Omaha Bound

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No airplanes for me this year. I’m driving to Omaha, Nebraska. Mayhem in the Midlands breaks out tomorrow as mystery writers and fans from all over converge in the land of wonderful steaks and Cornhusker Football. Mayhem in the Midlands is being held at the Downtown/Old Market Embassy Suites, 555 S. 10th Street, in Omaha, during May 22-25, 2008. Check out the Mayhem website for more details and the full schedule.

This will be my second year to attend. By the time you’re reading this I hope to be at least a hundred miles closer to the conference. Hopefully I’ve remembered to put in the Evelyn David Auction Basket for the event. I’ve never put a gift basket together before. I purchased three different wicker baskets before settling on one that was the easiest to pack with Murder Off the Books promotional items, an autographed copy of the book, two Murder Off the Books t-shirts, and a garden gnome! (Those who’ve read the book will understand the significance of the gnome.)

Evelyn David will be appearing on two panels at Mayhem: Friday 3:00 pm – “Casting Call: Creating Real Characters;” Saturday 1:30 pm – “Pet Peeves: Killing Animals vs. Killing People in Mysteries”

Murder Off the Books will be available for sale at the conference. I’d be happy to autograph a copy for you.

The Guest of Honor at Mayhem this year is Alex Kava. The Toastmaster of Honor is Jeff Abbott. An outstanding list of mystery authors are scheduled to attend including two of my favorites, Jan Burke and Charlaine Harris.

I’ll be blogging throughout the conference. Check back for updates daily.

Evelyn David
http://www.omaha.lib.ne.us/mayhem/

Bathing Suit Season

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God, I hate this time of year.

It’s time to start thinking about bathing suits, a time that is met with a collective sigh of dismay from most women (except all of those size twos who apparently don’t shop at Old Navy, leaving us size 10/12 [depends on the day] to go through racks and racks of their leftovers). I just received two of my favorite magazines in the mail and cracked them open only to find that it was that time of year again. Time to talk about bathing suits! Yay! And then, one of my favorite clothing lines sent me an email. Guess what time it is? Time to look at bathing suits online! Double yay!

Magazines now feature the ubiquitous article entitled something along the lines of “which suit is right for you?” (Answer: none) Are you big-busted? (Yes) Small-busted? (Never) Pear-shaped? (More like oboe-shaped) Short-legged? (Yes) Muffin-topped? (Yes) Double-chinned? (Yes) Fat of ankle? (Sometimes) Well, then we’ve got a suit for you!

My sister, who recently shed close to twenty pounds (yet I still talk to her), and who won’t have a problem donning a fashionable suit this summer, summed it up very nicely by asking: What if you have multiple problem areas? In other words, what if you are small busted, muffin-topped, double-chinned, and fat of ankle? What then?

I have a multitude of problem areas, or so my brain tells me. I think the reality of the situation is far better than I think yet I cling to this notion that one’s body must approximate perfection before one puts on a bathing suit. So, what to do? Short of dressing in a burka—and I have given it some thought—I have a couple of suggestions. The first: I’ve embraced the idea of the kaftan, which apparently, is making a comeback. (Cue chorus of angels, please.) I haven’t tried it out yet but I do have one on order from the same online catalog that had the headline screaming the approach of summer and bathing suit season, replete with “women” (and I use that term loosely—my nine-year-old son has more curves and he weighs a few ounces more than fifty pounds) cavorting in bikinis. Because, let’s face it, if you can wear a bikini and play volleyball without rupturing something, you are a “cavorter.”

The second: I have also purchased a pair of UV-protectant “swim tights” and a matching rash guard with a mock turtleneck. Both are made from a stretchy kind of material that can get wet while protecting you from head to toe from the sun’s rays. While both would suggest that I am avid swimmer and can be found frolicking in the surf, this is not the case. Can’t swim. Never frolick. But I want to be able to sit on the beach and watch everyone else swim and occasionally get my feet wet, so I need something that allows me to go into the water yet keeps me protected from the sun. I tried both pieces of swim apparel on and have to say, I don’t look terrible. Which, in my world of bathing suit self-loathing, is a rave.

