Where Ideas Come From (or Things That Make You Go Hmmm….)

by Alafair Burke

Of all the questions writers get on tour and online, the one many of us hear most is, “Where do you get your ideas?” In truth, the question is raised so frequently that some writers barely suppress an eye roll at its utterance, but I’m always glad when I get this one because I think I actually have a decent answer: Ideas come from everywhere if you only use your imagination. (Hey, I said it was decent, not groundmaking!)

I’ve heard many writers talk about the “What if” process. You read a newspaper article or stumble on a little nugget of a thought and start to think, What if X had happened instead of A? And then what if because of X, Y happened? And then what if the reason Y happened was because of Z? Before you know it, you have a plot that’s quite unrecognizable from its inspiration.

Ideas also come from characters, and, for me at least, characters come from watching the world with empathy. I try not to wonder “What would I do in situation X, Y, or Z?” Instead, I watch people in the world and wonder how they’d react, how they’d speak, and how they became the people they are today.

But not every story, and not every person, sends my imagination running. There are stories, and people, who, in the once great words of C&C Music Factory, “make you go hmmm.“

A couple weeks ago, I stumbled upon a little gem of a news story online about an Orange County woman who drove for months with the body of a dead homeless woman in her car. According to media coverage, a 57-year-old former real estate agent “befriended” the homeless woman at a neighborhood park in December and allowed her to sleep in the car overnight. When the car’s owner found the woman dead, she was too scared to call the police, so simply continued to use the car while the body sat covered in clothes in the passenger seat.

Police broke a window to enter the car after first noticing a foul odor and then observing the dead woman’s exposed (and now mummified) leg beneath the pile of clothing. They found a box of baking soda that the driver had placed inside to reduce the smell, although she told them that she had “gotten used to it.”

Comments posted online about the story tended to focus on the yuck factor.

Or to make jokes about the driver’s desperation to use California carpool lanes. (Warning: Those of you who don’t like the course language or humor probably won’t enjoy this clip from Curb Your Enthusiasm…but the rest of you might.)

But yucks and yuks aside, this is the kind of story that made me go hmmm. News reports indicate that police believe the driver, but that doesn’t mean a crime writer can’t go makin’ stuff up if she wants. So what if the driver were lying? What if she and the other woman weren’t just casual acquaintances from the neighborhood park but co-conspirators? What were they planning? And what went wrong?

But perhaps even more interestingly, let’s assume that the driver is telling the truth as all reports indicate. Why did she offer her car to the other woman for sleep? Might it be related to the fact that she is a “former” real estate agent who “once” lived in Corona del Mar, an affluent Newport Beach neighborhood, but is now experiencing “difficult financial times” and “staying with a friend” while she drives a 1997 Mercury Grand Marquis registered to her sick father?

And why was she so afraid to call the police when she found the body? Did she do something she’s trying to hide, or is there something about her personality or experiences that makes her fear police generally?

And who was the poor dead homeless woman? How did she come to be homeless in a park? And how did the two women become friendly? And how did she die? Did she know it was happening?

I never know where these kinds of ruminations will take me. I published a book earlier this year, 212, that involves women living dangerous double lives in New York City. Many readers thought it was inspired by the so-called Craig’s List Killer case, where the victim was a New York woman who, unbeknownst to her friends and family, was using Craig’s List to book private massage sessions.

But I turned in the manuscript for 212 two weeks before that case occurred. If I had to guess where the idea came from, I’d trace it back to a winter morning more than five years earlier. I had just moved to the city and was staring out my little window in the east village, marveling that my Wichita-raised self was living in great big important Manhattan.

I noticed an attractive younger woman walking on Mercer. She was tall, thin, well-dressed, gorgeous. I wondered what it was like to be her. She probably shopped at Barney’s, I figured. Dated investment bankers. Whizzed past the red velvet ropes outside the hot clubs she frequented long after the likes of me had fallen asleep.

And then she stopped at the corner trash can and looked in all four directions before pulling out a discarded pastry and eating it.

My fictional image of her life suddenly changed. The “character” I had momentarily created in my head was no longer cliche.

So if your friends and family ever find you daydreaming — paying too much attention to people you don’t know, staring into space wondering “What if?” and “What must it be like?” — tell them you are busy writing.

Now time for comments: Why in the world would someone drive her car for months with a dead body in the passenger seat?! (And/or feel free to talk about where your ideas come from!)

For Pet Lovers

By Allison Brennan

Once again, I’m stuck for time. I have copyedits coming on Wednesday, and a short story due a week from Monday–that now I have to get done early because I only have five days for copyedits. When it rains it pours!

So after writing all afternoon (after a football game and a soccer game), I’m brain dead. So when Pari asked us if anyone wanted to write a post for our good friend Simon Wood, I jumped at the chance! Why? Because it’s easy for me to talk about my pets, and I like Simon.

My mom was never a cat person, so we always had dogs growing up. My first dog was a Sheltie, and I’m still partial to them. After Shotzi was hit by a car when I was four, my mom turned to smaller dogs–a little poodle mix (Misty) then a pomeranian (Becky.) But I was always a cat person in my heart.

My first cat was my grandpa’s. Spooky was black with white paws and he didn’t like anyone but my grandpa. (It might have had something to do with the fact that grandpa bought him liver and gave him a little every night for his “dessert.”) I made it my life’s mission to get Spooky to like me. It took months, but I became a tolerable to the cat. When my grandpa died, I inherited Spooky.

