The Lady Killers

The Mysteriously Missing Author's Note for Leaden Skies ...

I'm a bit distracted by the upcoming release of Leaden Skies, so excuse me for blatting on about it ... But I recently had an, um, "interesting" experience: Received my author copies of the book, opened to the back where the Author's Note usually goes, and ... six blank pages. No note.

Okay, this is not on a par with world hunger or the energy crisis, just my own little personal book-related crisis (it does help to remind myself of these things and put them in perspective).

So, the mysteriously missing Author's Note is available for download from my website here (look under Leaden Skies cover).

These things happen. I recall a pr/marketing type document I worked on a couple decades ago with a designer ... It was pretty high-class for the time (and for being black & white). I still recall that feeling of horror when we got the boxes from the printer, opened them to see something like a couple thousand copies with ... a blank white cover. Well, okay, not completely blank: there was a title (thank goodness), but the very artistic high-tech graphic that was supposed to be there wasn't. The client was remarkably laid back about it, remarking something along the line of "One aw-shucks wipes out a whole lot of atta-girls." (Remember, this was long ago, 1980s thereabouts.) The document (well written, if I do say so) made its way out into the world and no one was the wiser. Probably no one else from those times remembers this "White Album" document either, except for me (and possibly the designer!).

So aw shucks. But at least the note is available, for those who are interested. And it will be included, I'm told, in future printing runs of Leaden Skies.

Fly me to the Moon

Jane here, returning to Rhys’s speculation earlier in the week about what she’d like to be. The question was triggered, she said, by a bit of computer-speak: “Choose an identity”. What a wonderful thought! What identity would I choose?

I’d choose to be an astronaut.

Think of it! To stand on the Moon, to gaze at Earth, to walk and run and live my life for a while under low lunar gravity. Yes, I know it’d mean sealed living quarters, cumbersome space-suits, and the ever-present danger of an airless environment. That wouldn't put me off. I’d like to visit Mars, to marvel at the huge mountains and canyons of the Red Planet. And if I could, I’d travel further still – to Jupiter and Saturn and their moons. And then if there was a chance of voyaging outside the solar system…

I wouldn’t want these adventures for practical reasons, though I realise how important the practical aspects are. I’m not driven by a wish to search for ET, or find precious minerals, or conquer territory. I just want to see these wonderful places, as a famous man said about somewhere else, because they are there. I bet that’s the motivation for every astronaut who’s even pulled on a helmet.

And if I couldn’t get even as far as the Moon, I’d at least like to orbit the Earth, to see the stars from space, to look at our planet as a globe, and experience the weightlessness of space.

Would I be scared? Certainly. Space-sick? Don’t know. Uncomfortable? Probably. So what? It’d be worth it.

I’ve always been fascinated by space travel, first in science fiction, then in fact. I remember the magic of those Apollo missions – heavens, the first Moon landing was forty years ago! Like many space-struck earth-people in 1969, I hoped that the “one giant leap for mankind” would have led to colonisation of at least the Moon by now. Progress has been painfully slow, but it hasn’t stopped. There’s the International Space Station, and various unmanned exploring missions going on, though sadly they don't make the headlines much. This week I sat spellbound at my computer screen, connected via the Internet to NASA while it broadcast live images coming from the moon, sent back by one of its latest survey vehicles flying close over the lunar surface. Not quite like being there, but amazing all the same!

OK, I’ll never be an astronaut. The day will come when space travel is open and affordable for people like me, tourists who are travelling to experience, not to contribute. But it's not here yet, though one or two millionaires are achieving something of the space experience already. But even if I suddenly became a millionaire (and here we move from fantasy to sheer impossibility!) I suspect I’m past the age and the fitness-level that would be required of anyone leaving the Earth.

Never mind. I can dream, and enjoy dreaming. I can cheer on the people pushing back the frontiers in space, even though the advance is slow and painstaking seen from down here. It’s still an advance, and the space dream is a dream worth having.

correction

I just tested the link and it didn't work. so let's try again.  http://www.sharannewman.com/

survey help needed

This is Sharan and I really haven't moved from the computer in a week.  I'm on the Bible Code now.  Since I believe in primary sources, I read the  article from 1994 by the men who first programed their computers to find coded messages in Genesis.  I have always heard that the right set of parameters can make statistics say anything.  Even without the algorithms their conclusions seemed pretty dicey to me.  I also read an article by some people who got even better results using a Hebrew translation of War and Peace, but I don't know what they entered to get it.  I concluded that these guys need to get out of the office and go to the beach.

Rhys suggested and I had already been considering taking a very unoffical survey, the top ten results to go in the book, if I get that many responses.  So...If you knew that the world was going to end in a week, not just your world, but everyone's, what would you want to do beforehand?  Relatively short answers are best but anything goes.  You can let me know here or, if you prefer privacy, through my website www.sharannewman.com  I've only got a few weeks before the deadline so feel free to pass the request along to anyone who might be interested.

I close with a picture that should remind people that seeing is not always enough for believing.  My firend, Joan Hess, and I were present for this alien autopsy in Roswell a few years ago.  I guess that must prove there are little grey men.

