Frank Sinatra

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This post will definitely show my age. When I was asked to be part of the Stiletto Gang I was surprised–and pleased. Surprised because I haven’t worn shoes with high heels for two decades. Pleased because such an invitation was certainly flattering.

Our local newspaper had an article about the timelessness of Frank Sinatra’s music in the magazine section. My mind was flooded with memories. When I was a young teen and attending junior high, I belonged to a teen club called Calling All Girls (associated with a teen magazine by the same name) sponsored by a large department store in downtown L.A. Meetings were held once a month and new on the scene entertainers attended.

A very young and skinny Frank Sinatra, complete with bow tie, was one of these entertainers. Frankly, I don’t remember too much about it except that it was exciting and when he sang we all screamed just like the girls do today. My younger sister was with me and she remembers us as all being rather silly.

As the years passed, of course Frank and his songs became more and more popular. When I met my husband-to-be, a really cute sailor, he reminded me of Frank Sinatra. Besides being skinny, he had a lock of black hair that hung in a curl over his forehead, much like Frank. My hubby also played the piano, including some of Frank’s songs. Needless to say, I was smitten.

After we married, when hubby was overseas, I could look at Frank Sinatra’s picture and superimpose the image of my husband and also do the same with Frank’s movies. As Frank aged, and hubby did too, the resemblance faded.

To this day, though when I hear Frank sing, memories of those first feelings of love for my husband flood my memory. So, now you know how ancient I am.

Marilyn
http://www.fictionforyou.com

Batter Up!

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It’s spring! Besides my allergies kicking into high gear, this is also the time when Little Leaguers are swarming through town. Every Saturday, you see scads of kids with grass-stained knees, wearing brightly colored t-shirts marked with the name of their team’s sponsor.

Once in a while, the volunteer in charge of shirts doesn’t check carefully and a typo is immortalized for the season. For example, one year my son’s team was sponsored by Ray’s Cantina, which everyone thought was a Mexican restaurant. Unfortunately, Ray Catena is a high-end luxury car dealership who thought they were spreading goodwill, not nachos, through their sponsorship. But as they say, shirts happen.

I confess that I once got snookered into serving as Commissioner of the Kickball division of Little League. It’s not a job for the faint of heart. Even then, you had some parents trying to stack the team with ringers – you know, the kid who has a late birthday, is really 14, and can kick a ball through goalposts in the next state.

The scores at these games were always 100-100, since everyone gets up to bat, each team has at least 15 kids, and nobody can make an out, even when they are holding the ball and only have to step on the bag in front of them. The multi-part concept is too much for the kindergarten set.

You could always tell the one who was the younger sibling. He’d already spent the better half of his short life in the bleachers, watching his older brother or sister play some game. Finally it was his turn: he was the one on a team. He’d swagger up to home plate and with great flourish, pull on his older brother’s batting gloves. The fact that this was kickball was too subtle a point. He’d draw back and kick the ball with a ferocity envied by the New York Giants. Of course, sometimes, he’d hit nothing but air and it would take quick thinking on the part of the coach to avoid a full preschooler meltdown. Other times, the young athlete would barely touch the ball and it would dribble pathetically down the line to third base, while the entire assemblage of parents would cheer with enthusiasm rivaled only by the Dallas Cheerleaders. You could always tell the first-time parents by the decibel level they could reach if their offspring managed to connect foot to ball.

In any case, no matter where the ball was kicked, the entire opposing team would head, en masse, after it, while anyone on base would merrily circle the infield, sometimes multiple times, running up the score. Often coaches would mercifully call the game for darkness, which was the result of the adults putting on sunglasses and declaring, at 10 am, that it would soon be dinnertime.

I’ve been doing spring cleaning and recently focused on the stash of trophies my kids have been hoarding, proof of their hours on the field of battle. I’ve got four kids so the mantle in the family room is a mini-village of faux-brass miniature sports players. The math gets too complicated for me, but four kids, times three sports seasons, times countless years equals…? Since I don’t think there is much of a market for recycling these homages to youth athletics, I’m tossing the whole bunch into green garbage bags and praying the trash men can heave them into their trucks.

