Tag Archive for: Linda Rodriguez

Untangling Murders

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez



In my Skeet Bannion mystery series,
my protagonist, Skeet, is a knitter who uses time with her knitting needles to
untangle the murky problems of murder she faces. In the forthcoming third book
in the series, Every Hidden Fear,
Skeet’s beloved grandmother has come to live with her, and Gran is a knitter
and untangler of problems also.

Skeet’s best friend Karen owns
Forgotten Arts, a fiberarts store in the small college town of Brewster,
Missouri, 12 miles north of Kansas City, Missouri. Karen raises Romney sheep
and angora goats on a farm outside of town and spins her own one-of-a-kind
yarns. She sells mill-spun knitting and weaving yarns, as well, and all sorts
of knitting, spinning, and weaving equipment.

I love the moments when I write
about Skeet walking into Forgotten Arts, perhaps buying yarn for her own
knitting projects, and when I write about Skeet, late at night, knitting
brightly colored socks for herself or a lace shawl for Gran’s birthday as she
ponders alibis, motives, and opportunities for suspects to commit murder. And I
do know what I’m talking about because I knit, spin, and do other fiber arts. In
fact, I used to take commissions to design and make one-of-a-kind, multicolored
lace shawls of various luxury fibers, millspun and handspun, until writing and
promoting books took over so much of my time. In fact, I was commissioned to
make one very special one for the writer Sandra Cisneros.

Now, I usually save my limited
spinning and knitting time for family gifts. However, as I’ve geared up for the
publication of Every Hidden Fear (out
May 6th), I decided to combine my love of spinning and knitting with
the promotion of books. I’ve set up a pre-order contest for Every Hidden Fear with a grand prize of
one of those one-of-a-kind, multicolored lace shawls of various luxury fibers,
millspun and handspun, that I used to make on commission. I’m designing it on
the needles so I don’t have a photo yet to show people interested in entering. Instead,
I’m showing these photos of the most recent shawl I made, a Christmas present
for my sister. The shawl I’m making will be of approximately the size and shape
of this Christmas-present shawl, but with different stitches and colors. The
fibers I’ve used so far include baby alpaca, cashmere, merino, and silk.

For two second prizes, each winner
will have a character named after her or him in my next Skeet Bannion book,
tentatively titled Every Family Doubt.
There will also be smaller prizes with either a book or fiberart theme, and
everyone who enters will receive a signed bookplate. Simply send an email to lindalynetterodriguez@gmail.com
with a copy of a receipt, Amazon acknowledgement, or other proof of pre-order
and type PRE-ORDER CONTEST in the subject line.

This contest with its special shawl
seems to me a particularly appropriate way to celebrate the publication of
another book in this series so involved with the fiber arts. As I plan and knit
this prize shawl, I find myself mulling over alibis, motives, and opportunities
to commit murder since I have another book to write, and life imitates art.
Linda Rodriguez’s second Skeet Bannion novel, Every Broken Trust, is a finalist for
the International Latino Book Award and the Premio Aztlán Literary Award. Her first
Skeet novel, Every Last Secret, won
the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition and an
International Latino Book Award. Find her on Twitter as @rodriguez_linda, on
Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LindaRodriguezWrites,
and blogging at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com.

REPLIES TO COMMENTS

Mary, knitting really does help with focus and concentration and creative thinking. and those fibers would need to be handwashed and laid flat to dry. Just in case. 🙂

We Have a Jewish Lawn, But Where Are the Diamonds?

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
  

People who have been reading my posts on my own blog, here
at Stiletto, and on my other group blog, Writers Who Kill, know that I have had
to battle disapproving neighbors and the city about my front yard, which is
planted in native, drought-hardy plants for the most part. The neighbors and
the city both would prefer that my husband and I have only bluegrass in my
yard, and they’d like to force us to do that. Fortunately, we’ve been able to
fight it for the past seven or eight years.
Now, along comes Pat Robertson, that ancient, uber-wealthy
televangelist, to give us just the excuse we needed to stand up to the
neighbors and the city. On March 31, Robertson said on his television show on
the Christian Broadcasting Network that you never saw Jews tinkering under
their cars or mowing their lawns because they were too busy polishing their
diamonds. 
My husband, who’s Jewish, sent me the link to the video.  
He included a subject line in his email that read, “We Have
a Jewish Lawn,” referring, of course, to the problems with the city.
I watched the video with the poor confused old man and
emailed my husband back. “You’re right. We do. But where are the diamonds?”
And I’m still waiting, darn it!