Choose an Identity

Rhys on Wednesday:

I was just about to sign in  to my Google account for my other blog when I noticed that it said, "Choose an identity." I'd never picked up on this before although I've done it hundreds of times. So now I'm intrigued. Choose an identity. Who do I want to be today? When I was little I used to pretend I was royal (hence my alter ego who is 34th in line to the throne, I suspect) I also used to pretend I was a squirrel. But today I'm rather dazzled by choice if I can be anyone in the world I want to be: the world's number one tennis player on center court at Wimbledon. An opera star singing La Traviata? Acting in a movie opposite Robert Redford when he was young and gorgeous? OR the writer of the book that will be number 1 on the NYT list. Now there's a suggestion.... maybe I'll be someone different every day from now on.

And while we're on the subject of strange computer sayings, I've always been intrigued with the words "Unknown Zone." If I were a sci-fi writer, I'd have used that by now as a title.

So it strikes me how little we take in of the words on the screen. When we click on "I agree" before we load a program or enter a site, maybe we are actually signing away our first born or our bodies to science. Who knows. Maybe everybody in  the world has agreed to leave our entire fortunes to the computer geek who created the program and he's sitting there chuckling and waiting...

Of math and such ... (and a tootle on the BSP horn re: Leadville and Leaden Skies)

Ann Parker here, Monday's child, skidding in late on a Monday evening after reading Jane's interesting post on things mathematical and numerical.

I guess I'm one of those "strange ones" who jumps from one side of the brain to the other without a whole lot of agony. I love science and math—good thing, because I've been a science/technical writer for all of my working life—and am passionate about literature and good reads as well. I think that blending disparate talents may be more common than at first blush. Within my family alone, there's an artist with a strong mathematical bent, a scientifically-aligned offspring with a musical bent, an astronomer who can't turn down a chance to be on the stage (and plays music as well), and a father who was a physician and a gifted pianist.

To move on to some historical "greats," there's Einstein (who loved music and was a talented musician ... a great downloadable paper about Einstein and how music affected his life and work is here, from Johns Hopkins, as part of the celebration for the World Year of Physics in 2005); Lewis Carroll, who was mathematically gifted in addition to being a writer, and Ada Byron—a mathematical visionary as well as a harpist. Okay, I found a list, I admit it. Check out Mixing Music/Art and Science here. There's probably something better somewhere, but it's late and I need to move along...

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Warning! Here comes the tootle on the blatant-self-promotion (BSP) horn. I guess I could say it's also BLP (Blatant Leadville Promotion, or maybe Blatant Library Promotion ... you choose).

Lake County Public Library in Leadville is sponsoring a "One Book, One Community" event, similar to those held in other towns and cities throughout the U.S., but with a twist. Instead of focusing on a single book, this local event will focus on a series: the Silver Rush historical mysteries by ... moi.

To say I'm honored and thrilled is an understatement. :-)

 Anyhow, I got my virtual hands on a copy of the press release from the library and just absolutely must include this quote from Library Director Nancy McCain: "We picked the Silver Rush mystery series because we know everyone who reads Leaden Skies will want to read all the Inez Stannert books.  Our history is part of the magic of this place and we can really sense these stories because we live here. Ann Parker blends impeccable research with imagination and rich detail that’s close to home.  So let’s read for the fun of it!”

The program runs from July 5th through August 15th, and I'll be in Leadville from August 6th through the 8th, you bet.

Are calculators dangerous?

Jane here, blogging late because I was a touch under the weather yesterday. I’m fine now, and at least I got some reading done. A mystery, of course; nothing like a good dollop of murder and mayhem to restore you when you’re not firing on all cylinders!

At the minute I’m halfway through a fascinating mystery in which the protagonist and his friends, and possibly the serial killer involved, are all mathematicians. If it ends as well as it’s begun, I’ll tell you about it. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying finding out a little about the weird and wonderful thought processes of people who spend their lives in the strange world of mathematics. So far the author is doing a good job of explaining for the absolute layperson (me) such things as Goedel's Incompleteness Theorems. (Anyone reading this who truly understands such matters, good for you.)

I’ve never had any intuitive feeling for mathematics. It’s my belief that most of us are either “word people” or “number people” and I’m the former. Well that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. I’m not even much use at most ordinary practical activities concerning numbers, having failed dismally at school to master algebra, or geometry, or even advanced arithmetic. I wish there had been calculators when I was young…or do I?

The only numbers-type thing I’m good at is mental arithmetic based on the Times Tables I learnt when I first went to school. At that young age, five or six I suppose, I was like most children; I enjoyed learning things by heart and showing off to the grown-ups. It wasn’t difficult, just part of being at school, and the facility to do simple multiplication in my head has stayed with me for always. OK, I realise this doesn’t make me numerate really; but I have acquired a useful practical skill, and if calculators had been around, I probably wouldn’t have.

