A Little Snippet from “Quick Study”

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Dear Stiletto Gang readers: I hope you don’t mind…I’m going to give you a little snippet from “Quick Study” the third installment in the Alison Bergeron/Murder 101 series that will be published on December 9. Alison’s journey begins at Madison Square Garden where she is celebrating her birthday with her best friend, Max.

If you want to read more of “Quick Study”, www.read-it-first.com will be posting excerpts all next week in anticipation of its release. Their copy, unlike this one, will be fully copyedited and proofread. 🙂

Enjoy! Maggie

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“I don’t know who you are, but I love you!”

The voice was deep, rough, and heavily inflected with the accent of one of the outer boroughs, and it belonged to the guy sitting in back of me at Madison Square Garden, home of the New York Rangers, my favorite professional hockey team. And the comment, which was directed at me, was made even more interesting by the fact that I was sitting beside my best friend, Max, who had packed her one-hundred-pound frame into a size two slinky black cocktail dress, her cleavage prominently and proudly displayed for all to see. She’s tiny but she’s got a great rack. It’s a veritable “rack of ages.” Nobody, and I mean nobody, had ever noticed me when Max was around. And we had twenty years of friendship on which to draw on, proving this point. I was not in a cocktail dress, having opted instead to wear my new Mark Messier jersey (he was number eleven and the sole reason for the Rangers’ Stanley Cup win in 1994, thank you very much), a pair of jeans that I had purchased in the last millennium, and sneakers that had seen their fair share of painting projects. My hair was pulled back into a ponytail, I had a smear of ketchup on my cheek and now, after jumping up to take umbrage at a call, a glass of beer soaking my chest. I don’t even like beer, but when in Rome…you know the rest. But apparently, when I yelled, “Shit, ref, you’re killing us! That’s a bullshit call!” after a bogus hooking penalty, I had forever pledged my troth to Bruno Spaghetti, as Max had dubbed him when we arrived, seat 4, row D, section 402.

He ran his hands through his spiky black hair and grabbed me in an embrace, his silver hoop earring brushing my cheek. Max, who had been standing for the better part of the last period and who thus had incurred the wrath of everyone behind her—many of whom had missed said bogus penalty because their only view was the back of her well-coiffed head—fell back into her seat, her cocktail dress riding up on her yoga-toned thighs. But Bruno didn’t notice; he only had eyes for me. See, we were sitting way up high in Rangerland, a place that used to be called “the blue seats,” and in which only the hardest core hockey fans sat. Now they’re teal, which doesn’t lend them the same menacing air. A gorgeous woman in a slinky black dress with spectacular boobs had nothing on a five foot ten college professor with a pot belly and beer breath who loved hockey and who could curse with the best of them.

It was my birthday and my boyfriend had given me the jersey and the tickets. Crawford—Bobby to the rest of the world—was a detective in the New York City Police Department and working overtime that night, hence my birthday date being Max. He had stopped by school on his lunch break to wish me a happy birthday, appearing in my office doorway at around one; I was preparing for my next class, a two o’clock literature seminar, and was delighted to be distracted from the critical essay on Finnegan’s Wake that was putting me to sleep. I’m a Joyce scholar but even I recognize that obscure is not the same thing as exciting and that makes my relationship with the subject of my doctoral dissertation tenuous at best. I love a challenge, though, and had spent the better part of my academic career trying to figure out if Joyce was laughing with us or at us. I was slowly coming to the conclusion that it was the latter.

I could tell that Crawford was excited by the items in the gift bag he was holding behind his back. He leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek; although he is a seasoned detective and an all-around good guy, he gets really nervous around the nuns I work with at St. Thomas University, my employer. Whenever he visits me at school, he looks like he’s on his way to detention, even though I’m sure he’s never done anything more scandalous than passing a note in class. He took the bag from behind his back and set it on my desk, settling himself into one of the chairs across from me, a self-satisfied smile on his handsome, Irish face.

