I Love Yarn Day

October14, is I Love Yarn Day. Personally, I love yarn every day.

To me a ball of yarn is a ball of possibilities. It still amazes me to see how with the help of some tools, that nothing can turn into a blanket or a scarf.

With yarn I can turn waiting time into something three dimensional with a purpose. I keep two projects in a soft bag that I carry with me all the time. Both projects are easy and small. I took them on the plane when I came back from Chicago and now when I’m waiting for something. I’ve already finished one small dish cloth and working on another. The cowl from the pretty yarn I couldn’t resist at the Tuesday Morning store is really taking shape. And the bonus for me is that I am not bothered by waiting.

Working with yarn has another benefit. Some people drink wine or pop pills, I pull out a hook or some needles and some yarn. The rhythm is soothing and meditative. It is actually more relaxing when I pay attention to what I’m doing, rather than do something else at the same time. I met a woman once who told me she could read while she knitted. Not for me.

Yarn comes from all kinds of sources. There are places where you can take all the fur your dog or cat shed and have it spun into yarn. I saw a woman spinning yarn from soy milk fibers at the Los Angeles county fair. Talk about turning nothing into something. I tried spinning once - though it was with standard wool fibers and it’s addictively soothing. After just a few minutes I was thinking of getting my own wheel.

Yarn has paved the way for my dreams to come true. It was all about learning how to fashion yarn into granny squares that brought me to writing the Crochet Mystery series.

There is a social aspect about working with yarn. It is nice to crochet or knit with a group. Not only do they help each other with problems with their projects, but life ones as well. Check out a group of knitters and crocheters and nobody is working in silence. Their lives become as interwoven as the lapgahns and sweaters they create. It was thanks to the group I’m in that I thought of the Yarn Retreat series.

Writing the books and coming up with patterns has done something else for me. I started out by just following a pattern, one step at a time, not thinking of what I was really doing or the big picture of how it was going to work out. But eventually, I began to see it in my head and found I could think in crochet or knitting and figure out how to make something that I pictured. I remember marveling at some woman who grabbed a ball of yarn and a hook and began crocheting a scarf without seeming to have any plan. And then I found I could do it. I stay to the simple designs for several reasons. I like to include patterns that someone with basic skill can make and I like to let the beauty of the yarn carry the project rather than fancy stitch work.

Yarn has led to me meet all kinds of wonderful people. I’ve gone to the Knit and Crochet Show and made friends with yarn people from all over everywhere. I’ve meet wonderful people at the Vogue Show and Stitches Midwest. And most of all, there’s my regular group that meets at Joann’s.
Yup, yarn has enriched my life in so many ways. Who’d figure a ball of colorful fibers could so all that.

I do dearly love yarn. It has enriched my life in so many ways.

The Ones That Didn't Make It

Before I tried novels, I spent some time writing film scripts, video ideas, and TV show series concepts.

I wrote three scripts. The first one was called Best Shot and was the story of a woman married to a charismatic professor, who tries to get out of his shadow by pursuing the kitschy craft of bread dough sculpture. I didn’t realize it was a comedy until I went through some meeting with a producer and she called it a romantic comedy. Unfortunately after a couple of meetings, it fell through the cracks as the saying goes. An agent who specialized in movie and TV writers wanted to represent me and use the script as a sample to get me work in TV which would have meant working at a studio, but my son was small then and I didn’t want to be an absentee mom and turned her down.

The second script was called Radio Motown and followed the adventures of a DJ and his listeners on his last night on the air. A lot of the action was tied into songs and it was sort of a music video - movie. I was paid for it, but they ended up using another concept for the project.

The last one was called Principal for a Day and was the story of what happens when a kid is principal for a day and everything goes wrong. Imagine (Ron Howard’s company) was interested in it. Most production companies buy scripts and then decide later if they’ll actually use them, Imagine only bought things they were going to green light. My script went all the way to the top and it was either my script or John Grisham’s The Chamber. Guess who they went with?

I wrote treatments for a woman’s self defense video called Don’t Mess With Me, a kids’ program that would promote reading called Kids’ Zone, a cartoon series called Squirrels in Space, a cooking with the stars show (long before there was a Food Network), and some others probably best forgotten. They all went through various stages of development, but not all the way into being made.

