasted Mama" made its debut in October of 2006.

Gail’s memoir, Cancer is a Bitch: Or, I'd Rather Be Having A Midlife Crisis was published by Da Capo Press in October 2008. She has also written two novels, Waitress Of The Month and Paris Smells Like Rotten Eggs. Her short story, “My Religious Education,”
won third place in the Madison Magazine Short Fiction Contest, chosen
by Jane Hamilton, was also a Glimmer Train Top 25 Fiction Open
Finalist, a finalist in the 2006 New Millennium Fiction competition and
a semi-finalist in the Boston Fiction Festival 2007 contest.

P.S. Please take a look at Sean Chercover's post here and encourage everyone you know to buy books as gifts this holiday season. Let's do our part to help one of our biggest benefactors – the bookstores.

Everything’s a Blur

By Brett Battles

Those of you who had been following along with my Facebook status will already know this, but Monday I went in for laser eye surgery. There are two main types. The one most people are familiar with is Lasek. Not to gross you out or anything, but this procedure involves cutting a flap on your eye, then doing the laser work underneath. The second method is called PRK (Photorefractive keratectomy), in which the flap is not created but the “pithelium removed is discarded and allowed to regenerate” (Wikipedia).

The reason Lasek is most popular is that within 24hours you’re usually ready to go. See, by cutting the flap you’re tricking the eye into thinking nothing is wrong, and nothing major has been done. So as long as you don’t rub your eye that first night while you’re sleeping (they give you goggles to wear to prevent this), then everything should be fine.

With PRK it’s different. Because the assault (because what else can you call it) happens in full “view” of the eye, it suddenly goes into defense mode. That means recovery time is longer. Approximately four days, so they tell me…(my forth day won’t be until Friday.)

That’s right, I got the PRK version. Why? Well, apparently my corneas were just a little thinner than normal. When that happens, the success rate of the regular Lasek procedure decreases…not by a terribly large amount, but by enough that the doctors recommended using PRK. Strongly.

Fine, I thought. At least I work at home so taking the extra time off won’t be the end of the world. I was told I wouldn’t be able to drive for a few days, and that the full effects of my correction wouldn’t settle in for a month (apparently that’s what they tell Lasek folks too, but I hear it never takes that long.)

So Monday morning my girlfriend drives me to the clinic and I go under the laser. Really, it’s a quick procedure. I was in and out of the office in 60 minutes, and really, each eye took under a minute beneath the laser. As soon as they were done, they put protective contacts over my eyes to act like bandages, and told me I should have an increased sensitivity to light for a little while.

So off I went, and BOY was the world bright. I don’t mean just a little bright, I mean surface of the sun bright. (Here it is two days later and I’m typing this in a darkened room wearing my sunglasses. Which actually aren’t needed much as most of the time I’m typing with my eyes closed, and when their open, the screen is blurry.)

An interesting thing I noticed, though, as we drove back to my place. Things that were close to me were now in sharp focus. In other words my reading vision was fantastic. It was just distant things which were still blobs. (I’m told my vision will remain blurry until the end of the week.) Still, having this small victory was enough to excite me!

That first day progressed fine…lounged around, took a long nap, even read some of THE FOURTH WATCHER by Tim Hallinan. Then at around 7:30 that evening, minutes before my girlfriend was to pick me up because we were going to go look at a few potential places she was thinking of buying, the contact in my left eye popped out. Crap.

If I remembered the instructions I’d been given, I was to not worry too much about it and throw it away. So I did, then got in the car to go. The next two hours were two of the most uncomfortable of my life. My left eye felt like it had twenty eyelashes under the lid scratching and cutting my iris. I put as much lubricant as possible in there, but it still went on. I was a bit of an idiot because I’d been given some numbing drops that would have helped a hell of a lot (and did later), but had left them at home. Still I soldiered on, opening my eyes up long enough to get a quick view of the properties, then retreating into a fetal position as we drove to the next place. My poor girlfriend, all she wanted to do was drive me home. She even thought I should probably call the clinic. But NO…me macho man…me say it’s no problem. Me say, since we are in the area already, let’s continue to look. Me a big, stupid idiot.

That night dosed my eye with the numbing drops and took one of the sleeping pills the clinic had provided, knowing I had a follow up visit the next day so could get the situation solved then.

But first, boys and girls, before my appointment at the eye clinic on Tuesday, I had an appointment to get my teeth cleaned at my dentist in the morning. So imagine me sitting back in the dentist chair, my left eye liberally coated with numbing drops and both eyes covered by sunglasses, AND the dental hygienist leaning over me and digging around my gums. My girlfriend says I have a high tolerance for pain, but come on, this was ridiculous!

Any way, 1 p.m. finally rolls around and I’m back in the eye clinic. “So how are you doing?” the clinical tech asks. “Well, my left contact fell out last night.” “Last night? Did you call our office?” Ugh…no, I was too manly, man to call. “Ah, no. I didn’t.” “Come on back, we’ll get you fixed up.”

Ten minutes later, a new contact in place, it was like I was a new man again. Today is even better. Though, as I’ve mentioned the light sensitivity is still there, but if I gradually brighten things, I can usually go outside after a while.

What’s any of this got to do with writing? Like the laser that reshapes an eye that works but could be better, a great editor does the same for a manuscript. Because no matter who we are, there are just some changes we can’t see without help.

