The Lady Killers

The Last Illusion

Rhys on Wednesday with good news to report. The first draft of my new Molly book is complete. It's called The Last Illusion and it involves Houdini and a clever illusion (which I then had to explain!) I find illusionists fascinating, don't you? I now know how many of their tricks are done, but there are some that defy explanation.  It's easy enough on television to make an elephant disappear because we only see what the camera wants us to. But I have been in theaters and watched a tiger disappear from a suspended cage. I watched an illusionist hypnotize a girl and then float her into mid air and prop her on a broom handle, where she remained, miraculously suspended. This was at a county fair, in broad daylight. No chance for trick lighting or even black curtains.

So when someone suggested that Molly might meet Houdini, I jumped at the challenge. A lot of his stuff was more escape than illusion but he was great at both. I particularly like the illusion in which he chews and swallows needles that have been previous stuck into his face by members of the audience. He then swallows thread, then coughs it up and draws from his mouth the thread with all ten needles threaded on it. He did this in an ordinary room at a gentlemen's club.

So Molly is going to face a real challenge, but what fun!

I'm off to Malice in the morning. By that I mean Malice Domestic, the mystery convention in Washington DC honoring the traditional novel, at which the Agatha Awards are presented. I'm nominated for best novel for Royal Pain, but with a fantastic slate: Anne Perry, Louise Penny, Julia Spencer Flemming and Donna Andrews, so I'm being realistic about my chances. It's interesting that three of the five write serious, multi-layered novels and two of us are nominated for light, funny books. It's great that the genre can honor both sides.

So please send positive vibes in my direction on Saturday! Either way I'll be having fun. It is great to mingle with ones friends and fans. I'm on a panel with the other nominees and then on another panel at which I appear as my character. I'll try to post photos next week!

Must pack,

Rhys

The Mystery of the Vandalized Birdbath

Several weeks ago, I was surprised to find one day that my birdbath was lying on its side on the lawn. It's dark green vinyl, not very heavy,  but I don't have a dog at the moment and couldn't think who had knocked it over.

And again, and again.

I found some heavy-duty pegs to replace the spindly wire ones and fastened the base down heavy-dutily. Lo and behold, the birdbath remained upright. Problem solved, I thought, thought I.

Last Saturday, a couple of house-finches were drinking from the birdbath. They're so cute, I decided it was even more fun to watch them using it than just eating seed at my myriad feeders.

Sunday morning, I went out to do some weeding and trimming, and saw that the birdbath was  empty. It holds quite a bit of water, so I was rather surprised.  Then I saw that the perch in the centre had been knocked off. Worse, it had been broken off. It was removable, but the socket was broken along with the perch, leaving a hole through which all the water had drained down the pedestal into the ground.

Strange! I sometimes suspect the teenager who lives in the house behind mine of climbing over the fence, but why would he do a thing like that?

And then, this morning (Monday) I saw the culprit. A raccoon, a very fat raccoon, was wandering around the garden. Looking thirsty. Wot, no birdbath? If I'd had handcuffs available I'd have arrested it on the spot.

No more drinkies for the birdies.

At least, not in my garden, for the moment. But speaking of birds and water, I took this pic the other day:

Can you count them?

Carola

With an eye to Malice

Ann Parker here, Monday's child for The Lady Killers, blogging in a bit of a frenzy. I'm packing for the Malice Domestic convention coming up later this week. For various reasons, I must be ready to go by tomorrow (Tuesday). I'm very excited about this ... haven't been to a mystery con in over a year and a half, since Bouchercon Alaska. I'm looking forward to seeing old friends and making some new as well as being on the panel "Timing is Everything" (focus on historical mysteries, of course) on Saturday, May 2, 4 p.m., with Kathy Lynn Emerson, M.E. Kemp, Roberta Rogow, and Victoria Thompson.

One of the little joys of being a writing/editing consultant/freelancer/self-employed-type with projects in hand is that as I plug along—editing a document on chilled beams, wordsmithing a job opening, updating an employee handbook, and so on—I can say to myself, "And THAT just paid for the plane flight ... and THAT just paid for a couple of books from the bookroom ... and THAT will take care of one night's lodging ..." This little pay-as-you-go self-talk makes me a cheery editor/writer, who appreciates every client and every project that walks in the door. Plus, it makes the work all very concrete to me. (Not that I haven't enjoyed learning about the benefits of chilled beams in and of themselves ... I have! If you come to Malice, look me up and ask me all about it!) All just more reasons why I love work.

