Pub Party!

Had the big pub party for Thai Die last night. I was so nervous about it! Instead of at a bookstore, it was held at a bed and breakfast down in St. Peter, about sixty miles from Excelsior – and from Minneapolis, my home town. Several chapters of the book at set at that bed and breakfast, the March Hare. It was put together by the March Hare, which had not done a pub party before, and by The Tangled Skein, a yarn shop which also had not held one before. I had an uncomfortable feeling this could end up with me, the two owners of the shop, and the owner and chef of the B&B talking to the two people who came and trying to eat a whole lot of food.

Instead there was a really big turnout. People came from all over the area. They listened while I read excerpts from the book then went to watch Lisa and her mom take turns spinning angora yarn right off a huge angora bunny name Blanche (if you read the book, you’ll see why they were there). Even the bunny had a good time.

And I signed a whole lot of books.

Now I have it all to do again, in more traditional fashion, tomorrow night at Once Upon A Crime Mystery Bookstore, and also in Excelsior, and in White Bear Lake, and at Uncle Edgar’s Mystery Bookstore and so on and so on. But we’re off to a fantastic start.

Blackwork is essentially finished, just a few little tweaks to go.
And I’ve begun the serious plotting of Buttons and Bones. I realized about a week ago that while I had a pretty good idea for it, the plot was so thin it might make a better short story. I whined about that at a dinner with some friends and that set off a brainstorm session that quickly turned out a much more complicated plot. I am rich in good friends.

Life is sweet.

Caretaking

I’m in Wisconsin this week, caring for my mother while my sister, in whose house Mom lives, takes a well-earned break. It’s strange caring for one’s mother. She isn’t a child, though she can be childish. She’s able to stand but not walk and so a wheelchair takes her from station to station around the house: bedroom, living room, bathroom. Even with eyeglasses she has trouble reading and she can no longer do needlework (both great passions all her life). She watches movies (right now she’s driving everyone crazy because she watches one movie, “Comfort and Joy,” once or twice a day) and sports shows (golf, tennis, baseball, football). My sister set up bird feeders outside her big front window and Mom loves to sit most of the day to watch her “circus,” as many varieties of birds and two kinds of squirrels come up to chow down. She has her good and her bad days. Tuesday, she mostly slept.

Therese is in Florida but her husband, Thomas, is here. He helps a lot, but Mom is bashful about bathroom things and changing from nightgown to daytime clothes, so that’s the main reason I’m here.

Another is to spend time with Mom. She’s nearly ninety and getting a little more frail every year, so this is a more precious than bothersome time. She’s on a fairly rigid schedule of bathroom visits and medications and she’s pretty good at manipulating me into ignoring some of the rules. At bedtime Tuesday evening she decided she was very comfortable in her chair (she sleeps in a recliner, the kind that lifts her onto her feet to get out of it) and didn’t want to make a bedtime bathroom call to change into a nightgown. I almost got into an argument with her, when she suddenly capitulated. And now, thinking about it, I suspect she’s angry. Angry at getting old, at being helpless, at having to be taken care of like a small child. I’d be angry, too. But she has to follow the rules, or she may get some serious life-threatening complication – her skin is fragile from sitting all the time, and needs tender, frequent care, for example, to avoid pressure sores. I suspect the argument didn’t happen because she’s afraid that might be mentioned, and she might burst out that she doesn’t care if she gets ill and dies. Because she’s afraid that might be true.

Meanwhile, southern Wisconsin is having the same trouble as mid-Minnesota getting spring started. There is still a lot of snow on the ground around here. Therese had to put off her plane flight to Florida for a day when a sudden, brief, intense snowstorm closed the airport. (Of course state farther south were getting clobbered with late-season blizzards, and even Florida had tornadoes a few days ago.)

I’m glad I had a week in Mexico City, it has helped me cope with this endless winter. But oh, for a mere snowdrop blooming in some protected corner of a garden! Or just the tip of the light green spear of a daffodil pushing up through the soil! The chickadees and cardinals are singing, so I know spring is coming, but it seems very distant – and this Sunday is Palm Sunday. I’ll have to wear my winter coat over my Easter dress Sunday after next. That’s not uncommon in Minnesota. But I’m thinking I’ll be wearing my furry winter boots, too, and that is not common at all. Hard to believe that in two months there will be lilacs blooming in my neighborhood.

