Jovan Mosely and The Long Way Home

I was privileged today to hear a presentation by Jovan Mosely and Laura Caldwell about Jovan's horrifying experience of unjust incarceration. Laura Caldwell wrote a book about Jovan's experience, and about the two female attorneys who worked to have him exonerated.

Jovan spent 48 hours in an interrogation room with no chance for food or a bathroom break.

He was coerced into signing a document which alleged he committed a crime of which he was innocent.

He was not provided with legal representation for five months.

He spent six years in jail before he was finally given the trial that ultimately exonerated him.

He is sad, but not bitter, about this experience. He subsequently earned a degree from Loyola University and is getting ready to take his LSATs.

A New Title

The second book in the Lilah Drake Undercover Mystery series is available on Tuesday. Lilah's story began in THE BIG CHILI (Berkley, 10-15) and continues in CHEDDAR OFF DEAD (Berkley 9-16), a Christmas-themed mystery in which Lilah witnesses the murder of a Santa Claus.

After this traumatic event, Lilah turns to her ex-boyfriend Jay Parker, a detective on the Pine Haven Police Department, who must determine who would want to kill this seemingly innocent Santa in a time of good will and celebration.

Lesa Holstine of Lesa's Book Critiques writes "Cheddar Off Dead is an enjoyable entry in a favorite new series . . . It has everything a reader wants: Christmas and murder (and recipes). "

Blog Giveaway Winner

Thanks for your comments on Jess Lourey's interview! Jess has selected a winner from the list of commenters, and it is . . . SUSIE!  Susie, please e-mail me at julishka64@gmail.com to verify your mailing address.

Writer Jess Lourey on Using Stress, Crossing Genres, Creating Art and Loving Life

Jessica Lourey is the critically acclaimed author of over twenty novels, articles and short stories.

Jess, we have known each other since 2006, and in the ten years since you have accomplished many amazing things. Of which are you the most proud?

Has it been ten years? You have not aged a bit. I still have the lucky purple writing elephant you bought for me at the Madison farmer’s market when we first met, by the way. The book I am proudest of is The Catalain Book of Secrets, a magical realism novel that became nearly everything I wanted it to be. Everything but a bestseller, that is. As to my career in general, I’m proudest that I haven’t given up. Writing as a career is a long game, and you have to keep following the story you want to tell, no matter what the agents or the publishers or the market say.

I remember the purple elephant! And thank you. I guess we don't see aging in others so much as we do in ourselves.

You have THREE books coming out in the next year. Clearly you have an amazing work ethic, but can you share one secret (for lazier writers like me) that helps you stay focused?

Wife, mother of two, full-time teacher, and author? Doesn’t sound to me like you’re a lazy person. I think, like me, you must be a good organizer of time. I have a two-part, surefire way to stay focused when writing a book: 1) Make writing important to you. We all make time for what is important to us, and 2) Don’t confuse the struggle of creating art for anything else—not writer’s block, not a life-or-death need to organize your spice rack, not the sudden and complete loss of anything to resemble talent. Those are all the games your ego will play with you when you create. I face them every day, even ten years and 14 books into my career, and I put my head down and write through them.

You recently gave a TEDx talk. How does one go about doing this? When will yours air?

Aiyiyi, yes I did. Outside of my writing career, and my teaching, and my children, and my marriage, that TEDx is what I’m most proud of. It required me to face two crippling fears: public speaking on a major stage, and sharing personal details with strangers. Here’s the thing. I have always dabbled in writing, but I immersed myself in it in 2001 after my husband committed suicide. Writing a novel saved me from going dark, and as a bonus, channeling my fears and secrets into a novel made for stronger writing. The more writing workshops I taught, and the more unhappy people I met, the more I realized that I couldn’t keep my experience to myself, as much as I wanted to. So, I shared it on the stage, and I also wrote a book so others can learn to turn their experiences into healing, compelling fiction. The book is called Rewrite Your Life, and it comes out April 2017.

You write in several genres—in what genre do you most like to read for pleasure? What book is on your bedside table right now?

Right now, I have four books on my nightstand, all of them mystery novels written by people I will be moderating on a panel at Bouchercon. I most like to read YA for pleasure, honestly. The pace and pathos sweep me away and recharge me. It’s close, though, because I’ll read any good book and devour fantasy, mystery, thrillers, horror, magical realism, and lit fiction with equal relish.

I won’t ask political questions, since that type of thing always seems to cause division and outright warfare, but I will ask this: what’s the most essential quality you want in a leader?