I love the guy but there’s one thing that bugs me: every time he gives me an item of clothing, it’s always extra-large. I’m extra tall but not extra fat, so this concerns me. Is this how he sees me? Or does he think women should wear tent-like clothing? I still hadn’t figured it out. I held his gift aloft and spread my arms wide to examine it, full width: a Messier jersey. Despite the size, I couldn’t have asked for a better present. “Crawford! I love it!” I said and came from around the desk. I kicked my office door closed so I could give him a proper thank you, sitting on his lap and putting my arms around my neck. “Now the best present you could give me would be your undivided attention tonight,” I said, hopefully, although I guessed this wouldn’t be the case.He shook his head sadly. “I can’t. I pulled an extra shift so I could go to Meaghan’s basketball playoff Monday night.” Meaghan is one of his twin daughters; she was banking on a basketball scholarship to get her through college. I had come to realize that basketball was like a religion in that family; what teenage girl would count former New York Knick Bill Bradley among her crushes if it wasn’t?

Maggie Barbieri

Quick Study is available now for pre-order at Amazon.com

Give Yourself a Holiday Gift

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Frankly, I don’t really want anything for Christmas. I love the holiday season and everything about it, but the older I get the less I like to shop for and receive presents. I have way too much stuff already. For my kids, grandkids, and greats I’ve decided to just give money rather than spending money on something they don’t really want.

For myself, I’d rather use the money for a trip. In fact, that’s more or less what I’ve been doing the past few years. Of course money isn’t as easy to come by nor does it goes as far as it used to.

When I go on a trip, I like to somehow combine it with promotion if at all possible.

What I’d like to suggest is whether you are a mystery reader or writer, that you consider giving yourself the gift of attending a writers conference or mystery convention. There are plenty out there to choose from. Last year hubby and I went to Love is Murder in Chicago and had a great time. We’ve already signed up for EPICon which is for electronically published writers. Mayhem in the Midlands is another favorite–we love Omaha and we’ve made lots of friends who come to that convention regularly.

Another, much smaller conference, is the Public Safety Writers Conference. I’m in charge of the program for this one and I’m proud to say we have a wonderful line-up of speakers. I won’t bore you by going over the whole list, but mystery author Betty Webb will be there, Steve Scarborough who is a forensic expert, used by both the Las Vegas Police and the FBI will tell us how to write it right, we’ll have a forensic handwriting expert, a retired arson investigator and many others.

Everyone who wants to will participate on a panel if they sign up before May 1. It would be best to sign up before May 30th March 31 when the price rises. If you have a book, you may bring it to sell at our bookstore. (10 % of all sales go to PSWA.)

Because a great number of our members are or were in law enforcement, there are a wealth of people to ask all your questions about crime and crime solving. Networking is definitely encouraged.

If you are interested and would like to learn more, go to http://www.policewriter.com/ and check it out. The conference is held June 18-22 at the Sun Coast Hotel in Vegas. If you want to bring the kids, there’s lots for them to do at this hotel–swimming pool, movie theaters, and video arcade, flat screen TVs in every room.

On the Sunday afternoon that the conference concludes, those who would like to will meet at Cheesecake and Crime Bookstore in Henderson from a booksigning.

Since I’m the program chair, naturally I’ll be at this conference. From having attended this particular conference for about five years, I can tell you that it is indeed one of the friendliest around. Hubby and I manage to have fun at everything we do–but this one is right up there at the top when it comes to a good time.

For me, this is the best kind of holiday gift there is. I hope that some of you will consider this for a gift for yourself.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

Fàilte (or Welcome as they say in Scottish Gaelic)

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I’ve just returned from the land of Highland Coos – those adorable shaggy cows that look like over-sized Shih Tzus. My husband and I spent a week visiting our daughter who is spending the semester at the University of Glasgow. Don’t ask me what time it is — my internal time clock is on the fritz.

My husband is a Scottish history junkie. So for days we wandered from Cathedral to battlefield to castle ruins, he examining old relics, me sipping tea and holding an informal scone contest (which the café at St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art won hands down).

Our first stop was Rosslyn Chapel, a small fifteenth century exquisite stone church, every single inch of which is covered with ornate and detailed carvings. You probably recognize the name because it’s the site of the big reveal in Dan Brown’s thriller, The Da Vinci Code. With the publication of the book in 2003, visits mushroomed from 30,000 per year to 30,000 in a single month! By the way, talk about the power of the Internet for research – our guide told us that until they filmed the movie, Dan Brown had never actually visited Rosslyn Chapel. As a mystery writer, I was more intrigued by the whodunit our guide shared. One of the stone carvings, completed in the early 1400s, was of maize. Keep in mind that new world corn was unknown in Europe at that time, was not cultivated on the continent until several hundred years later – and Christopher Columbus had yet to sail the ocean blue! Hmmm.