I’d tell you that I miss those days…and since I’m a fiction writer, I could probably make it stick. But this is a mystery blog, so instead I’m trying to fashion a suspense-filled storyline from my experiences in the bleachers. How’s this? It’s bottom of the sixth. Bases loaded. Score tied. Championship on the line. And then….

Evelyn David

The Old Desert Island Scenario

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Joanne Dobson is the author of the Professor Karen Pelletier mystery series, Quieter Than Sleep, The Northbury Papers, The Raven and the Nightingale, and Cold and Pure and Very Dead from Doubleday and Bantam, and The Maltese Manuscript from Poisoned Pen Press. Until recently she taught literature and creative writing at Fordham University. She is now at work on Death Without Tenure, available from Poisoned Pen Press in 2009.

If I were stranded on a desert island, what three books would I want with me? Okay, Evelyn David, I’ll take up the challenge. It’s a hoary topic, but if it’s good enough for a Malice Domestic panel, it’s good enough for me.
Just let me say—first of all, I wouldn’t be stranded on a desert island; the merciless sun can cause melanoma, sand in my shoes gets annoying, and I don’t particularly like coconut milk. I’d be blizzard-stranded in a cozy log cabin somewhere in New Hampshire, with a kerosene lamp, a month’s worth of kerosene, a winter’s stack of firewood, a wood-burning stove, and plenty of matches. I’d have a pantry full of cans and boxes and an outdoor cache of moose meat built high above the reach of wolves and coyotes, like Kate Shugak in Dana Stabenow’s Alaska mysteries. What am I forgetting? A cell phone charged sufficiently so that I could let the handsome local Forest Ranger know exactly where I am. That should do it.
That’s fantasy life. In real life, I truly was stranded in a blizzard, and I truly did have a stash of books. This was about fifteen years ago in early March. It was semester break and my husband and I were leaving for a week in Louisville, Kentucky from our home in Westchester County, New York. We were packed to go when I heard on a newscast some chilling (pun) words: Blizzard of the Century. You can imagine the marital disagreement for yourself, but when we got to the part where my husband said, “you are such a wimp,” I gave in—on two conditions. The first was that we stop at a local deli and buy a quart thermos of coffee, two huge roast-beef sandwiches and a stash of chocolate bars. The second, and more important, was that we also stop at the library. I took out six mystery novels, the maximum allowed. Praise all the gods of book-heaven for the latter, because we spent the next four days at a Holiday Inn in State College, Pennsylvania, eating (once we’d finished the roast-beef sandwiches) powdered eggs, instant mashed potatoes, packaged macaroni and cheese, tuna-noodle casserole—whatever the also-stranded hotel workers could come up with from the storage room.
And we read. When the power began cycling off and on, we read during the day and slept at night, woke up with the first sun and read some more. I’d chosen some favorites from familiar series, but the only title I remember for certain was Lindsay Davis’s The Silver Pigs. I remember that because it was the first in the Marcus Didius Falco historical series and it was so funny and the setting was so convincing, it transported me from a cold motel room in late-twentieth-century Pennsylvania with its closed-down Interstates directly to the Roman forum, first-century A.D. It was much warmer there.
So, going back to the desert-island, cabin-in-New-Hampshire scenario: how long would I have to be there? If it were to be forever, then there’s no question. Forget the three books, this is MY fantasy. I want every single one of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin stories—both the novels and the short stories. I want them for the food, I want them for the orchids, I want them for the town house on Thirty-fifth Street, I want them for the familiar streets of New York City—and I want them, most of all, for Archie.

Joanne Dobson

Author of the Professor Karen Pelletier academic mysteries
Forthcoming: Death Without Tenure, Poisoned Pen Press, 2009

I said, “No Thank You.”

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I’m not sure who came up with the idea of auto-renewals of subscriptions. It probably started with magazine subscriptions or maybe newspapers. Talk someone into buying a subscription, then in the fine print put a line or two about how by subscribing once, you give them permission to keep charging you without notice when your subscription expires.

Today you will find auto-renewals embedded in the fine print of all kinds of on-line purchases – vitamins, diet foods, cds, etc. And some of the things you’ve previously purchased are now adding an auto-renewal feature. I say the word “feature” instead of “option” because often you aren’t given a choice up front.