The Lie of the Land

Jane here, mulling over the importance of geography as a part of history. Fellow Lady Killer Rhys blogged this week about the annoyance of discovering, while working on her latest Molly Murphy book, that Penn Station in New York wasn’t finished at the time her story took place, which meant re-jigging a section of the plot.

You might think that writing about the ancient past lessened the chances of this sort of thing happening, but believe me, it doesn’t. I had a similar kind of near-miss concerning something crucial in my first book – the location of the inn where my sleuth Aurelia Marcella lives. I wanted it on Garrowby Hill, east of York; a long climb of about a mile, some of which is gradient 1 in 7. The road up it has been there since Roman times, and it’s still a main route to the coast.

Travellers in modern vehicles just whiz up and down it without missing a beat, but that certainly wasn’t the case in the days of four-legged transport, or for that matter, older cars. I can remember in the 1950s, when my mother drove an Austin 7, we didn’t attempt Garrowby Hill in snow or ice, the car wouldn’t have made it.

I wanted a fictional setting for Aurelia’s mansio, because, as I’ve often said before, I didn’t want to choose a real Roman site and then find that archaeologists investigated it again later and changed their minds about its layout in the light of new knowledge…wonderful for scholarship of course, but annoying for a writer! There isn’t (as yet) any evidence of Romans living alongside Garrowby Hill, but they had settled in the area around, so it looked ideal.

I put the inn at the top, a lovely spot which has a fabulous view across country. What more natural, I reasoned, than to position it just at the place where weary travellers and their animals needed a rest and a drink after a hard climb? So that’s where it was placed on my map (well Richard’s map, really, he’s brilliant at maps and draws them for me.) When the first draft of the book was almost done, I emailed a copy of the map to our local County Archaeologist and asked him for comments. Am I glad I did!

I’d gone and put the inn above the spring-line, so there’d be no water nearby at all, for cooking, for baths, for sanitation…which made it exactly the place where the Romans would never have chosen to live. I thanked him sincerely, and with a few alterations to map and text, I moved Aurelia to the bottom of the hill, below the line where springs bubble out and could have provided as many baths as her dusty guests could desire. Phew, that was a close one!

If I’d made such a mistake, it wouldn’t have affected the plot, and very few people would even have been aware of it. But some would have spotted it, and it would have made me feel awful, as well as giving the impression that I didn’t know about how the Romans lived, (which I do,) when in reality it was simply that I hadn't thought about where the water originated, because I hadn’t properly checked out the lie of the land.

 

Goofed Again!

A frustrated Rhys on Wednesday morning.

Sometimes I wonder why I chose to write historical fiction. How much simpler it would have been to write police procedurals set in a town near where I live, or better still, a fictitious town such as Agatha Cristie created. Minchonville and Little Delvings etc. That way I wouldn't have to spend hours on research to get everything right. And even then I am bound to get some important fact wrong.

I am about five pages from the end of my new Molly Murphy book. I had planned to finish yesterday and I wanted Molly to give a devilishly clever clue about a certain person coming to Penn Station. Then I began to wonder whether Penn Station actually existed in 1903. I don't recall ever sending a character southward from New York before so I hadn't checked. And of course it didn't exist. Trains still started from the terminus on the Jersey side of the Hudson, which could only be reached by ferry. This messes up a huge piece of action in the middle of the book and I couldn't see a way around it until I was driving home from a speaking event last night.

The problem is that now I think I know New York, 1903, pretty well. This is, after all, my 9th book in the series. And I do know certain areas very well, and where the elevated train lines stop and all that kind of useful stuff. But apparently there are still gaps in my knowledge like the fact that a huge train station didn't exist. How annoying of it! They were already digging the tunnels to connect it to Jersey in 1903 but the station itself didn't open until several years later.

