A New Contest

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

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

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

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

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

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

Television Interview, Thanksgiving

Well, that was interesting. Two men came over to our apartment with two good-size cases. In one was a television camera, in the other was a big rectangular light. I wore a lavender blouse, my new purple shawl, and my new lavender straw hat – I know, I know, it’s after Labor Day and straw is over. But I just love that hat, so I wore it anyway.

They set up in our living room, in front of our floor-to-ceiling shelves of books, and for forty-five minutes I was thrown some very nice “softball” questions about my writing. Did I ever use real people in my books? Did I like my covers? Who is my favorite character? It was very pleasurable.

Then we did a segment on my hats. I tried on several hats and they took brief videos of them. I put some hats on the dining room table and they panned across them. That was fun.

Then came the bad news: All this is going to be severely cut into a five-minute presentation! I’m looking forward with some trepidation to the result.

But then came the good news: This is going to be put up on Face Book. Yay! I can’t wait.

We’re going to do something this Thanksgiving I’ve never done in my life: eat out. Oh, okay, while I was in the Navy I ate in the mess hall. But that is not the same thing. At all. We’re going to brunch at my sister-in-law’s house which will probably last until noon or close to it, then at five we’re going to a nice restaurant for a turkey dinner. It felt really strange when I went grocery shopping yesterday and walked past the bins of frozen turkeys and the canned-good shelves of sweet potatoes and kidney beans (I make a killer kidney bean salad just twice a year, at Easter and Thanksgiving) and didn’t even take a good look. But a friend at water aerobics said I was going to love dining out. She’s been doing it for years and wouldn’t have it any other way. So I wonder if this isn’t the start of a new tradition.

I remember many years ago I was working a stressful job and wasn’t looking forward to the annual gathering of my family for Thanksgiving – my five siblings had young, noisy children and were often rubbing up against one another in unhappy ways. So I did a very selfish thing: I didn’t go. I stayed in my small, quiet apartment. I cooked half a turkey breast, made a salad, and watched “Miracle on 34th Street” on commercial-free public television, just me and the cat. It was heaven, a gentle, refreshing break I needed badly.

What’s your Thanksgiving tradition? What’s your favorite Thanksgiving dish? What’s your favorite Thanksgiving memory?

ADVENTURES AT MALICE

The first adventure was simply getting there. I got on the Internet a couple of weeks in advance and searched for cheap airline tickets. Success! I thought. But I was wrong. Oh, not in the price, but the landing field. The lowest price was coming into Dulles. Because it was the older name (the other airport is Reagan), I thought it was the one closer in. I was so wrong! The wonderful Washington Metro doesn’t go as far out as Dulles. My hotel didn’t offer a shuttle. My choices were to take a city bus to the nearest Metro line, then change at least once to get to Crystal City; or, take a cab. I was tired and burdened with a huge purse, a big, heavy suitcase, and a hatbox. And my feet already hurt – I had to wear my biggest hat and so had to wear an appropriate dressy outfit so I didn’t look like a total dork. The cab fare was over fifty-five dollars, not including tip. I will say, however, the cab was incredibly comfortable. Also, on the flight from Minneapolis, a man with a very loud voice sat behind me and confided many details of his personal life and career to his seatmate (poor woman). My own seatmate grumbled about it the whole trip. Not a fun journey, so when I decided to take a cab, I asked the driver to be quiet, and he was, the entire trip. I sank into new leather seats, cracked a window to the refreshing spring air, and recovered a lot of lost equilibrium on the long, expensive, silent journey to the Marriott Hotel.

The Marriott is a fine hotel, and I had a room all to myself. As I was suffering from a mild medical problem, it was sweet to be able to retreat to my room now and again and not bother or be bothered by anyone.

I didn’t get a lot from the panels. I’ve been going to these events for a large number of years, and there isn’t a whole lot I haven’t already heard. But one panel, "Get a Clue," quoted from a lengthy oath that a writers group found back in the twenties in England made its members take. The moderator asked the panelists if they would be willing to swear to two parts of the oath, copies of which were handed out to the audience. After a bit of hemming and hawing, every member did. The two parts: "Do you promise that your Detectives shall ell and truly detect the Crimes presented to the, using those with which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance upon nor making use of Devine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, or Act of God?" and "Do you solemnly swear never to concdeal a Vital Clue from the Reader?" I thought about that oath myself and decided that yes, I would take it, even though I agreed with one panelist that Feminine Intuition is just a short cut the mind will take from Point A to Point C – there is a Point B in there, but it slides by so fast it’s unnoticed.