 

REPLY TO COMMENTS (because Blogger still won’t let me reply 🙁

Marilyn, yes, it is sad, but no more than we can expect from Robertson anymore. It’s a shame that he puts himself forth as representing Christianity, which is something very different and much better than what he shows the world. I would say he’s irrelevant, but he has millions of viewers. I can’t understand why people and cities all over the country are so insistent on the bluegrass yards when they require so much water and chemicals to survive. Yards like yours and mine are much more sustainable and eco-sensible (I think I just made up that word, but we needed one like that, didn’t we?).

The Importance of Saying No

/in /by

by Linda
Rodriguez
I have always had a hard time saying
“no.” I like people, and I always want to help good causes. This has led to
years of low pay in the nonprofit sector, tons of overwork, lots of volunteer
hours, and on the good side, an awful lot of great friends. It also leads
periodically to a terrible feeling of overload, that point I get to when I have
so many urgent or overdue or essential tasks to do that I’m paralyzed. How do
you prioritize when everything needs to be done RIGHT NOW?
When I get to that point, I have to move
into To-Do Triage. I list everything that’s demanding my attention (and get the
most depressing multi-page list). Then I move down the list, asking myself,
“What will happen if I don’t do this today?” If it isn’t job loss, client loss,
contract violation, child endangerment, arrest, etc., it doesn’t go on the much
tinier list to be dealt with right now.
The trouble is that you can’t live your
life in To-Do Triage. At least, I can’t. Not as a permanent lifestyle. Sooner
or later, you have to learn to say “no.” Even when it’s difficult. Even when
it’s going to hurt someone’s feelings (whether it should or not). Even when
it’s something you’d like to do. At least, if you want to write, you will.
Sooner or later, you have to learn to guard your time like a mother eagle with
her nestlings. And sooner or later, you’ll find yourself having to relearn it
all over again. At least, I do. (Maybe I’m just a slow learner, and all the
rest of you can learn this lesson once and for all, but it keeps coming up in
new guises in my life.)
I remember the first time I learned the
lesson of no. I was a young, broke mother of two (still in diapers) who wanted
to write. The advice manuals I read were aimed at men with wives and secretaries
or women with no children or enough money to hire help with the house and the
kids. Since there was three times as much month as there was money, hiring
anyone or anything was out of the question—I was washing cloth diapers in the
bathtub by hand and hanging on a clothesline to dry because we hadn’t enough
disposable income for the laundromat.  Yet
still I wound up the one in the neighborhood who canvassed with kids in
stroller and arms for the March of Dimes and the American Cancer Society.
 
One day someone who knew how much I
wanted to write gave me a little book called Wake Up and Live by Dorothea Brande, who also wrote the wonderful On Becoming A Writer. As I read it, one
sentence leaped out at me: “As long as you cannot
bear the notion that there is a creature
under heaven who can regard you with an indifferent, an amused or hostile eye,
you will probably see to it
that you continue to fail with the utmost charm.”
I began carving out time and space for
my writing, and to do it without shortchanging my babies, I cut out television
and most of my community involvement. This lesson had to be relearned when
those babies were high schoolers, my new youngest was a toddler, and I became a
full-time student and a single working mother at the same time unexpectedly. It
returned to be learned again when my oldest two were grown, my youngest in
grade school, and I took on running a university women’s center that also
served the community. Every time it had to be learned in a different way with
different adjustments. Once I’d given up television, that option was no longer
open to me. At one point, I switched my writing to poetry because what time I
could create or steal was in such small fragments that it made novels impossible
to write.
Now that I’m writing novels again and
publishing them (as well as poetry and freelance work still), one of the
time-eaters is the promotion work we authors must all do to win the readers we
believe our books deserve. It’s not something that can be skimped on, and yet
the creative work of designing and writing new novels must go forward, as well.
For a while now, each request for my volunteer time and work has had to be
carefully weighed, and most reluctantly rejected. At this time, my major
volunteer commitment is our local chapter of Sisters in Crime, Border Crimes.
Everything else must sadly fall by the wayside—and some people are quite
unhappy about that, as if they had the right to my time and skills because I’ve
given them in the past. I’ve had to learn to deal with that.
What about the time book promotion
takes, however? With my first and second novels (this was never a real issue
with my poetry books and cookbook), I said “yes” to every opportunity, every
event, every guest blog, every interview, every podcast, everything. And I
managed to write books during that time, as well—and had the worst winters,
healthwise, in many years, having worn my body down. This year I’m trying to be
more strategic about the promotion opportunities I accept. I’m still saying
“yes” to most of them—it’s part of my job, and I know that—but I’m examining
them more closely and deciding against some that I don’t feel will be as useful
for me, especially with travel involved. It’s hard, but once again I’m learning
that lesson, which is apparently one of my life-lessons—“no” can be the friend
of my writing and is necessary at times.
Charles Dickens, who was one of the
earliest and most successful self-promoting writers, put it best for writers in
any age when he said:
“‘It is only half an hour’ — ‘It is only
an afternoon’ — ‘It is only an evening,’ people say to me over and over again;
but they don’t know that it is impossible to command one’s self sometimes to
any stipulated and set disposal of five minutes — or that the mere
consciousness of an engagement will sometime worry a whole day … Whoever is
devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and to
find his recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to see
you, but I can’t help it; I must go in my way whether or no.”
Do you find it difficult to tell others
“no” when they want your time? If you’re a writer, how do you create ways to
balance the promotion and the writing?
COMMENTS–Blogger still won’t allow me to post comments on this blog or my own. (Go figure!) So I will respond to comments by editing the blog below. (I know that makes just no sense at all, but it’s the way things are.)