I got the final design for the cover of Thai Die the other day. They made some changes from the original sketch, which I really loved. But then, I’m not an advertising agent, so I assume they know what they’re doing. So far they certainly have. Only, they put a smoking gun on the cover, which is great – but it’s a Derringer! The guns mentioned in the novel are not Derringers. I thought about making a change in the text, but realized that in the two places I could do that, a Derringer was definitely not the right kind of gun for the story. It’s a pretty and exotic weapon on the cover, however.

But Why?

Motive: the engine that drives a good mystery. Method is important, of course. Finding clever ways to murder a victim is kind of fun. I think it’s also one of the less-recognized marks of the traditional or “cozy” mystery. Noir mysteries have plenty of violence, but it tends to be with obvious weapons, such as knives, bombs and guns. Traditional mysteries go for obscure poisons, fishing line tied across the top of a staircase, or the disabled gas line.

But motives tend to be the same small handful: hatred, money, revenge. I finished and shipped a draft of Thai Die on Saturday, and normally at this point I’d take some time off. But I feel all anxious about the next one, in a good way, so I’m fooling around with it. I have a great murder method (obscure but not poisonous), a terrific clue that directly involves needlework, but only the vaguest idea of a motive. That is, there are a lot of possibilities, but not one that immediately jumps up and shouts, “Here I am, take me!” My victim is, like a lot of victims, a very not-nice person. (How else to generate a lot of suspects?) I will need a motive like several other people have (so the reader doesn't leap on it with a glad "Ah-ha!"), but one that leads to a hidden motive, a blockbuster motive.

Meanwhile my editor should be starting to read Thai Die, and – I’m sure – wrinkling her nose here and there.

We had company over on Sunday, a couple I’ve known for many years. We don’t see each other as much anymore, but it was warming to notice how easily we fell into good conversation, as if we were still practically neighbors. They were the ones who introduced me to the Society for Creative Anachronism, and it was in that organization that I met my dearly-beloved husband. Sweet people, very brainy, too.

And that’s all I have to say today.

Winding Up

Would you believe I’m still not feeling well? (As in having occasional attacks where I seem to be trying to cough my lungs up.) I finally went to the doctor and she said bronchitis and gave me prescriptions for an antibiotic and some cough syrup with codeine in it. Ahhhhh, codeine! But it makes me sleep, and that's why this post is getting up later than usual. Plus, I'm not going to water aerobics until this runs its course.

I am on the final scene of Thai Die. If the climatic scene reads like a fever dream, that’s because I wrote it while under the influence of several cold medications. Actually, it may have improved the writing. I was once in the presence of a bad man wielding a handgun, and perceptions alter when danger is that proximate. Images sharpen, but it’s in a kind of tunnel vision. Time slows down but it’s hard to make a decision: run or stay? Talk or scream or sit silent? I conclude that these decisions should be made ahead of time. I have been much intrigued by the new instructions for what to do when accosted by a man with a gun: run! Most people are terrible shots at distances greater than a few yards, especially when the target is moving; and by the time he reacts to your running, you’re farther away than that. And chances are, even if he shoots and hits you, it won’t be fatal. Whereas if you go with him, you almost certainly will end up dead. Same with carjacking. Keep your doors locked and if someone comes up and shows you a gun, drive off. He very likely won’t shoot – he’s after the car, not out to kill someone – and, if you do go along, he’ll make you empty your bank accounts for him. But remember, your doors have to be locked for this to work.

Tomorrow we close on the sale of our old townhouse. It took nearly six months to sell, an indication of the slump in the housing market in the Twin Cities. But sell it did, after we cut the price – twice – and now we can pay off the “bridge loan” we took out when we found ourselves obliged to pay for our new co-op apartment while still the owners of a very nice three-bedroom townhome with a tuck-under garage and functional fireplace. I like our new place very much, but it’s smaller than the old place. Which is good as far as house keeping goes – I can mop the smaller bathroom floor in half a minute. And it’s all on one level, for which my knees are very grateful. But when I set out my Fontanini Christmas pieces, I discovered that I have too many of them for the new place. I’m not sure what that means, whether I’ll set out some one year and others another. Or if I’ll have to sell some of them. We’ll see. Right now they’re all back in the cabinet allotted to them, so the problem doesn’t have to be addressed until December.

