Murder She Writes

I’ve spent the past two years composing dark suspense fiction for St. Martin’s Press. My second book comes out in January 2007, my first one is coming out in paperback in March, and I just signed for two more.

So, it’s a relief, really, to switch channels, if only for a bit. I just sold a mystery series to Berkley Prime Crime, that I TOTALLY love. It’s light and funny, and …. hey, can murder be light and funny? Because it is mystery series, and people DO die in it…. Hmmm.

I’ll have to ponder that, but Jenny T. Partridge, the heroine, is a dance teacher in Ogden, Utah, and she’s just barely eking out a living teaching dance to other people’s children, most of them without an iota of talent, but some who have great promise.

She has some great friends, no love life, and an addiction to potato salad. Well, ALL potatoes, really. But when one of her psycho dance moms shows up, er, ends up dead, suddenly she’s surrounded by hunky cops and they are all interested in her. Too bad it’s because they think she did it!

I wrote this book after working for the past four years with my daughter’s dance teacher. I’ve seen a lot of interesting things in that time, including women who flat out brawl at dance competitions. Crazy stuff. Pyscho dance moms aren’t a lot different from psycho moms (parents) of other children involved in competition sports.

Although there is glitter, and hairspray, and sequins and rhinestones involved in the dance world. You don’t see a lot of that in soccer, or baseball or football. I think. Please tell me you don’t.

Anyway, with the experiences of my own daughter, and because her dance teacher is a great friend of mine, and I’ve listened to the stories of hundreds of dance moms, I ended up creating this totally fun, crazy character.

Dancing off the Edge is the title of the first book, scheduled April 2007. I am very, very excited for this series.

AS OPRAH TURNS: This episode, THE FREY FRY, and THE EDITOR IS SACRIFICED.

I’m a big admirer of Oprah. BUT the spanking on her show last week annoyed me. Yes, she had reason to be angry. I understand that. No one likes to be wrong. But it looked to me like she lashed out at the editor of the book, castigating her for not fact checking, etc. She stated that she felt it was the publisher’s job to make sure the book was an accurate memoir, and that she had lent her name in good faith.

Please, Oprah, you are too savvy, too experienced, to believe that horse drivel. You passed the buck. Frankly, I am not upset that you lent your name in good faith and it turned out to be a mistake. Big deal, we all make mistakes. But the truth is that with a powerhouse name like Oprah comes responsibility. You (and by you, I mean anyone of your numerous employees under your direction) should have fact checked. It’s your name. The buck stops with you.

DRIVEN TO MURDER

Okay, two of my cars are fine. One of my cars, the car my son drives, is collecting mechanics and parts at my expense. Now it’s doing something that no one can figure out—jerking hard to the left.
Mechanic # One: It’s the Drive Shaft.
Mechanic # Two: It’s the Control Arm.
Mechanic # Three: I had a car doing that not long ago, let me wrack my brain and remember what the problem was…
Mechanic # Four: It’s normal (Excuse me, do I have STUPID stamped on my forehead? Do you think its NORMAL to have the car shift gears and jerk the vehicle and occupants into the next lane of traffic? That’s Normal?)

This car’s life span is about to be dramatically shortened.

DAYS OF THE POOL

Not enough stress in your life? Build a pool! If I could figure out how to post pictures, I would show you all the progress.

One funny experience, just before the dig, the receptionist of the pool company called. We chatted, and she asked me if I was worried about anything. Just my deadlines! I told her. So we started talking about books, etc. The next day, I see a man wandering in our backyard. As a precaution, I mention it to my son. In the next second, my son stormed out the door. I’m standing there completely stunned as I hadn’t meant for him to do anything. But a couple minutes later, he comes back in grinning, and said, “It’s a guy from the pool company checking to see if everything is ready for the dig. He said the office told him that you are an author on a deadline and not to bother you.” Both my son and I cracked up. I’ve tried to let the guys working around the house know it’s fine to “bother” me if they have questions.

Seriously, nothing has upset me about the pool building process yet, but we are only a couple of weeks into the endeavor. Stay tuned!

BOOKED TO DIE

I’m in Ground Hog Day Hell, writing the last fifty pages of my book over and over. The file where I keep the pages I cut out of the book has grown to 259 pages. The good news is that I seem to get about five pages closer every time, so I guess I’m making some progress.

So what’s the problem?