Marilyn, I know what you mean. I read your blogs and Facebook posts and see all the things you’re still doing. I actually was forced to finally take this whole concept of “no” seriously when I developed lupus, fibromyalgia, and COPD. Suddenly, I just could no longer do the work of several people as I had been doing. And the interesting thing was the number of people who wanted me to get out of my sickbed and do things for their organizations anyway. One woman tried to guilt me by telling me about another woman who had hosted an event for them even though she had had a stroke. (Of course, that woman was extremely wealthy with live-in help even before her illness and paid people to do the work necessary.)

And the books! I do review some books professionally and I try to be generous about giving blurbs because people were kind to me when I was starting out. Plus, I have students who send me their manuscripts or want letters of recommendation for fellowships, etc. Sometimes, I just have to say no to a blurb or review because my desk is already piled high with manuscripts and letters to do. Sometimes people don’t understand.

Thanks, Debra! I think that trick of balance is the hardest one to manage, and even if you do, conditions change and throw it all out of whack again.

Mary, my experience is that often people don’t come forward to do those things, and programs, etc., end up falling through the cracks. I’ve learned not to allow that to upset me and just say, “Well, if it wasn’t important enough for anyone else to help, it wasn’t important enough to take my time, no matter how much it seemed to be.”

Warren, I’m laughing and crying at the same time when I read your comment. That is so typical. “You’re at home doing nothing but writing, which is another word for nothing, so your time is completely available to me.” These are the same people who say, “I might whip out one of those mysteries on my two-week vacation while shepherding the kids through Disneyworld. I mean, how hard can it be, writing?”

Award Nominations

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It’s the time of year that award nominations start sprouting
for books published in 2013. All kinds of awards. And every single time one is
announced, nominees say the same thing: “It’s an honor simply to be nominated
with this group of high caliber authors.”
Now, we all know that each of them wants to win that award,
so why do they mess around saying something that everyone else has said a
million times? Because it’s the truth.
I just learned that my second Skeet Bannion mystery, Every Broken Trust, is a finalist for
the International Latino Book Award. This is a prestigious literary award, and
of course, I want to win it. Just as we all want to win those awards we get
nominated and become finalists for. But the other finalists are such fine
writers that I can say with equal truth, “It’s an honor simply to be nominated
with this group of high caliber authors.”
Last year, my first Skeet novel, Every Last Secret, was a finalist for the same award and came in
third. This was, of course, a disappointment in one way, but not in others. The
books which took first and second place were such fine books that I couldn’t be
upset. When a book that’s much weaker wins over yours, that hurts, but as
usually happens, when it’s a very strong, beautifully wrought book, you can only
feel happy and honored to have been considered to be in the same company.
So to all the award nominees and finalists out there, those
who have already heard and those who’ll be notified in the coming weeks and
months, congratulations! You’re all winners, simply for being in the small
group of finalists or nominees. No matter who finally takes home the medal or
teapot or statue, you’ve all done that marvelous thing—written an excellent
book the worth of which was recognized by experts in the field or your peers or
however your award is set up. Enjoy yourself, feel good about it, and whether
you win or not, go home and get started on the next book.
Because in the final hour that’s what we all are, not award
winners, nominees, or finalists, but writers. That’s the important part of us,
and that next book is calling seductively to us, making promises that we know
we’ll never be able to bring completely to fruition, but the real joy is in the
trying.


