Random Thoughts

The Once Upon A Crime bookstore’s mass book signing on Saturday went spectacularly well. Copies of Writes of Spring flew out the door. Many of the attendees stayed all afternoon to get successive groups of authors’ signatures. It was warm, crowded, jolly fun. I was happy and honored to be in such great company, and grateful to Pat and Gary, owners of the bookstore, for including me in this anthology.

It’s only April and I’ve already played golf twice. I only play the nine-hole, par-three course at a local public range. Last time there were wood ducks on the pond – gorgeous birds! (http://www.ducks.org/hunting/waterfowl-id/wood-duck) – and red-eared turtles sunning on its banks. One of the pleasures of the game is the beautiful setting. Spring is early in Minnesota this year, though this morning it’s very chilly. But daffodils are blooming, tulips are budding, and the lilac bushes in the neighborhood are about to burst with lavish lavender blossoms and the heavy familiar scent. Though I sent my first ball off the tee onto the fairway of the adjoining hole, my second shot went onto the proper green, so it wasn't a totally awful beginning. I’m still a duffer, will probably always be one, I still enjoy the game. Did anyone else see the thrilling finish to this year’s Masters?

One of the complaints about the traditional mystery genre the authors on this blog write is that is isn’t realistic, it doesn’t reflect “real life.” Authors who write darker, more violent, fiction find their work described as “gritty” and “gripping,” but rarely as “unrealistic.” But how many of us know a lot of quilters, as compared to private eyes? How many of us encounter muggers and rapists as compared to people who go to church on Sundays? I agree that it’s exciting to read about the dark side of life, but really, the dark side is a pretty narrow slice of life as it is actually lived in America today. Besides, when you've been searching for a particular pattern or a discontinued color of embroidery floss, it can be quite thrilling to find it!

I’m having trouble getting organized right now. The forthcoming book is written and being edited. The new book is tangled in a synopsis that, if I can work it out, is going to be good. There isn’t a book to read I’m excited about – you know, one you can’t wait to get back to – though there are a couple I’m reading and mostly enjoying. Things feel a little flat. Maybe it’s an after-Easter letdown. I had a great Easter Sunday. I wore a hat to church, one so elaborate that, even though I’ve had it for five or six years I’ve only worn it in public about four times. (I’ll have to get a photo of it posted on my web site.) Then friends came to a big ham dinner where all the food turned out great, and we played a new favorite card game while watching the Masters. Last night I went to a post-Easter dinner with in-laws that went really well, good food and good talk. As noted above, Spring is springing early and beautifully. So why am I not bubbling with energy?

A quote from Sarah Hoyt: “Writing is communication. Your objective is to communicate with as many people as possible. Or at least to amuse them, distract them, or make the burden of life less burdensome for a while. Wishing to feed your family is also an acceptable goal.” Amen.

Random Thoughts

I’ve played golf twice in the past week, the last time just yesterday. The weather in this part of Minnesota has been amazing for November, after a cold and rainy October -- it’s as if the two months traded places. My game is improving, not a lot or quickly, but noticeably. My drives go farther down the fairway and sometimes my putting is quite satisfactory. Yesterday, however, there was a definite trend into slices -- the ball goes off to the right. (To the left is a hook.) Frustrating.

One thing golf does is take one’s mind off writing. It does mine, anyhow. I’m having a tough time with this one section of Buttons and Bones and it’s great to be able to escape it now and again. Problem is, once back home, there the problem is, big as ever. But it’s fixable. It’s got to be, I don’t have time to tear the whole book down and start over. I have a feeling that pretty soon I’ll be struggling with it and it will just detangle itself and knit together like a good, obedient story and I’ll wonder later what the problem was. I’ve had that experience before, thank God, and hope to have it again -- soon.

I’ve started getting some kind notes from fans about Blackwork. It’s heartening to an author to get a note praising her work. This is not a hint I’d like some more, but encouragement to any of you who like a particular book to say so in writing. Many, if not most, authors have a web site with a “contact me” button on it. If not, write care of the publisher -- publishers forward these fan letters to their authors. You can get the address of the publisher from the library or on the Internet. Brighten someone’s day, okay?

The holiday season is upon us and for those who think they might have trouble getting in the mood, there is a new book called “101 Ways to Keep the Spirit of Santa Alive.” It’s by a friend of mine, John Hagerman, and it’s not a kiddie book, but a parents’, godparents’, grandparents’, aunt-and-uncles’ book. It tells the origin of Santa Claus, how Santa is named and described in other countries, and offers a great many suggestions for things to do with children to make the season more real, more wholesome, and more satisfying. It’s published by The Inspired Elf, a very small press.

Later this week I have to get out my killer Christmas wreath, which is about four feet in diameter, and pull off all of last year’s lights and decorations and put it back together again. I bought the thing at Sam’s Club about four or five years ago as the Christmas season was winding down. Got a heck of a buy on it and it sure looks snazzy hanging from our balcony, but somehow the lights, bows and artificial fruit get all droopy and tangled and burned out from just being stored and need renewing. I have a friend who is going to come over and we’ll spend a couple of hours getting it all prepped for the season coming up. I felt kind of odd doing the work this early, until I saw that two or three houses right in the neighborhood already have their Christmas lights out and turned on. The other houses still have their Jack o’lanterns on their front porches! My wreath isn’t going out until Thanksgiving -- and I can remember my mother complaining about Christmas advertising starting right after Thanksgiving. Now it starts right after Halloween. I know it’s important to merchants to extend the season, but the result is that by the time Christmas actually gets here, a lot of us are heartily sick of it. Of course, by Christmas, I should be well into plotting the next Betsy Devonshire novel -- and I think I’ll set it around Easter . . .

