Been a really wonderful couple weeks… and to think I was dragging my heels, thought staying home and working on the next Dee Rommel was what I SHOULD be doing. Boy, was I wrong!
Jule Selbo
On October 29, I had the opportunity to be on a panel at Concord Massachusetts’s amazingly gorgeous library, thanks to crime writer Kate Flora. The other panelists were Joseph Finder and Janet Raye Stevens … Kate interviewed us and the place was full! What did I learn? That these two wonderful writers keep their work close to their own vests, don’t seek out input from others, are patient with themselves and, for the most part, guide themselves through draft after draft – and then rely on their editor for the final ‘thoughts’ that might be considered before publication.
From there I went to NYC to see my friend (Maureen Kelly Stewart) perform her cabaret show at Chelsea Cabaret Club on 26th Street. The name of her show was THE STANDARDS, PERFORMED MY WAY.
Her interpretations of music from the 1930s, 40s, 50s and a few from the 90s – were fabulous – because I heard the lyrics in new ways. “What makes a ‘standard’” ? she asked the audience. Her answer – a song that not only LASTS through generations, but that has a universal emotion that continues to hit people in lots of different decades. Made me think about the ‘older’ crime/mystery novels that we still read – because of the characters that still speak to us.
In NYC I went to the Broadway show ‘Maybe Happy Ending’. This is a show about two robots – their masters no longer have use for them, so they are in ‘retirement’ but miss their old masters and workday. Where do they put that love and devotion? There’s tension between them at the start – but then they fall in love with each other. And how two robots travel that journey – a wonderful premise.
We walked the HIGHLINE to the Whitney Museum for the Roy Lichenstein show and took a docent tour. I learned that Roy gravitated to a teacher at Ohio State who had an inventive way of working with artists to explore WHAT THEY SEE and HOW THEY SEE it by using flashing lights and object manipulation. I learned that Roy’s work was panned, over and over, but he didn’t care, he kept on.
I learned that Roy was a generous soul and allowed young artists to copy his work (which they did, almost dot by dot). He said, go ahead copy – and use the exercise to find your own voice. I learned that many fellow artists, like Warhol, bought Roy’s work, even if the critics were unkind.
We went to THE POCKET, a new jazz club that recently opened mid-town.
The Charlie Mingus Band was playing. Charlie is deceased, but his wife used her own money to form this band so that Charlie’s contemporary jazz compositions would not go unplayed. The band has been together for over a decade now and play all over the world. How each instrumentalist plays off each other and riffs and changes and goes back to the written sheets was inspirational.
The place was sold out and all ages were there – people in their 20s and older – up to age 80s…. each piece seemed to tell a story and the ‘leaders’ of the band directed it all with waves of their saxophones.
Then election night. Wow. To be able to share that with NYC buddies while eating homemade lasagna and carrot cake at an Election/ Birthday and Happy Engagement Party
Wow.
Then arriving at CRIME BAKE to experience Dedham’s Hilton Hotel again. The disaster serves as a bonding experience with all the writers. Despite food that was nearly inedible, despite a fire alarm going off as the banquet was about to begin, despite the carpeting that is held together with duct tape, despite the bar not opening until after 5 pm and 270 writers (most who enjoy a drink) trying to get the ONE bartender’s attention – it was a great conference. I got to moderate a panel BOOK TO SCREEN and present questions to Tracy Sierra, Wayne Beach, Travis Kennedy and Joe Finder (I wanted him to sing because he had been a Whippenpoof during his college days, but we kept to the chosen topic). Again, the SOLE AUTHOR idea was explored. All four of my panelists were on this side of the fence: don’t ask for input from others too early. Find the story you want to tell – don’t be swayed.
And I agree. There’s always that impetus of WHY DID I DECIDE TO WRITE on this PLOT OR TOPIC OR CHARACTER that we might not identify until later in the process. We must listen to ourselves first.
Congrats Crime Bake organizers! So well done.
Taking time off for all of the above – worth it. Inspiration everywhere.
A few things I’m going to commit to:
If you are in and around Portland this week, I hope you can join Rebecca Turkewitz and I in conversation about the Best American Mystery and Suspense.
Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Gabi Stiteler (Monday), Jule Selbo (Tuesday), Brenda Buchanan (Thursday), and Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Friday).