REPLIES TO COMMENTS (since Blogger still won’t let me comment):

Reine, thank you so much. You have been such a staunch fan and advocate of the Skeet books, and I really appreciate that!

Real Beauty

/in /by


On Oscars night, social media went wild with often-cruel
snark and criticism of some of the older women at the Oscars who had had
plastic surgery, in particular Kim Novak. 
In reaction, crime fiction author
Laura Lippman posted a photo of herself without makeup, special lighting, or
any kind of flattering filters and challenged other authors in the field to do
the same in an attempt to show what real people actually look like at all ages.

The response was overwhelming. Mystery and thriller writers
and readers, male and female, posted what some people called “raw selfies.” I
put up one myself.

 Erin Mitchell put
together just a few of the earliest responders into a video slideshow that’s
absolutely wonderful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM9kBqG5VEM

Each of us who posted our raw selfie also wrote about what
prompted the photo and about the issue of society’s distorted expectations and
demands on women in the realm of physical appearance. This led in many cases to
intense conversations on Facebook and elsewhere about this issue. I had a thread that ran through more than 20 comments.
 I argued with some of
my feminist literary writer friends who blamed the older women like Novak who
had fallen into the movie industry’s trap of disvaluing their looks. One asked,
“And where are the men in this?” And I was happy and proud to tell her how many
of our male crime fiction colleagues had involved themselves in this little
protest movement.
 What’s your take on
this whole subject of society’s definition of female beauty as an underweight
teenager’s body and face? Also, what did you think about the Real Beauty
Project video?

 

COMMENTS (Blogger still won’t let me comment conventionally):

Reine, thank you for laying out so clearly the evolution of your feelings about physical appearance. I do think these perceptions change–and often for the better–as we mature. I sympathize about the problems with holding hair dryers and combing hair since I have similar issues–and these are universally issues no one takes into consideration. Often a person may take medicines that affect the thickness and quality of their hair or skin and meds and illness can impact so much more than that of our physical appearance.

Mary, I think the people who control our media focus the images of women they promulgate according to what will make them money. Many men may well not buy into those images, but many men and women are pretty much conditioned to think that those images are the only way women should be. It’s very pervasive and very powerful.

Out With the Old, In With the New

/in /by
NOT my junk corner


We have had a problem for years with our internet provider,
who shall hereafter be referred to as @#$$% Ma Bell. Their charges have
skyrocketed while the speed of their DSL connection and dependability has
plummeted. And almost every bad storm we have, winter or summer, we lose
connectivity to the internet. Finally, Google Fiber made Kansas City one of its
rollout cities, and for almost two years, I’ve been waiting for Google Fiber to
make it to my “fiberhood” so I can say a less than cordial good-bye to @#$$% Ma
Bell.
Two weeks ago, the Google Fiber crews finished connecting to
my house—what a racket of drilling into my foot-thick brick exterior walls!—and
made an appointment with me to come inside and do the interior part of the
installation. That appointment was for yesterday.
As it approached, we realized that the point where they
would bring in the cable lay in what’s turned into our junk corner of the
family room. That means decluttering and moving things and cleaning, oh my! (I
find those things much scarier than lions, tigers, or bears.) We found things
we didn’t even know we owned hidden under the don’t-have-a-place-for-it-right-now-so-I’ll-just-set-it
here-temporarily mound. (Please tell me that at least some of you have one of
those!) Like a never-used, decades-old cassette tape player. Not much use
anymore, unfortunately. And no one’s admitting to placing that machine there
now.
Furniture must be moved out of the way to create room for
them to work back in the corner by the electrical outlet, which means moving
other furniture out of the way to make room for that furniture and moving other
things—like my spinning wheel—out of the way to make room for the second batch
of displaced furniture. It’s kind of like falling dominoes with bookcases,
tables, and spinning wheels—and lots of stray books, boxes from my son’s Iowa
home, and of course, forgotten tape players.
As I write this, we’re about to head into the final battle
with the junk corner in anticipation of the advent of Google Fiber in the
afternoon, so as you read this, I should not only have reliable, low-cost internet
but a newly clean and organized junk corner. A win-win for everyone, yes?
Now, confess. Do any of you have a junk corner hiding in the
depths of your home? How do we let this happen?