Next week we -- the Killer Hobbies Crew -- are going to publish a series of helpful (we hope) articles on writing. I’ve got the one on Plotting. I believe I’ve already published something on that topic, but it won’t hurt to give it some daylight again. I’ve seen a preview of Joanna Campbell Slan’s item on Character, and it’s really good, very helpful, whether you’re a beginner or deeply experienced. I know I learned something from it. So please stay tuned.

Des Moines, IA

I'm in Des Moines, sitting in the still-dark morning, hoping I'm doing this right. I have a brand new computer I'm still trying to figure out, and using the motel's wi-fi system to get online. I think I'm there. I'm writing this directly on the post page, so if it's a little shaky, it's because it's done without much prep.

Today and tomorrow I'll be at the big quilt show at the Des Moines Events Center on Third downtown -- y'all come! I've done quilt shows before, sitting in Linne Lindquist's booth, The Craftsman's Touch. We usually do pretty well, as people who quilt very often do other needlework, too. I get to walk around the show on my breaks and never fail to be astonished and pleased down to my toes at the beauty and creativity of the quilts on display. I also often buy pretty pieces of fabric. In fact, hanging on my door at home is a big rectangle of Halloween-themed fabric I bought in Duluth some months back. It's meant to be the centerpiece of a quilt, but I just hemmed it and ran a dowel through the top. It features black silhouettes (sp?) of comic witches dancing on an orange ground.

Last weekend we were in Waukesha, Wisconsin, then Rockford, Illinois, and then Madison, Wisconsin on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. In Waukesha we stopped signed up in advance. The menu was based on a meal my character Godwin served to my sleuth Betsy and Godwin's new boyfriend Rafael. I think that is one of the coolest things anyone has done in connection with a signing! (The meal was delicious, too!) The weather was miserable so the turnout was smaller than expected, plus a feather arrangement I had put on my hat was blown away before I got there. I didn't notice it was gone until I got back to the hotel. It was a nice arrangement, too, of ostrich and peacock feathers. The weather continued bad to Rockford the next day, so the people who came were the ardent fans. Thank heavens I have some of those, I am so grateful!

The weather was nicer in Madison, and we had a very nice turnout. I read the Prologue to Blackwork, which is just about the right length and sets the theme for the book quite well. Which, come to think of it, is probably the purpose of a prologue.

All this travel, and some bad weather, means I haven't played any golf. I am hoping to get at least one more game in before winter sets in. I used to laugh at reports of golfers playing in the snow, but I think I'm starting to understand. I'm going to look around for one of those indoor ranges.

Time to go get some breakfast. Hope I have a good day at the Events Center!

BLACKWORK!

Yesterday, the sixth, was the official publication date for Blackwork, and I did a signing at a local Barnes and Noble – well, local in the sense that it was in Roseville, which is east of St. Paul, which is east of Minneapolis, which is east of St. Louis Park, the suburb I live in. For my birthday, which is this month, I received a GPS and I decided to try it out for directions to the bookstore. Fortunately, the thing is extremely easy to set up, and its directions were quite clear. If you take a different way, the woman’s somewhat mechanical voice says, "Recalculating," and swiftly figures a way to get you back on track. The turnout was good for a general bookstore, and they all laughed at the right places during my talk, and then asked good questions. One woman did ask me if I had aimed this book at the Wiccan market. Is there a Wiccan market? I said I didn’t have Wiccans in mind when I wrote the book, though two friends who practice Wicca did contribute to the plot. I said I needed an innocent suspect who some people could think used the black arts to commit murder. And I had this really cool way of killing someone that would work in a locked room and wouldn’t leave a mark . . .

Thinking of looking for a stocking stuffer? (Already? Yes, already!) The paperback version of Thai Die will premier on December 1. Also an "anthology" of the second trio of Betsy Devonshire novels (Unraveled Sleeve, A Murderous Yarn, Hanging by a Thread) will appear under the title Sew Far, So Good. This is also a warning to those looking for a new Betsy Devonshire novel and who might think Sew Far, So Good is one – it isn’t, it’s a collection of three already-published novels. FYI, Patterns of Murder is a collection of the first three Betsy Devonshire mysteries.

Today Laura Childs and I are going to be interviewed at KFAI radio in a recording to be broadcast later – next week, I believe. Hope I don’t blow it.

This weekend I will be at a science fiction convention aimed at the GLBT community, called Gaylaxicon. The con is to be held at the Doubletree Hotel in St. Louis Park, my own neighborhood. I’m going to be on a panel, do a group signing, join a group that does crafting (bringing my knitting), and then sponsoring a beer tasting. Blackwork features a Wiccan character whose "herbal preparation" of choice is beer. I had no idea when I set out to write it that there were so many varieties of beer – or that they were so different from one another. From the light and delicate fruit flavored limbecs to the thick, dark and bitter stouts, there is a beer to suit the palate of everyone – even those who, like me, have never thought they were fond of beer. To prove it, I have asked Michael Agnew, professional beer expert, to select six or eight widely-different kinds of beer to present to a paying audience.

I played golf on Monday morning, a chill, gray day, that had a forecast for rain that came true in the afternoon. Had the course practically all to myself, which was great, as on the third hole, the longest and for some reason my most difficult hole, my game came completely to pieces, and I took a shot off the tee three times (a "do over" or "McGuffin" it’s called) before I decided to just go ahead and play it where it last landed, about a dozen yards up the fairway. I think it took me about twelve strokes on that par three hole – on the other holes I scored between five and seven. Pathetic, I know, but a five on a par three isn’t bad for me.