Kate Flora: A perfect example of how dazed and dizzy I am is that yesterday, I wrote a whole post, pressed the button to have it post on the website, and it disappeared into the ether. That’s how things feel these days. Between the constant barrage of requests for money from everyone in the country, nerves about the election, and the disjointed effect of the time change, at least once a day I’m convinced that my brain has failed.
New England Crime Bake. That should be fun if I can only organize my thoughts and remember how to do a power point. It also says I’m going to moderate a panel on Sunday. It says there’s a dentist appointment, a hair appointment, two more “maintenance’ appointments and then a quick trip back to Maine to preview the marvelous Gardens Aglow at the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden. When, exactly, are those quiet late fall days sitting at my desk writing?
What does that look like? Unlike those of my fellow writers who are plotters or pantsers, I’m a cooker. I don’t write out elaborate notes. Nor do I sit down and start writing and see where the story goes. I start working on the plot and wondering. Wandering around for a few months asking questions. Who was killed? Why were they killed? Who killed them? Who else wanted them dead, and why? What will I put at the crime scene that will help the investigation? And so forth. I often say that, like Paddington Bear, during this process I should wear a little tag that says ‘please look after this author. Thank you.’ And on the back, when I’m found staring blankly at the frozen peas, ‘If found, please return to…’ and my address.
The scary part revolves around a ghost-dog wailing in the night. I’m not sure why it scared me so much, because by then, I’m going to guess I was around 10 or 11, I was reading plenty of mysteries and horror without any adverse effects, but even seeing the cover now gives me a chill. I guess it’s the combination of something frightening and unexplained up against the need to do what’s right and vulnerability? The heroine was trying to save an abused horse owned by scary crazy person on a neighboring farm. The ghost must’ve been written in a way that made it terrible and inexplicable. I don’t even remember and I still can’t say. I do remember the feeling it gave me. As kids, we had a habit of reading out loud to each other. I’m not sure how this happened in our otherwise unruly and cranky group, but we did up into the early teen years of us older kids, when it faded away. Anyway, I have a vivid memory of being in an upstairs room on a summer night with the window open and hearing my brother, on the patio below, reading the book to our younger siblings. I’d already read it, and I knew what the resolution was, and I still had to shut the window.
The only thing that compares is a few years later, when I was 14, and inexplicably home alone on a chilly, dark fall day. For hours, I read “In Cold Blood,” by Truman Capote. Our dog kept barking for no reason and I several times got up to look out the windows and make sure there were no mass murderers lurking out there. I even locked the doors, which we never did at our house in Augusta, since there were so many of us coming in and out at all hours (including the occasional stranger, a post for another day). It’s one of the few times in my life that I remember being happy when people returned home and I was no longer alone in the house. Boo!
Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson: I don’t remember being scared by any book when I was a child (movies, yes–the cyclops in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad had me looking over my shoulder for weeks after I saw that one.) but I do know what book terrified me most as an adult. That was Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, with his Salem’s Lot as a close runner-up. Much as I admire him as a writer, I’ve never read another of his books except for the On Writing. He’s just too darned good at evoking terror. This was the novel, by the way, that King said scared even him and I believe it. As an aside, years later, an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer made use of the same, shall we say unsettling possibility, but in televised form I found it much less upsetting. Go figure.
te Flora, had a hundred acres of fields and woods, and our house was set a quarter-mile from the road, a driveway that was only passable on foot in the winter. We had wood stove heat only. The only running water was cold. And the house was built by my father, who’d never even built a birdhouse before. In the chill of the winter, the wind whipping the zero-degree temperature into minus digits, I was reading this fine book by myself, huddled on the couch, probably because I was too lazy to add a log to the fire, when I came to the part where the large demonic pig, Jodie, is seen outside the house, looking in with large glowing red eyes. I will swear to this day that I looked up at that point, across at the window, and saw those two large glowing eyes staring at me. I’m not sure if I ever finished the book, as I blacked out most of the next two years of my life in sheer terror that Jodie was hunting me.
Kait Carson: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I don’t remember how old I was when I read the book, but it terrified me. I grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey, home of the then main campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University, and Iviswold Castle. Built in 1869, the Castle, as we called it, was originally known as Hill House. Despite the subsequent name change, and despite the building’s use as classroom space and administrative offices, the legend stuck. Generations of Rutherford kids dared each other to sneak into the ‘dungeon’ where all manner of horror, and certain death, awaited.