In college, long after Spooky was gone, my roommate and I rescued a kitten from a fraternity. It’s not that they would have hurt him, but we didn’t want to take the chance. Nixon became my cat, and traveled with me wherever I went. As a kitten, he loved the car. When I got a job in Virginia, I flew him cross country. After that, he hated travel.

It was Nixon who converted my dog-loving husband to tolerate cats. Why? Because Nixon acted like a dog. He came when you called him, he did his business outside in the garden, and he didn’t scratch the furniture. (Though, why Dan would care about that considering his dog, a chocolate lab, ATE not one, but TWO sofas!)

Nixon came down with cancer when he was only seven, and there was nothing we could do because it had spread so fast. I was pregnant at the time, and so heartbroken because he was my first pet that was all mine. I’d had other cats that I’d acquired and found homes for over the years–all while I had Nixon–but they were more like friends who came and went, and Nixon was family.

Nixon also trained our puppy, Curly (a friend of ours had a surprise litter just before we were married), to like cats, and the two of them were best buddies. After Nixon died, Curly was as sad as we were.

Shortly after my daughter (#2) was born in 1996, I went to the grocery store and people were giving away kittens. Two were left, curled up in a box, one orange and white like Nixon and one a dark tabby. I took them both and blamed post partum depression when my husband balked. (After all, I had just given birth to a ten pound baby, I could get away with almost anything at that point.)

We named them Toulouse (left) and Neelix (right), and because Nixon had trained Curly so well, we had no problems with the dog getting along with the cats. She knew who was boss (the felines.) In 2005, Neelix disappeared–we thought he might have been injured by a car or animal and wandered off to die. He was known to bring rabbits and huge rodents and birds to our back porch. He may, in fact, have been the only cat to deliver us a baby bunny on Easter morning. Thank God we woke up before the kids!

Toulouse was a character. He used to torment my younger daughter by always sleeping on her toys. Her favorite stuffed animal was this Mickey Mouse, and Toulouse loved to drag it from her room and sleep on it. If there was a piece of paper on the floor, he’d be curled up on it. Anything new became his bed for the day.

Below is Toulouse in the dog’s water bowl:

One Christmas, he found an empty box:

And then our kids left the skateboard out one spring day . . .

He found more innovative places to sleep as he got older. He liked getting into cabinets, or finding the one toy that was sure to bring the most attention:

Being cute by the garden statue:

Being not-so-cute on top of the toaster:

And two months before he died, we still don’t know how he had the energy to jump onto the counter, open the coffee cabinet, and jump up to the third shelf:

It was nearly two months ago when we had to put Toulouse to sleep. He was well over 14 years. Toulouse had a tumor for years, but because of the location and his age, it was safer not to perform surgery. He survived happily for nearly five years, but the tumor grew suddenly and quickly and we had no options once he stopped eating. Then two weeks ago, my daughter’s boyfriend asked my permission to give her a kitten for their 6 month anniversary. I went with them to the Sacramento SPCA to pick him out, and we brought home an orange and white tabby we named Nemo. Nemo can never replace Toulouse, but we love him just as much! When he woke up my daughter in the middle of the night to play, she brought him to my room and said, “Nemo won’t let me sleep!” I told her that sounded familiar, but at least he wasn’t wet, crying, and hungry. (I probably should have used the event as a life lesson about sex and babies, but it was 3 in the morning.)

Meet Nemo

When Murderati alum Simon Wood asked if we would post a special charity appeal here, I agreed because we just had a wonderful experience at the pound getting Nemo, and part of the great experience was having the foster parents comments about all the cats–which ones were good with kids, other animals, etc. That was invaluable to us as adoptive cat owners, because it would have broken my heart to find out after a few days that our new cat hates little kids. Fortunately, Nemo fit in perfectly!

So from Simon:

This is for the animal lovers out there.

I doubt anyone is aware that my wife and I foster animals for the ASPCA and other organizations. We usually take the no hope cases, where the animals aren’t expected to survive or need specialist care. Over the last few years, we’ve rescued dozens of cats and dogs and found them new homes. Our family pets are all rescues — ones that we couldn’t give up after the care we’d given them.

Our cat, Bug, was one of those rescues we couldn’t let go of after we’d taken him in. After five fun fill years, Bug died last week. He was a great cat and a lot of fun to have around the house. We’re going to miss him a lot.

In Bug’s honor, I’m going to donate all eBook royalties earned at Amazon and Smashwords.com for the next two weeks to Best Friends, an organization I truly admire. This applies to the following titles:

Road Rash

Dragged into Darkness

Please feel free to share this appeal on Twitter, Facebook or your blog. If there’s a strong showing, I’ll extend the appeal.

Thanks for listening,

Simon Wood

So you get to read a great story for a couple bucks, and Simon gives the money to a worthy charity!

And I’ll up the ante. I’ll donate $25 to Simon’s charity in the name of the first person who guesses how we named Toulouse, plus I’ll send you FEAR NO EVIL, my Daphne du Maurier award winner which introduces Lucy Kincaid–just in time to read the book before I launch her series on December 28 with LOVE ME TO DEATH.