I regularly renew my subscription to a software program that corrects registry problems on my computer. The program works great – so great that I also purchased a copy for my laptop. I’ve never had a problem with renewing my annual subscription – they send me a notice that it’s about to expire and then I renew by visiting the site and filling in the purchase information. I’ve done this for five years. The other day I was having problems with my computer at work so I purchased the program for my office computer with a license to use it on two other computers. I’d planned to buy the program for the rest of the field office computers if my co-workers found the program as useful as I had. (I would pay for the program and then be reimbursed by my boss).

This time when I purchased the program, everything worked the same except for the follow-up email I received confirming my purchase. How nice! It’s always comforting to know that an internet purchase is actually being shipped. But in the fine print of the follow-up email I discovered that my purchase included the convenience of auto-renewal. Convenience??? You don’t want to know the words I said aloud.

Okay, after I calmed down I clicked the link on the email that casually mentioned if I didn’t want this “convenience” I could visit the website and change my account settings. Sounds easy enough? Don’t you believe it! Finding my account settings was like a scavenger hunt without the clues. An hour later I worked my way through a series of titles and subtitles and found it buried about ten pages deep. Another twenty minutes and I located the place where you uncheck the box that authorized them to charge your credit card forever more. I un-clicked it. Immediately a pop-up appeared and warned me of the dire consequences of failing to auto-renew. I swore a blood oath (by checking another box) that I’d risk it.

Leaving the site, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Then my email program dinged. I had mail.

It was an email from the software company. They wanted me to confirm that I had declined the auto-renew option otherwise they would change it back.

Geez!

Okay, actually the word I used was one that I’ve told my co-author I never use.

Buyers beware! And always watch for follow-up emails – sometimes they’re not just spam.

Evelyn David

Rebate, Rebate

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There was an interesting story in today’s paper about the rebate checks that the government will be cutting and mailing shortly in a ham-fisted effort at stimulating the economy. (“But how do you really feel, Maggie?”) Interestingly, the majority of people (all New Yorkers, so not ones to mince words) interviewed for the story revealed that their rebates will be spent on bills—paying them, lowering their debt, not incurring new debt. Most people will not be going to customer-starved retailers and spending their cash. Nor will they be going out to dinner or on vacation. They want to pay their bills and will do so; any money left over, it was reported, will probably go into their savings accounts.

I was thrilled to hear this. Hearing that people want to get out of debt is certainly refreshing in this time of economic uncertainty.

Thing is, that’s not what the government wants us to do.

I’m not sure what we here are entitled to, but in thinking about it, I wondered what we would actually do if presented with a nice chunk of change. I really haven’t thought about it because a) how often do you get a check in the mail that’s real? (And I’m not counting the hundreds I get every year from a certain credit card company imploring me to change cards) and b) I won’t really believe it until the check is in my hot little hands. Honestly, my first instinct would be to pay some bills. But knowing that W doesn’t want me to do that, and not wanting to disappoint him (he’s had so many disappointments lately, hasn’t he?), here’s my short list of things to buy with $600.00:

1.The Christian Louboutin LaDonna Mary Jane Pump: $600.00. I get $300.00 for each kid, right? I’ve got two kids. Even I can do the math. It looks like, if I qualify for a rebate and I don’t put it toward the bills, I can get the LaDonna Mary Jane Pump, which would go splendidly with my Isaac Mizrahi Pencil Skirt from Target. The fashion mags tell us to mix and match, right? So why not a pair of $600.00 shoes with a cheap pencil skirt? I call fabulous on that.

2. Six Kobe Beef Porterhouse Steaks: Now, granted, they are twenty ounces each, and having just been in the presence of a twenty ounce steak, I can tell you that that’s a lot of steak. Over the weekend, I went to a ridiculously priced steak house in a city not far from here, and two friends split an order of a regular old American style twenty ounce steak. It was huge. But coming from good Irish families, they were loathe to leave anything on their plates, took one for the team, and finished off those bad boys. One of them is still marveling at the size of the steak and the fact that they were able to consume it. I’m still in shock from the fact that I paid $29.00 for chicken on a plate that I could have cooked at home.

