The evolution of personal myths and our writing

by Pari

In a way, every human being is in the fiction business. We all nurture myths about our lives — the victories and defeats, the entitlements and generosities.

Writers mine these myths in their work, often unaware that they’re doing this mental archeology. But, I believe all of us create characters that, in some way, mirror the attributes we admire or abhor in ourselves. At least, that’s where we start.

If we do it well, no one can tell what we’re up to. If we fail, people think our fiction is autobiographical. (This is a common pitfall for newer writers.)

Over time, myths become ossified. Our personal legends sit so still that we don’t even realize they’re there. They’re cemented into our psyches.

IF they budge, it’s usually at a glacial pace . . .

So, imagine my surprise when I realized my self image as a "frumpy soccer mom" had been sidekicked into oblivion.

I never thought that Tae Kwon Do would affect my art.

When I first started, about four years ago, I did it because it looked like fun. For a long time, it wasn’t. At least once a week, I thought more about quitting than sticking with it.

It was too hard.
I didn’t want to punch a bag. I didn’t want to punch a person OR BE punched.
I didn’t want to try to throw a person down. I sure as hell didn’t WANT to be thrown down.

But, I stayed.

Somewhere along the line, I became fierce and focused. I have no idea when it happened.

The other night, when we were in class, Master Kim had us compete against each other. The class had about 30 people that evening ranging in ages from 15 – 59.

For the uninitiated, "forms" are a series of specific moves that reflect attacks and defenses. Sometimes they make sense. Often they don’t. But you learn all of them in a particular order and each one brings its own challenges and insights. Right now, I’m working on the one I’ll need to earn my black belt.

Master Kim (he’s the Korean guy in the background of pictures 2 & 3) lined up three chairs and had the other black belts teaching the class sit as judges. The only thing they were looking for in our execution of these forms was sheer power.

I won every time.

Given that my kicks aren’t high or pretty, given that there are men in the class who are much stronger than I am, given a thousand other factors . . . this was astonishing and truly humbling.

My TKD master often jokes that I should have one of my protags study this martial art. I tell him that neither one has the discipline or personality for it.

But, as my writing continues, I’ve noticed that these ladies I’ve created have more and more backbone. They’re less willing to be frightened or intimidated.

Somewhere, deep inside, they know they could ram an attacker’s nose cartilage into his brain . . . if they had to.

That didn’t come from writing the character. That came from my own study and ownership of Tae Kwon Do. My personal mythology has evolved and it’s affecting my writing in a very real way.

My questions today are:
1. Have you noticed these kinds of transformations in yourself?
2. If you write, have you seen them transfer to your characters?
3. Is there anything lately that has caused a shift in your personal myths?

I can’t wait to read what you’ve got to say.

An Interview with Allison Brennan

One of the best things about being a member of Murderati is getting to get to ask other writers questions about how they work, generate characters, etc. This week, I had so many questions I’d been wanting to ask Allison Brennan, one of my favorite authors, and I thought you’d all enjoy her answers as much as I do, so I’ve asked her permission to post this Q & A here. Please come ’round and give a hearty welcome to Allison and tell us whether you start with character, ideas or some combination, and as an added bonus, everyone posting in the comments will be up for a drawing for her last trilogy and her new paranormal out Dec. 26th. That’s four terrific books! Comments open until next Saturday at midnight and I’ll announce the winner next Sunday!

And on to the interview:

1) I’ve got to tell you, that from the first sentence of your story "Deliver Us From Evil" in the What You Can’t See anthology (out Dec. 26th), I was utterly riveted and it made me want to pick up the book right then. Tell me a little bit about what inspired the story.

Back in August of 2003—before I sold, before I even had an agent—I had an idea for a supernatural thriller series. I started writing it, but it was shortly after this that I found an agent and sold THE PREY to Ballantine. So the supernatural was put on hold for awhile. I sold in romantic suspense, a different genre, and I was very happy to do so. I love romantic suspense. It’s the best of both worlds, as far as I’m concerned.

But I still thought about this series and told my agent about it. She loved it—but because of my contract, I couldn’t sell it yet. Then an opportunity arose to be in an anthology with two people I adore, Roxanne St. Claire and Karin Tabke. My agent said, “What about the paranormal?” And I said, “Well, it’s a series but . . . let me think.” Five minutes later I came up with the idea of a prequel to the series. I know how the first book of the series starts, but I had been stumped on the hero’s back story which made getting past page 100 really difficult. The novella is the prequel to my series. It stands alone. The hero of the series is in a coma the entire novella, but at least now I have his back story and I’m happy with it.

2) "Deliver Us From Evil" is a departure for you in that you’re dealing with an aspect of the paranormal, and with pure evil. Were there any differences to writing a supernatural thriller vs. a suspense-thriller? If so, how did you handle those differences?

I found writing supernatural to be very freeing. I love everything supernatural. Growing up, I read Stephen King, John Saul, Peter Straub, Edgar Allen Poe, and many more. Remember the television series “Friday the 13^th: The Series?” I loved it. But for me, I wanted my paranormal to be grounded in reality. Meaning, I wanted to write about supernatural things that I thought really could happen. There are so many unexplained things in our world, exploring the good and evil in them is enticing.

In paranormal, you get to make up the rules. Rather than writing about a human being who is evil, I could explore the roots of evil itself, as well as the human fascination with things like the fountain of youth, power, immortality. Because ultimately, no demon would have any power if we humans weren’t flawed and desiring more: more life, more wealth, more stuff. It helps that I believe in ghosts and demons and things that go bump in the night. So I thought, what would scare me the most? And I started writing about it.

My mom just read the ARC of WHAT YOU CAN’T SEE. She doesn’t read much paranormal anything, but loves crime fiction. She called me excited. “I loved it. It was still a crime story, but with a demon.” Exactly. It was what I wanted to accomplish. A supernatural story set in our world. BTW, my mom didn’t tell me she loved it just because she’s my mom. Believe me, I know exactly which books of mine my mom didn’t like as much, and if you ask her she’ll tell you exactly why she didn’t like them, as well as which of mine are her favorite.

3) I know some writers love the short-story or novella length, while others grip onto the novel length with every survival instinct they have. You’ve done all three: novel, short story (a fantastic tale in the Killer Year anthology), as well as the novella length. Were there challenges to writing something shorter than what you’re used to? And if so, how did you handle those challenges?

