Reaching the Climax

by Robert Gregory Browne

Let’s talk about sex. Those of you who are uncomfortable with the subject, feel free to bail out now — I’m likely to get pretty raunchy.

Still with me? I thought so.

When we make love, most of us have a particular goal in mind: that moment when our entire body seems to stem from one central point, every nerve-ending tingling wildly as fireworks assault our brain.

That moment, of course, is orgasm, and anyone who has experienced one (or two or three) — especially with a willing and enthusiastic partner (or two or three) — knows that it can be an exquisitely pleasurable sensation.

But are all orgasms created equal?

Of course not. The quality of our orgasms is directly related to the quality of the fun and games that precede them, not to mention our emotional bond with our partner, and our willingness (or unwillingness) to surrender ourselves fully to the moment.

So what, you’re probably wondering, does any of this have to do with writing?

YOUR WILLING PARTNER

Writing is an extremely intimate act. In his book, On Writing, Stephen King describes it as a form of telepathy. We put our thoughts on paper, and days, months or even years later, someone literally reads our mind.

Think about it. With a simple arrangement of words, you have the potential to pull your readers into your mind where they can be stroked and fondled and toyed with — sometimes gently, sometimes rough.

The result is often a partnership so strong and emotionally satisfying that neither of you ever wants to let go.

Who of us here can forget those times when we’ve read a book or watched a movie we didn’t want to end? And when the end did come, we felt drained, elated and thoroughly satisfied — much like we do after a night of unbridled passion.

Getting to that place wasn’t an accident. The writer of the book — at least in most cases — didn’t merely fumble his (or her) way toward climax. If he (or she) did his job, every step was carefully choreographed to lead us around the third act corner toward that final pay-off. And the quality of that pay-off is related to one important thing:

THE GENTLE ART OF LOVEMAKING

We’re often reminded in how-to books that the typical story is broken into three acts:

Set-up, Confrontation, and Resolution. Sounds pretty cold and uncaring, doesn’t it? Not to mention dull.

But what if we were to beat the lovemaking analogy into the ground and refer to the three acts in this way:

Seduction, Foreplay, and Climax.

Certainly puts a whole new slant on things, doesn’t it? And if we’re to have a successful story with a successful and satisfying ending — one that keeps our partners wanting more — we must pay careful attention to these three words.

Seduction.

The beginning of a story, any story, cannot and should not be referred to as anything other than a seduction. It is our job to make our audience want us.

How do we accomplish that? First we start with character. We must create characters that our audience won’t mind, figuratively speaking, getting into bed with. Particularly the lead. Is he or she someone we find attractive? Does he have a problem or flaws we can relate to? Are his life circumstances universal yet unique enough to pique our interest?

The next element is mystery. Every story should be a mystery. Remember the girl in college the guys all wanted but knew so little about? A big part of her allure was that hint of mystery she carried. No matter what genre you’re writing in, you should never, never, never put all of your cards on the table at the beginning of the game. Instead you must reveal them one at a time, each new card offering a clue to the mystery of our characters and their stories.

The third and most important element of seduction is giving your characters a goal. And not just your lead. Every single character you write should have a goal of some kind. Put two characters with opposing goals in a room and you have drama.

But the goal of your hero must be compelling enough to intrigue us and hold our interest. In The Fugitive, Harrison Ford is wrongly convicted of killing his wife, escapes to find her killer, and soon discovers he’s being hunted by a relentless cop who doesn’t care whether or not Ford is guilty. All three elements of seduction are satisfied and guess what? We’re hooked.

Foreplay.

Once we get our audience into bed, however, we certainly can’t let them down. As you would with a lover, you explore and tease and make new discoveries — which can often lead your partner to discover something about him or herself that, until that moment, remained dormant.

The foreplay in the second act is a continuation of the seduction but on a deeper, more intimate level. This is when we really begin to understand and root for the characters, and when their stake in the outcome becomes more and more important. Surprises are sprung, secrets are revealed, and our emotions and feelings build with each new scene, gradually working us toward the moment we’re all waiting for:

The Climax.

