Tag Archive for: Evelyn David

Chocolate Milk, Lack of Sleep, and Parenting

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My three sons have always maintained that by the time I had their baby sister, I had no parenting standards left. They love to give as proof the carton of chocolate milk they discovered in the refrigerator, something they insist had never been purchased in their entire collective childhoods. “Look,” they whine, “the kid asks for it, and voila, it’s bought.”

In my defense, I point out three things. First, it was a one-time purchase. Second, it was chocolate milk, not heroin. And third, and probably most important, they’re assuming I had standards when they were living full time in the house. Truth is: I’m a softie when it comes to my offspring. I repeat, who took them to see the World Wrestling Federation? And the answer is: not my husband who is still shell-shocked that I ever agreed to that outing.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about my standards (or lack thereof) as I work my way through this book on baby’s first year. Since this is a mystery blog, I’ve been trying to find a way to tie the subject to a whodunit. Best that I can come up with is the victim is a mother who declares in a park full of other new moms that her baby, at the age of three weeks, is sleeping through the night. I figure there would be plenty of suspects because the last thing you want to hear when you haven’t slept in 4000 hours is some woman, dressed in her skinny jeans, telling you how rested she feels.

I’m working on the sleep chapters and discovered a whole industry devoted to getting your baby to sleep through the night. One expert, Dr. Richard Ferber, has become a verb. Have you Ferberized your baby? Sounds vaguely like pasteurized milk. Anyway the basic concept is that babies need to learn to soothe themselves back to sleep. Parents are instructed to let their infant cry (for longer and longer periods over the course of a week) until he falls back to sleep. By that point, of course, the mother is up all night consumed by guilt, but that’s another story. Dr. Ferber believes that it will be a rough few days, but that most babies learn self-soothing mechanisms and are sleeping like, well, babies within seven days.

At the other extreme is Dr. William Sears. He promotes attachment-style parenting and a family bed. Sears believes that it’s more important that babies get the reassurance and intimacy of parental soothing, than learn independent sleep habits.

Reminds me of the quote from John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester: “Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.”

Most parents, I think, find something in the middle that makes them comfortable. I tend to err on the side of parental soothing. I could no more listen to my child cry for 25 minutes than I could stand hearing my dog whimper that long. On the other hand, I have no interest in routinely sharing my bed with anyone other than my husband. I do acknowledge, however, that by the time I had my second child (those firsborns are just one big learning curve), I no longer jumped at the first squawk, and was more than happy to not-so-gently nudge my husband to attend to the kid.

Bottom line: I accepted sleep deprivation as a parental fact of life, part and parcel of the job. But may I add that while I was crazed from all the nocturnal wakings when my kids were babies, it was nothing compared to the lack of sleep I got when they were teens.

Parenting is amazing, wonderful, fulfilling. It can also be a treacherous field of landmines through which we’re all trying to navigate safely. While we can learn from each other, we also need to learn to trust our instincts about what works best for each of our own families.

And as for that carton of chocolate milk? Here’s a confession. It had nothing to do with a lack of parenting standards. The better question is: who said it was for my daughter?

Evelyn David

Separation Anxiety

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For my day job, I’m working on a new book about baby’s first year. It’s been a long time since I had any infants in the house. Heck, even our dog is middle-aged. Many of the basics of newborn care haven’t changed, but the who, what, when, where, why, and how of baby’s sleeping habits has undergone a dramatic change since my kids were little. I’ll be devoting an entire chapter to what parents need to know about sleep – their own and their child’s.

I’ll also be focusing on separation anxiety, typical behavior in eight month old infants – and also in this mom whose “baby” is currently studying in Scotland. The news reports from the semester abroad student have been terrific. A little homesickness, a touch of shyness, but all in all, she’s having a grand time. Even willing to try vegetarian haggis – so the sense of adventure is strong.

But me? I have been surprised at how much I miss her. I’ve decided – and tell me if this makes sense – that my emotions are exaggerated because she’s in a different time zone. I feel like I’m watching a tape delay of the Beijing Olympics. The game is already over by the time I turn on the TV. I’m rooting for a winner when if I only go on the Internet, I can find the scores and know what happened. I’m not in “real time” with my kid.