Hell yes. It took me longer to write a 39,000 word novella than it took me to write my last 100,000 word novel. Every word matters more when you write short. In the KILLER YEAR antho, they wanted 3-5K stories. I wrote a 7,500 word story and it took me a week to cut it to 5,900 and then I emailed JT and begged for those 900 extra words. She said fine, because Gregg came in short (Thank you Gregg! Oh, and his story is incredible. Makes me feel completely inadequate that I needed three times as many words as he did, and he packed a bigger punch.)

I didn’t handle the challenges all that well, but in the end, I loved the shorter stories so much. I think writing short taught me a lot about brevity. (Aside: When I was a junior in high school, my American History teacher gave me an ‘A-minus’ on my final essay. He wrote, “You brilliantly wrote in ten pages what could easily have been said in five.”) Needless to say, short is not my strong suit. And even though I kept the novella to under 40,000 words, I still went waaaaaaay over the 30,000 words my contract specified.

The KILLER YEAR antho was my first short story ever. I’m writing another now and already, I can see I’ve improved in how I approach writing short—more action, less back story, fewer characters, and no subplots.

4) You always have fascinating characters, and I know you write three books a year, plus the other works (short stories, etc.) Finding a character and getting the details are generally different for every writer, so I’m curious: how do you brainstorm characters? Do you write out descriptions, do a dialog with the character, chart them, or something else? What inspires you, character-wise?

(blushing deeply) Thanks Toni. I think your phrase “finding a character” is how I do it. I find out all about them as I write the book. I generally know a little bit about my characters, but not much. I don’t really know enough until I get them on the page. I don’t write out descriptions (which really screws me during the copyedits sometimes), I don’t dialog with them, chart them, or anything that would considered “plotting” (shivers.)

What I do is start with the idea. Like, “Earthquake under San Quentin.” I knew from SPEAK NO EVIL that Theodore Glenn had been convicted of killing four strippers in San Diego, but it was a throwaway line to get Will Hooper out of town because I didn’t need him in the story at that point. But when I started my prison break series, Theodore became my villain. I wrote the scene of the earthquake and put Glenn there. What was he doing? He had something in his hand. It was a letter. To Robin. Who the hell is Robin? Right—she testified against him. Then he shreds it in anger. Wow, he has some emotion there—the only emotion he has. So you can see I learn about my characters as I write. They sort of tell me. Usually when I get stuck writing it’s because I start telling my characters what to do rather than letting them do what they need to do.

I did know that Glenn came from a good family, wasn’t abused as a child, and he isn’t a traditional serial killer. Usually when I get in their heads I figure them out. Sometimes they come fully formed, like Joanna Sutton my heroine in TEMPTING EVIL. Sometimes it takes me a little digging, like Kate Donovan in FEAR NO EVIL. She was such a tight-lipped bitch, er, heroine, it took me awhile to figure out what made her tick. Anthony Zaccardi in the novella came fully formed, it was the heroine Sheriff Skye McPherson that I had a bear of a time with. Again, because she’s a closed, private person and just didn’t want to open up.

5) I’m blown away by your descriptive prowess–I can see the places and feel as if I’ve been there after reading your books. I know you haven’t traveled to every place you’ve described, nor seen all of the crimes. How do you research the locations and details? Do you spend a lot of time researching ahead of time, or on the fly? Do you map your world out and use only real-world details, or do you fictionalize parts? And how do you ultimately decide where your next series will be set?

(Blushing again—the check’s in the mail, Toni.) I’ve always felt my descriptions were lacking. I get bored easily, so I don’t like to over-describe anything. In fact, I usually layer in description after I write the book. Like—during editor revisions. I research most everything on the fly. Major story plot points I usually know ahead of time. For example, before I started writing KILLING FEAR, I talked to a former corrections officer who worked on death row to find out where my prisoners needed to be to escape, what wall needed to come down in the quake, etc. I couldn’t start without having that information. But like now—I’m 60 pages into book three and I found a body submerged in a river. Okay, I knew the guy was dead, but I had no idea anyone was going to find him. So I stopped writing and did some research on underwater forensics just to make sure that my cops weren’t being stupid in how they retrieved the body and vehicle. In FEAR NO EVIL, my last book, I had to understand how webcams worked and how they could be masked. Well, no one (okay, I don’t) want to be bored with pages of explanation about how packets are sent and bounced around satellites and given false DNS numbers or whatever (that was a year ago, I pretty much forget everything I learned.) So I talked to an IT friend of mine who explained ad nauseum everything I needed to know. I wrote two pages where my heroine explained this to the hero. Boring. I cut and cut and trimmed and got it down to the basics—two short paragraphs and then a couple well-placed sentences further along. I wasn’t bored, my hero wasn’t bored, and hopefully my readers weren’t bored! I sent the paragraphs to my IT guy and he said, “Yeah, that’s exactly it.”

As far as setting—after getting knocked when I got something wrong about Seattle, I’m tickled to be writing a book set in Sacramento, where I’ve lived since 1989. When I write about places I haven’t been or haven’t been for a long time, I try to contact locals for big picture questions. The rest I get from maps and photos. It’s the map I was using of Seattle that screwed me up, though.

In TEMPTING EVIL, I actually planned on going up to the Centennial Valley to visit for a long weekend, but with five kids it’s really hard to just drop everything and go on a trip. So I ended up talking to two people who live there. One in particular was a huge help to me getting a sense of the area and what to expect. For THE HUNT, which was set in Bozeman, I relied a lot on my husband who went to MSU, and my brother-in-law who is a wildlife biologist.

6) After the two anthologies you have another series coming out, starting January 29th which follow three stories after a disaster frees prisoners from San Quentin. Tell me a little bit about this trilogy, what inspired it.

Well, I needed to come up with an option book idea. I panicked—I had no ideas. Okay, that’s not true, I had a lot of ideas, but none of them were romantic thrillers like I’d been writing. In fact, one of my ideas is a western-set historical crime novel centered around pre-1900 San Francisco. Then I read a newspaper article about the latest seismic report for San Quentin at the same time as the Gov started transporting prisoners out of state because of prison over-crowding AND an article about some legislators talking about selling San Quentin because it’s on 437 acres of prime California real estate. Earthquake. San Quentin. Story.

Well, it’s funny how our muses work at planting clues to future books. I had never planned on writing about any of the characters from my NO EVIL series again. As far as I was concerned, they were over and done with. But I got a lot of mail about characters from those books and if they were going to get books of their own. Then I remembered that in the middle of SPEAK NO EVIL, Will Hooper—my heroine’s partner—had to go to an appeal court hearing to testify against Theodore Glenn, who he had put in prison for murdering four strippers. I read that scene again and Glenn was incarcerated in San Quentin. Wham! He became one of the escapees. It just sort of came together and that’s KILLING FEAR.