St. Michael and All Angels

I woke with what feels like a chest cold this morning, so I didn’t go to water aerobics, but instead slept in and so this is going to be late getting posted.
I apologise

Last night the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels was celebrated at our place. Michaelmas (in England pronounced "mikkelmus") is one of the Quarter Days, dividing the year into four parts. They are, I believe, Candlemas, Lammas, Michaelmas and Christmas. The "mas" is a shortened "mass," because these were holy days, celebrated with a mass in church – marking the quarter days is a very old (e.g., medieval) custom. In England the fall term at university is still called the michaelmas term. (The university itself is a medieval invention.)

It was a good party, if smaller than usual. We hadn’t seen some of the guests in a long time, so there was lots of catching up to do. And one pair came late – one of them is a teacher and fresh from an acrimonious parent-teacher meeting that had her in tears and threatening to quit teaching. We soothed her with kind words and leftover goose and soon she was smiling. Ann told a long, convoluted (possibly invented) Irish folk tale about Archangel Michael in disguise defending a young man against the angry ghost of his wicked mother. She’s a good story teller seeking to become a good short-story writer.

Today I am going to a local mystery bookstore to sign a stack of copies of Unraveled Sleeve, which is set at the Naniboujou Lodge up on the north shore of Minnesota. The lodge carries my books in its gift shop, an unexpected and very welcome effect of my setting the book there. They buy their copies from the bookstore, which offers them a discount for quantity purchases. Everyone wins in this instance!

Last week I went to play golf at my usual par-three, nine-hole course and found the place clogged with high-schoolers. Someone said I was probably ready for the big time, and that I should try playing the back nine of the regular course. Big mistake! For one thing, I set off unable to see in the distance the hole I was aiming for and with my weak drives it took me a very long time to get to the green. For another, I got lost. I didn’t think it possible, and I was very embarrassed about it, but I couldn’t find the tee for the twelfth hole. So I decided to quit and discovered golf courses aren’t meant for people just to walk on. Finally a man in a cart came by and gave me a ride back to the clubhouse where, on confessing my sad tale, they gave me a rain check for my beloved par-three. I’m going to try to get there today

Random Thoughts

The golf game last Thursday was a disaster, I was off my game nearly the whole round. The ninth hole was my best, it was like I finally woke up. On the other hand I played yesterday and actually made par on the fourth hole – I couldn’t believe it. My first par. On the green in two and so close to the hole it just went straight in when I tapped it. Of course on an earlier hole I shot a twelve – seven strokes to get the ball in the cup. I don’t know why that happens. It’s one example of why I love golf and another of why I hate this maddening game - in the same round!

Buttons and Bones continues to trot along. It’s very satisfying when a story just about writes itself, I put my fingers on the keys and things start to happen. It’s almost like what people who don’t write think it’s like for people who do.

Have any of you ever seen pole bending at a horse show? They had a competition of it at our State Fair and it just happened to occur when a friend and I went into the arena to watch the horse judging. Pole bending is a timed event during which a horse and rider run up a row of six poles about twenty feet apart, weaving in and out as they go. They make an impossibly sharp turn at the far end and weave their way back down again. The competition we saw was for female riders fourteen and under – I think one rider was only six years old and I know another was only eight. One child rode a very tiny pony lickety split and finished third. The poles are set on small, round bases and they tip over very easily – the lightest touch from a horse going by would set a pole wobbling. If it fell over, the rider was eliminated. The fastest times were just over eleven seconds – first and second place riders were thousandths of a second apart – the slowest something over seventeen seconds. I could probably do it in a minute and a half. What was interesting was how many of the horses came into the arena dancing with eagerness to have a go.

Right on schedule, some of our maple trees are starting to show their brilliant fall colors. Autumn is my favorite season, even though I know it means winter is coming hard on its heels. I’m not as eager to embrace it as I’ve been other years, because we didn’t have a roasting-hot summer, but a rather cool one.
Attendance at our State Fair set records on several days because the weather was so pleasant. Normally sticky-hot, there were early mornings when a jacket was actually welcome.

My eyes are just about healed. The right eye is about as good as it can get, the left is still lagging, but much improved. I am so relieved and grateful!
　

POLITICS AND POKER

Politics and poker,
Politics and poker,
Make the average guy
A heavy smoker . . .

If politics seems more
Predictable
That’s because
Usually
You can stack
The deck!
- "Politics and Poker"
from the musical "Fiorello"

In these fraught times, when political arguments seem to take up all the air in any given room, how does the mystery author, one writing non-political novels, create believable characters who don’t favor one political party or opinion over another?

One way, of course, is to go ahead and give your characters political opinions. Let ’em duke it out on the page. It can be fun, and exciting – and when the book is published a year or more down the line, hopelessly dated. It’s even worse five, fifteen, twenty-five years from now when someone discovers you as an author and has to struggle through discussions on matters long settled or even forgotten.

In my own regard, with my own books, I ask myself, What Would Agatha Do?

Agatha Christie’s books appeared regularly for six decades. Yet it is rare to find even her earliest books referring to the political situation her characters lived in. Perhaps this is why they remain readable all these years later; they don’t jar by insisting you must know something about the Depression or World War II or the Cold War in order to understand them. Her characters are far too wrapped up in their own problems to comment on the politics of the time.

Go, I say to myself, and do likewise.

I played a solo game of golf last week on my usual par-three, nine-hole course and to my amazement, scored a four on one hole. That’s the best I’ve done to date. I scored a couple of sixes on two other holes and (sadly) much, much higher on the other holes. But a four – that’s a mere bogie, a perfectly respectable score for a beginner!

And then on Monday four of us went on a picnic and played croquet on a professional-size course and I finished dead last. Ah, well.

CLUTTER!