It wasn’t all just rejection. Interspersed with everything, I wrote some newspaper and magazine pieces which were published. I also wrote some short stories that were published in Woman’s World. Woman’s Day published an opinion piece. Though not without a certain amount of anguish. When they bought it, an editor called me and was all excited about publishing it, though told me it might not run for a year. The editor left the magazine and the piece never ran. Several years later, I queried Woman Day on another idea and mentioned the piece. They didn’t take my query, but ended up publishing the opinion piece. I only found out by chance when I happened to look at the magazine and see it.


I wrote two romance novels. The first one was a story in a story. I thought it was such a unique idea, which I now lol over. I got a very nice full page letter from someone at Harlequin who apologized for rejecting it so close to Christmas. She clued me in that the story within a story thing was quite as fresh as I’d thought. Now I realize the letter was more or less a rejection with promise, like I could have rewritten it and resubmitted it, but I just saw it as rejection and threw the manuscript in the corner. I don’t remember exactly what it was about except there was a TV detective named Jake Blake.

The other romance novel had several titles. I think the last was Marry Me, Marry Me....Temporarily. It was about a marriage of convenience. A couple who didn’t really like each other had to get married to qualify as writers on a soap opera that was only hiring married writing teams. Things got sticky when the producer got suspicious of them and they had to move together. Of course, they ended up falling madly in love with each other. I suppose if I was writing it now, they’d be contestants on some reality show. That manuscript spent a lot of time on editors desks, but in the end went nowhere. But I had a lot of fun writing it.

The first mystery I wrote was called Dead Men Don’t Diet and had many of the characters that ended up in the crochet series. My agent couldn’t sell it because it didn’t have a hook, which now seems ironic since the crochet series sold because it was about a hook.

Work-cation

This week we’ve been writing about our favorite vacations. I wouldn’t exactly call this my favorite, but it’s what I’m on now. And it’s not exactly a vacation since I packed up my laptop and a hard copy of my manuscript and came to Chicago to do the rewrite on my sixth crochet mystery which is now called Behind the Seams.

I like to think I’m at my own personal full service writer’s resort. After all that sitting reading my manuscript and sitting in front of the computer, I need some exercise. Who needs a gym when I walk everywhere, carry groceries and have three flights of stairs to go up and down numerous times. The beach is a short walk away if I’m interested in swimming.

And for eating - there are restaurants up and down the street offering a whole selection of cuisines. Though I took my shopping cart to the grocery store and bought all my favorites.

I have a whole stash of yarn here and hooks of all sizes, so when I’m not working on the book, I can work on the crochet projects I’m including. If I need amusement, there is a stack of some of my favorite DVDs and books all over the place. I can even get a steam bath if I want it. All I have to do is step out on the front porch. With temperature in the mid eighties and the humidity around seventy percent, I’d be drenched in sweat in no time. Did I mention it’s close to midnight? Luckily there is something else I have here. Window air conditioners.

Show and Tell

I realized I was the only one on the Malice panel who hadn’t been to a craft show. I was going to rectify it by going to the Knit Guild and Crochet Guild show that’s in Portland, Oregon next weekend. But buying plane tickets at the last minute is ridiculous. With two weeks advance purchase, a ticket was around $200. But with just one week in advance it was double that.

I found out The National Needlecraft Association has a show in the fall which ought to give me plenty of time to get a good deal on a plane ticket.

One of the reasons I wanted to go was that was to see all the specialty yarns. You can read about them in magazines and see photos online, but it isn’t the same as seeing them in person and being able to touch them. In the crochet mystery I’m about to begin both Molly Pink and I are going to upgrade our yarn experience. So far, I’ve stuck to craft super store kinds of offerings. Now I want to try cashmere and high end blends. I want to see how different it is to work with expensive yarn.

The same information will help with the knitting story I’m working on. Working with two pointy things still feels much more awkward than just using a hook, but I’m getting the hang of knitting. I picked up some knitting books and seem to be able to understand the patterns - at least in my head anyway.

I am looking forward to finishing the little coin purse I started, though I still don’t get what the big deal is about knitting. Crocheting feels more natural, is easier and faster. And it’s easy to rip out your mistakes. The hooks are shorter than needles and easier to carry.

But I like having a craft challenge. I like the idea of learning something new.

How about the rest of you? Have you learned anything new lately and how do you feel about it?

RWC Retreat

The airplane arrived from Chicago. The passengers came into the terminal at LAX. I could almost hear them sigh with pleasure as they looked at the blue sky and warm sunlight streaming through the windows.

