The LadyKillers

News and All-Time Faves

NEWS FLASHES!!

The big news this week: LadyKiller Staci McLaughlin (every other Saturday) has her debut cozy mystery coming out Tuesday, July 3! Cue the fireworks for Going Organic Can Kill You.

 

Favorite All-Time Authors

This week, the LadyKillers talk about their favorite all-time authors. Who are your favorites? Be sure to drop by this week and let us know!

Libraries I Have Loved -- by Sharan

The main branch of the Multnomah County library in Portland was my haunt all through high school.  It was built in 1913 with palatial staircases, high ceilings and long windows.  I did all my term papers there and discovered authors both modern and lost in time.

It has always been my ideal of what a library should be.

Like Ann, I grew up with the idea that silence was the cardinal rule for libraries.  Recently, I’ve noticed that it is no longer the case.  At first this bothered me.   Then I started paying attention to the nature of the noise: a storyteller enthralling children and adults, people being tutored in math, parents reading to their children and librarians giving reference information.  That is what a library should be, even if Marian the Librarian might not approve.

Over the years, I have had the chance to do research in some elegant libraries.  Two of the best are the Cathedral library at the University of Durham in England.  It is part of the cathedral complex, a thousand years old, in a long room that used to be a monks’ refectory.  To leave, I walked through the cloister and into the church, past the grave of St. Cuthbert near the altar.  The Richelieu branch of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris is six hundred years younger but redolent of the extravagance of pre-revolutionary France.  Now it houses manuscripts from the Middle Ages to the present.  One of my greatest thrills was to be able to look through a manuscript I had been studying.  I put my hand up to turn the page and saw the roughened mark in the vellum where thousands of people over the past 800 years had touched it. 

But architecture doesn’t make a good library, of course.  One of the most important libraries I found was just a wall across from the coat rack at the one-room school house in Egegik, Alaska.  This collection not only provides book for the students but is the only library in a town inaccessible by roads with a population that dwindles to only about 100 people each winter.  This is the best kind of public library.

As a writer and historian, I have amassed a fairly comprehensive collection of my own.  For years I dreamed of having all the books out of boxes and arranged on shelves where I could get to them every time I needed a reference.  About fifteen years ago, I bought a house solely because it had a long room that might have space for them all.  My sister designed it and had it built and now I have my own quasi-elegant library, although the collect has expanded to the point that there are boxes under the stairs again.  It is often cluttered with papers and noisy with children or meetings, but I have finally come to terms with my antiquated notions of what a library is and I revel in it.

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Breaking News: Sharan will be on the Barbara Simpson show tomorrow (Saturday) at 5:00pm, talking about the end of the world.  The link to listen on line is:  http://www.ksfo560.com/showdj.asp?DJID=2364

The Future of Novels is Not in Herndon, Virginia

I've been reading this week's topics like a junkie, twitching and sweating. I just can't get enough of thinking about how new means and modes of communicating might change the novel. After all, the current form is hundreds of years old, and its general narrative structure is older even than that. 

So, until I came out to Herndon, VA for work, I had planned to be the opposite of our own Michael Black and wax rhapsodic about the future of serialization, the cell novel, and all that jazz. Time for a change! We all love literature, who cares if it's in a new form? The novel is dead, long live the novel!

But then, reality attacked:

  I went to a chain bookstore on a charitable mission, to take snaps of my friends' books. Turns out authors adore pictures of their books in farflung places. I was excited to have something Useful To Do while far from my San Francisco home. Eyes shining with joyous anticipation, I clambered out of the white rental car in the stifing humidity (who knew humidity could stifle even without an excess of heat?). I darted into to the first bookstore I found. Bookstores anywhere always feel like home to me.

  As luck (or excellent publisher relations) would have it, one friend's book was face front, on the aisle. I took my time setting up the shot, but just as I snapped the photo, a stern and disapproving voice shattered my concentration and shook my shooting hand!

"You can't do that." She wouldn't look me in the face, but her tone was firm.

"But I've done this all over the country. It's for the authors." Ah, sweet naivete, how I miss thee.

"[Name-deleted-to-protect-the-innocent] would prefer you not take photos. Copyright, you know." I did know about copyright, especially fair use exceptions, but felt an ethos-type appeal would sway the short, stout, grandmotherly type who was currently looking at me as if I had rabies or perhaps the mange.

"I've done this in this very chain and no one has ever said anything."

"They must not have seen you," she said over her shoulder as she hurried on, still never having looked me in the eye.

