The LadyKillers

Travel in the Good Old Days

A very tired Rhys on Wednesday, having returned home from the East Coast at 1:30 this morning. And the first thing I read was Ann Parker's post on the ease of travel in the present time, compared to travel in the nineteenth century.

She may be right, of course. To get to America before WW2 involved the arduous task of a luxury stateroom on the Queen Mary, sumptuous meals for several days, a dance band at night, romantic strolls around deck and no sudden adjustment to the time change
Now all we have to do is get up at 4 in the morning to stand in a security line for hours, take off our shoes, and then get on a plane that will be delayed for weather or mechanical failures, causing us to sit strapped to our seats, either too hot or too cold, on the tarmac, surrounded by crying babies, and then be served no food or maybe rubber frozen food, until we reach London at what is for us four in the morning and for them is afternoon. Leisurely and relaxing? I don't think so.
Travel today is not for sissies! One must be physically fit enough to lug around suitcases, fling them into the overhead rack, open them for inspection, drag them off the carrousel--not to mention the hiking involved. I swear every time I land at Heathrow, my gate is so far from customs and immigration that I walk a greater distance than I have flown.
Oh, and the rudeness. How can one forget that? Those days on the Queen Mary would have been made more pleasant by hordes of caring waiters, stewards etc whose only mission in life was to make sure that the traveler had everything he or she needed.
Last night our flight arrived an hour late, and minus my bag. So what, I was told. They'd presumably find the bag and deliver it to me some time. No apology. When somebody actually went to look--using initiative, mark you--they found the bag, hidden at the back of one of the carts where it had been overlooked.
So give me the good old days any time!

Rhys
Just back from Malice Domestic in DC, the Festival of Mystery in Oakmont PA and several stops in between.

Traveling through Time - Part 2

Ann Parker here, Monday's child at the Lady Killers blog. I've got traveling on my mind, what with Sharan's post on Malice Domestic  and various posts elsewhere about the L.A. Times Festival of Books. I wish I could've gone to either ... or both!

How easy traveling is today in the early 21st century -- hop a plane or put the "pedal to the metal" and off we go (!) scooting away at high velocity to our destinations -- and nary an eyebrow raised for a woman traveling alone. What a difference a century-and-a-quarter has made (no six-day stagecoach rides for me, thank you very much).

In the 1879 etiquette book Our Deportment, author John H. Young, A.M., takes pains to assure readers that it is a-okay (my word, not his) for a lady to travel alone (see previous post "Traveling through Time"). Herewith are more of his "words of wisdom" to women traveling by train:

"A lady, traveling alone, may accept services from her fellow-travelers ... Indeed it is the business of a gentleman to see that the wants of an unescorted lady are attended to. He should offer to raise or lower her window if she seems to have any difficulty in doing it herself. He may offer his assistance in carrying her packages upon leaving the car, or in engaging a carriage or obtaining a trunk. Still, women should learn to be as self-reliant as possible; and young women particularly should accept proffered assistance from strangers, in all but the slightest offices, very rarely."

... And there's more! Ladies, as it turns out, may indeed assist other ladies:

"It is not only the right, but the duty of ladies to render any assistance or be of any service to younger ladies, or those less experienced in traveling than themselves. They may show many little courtesies which will make the journey less tedious to the inexperienced traveler, and may give her important advice or assistance which may be of benefit to her..."

Today, a woman traveling alone is ... normal. No big deal. Even children jet about alone with aplomb and only minor assistance. Too, I cannot imagine offering "important advice" to any of the self-assured, travel-savvy twenty-somethings I see flitting here and there (most of whom have, no doubt, traveled far more in their two decades than I have in my five!).

However, to bring things back to earth, the world is changing in ways we can't ignore, and these days of easy travel may be coming to an end. The cost of fuel is skyrocketing. It gives me pause when I grab the keys to dash to the grocery store. How much is that five-mile round trip costing me? Can I put it off and run other errands with it tomorrow? The calculations become even more painful when I contemplate a longer road trip. No doubt, in another century-and-a-quarter, it'll be a different world yet again. And I wonder what folks of the future will think of our traveling habits of today.

The right to read

Jane here, with good news for lovers of large print and audio books. There’s an Internet bookshop which specialises in these two important formats. It’s recently opened here in Britain, and it’s at www.largeprintbookshop.co.uk. Check it out, and tell everyone about it.