I got on the same plane and it flew right back to Chicago. It was cold, dark and late when I arrived, but I sighed with pleasure all the same. I guess it is just the appeal to being somewhere else.

I was supposed to have company while I was here, but there was a change in plans and I have a week alone. I have turned this time into my own personal retreat - just reading, writing and crocheting with some walks thrown in and well, a little cleaning, too. The company is showing up later.

So what am I reading? Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii by Lee Goldberg. I picked it up last month at Left Coast Crime in Kona. Lee was the toastmaster of the event and when he signed my book I found out he was also a former Tarzanian. It’s a fun read and even though it takes place in Kauai and I was on the big island, it still reminds me of my trip. When I finish, I have seven rooms with overflowing bookcases full of choices.

I didn’t bring clothes, just a suitcase full of yarn. The one thing not conveniently located around here is a yarn store or a Michael’s or Joann’s. I always bring yarn, crochet tools, and crochet books to leave here, which means I have now yarn stashes in two locations. Anyone who knits or crochets will get the importance of that.

I plan to make several of the pouch purses featured in the fourth crochet mystery, which I think might be called A Twisted Yarn. I also want to play. I’m always in a hurry and product oriented. I wanted to try stitches and combinations of them for an idea I have for the project in book number 5.

And the writing. Well, there’s book number 5 and something else I’m working on, too. Along with all the yarn, I brought some yellow legal pads. I like to start with them. For some reason I never have blank page anxiety when I handwrite, the way I do when I look at a blank screen with a winking cursor.

To finish off the retreat, I have lots of coffee and loads of local good food. Am I in heaven, or what?

What is your dream getaway?

Yay for Today

It’s almost my birthday which makes me think about celebrating. When I was writing scripts and video proposals, I discovered I never knew when to celebrate because it seemed like everything was always maybe, which at any time could turn into no. So, I decided to celebrate everything and anything.

For example, my reasons to celebrate today are: I got a nice email from a librarian at a branch of the Los Angeles Public Library telling me that my books are a big hit at the library and inviting me to give a talk; it’s beautiful outside and the orange trees in my backyard are all in blossom filling the air with a sweet floral scent; I’m almost finished doing the taxes stuff; and like I mentioned it’s almost my birthday.

I can find a reason to celebrate almost everyday. If someone almost smashes into me as they make a left turn, after referring to them as a jerk a few times and once my heartbeat returns to normal, I’m ready to celebrate the fact that an accident didn’t happen. All I have to do is think about how much that would have messed up my day and probably many to follow, and I know it’s going to be a great day.

Any smidgen of good news or possibilities will make me want to celebrate, too. I made an occasion out of being close to finishing the fourth crochet mystery, which might be called A Twisted Yarn. And when it was truly done and on it’s way back east, I celebrated again.

My celebrations aren’t necessarily big. It could just be sitting in my backyard, drinking a cup of coffee and thinking happy thoughts. Or it could be going somewhere special or going anywhere, for that matter. I’m a cheap date and enjoy a fast food veggie burger or a walk in the mountains to watch the sun set. Or even a bag of Trader Joe’s microwave popcorn and an episode of Monk counts as an event for me.

I suppose someone could say that if so much is special doesn’t it dilute the meaning. It doesn’t. You can’t dilute joy. It only comes in one strength - full.

The End is Near

Another week that disappeared. I haven't been to the gym since Sunday. My only outings have been going for a couple of walks in the mountains and walking the dog. The rest of the time I have been over my computer going through my manuscript for the last time. I've been up until 2 a.m. every night. Then stumbling into bed bleary eyed.

I just have a few more pages to go through and a few more changes make. Then just the crochet pattern and the recipe and crochet mystery number 4 gets a FedEx ride to New York. The end is in sight, which means soon there'll be clean laundry again and a chance to run the vaccuum.

Guess Who's Having Dinner

More action on my street.

It started with a flyer being dropped off announcing that MTV was going to be filming an episode of Rock Dinner at a house down the street. The shooting was to include an exterior music performance in the yard after cooking and eating a meal in the house.

My immediate response was what rock star lives down the street? Then I realized there was a good chance that even if I knew it was, I wouldn’t know who they were, if you know what I mean. Not that I really should have been spending time on this. The fourth crochet mystery is due March 1 and I am rushing to finish it.