"NO!" I shouted uselessly, impotently, down the row of books after her. Patrons stared at me, and staff steered a wide berth. I'm not ashamed to say I was hurt to think I'd broken a rule, and incensed to think she'd just made it up because, well, normal people don't take pictures of books so I must be doing something bad and wrong. I felt like a child.

So like any thwarted child, I went outside and defied the mean lady. I took a dozen pictures from the public street where I couldn't be stopped. This made me feel better, until I realized no one from the store could even see what I was doing, much less disapprove but have no power to stop me. And it  didn't get me closer to my goal of taking snaps of my friends' books for their personal and private enjoyment.

Two days later I went back and took snaps, completely unmolested by the college students staffing the store at the time. Juliet Blackwell and Sophie Littlefield, your books are flying off the shelves in old Virginee!

These shots would have been better, but I was scared that the store manager would catch me and call the cops. Sorry for the crooked angles and flash burns...

I didn't have the courage to stand on the end of the aisle and fix this picture, ruined by the store manager's commands:

Game of Lies by Rebecca Cantrell, not that anyone can tell

I know for sure that the future of novels does not reside in the [Name withheld] bookstore in Herndon, VA. No love for books or authors or readers there, at least in the heart of one store manager. That's okay, there's plenty of love elsewhere in the world--no matter what shape the novel takes, as long as we're truly human we'll crave each others' stories. Of this I have no doubt.

The Vegetables! The Vegetables! - by Kate Gallison (Irene Fleming)

  
Please welcome today's honored guest at the LadyKillers: Kate Gallison, aka Irene Fleming. Kate Gallison has been at various times a store clerk, a computer programmer, a technical writer and a museum docent. Her published writings include three private eye novels (the Nick Magaracz series) and five traditional mysteries featuring Episcopal minister Lavinia Grey. Under the name of Irene Fleming, she writes a series about silent movie production in the early twentieth century. The first of these, The Edge of Ruin, is available from Minotaur Press. The second, The Brink of Fame, was released just yesterday! 

She is descended from a convicted Salem witch.

Read more about her and her books at http://www.kategallison.com/.

Here in the Delaware Valley, CSA stands not for Confederate States of America but for Community Supported Agriculture, which is the deal where you pony up a sum of money the previous winter to get fresh organic vegetables and occasional fruit all summer long and up into November, God and the weather permitting. The folks at the Honeybrook Organic Farm in Pennington have been providing this service for some years now, rotating the crops and doing all that stuff a farmer has to do to bring forth delicious organic produce. They deliver a bushel box for us every week to  a central pickup spot a block and a half from my house.  Although one year the carrots might fail, and another year some pest or other might get the last of the tomatoes, on the whole their offerings do not disappoint.

Still, the vegetables take over your life.

The thing about tying up your grocery money in vegetables, and not just vegetables in general but specific vegetables arriving in season, is that you are pretty much forced to cook them and eat them. In the early summer, more lettuce than you can imagine consuming. In the dog days, zucchini, zucchini. And basil. Lovely basil, but you can only eat so much, and how do you get what's left to last more than two days? So What they give you forces how you eat. In the winter I might say, tra-la-la, I feel like lamb chops and peas tonight, and just go to the supermarket, but in the summer I have to figure out the best way to use what I've got. Or chop it and freeze it. Using food wisely is a good thing, one of the great old hippie virtues, but time- and mental energy-consuming.

Writers don't have all that much time and mental energy.

My book came out yesterday, THE BRINK OF FAME by Irene Fleming, a thrilling tale of old Hollywood.

I spent the day and half the night partying. Lord knows how many herbs and vegetables spoiled while I was out of the kitchen.

Organic By Michael A. Black

I must admit that this week’s blog topic, organic, really stumped me. I looked it up in the dictionary, the thesaurus, and even ruminated what the word meant to me. About the only thing that came to mind was my high school biology teacher, Mr. Cook and his provocative way of questioning us.

Mr. Cook was a nice guy. He was kind of low-key, as teachers went, preferring to integrate life-lessons along with the academic subject matter. His favorite tactic was asking the class questions, and sitting in front on the edge of the desk waiting for someone to hold up a hand to answer.

“Is your arm an organ?” Mr. Cook asked.

No one replied.

He had this way of staring at the group, then singling out individuals. Even with a question so germane to the course, the class was reticent. And Mr. Cook would sit there waiting, not offering anything more. Usually it took one person to break the stalemate, so I raised my hand.