LATE ADDENDUM: As the very nice Google Fiber guys were about to finish the installation, a power transformer across the street exploded with a huge bang and blue-sparked light in zig-zag waves like in a comic book or graphic novel. The whole neighborhood lost power for many hours just as it was starting to snow. So my husband, son, and I trekked to a local coffee shop for warm shelter (I’m still recovering from pneumonia, and I can’t do cold.) When it closed, we drove out to a suburban 24-hour restaurant with central heating until my answering machine clicked in and told us they’d finally fixed the neighborhood power. As you read this, I will still not have Google Fiber. They can’t return until Saturday. But it’s almost here.

COMMENTS (I still can’t comment so I’ll have to edit to respond–isn’t that crazy?)

Pam Hopkins, don’t you think it’s a human trait to put things down somewhere “just for now” and then forget about them as we get busy?

Mary, I had an overfull bookcase break and topple in my office/fiberart studio last year. What a mess! I’d send you the tape player, but I’ve already freecycled it. I am so looking forward to being able to call AT&T to say, “It’s over.” Cancelling landline, too, and going completely cell, which I never thought I’d do, but they’ve driven me to it.

Ritter, thank you for all of this information about Ooma. I’d never heard about this before. It’s definitely something I will be checking out. I really appreciate it!

Ah, Faith, I’m not talking about the garage that’s too full of stuff for a car. Some things are just too shameful. *sigh* I didn’t mention that every spare space in our house is crammed with boxes, bins, and eztra furniture recently moved from out son’s home in Iowa. Unlike the junk corner, that’s not a normal aspect of my house. (He’s found a job in the area and will be getting his own place once he digs out of the debt in which months of job-hunting left him.)

In Praise of Electricity and Internet and Some Much Older Things

/in /by


We’ve had an ice storm followed a couple of days later by a
blizzard in Kansas City, one that shut the city down for two days—and we’re a
city that’s used to ice and snow in winter. Our neighborhood has lots of old
trees, and we lost power, phone, and internet, as often happens to us. Once the
snow stopped falling, the temperatures plummeted to -15°.
Fortunately, we live in an old house with a fireplace and stuffed
to the rafters with yarn, wool and other fibers, sweaters, afghans, handmade blankets,
and quilts. (My quilting fabric stash, knitting/weaving yarn stash, and
spinning fiber/fleece stash probably goes a long way to insulate our interior
against the polar temps.) With our wool socks, alpaca scarves and hats, and
cashmere/silk shawls, no one was going to freeze to death in this house, except
possibly the dog, who is a short-haired Southern breed but refuses to allow
anything on his body besides his collar, even just a blanket.

Cooking was an issue since we have an electric stove. But
fortunately, we had sandwich makings and potato chips, fresh fruits and vegetables,
dried fruits and cookies, so we didn’t starve, either. (Though for my
ultra-picky son, it may have felt like it.) Late today, everything came back
on, a blessing because it’s dropping way below zero again tonight—and because
we really wanted a hot meal and a hot cup of tea. It left me thinking about the
past and the future.
I’m hardly some kind of survivalist with five years of food
stashed in my underground bunker—witness our pathetic diet during this time—but
I like to know how to do the things our grandparents and great-grandparents had
to do to stay alive. 
I’ve never sheared a sheep, but I can take that sheared
fleece, skirt it, wash it, card or comb it, dye it, and spin it into yarn and
thread that I can weave, knit, sew into items to keep us warm and covered—and I
can do the same process with cotton straight off the boll. I can (and have)
made bread and yeast, yogurt and a variety of cheeses, butter, soap, candles,
and baskets from vines outside. I’ve raised chickens, collected eggs, killed
and cleaned roosters, milked cows, picked cotton, and threshed and winnowed
wheat. And I collect books on how to do other basic survival skills that I’ve
never had a chance to put into practice, like how to build a log cabin, an
outhouse, a barn, a chicken coop, a horse-drawn plow or wagon, how to slaughter
and butcher hogs, how to raise milk goats and honeybees, and many other skills
that have been forgotten by most people in the United States today. I always
tell my friends that, if one of those dystopian disasters takes place, they
want to be close to me.