My personal favorite was Paisley Abbey, built in the twelfth century, with magnificent stained glass windows. While my husband was studying the role this old abbey played in Scottish history, I was enthralled by the romantic story our guide told. Marjorie, daughter of Robert the Bruce (think Braveheart with Mel Gibson), married Walter Steward, a local nobleman. Pregnant, she was on her way to the abbey when her horse stumbled and she was thrown. The monks desperately tried to save her, but alas she died. In a twist worthy of the best of the tearjerkers, her son survived to become Robert II, the first of the Stewarts (later to become “Stuarts”) who ruled Scotland until 1689.

I found great ideas for mysteries everywhere I went (does this mean I can deduct the trip as research?). We spent an afternoon at Scone Palace (which incidentally had only mediocre scones in their teashop). This is the crowning site of Scottish kings. I loved the ornate rooms and the absolutely phenomenal collection of porcelain which dominates the bookshelves of the wood-paneled library. The owners, who still reside at the palace, made the pragmatic decision that visitors would be more interested in looking at their huge collection of china than at old books. As an author, I feel honor-bound to protest. But the unsolved mystery, which perhaps could be the storyline of the next Sullivan Investigations book, is what happened to the Stone of Destiny? Also known at the Stone of Scotland, upon which the Kings of Scotland were coronated, it was stolen by the British in the 13th century and held in Westminster Abbey until Queen Elizabeth II returned it to Scotland in 1996. Sounds good except that the stone now residing in Holyrood Chapel in Edinburgh isn’t the original, according to experts who have studied its composition. So what really happened to the Stone of Destiny? Did the Scots, knowing the British were close, hide the Stone? If so, where? What happens in a whodunit when all the major players have been dead for more than eight centuries?

Sadly, even the best of vacations have to end – otherwise, what would you be vacationing from? Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, full of cheer, love, and good food (haggis, nothwithstanding).

Slàinte (or bottoms up as we say here in the colonies!),

Evelyn David

The Mysterious Mystery

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David Stewart (1938– ) received the Ph.D. from Rice University in 1965 and taught philosophy at Rice University and the North Texas State University before moving to Ohio University in 1970. In addition to being a faculty member, Stewart served a variety of administrative roles at Ohio University including that of provost from 1993 to 1996. He was named Trustee Professor of Philosophy in 1996. Among his works on ethics are Business Ethics, McGraw Hill, 1996; Exploring Ethics (co-author), Prentice Hall, 1986; and Medical Ethics: A Reader (co-author), Prentice Hall, 1992. He is also author of Exploring the Philosophy of Religion (6th ed, Prentice Hall, 2006) and co-author of Fundamentals of Philosophy (6th edition, Prentice Hall, 2005). He has lived on St. Simons Island since 1997. After retiring from fulltime academic work he devotes time to a musical group, The Stewart-Law Baroque Trio, in which he plays harpsichord and enjoys traveling with his wife, Audrey.

After retiring from thirty years of full-time teaching I decided to write a mystery novel. As my wife and I were returning to campus one day, and just as we rose to the crest of the hill on the bypass that looks down on campus, she said, “It looks peaceful enough, but it’s a wonder that someone hasn’t been murdered.”

What? A murder in the ivory tower? It’s not really far fetched given the bitterness that often pervades relationships in any organization, and a university is no different. What might lead to murder, I asked myself. Denial of tenure? Fear of disclosure of a falsified academic record? Threats to make public plagarism in academic publications? Jealousy? Sex? Money?

I had written several textbooks, edited collections of essays, and published journal articles, but I knew that trade publishing would be a whole different thing. I searched all the usual reference books for agents whose interests reflected those of my book and began to collect rejection slips. After the number of those exceeded twenty, I began to think there must be a better way. A friend, who worked in book retailing, referred me to a press that he thought might be interested in my book, and I received a nice rejection letter stating that the book was not for them but seemed to the editor there to be perfect for the Mysterious Press imprint of St. Martin’s Press. I sent them a query and was told that they only considered submissions from agents. So, back to square one.