Also, share with us how you ended up with your most recent pet, or another funny (or special!) animal story. (For example, my brother-in-law the wildlife biologist visited us one day–and his car broke down and he stayed overnight–with a mountain lion cub. They are NOT cute. The cub, named Flash, has been integrated with the mountain lions at Folsom Zoo, a rescue zoo, where my mother volunteers.)

Whoa, There’s a Man On My Cover!

By Alexandra Sokoloff

I have a new book out this week, The Shifters, which makes my third this year, if you count my non-fiction Screenwriting Tricks workbook, which has been selling really well on Amazon – maybe everyone should be paying a whole lot more attention to Joe Konrath than they already are.

So I guess the year wasn’t the complete and total black hole it felt like as I was living through it. Things got done, even if I can’t exactly remember how that was or even how it could have been, under the circumstances.

I think maybe this book was a bit more of an out of body experience than usual because, yes, I went over to the dark side, that is, the not-as-dark-as-my-usual-dark-side side, of paranormal romance. Which I am hoping the discerning reader will be able to discern from the cover, which indeed, has one of those alpha males on the cover. Truth in advertising, people.

Despite challenges, like having to write a love plot that actually ends well, this has been a fun thing in every way. I am constantly urging new writers to go to the conferences and workshops because Good Things Happen there – whether it’s getting the inspiration for the next book or getting a great agent or getting a great feature article in a great magazine or – even – having friends ask you to write a book with them.

In this case the phenomenal, and I mean phenomenal, Heather Graham, author of I think around 175 books now, all with her distinctive blend of paranormal romance, thriller, and traditional mystery, asked me if I’d be interested in writing a book for a trilogy that she’d be headlining for Harlequin Nocturne. For the record, there is no possible answer to a question like that but “When do I start?”

And I have developed an interesting dilemma. I have a growing contingent of readers who want to read me but who are too scared to read my books. (If there is such a thing as doing a job too well, I guess I’ve achieved it). So this was a chance to write something that the people I meet at the romance cons, and at a lot of workshops that I teach, can actually read. And then of course maybe, just maybe, they’d go a little further and read one of the others…

I’ve been very interested in Nocturne’s business model, which seems to be mostly about developing trilogies: either three interconnected books by three different authors, or three interconnected books by the same author, that are generally released quickly, one per month for three months, to build maximum momentum for the series. (All of us know how well that worked for Our Allison as a debut author.)

And our third author is Deborah LeBlanc, another horror writer (President of the Horror Writers of America, in fact) who also sidelines as a paranormal investigator. So I knew even though a happy ending was required, I could also get pretty dark with these two.

We decided immediately we wanted to write three sisters, and while we were at one of our favorite library events: Jubilee Jambalaya, in Houma, LA, we were able to sit down and brainstorm out a story. All great – except when we discovered that even though Nocturne had initially said, “Anything you guys want to write,” in reality that translated to “contemporary setting with vampires or werewolves.”

So it was back to the drawing board at last year’s Bouchercon in Indianapolis, where the three of us sat down in a quiet alcove in the lobby and in a shockingly short time came up with the idea of The Keepers, three sisters with an ancestral duty of keeping the peace between the communities of paranormal beings which hide in plain sight in our mutual favorite city of New Orleans. This way each sister could have charge of a different set of beings: Heather could write the vampires, as she has done so well before; Deb would write the werewolves, which she’d always wanted to do; and I, the least comfortable with creatures, was assigned the shapeshifters, with whom I have long acquaintance. Men, mostly….

We decided that each book would focus on a murder within one of the communities, and the Keeper sister of that community would have to team up with a male vampire, werewolf, or shapeshifter from that community to solve the crime before the human population of New Orleans got wind of the murders… and discovered the existence of the paranormal communities. And that teaming up of course provided the love plot and also the relationship conflict – Keepers aren’t technically supposed to be involved with their charges.

Now, for those of you reeling at the idea of collaborating on interconnected books – remember, I worked in Hollywood and in improvisational theater, so collaboration is something I actually miss. And this situation was the perfect blend of independence and teamwork – we were each off writing our own books, but the rules of each paranormal community were developed by the author writing the corresponding vampire book, the shifter book, and the werewolf book. So we could take each other’s rules and characters and weave them into our own books. And the three of us have spent significant time with each other in New Orleans, and we were absolutely committed to portraying that city in all her outrageous glory. It really did work shockingly well, and whatever we missed, our terrific editor Leslie Wainger was there to bring things into focus and continuity.

The process was not without its quirks. I was writing the second book and mine was due just two weeks after Heather’s – which posed a problem for me because Heather writes at the speed of light and I just – don’t. So I couldn’t bear to wait to read what she was going to write… instead I ended up joining her on the Florida Romance Writers Muse Cruise, from Miami to Mexico, and when the group left the ship to take a side trip to the Mayan ruins of Tulum, I trapped Heather in the back of the bus and we bashed out a lot of both our stories. It was probably the most surreal writing experience I’ve had to date, but we got what we needed out of it. (Writers have the most amazing lives – I know we’d enjoy them completely if it weren’t for that constant adrenaline rush of panic.)

And Harlequin has been wonderfully supportive of the series, including creating this great website for us: ReadTheKeepers.com (You can read first chapters of all three books in The Keepers trilogy there).