Bottom line? I’m not going to go to the beach in jeans and a t-shirt, as I’ve done in summers past. I am determined to at least go to the beach in swimwear even if I don’t go into the chilly Atlantic, content that I’m not going to make a splash with my swimwear. And I’m going to be content knowing that the all-flattering suit does not exist and that almost every other woman on the beach has had the same experience that I’ve had over the years—this one’s too small, this one’s too big, the leg holes on this one were made for a stripper, the one with the skirt makes me look like a Mom from 1965, and on and on. But ladies, I confess: I do look at all of you on the beach, but I never judge. Your bodily imperfections look perfectly okay to me as they do to everyone else. Our imperfections are mostly in our own minds and we need to get out of our own way and enjoy ourselves. Even if we are wearing a kaftan, swim tights, and a mock turtleneck rash guard, all at the same time.

Deal?

Maggie

Charles Manson

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Probably one of the scariest men still alive is Charlie Manson who is spending his retirement years in Corcoran prison–not too far from where I’m living now.

Back when my family and I lived in Oxnard CA, Charlie was up in the hills with a bunch of young people. This was in the 60s during a time of major drug use. What’s so frightening about all this is at the time, is Charlie had complete control of these young people. They began by entering people’s homes and crawling around on the floor, even in bedrooms while people were sleeping.

This same bunch came into Oxnard to get food out of the garbage bins behind the grocery stores.

Of course, they went on to kill movie star Sharon Tate and four other people who were in their home and a couple named Bianco. They wrote words like PIG on the walls using the victims’ blood. The book, Helter Skelter, which was also made into a movie, tells all about what these sickos did.

Charlie and his followers holed up out on the desert, and after all these many years, the authorities are checking to see if there might be some bodies buried around their hideout.

There’s no doubt that Manson is crazy. What is hard to understand though, is why these young people were so mesmerized by him to the point of killing people by his direction.

Needless to say, while all this was going on, finding out that Charlie’s bunch had been living only a few miles away, certainly gave us the heebie-jeebies.

All sorts of weird things happened while we lived in that house in Oxnard. My husband spent three tours in Vietnam with the Seabees, and one New Years Eve while he was gone once, I babysat all the neighborhood kids along with my own five. Everyone was in the living room except for my three-year old son who was sleeping. All of a sudden he came running, “Mommy, a man is in my bedroom!” I grabbed a baseball bat and went charging into the bedroom, hollering, “I’m going to get you,” and arrived in time to see a man disappear out the sliding glass door. Don’t think I slept at all that night.

Whether that had anything to do with the Manson bunch I have no idea – but it was during the right time period.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

I ♥ Geeks

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Sigh. I still crush on the geeky ones. I think pocket protectors can be sexy.

My newest heartthrob is Richard Wolffe, a Newsweek columnist and commentator on Countdown with Keith Olbermann (who I could crush on a little too). Wolffe is British and has a little lisp, but he’s so damn smart, with a particularly dry English sense of humor, that I can’t help but gush and blush a little when he appears on my screen.

Or how about Chuck Todd? Political director for MSNBC. Slightly overweight, weird goatee, same haircut that he had in his high school graduation picture, but with a brain that can crunch numbers faster than NASA engineers. But here’s what makes him swoon-worthy. He has the ability to explain in words I can understand just what all those exit polls really mean (if anything at all). Plus he seems to have the patience of a saint. He has yet to reach through the screen and throttle Chris Matthews, the pundit who won’t let anyone finish a sentence. See, that’s what makes Wolffe, Olbermann, and Todd my homeboys. They know they’re smarter, even if Matthews is louder.

I’ve always liked the ones who could walk, talk, and chew gum at the same time. Forget the World Wrestling Federation. I envision caged verbal matches. Let me see my boy Richard versus Bill O’Reilly. Let me tell you who’d be wearing that gold, championship belt.