There’s one resolution I should have made for the New Year but didn’t – but there’s no reason I can’t make it now, is there? To become more organized. For me, that means getting rid of stuff. My office is already silting up, and I’ve decided I really don’t like that. It didn’t use to bother me, but now it does. I get impatient with the clutter, especially when I look at my spouse’s vast, clean space. So I resolve to do something about it.

Life will be better when that’s accomplished. And, already, life is good.

INCONSEQUENTIAL SCENES

We writers think of them as character builders. They are anecdotes that tell the reader what kind of person or person you are writing about. The rule is, show rather than tell. If you want your reader to know something about a police detective, don’t write, for example, “He loved to play cruel practical jokes.” Write a scene in which he hires an extremely hard-bitten street walker to come into the station and ask if she can talk to her boyfriend Sergeant Wilcox for a minute. If he’s kind-hearted, write an amusing scene in which he stops traffic on a winding suburban road to keep a large snapping turtle from being run over. Snapping turtles crossing roads are almost invariably female. They are looking for a place to lay their eggs, or trying to get back to the pond after doing do. They do not want to be rescued, they want to be left alone. They cannot be herded and can bite through shoe leather. They can be pushed by a shovel – if you have one handy. Or, they can be picked up by the tail, if you are quick and careful. But then they must be carried at arm’s length or they will extend their sharp-beaked head on a surprisingly long neck and bite a surprisingly big chunk out of your thigh.

The thing is, these scenes, fun as they are to write, often don’t work toward solving the mystery. They are allowed only as far as they reveal more about the mind or character of the people in your novel. (In a short story, there is normally no time for these digressions.) I am beginning to think that the longer a series goes on, the more of this sort of thing there is, at least in my novels. I am at least as caught up in the personal lives of my “running” (repeating) characters as my readers, enough so that I’m no longer sure how much of this is character building and how much is gossip.

For example, my heroine goes three mornings a week to water aerobics – something I do myself. In Thai Die, I describe a visit based on something that actually happened. This is meant to reveal more about Betsy. Dave is never mentioned again. Is this scene necessary? Or do I just want to get it off my chest?

At six-thirty Betsy waded gratefully into breast-high warm water and began taking broad side steps, raising and lowering her arms in the water. The Courage Center’s Olympic-size pool had flat platforms that stepped down at wide intervals, rather than the sloping bottom of most pools. There were about nine other women there, most of them her age or older, and two men, all stepping sideways, warming up. Greetings were murmured as they passed one another. “Hi, Carol; hi, Rita; hi, Betsy; hi, Ruth; hi, Joe; hi, Ingrid; hi, Renee.” A collection of classic rock songs was playing, not too loud. Instructor Heidi stepped into the pool and called them to order. First head to toe stretches, then a slow jog, and pretty soon they were stepping lively, their heart rates at or close to where they needed to be.

Dave, whose occupation was serious and highly technical, had an amusing prelediction for gently nudging or splashing April and when April objected claiming loudly that she was picking on him. But April was home recovering from surgery. Betsy saw him look around, as if for another victim. He was a handsome man despite his balding head, with a strong build and a captivating North Carolina accent. He came to the pool because he was facing knee surgery and wanted to stretch and strengthen his leg muscles in preparation.

Dave’s eye settled on Irene, who had the most beautiful smile Betsy had ever seen. Her mouth was shapely and she had deep dimples, but it was more than that. When she smiled, somehow everyone around her felt warm and blessed. On the other hand, she was black and Dave was a southerner, so when Betsy saw him focus on her, she held her breath. Dave moved subtly out of his path to nudge her on the shoulder as they passed one another. It could have been an accident, they each murmured “Sorry,” and kept going.

But Irene evidently saw something in Betsy’s face when this happened. She flashed her smile at Betsy, and continued grape-vining placidly across the pool. On her way back, Irene deftly avoided another collision and flicked a few drops of water onto the back of Dave’s head as he went past. Dave shouted, “You saw that! You saw that! First April, now Irene! Can’t get a moment’s peace in this place!” Amidst the laughter Betsy was reminded that not all southerners were bigots – and that in her own concern for Irene, she was herself guilty of condescending racism.