I wanted to talk about this experience partly for all our aspiring author ‘Rati, because I know as a new author I had this idea in my head that I would be writing a book a year, on my own, in the same genre. I didn’t have any idea that opportunities like this would exist, or that I could create my own unique projects, like another collaboration I did this year which I’ll be able to talk more about shortly. But publishing really is a whole huge world, and you never know what great experience is just around the corner. Or even on a Mexican bus trip.

So, authors, I’d love to hear about quirky writing opportunities that have come up for you. And readers – how do you feel about following authors you like into a different genre?

– Alex

THE WORLD OF THE WORD

By Stephen Jay Schwartz

What fascinates me is the never-ending sentence running wild in my mind, bursting through my thoughts like the long, paper dragon in the streets of San Francisco during Chinese New Year. There’s always a sentence running, always an editor running at its side, clipping, grooming, evaluating.

It’s been this way all my life. Always the third-person observer, the narrator in my head describing everything I see, “…he stood high on his toes to throw the paper bag over the fence…the car passed and she turned to wave, forgetting the cup of coffee in her hand…the man impatiently pulled the little dog on the leash, dragging it through the muddy park…”

My God, will this inner voice ever shut the fuck up? I mean, really, it’s maddening. It gets worse when I’m tired, when my defenses are down. And if I’m sick, running a fever, touched by a hallucination or two…forget about it – “The Nyquil settled into the acids of his stomach, reacting like dry ice in water, the green liquid turning into gas in his belly, settling into his bowels under a river of…”

Enough. Stop it.

This has got to be a writer thing, right?

I used to feel very much alone living with my inner narrator and then I went to my first Bouchercon and met a hundred other authors. I recognized the same look in their eyes when they talked, or when they sat in rooms watching others talk, and I sensed the narration behind their eyes. I’d follow their glances around the room and imagined how their sentences described the things they saw, and wondered if they described them as I did. And I wondered if their narrators drove them crazy as well.

I wonder what occupies the minds of surgeons? Do they constantly run the scalpel through the tissue of their mind’s eye? Is the path of the blade ever-changing as their internal surgeon writes and rewrites each operation?

Do engineers see schematics? The blueprints of a bridge designing and re-designing itself in their dreams?

Do painters see colors and shapes and diminishing perspective when they shop for their vegetables at Ralphs?

How do people get through their days?

In my life I’ve been a writer, filmmaker and musician. As a filmmaker I’d watch a man walk across the street and I’d see the coverage in my head; long shot, medium shot from the front using a long lens, medium shot from the back, close up of his foot touching the sidewalk on the other side, close up of the bumper of the car that just missed him, long shot to see the car pass and the man turn to watch it go, medium frontal shot as he reacts to almost having been hit.

Now, imagine how difficult it would be if I went to a Lakers game.

But, even as I lived in the language of film, I still had to hear that pesky narrator describing each scene as if it were written in a screenplay. When I watch movies, I imagine how each scene looks in the script—CUT TO: Football player on the field, on his back, the paramedics surrounding him. CUT TO: Tom Cruise reacts. CUT TO: The family at home, watching the TV, the player’s wife standing, her body shaking. INSERT: TV screen, wide shot of the field, pandemonium.

Again, it drives me nuts because I just want to sit back and enjoy “Jerry Maguire.” Instead, I’m typing the damn screenplay in my head.

I met an author at Bouchercon who had damaged his fingers and had to resort to using some voice-activated software to help him finish his book on deadline. Once the software recognized his voice he could speak his novel into the computer and the words would magically appear. However, he would have to speak it like this, “Percy stepped into the street comma his long comma black hair trailing in the wind period space…” He said that, after a while, it produced a clarity of thought he never knew existed. Alan Jacobson was with us and he said he used the software, too, and one day when he was talking to his wife he said, “Do you mind stopping by the store comma when you’ve got some extra time question mark.” He stared blankly ahead, then said, “Did I just say comma question mark?”

I don’t think I’ll ever use that software. There’s no way I want my inner narrator inserting punctuation into my daily observations.

It’s strange, too, because I started in music early on, beginning with clarinet in the fourth grade. And yet I never saw the world as musical notes. I don’t remember my mind blaring symphonies the way my inner narrator drones on with the prose. And yet, even as a kid playing that clarinet, I found myself describing and re-describing my environment with silent words.

I think I’ve been wired as a writer from the start. And it’s taken forty years for me to realize that this is how I function best. Not as a public speaker or an actor or musician or surgeon. I see the world in words, in three acts. I see mundane daily events and the words that run through my head create drama. I want everything to have meaning, though few things in life have meaning on their own. The narrator infuses meaning, demands a good story. I see spectacular, open-ended climaxes, because even in the end there are questions that remain.

I daydream of dreamless sleep, sometimes, just for the silence that exists when the narrator takes his leave.

I, Juror or My Big Jury Adventure

By Brett Battles

So the week after Bouchercon I had jury duty.

The way it works here in Los Angeles, you call in the night before, punch in your juror number, and you’re told if you need to report the next day. If you go all week without being called in, you’re off the hook until the next time you get a summons.

But what about if you’re called in? Well, you’re now in what’s called the 1 Day/1 Trial system.

What’s that mean? It means you don’t get put on a jury that day you come in, you’re done for at least a year. Doesn’t matter if it’s Monday or it’s Friday. You’re done. Free. Obligation fulfilled. This is what is meant by 1 Day.

If you are put on a jury, or are in a jury pool from which a jury will be selected, you are now on the 1 Trial track. Those playing along who haven’t guessed already, this track means you’re on jury duty until the trial is over or you’re excused by the judge.