My characters aren’t as stupid as the author. See, I need to get a few characters in one place. But every time I come up with what I think is a plausible way to do that, the characters balk. I had my hero ready to put his key in a door and go inside. Perfect. I could visualize the scene, it was going fine! Just as I went to type, “He turned the key and opened the door,” my hero turned, looked me right in the eye (he has to-die-for green eyes) and said, “You don’t really think I’m stupid enough to go in here, do you? People are trying to kill me!”

Sigh…back to the drawing board.

So what are the latest soap operas in your life?

A Prince of a Man
My apologies for my lateness. This past week has been a long sad one for myself and my family. My husband’s Grandfather, Pappy, a prince of a man, passed away Wednesday after a massive heart attack last Thursday night. As a family we have been at his bedside non stop. Tuesday morning he requested the doctors take him off the life support. We were all able to say goodbye, and it was extremely difficult knowing Pappy was conscious as we all gathered to tell him how much we loved him. My biggest fear was that he was afraid. I was afraid.
But Pappy went in peace to be with his wife and other long gone family members.
I’m a better person for knowing him, and I’ll cherish the memories of him jitterbugging with my daughter Rhianna last May at my in-laws 50th wedding anniversary. Of him saying in response to our successes, “Baby, that’s beautiful, just beautiful.”
Pappy lived hard, played hard, drank hard and loved hard. He did it his way. Every memory I have of him puts a smile on my face.
As I think of his life and how he led it, and how he was such a stabilizing force in the family, my writer analyzes him. I analyze how supportive he was for all of his children grandchildren and family members. He was quiet Alpha. Pappy didn’t have a malicious bone in his body, he never put a family member down, he was always up, positive and saw the good in people. Oh, there were a few ex husbands he could do without and it was funny to hear him refer to them as “Thatsonofabitch.” All one word.
I was glad Pappy lived long enough to see my son Jeff go onto a bigger college to play football, on a scholarship no less. “That’s beautiful,” he said when Jeff called him to give him the news.
Pappy never made decisions for us, but he let us talk it out, mull it over, he was a sounding board, and ultimately by his calm presence he allowed us to make the decision and it was usually the right one even though it could be, and often was the hard one.
In thinking of his support I look closer to my immediate family. My parents, my children, my husband. Never once have any of them stood in my way of writing. Never once have any of them told me I couldn’t do it or told me my dream was stupid or what I wrote was junk. They were always encouraging, and the times when I was too tired of the rejections, feeling all was for naught, they all reminded me of my motto. “Quitters never win.” Pappy never quit, not until the very end when he knew his body could no longer sustain him in this life. He was brave to tell the doctor it was time. He was brave for us all. I love him more now for being so brave, for comforting us, when it was he who was leaving. He was a quiet hero, a decorated WWII hero, a hero who blended in, but by his quiet strength he gave us all the courage to slay our own dragons.
Pappy was one of the most special people I know, and for those of you who have those people in your life, you are truly blessed. I know I told Pappy I loved him every time I saw him, and I know he knew how much he meant to us all. There are no buts, no, I should haves, no regrets. He was a prince of a man. Even as I type through the tears right now I’m smiling ear to ear. He was my hero, and every time I write now, I know he’ll be peeking over my shoulder whispering, “Baby, that’s beautiful, just beautiful.”
My heroes will be dedicated to my Pappy.
Albert Louis Magorno May 23, 1920-January 25, 2006
A Prince of a Man

…we have a NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR in our midst. Yep, our own Allison Brennan hit the NY Times extended list this week. In her own words stolen from her own blog….

I am still shaking with the news, but THE PREY hit the NY Times extended list at #33. I keep having typos as I’m trying to write this, so I’m leaving it short and sweet . . . thank you to everyone who bought my book and those who recommended it! Remember what I was saying about buzz? It’s word of mouth that helped propel my debut novel to become a bestseller.

I am amazed and giddy and I was giggling this afternoon. I do NOT giggle. My agent was near tears, and she’s not a crier.

Time to celebrate. I’m going shopping

I knew she wouldn’t crow herself, at least here, so I am doing it for her.

Way to go, Allison!

I’m a binge writer. I can write a lot of pages really fast, or nothing. With The Kill, for example, I wrote the first 140 pages in 2 weeks . . . then nothing for months. True, I had other things to do like revisions on The Hunt, but the beginning just rolled out, and then I was stuck in the coroner’s office, not knowing if my heroine should watch the autopsy or not. Seriously.