And this is why we’re here today, class, to talk about that most crucial of Act Three moments: the time when all of the work you’ve done for the last three hundred or so pages comes together like the pieces of a puzzle, where plot and subplot intertwine to create the only ending that makes sense within the context of the story you’ve told — a thrilling and, hopefully, explosive orgasm of emotion. The final kiss, the final death, the final revelation that sends your audience soaring.

But you can’t get there without laying the proper groundwork.

A wise writer once said that the first page of a novel sells that novel and the last page sells the next one. This is certainly true, but what he doesn’t say is that the stuff between is what sells that last page. Without masterful seduction and foreplay it is virtually impossible to reach a satisfying climax.

Act Three is a culmination of all that came before it, and if the preceding two acts are anything short of spectacular, you’ll be lucky if your audience even sticks around for number three.

It’s all up to you.

Every time you sit down to write, you must remember that your audience is your partner, your lover, and in order to make them happy you must seduce, thrill and, most importantly, satisfy.

Mama’s Brains

By Louise

Several years ago, when I was home for a family holiday gathering in Tucson, my now 91-year old mother bemoaned the loss of Mama’s Brains.

Mama’s Brains was a treasured recipe from her mother, Mimi, handwritten on a lined 3 X 5 index card. It was usually crammed into a kitchen drawer, tucked under the nutcracker with a broken arm, and creased together with a newspaper clipping about ways to celebrate the Feast Day of San Juan Bautista.

I’ve always loved that recipe. Not for the taste, surely, but for the implicit prowess expressed in each step. It started with "Get some cow brains," as if my grandmother were as comfortable with the notion that one could kill a steer, cut off its head and pluck out the brain as she was going to the supermarket. One of my favorite cookbooks, the 1952 Eskimo Cookbook, has a similar recipe for whale. "Catch a whale. Cut whale in pieces and put into cooking pot. Add water and salt, and boil."

I’ve looked everywhere," Mama said. "Mama’s Brains are gone."

She was right, but we didn’t know it then. The recipe card had certainly gone missing, but soon enough, so had my mother’s brains.

Dementia set in gently. A pot left too long on boil. A sprinkler that ran all night. Reading the same newspaper article multiple times. She slowed down for the first time in her life, even pausing for a nap if no one was looking.

But she still drove. She shopped. She cooked. She forgot birthdays but sent notes and clippings for no reason at all. She took care of us all, just as she’d done all her life.

Then one day she drove to my brother’s house but couldn’t figure out how to get home.

We’ve moved into darker canyons now. She’s begun to wander. She’s forgotten the name of the daughter-in-law who sees her daily. And her conversations have been reduced to a ten second loop tape.

My brother has moved in with her, which was a good thing for both of them. And the patience and twenty-four hour care he’s giving have earned him the right to bypass Purgatory altogether. He’s building up so many karmic points that he’ll come back in the next life as a poodle and be pampered all day with chew treats and belly rubs.

I think she is comfortable in her senility. The same fog that has dimmed recent events has also allowed her to forget the loss of a child to cancer, and the death of her two mates. She still knows the words to all the old songs and she laughs easily. She sits in the morning sun "until the batteries are recharged."

There’s another pleasant thing about dementia: good news goes on forever. I gave her the first copy of Forcing Amaryllis and watched her reverentially open the front cover. "You’ve written a book and it’s dedicated to me!" It was like watching a sunbeam smile. Then, thirty seconds later, she noticed the book again. "You’ve written a book and it’s dedicated to me!"

I made her happy one hundred times in an hour.

I’m heading back down to Tucson soon. This time with door security alarms, memory-prompting books, gentle exercise videos and other gadgets from the Alzheimer’s Store to make her safe and warm and comfortable and happy.

That recipe says to "drain brains well." That’s already been done. But I’m not throwing away the cooking liquid. That liqueur is the sweet distillation of a woman whose love and courage has not been diminished, even in the face of a sea of forgetfulness.

"Do not go gentle into that good night?" My mother could teach Dylan Thomas a thing or two about gracious decline. Hers is truly a gentle good night, and I’d pick that for her over raging, any day.

Jeanne C. Ure

Tucson, Arizona

Comments are welcome. As are any suggestions on how to make her as happy and safe as possible.