It’s not that I expect doomsday at any point in my lifetime,
but I don’t think those important skills should be so quickly forgotten. It
took humanity millennia to learn to do these things to make life easier, even
possible, and more millennia to refine them. We’ve forgotten them in less than
a century—at least, in the United States. No one needs to be able to do these
things any longer, but the day may well come when these old skills are
necessary once again, only no one will know how to do them any longer. I don’t
expect to see that day in my lifetime, but I collect the skills and teach them
to everyone I can. I think it’s important to keep them alive so someone knows
how to do these things if the time comes that they’re needed again.
We only lost power for two and a half days, so I didn’t have
to dig out my cast-iron Dutch oven and start cooking meals in the fireplace—but
I could have if I’d needed to. I can feel my grandmothers watching and nodding
in satisfaction from the spirit world. They were survivors and taught me many
of the skills I have. They knew the value of having skills that help you keep
your family fed and clothed and warm and sheltered. Don’t get me wrong. I
missed the internet almost as much as electricity. I’m not someone who scorns
the conveniences of the modern world. I’d rather not kill and clean my own
chickens or make my own soap. But if I had to, I could, and my friends and
family would benefit from that knowledge.
Do you have some old skills that used to be necessary to
decent daily life? Do you wish you did, or do you think they’re all better off
forgotten?

 

Listening to the Sound of Words and the Voice of Characters

/in /by

Listening to the Sound of Words and the Voice of Characters
by Debra H. Goldstein

I like to talk to myself.  Not quietly in my mind, but out loud. My children cringe and fear the worst when they hear me. Joel ignores my occasional mutterings grateful they aren’t honey do directives.  I have no idea what someone watching a security camera filming an elevator or hallway thinks – especially when the words relate to murder or another heinous crime.  The fact is that as a writer, I need to hear the sound of words.

Testing dialogue or narrative works best for me if I can listen to the words.  Giving them vocal life allows me to feel the pace of a scene and the true voice of each character.  Often I realize that what is blocking the flow of the piece is that in trying to push the story, I overwrote it with words the characters never would have chosen to utter when expressing themselves.  The story only works when I respond to the awkwardness of my crafted sentences.

Many writers don’t have to talk aloud.  Instead, they hear voices in their heads. One of my first guest bloggers on my personal blog, “It’s Not Always a Mystery,” Lois Winston, author of the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, described the phenomenon of “Those Voices in My Head” in February 2012. (http://debrahgoldstein.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/guest-blog-those-voices-in-my-head-by-lois-winston/ )  Lois explained that the voices belong to her characters. Her voices are not content to sit back and let her write their stories.  Instead, they argue plot lines, characterization, voice, and pace with her.  They often refuse to let the story proceed until she accedes to their demands. Time has taught her that the way the voices in her head want a book to be written is always correct.  Her newest book, Decoupage can be Deadly, is a perfect example of  combining polished writing skills with listening to the voices in her head to produce a delightful final product.

Linda Rodriguez, author of Every Last Secret, Every Broken Trust and Every Hidden Fear, has a similar involvement with her characters.  She recently blogged about how they speak to her and insist on having lives of their own, but she implied that what the characters say are extensions of her subconscious experiences and reading that she had failed to consciously pull together.  The impact of these subliminal messages barging into her consciousness is what works to makes half-Cherokee Marquitta “Skeet” Bannion and the other characters in Linda’s books so real. (https://www.thestilettogang.com/ – December 6, 2013) The result is that when one reads any of the books that feature “Skeet” Bannion, one immediately feels a kinship with “Skeet,” her family, friends and enemies. 
 
A third group of writers don’t talk out loud or hear voices.  Their story stumbling blocks are resolved while sleeping.  The loose ends of their stories come together in action sequences during their dreams.