Going into jury duty, I was a little unsure of how I felt. The last time I was called in, I was excited and wanted to get on a trial. But that time I didn’t even get called out of the waiting room (1 Day for me). This time, though I thought getting on a jury might be interesting, I was also right in the middle of writing my next book and was fearful of killing my momentum. See what I mean? Torn.

On the Sunday before, I called and learned I didn’t have to go in on Monday. Okay, good. I got a day to work on the book. Only I had kind of hoped Monday was going to be my day. See, I was starting to worry that I might have to repot in on that coming Friday. That was the day I was supposed to head up to my hometown for my high school reunion. Yeah, I know, I could have postponed ahead of time, but the idea didn’t cross my mind then. They also gave us another chance to put it off in the waiting room after we all arrived, but I decided, Hell, I’m here already. Let’s just do this.

Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself, if only slightly. See, we were on Monday, and Monday I didn’t go into the courthouse. But Monday night I called again. This time I was told to report on Tuesday morning.

Okay, good. If I’m only there a day, I’ll be back in front of my laptop on Wednesday and without a worry about my Friday travel plans. So in I go, my iPad and one of the Matt Helm books in my backpack. The morning passes by. I read, I watch a move. Some jury pools are called, but my name isn’t. Hey, maybe I’m going to get off just like last time. But the funny thing was I was stating to think that I’d kind of like to hang around and participate. It would be interesting and, after all, it was my duty as a citizen, right?

After lunch another pool was called, but still no Brett Battles. Then, just before 2 p.m., they call yet another. 40 people for the pool. I was around the 30^th called. Awesome, maybe I WILL get on a jury.

Up we go to the 15^th floor. After about 10 minutes of sitting around, the clerk comes out and passes out juror questionnaires. Oooh, cool! I’ve never seen one of these. Lots of questions about law enforcement and domestic abuse. Hmmm…I wonder what this trial’s about? The clerk also gives us each a number that has been randomly assigned to us. I’m #16.

After we finish our questionnaires we all file inside the courtroom. The first thing the judge tells us is that we will all be back the next day. (I’m sure several people groaned on the inside.) The lawyers need time to go over our forms, and they won’t be ready until the morning. The second thing she tells us is that we don’t have to report until 10:45. That’s good news for me. It means I can get some writing done before heading off to court. The third thing she tells us is that if we get on the jury, the trial is expected to go 7 days. Ugh. That means if I do get chosen, I’ll have to adjust my Friday plans. Well, you roll the dice and sometimes you lose.

Wednesday comes. I get up early, get a nice chunk of writing done, then head off to downtown on a oddly rainy Fall day. This time when we go into the courtroom, numbers 1 through 12 are instructed to sit in specific chairs in the jury box. Numbers 13 through 18 (remember, I’m 16), are instructed to sit in a row of chairs directly in front of the box. Numbers 19 and above are to sit in the public seating area for the time being.

The judge starts. She tells us the case is one of alleged domestic violence. At first I think that maybe the accused is a police officer given what we’d had to fill out. But I soon get the impression that he’s not a cop, so I’m guessing there’s a difference of opinion between him and the officers who probably arrested him. The judge then asks questions of each of the first 16 based on our questionnaires. Some she asks several questions of, some just a few. One of the questions on the sheet was: What is your profession? I put crime and thriller novelist.

“Huh, a novelist,” the judge says when she gets to me. “What kind of books?”

“Spy novels. Thrillers.”

“Well, I don’t think they’ll be any spies here to worry about.” That gets a general laugh.

She moves on.

Then it’s the lawyers turn. They both ask me about my brother because he used to be a cop. It was the “Do you believe cops are always right” kind of questions. I wasn’t the only one they asked this of. Finally, we broke for lunch. When we came back, they started excusing people.

First it was the excused-for-cause juror candidates. This included a woman who said she could not send anyone to jail because she strongly believe that much of the money spent on prisons should be funneled toward schools and education. I can testify she seemed pretty set in her convictions, and wasn’t playing a game. More power to her. Next to go was a guy who said based on what had happened in own his childhood he could not judge a domestic violence case without prejudice. I don’t know the details, but I could imagine that being a problem. There were one or two others, then it was time for the lawyer challenges. These were just jurors the lawyers decided they didn’t want for whatever reason.

For this phase, the concern was only the potential jurors sitting in the box, nos. 1-12.

“Mr. Defense Attorney?”

“The defense asks that you thank and excuse juror number 6.”

“The court thanks and excuses juror number 6.”

Juror number 6 leaves, and the person sitting in chair 13 in my row is instructed to take their place.

“Mr. Prosecuting Attorney?”

“The people ask that you thank and excuse…”

And on and on.

Finally the guy next to me, no. 15, gets up and takes the latest seat.

“The defense asks that you thank and excuse juror number 2.”

Juror number 2 gets up and leaves. I tense. I’m moving into the box. I’m going to be juror number 2. I’m pretty sure at this point neither attorney is going to get rid of me. If either did, it would be the defense. It certainly wouldn’t be the prosecutor. My brother was a cop. True or not, I have to seem like someone who would might lean the prosecutions way.

“Juror number 16, please take juror number 2’s spot,” the judge says. Once I made the move, feeling the seat under me, and know this was going to be my home for the next 7 days, she then said, “Mr. Prosecuting Attorney?”