I spent more time than I should have in the Dealer’s Room, and spent more money, too. One thing I found was a patterned velvet scarf – or rather, the dealer found it. I brought down the jacket to the teal-velvet dress I was wearing to the banquet and asked if she had a thin scarf I could tie around my head that matched the jacket in color. Well, no, all her scarves were big squares. Fringed squares. She had to dig in a box under a table to find one the right color and then spend five minutes tying it up into a turban with a tail down the back and fringe in front of my ears, pinning it together right on my head. I looked in a mirror and thought, "My God, I look like a character from a silent film, the one who insists on telling people at a party their fortunes." But two passers-by said I looked wonderful so I got out my credit card, swallowed hard, and said I’ll take it. As it turned out, people at the banquet were either universally kind, or the turban was a hit. Or both.

The banquet was terrific. I have sat through a lot of awards banquets, and find them too often a bit tedious. But a very large portable movie screen was set up near the stage and an overhead projector went close by it. Someone rigged up transparencies to announce the nominees, first announcing them in a long sentence that incorporated the names of the books. This is not the actual sentence – I didn’t write them down – but the nominees for the Young Adult Agatha (Into the Dark, A Thief in the Theater, The Crossroads, and The Great Circus Train Robbery) were introduced with a sentence like this: A Thief in the Theater ran Into the Dark but was caught at The Crossroads before he could pull off The Great Circus Train Robbery. Nominees were individually named and the transparency for each featured a photograph of the author, the cover of the book, and a picture of some theme from the book or story. The person running the machine had problems with fingerprints on the glass and her fingers could be seen at intervals rubbing them out – but not before giving Anne Perry an interesting Pancho Villa mustache! The speeches were heartfelt, amusing, and brief. All in all, a terrific event.

Getting on board the plane going home, the cheery stewardess said, "I’m sorry you’ll have to take that hat off – " She grinned. "And give it to me!" We laughed and hugged, and we talked off an on about hats the whole trip. She is a church-going woman and says the rule is, you can’t wear the same hat twice for three years. I don’t have enough hats to follow that rule. Yet.

Magna cum Murder

Magna cum Murder was terrific for me this year. It was smaller than usual, so everyone got to meet everyone, which was great.

I had three great things happen there. First, Mattie Coleman had set up a booth selling her hats and clothes. For the first time in my life I had bought a pair of shoes with nothing to wear at home that matched. They are a brown suede with a reddish tinge, with a thin gold thread outlining a five-petaled flower on the toe. They are beautiful and, for a wonder (I have arthritic feet), comfortable to wear. And, I have a cloche hat in an odd beige trimmed in brown that was a gift that, again, nothing I own matched. So I brought them both to Magna, hoping Mattie could work her magic. And she did. She had a brown knit suit that sets off the shoes beautifully. And the trim on the hat matches, too – but for an oddity, the shoes hate the hat and it’s mutual. I have brown leather shoes to go with suit and cloche but I needed a hat to wear with the suit and suede shoes. And, again, Mattie came through. She had to go back to her shop, but she found this amazing hat, one of those that change color depending on the light and angle from brown to red to gold. Its shape is as of a garrison cap, and the top of it is covered with a tight bunch of ruffles in the same fabric as the rest of the hat. The edges of the ruffles glow red and gold, much like paper that has been burning in a fireplace. You can wear it about six different ways, and I’m sure I will. Anyway, the brown of it matches the shoes.

Second, they had a round table discussion up and running and I got to take part. It was unusual in that at any time there were three authors at the table, but every fifteen minutes one would leave and someone took his or her place. Each author stayed forty-five minutes, which meant that every forty-five minutes there was a new set of authors talking. There was no subject set, each one brought something (unless the discussion was already hot on a topic, which it usually was, though it shifted all the time). It was great! There was an audience whose members were also always shifting, and they could make comments or ask questions, too. I loved it, and hope to do it again in two years – no Magna next year, as it coincides in time and place with Bouchercon. Magna is in Muncie, just up the road from Indianapolis, the site of next year’s Bouchercon.

Third, I was asked to moderate a panel called You Are What You Write? First, I drew a super set of panelists: Louise Penny, Austin Comacho, Marion Moore Hill, and Sarah Wisseman. I decided on a philosophical, summing-up approach, as it was the last panel of the convention. I asked some obvious questions, such as How is the character in your books who is most like you also least like you? I asked, What problems did you have inventing a character you disliked or who is not at all like you? And the last question was the best, it got some amazing replies: "In Cruelest Month, Louise Penny (she was Guest of Honor at the con) suggests that the little town of Three Pines (in which her stories are set) is a happy place because the villagers throw away bad feelings. But a psychic visiting the town says that feelings have power and need to go to a specific place. There is a house on the edge of town that people stay away from because they think it is haunted or inhabited by evil spirits, but it’s really the ugly thoughts and feelings discarded by the villagers. We, as authors, create bad people and bad feelings. Does putting them onto paper discard them from our minds – or nurture them?" Louise thought that was the best question asked her at the entire convention. Sarah said she feels she takes wicked ideas out of her head and puts them into a book as into a box and can close the cover on them. Austin said he thinks of them as weeds and explores the possibility of identifying and uprooting a bad weed so it doesn’t become a whole field of them. Marion warned against becoming so friendly with wickedness that we "invite it to come in and sit down." What a great panel that was!

