Tag Archive for: Lori Rader-Day

Better Than Christmas! – Mystery in the Midlands is coming!

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 Better than Christmas! –
Mystery in the Midlands is coming!  by Debra
H Goldstein

 Mystery in the Midlands is coming virtually, and I can’t
wait! 

 

Last year, over nine hundred (you read that right – over 900)
readers and authors attended the virtual four and one-half hour Crowdcast conference
co-sponsored by Southeast Mystery Writers of America (SEMWA) and the Palmetto
Chapter of Sisters in Crime. The line-up, led by Charlaine Harris was
phenomenal —- but in some ways, for me, this year is even more exciting.

 

Why?  Because I’m a die-hard
fan of every panelist and I’m getting to interview the keynoter, Dr. Kathy
Reichs. Who hasn’t seen Bones, the television show that was based upon her
books and her life? As if it wasn’t a thrill to be interviewing her, I’ve been
given the extra treat of being able to read an advance copy of her upcoming
book, The Bone Code. You can bet it will be one of the things we’ll be
discussing.

Dana Kaye will be moderating Mystery in the Midlands’ steaming
three panels: Searing Suspense, Hot for Historicals, and Scorching Short Stories.
How can you go wrong with hearing Robert Dugoni, Yasmin Angoe, Alex Segura,
Laurie R. King, Caroline Todd, Lori Rader-Day, Barb Goffman, Michael Bracken,
and Frankie Y. Bailey – especially when the entire cost (merely to defray
expenses) is $5 (once again, yes, you read that right – simply five dollars)? Look
at their pictures below, but don’t close your browser. Hurry and guarantee your
spot by registering now! https://www.crowdcast.io/e/mystery-in-the-midlands-2/register
 #Mystery in the Midlands




Inspiration

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by Paula Gail Benson

For my first Stiletto Gang post of 2019, I wrote about how I wish I had not delayed reading two books, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Quiche of Death. In particular, I found that M.C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin series taught me about writing craft and structure.

Marion Chesney Gibbons (also known as M.C. Beaton and a string of other pseudonyms under which she wrote romance novels) lived a prolific writing life. She began working as a book store clerk. When given an opportunity to write a review for a local paper, in place of a reporter with a relative in the cast, she thought it was a mere substitution, then was handed tickets to another show and became the paper’s critic. When she told her husband she could write better romances, she rose to the challenge and produced them. In each instance, from what might have been dismissed as inconsequential, she made careers.

In preparing this message, I looked at her website: www.mcbeaton.com. It contained notice of her passing, but directly above that was the message her latest book was available for pre-order. In addition, there were announcements about the Agatha Raisin television series being renewed. Along with several mystery series, her biography estimated that she wrote around 100 Regency romances. What an incredible body of work and what a wonderful memorial for a writer, that one’s website would be active with word of forthcoming publications at the time of one’s passing.

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to hear National Sisters in Crime President Lori Rader-Day address our local chapter through Facebook Messenger. She spoke about the inspirations for her most recent work The Lucky One, which came from a conversation with a new neighbor over a fence, and her work in progress, which came from a line in an Agatha Christie biography. Her remarks reminded me that the idea pool is literally all around us. We just have to be open enough to listen to and receive the suggestions.

What are you working on this New Year? How did the idea come to you? Is a new idea swirling nearby, just waiting for you to reach out and grab it?

Best wishes for your happiest reading and writing year ever!

It Tolls for Thee

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by Paula Gail Benson
Calhoun Residence Hall

John
Donne wrote, “No man is an island.” As writers, we often labor in isolation, occasionally
taking our notebooks to coffee shops or book stores to be close to activity. There
may be a gentle musical selection playing in the background or perhaps we’ve
arrived with our own headphones, so we can “control” and “enhance” that aspect
of concentration for the task. Keeping our distance, yet staying close to
humanity.

If
we have the opportunity to study writing among our peers, fellow scriveners
seeking to combine words in the most effective ways, we embrace the joy of being
with those who understand what it is like to labor alone. We spend time with
colleagues who face the same lonely struggles, then return to our work with new
resolve and inspiration.

This
summer, I had the remarkable experience of attending Yale University’s Summer
Writing Program, where small classes of students were paired with incredibly
talented authors for twelve hours of instruction, additional special lectures,
and a private analysis of each student’s submission. I was thrilled to
find myself in a class with six others learning about writing mysteries from the
fabulous Lori Rader-Day. It was truly life-changing.

Walking
down the streets to our Yale class room, I could hear the chiming of bells
from the carillon in Harkness tower. What an wonderfully appropriate musical accompaniment
for my ivy league adventure!