Whether words are spoken aloud, voices are heard, or acted out during rem sleep, it is immaterial how subconscious story truth is reached.  The key is for a writer to recognize and accept the message. No matter how skilled a writer is, continually trying to push a round-pegged story into a square hole never produces a quality work product.  Being open to the sound of words and the thoughts characters speak can make the difference between writing that ends up in the drawer versus a book or story that is successful.  As a writer, what method do you use to find the true path a project is meant to take?
                                                                           ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Decoupage Can Be Deadly is the fourth book in Lois Winston’s Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series.  In Decoupage Can Be Deadly, Anastasia and her fellow American Woman editors are steaming mad when minutes before the opening of a consumer show, they discover half their booth usurped by Bling!, their publisher’s newest magazine. CEO Alfred Gruenwald is sporting new arm candy—rapper-turned-entrepreneur and Bling! executive editor, the first-name-only Philomena. During the consumer show, Gruenwald’s wife serves Philomena with an alienation of affection lawsuit, but Philomena doesn’t live long enough to make an appearance in court. She’s found dead days later, stuffed in the shipping case that held Anastasia’s decoupage crafts. When Gruenwald makes cash-strapped Anastasia an offer she can’t refuse, she wonders, does he really want to find Philomena’s killer or is he harboring a hidden agenda?
                                                                             ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In Every Broken Trust by Linda Rodriguez, life has settled into routine for half-Cherokee Marquitta “Skeet” Bannion now that she’s gained custody of fifteen-year-old Brian Jameson and shares care for her stroke-impaired father with her ex-husband—until the past reaches out to destroy everything she holds dear.

A party to celebrate the arrival in Brewster, Missouri, of George Melvin, a Kansas City politician accompanied by his troubled teenage daughter, wealthy wife, even wealthier backer, and mysterious employee, rapidly turns into disaster when Skeet’s best friend, Karen Wise, stumbles on a body in Chouteau University’s storage caves and is attacked herself.  Not knowing who she can trust as she finds friends and neighbors in Brewster keeping secrets from her, Skeet struggles against the clock to solve a series of linked murders stretching into the past before she loses Brian forever and her best friend winds up in jail—or dead.

Looking Back at 2013 and Ahead to 2014

/in /by


by Linda Rodriguez

This will be a short post of mostly links to other posts because
I’m battling pneumonia right now. I’m getting better, but with steroids,
antibiotics, and the pneumonia itself, I’m just knocked pretty flat.
2013 was a terrific year. My first novel, Every Last Secret, was named a finalist
for the International Latino Book Awards. My second novel in the Skeet Bannion
series, Every Broken Trust, published
in early May to lovely reviews and was the selection for September of the Las
Comadres National Latino Book Club. I spent the summer and fall either touring
or writing the third book in the series, Every
Hidden Fear, which will launch May 6, 2014.
Also, in 2013, my book and I were featured on Cosmo, sandwiched between “The Joys of
Hangover Sex” and “Hot Sex Tips,” and I wrote about that in “Interview Anxiety”
here on The Stiletto Gang. https://www.thestilettogang.com/2013/06/interview-anxiety.html
At the beginning of the year, my friend Richard Blanco was
named the Inaugural Poet, writing and reading a wonderful poem at the
Inauguration, which some of the poetry and political establishments slammed,
and I wrote about that here in “Of
Tempests in Teapots, Po-Biz, and a Welcome Return to Sanity.” https://www.thestilettogang.com/2013/01/of-tempests-in-teapots-po-biz-and.html
In February on my
own blog, I wrote a tribute to a dear departed friend and all those comadres
who’ve made my life so meaningful. http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/2013/02/comadres-forever.html
In April, on my
blog, I put on my poet’s hat, which I’ve worn much longer than my novelist’s
hat, and posted a two-part guide for those who want to learn to write or
understand poetry, but can’t afford to go off to some expensive workshop.
And in June, I wrote
about the writer’s dreaded enemy that keeps us cleaning fridges and Facebooking
instead of writing in “Resistance.” http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/2013/06/resistance.html
When summer turned
into autumn, we had big changes here on The Stiletto Gang. Several of our
established members said goodbye for various reasons of life cycle and
schedule, and we added a whole new cohort of blog sisters—Sparkle Abbey, Sally
Berneathy, Marjorie Brody, Lynn Cahoon, Debra Goldstein, and Kay Kendall. They’ve
brought a new fizz and energy to our daily cocktail of musings and stories that
we offer to our readers, and it’s been exciting to be a part of our new
expanded group blog.
So here’s to 2014. I
can’t wait to welcome this new year in—once I get well.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Buffy the Vampire Slayer