Email Ejection

by Pari Noskin Taichert

Okay, so, the scuttlebutt is writers should stay in touch with their readers. Usually we do that by writing books. But, sometimes, there’s a bit of a pause between tomes and we need to resort to other methods.

Like a good kid, when I first started out, I collected e-dresses and invited people to be on my list for "updates." Because I despise spam, I made sure to only send out notices when there was something important to report such as new contracts, book releases and signings, talks, articles published. My other vow was that I wouldn’t inundate anyone with my propaganda.

Three years later, I’d accumulated a list of 500 names — give or take. I know that’s not a big number, but it made me happy enough. However, with spam filters being what they are, mailing my updates became a nightmare. I had to break up my lists into itsy, bitsy, ones in order to make it through indiscriminate email sieves. Sure, I could have paid for someone else to do it — a company online — but with all the PR I do, and the humble number of my list, I didn’t think the expense was worth it. Not really. Not yet.

Anyway, the effort to stay in touch became a disincentive. I stopped mailing even quarterly updates. Names and addresses sank into obsolescence. That might have been all right for awhile, but now I’m gearing up for my new book’s entry into the world. (January will be here before you know it.)

So, I decided to resurrect the updates. This time, I created a private, unlisted group through Yahoo. I keyed in hundreds of names in January and got a horrid return on opt-ins. Sure, the people who responded really wanted to hear from me, but what about the others? Did they hate me? Did they hate my writing? Had I been annoying them for years without knowing it? Were they dumping my updates the way I often do when others send generic announcements to me? I felt totally rejected.

It’s stupid, I know. But there’s the truth.

What mature thing did I do? Nada. I stopped keying in any more names. Yep. Pretty pathetic, hunh?

The whole exercise devolved into another reason to feel rotten, to re-up for the emotional rollercoaster, to sulk. Heck, there are so many email newsletters out there, so many websites and blogs, listervs and online "communities." Why bother trying to put out my own missives anymore? Why bother trying to communicate at all? Wah.

Here’s the BECAUSE:
There are people who DO, indeed, want to hear from me.

This week, when I need a break from writing or have a couple of minutes between kiddie-taxi duties, I’ll try to complete my data entry. Though invitees may opt not to join the list, it’s a chance I’ll take.

At public talks and private book clubs, I’ll continue to collect email addresses and offer to stay in touch.

And, with each acceptance, I’ll feel a bit more connected, a bit more encouraged . . . a bit more like this particular exercise is worthwhile.

Oh Baby!

I apologize for not participating in the blog discussions this week. But I assure you I have a good reason…

Introducing, CHLOE CHAMPAGNE MACLEAN!!!

Born Tuesday, April 10, 2007

7 pounds 15 ounces

20.5 inches

10 fingers, 10 toes

Perfect!

Both mom and baby are doing just fine.

This is the extent of my blog this week. I could try to wax poetic on the nature of new life and writing, but I’ve got dirty diapers to deal with. Besides, that little face says it all.

In other News

The great Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale along with MWA SoCal are pleased to present Barbara Peters in Conversation. Peters, a publisher, editor, and bookseller, will speak on "Current Trends in the Book Biz and What Writers Ought to Know About Them."

When: Monday, April 16 5pm

Where: The Poisoned Pen

4014 N Goldwater Blvd. Suite 101

Scottsdale, AZ

But wait, there’s more.

While the event at Poisoned Pen is open to the public, MWA members are invited to get together afterwards at a nearby watering hole for cocktails and conversation.

Branded

by Alex

It sure is Spring. That brilliant green grass, the burgeoning blossoms, explosions of color, those maddeningly delicious fragrances wafting in the breeze…

Beautiful. Uplifting. Rejuvenating.

Here’s a thought. As soon as I turn in my book, I’m going to write something happy. A love story. A whimsical comedy. Something light. Something lovely.

Right.

I can already hear the stereophonic bicoastal hysterics of my agents and publishers…

Sigh.

No, It’s not a real thought. Well, all right, it was a real thought, but a very fleeting thought.