This is one of the frustrations about writing a historical novel. Things you think you know aren't always true. The famous restaurant Delmonicos had about five different addresses between 1880 and 1910 and it's not always easy to find out exactly where it was situated in July 1903. Of course, if I get it wrong, a hundred people will know and write to tell me. Next time I'll be smarter. My female detective will be the only woman on the Upper Meandering police force. She'll be at odds with the sexy local solicitor and her old school boss. She'll breed llamas. And I'll have nthing to get wrong--unless I hear from the International Llama Society that I've given the animals the wrong feed!

SinC party

On Saturday, the Portland (Oregon) Sisters in Crime chapter very kindly threw a tea party in honour of my 50th book--MANNA FROM HADES. Not only did I get to wear a tiara, for the first (and probably last) time in my life, but there was an Official Presentation of a Tea Cosy and an incredibly appropriate tea-pot:

(apologies for the quality of the photo; something's gone wrong with my photo editor).

I can't imagine where sib Susan Stanley found it! Not only is this a writer's desk, the manuscript protruding from the typewriter--which is the lid of the teapot--is headed Murder at the Grange and begins:

    Chapter 1 (Rosie Lee arrives)

The maid came in bearing a tea tray covered with a crisp white cloth. "Tea is served, Miss," she said, carefully placing it before Rosie Lee...

It sounds like something straight out of one of my Daisy mysteries. The pile of typescript on the left is even weighted down with a revolver. Perfect!

I Love Work ...

Ann Parker, Monday's child for the Lady Killers, actually surfacing on my day, for a change!

 I've missed a couple of Mondays here and there because I've been busy in my work-a-day life. Those that know me, know I say this with a big smile.

It's funny that, when I tell people I am a writer (and, with a little prompting, continue on by listing the kinds of writing I do), folks often fixate on the fiction, and, inevitably, the question is asked: "Don't you wish you could just make a living from fiction and stop 'working'?" (As if, you know, fiction writing isn't work!)

My immediate response to the question is always NO (with some variation in the emphasis).

I was asked again recently, and, after my NO, there was an interesting followup: "Suppose you made a whole lot of money from writing fiction, say, a million dollars, would you quit working then?"

I paused a moment to process this, before answering again, quite honestly, "No ... although I'd sure not turn down the million!"

So, I started thinking: What is it I find so appealing about my workaday (scientific/technical/corporate) writing and editing life? Other people are all too anxious to grab for that gold ring, make that million or two, and stop the workday grind. Why not me?

Strangely enough, one of the first things that popped to mind was not the umpty-ump dollars per hour (although yes, yes, I love that too!), but the people. One of the things I find very satisfactory indeed is plugging away on some writing project that involves working with/being in the company of brilliant technical people. Nothing makes me happier than being on the fringes of science/technology in action. I'm not a scientist, but I sure enjoy listening to researchers talk about their technical/scientific passions—and you can hear in their voices when a topic is near and dear to them—or, listening to a group of engineers/scientists discuss/dissect a project, examining what works, what doesn't, and batting about the whys and why-nots, and alternatives and solutions.

In fact, it occurs to me that this "batting about of ideas, problems and solutions" is one of the things I most enjoy about writing fiction as well. Occasionally, a group of us (mostly in the mystery field) will get together and bring our "problem children" to the table (along with the coffee and chocolate!) for discussion and dissection. We hammer out possible solutions and toss around ideas for dealing with plodding plots, clueless characters, and troublesome turns of phrase and brainstorm promotional possibilities as well as ponder "the state of the mystery and publishing today."

So, sure, there are times when I must chose the solitary route: shut the home office door to focus on fiction, or don the headphones at the "other office" to shut out the random engineering chatter, but if I didn't stand with my feet in both worlds—the workaday and the fiction, the interactive and the solitary, I'm not sure I could spin my stories at all.

Twisted words

Jane here, and I've been playing about with twisted words this week. I've been trying my hand at compiling cryptic crosswords. I love solving them, or attempting to, and I've wasted, I mean spent, many woman-hours doing them, so I decided to have a go at setting a few. It's just for my own amusement so far, but it's something I'd like to master, and then...well, who knows? You don't believe me? Ha, what sceptics...(that's a neat anagram. Tell you where I found it in a minute.)