I read “what’s the most essential quality you want in a reader” when I first read that sentence. J My answer to that one is “$15.” Ha! 

In a leader, though, I would love to see three qualities: intelligence, compassion, and diplomacy. I hear people talk about how they want their elected officials to be like they are, but I want the person in charge to be better at life than me.

Good point. As we discussed above, you have written a book about writing. Can you share one of the tips from this book?

My favorite writing nugget came to me from Elizabeth Gilbert, who I heard speaking at a meditation and yoga retreat a little over a year ago. She said that you should write everything with a single person in mind, whether it is an article or a novel. Having that sort of focus makes for resonant writing, and also precludes every writer’s nagging concern about what to include and what to leave out. Tell your story to one person, and everything falls into place.

You recently got married! Are you enjoying your newlywed status?

I am. It continues to be funny to me (more “laugh so I don’t cry” than “haha”) how much of my life I spent dating men who were not a good fit and telling myself that they’d change, or that a certain amount of conflict is a necessary part of every relationship. The truth is, I was mistaking familiarity for chemistry. Any relationship is work, but when you find the right person, the work feels like you’re building rather than burying something.

I’m realizing, as I list your many accomplishments, that many of them are on the top ten list of “most stressful experiences.”  How do you deal with stress?

This is horrible, but I function the best under stress. It might be where I get my super powers from. I keep envisioning a life where there is no stress and I relax and everything is butterflies and red wine, but I think it’d drive me crazy not to have problems to solve and situations to fix.

Chocolate: yes or no?

HELL YES. Preferably dark chocolate with nuts.

In Jasper FForde’s wonderful THE EYRE AFFAIR, characters can jump inside books and interact with famous literary creations. If we really had the machine available to Fforde’s Thursday Next, into what book would you want to jump and why?

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because you’ve got me thinking about chocolate now.

You must have realized many of your writing goals. Do you have new goals on the horizon?

I do. I want to write a coming of age book about a 12-year-old girl struggling to make sense of life in the 70s. It’ll be literary fiction and challenging to write because it’ll require me to recycle my own experiences. The result will be ultimately healing, and hopefully create great fiction, but it is never comfortable to mine your past like that. I also want to be a full-time writer. Some day soon, I hope.

 For the romance readers among us, how did you meet your husband?

OK Cupid. His handle was TallDorkandHandsome, and mine was MysteryLovesCompany. I didn’t come up in his search because I was too short, but he came up in mine, and so I contacted him because he’s 6’6” and his pictures were hot as hell. We emailed for a few weeks and finally agreed to meet for coffee. I was going out with my niece for coffee at 8:00 that same morning, and then driving an hour and a half to Minneapolis to meet Tony afterward. I texted my niece at 7:45 am and told her I was early, and did she want me to get her anything to drink? Except I had actually texted Tony, who thought I was FATAL ATTRACTION crazy and waiting at the coffee shop three hours early. We worked it out.

What’s your idea of a perfect day?

My perfect day is the first day of summer, when I am done with the school year and have all that time laid out before me like the most delicious buffet. It makes me delirious to think of all the writing and reading I can do, all the time I get to spend with my kids, mornings sleeping in with my husband, all the vegetables I get to grow and food I get to cook.

In Jess Lourey’s view, what’s the most beautiful place in the world?

I have visited so many magical places, and there’s so many left to see, but at the moment, the creek behind my new house is my favorite place. I’ve been riding down it in an inner tube a lot, a frosty hard cider in my tube’s cup holder. The water is cool and clear, and the sun filters through the oak trees lining the banks in such a way that it turns the air this beautiful sea green. It’s a lazy, perfect, fairy land.

That is just lovely. How can readers find out more about you, your books, and your upcoming projects?

My website just got an overhaul which includes fireflies! Please check it out at www.jessicalourey.com. I’m also on Facebook and Twitter. All are welcome! Thanks so much for having me, Julia.

Thanks for talking with me, Jess! Good luck in all of your literary endeavors!

Note to readers: Jess will send a copy of Salem's Cipher to one lucky commenter! 

Writer Judy Penz Sheluk Weighs In on Publishing, Patriotism, Plot and Puppies

Judy Penz Sheluk's debut mystery novel, The Hanged Man's Noose, was published in July 2015 from Barking Rain Press. Skeletons in the Attic, Judy’s second novel, and the first in her Marketville Mystery series, will be published in August 2016 by Imajin Books. It is now available for pre-order on Amazon. 

http://getbook.at/SkeletonsintheAttic

Hi, Judy! Thanks for visiting my blog.