3. Two composting toilets: Ok, granted, they are $305.99 each so you’d be a little short with your $600.00 rebate. But let’s say you have two bathrooms, like I do (although in the interest of full disclosure, only one is a full bath, the other being a 4’ x 4’ powder room that my son as appropriated as his own) and you are in the financial position to purchase two of these. And you want to go green. And you’d like to use your families’ waste to compost your own garden. Voila! The composting toilet. The web site on which I found this innovative product said that it is taking a little time for this idea to grab hold in most American households. Gee, I can’t imagine why.

4. Two HazMat suits: Say you go with option #1 and spend $305.99 on one composting toilet. You can put the rest of the money into the purchase of two HazMat suits to tend to your composted garden. Trust me, that would be a very wise investment.

So there are some helpful suggestions from me to you. I’d love to hear what you’re going to do with your rebate. Me? I’ll be paying bills.

Maggie Barbieri

Public Safety Writers Association Conference

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I’m just back from Las Vegas and the Public Safety Writers Conference. Small group, but it was terrific! Everyone had the opportunity to speak about his/her books, books were purchased and a joint booksigning at a new bookstore in Henderson was open to everyone from the con. (Cheesecake and Crime.)

Of course, Murphy was busy. The hotel kept changing our meeting room and it took all of our detective skills to track where we would be meeting next. As program chair, I had to switch things around a bit when my morning speaker, Michael Mehas (Stolen Boy), was late due to a migraine. A few other mishaps kept me on my toes–though the attendees didn’t realize what was going on.

Sunny Frazier, (When Fools Rush In) gave a terrific presentation on book covers, good and bad–and sexy.

Victoria Heckman and I instructed the members on how to write a mystery–and they participated in the planning of one–which turned out to be hilarious.

Denny Griffin told all about what it was like to work with a gangster on Frank Cullotta’s biography. (Cullotta)

This is a terrific, even though small, conference. We had the opportunity to really network and spend quality time with one another.

Not sure where we’ll be meeting next year, but keep this one in mind. Once I know more, I’ll be sure to post the information. By the way, the conference will have a name, Crime Writers and Crime Fighters.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

Evelyn David At Malice Domestic XX

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Malice Domestic XX. It’s a huge conference, but people are as friendly as they can be. Here is my “real time” diary of the event.

Part 1 – Friday

Drove down from New York this morning. Let’s say it was nobody’s finest hour. We’d put out a MySpace bulletin that Evelyn David would be bringing chocolate to Malice. About 40 minutes from the house, I asked my husband if he’d put the candy in the trunk. He assumed I had. The mystery is that we both lived to tell (and now to laugh) the tale. We zoomed back over the GW Bridge, picked up the candy, and headed back down the turnpike.

Finally arrived at the hotel and rode up in the elevator with Jim Lavene. He and his wife, Joyce, write the Peggy Lee Garden mysteries, as well as the Stock Car Racing series. They’ve got two new mysteries series about to debut. I was on a panel with them at last year’s Malice. Plus Joyce is a master gardener. I’m always impressed by authors who keep several series going at once. Carolyn Hart has three series — who else?

This evening is a lecture by the Poison Lady. I’ll be taking careful notes since poison seems like a clever murder weapon! There’s also two other programs tonight, plus a reception. Tomorrow the panels kick off at 9 and go through the Agatha awards banquet. Should be an exhausting, but fun/interesting day.

And by the way, dropped off the chocolate in the hospitality room — and it’s almost gone. Mysteries and chocolate definitely go together!

Part 2 – Friday

“It’s incredibly easy to poison somebody.”

Just came from a fabulous session by Luci Hansson Zahray, otherwise known as The Poison Lady. She’s a toxicologist who loves mysteries (reads 300 books a year!). She had lots of suggestions for how to incorporate poison into a murder mystery. For example, some plants are safe to eat in the Northern states, because of the short growing season, whereas the same type of plant is toxic in the South because of the long growing season. Toxicity increases over time — so it might be safe to ingest in May, but by August, deadly. Think of the possibilities for the clever killer who knows his poisonous plants. He declares his innocence because he ate the leaves from the same plant in his salad in the spring. Wasn’t his fault his victim died in August eating a tainted salad!

Zahray told scary stories about ricin. Derived from the castor bean, if you ground up enough beans to equal the weight of a nickel — you could kill 100,000 people.

A bit of trivia that should appear in some novel…heroin, a morphine derivative, got its name from “heroic effort against pain.”