No hesitation. “Your honor, the people ask that you thank and excuse juror number 2.”

Wait. What?

Did he just say juror number 2? The prosecutor? I’m juror number 2 now, only–

“The court would like to thank and excuse juror number 2.”

By my estimation, my butt was in that seat for thirty seconds. THIRTY SECONDS!

Walking out, I was stunned. What had I done wrong? Why didn’t they want me? Did the fact that I’m a crime and thriller writer work against me?

Sadly, if it did, I’ll never know, because my big court adventure was over, and I was headed home. I don’t even know if the case went seven days or not. I don’t even know…forget it, Brett. It’s over. They didn’t pick you.

Bummer.

On the bright side, I made it to my reunion in plenty of time.

So, 1) theories on why I got the boot, and 2) jury stories! Come on, give ‘em up!

FUN IS GOOD, PART III: WIT

In this, our third installment of what gives a book the elusive element of fun, I’m going to talk about something that may seem obvious, but which is hard to quantify: wit.

In these times where far too many people treat ignorance as something of which to be proud, the word “wit” seems at times to have fallen into disrepute. It carries with it a vague aroma of snootiness, of elitism, of cruel jibes delivered over dry martinis by callous sophisticates.

But wit–which I define as intelligent, incisive language that also manages to be amusing–is one of the things that can make a book fun to read. As just one example, take the works of Laura Lippman. Laura writes two kinds of books: her standalones, like her most recent book I’D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE, are engrossing, heart-stoppingly suspenseful, and gorgeously written; her Tess Monaghan series, about a female PI in Baltimore, are all of those things, and they’re also huge fun to read. The difference is wit. When Laura writes of a character, as she did in her book IN A STRANGE CITY:

Tess Monaghan couldn’t help thinking of her prospective client as the Porcine One. He had a round belly and that over-all pink look, heightened by a rash-like red on his cheeks, a souvenir of the cold day. His legs were so short that Tess felt ungracious for not owning a footstool, which would have kept them from swinging, childlike, above the floor. The legs ended in tiny feet encased in what must be the world’s smallest–and shiniest–black wingtips. These had clicked across her wooden floor like little hooves.

you can’t help but see him, and you can’t help but smile at the image, if you don’t actually laugh out loud. The wit comes from the delicious, wicked sharpness of the picture.

Sometimes wit comes out of a deadpan description of the mundane that ignores the big, dark, sometimes even scary thing that’s really going on. The humor comes from the dichotomy created by the characters’ apparent obliviousness or nonchalance about the rabid elephant in the room. Examples are the opening conversation in RESERVOIR DOGS, or this exchange from Donald E. Westlake’s BANK SHOT:

Kelp drove one-handed for a minute while he got out his pack of Trues, shook one out, and put it between his lips. He extended the pack sideways, saying, “Cigarette?”
“True? What the hell kind of brand is that?”
“It’s one of the new ones with the low nicotine and tars. Try it.”
“I’ll stick to Camels,” Dortmunder said, and out of the corner of his eye Kelp saw him pull a battered pack of them from his jacket pocket. “True,” Dortmunder grumbled. “I don’t know what the hell kind of name that is for a cigarette.”
Kelp was stung. He said, “Well, what kind of name is Camel? True means something. What the hell does Camel mean?”
“It means cigarettes,” Dortmunder said. “For years and years it means cigarettes. I see something called True, I figure right away it’s a fake.”
“Just because you’ve been working a con,” Kelp said, “you figure everybody else is too.”
“That’s right,” Dortmunder said.
Kelp could deal with anything at that point except being agreed with; not knowing where to go from there, he let the conversation lapse.

Often, wit takes the form of an impossibly perfect and well-composed comeback, the sort of riposte that you realize no human being could ever come up with on the spur of the moment, but which you wish you could. Like this exchange from Chandler’s THE BIG SLEEP:

I grinned at her with my head on one side. She flushed. Her hot black eyes looked mad. “I don’t see what there is to be cagey about,” she snapped. “And I don’t like your manners.”

“I’m not crazy about yours,” I said. I didn’t ask to see you. You sent for me. I don’t mind your ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a Scotch bottle. I don’t mind your showing me your legs. They’re very swell legs and it’s a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don’t waste your time trying to cross-examine me.”

It’s sort of like one of those Eric Clapton guitar solos where he tears off on a phrase so long and harmonically complex that you can’t imagine a human mind creating it, much less doing so on the fly.

Other times, wit isn’t so elaborate, but instead lightning quick, like the jab that you don’t see till your opponent’s pulling it back and you’re wondering where that ringing sound is coming from. Ken Bruen is a master at this sort of thing, as in this quick yet perfect description of a cop at a traffic stop:

He wasn’t wearing shades, but he wanted to…and badly.

Note that you’re unilikely to find the works I’ve quoted above are to be found in your bookstore’s humor section. some of them, like Our Ken’s work, are downright dark. All of them have humor, however. Smart, witty humor, and that’s one of the things that makes them fun.

Tell us, O ‘Rati: Who are your favorite witty, fun writers?

characters have childhoods, too.

When I was five years old, I was held hostage for the price of a meal.