As far as books two and three go, the second book I had a one-liner: two escaped convicts trapped with romance writer in the middle of a snow storm. In book three (PLAYING DEAD), the last escaped convict is innocent and he has to convince his daughter, who testified against him for murdering her mother, that he’s innocent and to help him find out what happened fifteen years ago. That’s the book I’m writing now, and to be honest—though I have some ideas about the story—I have no idea who did it. That’s half the fun of writing.

7) Do you start your story with the characters, the ‘what if?’ or some combination? And how do you know when you’ve hit on "it" — the idea that will sustain a trilogy?

I start the story with a situational premise and characters. Sort of. Kind of. It really depends. Since I always believed that “story is character,” they develop simultaneously. I don’t always know when an idea will sustain a trilogy—I had three different ideas and my agent picked the earthquake story. And she was right—the other two weren’t bad, they just didn’t have the punch of the prison break trilogy.

8) You’ve got a terrific panel you teach on being a "panster" instead of a "plotter." While I know you can’t go into a panel’s worth of detail here, tell us about what it is about ‘pantsing’ that you like so much, what it brings to your writing, and how you handle foreshadowing and pay-offs if you haven’t plotted out where you’re going. (Because clearly, you handle these well.)

Stephen King said in his book ON WRITING (which I love, and it’s even better on audio) why should we be control freaks? All stories have to come out somewhere. I’ve found that I don’t like to plot because if I know what’s going to happen, I get bored with the story.

I like the discovery of character and story as I go along. I have the premise—I know the external conflict (i.e. escaped prisoner seeking vengeance on those who put him behind bars), but until I get in his head I don’t know why. What makes him different than all the other vengeful serial killers out there? What makes him tick? Why should I tell this story? Why doesn’t he just go down to Mexico and disappear? The guy has money, why is he risking his life and freedom for revenge? It’s these kind of questions I answer as I get into his head. But I don’t know them when I start writing. It’s like a puzzle without having a box. All the pieces are in my head somewhere and as I write, I start putting them together and seeing the big picture. I’m also not scared of writing crap. I dump the story out there the way it unfolds, then I can go back and layer in foreshadowing and all that other stuff. Usually, it’s already there and I just have to clean it up—I just didn’t know it when I was writing. The muse is scary sometimes.

9) I have yet to fathom how you write three books, plus short stories, plus a novella, plus regular blog entries at Murder She Writes and Dishing with the Divas, plus your own website and still have time to raise five kids. I am pretty certain there are four or five of you running around out there somewhere. So how do you do it? What sort of writing habits do you have?

First, I gave up cleaning. It was a huge sacrifice, but it had to be done. My minions, er, children pitch in and help (I pay my minions well, so no calling child protective services on me!) I used to love cooking, but I have six picky eaters (five kids and a husband) so now quick and easy is always on the menu. I cook extensively and bake only three days a year—Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Easter. The other 362 days it’s 20 minutes or less . . .

It helps that all my kids are in school—the youngest is in preschool. So I write five days a week from 9-3. I have to stay disciplined, which is hard because I’m the world’s biggest procrastinator. This means that inevitably, about two weeks before deadline, I’m writing several nights a week (Starbucks is open until ten in my town—11 on the weekends–and there’s a bar open until after midnight . . . ) and I’ll write Sunday afternoons. Afternoons during the week and Saturdays are usually full of kid stuff and lots of driving.

10) What’s the best writing advice you’d like to pass along? And what’s the best "life advice" you’ve ever received?

The best writing advice I ever got was from Stephen King’s ON WRITING. I’ve read it twice and listened to it twice. I highly recommend it, even though I still have a love affair with adverbs. They are a perfectly acceptable part of the English language, I don’t think they should be banned. King reminds us that it’s all about the story. The story comes first. Everything else is secondary. When I get stuck or worried that I’m not any good or it’s all been a fluke, I remember that it’s about the story—my story—and I have to write it my way.

As far as life goes, don’t sweat the small stuff.

Agentspeak

by Alex

As Dusty and I are apt to joke, we (and JT and RGB) share the most awesome and the most laconic agent in New York. Scott can say “I’m excited” (and mean it) in the deadliest deadpan you’re ever likely to encounter. I often wonder if he makes such great deals for his clients because editors assume from his tone that he’s so underwhelmed by their initial offers that they panic and double the price before they lose out on the deal completely.

This can be a disconcerting thing about Scott, until you get to know him. Because as we all know – writers need feedback, they need enthusiasm, they need approval, they need validation, they need, well, love.

And the truth is that we spend so little time with our agents, even on the phone, much less in person, that we tend to obsess over and parse every word they utter. And if that’s true of published authors, it seems even more true of authors seeking representation. Every rejection letter is mined for that hint of gold that means you really are the next Stephen King, or that spot-on criticism that will take the book to the next level.

Because I’m so used to working with my film agent, who is a prince among men and a gentleman among agents, I think I’m somewhat less likely than most new authors to assign baroque interpretations to what Scott has to say. It’s pretty much face value. When he says he likes something, he likes it. When he says he’s excited, he’s excited, even if his voice never rises above a monotone.

Sometimes in workshops people ask me about my first phone call with Scott, what was the most thrilling thing he said to me about THE HARROWING. And everyone is always shocked when I say the most thrilling thing he said was, “Yeah, I think I can sell this.”

But you see, I know agentspeak. It’s a very refined code, and you need to be able to interpret the nuances. And in agentspeak, “I think I can sell this” means – “I think I can sell this.”

And that’s what you want your agent to do, right? That’s their job, and you want them to feel they can get their job done with your book.

In general I find communication in the book world pretty low stress, mainly because agentspeak in publishing (and pub-speak in general) is so much less florid than Hollywoodspeak. Screenwriters are regularly assaulted with phrases that seem to be passed around in a secret manual for producers, executives and agents. Every so often there’s a new phrase that gets added to the manual and you will hear it in every meeting and on every phone call you have for months. “I have to run this up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.” “What’s our way in?” “We need that character to have a sexier profession” (“sexy” having nothing whatsoever to do with sex). “It’s time to start thinking outside the box.” “Let’s make Chicago (Austin, Cleveland, St. Petersburg) a real character in this script.” “We’re looking for a Hallmark ending for the fly-overs.”

My theory is that editors generally know what they’re talking about, therefore they don’t have to use cryptic phrases or words du jour to communicate with their authors.

But lately a word keeps coming up from the agent and editor front that has thrown me.