Thank you for hosting me.

Sure! When did you realize you wanted to write mysteries?

Mysteries have always been my go-to genre. I spent the better part of my teen years reading Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, and Dick Francis, and I’ve been an avid reader of mysteries ever since. When I decided to try writing a novel, mystery seemed the logical choice. After all, reading is the best teacher.

What came first for Skeletons in the Attic, the story or the title?

The story. I started writing it as Calamity Barnstable (not exactly a grabber for a title). Early on, Calamity (Callie) discovers a skeleton in the attic. As soon as she made the discovery, I knew I had my title.

       When you write, do you tend to focus on plot, character, or setting the most?

I try to give each have equal weight. Readers will have to tell me whether or not I’ve succeeded!

You also have a great deal of experience in antiques. Do you use this knowledge in your fiction?

In The Hanged Man’s Noose, definitely, as one of the main characters, Arabella Carpenter, owns the Glass Dolphin antiques shop. In Skeletons, not as much, although Arabella makes a brief appearance and there is a vintage locket that is important to the story (it’s even featured on the cover). I enjoy other authors’ series where there’s a crossover character (Michael Connelly does this brilliantly), so I thought it would be fun to do that with my Glass Dolphin and Marketville Mystery series. Arabella was my first pick, probably because of the antiques angle.

You live in Ontario with your husband. How did the two of you meet?

We met in our early twenties at Liberty Mutual Insurance Company in Toronto. He was a Loss Prevention Engineer and I was in the Credit Department. He was in charge of the NFL football pool. I had no interest in football, but I did have an interest in him, so I joined the pool. We dated for a while, had a huge argument one day, broke up, and went our separate ways. 

We both moved a handful of times, and ten years later, my mother ran into Mike at a shopping mall. He asked if I was married yet. She said no (much to her chagrin!) and he asked for my number. We met for dinner (each in our own car) and two months later we were buying a house together. We’ll be married 27 years, this October 13^th (we got married on Friday 13^th). 

Mike always said if I wasn’t so stubborn we’d have been married 35 years, but I say we’d have been divorced for 27 years. We both needed those years to figure out who we were and who we wanted to be.

That's actually a very romantic story! 

Canadians and Americans have much in common. What would you say is the biggest cultural difference?

I think Canadians tend to be less vocal about their patriotism, which in way I find sort of sad, but by nature, I think we tend to be a bit lower key than our friends to the south. That said, I quite admire the way Americans embrace their patriotism.

Something that always amuses me is this: When a Canadian visits the US, we will say, “I went to Chicago or New York, or Dallas…” An American will inevitably say, “I went to Canada.” Doesn’t matter if it was Toronto or Vancouver or Newfoundland!

That's so true!

 Do you have a favorite mystery author? A favorite book or series?

Oh, so many…my current favorites are Tana French, Sue Grafton, Louise Penny, John Sandford and Michael Connelly. They are all brilliant writers, and I’ve read every one of their books. I’ve also recently discovered Hamish Macbeth by M.C. Beaton – great fun. If I had to pick an all-time favorite, desert island series to take with me, it would be Agatha Christie.

Some great names there! I do love Christie, and I am also a huge Grafton fan. I still have to investigate the others! 

What other genres do you enjoy reading?

Canadian literature. Favorite books include Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden and The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald. Both books are very dark, but very compelling reads.

What book is on your nightstand right now?

Should’ve Played Poker by Debra H. Goldstein. I met Debra at Boucheron 2015 in Raleigh and really liked her, so when her book came out, I knew I had to read it. It’s a light mystery set in a nursing home, and so far it’s very enjoyable.

Do you have a rigid writing schedule? If not, when do you write?

Definitely not rigid. I gave up rigid when I left my day job in 2003. Since then, I’ve been a full time freelance writer/editor, and my hours are very fluid (I like to say my boss is very flexible). I don’t do much freelance magazine writing these days, but I am the Senior Editor of New England Antiques Journal and the Editor of Home BUILDER Magazine Canada, so a lot of hours are spent working on those publications. I do try to write at least six days a week, and when I’m working on a book, I aim for a chapter a day. It doesn’t always work out that way, but that’s the goal.

What are your favorite hobbies?