HA! See, tied that one in nicely.

So let’s hear your medical stories…but nothing too gross, I prefer the funny ones that have a happier ending. So if you die in your story, please save it for someplace else.

OH…and because I can barely read the screen because of the brightness…there are probably even more typos than my usual post. I ask your forgiveness.

HEY…If you’re interested in taken a look at the cover to my new book (out next July)…click here…

______________________________________________

Today’s song: I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW by Johnny Nash

Sometimers

by Rob Gregory Browne

Okay. If you’re like me and you’ve gotten to a certain age, then you know what’s it’s like to get up from your desk, walk toward the kitchen intending to grab, say, an orange, only to get to the kitchen doorway and realize that you’ve forgotten why the hell you went there.

You know you’re there for a reason, but you can’t for the life of you remember what it was. So, you mumble to yourself, "Friggin’ idiot," and walk back toward your office.

Only halfway there, you suddenly remember what it was you wanted, so you do a quick one-eighty, head back to the kitchen —

— only to forget again.

This happens to me more often than I’d like to admit. And, yes, it’s true, I smoked a lot of pot when I was younger.

I don’t think it’s the pot, however. Just age. And I know people a decade younger than me (who never smoked a joint in their life) who have the same problem.

It’s scary, to say the least. I start thinking Alzheimer’s. A friend of mine calls it Sometimers.

But then Dr. Dean once described Alzheimer’s as not forgetting where you parked your car, but forgetting where you parked your car when you don’t have one.

When I was trying to come up with ideas for a blog post tonight, I decided to go the random route. Come up with two or three topics to discuss briefly. My wife was listening to me spitball these topics and I came up with a couple that I thought might be interesting.

Okay, not necessarily interesting. But I’m on a crazy close deadline for the new book and my mind is in a different place. So the topics were passable. Something to throw out to the group and let you guys have at it.

Anyway, five minutes and half a conversation later, I couldn’t remember one of the topics I’d decided on. Strained the brain trying to remember, but just couldn’t do it.

And guess what? Neither could my wife.

What the hell?

Fortunately, she did remember a few moments later and told me what it was.

I often worry, however, that such things are carrying over into my work. There will be times that I’m driving and I’m mulling over the new book and all of these wonderful ideas are bouncing around inside my head and I’m thinking, damn, I wish I had my digital recorder because I’d really like to get some of this down.

And of course, by the time I get back to my office, I’ve forgotten half of what it was that had gotten me so excited.

But then maybe that’s as it should be. A lot of stuff I think about as I’m driving is really useless garbage that just needs to be tossed out of the brain. A cleansing, of sorts. And whatever remains behind is the stuff I’ll actually use.

Paul Schrader, the writer of Taxi Driver, once said that he never writes an idea down when it first comes to him, because he figures that if it doesn’t stick, it isn’t worth remembering.

I can pretty much guarantee that I’ve forgotten more ideas than I’ve remembered. Some of them I even wrote down, only to discover them, years later, on some wrinkled piece of paper. And guess what? They truly, truly sucked.

What’s disconcerting, however, is when I find the beginning of a story I wrote a few years back and I cannot for the life of me remember writing it. It seems to have been written by someone else entirely, and while I recognize the handwriting or the typical way I arrange my sentences and paragraphs, I do not recognize it as my work.

As William Allman said, "The brain is a monstrous, beautiful mess."

And I certainly agree with… uh…

What was I about to say?

I suddenly have the sinking feeling that I’ve written about this very same subject in an earlier Murderati post.

Oh, well.

—

Now on to those two not so spectacular topics:

1. In response to Allison’s recent post, I never look at the numbers. I don’t think about bestseller lists. I don’t WANT to know the numbers. In fact, the only numbers I DO want to know are the numbers on the checks my publishers send me. And as long as they keep sending them, I’ll be a happy man.

The reason I don’t want to know the numbers? Because they’ll color my work. If the numbers are bad, I’ll freak out and try to tailor my work for "the marketplace." I’ll start writing vampire stories because vampire stories are hot and surely that’s gotta bring those numbers up.

If the numbers are really good, I’ll get a false sense of confidence and either lose all perspective about the work, or I’ll keep writing the same crap over and over again because I know it’s what works. That might make my publisher happy, but it certainly won’t make me happy.

Instead, I ignore the numbers and write what I want to read — and hope that others will want to read it as well. This, obviously, is my own little quirk and does not apply to others.

2. Speaking of writing. What the hell am I doing wrong?

I’m in the middle of reading the latest book by one of my favorite authors and I have to say that I’m truly enjoying it. But I’m three-quarters of the way through and, frankly, NOTHING HAS REALLY HAPPENED.

I’m on page three-hundred-whatever, and the hero has engaged and amused me — and the writing is superb — but I can’t help thinking that by the time I’ve reached this point in one of my own books, A WHOLE HELLUVA LOT OF STUFF HAS HAPPENED.

Is that a problem? Should I start cutting back on the plot twists? Should I slow the pace down?

After all, this guy seems to know what he’s doing. And AGAIN, I’m really enjoying this book. So what gives?

—

Okay, that’s all I’ve got. I’m done with you. Spent.

Now it’s back to the new manuscript to once again try to remember how I was planning to end that new chapter.