The word is “fun”. As in “It’s a fun book.” “Wow, we love it, what a fun story.”

Now, I guess that wouldn’t bother me, except that I write pitch-black suspense. So “fun” isn’t a word I immediately associate with my writing, or that I would want associated with my writing. I have found myself obsessing over this word, to the point of slipping back into screenwriter neurosis. Do they mean that they want a more fun story here? Are they gently urging me toward a lighter tone? Did they actually read my first two books as comedic romps?

I know this is mental craziness. “Fun” is in all likelihood the word du jour in publishing circles. But since as authors we don’t have constant contact with a wide variety of agents and editors in the way that screenwriters have a constant contact with numerous producers and executives, we might not be as aware of the industry buzz words.

So I wondered if you guys could give me any buzz words that you’ve been picking up from your peeps. Is there a secret manual of pub-speak?

Or… gulp… do they really mean “fun” when they say “fun”?

This is Your Brain. This is Your Brain on Drugs.

by J.T. Ellison

(Oddly enough, I wrote this a few weeks ago, well before the fervor that was unleashed yesterday.)

I had the most fascinating conversation the other day.

A friend’s husband is a scientist and we were discussing the prevalence of genetic blood enhancement in professional cycling. My eideticly enhanced hubby covered the baseball and football bases. Basically, we concluded that pretty much all professional athletes are juiced up in same way, shape or form. Cynical, yes. Realistically, how could they not be? They are performing super human feats of athletic prowess, with almost zero recovery time. Now, I don’t want this to turn into a discussion about the pros and cons of steroids. I have something else in mind.

What would happen if we, writers, were made aware of a drug that would allow us to enhance our writing? Can you imagine? And if there were a writing enhancing drug — not LSD, mind you, what then?

My first instinct, right or wrong, is we would be stabbing people to move ahead in the line.

To get at the heart of the matter, I guess we do have to tap into the steroid argument a bit. Is there something to be taken away from professional athletes who use performance enhancing drugs? If you’ve ever been around someone who aspires to "professional" status, or even a dedicated amateur, you know that they work beyond normal human endurance at their sport. It’s a gift, I think, that can’t be disguised. The constant desire to be better, to excel, isn’t bred into all of us. Steroids don’t give an athlete the will to train at 4 in the morning before work. They don’t drive the desire to work harder to improve, to fight for every inch in training opportunities and sponsorships, to sacrifice. Because honestly, being a pro at anything is a sacrifice. You have to give up friends, family, free time to pursue your dream. Hmmm… I guess there’s a stronger correlation between writers and athletes than I thought.

Shouldn’t we celebrate these people? Or should we treat the ones who take a shortcut with derision?

I was an athlete in high school, a decent shot and discus thrower, a better golfer. I competed at the state level in discus and shot, and was the only girl on the golf team — at the time, there wasn’t a separate system for women golfers. Fine by me, I could play with the best of them at that point. (I remember the final meeting of the district board: "You’ll have to play from the white tees…" Me: "Oooh, scary." Ah, the joys of youth, when Bring It On takes on a whole new meaning.) So I had a full schedule — fall and winter indoor track, spring outdoor track, and golf spring through fall. School was the obvious priority (cough) but all my free time was dedicated to track and the links. Which I loved. And there’s something to be said for that level of desire.

I had to choose between a track scholarship to two different excellent ACC schools or a golf team in Florida at a lesser known college. Daddy threw in the offer to let me put off school for a year and try for the LPGA Q school, which I stupidly turned down. ("I need to get a good education" — notice I’m not using my degrees…) I made the decision to go to school and pursue golf, which in hindsight wasn’t the smartest, but set me on the course that I’m on now, so I can’t complain too much. I played golf and IM volleyball, and had a decent time. I didn’t enjoy the competition at the higher level like I did in high school, probably because the other team’s players made me immediately and knew exactly how to rattle me. I don’t like being touched in competition. You can imagine.

And now that I’ve gotten completely off the subject… my point is I pursued these activities with a vengeance, trying to make myself the best that I could be. Something like what I do with writing.

Back to the writing enhancing drugs. There’s obviously been several legal and illegal means to expand our cerebral muscles. But I’m talking about a hypothetical enhancement that would make us the bionic writer. Better, stronger, faster.

Competition with writers can be as cutthroat as it gets. I’ve heard some pretty frightening stories about people desperate to climb to the top of the ladder, about egos, bitterness and jealousy wiping out friendships. I’ve also seen some amazing cooperative efforts, seen friendships flourish and grow under tight deadlines and differences of opinion.

Could anything good ever come of literary blood doping? Or would we make some scientists very rich women and men?

Wine of the Week: 2003 Li Veli Passamante Negroamaro, shared with great friends at Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse in New Orleans last week. Yum, but let it breathe a bit.

———

I’ll be appearing on Backstory on the Radio as the guest of River Jordan tomorrow (Saturday) December 15th at 4:15 p.m. Central time. Go to Radio Free Nashville to listen live.

Lying to be honest

I’m a pretty good liar, especially on the spot. Someone can toss out a subject and I can pretty much tell them some convincing facts about history, science or the arts—none of it true. Hmm, I wonder if I’m related to Dan Brown to me.

This is, of course, great when it comes to telling stories. I’m not lying. I’m just flexing my fiction muscles.

Where things go a little awry is when it comes to telling the truth. Lies need polish and racing stripes. The truth doesn’t. It’s naturally shiny. But I struggle when faced with telling the truth. It looks so vulnerable and naked when I tell it and in most cases no one believes me when I do tell the truth. The other week someone told me they didn’t believe my pieces about having to crash land a plane and falling off a mountain were true. They bloody were and I have evidence to back it up.

A few months ago I had a run in with Julie over my truthfulness. I’ve pulled the wool over Julie’s eyes so many times that she doesn’t have a fear of blindfolds. She’s used to my fibbery. This time, I ran into a little problem.

Now that I work from home, I’m a little house husband and I do the laundry and things. Laundry is a task I don’t mind. I find it quite therapeutic when I’m working a story idea out in my head. So, on this particular day, Julie came home to nice, neat piles o’ laundry. Please place Simon in the good books section of Julie’s world. I was typing away and Julie came in. I expected to get my good boy pat on the head. Instead, a pair of scarlet ladies underwear hit me in the back of the head.

“Whose are they?” she demanded.

I peeled the knicker cap off my head, examined them and said, “Yours?”

“No, they’re not mine.”

Well, they weren’t mine. They were these tiny little Victoria’s Secret things. Not my style for sure. To settle things down, I said the one thing I thought would calm her. “I don’t know whose they are, but you have them. Finders keepers and all that.”