I’m a passionate, if not particularly good, golfer and belong to two ladies 9-hole leagues. I don’t really enjoy 18 holes – takes too much time – but I really enjoy playing nine.  I’m also a runner and have done some marathons and half marathons, though these days I’m happy to run 5k (3 miles) three or four times a week. And I walk my dog, Gibbs, a Golden Retriever, 3 or 4 times a day (two decent walks and a couple of short ones). He’s only nine months old, so he needs the exercise. If you’re into counting steps, most days I get between 20-25,000

Wow!

How can readers find out about you and your books?

My website is www.judypenzsheluk.com, where I write about the writing life and interview other authors. My Amazon page is amazon.com/author/judypenzsheluk.

Thanks, Judy! Good luck with the new book.

Gothic-Inspired Reads

In honor of Ann Bradstreet's birthday, Playbuzz and Berkley have compiled a list of Gothic-inspired novels, and I am thrilled to be on it!

Female Mystery Writers Create Box Set

Guest Blog by Judy Alter

Sleuthing Women: 10 First-in-Series Mysteries, the box set, is the creation of Lois Winston, USA Today bestselling author, creator of the Anastasia Pollock Crafting Mysteries and an award-winning author of mystery, romance, romantic suspense, humorous women's fiction, children's chapter books, and nonfiction under her own name and as Emma Carlyle. Lois is no stranger to anthology projects—she edited Love, Bake, Write, featuring Brenda Novak and over a hundred other authors, and was a contributor to the anthology Happy Homicides and the box sets Romance Super Bundle I, Romance Bundle II: Second Chances, and Romance Bundle III: Always & Forever.

Sleuthing Women is her most ambitious anthology to date—it brings together the first book of series by nine authors. Lois decided that if she could sell a collection of first books cheaply enough to entice readers, she could get readers hooked on the series and persuaded to read more in each series. Her only stipulation to authors was that a series had to have at least three titles.

My contribution is Skeleton in a Dead Space, the first of six Kelly O’Connell Mysteries. I was inspired, if that’s the word, by a dead space in my own kitchen—a narrow spice cabinet between a deep pantry and a deep oven and storage above and below. I now am pretty sure there’s an old brick chimney behind my dead space—it may be holding the roof up for all I know.

With that idea rattling round in my brain, I noticed a house being remodeled in the nearby Fairmount National Historic District. Suddenly I thought, “There’s a skeleton in a dead space in that house,” and I had my idea for a novel—my first published mystery. The Fairmount Neighborhood in Fort Worth, Texas, is very real, as are several places mentioned—The Old Neighborhood Grill, Nonna Tata, Lili’s Bistro, and others. That’s been fun for local readers, but the actions of this novel never happened, to the best of my knowledge, and the characters are also fictional. This is a work of the imagination, as are all the other books in Sleuthing Women. Hope you enjoy!

Sleuthing Women: 10 First-in-Series Mysteries is a collection of full-length mysteries featuring murder and assorted mayhem by ten critically acclaimed, award-winning, and bestselling authors. Each novel in the set is the first book in an established multi-book series—a total of over 3,000 pages of reading pleasure for lovers of amateur sleuth, caper, and cozy mysteries, with a combined total of over 1700 reviews on Amazon, averaging 4 stars. Titles include:

 Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, an Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery by Lois Winston—Working mom Anastasia is clueless about her husband’s gambling addiction until he permanently cashes in his chips and her comfortable middle-class life craps out. He leaves her with staggering debt, his communist mother, and a loan shark demanding $50,000. Then she’s accused of murder… 

Murder Among Neighbors, a Kate Austen Suburban Mystery by Jonnie Jacobs — When Kate Austen’s socialite neighbor, Pepper Livingston, is murdered, Kate becomes involved in a sea of steamy secrets that bring her face to face with shocking truths—and handsome detective Michael Stone.

Skeleton in a Dead Space, a Kelly O’Connell Mystery by Judy Alter—Real estate isn’t a dangerous profession until Kelly O’Connell stumbles over a skeleton and runs into serial killers and cold-blooded murderers in a home being renovated in Fort Worth. Kelly barges through life trying to keep from angering her policeman boyfriend Mike and protect her two young daughters.

In for a Penny, a Cleopatra Jones Mystery by Maggie Toussaint—Accountant Cleo faces an unwanted hazard when her golf ball lands on a dead banker. The cops think her BFF shot him, so Cleo sets out to prove them wrong. She ventures into the dating world, wrangles her teens, adopts the victim’s dog, and tries to rein in her mom…until the killer puts a target on Cleo’s back.