Passing
Calhoun Residence Hall, where we roomed, I noticed a carved relief of a scholar
in his robes, sitting at his desk, smoking his pipe, apparently concentrating on
his studies while surrounded by stacks of books. With the carillon bells chiming
in the background, I could almost imagine striding across campus in my own cap
and gown, heading to confer with my fellow scholars.

Like
at Oxford. Or maybe Hogwarts.



And
those bells followed my every footfall.


Carillons
can be traced back to medieval times when they were used as a means of
notification or alarm system for a town. The instrument, with a keyboard like
an organ, is connected to at least twenty-three bells that are housed in a
belfry. The one at Yale has fifty-four bells, each emblazoned with the words “FOR
GOD, FOR COUNTRY, AND FOR YALE.” Generally, they sound twice a day at Yale, but
we had arrived during the week of the Yale Carillon Guild convention.  

Those
bells became a constant companion. In fact, for two days straight, during our
ENTIRE three-hour class period, the carillon played without ceasing.

At
times, music can progress from mere accompaniment to severe distraction. That
is exactly what those marvelous bells did. While we sought to discuss the fine
points of characterization, plotting, and revision, the bells pealed forth,
sometimes merrily and other times solemnly, until their sound became
predominant in our heads.

Yet,
from the incessant ringing, another literary lesson emerged.

As mystery
writers, we couldn’t help but consider how constant noise could manipulate a
mind and drive an intellect to dire circumstances—like murder. I remembered how
Edgar Allan Poe’s guilt-ridden protagonist in “The Tell-Tale Heart” insists
what he hears is not madness: “The disease had sharpened my senses – not destroyed
– not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things
in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell.”

Taking
another look at the scholar on the Calhoun Residence Hall relief, I began to
wonder if he was consumed with his work or with the effort of attempting to
block out the bells. There was something in his expression that I thought might
resemble Poe’s protagonist’s anguish.

So, I
decided that it was good that writers can channel any murderous urges into
prose rather than action. As John Donne says: “Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind, Therefore, send not to know, For whom the bell
tolls, It tolls for thee.
Not
a bad lesson to have learned from a carillon at Yale!

Summertime and the reading is . . . WONDERFUL!

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by Paula Gail Benson

A significant part
of my vacations as I grew up was participating in the library summer reading
program. Now, that I work for a state legislature with a session ending in
early June, the summer months still mean a time of less activity so I can catch
up on all those lovely books on my TBR pile. If you’re looking for some
terrific summer reads, here are my recommendations, in two categories. First,
short story collections, which are great travel companions, and, second, academic
mysteries, in case you crave a vicarious trip back to school.
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS:
K.
B. Inglee’s The Case Book of Emily
Lawrence (Wildside Books 2016)
K.B.
writes historical mysteries and learns about the time periods in her stories by being a
reenactor and living interpreter. Her Case
Book features intrepid Emily Lothrop Lawrence, whose professor father
characterized as “intelligent” while calling her older sisters “beautiful” and “talented.”
Emily, with her husband Charles, operate a Pinkerton style detective agency in
post-Civil War Washington, DC. Reading about their investigations and
techniques is both a journey back in time and an appreciation for how
technology has influenced detection.
B.K.
Stevens’ Her Infinite Variety (Wildside
Books 2016).
 
B.K.’s
(or Bonnie’s) stories have frequently found a home in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. In this fascinating volume,
they’ve been collected, so you can enjoy four that feature her series
detectives, Iphigenia Wodehouse and Leah Abrams, and seven of her “stand-alones,”
including one of my favorites “Thea’s First Husband.” For excellent writing, intriguing
situations, and clever deductions, this collection is a true reader’s delight.
Art
Taylor’s On the Road with Del and Louise:
a Novel in Stories (Henery Press 2015).
Winner
of two Agatha Awards, the Anthony Award, the Macavity Award, and three
consecutive Derringer Awards for his short fiction, Art uses a series of
stories to tell the adventures of two intricate and compelling characters.
Louise, a Southern girl working in a New Mexico 7-Eleven, is held up by the
ski-masked Del, a frugal man seeking enough to meet his “academic” expenses,
and gives him her telephone number because she thinks he has nice eyes. She
finds it exciting when he calls, then sets out with him on what becomes a cross
country journey with stops at such diverse locations as Southern California,
Napa Valley, Las Vegas, North Dakota, and Louise’s North Carolina hometown. At
first, I wasn’t sure I could like either of these complex characters, but after
following them through traditional crime stories and hilarious capers, I had to
wait as long as I could to finish the last installment so I didn’t have to say
goodbye. Winner of the Agatha Award for
Best First Novel and finalist for the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, this
novel in stories is an engaging read.
ACADEMIC MYSTERIES:
Cynthia
Kuhn’s The Semester of Our Discontent
(Henery Press 2016).