After concluding that agents were looking for the next John Grissom or David Baldacci, I looked for options. One was to publish part of the book on line and hope that after reading the free chapters interested persons would buy the rest of the book, download it and print it out. The complexities of that approach soon deterred me. I wanted to do something that would get the book noticed by a trade house and bypass the writer-editor-publisher track, so I turned to self-publishing.

We all have seen the vanity press ads: “Publisher seeks authors; Publication guaranteed,” and the result is a basement full of unsold books. And who wants to have the tarnish of vanity publication? Getting past that was difficult, but I became convinced that self-publication is different, especially when I found out that iUniverse was owned by Barnes & Noble. One can purchase several different publishing packages from iUniverse, even including editing services. All offer a reader’s report; mine, I am happy to report, got an “editor’s choice” award, and after publication I purchased several advertising opportunities, again hoping to get noticed.

Self-publishing as practiced by iUniverse is publishing on demand. Order the books, and they print them up and ship them out. I have a listing for Murder Most Academic on Barnes & Noble.com, and anyone can order a copy there, as several readers did. The thing about self-publishing is that the author has to do the work of promotion and marketing, which iUniverse aids by offering extensive marketing manual, bookmarks and business cards. The iUniverse contract gives the copyright to the owner and encourages its authors to land contracts with trade publishers.

I have no quarrel with iUniverse; they did everything they promised to do, but my book never got noticed by a trade house. It is my own fault, I’m sure, as I never got into the spirit of self-promotion and marketing. However, it was fun to see the book in print. I bought copies for family and friends, and I have never regretted the decision to self-publish.

David Stewart

Happy Thanksgiving

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When I was a child my Thanksgivings were spent at my grandparents. I attended two Thanksgiving dinners, one just a few hours later than the other. My paternal grandparents served a sit down dinner with tablecloths and polished silver. My maternal grandparents served a buffet with paper plates and a scramble for spare forks and spoons. One was polite exchanges and tales of relatives and friends long absent from this world. The other was multiple conversations all going at once, the worries and joys of those present bursting forth in a loud medley of voices. As a child I was eager to take it all in – including the food.

I’m from Oklahoma and my family’s food of choice is a variety of traditional Southern dishes with some Tex-Mex and barbeque thrown in for good measure. At Thanksgiving we have roasted turkey, baked ham studded with cloves, cornbread and sage dressing, mashed potatoes, giblet gravy, green bean casseroles, candied sweet potatoes, cranberry relishes, Jell-O molds, homemade yeast rolls, a variety of pies (at least one being pumpkin) and iced tea.

Iced tea is a staple in the South. No household is without it. I grew up drinking iced “sweet tea.” You might have to reach a certain age to drink coffee, but “sweet tea” was deemed suitable for all ages. Babies were given bottles filled with the sweet, cold liquid.

Some time in the late 70s, the custom changed to unsweetened tea or artificially sweetened tea. But I’ve noticed in the last five years or so, “sweet tea” seems to be making a comeback. If you walk into a restaurant in Oklahoma today, you’ll be offered a choice. I sweeten my tea with Equal now, but I remember the sweet tea of my childhood with great fondness.

Sweet Tea

To fix sweet tea – boil about six or seven cups of water, then add three large Lipton family-sized tea bags. Let the tea seep for 20 minutes, remove the bags. Pour the still hot mixture into a pitcher containing 1 to 1 ½ cups of sugar. (I have heard of people boiling the seeped tea and sugar, but that’s not how I learned to make it). Stir well. Add cold water to make one gallon of liquid. We would make one or two gallons of tea a day, sometimes more if we were expecting company.