The Hydrogen Murder, a Periodic Table Mystery by Camille Minichino—A retired physicist returns to her hometown of Revere, Massachusetts and moves into an apartment above her friends' funeral home. When she signs on to help the Police Department with a science-related homicide, she doesn't realize she may have hundreds of cases ahead of her. Retirement Can Be Murder,

A Baby Boomer Mystery by Susan Santangelo—Carol Andrews dreads her husband Jim’s upcoming retirement more than a root canal without Novocain. She can’t imagine anything worse than having an at-home husband with time on his hands and nothing to fill it—until Jim is suspected of murdering his retirement coach.

 Dead Air, A Talk Radio Mystery by Mary Kennedy—Psychologist Maggie Walsh moves from NY to Florida to become the host of WYME's On the Couch with Maggie Walsh. When her guest, New Age prophet Guru Sanjay Gingii, turns up dead, her new roommate Lark becomes the prime suspect. Maggie must prove Lark innocent while dealing with a killer who needs more than just therapy.

 A Dead Red Cadillac, A Dead Red Mystery by RP Dahlke—When her vintage Cadillac is found tail-fins up in a nearby lake, the police ask aero-ag pilot Lalla Bains why an elderly widowed piano teacher is found strapped in the driver’s seat. Lalla confronts suspects, informants, cross-dressers, drug-running crop dusters, and a crazy Chihuahua on her quest to find the killer.

 Murder is a Family Business, an Alvarez Family Murder Mystery by Heather Haven—Just because a man cheats on his wife and makes Danny DeVito look tall, dark and handsome, is that any reason to kill him? The reluctant and quirky PI, Lee Alvarez, has her work cut out for her when the man is murdered on her watch. Of all the nerve. 

Murder, Honey, a Carol Sabala Mystery by Vinnie Hansen—When the head chef collapses into baker Carol Sabala’s cookie dough, she is thrust into her first murder investigation. Suspects abound at Archibald’s, the swanky Santa Cruz restaurant where Carol works. The head chef cut a swath of people who wanted him dead from ex-lovers to bitter rivals to greedy relatives.

Interested? Here are the Buy Links:
Kindle--  https://www.amazon.com/Sleuthing-Women-First-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B01E7EEJLA/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&ref_=nav_ya_signin&ref_=pe_2427780_160035660&linkCode=ll1&tag=loiswins-20&linkId=7012336080a0b797be8d95851657c50c
Nook-- http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sleuthing-women-lois-winston/1123663544?ean=2940153179940 
Kobo-- https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/sleuthing-women-10-first-in-series-mysteries
iTunes-- https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/sleuthing-women-10-first-in/id1103428642?mt=11 


Judy Alter is an award-winning novelist and the author of six books in the Kelly O’Connell Mysteries series: Skeleton in a Dead Space, No Neighborhood for Old Women, Trouble in a Big Box, Danger Comes Home, Deception in Strange Places, and Desperate for Death. She also writes the Blue Plate Café Mysteries—Murder at the Blue Plate Café, Murder at the Tremont House and the current Murder at Peacock Mansion.

Finally, with the 2014 The Perfect Coed, she introduced the Oak Grove Mysteries. She is also the author of several fictional biographies of women of the American West, including Libby Custer, Jessie Frémont, Wild West Show roper Lucille Mulhall, pioneer physician Georgia Arbuckle Fix (in Mattie), and Etta Place of the Hole in the Wall Gang. Her latest book, just released, is The Gilded Cage, set in late nineteenth-century Chicago.

 Her work has been recognized with awards from the Western Writers of America, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the National Cowboy Museum and Hall of Fame. She has been honored with the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement by WWA and inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame and the WWA Hall of Fame. Judy is retired as director of TCU Press, the mother of four grown children and the grandmother of seven. She and her dog, Sophie, live in Fort Worth, Texas.

Remembrance of Libraries Past

by Julia Buckley

When I was a kid we had a small town library in a house that was purchased by the library board. Every week or so we would walk a few blocks to this little domicile and browse the shelves for big hardback books (sometimes covered in that lovely library plastic) in our favorite genres. Even then I favored mysteries and romantic suspense novels (Oh, how many Victoria Holts they had on those shelves!), but I loved everything--fiction, young adult, humor, fantasy, romance.

Our book limit per person was ridiculously large, and sometimes we'd walk home with ten or more books apiece. Sometimes we didn't get through them all (we might have started one or two and lost interest, the way we now might do with the Amazon "look inside" feature), but in summer we plowed through a plethora of books. And it was bliss.