I was afraid I’d find out I golf as poorly with my new clubs as I did with my old ones, that it isn’t my awful old clubs, it’s me. Reality: My game is improved. I’m still not good at it, but I hit farther, and straighter, with my new clubs. It’s also nice to have a new bag with bright, shining clubs that all match in it. I especially like my driver. The head of it is almost as big as my face, but the club is very lightweight. I’m going to have to go to a driving range and try out each club to see how each performs differently. I have three hybrids that take the place of some irons, but the numbers on them are different, seventeen, twenty-two and twenty-five. I’ll take notes so I don’t forget.

I called AmTrak on Monday and connected with a wonderful agent who was not in the least intimidated or irritated with the route a friend and I want to take next year from Saint Paul to Seattle to Sacramento to Salt Lake City, with stops along the way to do book signings. She figured out the fare both with a rail pass and "point to point" – every place we want to get off calls for a separate ticket when we get back on for the next stop – and it’s hundreds of dollars cheaper point to point. That surprised me. But we’re booked, so I guess it’s really going to happen. Look for us in your town, if you’re on our route, in June of 2010. Scheduled stops are: Fargo, Wolf Point, Cut Bank, East Glacier Park, Spokane, Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, Reno, and Salt Lake City. Whew!

We moved into our current residence in June of 2007, from a four-level townhouse to an apartment. I moved from an office made from a nice-size bedroom to a windowless den more than a third smaller in size. So it wasn’t just because I didn’t want to move everything stored in my office to our new place, I couldn’t bring it along. Once I realized that, it was amazing what I decided I could do without. It’s also amazingly liberating to throw things away; it’s like putting down a heavy load you’ve been carrying for a long while. You add to it a little bit at a time so you don’t notice how huge it’s gotten. Then you start to clear things out, toss this and that and it’s almost like an avalanche. "If I don’t have to keep this, how can I possibly think I need to keep that?" Whoo-hoo!

What's interesting is that, two years later, I don't hear myself saying, "I wish I hadn't thrown that out" about anything!

I do wish I were more the sort of person who is very organized. I’m married to that sort of person, and it’s the biggest thing I’m envious of. People visiting us for the first time have no problem telling which office belongs to whom. One has everything put away in neat folders properly labeled or stacked on shelves in an orderly fashion. The other has stacks of paper not filed (every so often I’ll get angry at myself and will catch up on my filing, but in less than a week, there’s another stack built up), shelves cluttered haphazardly, and bags of partly-finished projects (at least they’re in bags, not left out to collect dust) piled all over the place. I like to think my office looks friendly and lived in; my husband would go mad trying to work in such disorder.

Maybe that’s what it is. I can live in more disorder than some people; less than others. I have at least two friends who can live with more disorder than I can stand, and many friends who absolutely must have a lot more order than I need. It’s probably something like, "the time it takes to complete a given task expands to fill the time allotted to it." The clutter piles up to every person’s ability to stand it. I used to think that if I had more room, so there was a place to put everything, I’d be more orderly. But now I think I’m actually a little neater when the space I’m given is severely limited.

I also like the notion already expressed in these pages that every so often we should pretend we’re going to move and go through our collections with that in mind.

IT SLICES, IT DICES

And now for something a little different: On my web site, Monica-Ferris.com, there is a new short story, "It Slices, It Dices." Unpublished anywhere else, it was written as an entry in an anthology of Minnesota State Fair mysteries. Unfortunately, the anthology was never published and the story came back to me. I’ve tweaked it a little, tried selling it to a magazine without success, and so am just offering it for free to anyone who cares to wander by and look for it. It’s not a Betsy Devonshire mystery, the sleuth is a woman police investigator. It’s a "stand alone," not part of a series.

I love our state fair, it’s huge, the second-largest in the nation. I go every year, heading straight to the animal barns. I love the horses, the cows, and especially the chickens. There are some beautiful chickens bred in Minnesota, from the immense Plymouth rocks, to the sleek and colorful banties. One of my favorites is the Polish, who look as if they took a lit firecracker into their mouths where it went off, making the feathers on top of their head stand up and out. Then I walk the midway, though I don’t go on the rides anymore or play the games. I remember when I was in my teens and lusted after one of those huge stuffed animals, but now I think, "Where would I put it?" and worse, "But then I’d have to carry it around the rest of the day!" Still, it’s a nostalgic thing to walk down the midway and stare in awe at that one ride which flings people high in the air on bungie cords. Not for a million dollars, thank you. Then on to the arts and crafts building, to look at the quilts and sweaters and needlework and wood carvings and miniatures. Thence to the hucksters inside the grandstand. Golly, the things offered for sale: knives and popcorn and machines that massage your feet and blown glass and aluminum siding and electric organs and nut fudge and liquids that clean jewelry, and a thousand other things. Our state fair is famous for food, especially food on a stick. Everything from deep-fried fruit on a stick to spaghetti and meatballs on a stick (I’m not kidding, they did it by surrounding the spaghetti with a meatball). The most fattening thing I’ve ever seen at our fair – and they specialize in fat – was a deep-fried Snickers bar. You could raise your cholesterol ten points just walking by the stand selling those things.

It’s August and the fair starts the 27th. I’m already making plans to go.