It’s a question of "brand". I know my brand. I don’t even have my second novel out yet and I don‘t just know my brand – I work my brand. I work the hell out of my brand. I write spooky, sexy, dark and eerie. There might be some uplift going on there as well, but never at the expense of thrills.

And even though I’m having this momentary longing to do something not QUITE so dark next time (that or run away to a tropical island and never write again…) dark is not just my brand, it’s who I am. It’s a brand in a much more metaphysical sense – it’s a brand on my character, on my soul.

I have a writer friend who is always saying that I should write my OWN story – like autobiographically. I keep telling her that what I write IS my own story. This is how I see things.

Here’s a perfect example. I’m on deadline and have been housebound for what seems like months, but my next characters have already come to me. Physically. Like, on the sidewalk outside the window where I work. I see these four kids every day now, two or three times a day, walking by, always together, a strange collection. A very short, slim, animated black girl. A very large redhaired white girl with doughy skin and flat eyes. A small, wiry black boy with a loud laugh. A talk, dark-haired, spacy white boy.

They are not your normal teenagers. They are a pack. They are always together. They even move together – walking in a clump, closer than ordinary people stand to each other It is very strange to see four people so near to each other and so synchronized. They don’t seem dangerous as in violent, but dangerous nonetheless. Though they chatter and caper like teenagers, there is a heaviness about them. They stick together for protection, and it’s not hard to imagine what they need protection from, or why they’re on the street.

I have become obsessed with them. I think they are homeless and now that it’s getting warm they have come out from some shelter and are sleeping under the railway bridge down the street. But they’re clean, and they’re not obviously stoned. What they are is feral.

They have noticed me, too, behind my window – at least one of them has – the redhaired girl. She was as startled to see me in the local grocery store as I was to see her, because, you see, I was thinking about them at the very moment that they appeared around the end of the aisle. They were shoplifting, I’m sure, tucking pizzas and cokes into their oversized jackets. It was overwhelmingly odd to see them in the store. It was even odder to come home from the store and see them walking on the sidewalk past my window the second I walked into the house. I left the store before them and I have a car. They could not possibly have beaten me home.

Definitely not the stuff of romantic comedy.

Zombies, revenants, creatures of the night…. perhaps. We’ll see. It’s inevitable.

You see, I AM writing my own story.

I’m branded.

Are you?

Sip or Swallow?

JT Ellison

How do you read?

Are you a gulper, must read in large chunks of time, one book at a time type, or can you be just as happy with a simple sips from several sources, reading several books at once?

Do you read everyday?

Do you stick with a single genre and known commodity authors, or are you seduced by variety?

Why do I ask? Because I’m seeing some interesting trends, or non-trends in the publishing industry, and I’m curious to see how other readers approach their tasks. I’m a gulper. I hate being torn away from a book. Once I’ve committed the time to an author, I want to give them my undivided attention, take the journey with them, see how they "do it," for lack of a better term.

And I’d like to think I’m varied in my choices, though I do have a few authors that I’m faithful to regardless.

For a while there I was having a difficult time enjoying anything I read. It wasn’t that I was reading poor material, on the contrary, I was on a roll with some of the big award winning names. I was analyzing their work. It’s the bane of any writer, the inability to separate your style from the story of others. Oh, I wouldn’t have used that word, or I wouldn’t have given that clue there. If it were mine, I would have. . .

Would of, should of, could of. What??? Egads, what was I thinking? Where did THAT touch of arrogance come from? How in the world could I think like this? That I would do it differently? Then it would be my book. And that wasn’t what I wanted at all. Epiphany time. It didn’t matter what I would do. I needed to respect they way the author had done it. Amazing the freedom that tidbit gave.

Which made me wonder about the pure readers, those who don’t spend half their day writing their own books. How do you read? Are you a deconstructionist, like me, or do you allow the story to unfold, trusting the author to keep you on the right track? What drives you to unparalleled paroxysms of delight?

And here’s where I’m going with all these questions.

I noticed something very interesting the other day at a Steve Berry signing here in Nashville. I go to as many of the signings as I can, especially the big-name authors. I’ve been lucky enough to see John Connolly, Michael Connelly, Steve Berry, Tasha Alexander, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Diana Gabaldon and trust me, the upcoming visit of Lee Child has me in my own paroxysms of delight. But what fascinated me is that the attendees are different for each author. You’d think that people who like Lee Child would like Michael Connelly would like Steve Berry, right? Apparently not in Nashville. Each "name" seems to have their own following, and there are maybe four or five people who cross over into each.