From my observation of kids these days, I conclude that most of them don’t learn any mental arithmetic at all. They can’t even manage something as basic as multiplying two numbers, say, to find the price of three chocolate-bars at twenty pence apiece. They wouldn’t dream of using a pencil and paper to work out something slightly more complicated, like how much money five of them would need to travel by bus at 87 pence a ticket. If there isn’t a calculator handy, they’re stuck. I think that’s a shame, in fact more than a shame, I think it’s dangerous. It’s handicapping them unnecessarily for adult life.

Of course I’m not suggesting we ban calculators. I wouldn’t want to be without one for all sorts of jobs, from compiling my tax return to working out how much material I need for new curtains and how much it will cost. But for ordinary everyday life, I know that if push came to shove, I could manage without, if I had a pencil and paper. Are we bringing up generations of people who could not?

Let the youngsters learn some number-crunching skills themselves first, so that they don’t grow up dependent on a gadget for even the simplest bit of arithmetic. Then let them have calculators and make the most of them, because they’ll be a blessing, not a danger.

 

nice mysteries

Sharan,  moving to Thursday to see how I do in prime time.  I spent the morning on a little known Cherokee millennial prophecy from 1811.  The prophecy made a lot of sense, since it was accompanied by severe earthquakes and a comet brighter than Hale-Bopp, not to mention encroaching settlers.  But doing the research, knowing that it didn't matter how sensible and rational they were the Cherokee would still have to face the Trail of Tears, made the work really depressing.

What has that to do with mysteries?  I'm not going to write one set in the Cherokee communites, although it would make a great novel.  It's that after reading about a reality that I can't change, I don't want to read fiction filled with miserable people hurting each other.  One of my favorite writers was the late, much lamented, Charlotte Macleod. She managed to make wonderful comments on the human condition and serious issues, like religious and class prejudice and the plight of the elderly poor, in a way that was gentle.  Her characters were wonderfully idiosyncratic and the plots twisty enough that I can read them over and over and still find something I missed.

So I seem to be commenting on most of the recent posts.  I do have one minor dissension, however.  Good writing is essential, of course.  A great story is nothing without a great storyteller.  But sometimes a brilliant writer can make a harrowing story impossibly painful to read.  I get enough atrocity from the news.  Fiction is a place I go to recover.

Is that cowardly?  Sharan, tackling the Maya next.

Rejecting the Dark Side

Today I'm interviewing Louise Penny on my other blog, www.jungleredwriters.com. Please go over and check out the interview with this charming writer.

What comes out in the interview is that Louise's books have garnered international success and yet they are not sensational, violent or sexy. They take place in a small Quebec village with decent, ordinary people and a likeable, decent sleuth, Inspector Gamache.

This is interesting to me as the publishers tend to see the dark, violent thriller as more important than the gentle mystery (God forbid that I would use the word cozy). The books that sit on those bestseller tables at B and N are always about serial killers and missing children or Iranian terrorists, with sleuths that need an immediate visit to the psychiatrist to sort out their problems.

We writers of the more traditional, character-driven mystery are patted on the head and treated like the spinster aunt in the family--nice enough, but harmless and best kept in the background. And yet do readers really want the dark side?

Louise says that she created Three Pines in her books because she saw it as the kind of place she'd like to escape to. I think many people want to visit a world that makes sense, where law and order usually prevail and will prevail again when the crime is solved. This is why Agatha Christie is still read--her universe is one of order and security. When a crime occurs, that order is disrupted, but only temporarily.

So we are the Rodney Dangerfield of crime writing--we don't get no respect--and yet I think it is our books that publishers should be pushing these days. There is violence and terror enough in the real world,without falling asleep reading about it. So here's to Three Pines, and here's to Lady Georgie and all the decent, ordinary sleuths out there. Long may they flourish!

The writing's the thing (although setting helps too!) ...

Checking out Sharan and Rhys's posts of place, and Jane's comments about what makes a good mystery got me thinking about books and what, for me, makes them "tick."

What gets me reading and keeps me reading is the writing. There are books with wonderful premises, great locations, excellent plots, and characters that promise much ... but if the writing doesn't grip me by the throat and pull me in, the rest pales and falls away. When I was a child, I easily entered "the zone," where I was no longer conscious of the act of reading. The older I became, and the more writing I did, the less this magic occurred. It is easier for me to analyze the writing, hear the "clunks" in the flow, the mistakes in the music of words.
However, one writer that captivates me consistently, no matter the time, place or character, is Martin Cruz Smith. Whether he writes about 1872 England (Rose), current-day Chernobyl (Wolves Eat Dogs) or Tokyo 1941 (December 6)—he creates the world and characters so convincingly the real world falls away. If I could write only a tenth as well ...

And, I have to echo Rhys's comments about Saratoga Springs, NY. Two years ago, historical novelist Patricia Wynn and I paid a quick visit to Saratoga Springs after the Historical Novel Society Conference up in Albany, NY. The Canfield Casino, in particular, intrigued me. I'm thinking that, someday, my protagonist Inez Stannert will have to return to New York. As Rhys noted: all that racing, gambling, money ... wonderful venue for crime and nasty doings.

I think I hear Saratoga Springs calling ...