The next day both sides of the streets were lined with a generator, trucks, cars and vans. A bunch grungily dressed people seemed to be involved in setting things up until late in the evening.

When Thursday rolled around even though they posted the filming hours as 7:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m., the street was quiet until afternoon. But then that goes along with musicians. It was obviously a low end production. There was one trailer, two port a potties and no security. In contrast the production on our street a few months ago had trucks with dressing rooms complete with real bathrooms, a whole line of fancy trailers for the actors, and an off duty motorcycle cop to keep an eye on things.

So, I was still wondering who this rock star neighbor was.

Night fell and I took my dog for a walk past all the trucks. Blindingly bright lights were set up in the front yard of the house. The production assistants and assistant director types were hanging around in the street caught up in their self importance and I asked one of them what was going on. A lanky guy with an attitude said they were shooting a mayonnaise commercial. Like, sure. The dog and I went home.

Around 11:30 p.m., I took some garbage out and heard the thump of music along with the excited squeals of fans coming from the house down the street. Now I got what the white vans parked across the street were for. They had brought in fake fans for the outdoor performance. But I was kind of surprised they were making so much noise so late. My husband went down the street determined to find out what rock star had cooked and eaten dinner and was now performing in their yard. I figured he knew how to talk the production people’s talk since he’d produced TV shows including a Michael Jackson special (a long time ago before Michael got weird). Meanwhile I listened from the end of our driveway. The music was unintelligible, and the screams were obviously choreographed.

So who did my rock star neighbor turn out to be? Well, actually it wasn’t a rock star, but a band. And such a not famous band that the production assistant didn’t even know their name, just that they were a Latin band that was popular in Puerto Rico. And no, it wasn’t even their house. And then figuring my husband was a crotchety neighbor annoyed by the noise, the P.A. said they’d be finished soon. I didn’t hear exactly when the music ended, but around 1:00 a.m., I did hear the rumble of trucks as they drove away.

I wonder if even the cooking and eating dinner part was real.

Why the Gym Won

Several people seemed surprised that I chose the gym over writing my blog last week. Not too long ago I would have agreed. Most of my life I was a washout at anything athletic. I almost flunked bowling in college.

I go to a woman’s gym and when I joined it, I thought I would probably end up going a few times and that would be it. That was fifteen years ago and if anything I go more often now. During the first few months I was a member, I asked a fitness trainer how she got herself to keep working out. She didn’t really have an answer, but I figured out one myself. Very simply going to the gym makes me feel good. It ups my cheerfulness, and gives me energy. The routines in the cardio class sharpen my brain. Yoga centers me and helps keep my spine supple. Indoor cycling and kick boxing are always a physical challenge. The weights and floor exercises make me feel stronger.

And exercise helps my writing. When I get stuck all it takes is a few minutes in a cycling class and ideas start flowing. I always keep some paper and a pen in my gym bag for the inspired ideas that so often show up.

Since I am spending so much time sitting in front of a computer or sitting and crocheting as I rush to finish the fourth crochet mystery, the gym offers a balance. And there is the fun aspect. Yes, I have fun at the gym. When the music is good and my endorphins are pumping and the steps all flow like dancing, it’s fun. And the good feeling lasts all day. I’m posting this late on Friday, so I won’t have to make the choice of writing versus cardio dancing again. I already know what would win.

Email and the Author

In the old days if you wanted to contact an author it was a whole production. I wrote a letter to Herman Wouk once. I had read and reread Marjorie Morningstar a number of times, but the letter was actually about The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. I don’t remember what I said, but I do remember that I stayed up all night reading to finish one of them. That is a high compliment. When I’m tired, I’m tired and usually nothing will keep me from hitting the pillow.

I had to send the letter in care of the publisher. I assume he received it, but I never got a response.

Fast forward to now. What a change thanks to email. Since most writers seem to have website that allow you to send an email, it’s a snap to contact them. Or contact me, in the case of my website.

Since I only have the two crochet mysteries out and the YA mystery, I am relatively new to hearing from readers. The emails have mostly been fun. Someone sent me a picture of an amazing crochet bedspread she’d made that looked like a quilt. Someone else sent an email insisting you couldn’t crochet with string (something from Hooked on Murder).

Lots of people emailed just to say they liked one or both of the books – always nice to hear. A few of the email writers seemed to believe that my characters are real – those were a little spooky. I mentioned a crochet diet book in Hooked on Murder and someone emailed me saying she’d been looking everywhere for a copy and wanted to know where it was available – I had to tell her it existed only in my imagination.