Anagrams are one of the main ingredients of cryptic crosswords, and they're fun to invent. I find it's often easier to create them than to solve other people's creations, but if I'm stuck and I want a short cut, I'm not above using the Internet. My favourite site at the moment is http://wordsmith.org/anagram/ I'm sure there are others equally good, but this one is easy to use, sophisticated in results, and free. Computers and anagrams were made for each other.

I've heard it said that mystery fans tend also to be lovers of cryptic crosswords; I wonder if it's true for the Lady Killers and friends? I certainly know of some who fit that rule -  Colin Dexter and Simon Brett for starters. I remember Morse (I think it was) solving one crossword clue that I liked so much it stuck in my mind. He did it in about one and a half seconds flat; something like "Resting bats do this." (5 letters,) and I'll put the answer at the end in case you don't know it and want to beat his time.

Another favourite type of cryptic clue is the "double-meaning" one, where you effectively give two different definitions of a word. "Say no to rubbish" (6 letters) = refuse. Again, it's fun to make them up, and I don't know of an Internet site for that, so it's all down to the "secret telly girl", as Poirot might have said if he'd done crosswords, or for that matter, watched telly...

Of course while I was on the Wordsmith website I checked out anagrams for The Lady Killers. There were a number with deadly overtones: Deathly killers, Lethally risked, Had killer style. And some were wonderfully surreal: Daily shell trek, and my favourite, Elk threads lily.

Well, I'll let you know how I get on. As I said earlier, watch this space. Oh, and what do resting bats do? Peels (sleep upside down.) Nice.

new cover

Sharan here. It's been a busy week - lots of family gatherings and some professional commitments.  I went to a dinner last night to benefit a group that works on providing affordable housing, especially for people in addiction recovery.  They host authors every year, with the proceeds from book sales going to the charity.  Even in this economy, people were very generous.  Today I am taking  my birthday present, a spa morning, by my request.  Then it will have to be back to the grindstone until July, when my next non-fiction book is due.  I'm enclosing the cover Berkley just sent me.  Let me know what you think.  It has occurred to me that, while not a mystery, in this I get to kill everyone!

I've been a quiet Lady Killer...

This from Mary Anna Evans:

I'm looking at that subject line.  "I've been a quiet Lady Killer..."  Does that mean I've been quietly killing ladies?  Or would that be quietly Killing Ladies?  Oh, never mind...

I've been busy while I wasn't blogging.  The final version of Floodgates goes to the printer next week, or so the nice folks at Poisoned Pen Press tell me.  David Fulmer, Shamus-award-winning author of many wonderful books including Chasing the Devil's Tail, said nice things about it, including "Mary Anna Evans gets New Orleans: the tainted light, the murk and the shadows, and the sweet and sad echoes, and the bloody dramas that reveal a city's eternal longing for what's been lost and its never-ending hopes for redemption."

In the meantime, fellow Lady Killer Rhys Bowen and I have been up to no good.  We are planning a weeklong foray through Florida in August, since we both have new books coming out in July.  You'll be hearing more on that as time goes by.

We also have another exciting joint project.  I'm co-organizing a writing conference in Gainesville, Florida, from July 29 through August 1, called the Anhinga Writers Studio Summer Workshop.  This is an established conference, but with new management, we've made some exciting improvements.  For mystery writers and fans, the most important change is the addition of a course of study devoted completely to mysteries.  Rhys and I are on the mystery faculty, as is Bob Morris, who is a great writer and an all-around good guy. 

We're all very excited about our Guest of Honor--Charlaine Harris.  Charlaine has written so many wonderful books and is such a sweet human being that it's very exciting to see the success of the HBO series True Blood, based on her Sookie Stackhouse novels.  There will be a reception to honor her that's open to the public, as well as a book fair where people can get autographed books from her and our other faculty.  And for the attendees of the conference, there will be a 90-minute interview with her in the style of the Actor's Studio television program that should be entertaining and illuminating. 

For more information on the conference, go to the website-- www.anhingawriters.org --or e-mail me at maryannaevans@yahoo.com .

Now I've got to return to quietly killing ladies, because Poisoned Pen has asked me to write Book 6 in the Faye Longchamp series.  I don't know the title yet, but it's set in St. Augustine, so it will involve conquistadors, Ponce de Leon, and the Fountain of Youth.  I've just got to finish it in time for a Columbus Day 2010 pub date.  That should be no problem.  Probably...