We are lucky enough to have a home-visit veterinarian. He’s our second one, our first one died suddenly, to our sorrow. She was nice and our cats loved her – they didn’t really know they were getting annual physicals from her, they just thought she was a kind visitor who sometimes played a little rough. I mean, squeezing their tummies a little hard, poking an implement into their ears, and giving them this teeny little prick above the shoulder – but all the while speaking kindly and doing a lot of stroking. Panzi was a little suspicious, but she’s a naturally suspicious cat. Stinker, on the other hand, never caught on. We still have Panzi, but Stinker has gone the way of all flesh, and we now have Snaps. And Snaps, our new vet has discovered, has a little problem: a heart murmur, a malfunctioning mitral valve. Nothing serious right now, just a two on a scale from one to six, but something to look at again on his next visit. Meanwhile it seems as if Snaps is determined to show us there’s nothing to worry about, leaping and running all over the place. Yesterday morning he jumped from atop our chest of drawers onto the top of our bed. Our bed is so high I have to take a flying leap to get into it, then it has a raised bookshelf at the head with lights inset in it, that brings it up near our ceiling ten feet away. Snaps announced his accomplishment by crying out loudly to wake us – it was quarter to six on a morning I am usually able to sleep in. I would have shouted back at him, but to what end? I was already awake and so was my husband. Even Panzi was up.

I finally gave up on my old, cheap golf clubs and found a new set on an e-Bay auction. I was out-bid and disgusted about it but the company offering the clubs contacted me and offered me the set for my bid. I accepted the offer. I hope I like them, but there’s a money back guarantee if I don’t, so I feel all right about buying them. They should be here by the end of this week. Meanwhile, I will play my last game with my old clubs later this morning.

Favorite Tool

I was a little bit nervous when I saw the assignment to write about my favorite tool as this week’s theme. What would a stitcher’s favorite tool be, if not a needle or floss? Then I read the first two blog entries and laughed out loud.

So all right, my favorite tool is a size 24 tapestry needle. Unless it’s a size 26. But on reflection, my second favorite isn’t floss, or not exactly. It’s a wooden cabinet with three shallow drawers that holds cardboard "bobbins" of DMC floss sorted by number. I don’t update it daily or even weekly. I dump new skeins of floss into the section covered by a slanted cover, then now and again get a "let’s get organized" jones going and will sit down and wind bobbins for most of a morning or afternoon. Before I started using this cabinet, my floss was just in a box and I didn’t know what I had or didn’t have and so would buy new floss for every new project. Now floss isn’t expensive, but after awhile even I noticed I had six skeins of partly used up DMC 434. Now at least I can check to see if I need to buy a certain color or if I already have it.

Work on the crewel piece of sheep in a meadow is moving along. When I get frustrated or overwhelmed by working on what I hope will interest a producer into making an offer for the rights to the Betsy Devonshire mysteries or on Buttons and Bones, I can sit down with the sheep. I’m usng some exotic floss – it’s a mix of oranges with lots of slubs – to make an autumn colored tree and so far I think it’s working. I’ll know when I get a little more of it finished. Then all I’ll have left are the touchups – there are always little places left uncovered with stitches, and maybe even a place that needs to be "frogged" (rip it, rip it) and done in another color or stitch.

For the producer, I am supposed to come up with a bio sheet on Betsy and then six synopses of episodes for him to read. I’ve got five and a bare start on the last one. Deadline: August 1. I think I’m going to make it. Then I’ll have to work like a son of a gun on Buttons.

I have been working on Buttons and Bones, just not as hard as with the other project. The research I did up in Cass County is proving very valuable.

I thought my eyes were improving but they aren’t. Last time I saw my eye doctor, he said there were glasses that would correct the double vision, but he wanted me to wait another month. That was only a week ago. What I don’t understand is why squinching up my eyes helps.

No golf in a week; every time I’ve had the time, it’s rained. Like yesterday, for example.

I got my information packet from Bouchercon (the biggest of the mysery conventions, held in October) on Tuesday. They are asking everyone who is coming to read the same book: Rex Stout’s Some Buried Caesar, and actually include a copy of it with the packet. I haven’t read Rex Stout in many years, though I was a big fan back in the day. I had never read this entry, so I’m really looking forward to this. They promise some of the programming will revolve around the book. Clever of them!

The Writing Life

I’ve been listening to "Fibber McGee and Molly" radio programs on CDs. One of my characters in the Betsy Devonshire mysteries is fond of old-time radio and sometimes quotes from these old shows, so I get to listen to them as research. Life is sweet when you can combine your work with something you’d like to do anyway. Catch phrases from "Fibber McGee and Molly" include, "Heavenly days!" and, "I’ve got to clean out that closet one of these days." I’ve been listening while I work on a piece of crewel I started a long time ago and abandoned. It’s a pretty piece, of sheep standing in a pasture under an autumn-leafed tree with various colors of fields in the background. If I ever get it finished I’ll post it on my web site.

Today I’m going to try out a recipe that’s new to me as a treat for my writers group – it’s my turn to host the meeting. I had them at the bed and breakfast up in Longville, where I was doing some research for the next novel. They’re called Swiss Butterhorns and they’re shaped something like miniature crescent rolls, except they’re crisp, and filled with chopped pecans, sugar and cinnamon. My, they are delicious! If this were a cookery blog instead of Killer Hobbies, and if they came out as delicious as the ones we had up north, I’d type out the recipe.

I always thought an aid to getting organized was to have lots of places to put things, but now in our new apartment, I’m finding a little room with a tiny desk works even better. I have to keep putting things away to make room for the mess I need around me when I’m writing. You know, a dictionary, a telephone, my notes on interviews, maps and photographs, a cat toy or two, a stitching catalog, a few samples of floss and/or fabric, a box of Kleenex, a pen and pencil holder (mine’s actually one of those rubberoid things used to keep pop cans cold and is shaped like the head of a large-mouth bass), and the miniature file cabinet that holds names and phone numbers of people I need to get in touch with when I have a question. Oh, and my book of baby names, useful for naming characters. So you see, there’s not much room for extraneous items on my little desk. Though I manage to let things get stacked up somehow.

I played a round of par-three nine-hole golf yesterday morning and hit a couple of shots off the tee that were almost respectable, plus a pitch onto the green from the rough that landed inches from the hole. It’s enough to keep me thinking I may be able to play this game well enough to report a score without shame or apology some day.