“I don’t want somebody else’s underwear.”

I went to say they were clean, but didn’t think this would resolve the issue. So I shrugged.

“I want to know whose these belong to,” she demanded.

This is where I panicked. The truth was, I didn’t know who the knickers belonged to and me proclaiming my innocence didn’t seem to be working. I should have lied at this point and told her I was holding them for a friend or something, but I scrabbled for an explanation and came up with, “Maybe they’re your mum’s. She house-sat for us the other week.”

“My mom doesn’t wear these. Have you had someone here?”

“No,” I said, but it sounded so weak.

“Tell me the truth.”

“I am.”

“Then how did these things get in our laundry?”

“I don’t know. It could be a trick. Maybe someone pulled a prank on me.” I said this as if it was likely that one of my chums would get back at me by dropping the naughty undies in my gym bag. I tend pull pranks on others. Payback is a female dog.

“Then I suggest you find out. That’s your task. Find out who owns these things.”

“I’ll get on it straight away, my petal,” I said, but Julie had left the room.

I’d told her the unadulterated truth (ew, bad choice of word there) and it didn’t sound very convincing. I didn’t know how to be more convincing. If I had been lying, I would have done a great job of having a story lined up with backup lies on hand. I’m a totally interactive liar. So very now. But my truthiness (thanks, Stephen Colbert) sounded so lame it needed shooting.

Like a half-lit firecracker, I gave Julie time to cool off. I snuggled up to her on the sofa and asked, “You do believe me, don’t you?” She told me that she did but in one of those clipped tones that said otherwise. I gave her another ten minutes and asked her again and got the same tight answer. For the next hour, I repeated my question every ten minutes or so.

“If you keep asking, I’m going to start doubting you.”

I stayed quiet after that.

I asked my lady chums if they’d played a cruel joke on me and all replied that they hadn’t. This news didn’t please Julie. She was leaving on a business trip that weekend and she left me with instructions to get to the bottom this issue. My Sherlockian skills narrowed it down to Julie’s mom. Julie didn’t want to ask her mom for obvious reasons. If they weren’t her mom’s, then her mom would think of me as a cheater. A thorny issue. Anyway, Julie left for trip.

About an hour later, I received a call from Julie. “I talked to my mom. They’re hers.”

Not one to gloat, I told Julie she could apologize any time she felt like it. Oddly, she hung up on me.

When she returned from her trip, I chatted to her about our knicker mystery. I reminded her that I’d been right from the beginning. I said I was little worried that she thought I might be a cheater.

Julie said, “I had total faith in you and I only threw the underwear at you for a joke, but when I asked for an answer, you looked completely guilty. You were telling me you didn’t do it, but all I saw was guilt.”

And there lies the problem. My honest face is real shaky. I know why. I didn’t have a good story to back up the truth. My “Dunno” defense felt as weak as it sounded, but the issue at hand wasn’t something I wanted to lie about. In retrospect, I should have embellished in some way. I would have come over more convincing.

I wish I could say my truthfulness hasn’t gotten me into trouble. Oddly, my lying never has. I’m not sure what that says about me, but I’m guessing it’s not good.

You believe me, right?

Yours truly,
Simon Wood
PS: CrimeSpree Magazine interviewed me in their latest issue and you can read it here.

It Ain’t the Meat

by Robert Gregory Browne

To use an old cliche: ideas are a dime a dozen.

Truth is, there aren’t all that many ideas to spare. How many times
have we seen the same story over and over again, dressed up in new
clothing?

A man is accused of murdering his wife, escapes custody and hunts
down the real killer.

A daughter commits suicide but her mother thinks
it was murder.

Two young teenagers go on a killing spree.

A house/car/insane asylum/ship/airplane/cave is haunted by ghosts. A man/woman/boy/girl/dog/cat is possessed by evil spirits.

A husband/wife/daughter/son is kidnapped and the spouse/mother/father risks his or
her life to save them.

A man and a woman meet, hate each other, fall in love, break apart
after a huge misunderstanding and finally get back together again.

That last is the plot of many romance books and countless romantic comedy movies.

And you know what? It doesn’t matter that these ideas are constantly recycled. Because, as numerous writers have pointed out in my lifetime, it’s not the idea that counts, but the execution.

Or as The Swallows once sang:

It ain’t the meat it’s the motion
That makes your daddy wanna rock
It ain’t the meat it’s the motion
It’s the movement, it isn’t the stock

For example, let’s take a look at movies. I choose movies over books
for the simple reason that a) I love them as much as books (but in a
different way); and b) it’s much easier to find people who have all
seen the same movie.

If we go back to the romantic comedy example — the meet, fall in
love, break up, get back together plot line — we could, as I said,
point to just about every romantic comedy ever made.

But which ones do we remember?

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY comes to mind. Not because it’s my daughter’s
favorite movie of all time (she can quote entire passages of dialog),
but because it was a huge, huge hit for everyone involved and most of
us have seen it.

But it also comes to mind for another, all important reason: it is a beautifully written, beautifully executed movie.

Harry and Sally meet while they’re on the road to New York. Harry’s
very opinionated about women and relationships, Sally’s a picky,
high-maintenance girl who thinks he’s a jerk and they part ways not
liking each other much.

A few years and a couple of relationships later, they meet again in
an airport, wind up sitting together on a plane and Harry once again
demonstrates what an opinionated jerk he is — only he’s a little more
endearing than he was before.

They part ways, only to meet again a couple years later in a
bookstore. Next thing you know they’re hanging out together, become
great friends and — unknown to both of them, of course, but obvious as
all hell to the audience — they begin falling in love.

In the middle of a personal crisis, they finally succumb to their
attraction and sleep together. Only Harry, being afraid of commitment,
freaks out a little and Sally, sensing his hesitation gets pissed and
they stop seeing each other.

The story continues along the usual romantic comedy path, and the
two eventually wind up together after Harry races to a New Year’s Eve
party to find Sally. And here is an example of where the execution is
so important:

Sally at first rejects him. She’s not his consolation prize. But as
people are counting down to the new year around them, Harry,
desperately in love and wanting to win her over, goes into a speech
naming every quirk that Sally has and how much he loves those quirks
and wants to be with her for the rest of his life.

Sally, pissed off, tears in her eyes, just looks at him and says,
“Now, you see? It’s just like you, Harry, to make it impossible for me
to hate you. And I hate you, Harry. I really hate you.”

And then they kiss.

That, my friends, is genius execution. And with a movie filled with this kind of execution it’s no wonder that people love it.