Why the disparity? I’d love to know the answer to that. If you have any ideas, please chime in. I guess I’m naive in thinking that mystery readers like thrillers, and thriller readers like mysteries, but perhaps I’m wrong, and never the twain shall meet. Is this phenomenon native to Nashville?

A housekeeping note: I’m going to be gone for the next two Fridays. The lovely and talented Naomi Hirahara will be blogging in my stead while I traipse through Italy. This is the first real vacation I’ve taken since the writing journey began three years ago. I won’t be taking my laptop, will assiduously avoid Internet cafes, and promise to come back with a slew of new wine selections and a renewed sense of verve. I’ll miss you.

In the meantime:

Please visit the wonderful Julia Spencer-Fleming’s website for Tales of the Teapot: Conversations with the 2007 Agatha Best Mystery Nominees.

"2007 Agatha Nominee Julia Spencer-Fleming (ALL MORTAL FLESH) interviews
fellow nominees Earlene Fowler, Jacqueline Winspear, Nancy Pickard and
L.C. Hayden, discussing their lives, books and craft in a delightful
series of interviews."

The brilliant, witty and always insightful Tasha Alexander has new fare! Her second novel of historical suspense, A POISONED SEASON, went on sale Tuesday. Get a copy today, you won’t be disappointed!

And if you missed the announcement, Killer Year 2008 is gearing up. Please visit the new website for more information!

Arrivederci, i miei amici!

Wine of the Week: As the first part of the trip will be in the Piedmont region, I’m going to start with a Barbera, then have a Barolo, and maybe a touch of Asti toward the end of day one and will report back with brand names… I’m going to refuse the homemade lemon grappa this time. Non molto bene.

Gone Fishin’

Ah, the air smells fresher. Colors are more vibrant. Everything is good with the world and I am happy.

The reason for my good spirits is that I completed my next book, Paying the Piper, and turned it in on deadline. Dorchester has it and they’re happy and we’re holding hands as we walk into the sunset.

I like completing a book, because I can be me again. As the deadline looms, I start to discard extraneous life items like weight from a sinking balloon. Such things as regular meals, entertainment, exercise, and tidying up after myself have gone by the wayside. I’ve put on 10lbs over the last few months. Nothing else matters except for finishing the book. Now that it’s in the bag, I can see what’s been going on in the world. I can read for pleasure, see a movie, walk my dog—and Julie says tidy my damn room. She has a point there. There are over 2000 sheets of paper in various piles stacked haphazardly around my office. This week it’s my intention to clear up the house and weed the garden. Then get back to the home improvement projects I have planned which include a kitchen and two bathrooms.

I’m particularly happy to be able to draw a line under Paying the Piper. The book was on a fast track so I didn’t have a lot of time to write it. To compound the pressure, there was a lot of messy life stuff that got in the way, not to mention having to promote Accidents Waiting to Happen. So hand on heart, the last six months have been a pain. But I’m not complaining. This is what I want to do with my life and I signed on knowing it would be tough. It was just a little tougher this time around. But I did it. Well done me.

I finished the book Sunday and I haven’t thought of anything creative since then—except for my impending tax return which is due at the end of the week. I feel weird not writing anything. Guilty even. It’s not right that there isn’t a keyboard attached to my fingertips. I’m in a vacuum—and I don’t like it. But I have to stay strong. I promised myself a little break and I’m going to have one. I’m a little worried about Julie though. She said, “I don’t have anything to read. What am I going to do?” The withdrawal hit her after a day or two. She’s jonesing for a story. By the end of the week, she’ll be pressing herself up against me and saying, “Got any pages for me, baby? Mamma needs some eye candy.”

“But I don’t have anything,” I’ll say.

“Don’t be like that,” she’ll reply. “Julie knows you’ve got something tucked away. Just a few pages will get me through. A synopsis will do. I know you have a short story tucked away somewhere. You’ve always got a short story. Give it up, baby. Julie will make it worth your while.”