Work on Buttons and Bones marches slowly – I keep finding things out that mean I have to go back and do re-write. Oh, well, such is the life of an author, too – it’s not all beer and skittles.

BASKETWEAVE KNITTING

Excuse me for barging in early, but I want to post two pictures and I'm not sure I can do it without help -- and my web mistress is NOT an early riser.

Another thing I ran into at the Quilt Show in Duluth two weekends ago was a yarn booth. I don’t quilt, so you’d think I’d be safe from buying things at a quilt show, wouldn’t you? But noooooo. The woman at the booth was knitting a scarf in this fascinating pattern, and showed me how it was done. It didn’t seem terribly difficult, and it was a very interesting pattern. So I bought a skein of yarn, as that was the only way to acquire the instructions for knitting it. She calls the pattern Basketweave and it took me several tries with scrap yarn to acquire the skill. I’m still not terrific at it -- you can see a couple of errors in the pattern -- but I’ve started the scarf on the yarn I bought which is a fabulous blend of silk, wool and mohair, and a gorgeous color. One thing I didn’t realize until I was well into it is that the backside is a completely different pattern. The pictures here show the front and the back – amazingly different.

We have a bed that is very high off the floor – I literally have to take a flying leap to get up into bed at night. There are drawers in the bottom of it, so you can’t get underneath. I knew I’d had at least one pair of reading glasses fall between the head of the mattress and the headboard onto the floor, so when a paperback I’d been reading went missing, I took a flashlight and peered into the narrow space and sure enough, there it was, out of reach. I pushed the mattress out of the way and squeezed my forearm down between the box spring and headboard and still couldn’t reach the floor. I resorted to a pair of kitchen tongs and came up with the book and three (!) pairs of reading glasses. I didn’t realize that’s where they’d all gotten to. On the other hand, it makes me feel competent to have figured out how to get them back without dismantling the bed.

We’re going up to Cass County this coming Sunday, will be there till Wednesday evening. Look for a report next Wednesday on loons, a German POW camp, the source of the Mississippi River, and whatever else I can learn in aid of Buttons and Bones, the book I’m currently writing.

I took a one-hour lesson in driving, as that is my weakest part of my golf game. I think I came away more confused than helped, but we’ll see next time I play. Meanwhile, I’m going to go hit a bucket or two of balls to see if any of it has matured in my head since the lesson. Whoever thought hitting a ball with a stick could be so complicated?

Speaking of slow learning, I think I’m slowly starting to get the hang of writing a synopsis for film as opposed to a book. Think visually, that’s the ticket. But oh, how much easier is that said than done!

Speaking of visually, I think my eyes have at last started to improve.

A friend and I are planning a long train trip around this time next year and she came over this past weekend and we got out the schedules and maps and timetables and started plotting the stops we hope to make along the way: Fargo, Wolf Point, Cut Bank, East Glacier Park, Spokane, Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, Reno, and Salt Lake City. We figure we’ll be on the rails something over two weeks. If any of you are from one of these places, I hope you’ll come and see us wherever we're appearing, a library, a bookstore, or a needlework shop!

GOLF AND STITCHING

I had my last golf lesson last evening. I should say, it was the last lesson in a set of five I signed up for at my local public golf course. The class got to play on an actual par-three, nine-hole course, though we only played two holes. Our instructor, Matt, is a chipper pro, very helpful and friendly and adamantly, almost obstinately optimistic. No matter how poorly a ball was hit, he’d find something to praise – the swing, the stance, the effort.

I have been going to the driving range and hitting bucket after bucket of balls to almost no good effect. If I had been making the same mistake over and over, I could have done something to correct it. But I topped some balls, struck the ground on others, sliced some and hooked other balls I hit. Once in a great while, I’d hit a good one, but I could no more see what I was doing right than what I was doing wrong.

Then this past Saturday I went over and there was an older man berating a much younger one – his son, perhaps – about his stance. "Bend your knees!" he shouted at him. "Arms straight, lock those elbows!" The hapless young man couldn’t hit the balls any better than I could, and at last the man turned away and began hitting beautiful drive after beautiful drive by himself. Grateful the tirade was over, I took my place on the line and bent my knees, and locked my elbows and by God hit a beauty. And then another, and another. They didn’t go far, only about sixty or seventy yards, but that was twenty yards farther than I’d ever hit a ball. And I could do it almost every time. It was wonderful. I will be forever grateful to that angry man.

And glad Matt didn’t use that method on us, it would have destroyed my pleasure in the game aborning.

My first drive off the tee on the actual course wasn’t too awful, it went straight out for about sixty yards. That was the only good stroke I made, but at least I wasn’t the worst player in the class. My other strokes were merely bad, not disgraceful. One unfortunate classmate seemed to have forgotten everything she’d learned, I think because we each had to take a stroke while everyone else stood and watched.

Now I want to play some more. I want to play all nine holes of the par three. All the way home I thought about the bad strokes and what I did wrong and how I would correct that my next time out. My current set of clubs was purchased for five dollars at a garage sale and included the bag and cart. My woods are made of real wood – they are beautiful, but I need a good driver, one of those titanium things. I don’t know if I’m ready for a better set of clubs; I think I’ll play this summer with these old ones. But if in the autumn I’m still playing, I think I’ll see about getting a nice second-hand set.

Here’s another hint for beginning stitchers. How may times have you been told not to tie a knot at the end of your floss, but to run it under some other stitches to fasten it down? That’s all very well when there are some other stitches to run it under, but what to do when you’re starting out? I tie a knot, BUT then I go down through on the right side of my fabric about eight stitches down from the starting place. Come up from the wrong side at the starting place, and begin stitching. Five or six rows down, snip the floss on the wrong side near the knot and discard the knotted end. Your floss is fastened down by the other stitches. Isn’t that cute?