At the opening ceremonies, I sat next to Robert Barnard, British author who flew in to conduct the interview with Peter Lovesey, who is receiving the Malice Lifetime Achievement award. I also saw Chris Grabenstein who blogged at The Stiletto Gang today; Agatha nominees Hank Ryan Philippi and Elizabeth Zelvin; and new author Rosemary Harris. I met Michael Allen Dymmock, author of the Jack Caleb/John Thinnes series.

I’m going to be broke by the time I finish buying all the books of all the authors I meet or hear this weekend. More later — two more programs tonight!

Part 3 – Saturday

Just finished attending a wonderful panel, “Cozy Up to these Sleuths: What Does a Cozy Make?” A fascinating discussion about the cozy genre with Carolyn Hart, Jane Cleland, Audrey Friend, Mary Ellen Hughes, Emilie Richards, and G.M. Malliet moderating.

Carolyn Hart was incredibly thoughtful in her response to whether she liked the term “cozy.” She said she “loathed the term” because it was originally used by Raymond Chandler as a “diss” about Agatha Christie. She prefers the term “traditional” or “classic” mystery. Carolyn explained that “I don’t write ‘cute’ mysteries. I write mysteries dealing with human emotions, dealing with right and wrong.” She added that the traditional mystery avoids gratuitous sex and violence. It’s not that those elements aren’t in the classic mystery, but it’s how they are presented. She gave as an example, Agatha Christie’ s book, “The Body in the Library.” Set in St. Mary’s Mead, a small town, and yet “if you look past its intimate setting, it’s a very grisly book.” She added “I’m very proud to be a mystery writer.”

The panel discussed the elements of a cozy mystery and suggested that these include: a closed setting, limited number of suspects, the killer knows the victim, a plausible method of murder, and forensics can be mentioned by are not intrinsic to the solution.

The panel was asked: if you were stranded on a desert island, which three mystery books would you take with you? One admitted that she wanted a book on how to build a raft! but Agatha Christie’s “Then There Were None,” was mentioned several times, as were books by Robert Parker and Josephine Tey. Got me to thinking which ones I would take…how about you?

Off to a panel on the paranormal called “Touch of Woo-Woo.”

Part 4 – Saturday

Full disclosure: I’m the wrong half of Evelyn David to be at a paranormal panel. The Southern half loves this genre. Me? I get scared by the stuff.

After this panel, though, I might pick up some of these books. The authors were hysterical. Apparently hanging out with ghosts, zombies, shape shifters, brings out the funny! All agreed that they needed some humor in their books, otherwise they’d get “bogged down.

Moderated by Maria Lima, the panelists were Lorna Barrett, Lillian Stewart Carl, Casey Daniels, Carole Nelson Douglas, and Elena Santangelo. Two of the panelists say they were attracted to the paranormal mystery because they love history. Lillian Stewart Carl described how most historians will experience an “epiphany” when they visit a historical site, “almost a haunting…that moment when you can envision exactly what happened.” It’s that perspective that motivated her to write her books. It struck me that whether it’s the paranormal or a more traditional classic mystery, we see that “aha” moment in the reveal when the hero/heroine can described exactly what happened – and why.

When asked why she included ghosts in her book, Casey Daniels had both a funny and an honest answer. She said that the ghosts in her book were used for comedic effect, but also added that she did believe in ghosts herself, so she thought it was natural to include them in a book.

All the authors insisted that the mystery cannot be solved via the paranormal, that is, that it can’t just be a magical reveal. The protagonist has to “solve” the case, even if the answer lies in the paranormal.

We wrote one paranormal short story, “I Try Not to Drive Past Cemeteries.” I wasn’t sure how to write a novel-length paranormal story — but this gave me some ideas. It’s one of the values of mystery conferences – the opportunity to explore new directions.

Part 5 – Saturday

This panel had an interesting slant — from the point of view of the villain in a mystery. It was called, Cruella de Villain: Unforgettable Killers Make Good Mysteries.

The panelists were Suzanne Aruda, Jan Burke, Ellen Byerrum, Clare Langley Hawthorne, and Roberta Iseleib. Triss Stein was the moderator.