Maybe neither you nor your family use these formats, but think for a moment about those who do, especially those for whom large text and sound are their only way to read, because they can’t see to read ordinary-sized print.

Did you know that less than 5% of all the books published are ever put into formats that blind or nearly-blind people can use – large print, audio, or braille? About 1% go into braille; better than nothing (just,) but only one in ten visually impaired people read the dots. That leaves 4%: would you like to have your reading restricted to four out every hundred books on the shelves?

Then please help to do something about it. If you’re a library user, check out what your library has to offer in large print and audio; if you’re a librarian, try to get more of these versions in stock, and make sure all your readers and potential readers know about them. If you’re a writer, check out whether your publishers are putting your books into large print or audio. I’m amazed how many writers regard these as peripheral, and don’t even know whether their books are produced in anything other than standard print.

I’m lucky: my publisher Poisoned Pen Press produce large print editions of most of their titles, and have always given quick and enthusiastic approval to copyright clearance requests when I’ve arranged for audio and braille versions of my mysteries. But too many publishers have an in-built fear about giving permission for anyone other than themselves to produce their books, even though more and more countries now have laws to protect them as they help disabled readers. So all you publishers, please think about providing, or at least encouraging, more large print and audio editions. Don’t you want everybody to be able to read your books?

And if you’re not involved in the book business but love books, see if there are any campaigns about reading for all in your neck of the woods, and support them. In Britain we have a “Right to Read” campaign, with (among other things) an on-line charter which you can sign up to support.

Other nations have similar initiatives, and hopefully a growing number, because this week in Amsterdam the World Blind Union launched an International Right to Read Campaign, whose intention is to lobby globally for books that are accessible to people who can’t read print.

Interestingly, during the launch event WBU demonstrated the world's first fully accessible book, 'Blindness and the Visionary' by Sir John Coles, an appropriate title because it’s a biography of that marvellous pioneer Sir John Wilson, founder of Sightsavers International,  http://www.sightsavers.org. What makes this book remarkable is that publisher Giles de la Mare provides, tucked into every copy, a CD containing an audio recording of the book in an excellent digital form, and other digital files for printing out the book in braille and large print. Excellent. Couldn’t all books offer the option of such a digital CD?

OK, it’s a dream. In reality, 96 out of every 100 books are out of your reach if you can’t use normal print. If that scandalous situation is ever to improve, it needs all of us to work to make the dream come true.

 

In the midst of Malice

This is from Sharan, whose brain is finally functioning, slightly.  I now have it written in my day planner that I get to blog on Saturdays.  At the moment I'm at Malice Domestic where Rhys has up the price for the vote to $5.00.  I've voted early and often and am crossing my fingers that she wins in BOTH the categories in which she's nominated.  The Agatha award is a great honor and HER ROYAL SPYNESS is just the sort of book that should win.  Charlaine Harris is the guest of honor this year.  Her story is a perfect example of a writer trying something new and different, persevering until she found the right editor and then striking gold.  It can be done!

I'm here, of course, to let people know about my leap into the nineteenth century.  THE SHANGHAI TUNNEL is doing surprisingly well. A few people have told me that they weren't sure I should leave the Middle Ages but gave me the benefit of the doubt and tried the new book, discovering that they liked it.  That's good, because I'm already working on the next one.

I'm sorry that you can't all be here.  We could have our own panel.

Age is Just a number and mine is unlisted

I have a new pet peeve!
Last week I had my hair cut. The young stylist was pleasant enough to me, but she constantly called me honey, sweetie, and other syrupy names. And talked to me as if I was in my second childhood.

Now I know that I am heading toward my golden years. I am in the second half of my life. However I am in no way an old woman. I certainly don't look like an old woman, do I? (see photo) I don't think like one, I don't feel like one and I don't act like one. I write two books a year. I tour to promote my books. I travel all over the world. I hike six miles a week. I swim daily.

I suppose to a twenty year old hairstylist I might seem old, but I've noticed recently this awful tendency to talk to an older person as if she is somehow simple and needs to be humored. How come other societies revere their elderly? What happened to "Oh esteemed wise-one, may you live forever," which is what they always seem to be saying in Asian films.  We in America's disposable society obviously look upon those who might want to collect social security as disposable. Let's get rid of them as quickly as possible so they don't use up our precious resources. Thank God there are no ice-floes off our coast or we'd get shoved out to sea like the Eskimos do.