It was a Sunday morning and my mom was sleeping in, so my dad took me out for breakfast. We went to a restaurant a few blocks from the apartment where we were living, a dining spot we’d never been to before. I was thrilled to spend time with my dad, who worked two jobs and rarely had time for a leisurely breakfast, and I dressed up in my favorite red bonnet and a plaid skirt. We sat in a booth and ate pancakes and it was a perfect morning.

Until my dad opened his wallet to pay the bill, and realized he had only two dollars.

Back then credit cards were still rare and he hadn’t brought his checkbook, but none of this mattered to the waitress or the manager. All they knew was that these customers had just eaten breakfast in their establishment and we weren’t going to pay for it. My frantic dad told them he’d come right back with the cash, if they’d just let us leave for a few minutes. No dice. They wanted the bill paid, or they were going to call the police. I don’t remember how the negotiations went, or how they came to the solution they agreed upon. All I know is that I was told to stay behind in the booth as a guarantee that my dad would return. Only then would they let him run out for the money. As hostage experiences go, it wasn’t unpleasant. I think the waitress might have brought me hot chocolate. What I do remember was the look of utter humiliation and panic in my dad’s face when he came running back in with the cash.

As we walked home together, he said to me, “The worst feeling in the world is having no money in your wallet.”

I have never forgotten his words, or the shame with which he said it. And to this day, I feel anxious if I don’t have at least twenty dollars in my wallet. Even if I have credit cards and a checkbook with me, I still need those twenty dollars on me. It’s gotten to be a joke in our household. Whenever my husband and I leave the house, I always ask him, “how much cash do you have?” He knows it’s just one of my little neurotic tics. He also knows exactly where it comes from. When you’ve been held hostage for the price of pancakes, you make damn sure you’re never again caught with an empty wallet.

I mention this story because I’ve been thinking lately about how childhood traumas — even minor ones like mine — always stay with us. Thriller writer David Morrell once told me that he thought writers invariably focus on themes from their childhoods, and we work out our childhood issues in our stories. I think there’s a lot of truth to that theory. I grew up as the only Asian kid in my elementary school, so my childhood struggle was trying to fit in with the crowd, and knowing that I never could. I realized that many of my characters are working out that very issue: Jane Rizzoli, trying to fit in as a woman in a man’s profession. Maura Isles, trying to be accepted by cops who are a little afraid of her. All the plain, awkward, unsophisticated heroines that populate my novels are longing for the same thing I did: acceptance. (And they hate having empty wallets, too.)

When I write, I find that I often include a character’s childhood memories in the story, because childhood incidents are such powerful influences on personality. They tell us what a character fears and longs for, why a character reacts the way she does to an insult, or why she doesn’t believe it when a man tells her he loves her. And sometimes those incidents come right from my own life.

In writing about Jane Rizzoli, I once had her remember the time her father lost his job and the family had to live on Potato Buds and canned corn. (A memory from my own childhood.) In another of my novels, my heroine’s dad lost his job but was too proud to reveal that shameful truth to his neighbors, so he got dressed every morning in his usual suit and tie and drove off as if he were going to work. (Again, a memory from my childhood.)

Even if the incidents aren’t from your own life, a character’s childhood memories give us powerful insight into character. In The Apprentice, Jane thinks back to her days in the school band, where she was one of only two girls who played the trumpet. She was so bad at it that her parents banished her outside to practice. The fact she chose a trumpet was part of what defines Jane Rizzoli. No demure flute or oboe for her; she’s never been afraid to make noise or to irritate people, so she would choose the trumpet.

Or the time little Jane fell and split her chin on the coffee table. Any other kid would scream in distress, but what did Jane do? She kicked and slapped the table because she was angry it had hurt her. She refused to be a victim; instead, she was fighting back.

Sometimes, when I’m creating a new character and I don’t yet have a good handle on him, I’ll use one of his childhood memories to help me define him. All it takes is a remembered incident or two, and suddenly I understand why he’s so terrified of poverty, why goats make him nervous, or why he can’t stop arguing with his brothers. It makes him more real for me. Because I believe that once you know the child, you’ll know the adult he becomes.

Heart

by Pari

A few weeks ago, I started a blog about public relations and marketing. Originally I thought the endeavor would be a good way for me to share what I’ve learned during decades of work in a field that I respect and enjoy. The other impetus was that I’ve written a fair number of short articles about PR and they’re just lying around. So why not pull them out, organize and update them and eventually turn them into an e-book? It seemed like a nifty and easy project. A no-brainer.

But something changed between the first post and the fourth. I realized that during the last few years my whole attitude about public relations has gone through a subtle but seismic shift. I’ve always cared about what I do, but now I’m only taking on clients whose missions I adore. And that, my friends, has affected how I think about PR in general. All those already-written articles need a rewrite because I no longer want to merely present the tricks of the trade; I want to frame them within a different context.

You see, I don’t think you can be good at PR without heart.

So what is heart?

There’s the rub. I’m not sure I can define it well and I don’t want to cop out and say something like, “I know it when I see it.”

But the horrible thing is . . . it’s true.

Here’s how this new framework is affecting me:
The Election
I’ve been particularly disgusted this year with the hoopla leading up to tomorrow’s election. You know why? I realized that it’s because in spite of all the finger-pointing and righteous indignation, the glossy brochures, robocalls and slick television advertisements — there’s no heart. Sure there’s anger and passion. But how much of that incredibly loud, rude and mean-spirited noise is coming from that place where a person goes deep within to find his or her personal truths?