It’s why I’d choose Hugh Laurie over Brad Pitt; Han Solo over Luke Skywalker. I loved a short-lived tv show: Beauty and The Beast, and had no trouble figuring out why the heroine would opt for the sewers and the hairy monster over all the studs walking the streets above. For West Wing fans, I hearted Josh Lyman over Sam Seaborn, and always preferred Toby Ziegler, the dark, brooding, but balding speechwriter over all the pretty boys.

It’s not an either-or proposition. You can get brains and good looks (ahem, I married one of those). But to quote that great philosopher Judge Judy, beauty fades, but dumb is forever.

The Gourmet Girl’s Un-Gourmet Son

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Jessica Conant-Park lives in Manchester, NH with her chef/husband, Bill, and their son, Nicholas. Jessica writes the Gourmet Girl mysteries with her mother, Susan Conant. Their cozy, culinary, chick lit series is set in the Boston restaurant scene…recipes included!

I come from a food-oriented family, no question. My parents have been cooking up gastronomic treats for as long as I can remember, learning from Julia Child’s television show in the ‘70s and experimenting in the kitchen with their own recipes. I grew up on meals from across the globe and eagerly visited local ethnic shops with my parents, browsing through the Greek market for spanikopita and tabouhli. I was bitterly disappointed with the disgusting cafeteria fare offered by my college and spent vacations home devouring all the good food I could get my hands on. I even stayed true to my love of food by marrying a very talented chef, my husband Bill. He wooed me with culinary delights and I fell madly in love with him and his cooking. I even started writing the Gourmet Girl mystery series in honor of my food obsession.

When I found out I was pregnant, my husband and I immediately started planning how we would make our own baby food and raise a child who ate more than macaroni and cheese and hot dogs. I must say, we were full of smug superiority knowing that our child would be born with a genetically enhanced palate. We would take him to restaurants and order him honey-glazed chicken with olive risotto, Vietnamese noodle dishes covered in vegetables, or shrimp gumbo!

The first time I fed him that icky baby cereal was a monumental event for me and I distinctly remember feeling that, despite the blandness of the food item, this was the start of a lifetime of gourmet eating! When it was time for more advanced foods, I followed the pediatrician’s advice about starting him on vegetable purees before fruits so he wouldn’t get too interested in the sweet fruit and reject the vegetables. All went well and Nick loved the spinach, squash, and even the lentils! I just knew it! How many babies love lentils? I thought.

Ha! This is what you get for being so full of yourself: our son, Nicholas, couldn’t have cared less about our pre-natal predictions for his culinary enthusiasm. The post jarred-food days are when things started to go downhill. Aside from his love of Chinese dumplings, Nick refused to touch anything out of the ordinary. My pasta salads that were loaded with beans and finely diced veggies were hurled at the wall. The organic fruits were tossed at the dog and the scrambled eggs full of turkey and cheddar were simply mashed up on his highchair.

To make matters worse, he developed a milk allergy and I had to remove all dairy from his diet for a few years. I can’t say I was a big fan of many of the soy products, but despite my creativity in offering up interesting meals, my kid wanted nothing to do with my cooking. Even when the milk allergy resolved itself, Nick simply refused to eat what Bill and I ate; one taste of that orange mac and cheese and all hope was gone! (I’ll never forgive Bill for making that…)

Nick is seven-years-old now and continues to eat the tiniest variety of foods! I could probably list on one hand what he’ll eat and none of those things include anything vaguely resembling a vegetable; in fact, God forbid a fleck of parsley show up on his plate. “What’s that green thing????” he’ll scream in horror.

My husband even came up with a game he calls Food Fear Factor; he closes his eyes and lets Nick feed him mystery items and then they switch roles. Poor Bill has suffered through mouthfuls of black pepper followed by pickled beets. (Um, why we have pickled beets in the fridge, I have no idea…) When it’s Bill’s turn to feed Nick, he usually picks something mundane like plain, unseasoned chicken breast. No matter what boring item Nick gets in his mouth, his turn in the game is invariably marked by wails of disgust and a variety of gagging noises. So much for Food Fear Factor.