The best email story involves someone who lives in my area. She’d been inspired by the books to take up crochet again and wanted to know if I knew any groups she could join. I sent her the details on the one I go to. Actually I haven’t been to the group since before the holidays thanks to my long bout with a flu bug and a hair cut appointment. But several days later I got an email from the same woman thanking me. She’d joined the group and seemed very happy with the people in it. It will be fun to meet her when I finally make it to a Thursday meeting.

I suppose someday I may not be able to answer each email personally, but for now I do, always thanking people for taking the time to email me. It’s easier to do than what I went through with Herman Wouk, but it still takes some effort.

Food for Thought

My family’s favorite part of the crochet mysteries are the recipes. They are my official tasters and love their job. They love it so much that both my husband and son are urging me to put in more than one recipe per book.

In all fairness, I used to cook a lot, and I guess they miss it. Okay, I don’t guess, I know they miss it because I’m always hearing about what I used to make. But back to the recipes in the books.

Hooked on Murder (which I found out just went into a second printing) features Helen’s Pound Cake. Helen was my mother and the pound cake was her all occasion favorite to make. My mother always made a big deal out of birthdays, and she liked to make cakes for people who normally wouldn’t have had a birthday cake.

I followed in her footsteps and the pound cake became a regular in my baking repertoire. Even so, I wanted to bake it again when I was adding the recipe to the book. I was including a recipe for butter cream icing and planned to ice the cake when it was cool. But my husband and son were so excited about an actual home made cake in the house, pieces of it started disappearing before it stopped steaming. By the time it was cool enough to ice, there was a little over a slice left. I had to make the full amount of icing to check how it turned out, but there is only so much butter cream icing you can put on one piece of cake. So, I trashed the rest. I’m still hearing about that. I didn’t think there was much you could do with a bowl of icing, but they are still tossing ideas out about what they could have done with it.

I included a recipe for cheesecake cupcakes in the Dead Men Don’t Crochet. I don’t have quite the same emotional connection with that recipe. It was one I came up with a long time ago, long before cupcakes were such an in item. I made several batches of them when I was checking the recipe. The recipe made eighteen of them and with the buttery graham cracker crust and the cream cheese top, they were rich and delicious. They lasted a little longer than the pound cake.

The third book now called By Hook or By Crook has a recipe for California Noodle Pudding. You can eat it hot or cold, as a side dish or a main course for breakfast. It has fruit and nuts and a little bit of sugar and vanilla, so it could almost be a dessert. It was my standard pot luck entry and so good I’d find myself saying mmmm when I ate it. This is another reason I don’t cook that much anymore. I like my own creations too much.

When I was in Chicago, I spent time going through my mother’s recipe file. I found all kinds of good stuff like a chocolate cake made with mash potatoes, and another made with yeast. Then there was one she called the Truant Officers Carrot Cake. I’m guessing that since my mother worked in the office of an elementary school, that’s who she got the recipe from. But I decided to go with one of my mother’s party creations. Nobody liked to give a party more than my mother. She always said she’d be planning her next party in the midst of her current one.

Since we basically had no money, my mother always made everything and generally something inexpensive. My parents had lots of brunch parties with waffle. For evening events, she came up with a sweet and a savory variation of appetizer puffs. I’m going to use the recipes for both in the fourth book. After she baked the small puffs, she’d fill some with crab salad and the others with homemade custard and a dollop of whipped cream. Just reading over the recipe reminded me of her standing in the kitchen, stirring the puff batter in a saucepan (you have to heat some of the ingredients). She would say they were so easy to make and then worry they weren’t going to turn out. My mother always worried that whatever she cooked wasn’t going to turn out.

Of course, everything always did.

Viva Las Vegas

I am going to Las Vegas on Sunday. The outward reason is a convention for our family business. But I have my own personal mission.

Over the years I’ve watched Vegas change from the days when my husband was William Morris personal appearance agent and I’d tag along when he’d go to cover acts like The Letterman, The Carpenters, and Charo among others. The Strip had lots of open spaces and was sleepy compared with now. The big deal in those days was the coconut cake at the Riviera Hotel’s coffee shop.

No more.

The hotels are like theme parks with things like an indoor rainforest, shopping streets with ceilings that look like the sky, a lake with a water show and a fragrant conservatory that has it plantings changed every couple of months.