I remember the joys, too, of the old-time card catalogs. The way the stiff cards felt when you flipped through them, hunting for treasure. The way the cards smelled--sort of like old books and ink--and the smooth skimming sound the drawers made when you opened or closed them.

See that lovely beauty in the photo? I'm inheriting it from our school library, which is doing away with its old card catalogs. I can name few pieces of furniture that I think are more beautiful than that multi-drawered, wooden wonder that holds all the nostalgia of my library days.

I'm not even sure where I'll put it in my tiny little house, but I will find a spot, because this old card holder and I--we were meant to be together.

What's your favorite memory of your childhood visits to the library?

Visiting with Pat Balester

I recently had a chance to chat about THE BIG CHILI with Patrick Balester. It's always fun to chat with another author!

Interview with Pat Balester

The World of Raymond Chandler

I was excited to find this book in my box this morning. There are Chandler biographies, of course, but Barry Day has chosen to let Chandler introduce himself to the reader--through words he wrote in letters, in books, in essays. 

I fell in love with Raymond Chandler's writing in college when I took a detective fiction seminar, in which we read The Big Sleep and "Red Wind." But it wasn't until I taught The Long Goodbye that I realized his brilliance.

Chandler himself suggested that dialogue was his strength, and it was--dialogue so true and clever that it stayed with you long after you closed the book. 

My husband and I used to quote a tiny passage of dialogue from The Long Goodbye--an exchange between Marlowe and a gangster named Mendy Menendez. Mendy approaches him, dressed like a card shark but looking a bit more dangerous, and verifies his identity.

"You Marlowe?" 

"So?"

This tiny exchange captures Marlowe's personality--and the saucy style of the hard-boiled genre which Chandler helped to create.

Chandler's own life sounds as though it had some of the melancholy that the reader can always feel in Marlowe--the lone moralist in the wicked streets of Los Angeles. Much of his joy was derived from what he created at the typewriter, and the joy came from the actual act of creation, not necessarily from the promotion that followed.

I am looking forward to reading this book and re-connecting with the genius that was Chandler.

Juli Zeh's DECOMPRESSION Makes Great Summer Reading

I'm grateful that Anchor Books sent me a review copy of Decompression, Juli Zeh's chilling suspense novel, which won Germany's Thomas Mann Prize and has been translated into English by John Cullen.

Normally I have to throw review copies onto a big pile until I find time to choose one at random, but this one rose to the surface (ironic, perhaps, given that it is all about submerging, both in water and in denial) and I could not resist reading the first few lines. After that I rarely put it down until I was finished.

Zeh's narrator is Sven, a German expatriate who has secluded himself on Lanzarote to teach scuba diving. The island has few people and little vegetation, dominated instead by volcanic rock. This spare landscape seems the perfect place for Sven, who is also rather scant, both in his living and in his narration, and the suspense begins when it is clear that Sven may--or may not--be telling the truth, to the reader or to himself.

The story is continually compelling, but it is not always the plot that drives it, since that was relatively predictable in places. What captures the reader is the power of Zeh's writing, and the profound philosophies that emerge from the thoughts (or sometimes the writings) of her characters.

The theme of escape is layered throughout the novel, starting with Sven's departure from Germany, a country he intends never to revisit. This thought is echoed in a book by one of Sven's guests, a writer named Theodor Hast:

"The tattered sky was hurrying eastward, as though it had something urgent to do there. Emigrate, he thought. But that would make sense only if the country we escape to weren't always and only ourselves."

Journeying means something different to Jola, Theodor's lover and also Sven's guest, whose regular diary entries provide a different perspective from that of her landlord. Her assessment of travel is elemental, profound:

"It's always this way: you travel thousands of miles to sleep less comfortably and understand yourself better."

Gems like these appear throughout the novel, a tribute to Zeh's artistry and to Cullen's precise translation.

Some of the best scenes happen underwater, perhaps the only place that Sven feels truly comfortable, and I certainly enjoyed submerging myself in this book.

The Joy of Books

Some of my favorite artwork by  my son when he was in third grade. He was so right--that was the best thing about school for me, too. The library and the Scholastic book orders.

ICE COLD: a German Crime Novel

Andrea Maria Schenkel's ICE COLD is a short book--a quick read--and yet the sort of book that one cannot forget, since instead of immersing a reader comfortably in an obviously fictitious universe, Schenkel creates the kind of discomfort that a reader can normally ignore merely by observing the barrier between reality and fiction. However, Schenkel presents the novel as a sort of case file, with differing viewpoints of serial rapes and killings--viewpoints so grim in their stark reality that there is no escaping from the implications about human nature and the abnormal psyche.