The pediatrician reassures me that he will, in fact, grow out of this. Apparently my chef husband was actually the same way as a child and was extremely picky about what he ate, so I do have hope for Nick. He is growing like a weed and his doctor estimates he’ll be about 6’ 2” so he is obviously getting what he needs from his limited diet. I refuse to get into food struggles with him and so continue to offer different things with the belief that one day a light will go off and he’ll discover the joys of fancy Italian pasta dishes, fresh seafood baked in foil packets with herbs and vegetables, and upscale delicacies like foie gras and lobster. How humiliating that the son of a culinary mystery writer and a chef has zero interest in consuming anything beyond peanut butter sandwiches and grilled cheese! For now, I have accepted that this Gourmet Girl has a son whose greatest culinary interest is suggesting new titles for my series. So far, his top choices are Eat That Chicken and Kill That Turkey. I think both of those come from seeing a copy of Nancy Fairbanks’ Turkey Flambe lying next to my bed….but, hey, it’s a start!

Jessica Conant-Park
http://conantparkmysteries.googlepages.com/

The Mother of All Blogs

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As you know if you’ve read either of my books and have seen the jacket copy, my father is a retired New York City police officer. Interestingly, this is the primary thing that most people who talk to me about my writing want to talk about. The few interviews I have had—some in print, one on a local cable station—have started out with the request to “tell us about your father.” This has become something of a family joke—hey, Maggie, how are the books doing and how are their sales affected by Dad? Do you have any upcoming interviews? Will the interviewer want Dad to be there?

Dad, of course, is extremely flattered.

But my mother, I fear, is starting to feel left out. During one of these joke-fests, my Mom finally blurted out, “What about the mother?! Doesn’t anyone want to know about the mother?!”

Indeed, what about the mother? Let me tell you a little bit about my mother.

My mother was the second of two children. Her brother, John, is without a doubt one of the kindest, nicest men you’ll ever meet. (One day I’ll write about his not-so-dangerous stint in the Air Force during the Korean War. It involves cooking, gymnastics, and R&R in Osaka.) His sister/my mother? The same. I don’t know what my grandmother did to raise two such wonderful people, but she did. And I thank her for it.

My mother raised four children on a shoe-string budget, sent them to Catholic school, and attempted—even though she will admit that cooking is not her forte—to provide a nourishing meal every night. She once told me that her goal was to serve a protein that cost no more than $3 a dinner. Now I know we’re going back thirty years or so, but $3? I don’t remember eating cat food, but this was a woman who could stretch a budget.

But this is not a woman who could sew. My father, the cop, needed new patches sewn on his NYPD shirts. She sewed them on—upside down. He was the laughing stock of the precinct. There was many a time when the hem on my plaid uniform skirt was hanging only to be repaired with a staple or two or a strip of Scotch tape. The nuns were not amused.

Nor could she sort laundry. My father—yep, the cop—was driving to work one day, wearing what he thought were his uniform socks. He had pulled them from his drawer one dark winter morning and donned them quickly, in a rush as he always was at four or five in the morning. He got about halfway to the George Washington Bridge when he realized that the circulation was completely cut off in his ankles and calves. The reason? He was wearing my uniform socks. And I was in the third grade.

But this is a woman who can love. She nursed me through two pregnancies, a life-altering surgery, a long and protracted illness. She held my hand when my grandmother—her mother—died. And she has listened to me cry about a myriad of woes concerning my various jobs, my childcare situation (or lack thereof), my children, my house, my friends, my dog…you name it. And she always had sage advice. She’ll cry with me, but always remind me that whatever I’m experiencing, I’m blessed. I could have it much, much worse.

So, you want to hear about my mother? This just scratches the surface. She’s all this and more and I don’t tell her enough how much I love her. Let this blog serve as a valentine, a belated Mother’s Day wish (I still owe her a card and a present!), and a happy birthday all rolled into one.

And to all of the Mom’s out there–happy belated Mother’s Day. One day isn’t enough but it will have to do.

The Public Safety Writers Associations Conference

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This was the book table at the PSWA conference. My husband is back there with the PSWA treasurer. If you look closely, you can see the “hunky firemen” on the table cloth.