You’d think I could just skip that part, right? That I could just write the scene that comes next and get back to it. Not! It was an important turning point and whether she observed the autopsy or not would mean different things to both her and the hero.

Ultimately, I had to re-read the 140 pages I’d written and get back into the story before the solution was SOOOOO obvious you’d think I was plain stupid not to see it before. My heroine was telling me all along exactly what she would do, but I wasn’t listening. I was trying to force her to do what I THOUGHT she should do, not what she would do in “real” life.

When I’m in the zone, the characters take over. I merely dictate what happens.

For example, when I worked on the revisions for The Hunt, I made far more changes than my editor asked for. I started working on the book logically–I read the revision letter a dozen times, a made notes, I had the manuscript with her comments in the margins right there in front of me. I worked on the book slowly, reviewing the comments, thinking about the scene, reworking it, layering in, whatever.

Then they–the characters–took over.

About a third of the way through the book I wasn’t even looking at my editor’s notes anymore. I knew what the problems were, I’d absorbed them for lack of a better word. The story just rolled out–nearly 300 pages, most of them brand-spanking-new–in less than three weeks. I was in the zone. It was fabulous, the ultimate high.

I can feel the zone circling around me again. I’m itching to get back to my next book. I’ve written about forty pages, but I wasn’t happy with all of it. I started re-reading it, and then I talked to myself last night while driving to the mall to shop. I talked out a lot of the little problems I’d had with the first chapter (thank God it was dark and no one could see me talking to myself!) and now I can move forward. The muse is calling, and I can’t wait to lose myself in the story.

If you’re a writer, do you ever find yourself in the zone? How does it feel? Is what you write unusually good or not?

If you’re not a writer, do you ever engage in any activities–cooking, video games, exercize–where you lose track of time because you are so absorbed in the task at hand? You don’t know where the time goes?

One of the best things about getting involved with a terrific group of authors like the ones joined together for this blog, is I get to celebrate their successes along with my own. It’s like having an extended family. This past weekend, I realized just how true that was when I walked through my local Barnes & Noble and Walmart and saw Allison Brennan’s THE PREY everywhere! I couldn’t have been more thrilled for her or more proud to say I ‘know’ her. You would have sworn we were blood-kin the way I went about straightening her books in the bookstore, made sure all of them were face-out, and introduced THE PREY to the community relations manager so he would introduce it to the local reading group. (I’ve done the same for Jennifer Apodaca’s BATTERIES REQUIRED. Natalie Collin’s WIVES AND SISTERS and Karin Tabke’s THE HARD STUFF get recommended often, and I relentlessly hound my local bookstore to keep their books in stock because I don’t ever see them on the shelves! Arggg!)

On Sunday, when I went to Walmart with my youngest daughter to pick up a few groceries, I noticed the book/magazine section had a lot of activity. I went over, of course, to see what people were buying and was thrilled to see the fiction section almost depleted of stock. Most of the authors had only one or two copies of their books left on the shelf, and Allison was one of them. While browsing, I overheard a couple of women chatting about what books they should buy. Oh, what a perfect lead-in! I grabbed a copy of THE PREY from the shelf (there were only two copies left), turned to my daughter and said loud enough for the ladies to hear, “Have you read this yet?”

My daughter looks at me like I’ve lost my mind since I just bought her a copy of the book the day before.

“It’s excellent,” I continue as though she’d answered. “Best I’ve read in a while. Doesn’t surprise me there’re only two copies left.”

We didn’t make it half-way down the aisle before I saw the women pick up the two remaining copies of THE PREY and put them in their shopping baskets. Of course I left Walmart grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat. Some people might consider what I did manipulative, but I see it more as an act of kindness. Those poor women would have missed out on a terrific book had I not intervened.

Congrats again on the new release, Allison. It’s going gang busters out here!

Last night I went with some girlfriends to a film being shown in the annual Sundance Film Festival. Having spent some time working for Sundance, whenever January rolls around I’m pretty nostalgic. It was fun to get a chance to go see another film.

The movie we saw was called Kinky Boots, which is a very, very good title, one that immediately brings hundreds of impressions about just what topic this film MIGHT be covering.