I think Julie has a problem…

I was planning to take a month off, but as usual, it ain’t gonna work out that way. I already have another book project due before the end of the year in addition to my next novel project. So my resolution to be good to myself in 2007 has been put back a year. So my month’s vacation has been reduced to this week—from which I won’t budge. It’s my birthday on Saturday. This week is all about me time. That’s final. Unless something falls into my lap between now and Sunday.

So if you’re reading this, I’m not here. I’ve gone fishin’ with Royston. We could both do with the exercise.

Yours elsewhere,
Simon Wood

Somebody’s Goin’ to Emergency, Somebody’s Goin’ To Jail

Friends and neighbors, it’s great to
be here at Murderati, Thanks to the gang
for inviting me, even though I confess to being more than a little intimidated,
being surrounded by all this talent.

I mean, dear Lord, I have to try and follow Bruen? Thanks just oodles, guys.

Those of you who know me know that I
also have my own solo blog, What Fresh Hell is This? My tens of fans from that
effort know that I tend to engage in a lot of discussion there on politics and
society, and by "discussion" I mean "unhinged ranting."
Never fear, however, I’ll be saving the political stuff for there, and I’ll try
to keep my ranting here as hinged as possible.

Now having just disclaimed any
intention to do political and social commentary here, I will now discuss
political and social commentary, at least as it pertains to crime fiction.

I recall a panel I once did at the Cape Fear Crime Festival
with the brilliant Michele Martinez
during which she talked about one of the attractions of crime fiction, namely
that it provides us with stories in which the bad guys are caught, justice is
done, and balance is restored to society. I, on the other hand, pointed out
that I tend to like (and to write) stories in a more minor key, in which corruption and evil exist from the
top of society to the bottom and things are coming apart at the seams. Balance
may be restored in stories like that, but more likely not, at least not without
terrible cost.

But if you break it down to its most basic level, we crime writers, from
creators of the darkest noir to the
fluffiest cat mystery, write about the same thing: a world that’s gone out of whack, a
world where, as Shakespeare said, “the
time is out of joint,” or, to quote a more contemporary poet, “somebody’s goin’
to Emergency, somebody’s goin’ to jail.” And when you write about a world out of whack,
it’s very easy to begin putting in your own opinion as to how and why it got
that way. It’s a temptation to want to use a particular book to grind a
particular axe. And that’s okay, if it’s done right. Some of the best crime
writers, like Ian Rankin, weave their Big Idea into the fabric of the
story so deftly that you don’t even realize a point Is being made until the
book’s over, and you go, “yeah, that’s right.” . Others…well, not so much. Some writers beat you over the head with
their particular version of the Big Stick O’ Commentary until you cry “Uncle” and toss the book aside.

Now, in person, I’m a positive kind of guy. In addition, I
have a powerful aversion to being punched in the mouth or having a
drink thrown on me by a disgruntled colleague. So let’s talk about who does it
right. Who, in your opinion, can not only make a point about society, including but not limited to a
political one, but can make you like it?

The Writer from the Writing

by Ken Bruen

Should writers live up to the expectations of their readers, should e.g. Lee Child be more Reacher in his appearances? Or Barry Eisler be more like Rain . . . Scratch that, Barry pretty much is .

My point, which I’ll eventually make, is readers get a picture of the author from what they’ve read, so is it better if they never actually get to meet the writer . . . because by Christ, most of the time, they are in for a shock.

If you write about psychos and convincingly, when your readers meet a mild gentle soul . . . are they going to go, Hello?

For a long time, readers and reviewers believed that Jim Sallis was black; he couldn’t have written such a compelling, convincing character as Lou Griffin if he were white! Jason Starr has written some of the most noir characters to come down the pike since Charles Willeford, and a few weeks back, taking his daughter to school, he got talking to one of the other dads and told him he was a noir writer. The man went, "You!"

Jim O. Born writes of the homicide squad and so believably that he won the major award last week . . . congrats, Jim. And he is just the funniest sweetest guy till you see him demonstrate weapons and talk about his daily job . . . as a cop.