It ain’t the meat, it’s the motion that makes your daddy wanna rock.

So what are your favorite examples of same old plot but GREAT execution?

The Detective Within

By Louise Ure

I don’t call them amateur sleuth novels. That seems to diminish them somehow. As if a story about a person caught up in a web of evil has to be feather light unless that person is a policeman or a private eye.

I like to think of them as ordinary hero novels.

When I launched People Magazine in Australia (called Who Weekly down there, as there was already a magazine called People that prominently featured stories about three-breasted women and unexplained lights in the sky), we focused on two kinds of stories.

Extraordinary (read celebrity) people doing ordinary things

Ordinary people doing extraordinary things

That pretty much sums up crime fiction, too. The extraordinary people, in our case, are the detectives and forensic scientists. The lawyers and the cops. And if the series are well done, we get to know the ordinary side of these heroes. What they drink. What music they listen to. Who they care about. What they lost that they most grieve for. In other words, the things that make them human … the things that make them real.

The amateur sleuth is Everyman and in our books he’s taxed beyond his experience and endurance and asked to accomplish extraordinary things. The housewife who solves her brother-in-law’s murder. The journalist who stumbles into violence and saves himself and the kidnapping victim. The innocent bystander who is pulled into the middle of a nightmare.

I enjoy reading both kinds of crime novels, but I can especially understand the appeal of the amateur sleuth.

You see, I think there’s a little detective in all of us.

Have you ever checked the birth and death records at an old church to track down an ancestor? Followed a car away from the scene of an accident and jotted down the license number for the cops? Memorized the face of the guy in front of you at Home Depot who bought the shovel, the rope, and the bag of quick mix concrete?

Have you ever wondered how you’d fare if put in the same “out of the blue” situation many of our fictional ordinary heroes find themselves in?

I found myself playing detective just last week. My husband had asked me to contact the guy who’d given us his golden retriever, Angus, five years ago when he had to move to Hawaii. We wanted to tell him that we’d given his dog a good life, but that he’d finally died at the age of fourteen.

This former owner had a common name, Steve Foster, so a Google search wasn’t of much help and I wasn’t about to pay any of those websites that offer to track someone down for only $49.95. I wanted the information fast, and I wanted it free.

First, I found a site that lists someone’s previous addresses. Hmmm … a half dozen Fosters used to live in Oakland and now live in Hawaii. But none of them Steve.

Wait a minute, he said he was going to move in with his daughter. Nope, no female Fosters on that list used to live in Oakland.

But what if she’d married since she moved out? You can also do the same lookup by maiden name. And here’s a site that lists the age and the names of the relatives of that person you’ve found by their maiden name.

Nope, nobody by that name at that address anymore. What are you gonna’ do? I guess you have to ask the neighbors. So I used Google maps to find the house on either side.

“Oh, Sharon moved out a couple of months ago,” the nice lady said, not even complaining that I was calling at seven in the morning. “Here’s her new number.”

After an hour’s work, I had a phone number for someone who used to be named Sharon Foster, who used to live in Oakland, who was the daughter of Steve Foster, and who’d moved away from Welo Street in Kapolei only three months ago. And when I called and asked for Steve Foster, she put down the phone and yelled, “Dad, it’s for you!”

I’d cracked the case. And it felt as good as reading any fine story about an ordinary hero facing insurmountable odds. I didn’t even have to fight any bad guys along the way.

So tell me, ‘Rati, have you ever played detective? Figured out who busted the window/cashed that blank check/stole the Christmas ornaments off the lawn? Have you tracked down any missing persons or found a birth mother?

Have you ever wanted to?

PS: OK, I’m calling in all favors here. St. Martin’s has asked me to blog on their new website Moments in Crime next week, everyday from Sunday the 16th to Friday the 21st. I don’t want them to think I don’t have any friends. Please, please drop by Moments in Crime next week and leave a message. It’ll be awfully cold over there without my ‘Rati friends.

And just to sweeten the pot, I’ll make you two promises: 1) I’m launching something there that has never been seen before anywhere (not even here at Murderati), and, 2) I’ll give an ARC of The Fault Tree or a copy of Forcing Amaryllis to anybody who leaves comments on the St. Martin’s blog for me for at least four days out of the six. How does that sound? New news and a freebie. Can’t beat it with a stick.

A book for a tree: An interview with Eco-Libris co-founder Raz Godelnik

by Pari Noskin Taichert

I don’t know about you, but I happen to like oxygen. Breathing has been pretty good to me.

I also adore books — reading and writing ’em. But there’s a problem. For each book printed, somewhere a tree was felled.

Raz Godelnik and his crew of inspired ecopreneurs have come up with a plan that, in a way, addresses this fundamental dilemma.

Can you give us a brief history of Eco-Libris?
It all started when I was thinking about paper and the environmental impacts of its production. I realized that it might take a while to get to the point where eco-friendly alternatives (from the use of recycled paper to e-books) will replace virgin paper. Then, I talked with some friends about the idea of giving people the opportunity to balance out their paper consumption by planting trees and received good feedback about it.
It took me a couple of months to gather a team of talented people with a great devotion to the idea. Later on, we put a lot of work into a screening process of our planting partners and eventually we started operating last July.

Why books and trees? Are you a reader?
Let’s start with the fact that about 20 million trees are being cut down every year to produce the books sold in the U.S. alone. Now, our decision to focus on books was made after learning that only 5 percent of the paper used for printing books is made of recycled paper and because most books don’t yet have an online eco-friendly alternative (e-book), like magazines and newspapers. So, if you want a book, you usually can’t avoid purchasing the paper-made version, unless you go to the library or get it from websites like BookCrossing or BookMooch, which are all excellent choices. [Readers & authors: What do you think of these kinds of sites? — Pari wants to know] You also can’t tell people to stop reading books, so it seemed to me only natural to give book lovers a new alternative to make their reading habit greener — planting trees for the books they read. I’m an avid reader. My mother is a librarian and since I was a little kid, I was always surrounded by books. I read almost everything, from thrillers to biographies. Right now, I’m reading THE SHOCK DOCTRINE by Naomi Klein.

What do you think of the Kindle and other e-book readers?
I think that the Kindle is good news for eco-conscious readers as it will save a lot of trees. If it is, as a device, so advanced technologically, it will also become advanced environmentally. That would be good news. It still has an environmental impact and it’s definitely far from being accessible to many people, but all in all it is a first step in the right direction. My wish is that the Kindle won’t only become cheaper, but also that it will be manufactured in an eco-friendly manner (right now I only know that it’s been manufactured by an undisclosed Chinese original equipment manufacturer), hopefully adopting cradle-to-cradle concepts.
I believe that the Kindle, and other e-books options that will be available, are one part of a greener future we’ll face in the book industry. We will also see books that are made of recycled paper and other non-tree materials, from hemp to plastic (like the book CRADLE TO CRADLE itself).