One of my favorite Thanksgiving side dishes is the following:

Cranberry Ring

1 pound of cranberries
1 orange, peeled
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1 cup of drained pineapple
4 teaspoons lemon juice
1 cup chopped apple
1 cup of sugar, or less according to taste
2 packages of cherry, or raspberry gelatin

Put orange and cranberries through food chopper. Mix orange-cranberry mixture with nuts, pineapple, lemon juice, apple and sugar. Dissolve gelatin in 2 cups hot water. When gelatin has cooled slightly, add fruit mixture and combine. Pour into molds and chill until set. Serves 12.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Evelyn David

Surviving Thanksgiving, One Martini at a Time

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OK—so we’ve got all of the basics covered: the sweet potatoes, the green bean casserole, the turkey, the stuffing…there’s nothing left for me to contribute. So, because being together for Thanksgiving can be fraught (and is there a better word to describe being with one’s family answering questions like “how could you have voted for HIM?” or “how much of your savings do you have in stocks EXACTLY?” or even “when do you think SHE is going to have a baby?” and the worst of all “why are you STILL single?”), I’m going to simplify things. Here’s what I can contribute: the good old pumpkin pie recipe.

Take one can of pumpkin pie mix.

Add two eggs.

Add one 5-oz can of condensed milk.

Mix together. Throw in a prepared pie shell. Bake until done. Don’t tell anyone that you didn’t make it from complete scratch. Opening the cans DOES count.

And if that doesn’t make you feel better or help with the family dynamics, here’s my favorite cosmopolitan recipe:

4 parts any kind of vodka
2 parts Triple Sec
2 parts cranberry juice (great for urinary tract health!)
1 part fresh lime juice

Eat all of the pumpkin pie. Wash down with a cosmopolitan (or three). Happy Thanksgiving!

Maggie Barbieri

A Few of my Thanksgiving Favorites

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Because my youngest daughter has invited all of us to travel to Camarillo to have Thanksgiving with her family and told me not to bring anything, I won’t be having two of my traditional Thanksgiving dishes, sweet potatoes and green beans with mushrooms.

My Aunt Flossie always made these and brought them to Thanksgiving dinner when we lived in Oxnard and then after we moved to Springville and continued to have Thanksgiving at our house with all of our relatives–my whole family and my sister’s family.

When my sis moved to Las Vegas along with all of her children, Auntie and my cousin and family went there for Thanksgiving. (I guess Las Vegas was a bigger draw than little Springville.) We still had plenty of guests for Thanksgiving dinner right here–but with I had to take over the cooking of the sweet potatoes and green beans along with cooking the turkey, dressing, and gravy. Fortunately, the guests contributed salads and desserts.

I’d like to share these two recipes. I’m a dash of this and a dash of that cook, so you aren’t going to get exact ingredients. I also like to find the easiest ways of doing things–so both these recipes are simple as well as yummy.

My auntie always used fresh green beans but I made life simpler by using frozen green beans. How many bags depends upon how many people you’re going to serve and whether you want left-overs or not. I cooked the green beans sort of by the package directions but I added cut-up pieces of bacon–so they really are over-cooked to make sure the bacon got done and really flavor the beans. Again, how many fresh mushrooms you want to use depends upon how many people–and how well you like mushrooms. Slice the mushrooms and stir into the beans–you can cook on low for awhile. Actually, this dish gets better the longer it is cooked. (Probably there aren’t many vitamins left–but it’s really good.) You could make this the day before and reheat on Thanksgiving.

For the sweet potatoes–I buy the yellow sweet potatoes, not the orange yams. Put them in a big pan with water and cook until you can pierce them easily with a fork. (Be careful though, you don’t want to cook them into mush.) Allow them to cool, then peel off the skins. Slice in half.
Put in a pan along with lots of butter and about a cup of brown sugar. Cook slowly to melt the butter, stir gently. Or…you can do this the day before and put the sliced sweet potatoes, chunks of butter and the brown sugar into a casserole to cook on Thanksgiving. Yummy! I like these so much better than the yam recipes. (But I also like baked sweet potatoes with butter.)

And for the dessert, these cookies are a pain to make, but oh are they good. My mom made them during WWII when sugar was rationed, and we only got one small bar to eat each evening.

Congo Cookies (This is a bar cookie)

Sift 2 3/4 flour with 2 ½ tsp. baking power and ½ tsp salt. Mix in 2/3 C shortening with 2 1/4 C brown sugar, and 1 tsp. vanilla with 3 beaten eggs, mix altogether with 1 C of chopped nuts and a 7 or 8 oz. package of chocolate chips. Pour it all into a greased oblong baking pan, bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 35 minutes or until a knife or toothpick inserted in the middle of the cookies comes out clean. When they’re done you can cut them into whatever size chunks you please.