Yesterday was my thirtieth wedding anniversary. A few more and I’ll have been married half my life. Question: Would I do it again? Answer: Yes.

I’ve been working on three things, not counting my golf swing: The galley proofs of Blackwork, Chapter Six of Buttons and Bones, and the short synopsis of what might be the pilot of the Betsy Devonshire mystery television series. I think of the three the last is the one with two chances: fat and slim, so I’m working hard on not getting too worked up over it. The other two are dead serious. I really like Blackwork, and think it might be one of the best, if not the best, of the series so far, so I want it to be really clean and sharp. And it’s important to get things right in the early stages of a novel, so I’m trying to focus in on Buttons and Bones. So why, when I go to bed at night, do I find myself wondering the next steps would be if I actually got an offer for the television rights?

Lots of Lessons

Nothing is as easy as it looks – isn’t that one of Murphy’s Laws? I found that out yesterday when I finally got to hang my Topse Turvy tomato planter. First of all, the roof on our balcony is about nine feet high, so we had to get the super of our building to come up and screw in the big ol’ hook to hang the planter from. Second, hanging it from that hook would leave it too high to fill, water and tend, so I bought a pulley and some heavy nylon line. Third, I forgot how heavy a cylinder sixteen inches high and nine inches in diameter would be once full of wet dirt. While I let it down in order to put the tomato plant in upside down and fill it with dirt and water it, it was then too heavy for me to hoist it – the nylon cut cruelly into my hands when I tried. So I had to get Ellen to lift it while I shortened the line and tied it off. Soon it was hanging above the railing, dribbling dirty water and expensive tomato fertilizer out the bottom. This thing had better grow more tomatoes than I have ever gotten from a single plant or I am going to be very disappointed.

When doing counted cross stitch it is considered good form to have all your Xs crossed the same way. That is, if your first X has the first stitch going left to right and the cross stitch right to left, then every X on the cloth must follow suit. I have learned that way to be sure you follow this rule is to do a row of half crosses (/ / / / /), then come back the other way, finishing the Xs. The reason behind this is that the piece looks nicer done like this, every X catches the light the same way.

Most stitchers I know hate backstitching. (For non-stitchers, this is an outline stitch done to surround a cluster of cross stitches; for example, the cute puppy’s eyes or his ears.) I don’t mind it – much – but maybe that’s because I do it before I do the Xs, and I do it as a double running stitch. I learned about the double running stitch when I took a class on Blackwork. It’s very easy to do, just stitch around the area, then come back going down where you went up to make a solid line. Regular stitching looks like this: --------. The double running stitch, after you come back the other way looks like this: ______. If you do your backstitching first, then you just fill in the center as if you’re a kid coloring between the lines. This is not considered good form, but then I was told when learning to stitch that if the pointed end goes through the fabric first, you’re doing it right.

Thinking about this makes me almost brave enough to work on that complex piece of loons reflected in a lake.

In my golf lesson yesterday evening we, at last, got to swing hard at the ball. I found out I’ve been doing it pretty much wrong, and following the instructor’s method hit the ball far more reliably. I’m still not much on distance and I need to spend more time at the driving range to set the new method into my nerves and muscles, but I feel much less of a duffer. Golf isn’t the game I thought it was. Those pros on television make it look so easy and natural but there’s method and discipline to every movement. The search is for consistency, not artistry. "Let the club do the work," says my instructor. Swing the same way every time, but choose a different club for a different situation, depending on how far you need to go or how much "loft" you want on the ball. Interesting.

A Golfing Lesson & Other News

Remember last week when I asked if the needlework store Classy Threads was still in business? I’ve been doing too much needlework. The store sells clothing. I should have known that, I’m old enough to remember when "threads" was beatnik slang for clothing. D’oh!

Eye report: Nothing to report. Vision still blurry, doubled at a distance. My doctor is pleased with the reduction in eye pressure, he told me today that sometimes the tiny cut will heal up completely and the pressure inside the eyeball will climb again. My pressure is nice and low. He says the blurring will heal in time.

I ad my first golf lesson yesterday evening. The local pro says to start with putting, that putting is more than half the game. I’ve been playing miniature golf for years and so thought there was nothing I could learn about putting. Boy, was I wrong! I couldn’t believe how quickly I improved once I lined up my feet, my body, my club and the ball properly with regard to the hole. Now I want to go find a putting green and practice some more – but I won’t have a chance tomorrow, and I have another lesson on Thursday. There’s a miniature golf course out in Edina that is laid out on real grass not that indoor-outdoor carpet of most of them. I’ll have to go out there this summer to see if my game is better there as well as on a putting green. The only thing I was really bad at during my lesson yesterday was "readng" the green. A good player can see the subtle shifts of terrain that cause a ball to drift left or right from the straight line to the hole. Maybe it’s the blurry vision messing me up. Now I have another reason to be impatient to heal.

I have had an extraordinary opportunity handed to me. A friend from church knows a Hollywood producer and in the course of "pitching" some ideas he had for movies and television shows, he talked about my Betsy Devonshire series. And the producer was intrigued enough to ask for something in writing. So between pushes of writing Buttons and Bones I am now also working on synopses of six episodes of a one-hour television show featuring my sleuth. It’s a learn-as-you-go opportunity, as I am not used to writing for the screen and am finding it quite different from writing straight prose. This all may come to nothing, of course; I understand most proposals go nowhere. But it’s exciting none the less? Who do you think should play Betsy? Who would make a great Godwin? How about Jill?