Literature
I just finished The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis and remain totally floored by it. The book is a masterpiece of storytelling. I don’t remember the last time I read something that affected me so that I can’t stop thinking about it. Why this book? I think it’s the incredible concern and caring for each other the characters manifest during extraordinarily tough times. Willis is such a fine storyteller that she doesn’t need to bang us over the heads with the heart of her characters, she just shows us their actions and we’re forever changed.

School
The wonderful school my children attend is in the process of selecting a new leader. Because I’m a concerned parent, I went to every meet-and-greet with the candidates for the job. The two that impressed me most had an incredibly powerful spirit, and fabulous enthusiasm for education and their role in it. I came away from both of their interviews thinking the world is lucky to have these people who know themselves so well that they can be this passionate about what they do.

Fundraising
I’m helping with the school’s annual fund this year. The process has made me think a lot about the fundraisers I know and those who are most successful. They’re the ones that believe totally in the work of the organizations they represent. Because of this conviction, they’re able to inspire other people to feel and understand the organization’s mission . . . and to want to participate in that story by opening their wallets and checkbooks.

What’s it all mean?
I know this post is jumbled. That’s because I’m in the middle of looking at the world through this particular pair of glasses. It feels important to me. Critical, in fact. I want to be a person who operates from that center of heart in everything I do – personally, creatively and professionally.

Otherwise . . . why bother?

Today’s questions:

1. First of all, did I make any sense?

2. Do you have examples of where heart exists or is lacking in the world – or your own life — right now?

3. What book has touched so deeply you felt permanently changed by it?

I look forward to a good conversation.

trick or treat

by Toni McGee Causey

I am firmly convinced that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who love dressing up in Halloween costumes, and those who do not.Some are pros…

You know those people who start planning one Halloween for the very cool costume they’re going to wear the next year, and they’re always awesome and the talk of the party and the one whose kids are so decked out, every kid out there is just sick with envy? That was not me. Some are not pros…I fall pretty squarely into the ‘not’ category, probably because I am what you might diplomatically call “costume challenged.” Apparently, there is a costume gene out there that I did not receive.

My kids dreaded Halloween, I think. Sure, they loved the candy, but they had to endure their mom’s complete lackadaisical attitude toward the holiday. I’d never remember to get whatever it was they wanted to use to make their costumes, and I think they went as the same costume–karate kids–enough years in a row to be too humiliated to trick-or-treat in the same neighborhoods again. It started early, as I mentioned over here, this ineptitude toward costume design. [And my older son still has not forgiven me for the tin foil.] I cannot tell you how thankful I was when both boys were finally old enough to fend for themselves and come up with whatever they wanted to do.

But it’s not that I don’t appreciate great costumes. Especially those which, in essence, tell a story. I was at a party up in the hills off Mulholland (L.A.) where a lot of industry people were in attendance… so you know, people who knew how to create cool costumes, and it was impressive. The one that stuck in my memory, though, was a guy who was dressed as Sammy Sosa (who’d just beaten the all-time home-run record), and his girlfriend, who came dressed as a baseball fan with his home-run ball… impaled in her left eye. It really looked impaled, even up close, the make-up was that good, and when she first turned around, I flinched.

As a writer, I’m constantly in costume… I’m always stepping in the shoes of other people, wearing their skin, their clothes, their mannerisms, getting the feel of how they walk and talk and dress and go about their day. I loved shooting our film (which just sold to its first foreign country, Japan), especially when the lead actor asked me if the main character was left handed or right handed. I could see him putting together the mechanics (and costume) of who the guy was that he’d be portraying, and it was easy to forget, sometimes, that he had a different life outside of what this character lived.

So how about you? Are you a costume person? Or not? And either way, what’s the coolest costume you’ve seen? Or if you love them, what are you going as this year to any parties you might attend?

My Favorite Things

By Cornelia Read

1. Bouchercon

San Francisco was so so so so amazing. Rae Helmsworth rocked the Hyatt and put together an amazing team of volunteers, and this time it was like a really, really fabulous high school reunion only we all looked better than in high school and there were no evil cheerleaders. Not to mention Lee Child’s wonderful Reacher Creature party, this time open to all attendees for the first time ever, which is tremendously kind and generous of Lee to do for a lobby-full of 1600 people who, let’s face it, can probably outdrink the Shriners and the Kennedys combined. Not to mention tanker captains.

For a taste of what it was like (and to see the fabulous Ball O’ Twine sculpture), click here:

2. Roger Vivier shoes

Viviers are what Queen Elizabeth the II wore at her coronation (hers had 3,000 garnets on them), and what Cathering DeNeuve wore in Belle de Jour. Also, the guy invented the spike heel to match Dior’s New Look. Credit where credit is due–take that Manolo.

3. B. Kliban cartoons

I used to have B. Kliban sheets, in boarding school…

4. The view from Nepenthe, in Big Sur…

5. The Exeter-Andover game, especially when we beat those Smurfs…

6. Playing with quick snapshots from my iPhone until they’re hallucinogenic…

7. Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations…

8. Berkeley… and the sun setting over the Pacific in general.

9. Sargent paintings

10. The odd little brick building in the vegetable garden at Monticello. Those windows are triple-hung, so you can slide them all the way up from the floor to let the breeze through on all four sides, and there’s still a Windsor chair in there that you can sit in and read, or just take in the view.