And that’s my contribution to our Thanksgiving favorites.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

Thanksgiving Revisited

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All this week The Stiletto Gang is sharing Thanksgiving memories and recipes. We hope you’ll share with us your favorite holiday story and dish.

Six years ago my mother-in-law, a lovely, generous woman, had a severe heart attack that left her wheelchair-bound. It was hard for her – for all of us – to adjust to this new reality. But despite her physical frailities, what never changed was her commitment to family, especially her grandchildren.

Holiday traditions, those that we often think are etched in stone, had to be tossed aside that November. She couldn’t travel to our home, as she had for years, to help make the turkey and all the fixings. Instead, we drove to Baltimore, stayed in an over-priced, undersized hotel room, and ate at a nearby restaurant. Instead of turkey, I had filet of flounder. Instead of sweet potato casserole, I had Caesar salad. Instead of apple pie a la mode, I had an éclair.

I wasn’t sure what to think. But then I stopped focusing on what we didn’t have and looked around the table. I saw my children and their grandmother laughing and enjoying one another with such love and devotion. The Thanksgiving menu was from an alternate universe – but the Thanksgiving emotions were the same. We were indeed blessed and thankful.

Best wishes for a joyous holiday!

Evelyn David

Sweet Potato Casserole

6 sweet potatoes
¼ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
2 tablespoons butter
Marshmallows

Boil sweet potatoes until tender. Drain and mash.
Mix in brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and butter.
Pour into ovenproof casserole.

Can be made ahead and frozen at this point. The night before serving, defrost in the refrigerator. Bake in 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, top with marshmallows and bake for an additional 10 minutes.

Nip It in the Bud!

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I was out raking leaves the other day—a nice break from chaining my butt to my chair during deadlines—and while I breathed in the chilly fall air and cleaned up the gardens a phrase popped into my head: Nip it in the bud.

Maybe it was the appearance of roses still on one of the bushes that got me thinking about buds. More likely it was my subconscious working overtime, always trying to figure out ways to improve myself. When it comes to my brain and the things it conjures up, I have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy; but I’m glad it tossed out the “nip it” idea regardless.

I’m already thinking of the ways nipping it can alleviate a lot of the stress I cause myself. Like when it comes to small injustices that inspire me to fight instead of back down. My grandfather was of the mind that “if it’s only money, it’s not worth it.” My husband feels the same. But I’m dogged when it comes to unfair situations, like companies that have been incompetent or unethical. I’ve cried writing three-page letters detailing work gone wrong or unfounded overcharges. I spent countless hours on the phone dealing with my medical insurance and bills not covered when I went through breast cancer treatment. Have you dealt with the health care industry these days? It’s a lot like running in circles, and it made me exhausted and upset during a time when I needed to heal. Wish I’d been smart enough then to just to nip it in the bud by settling things quickly.

Another stress-inducer: my looooong memory. My husband remarked the other morning, “You don’t forget anything, do you?” Okay, not much, which is one of my problems and a big reason I need to practice more nipping. I can recall conversations verbatim from decades before. I remember the good and the bad, people I’ve loved and who’ve done me wrong, those who’ve lent me a hand and those who’ve torn me up with lies. I’d like to blame my hyper-retentiveness on being a writer. We’re a sensitive lot with skin not near as thick as we’d like. We seem to want to swim through our emotions instead of taking the bridge across them.

That’s why this whole “nip it in the bud” idea rocks and I’m applying it as we speak to a friendship that’s recently gone in the crapper. It’s sad, because I’ve known this pal for years, but we’ve been drifting apart for awhile now. I kept thinking I could build some kind of tunnel to re-connect us, but it just ain’t happening. Some people appear in our lives when we need them most and eventually they travel on their merry way. That’s actually a wonderful thing when you think about it. So I’m nipping this one in the bud, too. I’m not dwelling on it any longer. I’m accepting the situation for what it is, and I’m packing away my fond memories so I can proceed with a peaceful heart and a smile. Ah, it’s like breathing in that chilly fall air again: liberating and refreshing.

I truly admire folks who don’t wallow in emotion, who don’t rehash ill-fated relationships or frustrating conversations nightly in their dreams. My husband has a very healthy “live and let live” attitude. He doesn’t hold grudges. He doesn’t sweat the small stuff. I wish I could be more like that, but I probably never will, not entirely.