I had no idea what to expect, but in the end, was more than pleasantly surprised. It was an excellent movie, about a man who is forced to turn to a cross-dressing cabaret singer–Lola–when his family’s footwear factory in uptight North Hampton begins to fail. Sound odd? Well, it was…. kinda. But it was also humorous, funny, touching, enlightening, heartwarming… those are just a few of the descriptions I can come up with. According to both the credits and IMDB, “the movie was inspired by the true story of a traditional English men’s footwear factory in Northamptonshire which turned to production of kinky boots for transvestites in order to save the ailing family business and safeguard the jobs of the local community. ”

And I think that explains it well. It was much more than a movie about acceptance. It was a movie about human frailty, and emotion, and the fear we humans seem to have of all things different–things we don’t understand.

Sundance Film Festival headquarters are in Park City, but film venues are also in Salt Lake City, Sundance, and Ogden. We attended the Ogden screening, and the sold-out crowd responded very positively and enthusiastically, and I know that the majority of the attendees were locals.

Sometimes my home state gets a bad rap, as in the recent controversy of local millionaire Larry H. Miller decided to remove Brokeback Mountain from his theatre, because it was the story of two gay cowboys. But I didn’t see that at all last night. Lola, the transvestite, was one of the most sympathetic characters to come to the big screen in a long, long time.

I sincerely hope this movie hits the big time, so you can all get a chance to see Kinky Boots.

My reason for posting it here is that I think “fear” is an interesting topic. Fear writes novels, and sells books, and movies, and keeps people from realizing their full potential, and even more often, from realizing the full potential of others.

Fear keeps us suspense/thriller writers in bread and butter. But fear is multi-faceted, and many-definitioned, and more complicated than anyone could ever hope to explain in one post.

I don’t really have any fear of kinky boots or the people–drag queens or otherwise–who wear them. What do I fear? Ignorance. Failure. Saran Wrap. (No, that last one is not a mistake. Saran wrap is evil.)

I challenge all of us to look closely at our inner self and discover what fears us, and why.

What is fear to you?

A long time ago, when I was around eighteen, I came home from work one evening.

To set the scene, my apartment door was adjacent to the manager’s apartment door, which meant that when I walked out my door, I could literally reached out my left hand and touch the manager’s door. All the apartments faced a courtyard.

It must have been a spring or summer night, still light and I walked from my car, across the courtyard sidewalk and up to my door. My upstairs neighbor, Rick, was at the manager’s door, sliding his rent check into the mail slot and chatting with another man I didn’t recognize.

But that wasn’t unusual. Rick was a young married man with a son, working at the church across the street as a youth minister. I’d see him talking to people quite often, so I didn’t take much notice of the man he was speaking to that evening.

After all, it was nearly six. I was hungry, tired and I had on pantyhose, which every woman knows are torturous by the end of the day. So I walked up to my door, glanced over and said hello to Rick. The two men were standing practically at my right shoulder in a tight space. I wanted to be polite.

Rick looked over at me and I think maybe he nodded a greeting. But he didn’t chat, didn’t introduce me to the man. In fact, I got the distinct impression he wanted me gone. That seemed odd since I was just going into my own apartment, and Rick was normally a very friendly, easy going guy. Finally I got the two locks undone, went in, closed and relocked the door. I dropped off my stuff and went into the bathroom change.

Halfway through the process—there was a loud thud, then pounding on my front door. Unfortunately, I was doing battle with pantyhose, and it took me a few minutes to get to the door. My heart was thudding. I can’t remember what I was thinking, but I think I stupidly yanked open the door to see what the noise was from.

No one was there. Across the courtyard, another apartment door was open, but I didn’t see Rick or anyone. Just a minute or two later, the police and paramedics arrived and in the next few minutes I found out.

Rick had been stabbed right outside my apartment door by the man he had been talking with when I went in. Rick had fallen back against my door, and then pounded on it to get help. When I didn’t react fast enough—and can you only imagine how long it seemed to him?—he got up and made his way to the neighbor across the courtyard. She got him in the apartment and called 911.

Rick lived and recovered. But I will never forget it. Rick was just a nice guy, with a family, trying be an even better guy. This crazy zeroed in on him and tried to kill him. And the fact that Rick brushed me off that day didn’t escape my notice. Had he sensed danger? Should I have done something? Could I have prevented the attack? Should I have known something was wrong? How much pain could I have saved Rick and his family if I had been a little more alert?

I don’t know. I moved away not long after that. I don’t know what became of Rick, but I think of him sometimes and I wonder…

Just a man in the wrong place at the wrong time.