On a brighter note,I'm off to Washington DC tomorrow to attend the Malice Domestic convention. This is the biggest gathering of fans and writers of the traditional mystery. Attendees this time will include Lindsay Davies, Peter Lovesey and Robert Barnard from UK, as well as all the American so called cozy writers. (I'm not a big fan of the word cozy, but since it's widely used I'm using it here) I prefer traditional mystery myself, or even amateur sleuth. At Malice the Agatha awards are presented, and tooting my own horn a little, I'm up for two of them: best short story (Please Watch Your Step) and best novel, HER ROYAL SPYNESS.  It's always nerve-racking to have to sit through an entire banquet, playing with the food, trying to hide the rubber chicken under the lettuce leaf, and then going through all the speeches before the awards are announced somewhere around 11 p.m.  This year there is a stellar line up for Best Novel. All previous Agatha winners so my chances are iffy. Of course it's an honor to be nominated....

If anyone wants to read my short story, by the way, it's on my website (www.rhysbowen.com) and if anyone is going to Malice--I pay a dollar a vote, just like they used to at the time of my Molly books<g>

Rhys

weather as a character

We've had some pretty strange weather here in Eugene the past week. The second Saturday in April was 84 degrees, much hotter than the normal 60 or so. Last weekend we awoke to snow both Saturday and Sunday mornings. It's never snowed in April before in the 14 years I've lived here.

It made me think about how we use weather as a "character" in our books. What would The Nine Tailors be without the floods? Or Murder at Hazelmoor without the snow? Or The Hound of the Baskervilles without the fog?

Rain, snow, fog (especially a thick London pea-souper!) can all keep people indoors, making the streets deserted, hide or wash away clues, even conceal a murderer creeping up on the victim. They can cause delays, so that events happen when we want them to. Mud shows footprints where dry ground does not. On the other hand, sun can tempt people outside, where perhaps the murderer is waiting, or we simply wave our magic wands to make the weather fine so that our story can proceed without problems.

In my books, London fogs play their parts in Rattle His Bones and The Bloody Tower. In Fall of a Philanderer it's sea-fog and storms. In Death at Wentwater Court, it's the ice on a frozen lake. To Davy Jones Below: the transatlantic liner runs into gales and squalls, as well as fog, making it much easier for me to push people overboard. When I was writing The Case of the Murdered Muckraker, I discovered that there had been a real, non-fictional blizzard in Wyoming right when Daisy was flying cross-country. She and Alec couldn't fly around the north end of the Rockies, which gave me an excuse to bring in Bessie Coleman, whose story I badly wanted to tell. November 5th was fine in Gunpowder Plot; if the fireworks had been cancelled, there would have been no story!

Now, if I could manipulate the real weather as I can the fictional weather, we wouldn't have had snow on the cherry-blossom last weekend.

Carola

www.geocities.com/CarolaDunn/

Traveling through Time

Ann Parker here, Monday's child, dashing in with a late-ish post.

Maybe it's spring. Maybe it's all the talk of trains, planes, airports and trips, or Mary Anna's photo of her most wonderful porch waaay back East, or even all the field trips I've been driving lately, but I'm feeling the urge to move forward. In honor of work and the triumph of acceleration over inertia ("in the absence of forces, a body at rest will stay at rest," etc.), here are some encouraging words for women regarding railway travel, circa 1880.

From Our Deportment by John H. Young, A.M., copyright 1879:

"... The longest journeys by railroad can be made alone by self-possessed ladies with perfect safety and but little annoyance. Then, too, a lady who deports herself as such may travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, and meet with no affront or insult, but on the contrary receive polite attentions at every point."

Next week, I'll move along to share some 1880-era advice to women traveling alone.

Corny Proverb of the Week

Jane here, and if you don’t like corny proverbs, too bad, don’t read to the end of this post. Sayings only reach the status of proverbs because they contain good advice, and this one certainly does, especially for authors.