I tend to let more people into my circle than he does, and I give folks a chance, even when I’ve heard whispers, like, “don’t trust him” or “she’s a self-absorbed twit.” I’m inclined to form my own opinions. The trouble ends up being that the warning whispers were right on target. It’s then that I usually step in a mess trying to back my way out; but, Lord, how those messes can linger, like dog poop on a shoe tracked all over a houseful of wall-to-wall carpet.

But, from this point on, I’m gonna nip it in the bud. I will see that untrustworthy self-absorbed twit for who he/she is, realize I cannot change him/her like a misguided Mother Teresa, and I will gracefully walk away. Doesn’t that sound good?

Now if I could just nip this latest deadline in the bud, I’d be in great shape.

Susan McBride

Susan McBride’s YA series debut with Random House, THE DEBS, features four prep school seniors in Houston clawing their way through their debutante season. A Fall 2008 Kid’s Indie Next Pick, THE DEBS has been called “Gossip Girl on mint juleps.” The second DEBS book, LOVE, LIES, AND TEXAS DIPS, will be out in June of 2009, and Susan’s busy writing GLOVES OFF. Susan has also penned five Debutante Dropout Mysteries for Avon, including TOO PRETTY TO DIE and BLUE BLOOD. She’s recently signed with HarperCollins to write a trade paperback women’s beach book called THE COUGAR CLUB, about three forty-something women who date younger men. Visit her web site at http://susanmcbride.com/ for more scoop.

The Long of It!

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When I was a child I wanted my favorite books to go on forever – the longer the story the better. Short books were like eating one potato chip – tasty but not enough to satisfy. I wanted to get lost in a book and stay there for days. And I hated reading books piecemeal. Someone was always telling me to turn out the lights and go to sleep, put down the book and go play outside, or warning me that I was ruining my eyes with all that reading.

As I got older I read faster so I could get through more of the story without being interrupted. In college one of my favorites was Stephen King’s The Stand. The original hardback had 823 pages. I’ve read all the Tom Clancy books, lugging them through airports like fat infants straining my arm muscles.

I loved Carl Sagen’s Contact and Colleen McCullough’s The Thornbirds, but at just over 400 pages they were practically short stories compared to two of my later favorites: Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove weighing in at 864 pages and a book that remains in my top ten – Antarctic Navigation by Elizabeth Arthur.

This 798 page book fascinated me. The heroine, Morgan Lamont, had been obsessed with Robert Scott’s 1910 Antarctic Expedition from childhood. The author takes us through Morgan’s early days and her quest to visit the South Pole and retrace Scott’s footsteps. By the time you finish the book, you feel like you’ve made that icy journey with Morgan. It’s not a book that will appeal to everyone. Elizabeth Arthur has been to the South Pole and she uses her knowledge of that remote locale. She makes the South Pole and its harsh weather a major “character” in the book. The plot is dependent on the place as much as Morgan’s need to achieve something Robert Scott did not.

From a recent discussion on the DorothyL internet group, I’ve read with great interest reader opinions on “long” vs. “short” novels. Many seemed to find places in long novels that “sag” or move forward only sluggishly. I confess that with some of Tom Clancy’s descriptions of the inner workings of ships and subs, I only half absorbed the paragraphs the first time through (yes, I’m one of those people who read books over and over.) But Clancy’s books have great plots and more often than not, the technical information he conveys lends depth and atmosphere to his thrillers.

I’m a fan of Nelson DeMille’s books. I just finished his newest, The Gate House. DeMille is great at creating interesting tough-guy characters and exciting plots based on real events. Sometimes the backstory runs a little longer than suits my taste, but as with Clancy’s books, I know the payoff will be well worth the slow bits. My favorite DeMille book remains the first one I ever read, The Charm School – a book I picked up in a hurry in an airport bookstore. A mere 544 pages long, it’s a true page-turner with a Cold-War plot. American MIA pilots from the Vietnam War have been taken to Russia and installed as unwilling teachers in a KGB “Charm School” for Russian agents. Two U.S. diplomats find out about the school and the game is on.

Short books are wonderful and fun – but for books you can literally lose yourself inside, give a longer book a chance.

Evelyn David