You call yourself an eco-entrepreneur. What does that mean?
I see myself as an entrepreneur dedicated to developing green business. My first venture was Hemper Jeans, as an eco-fashion company focusing on producing fashionable jeans made out of hemp. Eco-Libris is my second venture and I love every minute of it.

Have you tried to partner with paper producing companies, with publishers?
We are aiming to work not only with book readers, but also with publishers, writers, bookstores, book clubs and others involved in the book publishing industry. We’re now negotiating with a few publishers from the U.S., Canada and Europe on partnerships with regards to new titles they want to balance out. I hope that in the next month or so, we’ll be able to publish details on some of these collaborations. All in all, I can say that the general response to Eco-Libris is very enthusiastic. Publishers understand the need to go green and see us as a great option to take a step in that direction.
At this stage, we don’t work with printers. We might consider it in the future.

Will you branch out to magazines or catalog producers?
Right now, we’re focused on books for the reasons I detailed above. Nevertheless, we’re aware of the environmental impact of other publishing areas and might consider involvement there in the future.

What’s next for Eco-Libris?
We are having a busy holiday season with new offers for those who are looking for unique green gifts. Other than that, we intend to keep putting a lot of effort into establishing collaborations with publishers, bookstores and anyone in the book publishing industry who wants to go green. We also look forward to continuing to be a strong voice for all the eco-conscious readers out there and we are working now on plans on how to bring their environmental concerns to the knowledge of publishers and writers. Finally, we intend to keep spreading the word on sustainable reading, by working with libraries, participating in literary events and collaborating with other green organizations and companies.

What’s the one recent idea in environmental activism/entrepreneurism that you wish you’d thought of?
Two innovative green companies that I’m a big admirer of are:
1. RecycleBank — An innovative incentives system that managed to crack the one million dollar question: How to make people recycle more? Their answer: A combination of technology, partnerships and coupons.
2. TerraCycle — The ideal green product: Better and cheaper than its competitors, sold in recycled bottles and it’s made of worm’s poop!

Let’s give a big Murderati thanks to Raz and other eco-entrepreneurs who are looking for ways to make this a better world. For more information on Eco-Libris, check out the website.

I’m curious:
What do you think of this idea of a tree for a book?
What do you think of trying to make the publishing industry more green?
Have you heard of other eco-friendly businesses that we need to know of?

I’m looking forward to this conversation.

Pari

A note about the photos: The second one is courtesy of Eco-Libris planting partner RIPPLE Africa and the third is courtesy of partner Sustainable Harvest International (SHI). Contributors to Eco-Libris receive stickers for each tree planted. The organization hopes that they’ll put these stickers on their books to spread the word.

Guest Blog — Lori Armstrong

A Ginsu Knife To The Temple or Why I Prefer The Hands-on Approach

I hate research.

There. I said it.

If you mention that factoid (or something like you also hate Springsteen) within earshot of other authors, they will argue with you. “But honestly, don’t you just love?…” NO. “Wouldn’t you rather?…” NO. I like making things up.

But sometimes you do have to see things with your own eyes. I like the hands on portion of research, mostly because it doesn’t seem like research.

A few years back before my first mystery novel was published, I had the opportunity to take a 10-week course through the Rapid City Police Department. The course, entitled, yes—you guessed it—Citizen’s Police Academy, delved into the aspects of the inner workings of the local police department. I don’t know what the intention was for the class, but it affected me profoundly as a citizen and as a writer.

Quite a bit of the course was classroom time. Learning the differences between the city/county/state/federal/tribal jurisdictional breakdowns. Officer’s education and extra training. We took a field trip to the detox center. Another field trip to the juvenile detention facility. Visited the booking and cells of the county jail. One on one instruction with the range-master at the indoor gun range in the basement of the police department. An afternoon at the state-of-the-art crime lab. All important things for me to see firsthand, especially since I’d chosen to write about this area, western South Dakota.

Then came the opportunity to sign up for ride-alongs. The Saturday night slots filled up fast, so I ended up with the 10-6 am shift on a Friday night. My instructions were to report to the department. So we headed downstairs for the shift briefing (nothing like roll call on the cop show Hill Street Blues, which up until that point was my only reference point) and I was assigned an officer, I’ll call him C. The shift supervisor told C he’d be checking AOBs (Adult Oriented Businesses) which I thought was totally cool, because it was out of the realm of my real life as a housewife/mom, and hey, I do also write erotica.

So we’re walking out to the street where Officer C shows me how they check the cop car before taking it out, removing the seat so if someone is stupid enough to shove a baggie of dope in the seat crack, it was verified and documented it wasn’t there at the start of shift change. I also saw the bag of riot gear in the trunk, and he let me sit in the backseat and rattle the cage (because really, I’ve never been arrested) and showed me how to work the radar device. We talked about guns—with my husband and his brother owning a firearms business, I get that “how cool” thing a lot.

I had no idea these officers have a laptop, and a cell phone or two in addition to the radio and paraphernalia in the front seat of their cars. C is guzzling Mountain Dew, apologizing as we’re driving around, saying it’ll probably be a quiet night, when he gets “the call” – a stabbing at a local bar. In his jurisdiction.

This was ten minutes into the shift.

He hits the lights and we haul ass to the scene. We pull up in front, he’s first on scene, which means he’s primary, so the other officers pull up in the alley. C says to sit tight…and he jumps out, gun in hand, and locks me in the car. Media vans show up. I’m like, “shit” trying to keep my face out of the camera shot because HELLO – I’m in front of a crime scene… in a cop car.

Twenty minutes later C returns to the car and we drive around to the alley behind the bar, to the apartment where the incident took place. “Your lucky night,” he said. “They just took the victim to the hospital and they’re cataloguing the crime scene. You get to be in on this from start to finish. Ah. You don’t have a weak stomach do you?”

I’m thinking, “Yes,” but I said, “No.”

“Good, because this guy was stabbed in the temple with a steak knife.”

I said, “A steak knife?”

“Yeah, a Ginsu, and there’s lots of…well, you’ll see.”

I didn’t have to put on booties or latex gloves. I was warned not to touch anything, not to talk to anyone, to be as unobtrusive as possible when we entered the apartment. There were cops all over, but the first thing I noticed was all the blood.