Lots of interesting thought-provoking ideas. Jan Burke emphasized that villains need to be complex characters. She says it’s a cop-out just to have “He’s crazy,” as the motive…”the villain’s world must make sense.”

Laughed when Ellen Byerrum described taking a PI class. Said she flunked “surveillance” and had to take “remedial surveillance.”

When asked where they find ideas for their villains, Jan Burke talked about how sometimes a character “won’t get out of my head.” She also pointed out that not all first ideas are winners, but sometimes you use one and as you develop your story, a better one comes along. She suggested that it helps not to “over-direct” your creativity and sometimes ideas will develop as you let your imagination wander.

Fascinating discussion about male versus female villains. Statistics say there are fewer female serial killers — but that is changing.

Also loved the comment about the writing life by Suzanne Arruda. She said “Writing is like combing my hair. There will always be a big knot. I have to tease it out rather than rip it out.”

Part 6 – Saturday Night

Just got back from the Agatha Awards Banquet. It’s always so inspirational — and funny. The people who create fictional murder and mayhem are some of the funniest people I’ve ever seen.

Daniel Stashower was the Toastmaster. Incredibly articulate and also incredibly funny. He did a wonderful job moving the evening along – and he also won an Agatha tonight for editing “Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters.”

Elizabeth Foxwell, a mystery historian, gave a brilliant talk on the need to preserve the letters and papers of classic mystery writers of the past, as well as how to promote the genre in the future.

Peter Lovesey won the Malice Lifetime Achievement Award. Handsome and debonair, he explained that “behind every amazing man is an amazed woman.” The crowd cracked up. He then said that he wanted to give a lifetime achievement award to his amazing wife, Jacks, whom he called “my inspiration, first editor, and main reader.” He then walked off the stage, gave a hug and kiss to his wife, and handed her a jewelry box. Wow! He then came back to the stage and gave a funny and gracious acceptance speech.

Lindsey Davis was presented an award as the International Guest of Honor. It was her first time at Malice and she too had the crowd in stitches.

Finally, came the Agatha Awards. Sarah Masters won the Best Children/Young Adult Fiction; Donna Andrews won the short story award; Hank Phillippi Ryan won best first novel; and Louise Penny won best novel of the year.

Malice Domestic is a delightful mystery conference, chock full of writers, readers, editors, agents, all sharing a love for the cozy, traditional, classic mystery. It’s been great to be here. Learned alot, laughed alot, and can’t wait to come back.

Evelyn David
http://www.evelyndavid.com

Second Acts

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A confession. I watch Dancing with the Stars…religiously. I’ve never had any interest in other reality shows. I’ve got zero interest in camping out with strangers for a month even to win a million dollars on Survivor. My idea of roughing it is a motel without room service.

But, in a little corner of my mind, I can see myself gliding across the floor in the arms of a tall gentleman in white tie and tails performing a Viennese Waltz.

Some critics say Dancing with the Stars is just another boot camp for D list stars, willing to boogie their way back into the limelight. Maybe. But the amount of work is ferocious, learning one, and now that the season is moving towards the finale, two routines per week. The way I see it, if you’re on the D list and manage to make it to the final Dancing four, you’ve earned a promotion to the C list at the very least.

I wasn’t surprised, but slightly saddened, by the elimination in the last two weeks of Priscilla Presley and Marlee Matlin. ‘Cilla is no spring chicken, the grandmother of two, soon to be three kiddies. And Marlee, while considerably younger, is also past the traditional Hollywood babe age.

But there they were, kicking up their heels, Cilla performing a split for goodness sakes – and enjoying the prime of their lives. Whatever they had done and achieved in the past, and it’s been significant for both, they are continuing to challenge themselves in the second act of their lives.

Which got me to thinking of how Dancing with the Stars and Evelyn David have a lot in common. (Buckle your seatbelts, this may be a crazy ride.) To be deliberately vague, let’s just say that when we wrote Murder Off the Books, neither half of Evelyn David was eligible for a student discount at the movies. Just to be clear, however, we weren’t eligible for the senior citizen early bird special either. But one of the best parts of the success of our book is that it has opened a new chapter (pun intended) in our lives. Rather than buy a red convertible and find some new arm candy to deal with any mid-life crises, we wrote a mystery. Then we learned a whole series of new “routines,” like promotion and public speaking. We discovered that our second act is as exciting, challenging, and fulfilling as anything that we’ve done before.