On the other hand, my husband says I’m talking to her more now that she’s overseas, than when she was 120 miles away. Part of it (okay all of it) is my personal craziness, but Skype has dramatically changed my over-anxious life. If you’re not familiar with this free software, and have family and friends who live at a distance, you need to check this out. With Skype you can talk, and if you have a camera/microphone attached to your computer, you can actually see the person on the other end — all without charge! On the first day in Scotland, by moving the camera on her laptop computer around the room, I could actually see where my daughter is living. When we talk, she can show me what she is wearing to the “freshers” dance. Of course, I could also see the circles under her eyes from lots of late-night events.

Letting go – whether your children are four, fourteen, or forty – is never easy. But thanks to a daughter who is patient with her over-anxious mother and with the help of cell phones, e-mail, and Skype, I can watch as she takes wing and soars.

Only 95 more days to go (before she’s home!).

Evelyn David

Jane and Hercule Sittin’ in a Tree…

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I’ve got a question – and apparently Agatha Christie has the answer.

My question is who owns the characters I love? The author who created them or the audience that sustains them?

According to a story in Monday’s edition of the New York Times, Mathew Prichard, Dame Agatha’s grandson, recently discovered 27 audiotapes, recorded by the legendary author as she prepared material for her autobiography (published in 1977). In it she responds to the repeated requests she had received about her characters: “People never stop writing to me nowadays to suggest that Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot should meet. But why should they meet? I’m sure they would not like meeting at all. I shall not let them meet unless I feel a really sudden and unexpected urge to do so.”

First, I agree with Dame Agatha. The concept of Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot working on a case together is, as undoubtedly my grandmother would have answered, just plain meshuganah (Yiddish for crazy).

But for those familiar with the fanfiction world, crossovers are a well-respected staple. In that genre, Miss Jane Marple might not just collaborate on a baffling whodunnit with the Belgian detective, but could be having his baby as well.

I know, I know – blasphemy. Mea culpa.

But in some ways, it’s a chicken and egg question. Dame Agatha – and Evelyn David, for that matter – is perfectly within her rights to decide what happens to her characters, including ***spoiler alert*** killing off Hercule Poirot when she saw fit. But like Arthur Conan Doyle, it is folly to ignore your readers when they are clamoring for a different outcome. Doyle took the “great hiatus,” as his fans referred to the period after he published The Adventure of the Final Problem, where Sherlock Holmes disappeared over the Falls and was presumed dead. The detective’s wondrous resurrection eight years later was motivated by many reasons, not the least of which was…$$$$

The collective Evelyn David has created backstories for all the main characters. These histories help us determine the motivations for Mac, Rachel, even Whiskey (it was hard being the runt of the litter…). So while you can do whatever you want with your characters – should you? Do you, the author, know them better than your readers?

The answer is: probably, sometimes, or it depends. Dame Agatha was undoubtedly correct that Jane and Hercule were destined never to be together. But like our real-life children, sometimes we need a fresh perspective. Our readers offer that. It may not change my decision on how a character will develop or change, but it will make me at least think through why I’m doing what I’m doing – and that’s never a bad thing.

Do you have a favorite character — in books, television, or movies — that you think was derailed by its creator?

Evelyn David

Lost and Found

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The collective Evelyn David had great fun writing Riley Come Home, a new Sullivan Investigations short story. It will appear in Missing, a new anthology, set to debut in October. The collection will benefit the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Creating a believable mystery fraught with red herrings and clever twists, with characters that have depth and substance, all under 5,000 words, was the toughest writing assignment we’ve had since we started collaborating five years ago.


Riley Come Home plunges Mac, Rachel, and Whiskey into the high-stakes dog show circuit, searching for a missing Irish wolfhound whose pedigree is longer than Crystal Gayle’s hair. I wish I’d had this sleuthing trio when Snickers, our first dog, went missing.