Blood was splattered all over the table, the floor, a thick trail led to the bathroom, it dripped off an old fashioned leather suitcase, it was smeared on the shower curtain, chunks congealed on the tub, splotches were on the toilet and an actual pool of blackish goo had puddled on the dirty white floor. My first thought, beside – Eww – was, no way would this guy survive. By the time I’d arrived, the victim was gone; the two witnesses had been separated and taken to the station for questioning, along with the alleged perpetrator. Then C started the actual police work.

The photographer snapped a billion pictures, and chatted with me about what he was looking for. I tagged along with C and listened in while he questioned witnesses inside the bar – mostly the bartender who’d made the decision to stop serving alcohol to the inebriated couples, hence the reason they’d left to drink elsewhere.

Then we moved to phase 2, which was a trip to the hospital to see if the victim was coherent. Nope – we didn’t expect otherwise, but C cautioned me stranger things had happened. The emergency room doctor was waiting on blood test results before he started the surgery to remove the remaining piece of the knife, so he showed us the X-rays of the knife lodged in the guy’s sinus cavity. We found out during the altercation, the handle had snapped off. Yes. The guy had been stabbed with such ferocity, the stabber had snapped off the black plastic handle.

Not a good testimonial for the Ginsu knife company.

After the hospital visit, C and I returned to the station. I expected he’d conduct the interviews. Wrong. Here in Rapid City, my understanding was, all cops rotate into the detective positions, so the cop on call had to come in at 1:00 in the morning to conduct interviews. I got to sit in, and listen to what went down from the point of view of the perpetrator. Most of it was drunken gibberish, which was just plain sad. Not only didn’t the guy remember stabbing the victim, he didn’t even know who the hell the victim was. They’d just met that night. The detective made the decision to arrest, and C and I took the male down to booking.
It was around 4:00 am by the time this all was finished. I had to be back at the station the next morning at 8:00 am for the defensive driving skills seminar (another time perhaps, I’ll talk about the joys of being in the driver’s seat of a cop car, next to a cop, with said cop telling me to “punch it and see how fast this mofo will go”) so C suggested I go home. As he walked me out to my car, I asked if he thought the stabbing victim would die. He didn’t know.

Surprisingly enough, the guy survived. Oddly enough, that same night, another guy fell off a curb at a downtown bar, whacked his head…and died.

Because my ride along experience was out of the norm, the instructors allowed me do another one, a different shift, with a different cop. No head stabbings, but I did get to see firsthand how an I-bar works on a belligerent shoplifter, take a guy to detox with a blood level alcohol limit near the fatal range, pull over a couple of people for suspicion of DUI, take an escaped runaway back to juvenile. Invaluable hands-on research for me, but all in a day’s work for the police in this town.

Any interesting research stories you wanna share?

Bio –
Lori G. Armstrong left the firearms industry in 2000 to write crime fiction. Her first mystery novel, Blood Ties, published in 2005, was nominated in 2006 for a Shamus Award for Best First Novel by the Private Eye Writers of America. The second book in the Julie Collins mystery series, Hallowed Ground, was released in November 2006 and was nominated for a 2007 Daphne du Maurier Award for Best Mystery, a Shamus Award for Best Paperback Original of 2007 by the Private Eye Writers of America, and was recently named the winner of the 2007 Willa Cather Literary Award for Best Original Softcover Fiction, by Women Writing the West. The next book in the series, Shallow Grave, was released in November 2007. Armstrong lives in Rapid City, South Dakota, with her family.

Recent News:

“Former firearms industry professional Lori Armstrong’s RITUAL SACRIFICES, the first in a new mystery series featuring an Army sniper who has returned home to run her family’s South Dakota ranch, to Trish Lande Grader at Touchstone Fireside, in a good deal, in a two-book hardcover deal, by Scott Miller at Trident Media Group (NA).”

Beyond Four Walls

I wanted to follow up JT’s powerful post with something concrete to do.

A lot of you know that I taught for a time in the Los Angeles juvenile court system. But here’s something you probably don’t know.

In all the juvenile detention centers across the United States – the prisons for people under the age of 18 – there are only six staffed libraries. Six in the entire US. (And I can tell you – the books on those shelves are rarely what contemporary teenagers would choose to read).

Here are some statistics from a panel of five librarians who have worked in three of California’s juvenile detention centers, speaking at the annual California Library Association Conference in Long Beach, CA:

The State of California has more prisons than universities:

17 youth authority sites
33 adult prisons
29 state universities

At any time, in Los Angeles County alone, between 1,650 and 2,000 youth are serving time in the county’s three juvenile detention centers. Another 15,000 young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 are serving time in L.A. County jails.

Now project that across the country and you begin to get an inkling of the problem.

I know I don’t have to tell anyone here about the power of reading and books. Books aren’t just an escape – they can be a WAY OUT. Statistics have shown time and time again that literacy reduces recidivism.

So this holiday season please join me in supporting one of my favorite efforts:

The Beyond 4 Walls Book Drive for Incarcerated Youth

Buy books from the AMAZON.COM WISH LIST for kids at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Detention Facility in Sylmar, California

Nidorf houses 600+ children and teens ages 10-17 who are awaiting adjudication. Some cycle in and out in a matter of weeks, while others are detained for years. There is no access to a library. The Nidorf Collective, a group of librarians and masters students at UCLA’s Library Information Studies school, initiated a program of book giveaways and book-talking groups at the facility; this book drive is to supply the books the kids have requested and would like to read. Free voluntary reading has proven to have a salutary effect on school performance, personal attitudes and behavior; we hope you will support this important outreach program by donating books.

Click here for the Nidorf Wish List

or just search “Nidorf” on Amazon (Click “Gift and Wish Lists,” then “find someone’s wish list”, then search “Nidorf” or “Beyond 4 Walls”)

To donate new or gently used paperback books directly, please send to:

Beyond 4 Walls
c/o Lisa Lepore
3254 Kelton Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90034

Sponsored by THE NIDORF COLLECTIVE – founded by students in the UCLA Masters, Library Information Studies Program, and including students, librarians, and interested others.

For more information, email Melissa Elliott, melielliott@earthlink.net, or Monti Lawrence, mlawrence@ucla.edu

You can also donate books to a detention center near you. Call the front desk and tell them you have books to donate and ask where to bring or send them. You can use the wish list above to get an idea of the most coveted books. Also please note that it’s best to send paperback books. Some facilities do not allow hardcovers, which, yes, can be used as weapons.

Thanks for helping.