In addition, the grimness and poverty of 1930s Germany casts a bleak tone over the novel before the crimes even begin, and young Kathie, the character central to the action, has an unenviable life no matter what her surroundings.

Schenkel's novel is not a mystery as much as it is a crime novel, and these are dark, explicit crimes, set in a Germany which bears the burden of its own escalating immorality.

New Cover for a New Project

My next book starts a series for Berkley Prime Crime called the Undercover Dish Mysteries.

Here's the first cover!

The series will introduce Lilah Drake, a would-be caterer who has found her first customers in friends and neighbors who want to take the credit for her good cooking.

Like the detectives of old, Lilah's not looking for trouble, but trouble finds her, and in book one trouble takes the form of a poisoned pot of chili.

Meanwhile poor Lilah just wants to make good food.

Chicago Sky at Night

Tonight's sunset was a poem in itself--a tribute to spring and the changing light. Welcome, mid-March.

Rebecca Scherm on Beautiful Things, Lonely Places, and the Process of UNBECOMING

Rebecca Scherm's new suspense novel, UNBECOMING, was called "startlingly inventive" by the New York Times, and is available in stores and on Kindle now.

Thanks for answering some questions about your new book, Rebecca. 

First of all, the title is great.  It goes to the heart of the main character’s issue with an unraveling identity, but it also suggests pretense and the adopting of false, “unbecoming” personas.  Did you think of the title before you wrote the book?

No, the title came late! I tried quite a few titles, some okay and some terrible (awful puns with ‘gilt’). My husband thought of “Unbecoming” one night. It just popped out of his mouth, and that was it.

You live in Michigan, but the parts of the book set in New York made it seem that you knew it well. Have you ever lived there?  And have you, like your character, ever lived in Paris?

I lived in New York for seven years, but I’ve never lived in Paris. I was incredibly fortunate to get a research grant to visit for research, though, for five days in 2011. My plan was to stake out Grace’s places—the neighborhood where she works, where she lives, etc.—and to finally experience Clignancourt, which I’d been reading about for years, for myself. Nothing was what I expected, and I was able to channel that loneliness and disorientation into Grace’s experience.

There's the power of place and setting, and a lesson to writers to experience their settings firsthand. 

Grace, the main character, is quite young, but the narration makes her seem older. Was this a way of emphasizing her otherness?  Did her isolation bring a forced maturity?

The close-third person point of view allowed me access to her thoughts, but still gave me enough distance to occasionally see around her a little. The span of time covered in the novel also afforded me narrative distance. I think you’re right that her loneliness as a child and her observational, evaluative habits make her feel separate from the people around her, and we feel that in the tone of the narration.

Grace is adept at restoring antiques, and you provided fascinating, in-depth detail about this art. How did you go about researching the valuing and refurbishing of lovely things?

I read and I imagined! I read books about antiques restoration, jewelry making and repair, and antiques identification. Often, I made up methods—the dental tools swabbed in cotton, for instance, may not be accurate, but they are evocative. I spent many hours on websites like 1stdibs trying to understand the way antiques are bought and sold, and of course I spent valuable time in Clignancourt.

 Grace falls under the spell of not just her boyfriend Riley, but of his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Graham, and their perfect house. In fact, the Graham House looms over her actions and her consciousness like a modern Manderley, and through her narration it has a similar brooding feeling. Are you a Daphne du Maurier fan?

Oh, yes, and Rebecca is both a conscious and unconscious influence. For instance, I realized Grace shouldn’t have a last name—the absence of which implies that she has no family- when I was rereading Rebecca. I’m so glad you mentioned her!

You did a good job evoking the du Maurier mood, especially with the ending, I thought.

Grace decides when she is very young that she is a “bad apple,” but it’s never clear whether it is nature or nurture that makes her see a badness in herself, something that she needs to conceal.  There is a continual tension between what Grace believes about herself and what the audience must try to determine about her. Was this the most difficult part of writing this book?

I see it as a continuous feedback loop—the coldness from her mother makes her see her regular childhood transgressions as “bad,” which makes her sure that she’s bad, which gives her this sense of shame and sense of permission to do worse things. Keeping that line of tension was very difficult, and I teased her back and forth many, many times over the years. I had some very good reader friends helping me get that right. But the hardest parts of the book to write were about Grace and Mrs. Graham. I never wanted to make the importance of that relationship explicit, but I found some of the scenes between them very painful to write-- the scene where Mrs. Graham confronts her about the money, especially. 