Vicki Hendricks writes the sleaziest down in the gutter noir that I’ve had people say to me, "That can’t be a woman?"
And I tell them she is a lecturer and they go, "Not the same person."

Years ago, Val McDermott and I were together at a convention in Germany and as we huddled over a brew, Val said, "See, the looks?"

I did.

She added, "They figure, two hardboiled mystery writers, discussing mystery and mayhem when we’re actually exchanging photos of our kids!"

I write about the lowest of the low, the losers, the alienated, the seriously deranged and when my readers meet me, they always ask, "Are you sure you’re Bruen?"

I think so, most days anyway.

The best example of this was two years ago when I went to Dublin to meet a Sunday Times journalist, and we agreed to meet in The Shelbourne. The hotel closed a week later but the two events are not connected.

Are they?

I was early and saw a lady breeze in, all biz, power dressing, well, I mean she was English and thought that shite still mattered and was glancing furiously at her watch. I approached and asked if she was looking for Ken Bruen.

"Yes."

She gritted and, "He’s late."

When I told her I was, am . . . the person, she stared at me in total wonderment and said, "But you’ve manners?"

She’d read me books, and works, C.V. and expected a branded hell’s angel. I was a sad bitter blow.

We did the interview and she kept snapping, "Don’t do that irony on me!"

You’ll gather that we didn’t bond, become email buddies and go on to write a book together.

No.

When the article appeared, the heading was . . . Benign Thug.

I can certainly be thuggish but benign . . . I’m working on it.

Being Catty

by Pari Noskin Taichert

Lately, I’ve been marveling at how chic it is to scoff at kittycats. There’s this overarching bias in our crime fiction community that equates felines with frippery. It’s a kind of odd snobbery, snuggly and warm as a winter blanket, but woven with disdain.

If a mystery contains a cat — and that cat has even a small role — it’s a hairball in the world of literature.

Meow.

And yet, sometimes, when I’m imbibing my second shot of scotch, I raise a glass to the queen of cat mysteries . . . Lillian Jackson Braun. Her dozens of CAT WHO books have sold millions of copies for years. She has a rabid fan base that spans the globe.

Obviously, all of those readers are wrong.
Right?

Cat mysteries denigrate the important work we’re trying to do in the crime fiction genre.
Don’t they?

It’s interesting that at the same time this bias exists, you can go to a community-connection site like Crimespace and find many people who are using cats as avatars (representations of themselves).

What gives?

Why is it cool to dis fictional felines?

Let me tell you a brief story . . .

A little more than a decade ago, I was pregnant — sick, hostile and of a murderous mind. That’s when I discovered the curative powers of traditional mysteries, of fun and fast reads. Only these could momentarily soothe my nausea and frayed nerves. Braun, Grafton and a score of other authors became my sanity.

Alas, one day the CAT WHO series stopped working for me. I got angry. If Braun could slam out so many books and sell so well, why couldn’t I? Hell, I was a better writer than she was! (DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!)

It’s so easy to compare ourselves with other writers, isn’t it? Many of us tumble into jealousy or holier-than-thou attitudes that only serve to make us miserable, wet little kittens — the kind with stinky fur and runny eyes.

I know I suffered in a major way because of these attitudes. When Braun’s books lost their magic for me, I wanted something to blame. The cats were an easy target.

. . . So, I understand some of the current snickering.

But guess what? I ended up putting a cat into my New Mexico series. This was — and is — an absolute tip of the hat to Braun. Without the disappointment I felt with that book long ago, I might never have had the impetus to put my butt in a chair and write the first manuscript. I might not have stuck through the failure of that attempt, and the one after that, before finally selling a work.

You see, I think it’s seductive to feel superior. Sometimes it can generate wonderful action. More often, it deprives us.

I don’t write cat mysteries, but I don’t mock them either. In my series, Leo does have a role in my protag’s life. Anyone who has had a pet to love, knows how important an animal can be to maintaining a sense of stability when the world seems rocky and mean.

What I find intriguing is that cats get bigger play, bigger attention, in the excuse to neglect a sector of books.

Why cats?

Why not goldfish
or cigarette smokers
or men who can’t maintain healthy relationships?

What’s up with that?