We always used to fly and I’d scoff at people that drove, thinking it was a long drive through a ruthless desert. Until we decided to drive once. This is why it is always good to keep an open mind. It turned out I loved the drive and we never went back to flying.

The ride goes by quickly and it has become a fun family trip. It even became the inspiration for a short story I wrote that appeared in Woman’s World magazine. The very coolest thing about it, is that when I fly back from Chicago and the plane passes Vegas it follows along the road we drive on. I always fly back at night and I can see the 15 from the plane. The car headlights are like a faint line through the darkness. I can pick out the giant thermometer at Baker and the huge conglomeration of fast food places are in Barstow. I can even pick out the line of cars looping around and coming down the Cajon pass.

You don’t usually think of Las Vegas and crochet in the same sentence, but for me there is a special connection.

Several years ago when we went to this same convention something happened to me that totally turned my life around. This is where my mission comes in.

Holly Golightly went to Tiffany’s to feel good. For me it is going to FAO Schwartz. I want to go back there and wander through the second floor and all the art kits and think about how when I walked through there a few years ago I had no idea my life was about to change big time.

It all hinged on a little blue suitcase with a banner across it that said Granny Squares. I have always loved granny squares, but had no idea how to make them. I had taught myself how to single crochet enough to make a hat, but that was it. Granny squares, with their open spaces and the way they seemed to go around rather than across, mystified me. But with a kid’s kit, I thought I’d be able to conquer them.

I bought the little blue suitcase with great excitement. But I didn’t open it until I was back from the trip. I didn’t want to mess up the yarn it came with, so I tried following the directions with some yarn I had around. The first one I tried turned out to be lopsided as I had missed a corner somewhere. The next one I made turned out to have all four corners, but since it was all one color and my stitches were loopy and all over the place, it was hard to recognize the design. I had to hold it at a distance to see that I really had made a granny square. After that I used the kit and got more yarn. I kept making granny squares over and over until I didn’t need directions, until I realized there were variations on the pattern and I came up with my own.

I had fallen in love with crochet and now that I could make a granny square, all things seemed possible. And then a light bulb went off in my head. Hadn’t my agent Jessica suggested I write a cozy mystery? Why not mix the mystery with the crochet? If nothing else I knew I would learn how to crochet more things because it would all be research.

The story has a happy ending. I did learn how to crochet and the book, HOOKED ON MURDER, turned into a six book series.

So, while all the people are pulling levers on slot machines and roasting themselves by the pool, I will be making my way to the Forum Shops in Caesar’s Palace. I’ll go past the giant horse that marks the entrance of the toy store and ride the escalator to where it all began and think about how great life is.

I hope the store is still there.