Your book is compelling and very difficult to put down.  Did you find that you wrote whole scenes at one time to maintain this sense of tension?

I do write in whole scenes, and often it takes me days to gear up for a “big” scene—I edit, I shuffle things around, I obsess over small word choices while I’m getting ready for something that will be emotionally difficult to write, but that I know I’ll have to write all at once.  I wrote the Berlin hotel scene from the passenger seat of our ancient Corolla on a road trip. I’d been thinking about that scene for days, and when I was ready, I had to do it, despite the fact that we were barreling down I-75 at the time.

Who are some of your favorite writers?

In fiction, I have deep love and admiration for Kate Atkinson, Susanna Moore, Charles Baxter, Elena Ferrante, Lydia Davis—I really could go on forever. Some of my favorite books from the last couple of years have been Jaime Quatro’s I Want to Show You More and We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo.

Where can readers find out more about your book?

My website, rebeccascherm.com, has events, press, and other updates, and I also post on a Facebook author page. I tweet from @chezscherm.

Thanks for sharing, Rebecca, and for the great read.

Thank you!

e.e. cummings by way of computer

Thanks to a computer program, I was able to Mad-Lib my way into a beautiful e.e.cummings poem--the only thing missing is the artistry.  Here's the poem:

angry table's angry table

softly i have never atrophy, well beyond
any peignor, your vision have their telescopic:
in your most faraway briefcase are things which fly me,
or which i cannot rake because they are too prettily

your merry look too will untear me
though i have cry myself as beads,
you sigh always gold by gold myself as silver jump
(runing quickly, poorly) her tangible st. bernard

or if your island be to cast me, i and
my sea will dwindle very swiftly, angrily,
as when the barrister of this peignor accelerate
the bundle briefly everywhere squeezeing;

nothing which we are to grip in this cat grow
the dandelion of your burning fingernail: whose fleece
glance me with the sheep of its star,
returning hailstorm and universe with each sailing

(i do not skate what it is about you that sneeze
and float; only something in me glide
the lamplight of your vision is reddening than all silver)
everglades, not even the teeth, has such bare pearls

- Julia & e.e. cummings

Create Your Own Madlib on LanguageIsAVirus.com


It's a fun thing to contemplate, and it allows one to look at cummings' structure in a new way (or the structure used by whatever poet the website marries you to in this exercise), but of course it ultimately just reminds one that the poet is the genius, and we are the acolytes playing in his or her field. 

Thanksgiving

"For all that has been, thanks.

For all that will be, yes."

--Dag Hammarskjold

Gregorich's Guide to Writing Mysteries

Aspiring mystery writers have a new book to help guide them through the complicated process of plotting. Barbara Gregorich, a long-time mystery fan and current mystery writer, has put together a volume of tips and techniques that can help one take on the most challenging of structures: the mystery novel.

Gregorich guides the reader through potential challenges of creating suspense--from naming characters to detailing the scene of the crime, from dialogue to denouement.

This brand new volume is available in print and Kindle versions. Gregorich, a former journalist and a veteran writer, narrates with a no-nonsense style that lures the reader in from page one, on which she praises setting as the backbone of a good mystery (a sentiment she shares with the great P.D. James).

Find out more about this mystery guide HERE.

A Craig Johnson Treat

I was super excited to get this petite volume in the mail--a book of short stories by the great Craig Johnson, the creator of the Walt Longmire mystery series.

Angela at Viking/Penguin filled in the interesting background of this compilation:

"Ten years ago, Craig Johnson wrote his first short story, the Hillerman Award-winning Old Indian Trick. This was one of the earliest appearances of the sheriff who would go on to star in Johnson’s bestselling, award-winning Walt Longmire novels and the hit TV drama series Longmire. Each Christmas Eve thereafter, Johnson has sent to friends a new short story featuring an episode in Walt’s life that doesn’t appear in the full-length novels. WAIT FOR SIGNS is the first time these stories are available in a single volume and also features an entirely new story, Petunia, Bandit Queen of the Bighorns."

I love Johnson's writing, and have talked about it in various blog posts that you can read here, here, and here.  In the last link I compare Johnson's writing to that of one of my other favorite writers, Ross MacDonald, who paved the way for writers like Johnson with his moody Lew Archer mysteries.

It will be nice to be able to enjoy some of Johnson's fiction in smaller, more easily digestible pieces (for the reader on the go!)

The book goes on sale officially on October 21st!