The first book in a new series,
Cynthia’s novel features English professor Lila Maclean, who in her first year
at a prestigious university finds herself as involved in solving murders as
she is in steering clear of academic intrigue. Unfortunately, she keeps turning up on the
scene where her colleagues are being murdered. When her cousin becomes the
chief suspect, Lila has to find a way to clear her name. A fast-paced whodunit
with lots of quirky, yet familiar characters from higher education, which
received the William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant.

Lori
Rader-Day’s The Black Hour (Seventh
Street Books 2014).
Lori’s
suspenseful novel alternates between two narrators: (1) sociology professor
Amelia Emmet, who is returning to the campus where a student with whom she had
no apparent connection shot her, then killed himself, and (2) Amelia’s new
graduate assistant, Nathaniel Barber, who came to the college not just to earn
a degree, but to study her attack. As they each investigate separately, then in
tandem, the reader is plunged through every emotion watching the fascinating plot
unfold. Winner of the Anthony Award, Lovey
Award, and Silver Falchion for Best First Novel, this is truly superb reading!
I
want to assure you that you can’t go wrong with any of these books. So stay out
of the pool, pour yourself a tall glass of lemonade, and settle down for some
fabulous summer reading!

How We Spend Our Time

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Sparkle Abbey welcomes Lori Rader-Day

Today we’re thrilled to welcome our friend, the brilliant, talented, and award-winning author, Lori Rader-Day who shares her thoughts on how we spend our time. 


Take it away, Lori…

Big news. I have all the time there is. I’m newly out on my own as a full-time writer for a while and now I’m considering the ways in which a break from the 9-to-5 grind might be used to its fullest potential.

Do I set off on a multi-state bookstore tour?

Do I offer to visit every library in the state?

Do I visit all the friends I haven’t seen in two or more years, ever since I’ve had to start using all my day-job vacation time for book conferences and such?

*deep breath*

There’s a certain itching panic involved in realizing you could do WHATEVER THE HECK YOU WANT. That you have, for possibly the first time ever, the time to focus on making your dreams come true.

I should be doing. I should be going. I should teach here, speak there, offer this, volunteer that.

And yet—what did I want from this time so much that I made the leap in the first place? What was so important to me?

I wanted the time from my time. And not time for more promotions or more blog posts (with apologies to Sparkle Abbey, for hosting me today). Time for writing.

So. Writers retreats. Should I apply for a two-week residency somewhere? I’ve never had two weeks to rub together before. It’s attractive—coming off two years without a vacation, though, I wonder if I would panic at that vast amount of alone time.

A few of my friends have taken mini-retreats to write. Book a hotel room, get away for a day or two, scribble. That sounds pretty good, too, and less of a commitment. But am I the only person who’s stayed in a hotel recently? They don’t exactly inspire me, and sometimes you get neighbors who have booked a hotel room for distinctly different pleasures than silence. Ahem.

What I want to do is create a daily retreat practice at home, based in reality and therefore perhaps more sustainable over the time I have off work and into whatever I do in the future. I know it’s crazy, but I like my husband and dog. I don’t want to spend two weeks away from them. I want to do the morning dog walk and then take my husband away from his desk for dinner. Instead of escaping from my life, what I want to do is escape into it—live it deeply and with an attention that I haven’t had in a while. Instead of retreating, actually, I want to charge forward.

So? No solutions here. Only thoughts that haven’t quite coalesced into a plan. If anyone has ideas on how to make the best use of time—golden, precious time—leave a comment. I’d love to know how you used your time best or would spend a few months of freedom if you got the chance.

By the way, thanks for spending the time you have on this post. Anne Dillard said, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” We all just want to spend our days, our hours, our minutes on things that matter. I wish that for everyone.

Thanks so much for stopping by today, Lori. And readers, please be sure to check out Lori’s latest book Little Pretty Things. Kirkus Reviews says: “Rader-Day…writes absorbingly.” 


We agree!

Lori Rader-Day’s debut mystery, The Black Hour (Seventh Street Books, 2014), received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal and was a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her second mystery, Little Pretty Things, is out now. Her short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Time Out Chicago, Good Housekeeping, and others. She lives in Chicago with her husband and spoiled dog and is active in the Mystery Writers of America Midwest Chapter and a member of Sisters in Crime and International Thriller Writers.

Memories of Malice Domestic 27

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Memories of Malice Domestic 27 by Debra H. Goldstein

Not enough sleep as toastmaster Toni L.P. Kelner urged all of us to get during the weekend, but there definitely was plenty of fun, friends, and sharing of stories, beverages, and new experiences at the 2015 Malice Domestic Convention that now is in the history books.  Held in Bethesda, Maryland, Malice is billed as a fan conference.