It began on a rainy Saturday afternoon. My husband was not only out of town on business, but out of the country, so the Sherlock Holmes/Miss Marple role would have to be played by moi. I’d promised the kids that we could make chocolate chip cookies and had left a bag of the chocolate morsels on the counter (Mistake #1). I left the kitchen for what I swear was a total of two minutes, and returned to find the bag on the floor half empty and Snickers with a chocolate mustache.

I know that chocolate can be lethal to dogs, so I put in an emergency call to the vet who informed me that I had to make Snickers vomit in order to get the chocolate out of her system. Oy! Cursing under my breath – as well as loud enough for my husband to hear me five thousand miles away – I gave her an emetic and proceeded to spend the next hour cleaning up after the little darling.

The vet also told me that I should then give her rice and boiled chicken for the next few days. Oh goody. Another palate to placate since the only meal the four kids could agree on was a strawberry fruit roll-up.

So I prepared the delicacy for Snickers, then put her outside in the fenced backyard so she could do her “business.” Mistake #2.

It’s easy to get distracted in a house full of kids, so I confess it was probably a half hour or more (okay, more, she wasn’t exactly on my hit parade list that afternoon) before I went to let the dog back in the house and discovered…yes Mistake #3, the gate to the backyard was open and Snickers was nowhere to be found

Hysteria descended en masse as the children wailed about their missing dog, although were generally useless in actually searching for the hound.

The phone rang. It was the cops. Yes, they had found Snickers. Yes, they knew exactly where she was…the dog pound. And did I know that her license had expired, that there was a fine for letting a dog run around off the leash, not to mention a fine for the expired license?

I could find Snickers at the local pound…but couldn’t bail her out until the next day because the village office was closed so I couldn’t pay the fine and get the license renewed until then.

I took the boiled chicken and rice to the “inmate” since I certainly didn’t want her to have to deal with institutional food. Just to add insult to injury, I lost one of my favorite Tupperware bowls at the dog pound.

I wish I could say that Snickers learned her lesson(s) and that she returned a chastened dog who never again ate food off the counter or dashed out the door to freedom. I could write that because I’m a fiction writer…but as a woman of truth, the only one who learned a lesson that weekend was my husband….business travel can indeed be rewarding.

Evelyn David

I Do, I Do!

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The collective Evelyn David is positively giddy to announce that Murder Takes the Cake, the sequel to Murder Off the Books, will be published May 2009. Giddy, I tell you.

Here’s a brief synopsis: The guest list is getting shorter and shorter, as the body count rises. Can Mac, Rachel, and Whiskey find the killer who wants to see the bride in red…blood red?

Weddings are on my mind. I’m hosting a bridal shower in a few weeks. While I’m not expecting anything sinister to happen, all this “till death do us part” stuff has made me sloppily sentimental about my own nuptials. Held in the middle of the summer, the temperature was about 110 in the shade, and the menu was caponette, a uniquely Baltimore kosher dish which was essentially chicken on steroids. My only nod to personalizing my wedding was to insist on a chocolate wedding cake. My mom made most (probably all) of the decisions since frankly I had no taste at that point in my life.

I do have wonderful memories of looking for a wedding dress. Mom insisted that we take my father along. As I have mentioned before, my Dad was, to put it lovingly, frugal. I guess Mom didn’t want to hear any financial hysteria when he got the bill. I tried on several gowns and Dad nixed each one, until I emerged from the dressing room in what was the most expensive dress of the group. He smiled and said, “that’s it” – and I felt like Cinderella at the ball. After the wedding, a dry cleaner “preserved for eternity” my dress. To be honest, I’m not sure why I saved it. I’m four inches shorter than my daughter and the puffy sleeves and empire waist would look ridiculous on her. As for the shoes, four children later, and my feet are two full sizes larger. But they’re upstairs in the attic as well.

Weddings today are big business. The average budget for a wedding is $28,000+ (or a fabulous downpayment on a home!). In the U.S., that translates to an annual $40 billion industry. There are wedding coordinators (versus my cousin Suzi who stood at the back of the synagogue and whispered, “go” when she thought it was the right moment for each of the attendants to move). Photographers still capture every moment, but now there are videographers as well. I have mixed feelings about videotaping weddings. While it’s true you capture every second of the big event, that also means that certain moments that memory will eventually blur to less-than-mortifying status, are now captured forever in living color on tape.