CONTEST, Golf, Singing

About the contest: I’ve already gotten some very nice entries. I can tell it’s going to be hard to decide. I wonder if it would be legal to have a tie-breaker? No, probably not, since I didn’t announce one at the start. But some people can be very convincing in only a few words.
If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, I’m offering a contest, the prize to be about two pounds of quilting fabric, various patterns but all featuring chickens. Realistic, cartoon, artistic, chicks, roosters, hens. Even eggs. And chicken wire. This fabric is left over from a beautiful chicken quilt I had made last year.

So tell me in twenty-five words or less why you think I should award the chicken fabric to you. Go to my web site, Monica-Ferris.com, and contact me via that. I’ll pay postage. Contest ends July 31.

I’m still intrigued by golf. A friend drove all the way from North Dakota to see the Ladies Professional Golf Tournament which took place just a few miles from our apartment. She had two tickets, but the friend who was coming backed out at the last minute, so she asked if I would like to go. Wow! Now, I’m arthritic, so I couldn’t do what my friend wanted to do, which was follow her favorite around the course. So I found a seat in the bleachers set up at the eighteenth green and watched them come in. One thing surprised me: how badly some of them putted! Okay the green was very fast and they were tired, but still. Anyway, it was a lovely setting, the magnificent Interlachen clubhouse in the background, a large pond guarding the second half of the fairway, tall trees and bright flowers and polite applause. It’s a different world. What I was surprised to learn was that I’m not anxious to be a part of that world. I just want to smack the ball hard enough to get to the green in two or three strokes. I don’t need applause or trophies or the rarified air of the private golf club. It might be a futile dream I do have. I played a par-three course on Saturday and it took me eleven strokes to finish the first hole – nine of them just to get to the green!

Oh, and here’s a golf hint for free: If you’re writing a murder mystery and want the weapon to be a golf club, don’t pick a driver. They look formidable, with that huge knob on the end, but they’re not all that heavy. Instead, choose a nine iron. They’re big compared to the other irons, and they’re heavy. Somebody, trying to help me out, went to a garage sale and bought me a whole set of golf clubs, and the bag. Paid five dollars. They are exactly what I need at this stage of my game. The clubs are elderly but good and not damaged. I think the seller went around collecting old clubs, because there were three seven irons, two five irons and two putters in that bag, along with the other clubs. Including that impressive nine iron.

Sunday evening our church put on a little recital. The three Eschweiler children, Ted, Phillip and Emma sang. They are twenty, seventeen, and fifteen years old. They sang some opera, some Broadway songs, and an arrangement of a hymn made just for them. They are so bright, competent, intelligent and level-headed (well, Phillip has a little bit of artistic temperament, but he also has the best voice), that it was another lesson in "not to worry." You know what I mean. My generation (how predictably like previous generations!) is sure the rising generation is going to rack and ruin and will tear down the country, if not the world, about their ears. But now and again I’ll meet young people like the Eschweilers and I know that isn’t true.

Golf?!? Pity Party

I think I’m taking up golf. I only think so because I’ve gone golfing exactly one time, and for only nine holes – and my partner and the other two gentlemen we were golfing with allowed me to pick up my ball and throw it on occasion, because I was holding up the game. Or when we were crossing a creek. I was pretty good at putting, because I’ve played miniature golf for years. But going up the fairway? Not so much.
So twice since then I’ve gone to a driving range and hit a bucket of balls. My range rarely exceeds fifty yards, and is often much less than that. But you know something? I’m going to go again.
But there’s something about the game. I’ve always loved to watch it on television, though I’ve heard that many sports fans think it’s more exciting to watch paint dry. One thing pro golf tours on television don’t seem to show: there are some hills on those courses! I’m not in great physical shape and some of the hills on the course we played were pretty steep! And those pros make it look so easy. They take a swing and the ball just flies. Me? I swing and miss. Or swing and it dribbles a few yards.
My favorite Tiger Woods story, one I saw for myself: He was playing on a rainy day and the green he was coming up to had a distinct tilt toward the fairway. He hit his ball too hard and it went over the green and down a grass-covered, cliff-like slope that was about eight feet high, landing in a shallow puddle in tall grass. The two commentators watched as he came around behind and studied his lay. They noted that the hole on the green was near the top, which would make it very hard to land near from behind. They discussed first, whether Tiger could get up on top in one stroke, and then how far down the green the ball would roll. And then how many spectators, who were crowding around, would get splashed when Tiger swung. The answer was: a lot! Grass and mud and water flew in all directions as Tiger took a mighty swing. But the ball rose beautifully to the top of the little cliff, landed just barely on the green – and stopped. I don’t think it was more than fourteen inches from the hole. There was an incredulous silence, then one of the commentators said, "I think some of Tiger’s shots are animated."
I remember when I was struggling to get published, many years ago, and managed to get into a writers’ group. One member was regularly published. At one meeting she told of some problems she was having with her editor about her covers, about her deadlines, about some difficulty over the plot of her latest book. I sat there trying hard to keep a sympathetic look on my face, but all the while I was eaten with envy. Oh, how I wished I had her problems!
Well, be careful what you wish for . . .! My editor didn’t like the direction Thai Die was taking and made me do a massive re-write. I groaned and grumbled and complained, but I did it. Now, both she and my editor ganged up on me about the synopsis of Blackwork I submitted. We actually held a three-way conference call over it. I won a point or two, but I’ve been groaning and grumbling and complaining to anyone who’ll listen about the points they won. I’d be more specific about their complaints but I don’t want to let everyone know that I wasn’t being very bright about the plot points – and they were right to make me change some things. It helps when I remember we all three want the same things: a good story that sells lots of books. So boo-hoo, poor me – okay, pity party’s over.