/in /by

My youngest son has a lot of ambitions, and he’s pretty good
at achieving them. Very determined in quite a praiseworthy way when he’s aiming
at living and studying for a year in London and gets waylaid at the last minute
by ulcerative colitis that put him in the hospital with IVs pumping blood back
into his nearly bloodless body, yet makes it to London the next year. It’s more
like stubborn when his goal is to drag me kicking and screaming into 21st-century
popular culture.
I stopped watching television back in the late 1980s because
I was a working (and going-to-school) single mom and needed to find time to
write somehow without taking time away from my kids. I stopped keeping up with
pop music earlier sometime in the *shudder* disco age. After I grew up enough
to stop wearing bell-bottoms and mini-skirts, I stopped paying any attention to
fashion. I’ve always been a person who danced to my own drum, one who lived in
books and on paper, very introverted and introspective. And then I was a
workaholic. So American popular culture passed me by.
My older two kids seem just fine with that. Of course Mom is
just out of it and doesn’t know what’s cool. *eloquent shrug* But the youngest,
who’s over twelve years younger than his brother and sister, decided somewhere
along the road that it was his duty to bring me current with the world of
movies, music, TV, celebrities, all the trivia that a normal American would
just know.
This started when I had a demanding job running a combined
campus and community women’s center at our local university. I was always
understaffed and had to raise all the money for our programs myself. My son,
Joseph, became my right-hand computer geek. When something went wrong with our
computers, Joseph fixed it. When I needed our computers to do something that
they couldn’t do, Joseph managed to get them to do it. When our website needed
updating and I had no money to pay for IT, Joseph updated it and even
redesigned it. He was a lifesaver, but he had a price.
For each of these jobs and others, I had to watch so much
TV, animé,
or video game with him. First, it was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We went through
all of his boxed DVDs, and I became a fan—Spike!!!—who watched the last couple
of seasons as they were broadcast with him to my husband’s confusion and
dismay. (Did I mention that my husband is like me? And that Joseph eventually
talked him into going to a Communiversity class on feminist agency in Buffy the
Vampire Slayer?) 

Once Buffy was covered, he insisted on Marmalade Boy, a popular
Japanese animé adapted for TV from an even more popular manga. (Animé are
Japanese animated films and TV series while manga are Japanese graphic novels/comic
books, usually with outlandish premises like a boy turned into a girl or a girl
who’s also a fox demon or something much more bizarre.) I would never have
believed I could become fond of an animated TV romance about Japanese teenagers
whose parents were divorcing and marrying each other—with English subtitles.
Altogether, albeit it was during the time when Joseph was so very ill, we
watched all 76 episodes of Marmalade Boy. I call that true motherly love
myself.
Then, there was his insistence that I watch as he played Final
Fantasy 10 all the way through for probably the seventh time so that I could
see the “wonderful character arcs” and the “great storyline.” I did not ever
take him up on his offer to use the controls. After that, there were lots of
others, including Firefly, Dr. Who, Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog, and Glee.
Now, Joseph has moved back in with us for a while, and he’s
already started—Orange Is the New Black and the Dr. Who audiodramas. I draw the
line at American Horror Story, however. Stay tuned to see how this battle of
wills plays out. (He whispers, “Hint: Joseph wins.” *evil laugh*)
Note: Blogger will still not allow me to post
comments on The Stiletto Gang or my own blog (though I can post on other
Blogger blogs). So I will respond to your comments on our Facebook page, so
visit us there at https://www.facebook.com/stilettogang.

 

REPLIES TO COMMENTS:

I’m going to try responding to comments here since I know everyone isn’t on Facebook–there are some people even more out of it than me it seems. 🙂

Ramona, you–and Joseph–are right. buffy has great story and character arcs. And Spike! he inspired a whole sequence of my poems, “Coyote in Love.” Some of my most popular poems with women.

Kristopher, yeah, Joseph’s a pretty amazing young man. He just took a job teaching at Haskell Indian Nations University and made me the proudest mom in the world. I do like Orange is the New Black, but I’m drawing the line at American Horror Story, though I love Jessica Lange and Kathy Bates.

Katreader, yes. Buffy seriously rocks.

Sally, didn’t you love the musical episode, “Once More With Feeling”?

Mary, Joseph and I have always shared tons of interests. He loves to write, to read mysteries and fantasy/sf, loved opera, has read and loved the classics I adore (and has taught them), loves to knit and bake. Consequently, it’s natural that he’d want to share his interests with me. It’s a fair trade–except forAmerican Horror Story.