We’re adding a wedding stories page to our website (www.evelyndavid.com). Please share your favorite, funniest, or even murderous memory of your special day.

Evelyn David

Five Little Lifestyle Changers

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Leaving aside the major life changing household miracles (electric washing machines, clothes dryers, central air and heat, cellular phones, color television, and desktop computers) these are the top five things invented during my lifetime that have impacted me the most (listed in no particular order):

a. The remote control – remember when you had to get off the couch to change tv channels and risk bodily injury from other viewers? Now you can just click and duck.

b. The hair dryer – remember when you had to attempt sleeping on rollers because your hair wasn’t dry yet? I say attempt because I never actually managed it. Now you can wash your hair any time – day or night, winter or summer – without risking catching pneumonia from going outside with a wet head. I doubt many ever died from washing their hair during inclement weather but my grandmother believed it was a distinct possibility.

c. Flash (thumb) drives – Remember floppy disks? Remember trying to format CDs so you could use them to store computer data? Sometimes it took hours. Flash drives are incredible. You can store enormous amounts of information on these little lipstick-sized electronic units – more information than boxes of floppies could contain– more information than stored in a row of filing cabinets.

d. The VCR and now the DVD Recorder – remember the generations of little girls who never saw Cinderella because the networks always aired it on Sunday night during church services? Remember scheduling your college classes so you could still see your favorite soap opera? The VCR freed people to watch movies and tv programs when they wanted, instead of when the networks scheduled them.

f. Mr. Coffee and the slew of programmable electric coffee makers – the ease of having hot, fresh coffee waiting for you when you get up in the morning is a luxury I wouldn’t want to give up.

What’s been invented during your lifetime that’s impacted your lifestyle? Cable tv? Garage door openers? On-line shopping? Contact lens? ATMs? What?

Rhonda
aka The Southern Half of Evelyn David

Fresh Apple Cake

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Do you have some recipes you’d like to share? Here is one of my family’s favorites.

Fresh Apple Cake

1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
3 teaspoons vanilla
1/3 cup apple sauce

Mix items above in a large bowl and beat until smooth.

3 cups flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

Sift items above and add to apple sauce mixture. Mix on medium speed.

Add 1 cup chopped pecans and 3 cups finely chopped red delicious apples.

Pour mixture into a greased and floured 9x13x2 pan. Sprinkle generously with sugar and cinnamon just before putting cake in oven.

Bake at 350 degree open for approx. 1 hour.

Rhonda
aka The Southern Half of Evelyn David

Murder Takes the Cake – Coming May 2009

Shoe-a-Palooza

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I am a shoe whore. I love the smell of soft leather and the look of shiny patent. I worry over the question of open toe or closed like it was a question that involved our national security. I delight in espadrilles and flats; sandals and loafers; and even though my stiletto days never were, I still have a few super-high heels that I bought because…well, just because. My husband can’t fathom why I would ever buy another pair of black shoes since my closet is already bursting at the seams with black footwear. But like a mother with identical sextuplets (oy!), I absolutely can tell them all apart.

So it was with an extremely heavy heart that I discovered that my personal shoe heaven has now been shuttered. May I have a moment of silence for Filene’s Basement.

Fie on you who say: Wait! Filene’s Basement still exists. Sure that’s true if you believe that Cool Whip Lite tastes the same as Whipped Cream made from actual heavy cream. Filene’s Basement, in its present incarnation, is a perfectly nice discount store chain. You can find some good deals, but where’s the sense of adventure – and the educational component – that was part of the original Beantown bargain store?

Let me tell you the sorry tale.

In less than two weeks, my daughter is off to Scotland to spend the semester at The University of Glasgow. (Yes, I know. We all want to come back as our kids.). So, my thought was to grab a few days once her summer jobs ended, and head off to Boston for a weekend of theater, good meals, and shopping. We would bond over my credit card. We landed in Beantown a little after noon, and within fifteen minutes, headed over to Downtown Crossing, the location of Filene’s Basement.