We will be returning to Las Vegas in June of 2009. And we’re going to ask for people to suggest presentations or panels they’d like to do or be on. Because many of the people who come are involved with law enforcement, we’ve already had a forensic expert volunteer. But we also don’t have any requirements about publishers as far as who can be on panels and everyone can have their book(s) for sale.

I’ve been reminiscing about how much fun I had at the PSWA conference. Do hope some of my fellow mystery writers will join us next year.

Marilyn

Summer Jobs

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My daughter comes home from college on Wednesday. She’s got two internships this summer, but unfortunately only one pays even a small stipend. Usually my husband and I encourage her to take jobs where she can earn enough to cover her personal expenses during the school year. But she’s a film studies major and we agreed that these two summer opportunities in the entertainment industry were too good to pass up. In today’s job market, employers definitely check what kind of career-building internships an applicant has held. We see this summer as investment in her future. If we’re lucky, her stipend will at least cover her summer expenses.

I wish I could say that my summer jobs were career building. Frankly, I usually never gave jobs a thought until I’d been home a week or two from school. At that point, my exasperated parents would slam into my room one morning around eleven and yell something to the effect that (1) money didn’t grow on trees and (2)there was no way in hell I was spending the summer partying at night and sleeping in the day and I’d better haul myself out of bed and find some summer employment or else. Which could explain the boring, dead-end, ‘don’t bother to list them on the resume’ positions I held every summer.

My daughter and her friends started their job searches last Christmas. The competition for good internships is more intense than trying to get into Harvard on a full scholarship. For the unpaid internship she has, there were 1000 applicants, 200 students were interviewed, and 15 were chosen. I guess we’re lucky we didn’t have to pay for the privilege of no pay.

But sometimes dead end jobs teach you as much as these career builders. The summer after I graduated from high school, I got a job in the Baltimore City water department. I don’t want to tell you how old I am, but let’s just say that they were still totaling district water bills with electric adding machines. Summers in Baltimore are charitably described as hot and humid. Sweat, not perspiration, but sweat is a constant companion. Real men, apparently, didn’t need no stinkin’ air conditioning, stinkin’ being the operative word.

Anyway, the work was deathly boring. Whenever you had finally finished a huge mass of water bills, there was always a hundred more piles to do. But what I remember the most about that summer is the old man who’d been in the department for thirty years. He was as thin as a rail and literally bent in half. His body was permanently bowed at the waist, from what I assume was a severe spinal condition. His job was exactly the same as mine: To add up an endless pile of water bills. But while I would be leaving in the fall for college, this was his permanent position. He would be doing it until he retired.

Spending a long, hot, boring summer in the Baltimore City water department taught me more than almost any other job I’ve ever held. While I’d been able to effortlessly tune out all those parental lectures on the importance of an education, the image of the bent man adding up water bills was enough to send me off to school that fall with a new sense of urgency.

How about you? What were your summer jobs?

Evelyn David
www.evelyndavid.com

A Dad’s View of Mother’s Day

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Austin S. Camacho is the author of the fast-paced Hannibal Jones mystery series, starting with Blood and Bone (Echelon, 2006). His newest book, Successfully Marketing Your Novel in the 21st Century (Intrigue Publishing), was published in April. Visit Austin’s web site at www.ascamacho.com.

Considering the name of this blog site and the holiday coming up in a couple of days, I kind of knew what I had to write about today. That was a little intimidating. After all, what’s left to say about Mother’s Day? But then my lovely wife Denise bailed me out, as she so often does, with this comment about this weekend’s special day:

“I don’t mean to make it sound like I don’t appreciate it, it’s just that sometimes the kids make me feel pretty unimportant in their lives and on this particular day it would be nice if they made an effort. Sounds pretty selfish I guess, but I think all moms want to feel special on Mother’s Day. Do you feel the same about Father’s Day? Does it matter to you at all?”

Well, her question about Father’s Day got me thinking. After a while I realized that at one time Father’s Day was very important to me. I remember wanting so badly for my little girls to realize how hard I worked at raising them. Not just the canoe trips or Disney World tickets, but the skinned knee tending, tolerating the slumber parties, the days I turned a blind eye to small misdemeanors and the nights I chased the bad boys away.