Shall we dance?

Evelyn David
Murder Off the Books by Evelyn David
Murder Takes the Cake, coming Fall 2008
www.evelyndavid.com

Perception, Reality, and Hyper Happy CVS Customers

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Anthony Award-winning Chris Grabenstein writes fabulous adult mysteries and thrillers. Hell Hole,the newest of the John Ceepak/Jersey Shore books, will debut this August. He also writes the Christopher Miller holiday thriller series. In May, look for Chris’s newest project: The Crossroads, a spine-tingling spooky ghost story for middle schoolers. The Stiletto Gang welcomes Chris Grabenstein!

A couple weeks ago, I was sitting in one of those Dilbert cubicle offices at our local Citibank branch, waiting for the management trainee (nice lady, but I suspect it was her first day on the job) to return once again from the Manager office – the real manager as evidenced by the fact that she had a) an office b) no mere mortal could deign approach said office c) it was behind all that brick-thick Plexiglas where they keep the new five dollar bills with the purple ink that my wife loves.

I’m sitting at the bank for the worst reason possible: someone has been forging checks on our account (look for the name Michael Butler to show up in one of my books soon. I’m not sure who he’ll be but, most likely, it will be a character who is pimply jerk with bedwetting issues and very frilly, feminine penmanship).

That’s all I want to do: stop payment on the forged check, close the account, find the forger, draw and quarter him/her, restore a sense of justice to the world. Hey, I write mysteries. The assistant manager keeps asking me if, while I’m there, I would like to take out a home equity loan. Maybe sign up for a mortgage. I think I get free airplane tickets if I do. I wonder if this is why we are currently weathering a mortgage meltdown crisis? Too many airplane tickets for folks who sign up for adjustable rate mortgages when they came in for a roll of quarters so they could do their laundry.

Anyway, I digress.

I meant to be writing about perception and reality.

Maybe it’s because, even though Ceepak Mystery #4 HELL HOLE won’t be out until July 22, 2008, I’m already working on book #5. It takes place in Atlantic City and deals with manipulated realities: a murder backstage at a world famous illusionist’s show playing in the casino’s main theatre. Lies everywhere to confound Ceepak’s honor code! As Bruce Springsteen says in his new song Magic, which, of course, will be quoted in the book: “Trust none of what you hear and less of what you see“

As I sit in the cubicle, admiring the cubicle school furniture all around me, wondering if it will ever rival Stickley, I see this poster. An ad.

For the record, I spent 17 years writing and producing TV, radio, and print advertising. I am still fascinated by the manipulation of imagery for devious purposes.

On the Citibank poster, here is what is depicted: An Asian dude, probably in his mid twenties, headphones strapped over his ears, orange shirt artfully open so one can see the yellow T underneath it (the rumpled slob look currently en vogue so I know this Asian dude is a happenin’ young adult). He is riding a unicycle on gravel in a park.

That’s it. No headline. No body copy. Just the image of the lanky guy who sort of reminds me of that Chinese NBA star riding on one wheel like a doofus over gravel that will scrape his knees when he loses his balance.

This is a six-foot tall “dangler” – one of those posters that hang suspended from the drop tile ceilings in banks and fast food joints (I’m sorry, I meant to say QSRs – Quick Service Restaurants, because that’s we had to call Kentucky Fried Chicken when we told the world “Everybody needs a little KFC.”)

Why is this poster hanging in Citibank? Do they give out unicycle loans ala auto loans? Did he get the unicycle free with his Citibank Thank You points? The orange shirt?

There’s another poster. In the window. This one is at least semi-bankish. It shows an extremely happy older couple staring at a blue print and the bare beams of a house under construction, imagining their uber kitchen. Their dreams are coming true! Life is good! This one I get. Bank. Mortgages. Home Improvement Loans.

But there are other danglers simply showing happy, peppy people. Lots of heads tossed back in laughter. Super joy. Puppy dogs. Frolicking in leaf piles. The folks depicted in the bank look the same as the ones in the windows of the CVS drug store on 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue where they have whole windows filled with headshots of impossibly blissful, dare I say exultant, individuals.