For those who aren’t familiar with this cultural landmark, here’s the basic concept. Filene’s Basement was literally the bottom two floors of Filene’s, a traditional Boston department store. It bought up odd lots of high-end merchandise from manufacturers and other large department stores. But the fun – and that’s what it was – the fun was in the pricing system. The price tag for every item in Filene’s Basement included the date it was first put on sale. The original sale price was usually significantly lower than what you’d pay at most other stores, but there was the promise of even better deals. Fourteen days after the article entered inventory, if it hadn’t sold, the price was reduced by 25%; 14 days after that, the price was reduced by 50%; 14 days after that, the price was 75% of the original sale price. And if it still didn’t sell, then after 14 more days it was donated to charity.

At the age of seven, my daughter learned how to do fractions by calculating the savings on a pair of designer shoes that I could at last afford because they had been stuck on the shelf for 28 days. I still remember the day I found a set of 800-count, queen-sized blue sheets and matching pillow cases (and there will someday be a blog on the luxury of high-count sheets) that were just $20 because they had languished in the Basement for 42 days. Ah, those were the days.

But all good things come to an end, I guess. It was a traffic cop who took us aside to explain the brutal truth. Filene’s Basement had closed last September. The building was undergoing a massive renovation that was to last two years. It’s supposed to reopen in 2009 — but the owners have made it clear that they are under no legal obligation to do so. Sigh.

It took me a little while to figure out what it was I was going to miss. Does this make sense? We all have to shop for the basic essentials in life. Some of us enjoy it; many don’t. I probably fall in the middle and my patience when shopping usually wears thin far sooner than my daughter’s. But Filene’s Basement made it a game. I probably didn’t need the sheets — but the price was too good to pass up. It was a win-win for the store and for me. I won’t say I didn’t need the shoes, because well, just because I always need shoes. That’s the way it is for shoe-a-holics.

But mostly, I think I’ll miss the fun I had rummaging through the piles with my daughter. Calling out to each other when we found an item, even if we hated it, that was 75% off. We might not have bought it, but we enjoyed the hunt.

RIP, Filene’s Basement. We’ll miss you.

Does anyone know of a similar bargain store??

Marian, the Northern half of Evelyn David

The Sign of the Twisted Candles

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Last night I read my mother’s well-worn copy of The Sign of the Twisted Candles. She’d been given the book as a young girl. The copyright date inside the battered cover is 1933. Coming from a family with limited financial resources and lots of siblings, she didn’t own many books as a child. She’s treasured this one for almost 60 years. I’ll be returning it to her bookshelf this weekend.

My mother introduced me to Nancy Drew when I was in the third grade. Many of the words were strange – commodious, oculist; the phrases unusual – jolly friends; the foods strange – jellied consommé. But I still loved the book.

“Oh, Nancy! I’m afraid to go any farther, and I’m afraid not to. Won’t you speed the car up!”

Nancy Drew smiled grimly to herself, despite the awe-inspiring situation with which she had to battle. (The Sign of the Twisted Candles, Carolyn Keene, 1933).

Teenaged Nancy Drew wasn’t afraid. She seemed to thrive on meeting challenges head-on; her confidence in herself and the power of good to triumph over evil was indeed “awe-inspiring.” An only child of a wealthy criminal lawyer and a deceased mother, Nancy is often on her own or having adventures with her two best friends. She gives free reign to her curiosity when she and her friends take shelter at a crumbling Civil War-era mansion that has been converted into a combination restaurant and inn. There is a mysterious old man in the tower room, an overworked, ill-treated foster child, an evil innkeeper and wife, and strange happenings galore. Asking questions, watching people, and following the clues, Nancy solves the crimes and plays fairy godmother to the foster child.

Last week I read Nevada Barr’s latest book, Winter Study. Anna Pigeon, Barr’s heroine, is a 40-something, National Park Service Ranger. Anna was recently married. But in her words, “They’d been married four months. They’d been together ten days of it.” In Winter Study, Anna is temporarily assigned to the wolf population study at Isle Royale on Lake Superior. The survival of the wolves on the island might be threatened, but it’s the humans who are doing the dying. As usual Anna uses her experience, survival skills, and keen powers of observation and deduction to solve the murders.