Of course, they never did appreciate all I did, not until years after I was finished doing all I could for them. And why should they? After all, my love was never unconditional, the way my wife’s is. I criticized the goofy hair styles, crazy fashions and shady friends. She, God bless her, accepted them exactly as they were, and loved them for exactly who they were.

Today, I’m not really being a dad to those kids. They’re on their own, using the tools I gave them to build their own lives. The old dog has learned, and I no longer expect kids to appreciate the work I put into them. Besides, I’m not really a friend to them the way my wife is. I think maybe fathers can be friends or they can be teachers and caretakers. We men just don’t have the goods to be both at once. And I think that maybe, just maybe, that’s what makes mothers so special. You see, even the best of men can only be in one place at a time. Only your mother can lead you, stand beside you, and get behind you, all at the same time.

On the other hand, it seems to me that guys don’t care that much about getting gifts and such either. The only thing I’d really appreciate on a day like Father’s Day would be for the kids to just call or come by and say thank you for trying and for caring what happens to them. The rest is form and artifice, like Christmas wrap and tinsel, which also mean very little to me. And I know that makes me a Scrooge and ruins it for everyone else, so I try to keep it to myself.

By the same token, Mom will make every flower, every card, every little gift bought with your allowance seem like solid gold and just what she was praying for. She’ll make you feel good just by appreciating your effort and a little thought. And I can’t say how much of that reaction is for your benefit, how much of it is tradition, and how much is Christmas wrap and tinsel.

But, just in case, no matter what else we do, we should all be sure to go to Mom on Sunday and say thank you for trying and for caring.

It’s a small price, I think, for unconditional love.

Austin Camacho

Your Own Facts – I Don’t Think So!

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There’s spin and there’s lying. And there’s a difference between the two. You know it and I know it, but reporters and politicians don’t seem be acquainted with the difference. The worst thing is that the public has come to accept the lies as business as usual.

Well, I’m tired of liars not being confronted. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Yes, I’m going to talk about the elephant (and the donkey) in the room – politics.

I was listening to the political pundits on CNN the other night – they had a panel of “experts” and a moderator who acted as more of a pundit than a moderator. The Obama side had a couple of talking heads and so did Clinton. And just to round out the group there were three or four experts who claimed to be neutral. One pundit would make a statement, claiming it was a fact. One from the other side would claim that statement was untrue. Then they began talking over each other – the goal being to drown out the other and win the sound bite. The moderator did very little to redirect or focus the discussion.

The pundits weren’t giving opinions so much as they were asserting “facts” – contradictory facts. Back and forth it went. The moderator never called either pundit out; never made either justify or prove the statement they’d just made. And all “facts” could not be correct. Someone was lying. Not spinning. Lying.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being lied to. And I’m tired of the reporters, the politicians, and the pundits thinking that the American public is stupid. We’re not stupid, but sometimes we’ve got all we can handle just dealing with work, home, and family. We expect someone else to deal with the damn ringing phones. We expect our government to take care of the big problems, but more and more the government is the big problem: disaster responses, illegal immigration, the rationale(s) for the war in Iraq, airport security, the care of our wounded soldiers, voting machines, etc.

We know that just because someone – be it your child or the “would be” President – says something loudly and repeatedly doesn’t make it a fact. But often it’s just too much effort to do any research or object. It’s easier to just ignore the lie – and accept the liar. We’ve become complacent. We ignore the noise. At this point in America’s history, we’ve become used to lies; we don’t expect the truth, not from the government, and not from anyone running for office.

We need to wake up.. We need to write letters to the editor. We need to communicate our feelings to our legislators. We need to get involved. We need to answer that phone until we can get our government working the way it should be

And for heaven’s sake – don’t forget to vote in your local, state, and national elections. We need to elect smart, honest, hardworking men and women to start working on some of those big problems.

I know there have to be a few of those rare souls out there – somewhere.

Evelyn David