“Mike,” he said as he called on me.

I lowered my hand. “Mr. Cook, is your arm an organ?”

Yeah, I know I was merely firing his own question back at him without offering up an answer, but this was usually the only way I could get things moving again. I sort of felt like it was my role to be his straight man. He would always seem to accept this as a break in the stalemate and would slide off the desk and begin an animated answer. He often would draw diagrams and pictures on the board. I think perhaps he was a frustrated artist.

I remember Mr. Cook offering a detailed explanation of the subject matter, starting with, “Well, as near as we can figure, it is, depending on what your definition of an organ is. If we accept the definition of an organ as being a specialized part of an animal or plant, made up of specialized tissues adapted to perform specialized and specific functions, your arm is indeed an organ.”

Aren’t you glad I settled that question? I’d hate for it to have kept you up nights wondering.

Another time Mr. Cook was lecturing us after an exam. It seemed that somehow a person from the first period class (the one I was in) had absconded with a copy of one of the mid-term biology tests before it could be administered to the afternoon students. Naturally, the afternoon students aced it, which made fairness in grading a problematic chore for the teacher. Mr. Cook was highly upset over this and the next morning positioned himself on the edge of the desk and asked another of his poignant questions.

“How many people in here cheat?” he asked.

This time, no one raised his hand. Well, I started to, but just to break the deadlock. When my hand was midway raised, I realized I couldn’t rephrase this particular question in any meaningful way to allow for Mr. Cook’s subsequent pontification. And I wasn’t the one who’d cobbed the test, either.

Luckily, if he saw my hand dart upward, then drop, he made no mention of it. This time, he just paused for effect and then went on and answered his own question.

“Well, if you can’t be honest with me, at least be honest with yourselves. Someone stole a test from my desk yesterday, and I want you to know that person not only cheated himself, but every other person in this class and the afternoon class.”

I remember Mr. Cook had these real sad looking eyes, and they looked even sadder that day. It was like he was on the verge of tears. It’s rough, sometimes when your idealism is shaken. He went on that morning talking about tests and cheating and learning and it made a lot of sense to me.

The bell finally rang and as we gathered up our books and moved out of the room a student named Ross Kilagrew (not his real name) grabbed me by the arm.

“I just want to shake your hand,” he said as we walked in the crowded hallway.

“For what?”

“For having the balls to admit you were the one who stole the test.”

“But I didn’t steal it,” I said.

His grin was wide. “Yeah, I know. I did. But now Cook thinks you’re the culprit. Way to go, Blackie.”

I was left in the hallway thinking of how things must have looked to Mr. Cook, and was sure he’d flunk me for thinking I was the test thief.

Up until then I’d been a mediocre student in his class, but I buckled down and studied pretty hard. I actually got pretty good grades on the rest of the tests in Mr. Cook’s class after that. If he held the “How many people in here cheat?” misunderstanding against me, he never let it show and I left sophomore biology with a better understanding of life’s lessons.
I also left with a pretty good idea of what was organic, and what wasn’t.

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I’m scheduled to attend the Killer Nashville conference in Nashville, Tennessee later this month. This will be my first time there, but I’ve heard great things about the conference. I’m also looking forward to the release of my new book, The Incredible Adventures of Doc Atlas--- The Doc Atlas Ominbus, from Oak Tree Press.

News and Going ORGANIC

NEWS FLASHES!!

• DENISE BARNEY is the winner of the gift basket offered by author Mara Purl in her guest post at The LadyKillers last Thursday. (Denise provided Comment #10, number picked courtesy of  Random Integer Generator at http://www.random.org/integers/). Congratulations, Denise! Please check your email so we can arrange delivery of your prize.
• Camille Minichino's "The Square Root of Murder" (Ada Madison) made the top 10 bestsellers list for July at Seattle Mystery Bookshop and Uncle Edgar's Bookstore in Minneapolis.
• Our honored guest from Thursday, Mara Purl, blogged about The LadyKillers on her own blog, here.
• We have another honored guest posting this coming Wednesday... Please drop in and see what mystery author Irene Fleming (aka Kate Gallison) has to say!

 It's All Organic

The theme of the week is ORGANIC. And lest you think this only involves food, clothing, and such, try these definitions:

• Instrumental; acting as instruments of nature or of art to a certain destined function or end.
• Of, relating to, or derived from living matter
• Consisting of different parts that all fit together well (... Hmmm. Sounds like a definition of a good book...)