Ethnically diverse. Fashionably dressed. Happy, peppy, and bursting with love. Inevitably, the heads are tossed back in throes of ecstasy. These giant heads in the CVS windows have never been SO GOSH DARN HAPPY!

So why am I so miserable? Sitting in the bank cubicle wasting over an hour with, unfortunately, a very nice lady who doesn’t know what she is doing.

Why am I not giddy with joy at CVS or Circuit City or any of the corporate chains that plaster these posters of happy people all over the place while paying their Customer Service (and I use that term loosely) workers the minimum wage, thereby attracting the surliest and sourest humans possible, folks who think it’s rude of
you to reach their register while they are in the middle of an interesting cell phone conversation.

The people in the pictures in the windows and dangling from the ceiling are happy.

I should be too.

It’s my fault.

This, I think, is the real reason behind the image of the unicycling Asian dude merrily wheeling his way through life at the bank, the cheerful senior citizens loving life, dentures and all, in the windows of CVS.

If I am having some problem with the slooooow service, the shabby products, with anything it’s just that – my problem. Everybody else, as I can plainly see, is having a wonderful time.

If my reality doesn’t meet the perception as depicted, whose fault is that?

Most likely mine.

I start unicycle lessons tomorrow.

Chris Grabenstein
www.chrisgrabenstein.com

Mystery Plots

/in /by

A priest hanging from a bunch of helium-filled balloons disappears. A caller reporting child abuse at a polygamist compound can’t be found. A mail carrier catches a baby who falls from a second story window. The daily news is a great source of “plot bunnies” for mystery writers. It’s just a matter of choosing a subject that will hold your and your readers’ interest for 100,000 words.

With the advent of 24-hour cable news and the Internet, today’s writers have access to an endless stream of interesting stories and events. Unsolved murders, missing persons, haunted houses, treacherous weather, family feuds, dangerous jobs, and unexplained events are wonderful building blocks for your next mystery novel. Many writers keep a notebook filled with plot ideas; others, like me, file the information away in memory for future use.

It’s time for “Evelyn David” to start a new book. Since there are two writers involved we not only have lots of plot ideas, but have to negotiate with each other to narrow the choices. Sometimes one of us will take an idea and run with it, writing a few pages to see if we can truly turn the idea into a viable storyline. I have at least five such partial stories parked on my desktop – everything from a sequel to our short story, I Try Not To Drive Past Cemeteries, to a children’s story involving Jesse James loot, to a couple who run an antique store and solve murders in their spare time. From time to time I write a little more on each, depending on my mood. I’m not sure any will ever make it to a publisher’s desk, but maybe.

How to start? I bring up a blank sheet of paper on my computer screen. I type a working title. Then save the blank page. (Note: it’s always wise to save your work every half page or so. I haven’t lost any work yet to a power surge and I don’t intend to – bowing my head and offering a silent prayer.)

It’s usually best to start in the middle of the action – the scream of the baby falling, the ring of the anonymous call, the man hanging from the balloons drifting out of sight. You want to start with the “good stuff” then back up and describe your setting and your characters. Some people work off of an outline. My co-author and I don’t – or at least we don’t have a hard and fast one. Later in the writing, as the subplots develop and begin to take on a life of their own, we start structuring the chapters and the scenes.

We keep a running list of character names, descriptions, occupations, etc. – all the details you don’t want to forget (i.e. your hero drives a Ford Bronco on page 20 and suddenly leaps into a Chevy Tahoe on page 187.)

As I mentioned earlier, it’s time for Evelyn David to start a new book.

The sticky tabs on the diaper held. Twenty pounds of screaming baby dropping two stories at the speed of gravity. Only fragments of seconds to act. Reaching up, my fingers found purchase between the leg opening and the waistband. Pampers were tough. And on sale at the local super center. Strange the thoughts that run through your mind at times like these.

Dead silence. The baby and I looked at each other in amazement. My heart felt like it was going to explode; I couldn’t seem to take a deep breath.

The baby had no such problem. The noise was deafening.

I got a better grip. The sudden moisture on my hands had me checking the baby for injuries. There were none.

The diaper was strong—but not leak proof.

Okay, not great. But it’s a start. Maybe I need to watch CNN for more ideas.

Good luck with your own writing!

Evelyn David