Something New and Something Old

I came back from Chicago happy. I had two goals while I was there and accomplished both.
They really have nothing in common. They are almost opposite. The first involved creating something new and the second getting rid of something old.
I’m just starting my fourth crochet mystery. For now the book is called Murder and the Marshmallow Stitch. Adele Abrams, a character with rather flamboyant taste invents the marshmallow stitch in the book. Actually, I think creates is a better word. Okay, but in order for her to create the fictional stitch, I had to come up with it first. I knew I wanted it to look something like a marshmallow, but not much else. I had brought along some white Baby Cloud yarn left from the Cuddle blanket in the third book . It’s bulky, fuzzy and puffy, and seemed perfect for the proposed stitch.
The thing about crochet is that it is all about making loops, yarn overs and pulling the hook through loops. So, all I had to do was figure out what combination of the above would give me the effect I wanted.
It’s amazing what some time with no interruptions can do. My first attempts didn’t work, but as I kept working with the yarn, I began to see possibilities to getting it to do what I wanted.
And then I did it. I made a nice three dimensional nub that was round and puffy and deserved the title Marshmallow Stitch.
I made a whole row of them, writing down the instructions. Then I had fun thinking of what kind of wild uses Adele would figure for the stitch. Then I gave myself a high five.
My other goal regarded moving an air conditioner that had been in a bedroom window for at least twelve years. Since I come and go, the seasons pass by like a montage in a movie and it seemed either it was winter and too cold to start fiddling with open windows or about to become summer and the air conditioner would be needed.
The problem was that during the twelve years, countless pigeons had started to call the area on either side of the air conditioner home. Their soft cooing sounds were soothing and I had to admire their hardiness at staying through Chicago winters, but eventually I heard them knocking into the plastic barriers on either side of the unit. I began to get concerned that the next time I came, I’d find the birds had made their way into the room. I made a stronger barrier with cardboard and duct tape with books piled in front of it.
The window had taken on kind of monestrous look by now.
Finally last spring the building was supposed to have the windows washed which meant air conditioners had to be moved. My neighbor tried to take out the unit for me, but there was a mother pigeon standing over her baby, who though it was a bad idea. The window washing was delayed for other reasons and I decided to wait until the baby left the nest to clear out the air conditioner.
With pigeons, that turns out to be a long time. Most baby birds leave after a few weeks. Baby pigeons stay there for two months which is why you never see baby pigeons wandering around. When the leave the nest the only way you can tell them from adult pigeons is that their beaks are a little bigger in proportion to their bodies. No wonder they’re not in a hurry to leave. Both the mother and father pigeon sit on the two eggs that are laid at one time. And both of them care for the young, producing something like milk to feed their baby. Yes, Daddy pigeon produces this stuff called crop milk, too.
Last week, the baby was gone and so were the parents. I got the air conditioner out of the window and found the mess twelve years of pigeons can make. They had positioned their nest inside the storm window in the window frame. As is their habit, they had built nest on top of nest on top of nest which had become fused into a solid block of yuck. Of course, there was pigeon poop.
Too bad it isn’t the 16th, 17th, or 18th century in Europe when pigeon poop was so highly regarded as fertilizer there were armed guards outside pigeon coops to make sure nobody stole it. I would have been happy to pass it on to them. It was also the only source of saltpetre which is an essential ingredient in gun powder.
Finally, I got all the yuck removed and was able to pull down the storm window and close the inner window. It seemed so nice and plain after all my duct tape and piles of books. Best of all, much lighter.
The pigeons are in for a surprise when they try to come back.
And so I flew home satisfied. I had come up with something new and gotten rid of an old problem.

The radio interview I did for A Touch of Grey is going to air Saturday September 20 on WABC 77 in New York from 10 to 11 p.m. and Sunday September 21 on KRLA 870 in Los Angeles from Noon to 1 p.m..

Still Good After All These Years

I sent in my manuscript for Death and Doilies on Monday and other than getting caught up on laundry and house cleaning, my number one priority was reading. I find it hard to read fiction when I’m writing and before I start my fourth book, I wanted to read about somebody else’s characters.

I have been so wrapped up in mystery I wanted to read something different. I have a personal history with the first book I chose. The first time I read it I was in seventh grade. Our class had its own library made up of castoffs of the school’s library. We might have been allowed to take the books home on the honor system. In any case I loved the beat up book with the red cover so much, I never brought it back. I still have it here somewhere.

Even though a movie was made of it – a very bad movie at that – I thought the book was out of print and unavailable. My old copy too beat up to be readable anymore, so I thought it was lost to me forever.

By chance I was talking to a friend recently about books written in the form of letters, which my seventh grade favorite was, and I thought of www.amazon.com And how easy it is to find needle in the haystack old books – after all I’d found a children’s book I’d adored as a kid called Amos and the Moon. It was long out of print, but I still managed to get a copy in good condition. So, I typed the title into the search box.

To my surprise, I found out it was a classic of sorts and had been re published and brand new copies were available with extra information about the author. Of course I ordered it. The book is called Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster and was copyrighted in 1912. No, I’m not that old. Apparently when I read it in seventh grade it had been around a long, long time already.

I had to wonder how a book written almost one hundred years ago that I had last read in seventh grade would hold up. It’s the story of an eighteen year old young woman who grew up in a fondling home and is offered a college education by one of the trustees of the home. He wants to remain anonymous – she’s only caught a glimpse of him once as he was leaving and he reminds of her a daddy long legs spider. She’s to write him once a month to tell him about her studies.

The book is her letters to him. Once I started, I couldn’t stop reading. I loved it just as much now as I had in seventh grade. What a surprise. And there was even a mention of crochet.

Dead Men Don’t Crochet which comes out in December centers around Irish crochet. For anyone not familiar – Irish crochet is made with thread. It is most often has motifs of things like flowers or leaves that are joined into a collar or even a gown with crochet stitches so fine it’s hard to see them. It has a lacy appearance and got its start as a way for Irish woman to earn money during the potato famine. It also made lace type items available to more people as only very rich people could afford the Venetian lace it was based on.