When I decided to compare the two books for my blog entry for Nancy Drew week, I ignored the issue that one series is written for children and the other is written for adults. Although Nancy is around 16 or 17 years old, the themes in the Nancy Drew books are ones that a 10-year-old would enjoy most. Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon books are definitely for older teens and adults. Was a comparison of the 1930-heroine with the 2008-counterpart fair? Do they have anything in common?

Freedom for a woman in Nancy’s day (1930s) was accomplished by being upper class, having inherited money or a generous parent, having a supportive yet distant family who gave you time and space to solve mysteries, and an extraordinary inherent confidence in your own beliefs and intellect.

Freedom for a woman in Anna Pigeon’s day (now) is accomplished by hard work and earning your own money, pushing back against stereotypical female roles, having a supportive yet distant family who gives you time and space to solve mysteries, and an well-earned confidence in your own beliefs and intellect.

In both books there is “good versus evil” theme, with “good” winning in the Nancy Drew books and if not winning in the Anna Pigeon books, at least a rough justice is achieved.

Both heroines solve mysteries by using their powers of observation, understanding human nature, and their own personal courage. Both Nancy and Anna walk out into the night alone to confront the unknown. They are both smart, curious, creative and willing to take risks. As my co-author says, “Independent women were revolutionary in the 1930s. And perhaps they still are.”

What do you look for in your favorite “mystery” heroines? When you examine the fine print – are they all versions of Nancy Drew?

Evelyn David

Girl Power

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I wanted a little blue roadster – even before I knew what a roadster was. I knew for sure that it was cooler than my Dad’s Plymouth.

I didn’t want Ned Nickerson. He seemed like a vain pretty boy who just got in the way of the real star of the show.

I did want a friend named George who wasn’t embarrassed to be a tomboy, but still went to all the dances. My best friend was Myrtle (and while she was great at hopscotch, she didn’t have the curiosity of a hedgehog.)

But most of all, I wanted to be the heroine who was smarter than all the grownups in town and had thrilling adventures where she rescued herself from danger. Who didn’t want to be Nancy Drew?

My childhood library didn’t stock Nancy Drew mysteries, although for some reason, you could find student nurse Cherry Ames who also solved mysteries. Still I managed to accumulate my own shelf of the blue and yellow mystery books, anxiously determined each time to crack the case before Nancy revealed the answer to the whodunit in the last ten pages.

My daughter, on the other hand, had zero interest in Nancy Drew. She loved the Alanna series by Tamora Pierce, that featured a fierce young woman who disguised herself as a boy to enter training as a knight. She found this fantasy series far more exciting, but also more realistic than the Nancy Drew mysteries. “Alanna got her period, had trouble with boys, stuff that happened to me even if I wasn’t a knight-in-training.”

So why my personal fondness for Nancy Drew? Was she my inspiration to write mysteries? Probably. I recently re-read The Secret of the Old Clock, the first book in the series. It had been reissued in 1959, cleaned up of any of its original racist references. The mystery is slight, at best. But even as an adult, I’m struck by the creation of a young girl heroine who is resourceful enough to rescue herself from a locked closet – look out Macgyver. I am delighted that her father Carson Drew doesn’t try and stop her from investigating the mystery, but instead encourages her independence and declares, “I’m glad you have the courage of your convictions.”

But if Nancy Drew was the spark, it was Mary Stewart, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Rex Stout who fanned the flames of my early interest in mysteries. I quickly realized that their protagonists were more layered, their mysteries far more challenging, and their storytelling more sophisticated and intriguing.

Still, let me raise a toast to Nancy Drew. She filled a void in my childhood for a female adventurer who didn’t need a boy to give her the answers. She taught me that the search for solutions could be as much fun as the end result. And she gave me the confidence to say that I too could solve mysteries – or even better, create them!

Marian the Northern half of Evelyn David