A New Contest

Someone wrote to ask me a very interesting question: What books is Godwin reading? That question – which I could not answer, at least not right away – got me thinking. Character building is one of the really interesting parts of writing fiction. It’s the telling little details that make a character real, and inventing them is great fun. I dare say most authors know far more about their characters than they tell. (For example, the hero in my first series, Detective Sergeant Peter Brichter, had a bronze star hidden in the back of his sock drawer, a souvenir of an incident that happened during his Navy service aboard an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War. I never had a chance to work the story of his heroism into a book. He didn’t like to talk about it.)

I have in mind a contest: What does one of the characters in the Betsy Devonshire mysteries want for Christmas? Enter as many times as you like for as many characters as you like. I’m hoping to be surprised and amused and edified. The deadline is Monday, December 26, 2011. I will be sole judge. The prize is an autographed hardcover copy of Threadbare. Good luck!

This past Saturday I did a signing at Excelsior Bay Books. There was a steady stream of book-buyers – and a reporter from The Patch, an on-line news organization. She interviewed me between customers and asked some intelligent, thought-provoking questions. She had one of those tiny, flat cameras and took a picture of me in my Christmas hat, a gold net concoction with sparkles caught up in the wires. If it comes out, I’ll see if I can get a copy of it to post on Killer Hobbies.

Sunday I baked six loaves of Vanocka, an Austrian Christmas yeast bread which is made with grated orange peel, almond slivers, and two kinds of raisins. The apartment smelled fantastic while they were baking, and we ate the smallest loaf with butter as soon as it was cool enough to handle.

Today, from twelve to one, I am to address a gathering at the Minneapolis Textile Center. They borrowed twenty of my hats to make a display, but I’m supposed to talk about my books, with an emphasis on the one I’m currently writing, And Then You Dye.

Merry Christmas – or Happy Chanukah, or Joyous Solstice, or Cheerful Holidays or whatever makes you smile during this time of year!

Christmas 2009

My mother passed peacefully away December 17. We wanted to put death notices in newspapers from the city where she was born and grew up and again in the city where she spent most of her adult life and again in the city she was living in when she died, but discovered newspapers charge by the line as if these notices are trying to sell something. The Philadelphia paper was the most expensive -- $900 for three short paragraphs! My sister, who is in charge of the burial funds, said to cancel the notices and I replied that we didn’t have to because the papers want proof of death and the hospice she died in wouldn’t tell anyone, even at my direction, that she had, in fact, died and so the papers refused to accept the notice. Well, except the Fort Myers paper; for some reason they decided I wasn’t a prankster and published a notice. The hospice cited patient privacy laws as the reason they wouldn’t give out the information. We didn’t go through a mortuary but had Mom taken directly to a crematorium, so we didn’t have their expertise in handling this. Life is too weird to be believed, sometimes.

Meanwhile, Christmas approaches and thank God I’m finding it a comfort rather than a painful contrast. Favorite ways of celebrating:

A showing of “Scrooge,” the movie I find that comes closest to Dickens’ version of “A Christmas Carol.” It’s the one starring Alistair Sim, made in England in 1951. I’m also looking forward to “A Christmas Story,” based on the short story by Jean Shepherd from his anthology, In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, which I read long before the movie came out. It’s not Christmas until I see those two movies. (Fortunately, I have them on CDs, so if television fails me, or shows them at a time I can’t watch, I’ll still get to see them.)

For close to thirty years I collected the Fontanini Christmas Creche pieces, which is not just Mary, Joseph, the Infant, the Three Kings and a few shepherds, but Bethelem: the rug seller with the spinner and weaver; the priest, rabbi, and temple; the carpenter in his shop with an apprentice; the baker and his dough-kneading wife and basket-wielding son; the innkeeper with his apologetically-spread arms (confronting Mary on a tired donkey and a worried Joseph); the stable in the form of a ruined pagan temple; the potter painting a pot in front of his kiln; a big cluster of angels suspended on fine fishing line over six shepherds, three dogs and a large flock of sheep; and so on and so on and so on. I used to put them out on the long raised hearth of our living room and allowed them to spread onto the coffee table -- but then we moved into a much smaller place. I no longer have room to put them out, and didn’t want to leave them jammed into their glass-fronted bookcase so I began to think, sadly, of selling them. Then I got a better idea: I donated the whole set to my church. And they, very kindly, have named me the informal Curator of the Creche. I still get to play with them, they provided a big table in the narthex, and I went over yesterday to move the Three Kings on camelback from a table that holds announcements to the big table, where I turned most of the figures to gape at their striding into town. Christmas Eve after the Children’s Service at four, the Baby Jesus will be brought by one lucky child to the manger. January 6 the Kings will dismount and will appear on foot presenting their gifts in a brief appearance at the stable before the whole set gets put away until next year. So far the members of St. George’s seem pleased at having this display. I am not inclined to preen because I’m genuinely humbled at this public evidence of my lack of self control when it comes to collecting.

Among my earliest published books is one called Original Sin, set at Christmas time. I loved writing it -- it’s a locked-room mystery that takes place in a big Victorian mansion cut off from the world by a blizzard, with a body in the library -- and while it’s long gone out of print it remains one of my favorite Christmas reads. Another is The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy Sayers which, while not explicitly a Christmas book, has Christmas happen in it.

This year my sister-in-law’s Christmas gift to me was to take me to a play, “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol,” which was really good. It’s a tour de force for the one actor who tells the story in two and a half hours, playing all the characters without the aid of sets or costumes. I hope I can think of something half as good for her next year.

I also like to bake a wonderful Austrian Christmas bread called “Vanocka” in honor of the season. It’s a yeast bread with orange peel, blanched almonds and two kinds of raisins in it. I will send the recipe to anyone who asks for it. Write to MaryPulver@aol.com.