In Daddy Long Legs, Judy (she’s the fondling/college student) talks about the clothes she gets a lot. It makes sense. After growing up wearing a uniform of blue gingham, who could blame her for getting excited about having gowns and lovely dresses. Her benefactor pays for her schooling and gives her a generous allowance so she won’t feel different than the other girls. She mentions getting things made of Irish crochet which at that time were contemporary. It was like seeing it from a different angle since when I was doing research, everything I looked at was old.

I guess maybe I didn’t get away from my writing as much as I thought. I have crochet on the brain. But it was nice to know that a book can hold up with time and be read by a seventh grader and someone way beyond and work for both ages. Wouldn’t we all like our books to be that good.

Signing in the Rain

There must be something about the combination of outdoor book signings, Chicago and me that courts disaster.
BLUE SCHWARTZ AND NEFERTITI’S NECKLACE came out in September. It takes place in my Chicago Hyde Park neighborhood and the release coincided with a local children’s book street fair. The fair was even sponsored by 57th Street Books which happened to be Blue’s favorite bookstore. It would seem that all the planets, or whatever it’s supposed to be, were in alignment.
I remember that afternoon thinking how this was to be my very first time on the other side of the signing table. My friend Judy Libby even drove up all the way from Springfield to share the moment.
My signing time was toward the end of the fair and it was to be at a table on the street. The sky was white, but non threatening so I wasn’t worried. This is no lie, but as Judy and I walked the two blocks to the fair, something happened in the last half a block. It started to pour. Not drizzle, not light rain – pour. The kind of rain where it seems someone unzipped the sky and let a deluge fall out.
By the time we reached the signing table, it was covered with a tarp and frantic people were carrying books inside. Most of the fair goers were fleeing for someplace dry. The bookstore people were very nice and moved my signing inside. Meanwhile Judy troweled the bookstore for customers. She found some wet girls waiting to be picked up. They were just the right age for the book and several of them got copies.
When the mother’s showed up and the only shoppers were a couple of men, Judy and I left and went out to dinner. When we walked outside, the rain had stopped and the puddles were already drying up.
Flash forward to last weekend and my first signing of another book in Chicago at a street fair. This time it was the Printers Row Fair which is held in the South Loop. Julie Hyzy, the president of the Chicago area chapter of Mystery Writers of America as nice enough to give me a signing slot for HOOKED ON MURDER, a crochet mystery in their booth.
The sun was shining when I arrived at the MWA sideless tent. I took my spot at the table and all four of us signers had a stack of books and a ready pen. Lots of people came by and many of them stopped. My friend Mike Caselman came by with his family. Things were looking good and books were moving and then the wind started. Someone mentioned a coming storm and that we should cover everything with plastic when it came. It was hard to believe bad weather was on the way. The sky was still blue, though there were some big clouds.
The thing they say about Chicago weather – if you don’t like it, wait a minute – is no joke. Within minutes the dark turned dark and ominous. The wind snapped all the tarps people were putting over their booths, and the doors on the porta potties blew open and shut. A garbage can did cartwheels past our booth.
And then it started to rain. No drizzle or a few wet spots, it went directly too pouring again. It was raining so hard, it honestly looked like a sheet of water.
We covered our table with plastic and bravely held our signing spots. Though by now most of the people going by were running.
When I looked around, there were clumps of people under the canopies, and huddled under building overhangs. We all had the same idea. It rains, it pours, it stops.
Not today.
When the lightening started, a fair official came by and told us we had to evacuate our booth. Apparently the metal rod sticking up in the middle did a good job of attracting lightening and could have fried us if we stayed put. I found an awning on a building and hung out with one of my signing mates.
Could it get worse? The tornado siren sounded and then I heard a lot of emergency type sirens in the distance. The woman from the next booth, also under our awning screamed every time the lightening flashed.
As the rain finally began to let it, there was another tornado siren, but this time further away. When the rain turned to drizzle and people began to come out of their shelters, I looked at my watch. My signing time was over. I headed for the train and went home.
It turned out there was a damaging tornado on the south end of the city.
The funny thing is if both signings had gone by without incident, they certainly wouldn’t have been as much of an adventure or given me anything to write about. Who ever wants to hear about a good time? I guess there is definitely something to be said for disaster. But next time I do a signing, I think I’ll try inside.