Since I began attending in 2012 when I was on the Academic Panel talking about my mystery on the University of Michigan’s campus, Maze in Blue, I haven’t been certain who the fans really are because I think the writers and the non-writers equally qualify as fans.  I know I am thrilled when the two non-writers who met me at the 2012 New Authors Breakfast make it a point to find me and tell me that they have followed my career this year (For their loyalty, they both will receive free copies of my new book, Should Have Played Poker: a Carrie Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery, when it is published by Five Star in February 2016). But, the truth is that I am personally excited to meet writers I have held in esteem for years and newbies that I can’t wait to follow. See if you recognize a few of both in these pictures that capture some of my Malice Domestic 27 memories:

2015 Academic Mystery Panel – Susan Van Kirk, Lori Rader-Day, DHG, Triss Stein, Neil Plakcy

Jungle Red Writers Game with Hallie Ephron, Rhys Bowen, Charlaine Harris, Roberta Isleib/Lucy Burdette, Hank Phillippi Ryan and the game players including DHG

Picture One:  Nikki Bonnani, Susan Van Kirk, Marilyn Levinson, Grace Topping
Picture Two: DHG, Catriona McPherson, Barb Goffman
Picture Three:  Maggie Toussaint, Nancy J. Cohen, Maggie King, DHG
Picture Four:  Terrie Fairley Moran & DHG
Picture Five: Kathy Waller & DHG
Picture Six:  Edith Maxwell & DHG
Picture Seven:  Leslie Budewitz & DHG
Look at my grin — who says writers aren’t fans?  Do you admit it, too?

While My Guitar Gently Teaches

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Sparkle Abbey with Lori Rader-Day

Today we’d like to share a guest post from our friend and fellow mystery author, Lori Rader-Day whose book, The Black Hour, will be out this July 8th. 


Lori – You have the stage!

There’s
a YouTube video I can’t stop watching. It’s a clip from a tribute to George
Harrison from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony in which Harrison was posthumously
inducted as a solo artist. Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne, and Harrison’s
son Dhani, perform While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

I like the Beatles as much as anyone who wasn’t alive while
they were a band, and I adore Tom Petty. But the reason I can’t stop watching this
clip is because about three and a half minutes into the performance, Prince
enters the stage and breaks out a guitar solo that shuts down life as we know
it.

The clip has been viewed more than 3 million times. One of
the comments says something like, “If civilization ended after that Prince
guitar solo, I’d be OK with it.”
This is the stuff of procrastination. Watching videos of
puppies learning to howl and little kids belting out songs with lyrics far beyond their years is what we do when we’re feeling uninspired and stuck. And
yet I keep going back to that Prince guitar solo, not because I want to waste
time, but because something in the way Prince throws that little red Corvette
of a guitar around on stage teaches me something I want to know—about
storytelling.

Here’s the lesson I keep trying to learn from that video:
mastery shows. Mastery is worth the effort. When an artist is in command of his
or her form, you want to be a part of it.  


Coming July 8th
Haven’t you ever opened a book in a bookstore and found
yourself within a couple of sentences in the firm grasp of a master storyteller?
As readers we’re often forgiving. We’ll give a writer pages, chapters,
sometimes a full book before we decide if we’re satisfied. We’re all willing to
be captivated. We’re hoping to be
captivated. It doesn’t always pan out. But when it does, there’s something
magical about being under the spell of an expert at ease in the command of her
story, someone we can trust completely with our time and attention.

This theory holds until you realize that the original
recording of “While My Guitar” by the Beatles featured a guitar solo by Eric
Clapton. Clapton, it’s safe to say, is a master of his genre, too. So why is
Prince’s three-minute guitar-weeping solo like a bomb going off on that stage?
I think it’s because he’s playing with expectations. The
song may be one we all recognize, and Petty and company are doing a serviceable
job for their parts, but when Prince enters the fray, he’s doesn’t merely do
what’s necessary. He doesn’t recreate Clapton’s notes. He throws himself body
and soul into creating something new from the expected.

And that’s the lesson we writers can take to the page.
Mystery writers, perhaps especially, have signed on to fulfill certain
obligations to the reader. We have to set up the crime, dole out the suspects,
pin down the clues, and for the love of all that is holy, solve the crime by the end of the book. But that doesn’t mean there
isn’t room for creativity in how those expectations are met. Riffing on what’s
expected, in fact, means you’re in the conversation with all that has come
before you. And like Prince, you can step up to honor that history and still
blow everyone’s minds. 


Again, Lori Rader-Day is the author of The Black Hour, out from Seventh Street Books on July 8th. She’s a fan of music, mysteries, and mutts. Learn more at: www.LoriRaderDay.com 
A great post Lori! Thanks for being our guest. 


Readers, what do you think? When was the last time you were totally blown away by a keep-you-up-all-night-read, a performance, or a work of art? 


Leave a comment and share your thoughts because we’ll be doing a random drawing from among the posters for an ARC of Lori’s The Back Hour.