Well, I tried to post a picture of me in the hat, but somewhere along the line I made an error. I'll get it yet! (Just not this time.)

WHERE DID YOU GET THAT HAT?

The other day someone told me in an e-mail that she liked the fancy white hat I’m wearing in the photograph at the top of this blog. She asked me where I got it so I told her the whole story. And now, I would like to tell you.

I found the hat in a little shop in Muncie, Indiana. The shop is called Town Boutique, and is owned by a tiny black woman named Mattie Coleman. She caters mostly to the black women of Muncie who like to dress up for church. Perhaps you have read the wonderful book, "Crowns"? Or seen the play made from it? The hats are supposed to be a foretaste of their heavenly crowns and so are as elaborate and beautiful as the women can afford. The hat I am wearing in that photograph is beautiful and elaborate – but tame by comparison with some of the hats in Miss Mattie’s shop. (I call her Miss Mattie, she calls me Miss Mary.) It was Miss Mattie who persuaded me to try on an enormous purple platter of a hat with a curved rhinestone triangle draped over the crown, and the brim edged with purple marabou feathers. When I saw that incredible object sitting on my lowly head, I realized I didn't have the nerve to wear it in public. I said I didn’t have anything to wear with it, which was true. I turned to hand it back to her and there she was, holding a matching purple suit by the hanger. What could I do? But it took me almost an hour of standing in my hotel room, one hand on the doorknob, to summon the nerve to walk out into the mystery convention in that suit and hat. It caused such a sensation that I have never again been afraid to wear one of Miss Mattie's hats. In fact, I’m trying to establish a reputation for wearing fancy hats, hoping to arrive at the day when someone can walk into a bookstore and say, "There’s this author, she writes mysteries. I can’t remember her name, but she wears these hats," making a gesture around her head to show they are large and complicated. And the clerk will reply, "Oh, you must be thinking of Monica Ferris." I may never get there, but the journey has been really fun!

Anyway, I was in Riverside, California, attending a needlework convention, and wearing the white hat. I loved it, the crown sat right atop my head, but the brim was built at a decided angle, and set off with a huge bunch of white net with sparkles caught up in it. Classy, and memorable –On the other hand, I’d had the hat for a couple of years, and so was wearing it less and less. I was walking back to the hotel when this big, dark van pulled suddenly to the curb and a black woman got out and hurried over to me. "Where did you get that hat?" she demanded. She was sooooo disappointed when I told her it was years old and purchased very far from California. She was going to a wedding the next day, and wanted a fancy hat to wear. She’d bought a hat – she took it out of the bag she was carrying. It wasn’t a bad hat, a small red velvet affair with a little rhinestone ornament on one side. I took my hat off and we tried on one another’s hats, using the darkened windows of her van as a mirror. I liked the red hat on me -- but when she put that white hat one, it suddenly roared back to life. In fact, it looked a whole lot better on her than it ever had on me. So I said, "Would you like to trade?" She screamed and threw her arms around me and said the most amazing thing: "Honey, I’ll say a prayer for you every day the rest of my life!" My heart just melted, I haven’t felt that blessed in my whole life – and I’ve had bishops making the Sign of the Cross over me. We hugged again, and she got back in her van and drove away. I hope she keeps her promise.

Now Here's a HAT!

People who know me know I love hats. One of the hardest parts about downsizing for our recent move to a smaller place was selling or giving away some of my many hats. I still have about two dozen. I am going to try to attach to this entry a photograph we took in Mexico City, in the wonderful Museum of Anthropology. It is a reproduction of the feathered headdress of Moctezuma (I understand that’s the new proper spelling; I learned it as Montezuma). He was the ruler of the Aztec empire when the Spanish arrived. The Aztecs thought Cortez, their leader, might be a god. They devised a test, bringing out assorted closed chests and signing that Cortez should pick one to open. Cortez picked the one that had this marvelous feathered concoction in it, the one only a king was permitted to wear, and they knew he must be a god.

If I can't get it to attach, go to my website, Monica-Ferris.com, and hunt it down there -- it's worth the trip!

Anyway, the feathers are iridescent tail feathers from a South American bird, and they seem to glow with an inner light. I can just see myself striding up the aisle of my church on Easter Sunday morning in that hat. Or coming into a gathering to sign my newest book. That would be even more spectacular than the gold-net-covered object I wore last Christmas, the one that looks like a cross between a Christmas-pageant angel and a Brillo pad.

Because I write mysteries, I wonder how Cortez might have known to select that chest. Was it because the Aztecs who carried the chests to him treated that one with special care? Was it because someone told Cortez in advance to pick that particular chest, and if so who? And why? I think the simplest solution is the right one; the people who knew which chest held the feathered headdress treated it like a group of Catholic priests might treat a chest in which lay hidden a consecrated host. Just walk along the row kicking each chest in turn, and listen for the half-stifled intake of breath when you get to That One.