The other day I was looking up details of that famous writer of westerns, Zane Grey, because I wanted to know how early he started writing. Before World War 1, is the answer, but what caught my eye was that he got a poor response from publishers for his first book and ended by self-publishing it. This really cheered me up. I don’t know the ins and outs – I haven’t read “Betty Zane”, the book concerned, though I have read a lot of his others, mostly when I was young and wished I could be a Texas cowgirl…but imagine a successful novelist like that having to begin by self-publishing! Good for him, I say; he stuck it out, and it worked.

Then I remembered something about the Scottish author James Herriot, who wrote those engaging books about his life as a vet in Yorkshire (that’s veterinary surgeon, for all you Americans, not veteran!)  He had to send his first vet book to 24 publishers before he found No 25, who saw its potential and took it. It needed a lot of work, apparently, but what a successful outcome. Good for Herriot! He must have been tempted to quit, but he didn’t.

This weekend we had the Scarborough Literature Festival in our nearest town. A good selection of authors (mostly not mystery, but there was an excellent crime panel,) and also plenty of readers, and plenty of people who want to be both readers and writers, but are not published yet. I was lucky in getting published; it took about two years from finishing my first Aurelia book to finding Poisoned Pen Press, who were prepared to look at it seriously. And, like Mr. Herriot’s first, mine needed a lot of work, so I was lucky again, because the publishers gave me a lot of help. I had maybe ten rejections before Poisoned Pen, mostly from literary agents, and some of them were quite encouraging, which helped, but they still sent rejections, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't depressing sometimes. You need luck as a writer, and you also need a stubborn streak; if you haven’t got one of these, grow one and nourish it.

I hope somebody said all this to the potential writers at the Scarborough Literature Festival. I wasn’t involved in the Festival myself – left it too late even to be considered, my fault. But they have my details on file to be considered for 2009. They should showcase local authors; I plan to persuade them to give me a spot. And if not in 2009, then 2010...

By now you’ve guessed what the corny proverb is. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again. Told you it was good advice!

 

An author I love who no one has heard of

Cara here on Friday,

Well, I'm on the Nancy Huston bandwagon. She's an author you probably haven't heard of who won the Prix Femina literary prize in France and has written nineteen books. Her latest book is shortlisted for the UK Orange Prize. She's also Canadian - but lives in Paris - so that might be another reason. I think only two of her books ( a shame) has been published in English. One of them is Mark of an Angel and you might find it on www.abebooks.com.

Another reason mystery readers wouldn't know her is that her work is shelved in Fiction - Literary but there are definite mystery elements. She's an amazing writer and I love the fact that she wrote her thesis (in France) on swear words.

Any writers you love that you think we should know and be reading?
Have a great weekend,
Cara

From Mary Anna--Back from the Great Beyond

So some of you may have noticed that I've been AWOL again...

And you may have noticed that today isn't even my day.  Yesterday was my day...

Well, I spent yesterday cleaning my house, so that I could cook dinner for some friends that are, after nearly twenty years of friendship, moving away.  Sob.

Friends of such longstanding don't care how your house looks, but you want the place to look nice for such a momentous occasion.  And it's time for spring cleaning, anyway, though I have to confess that most of what I did yesterday was regular old cleaning cleaning.  I did mop the porch and beat the pollen out of all the cushions out there, and just generally make it look nice for spring.

I don't think I've posted a picture of that wonderful porch.  It was a major contributor to me buying this house last August.  Here's a photo,taken before I got any outdoor furniture.  I also had a porch swing made that's big enough to sleep on.  It's yellow, with pink and yellow and peach and green pillows, so it doesn't look so white out there.  And while I'm at it, I'll post a photo of other major selling point--space that was suitable for a music room that had to house a 7.5-foot piano.  That's me sitting at the piano during a piano party I hosted.  I was trying to accompany the poor man standing next to me as he sang a lovely Schumann song sequence, but we had to stop and laugh when I flubbed up really badly.  For those of you who are into such things, the piano's a Yamaha C7. 

The porch and the music room make me happy, just thinking about them.  They make me really happy when I get to spend time there.

I definitely related to Ann's post a few weeks back about life changes making her feel like matter thrown out of a supernova, careening through space.  Divorcing, buying a house, becoming a grandmother...all those things are disorienting, too.  Maybe Ann and I should combine our gravitational pull and careen together.  But I've learned that if I proceed calmly through whatever the current turmoil might be, things tend to turn out well in the end.  Maybe then I'll have time to post on Thursdays, when I'm supposed to...