Lovin' Lance

by Ben Small

Tucson is well known in the bicycle world. Its streets often have bike paths, and Vermont Bicycle Tours, one of the better bicycle touring companies -- personal experience speaking here -- runs tours out of Tucson.

But lately the city has been agog> Lance Armstrong and his Radio Shack team have been practicing in Tucson for a month. The newspapers and local media have been full of pictures and commentary, as the team works out on and around our mountains and parks.

In the media, one usually sees these guys pedaling hard in clumps, sweat running down their faces, their visages set in grimaces. But these are either teamwork shots or in some cases mountain shots. Usually, one sees these guys on the road either alone pumping the pedals or in groups of two or three.

But I've also seen them alone, churning out the miles through our neighborhood, either approaching Mount Lemon, a popular climb for professionals, or back on the downside. And that makes sense. While teamwork is no doubt an important part of the Tour de France and professional touring, it's individual endurance and strength, combined with teamwork that carries them to the finish line.

Sometimes these guys wear Team Radio Shack uniforms, sometimes uniforms they've worn before -- like last year's Tour.

But until today, I hadn't seen Lance, except on TV or in the local newspapers.

Today was different. I spotted Lance as I was leaving the Safeway parking lot. He was turning onto Catalina Highway, heading toward Mount Lemon. He was wearing yellow -- what else? -- and pumping hard.

While I was sitting, my jaw dropping as realization set in, I noticed a group of three teenager bikers pull out from next to me to follow Lance. Evidently, they'd done some scouting and wanted a bird's eye view, or maybe they wanted to see if they could keep up.

I waited until Lance had sped by me and the kids behind him pulled out before I turned right, too, to follow. I drove slow, about fifteen miles per hour.

I noticed Lance turn around, spot the teenagers and then slow up. He waited for them to catch up. Some high fives were slapped, some words exchanged, and then Lance pulled what he did in the Alps the last time he won the Tour de France. He stood on his pedals and left everybody in his dust.

I passed the kids and crept up behind Lance. He was now going twenty-some miles per hour. No traffic was approaching, so I swung wide and passed him. Looked over, caught his eye, flashed him a big thumbs up. Lance smiled.

And that made my day.

What a guy, Lance Armstrong. An American hero.

A Sense of Place

By Pat Browning

“A profound sense of place” – that’s what novelist Beth Anderson said about my fictional town of Pearl in ABSINTHE OF MALICE.


Pearl is a combination of several little towns along old Highway 99. The highway runs the length of California’s San Joaquin Valley, with Fresno almost dead center and various towns hidden in the trees on either side of the highway.


I lived in the area for most of my adult life and, frankly, I miss it. I’m glad I set my mystery there. ABSINTHE is first in a proposed limited series. The second book got derailed along the way, but as James Garner always said in his old “Maverick” TV series, “I’m workin’ on it.”


Helping to preserve that sense of place as I slog through Book No. 2, which I’ll call METAPHOR, are some photos I took in Hanford before I moved to Oklahoma five years ago. The photos are of real streets and houses. Their place in my book is purely fictional.

Hanford’s old Irwin Street Inn is the inspiration for property now owned by my character Halcyon. She got the keys when her husband’s mysterious disappearance – oops, that would be a spoiler. In METAPHOR she’s fixing the place up and thinking of opening a tearoom.

Halcyon’s dashing nephew, Watt, lives in one of Halcyon’s suites with an outside entrance. Watt was “born” one night about 10 years ago during an online chat with a writing group. We kicked around the idea of a romantic interest for my protagonist. As long as I was inventing him I invented the perfect man – handsome, sexy, rich and aging gracefully. What’s not to love?

 Hanford’s China Alley is the inspiration for my Shanghai Street. It plays an important part in METAPHOR.

This house inspired my version of a house that once belonged to one of Pearl's long dead residents who left behind a surprise or two.

And what would a setting in Central California be without winter fog? I took this photo of a Hanford street in December 2004.


A sense of place … a place I know well. It’s time I got back to it. See you in the funky little town of Pearl!

Why I Write About Senior Sleuths

by Jean Henry Mead

I write senior sleuth novels because there’s a growing market for retirees who like to read in their own age group. I was intrigued years ago by Miss Marple and Hercule Periot, who were wise and perceptive, but never seemed to have any fun.

That’s not true of today’s seniors who are less inclined to retire to their rocking chairs than previous generations.

Pat Browning, who wrote Absinthe of Malice, said: “A St. Martin's editor gave me a piece of advice I have never forgotten: ‘Be careful not to turn your characters into cartoons.’ I try to picture older characters as they are--the same people they always were, only older. This is especially true when it comes to romance and sex. For all the jokes about senior sex, it is a very real part of senior life, and it's no joke to those lucky enough to have a romantic partner late in life.”

I agree. Not unlike Janet Evanovich’s character, Grandma Mazur, who is eccentric enough for a cartoon character, most seniors have the same interests they’ve always had, with the possible exception of roller blading and downhill skiing. On second thought, I once interviewed Buffalo Bill’s grandson Bill Cody, who learned to donwhill ski at 65 to keep up with his much younger wife.

Mike Befeler writes what he calls “Geezer-lit.” His first novel, Retirement Homes are Murder, features his octogenarian protagonist, “who is short on memory but has a sense of humor and love of life. He accepts his ‘geezerhood,’ solves a mystery and enjoys romance along the way.” He followed it up with Living With Your Kids Can Be Murder and is busy working on another book in the series.

My second senior sleuth mystery, A Village Shattered, takes place in a California retirement village. The plot is generously sprinkled with humor but none of the seniors resemble cartoon characters, although a couple come close, a redneck Casanova and love starved widow. Diary of Murder followed and I portrayed the two 60-year-old protagonist widows as quite capable of traveling the country in their motorhome as well as chasing down killers who happened to be drug dealers.

Another senior writer, Beth Solheim, spent years working in a nursing home and says she loves the elderly and their “humorous, quirky insight to life, love and longevity.” Her protagonists are 64-year-old twins in her humorous, paranormal cozy series, The Fifi Witt Mysteries.

Chester Campbell, an octogenarian, writes the Greg McKenzie Mysteries. He said, “My friends in this [age] bracket are out going places and doing things. Some, like me, continue to work at jobs they enjoy. I chose to use a senior couple in my books who are long married, get along fine, and do a competent job as private investigators. Greg, who narrates the books, is aware of his limitations from age and makes up for physical shortcomings by outsmarting his adversaries. My hope is to dispel some of the absurdity of the stereotypes about seniors that are all too familiar. Like the old song says, "Anything you can do I can do better."

Chester recently started a new series featuring 59-year-old private investigator Sid Chase in The Surest Poison.

Like so many other novelists, I write what I enjoy reading. My readers are mainly retirees and baby boomers who number over 78 million. Some 8,000 boomers are moving into the senior column every day, the fastest growing potential book buying market on record.

We’re experiencing the graying of America. What better subgenre to write for?

In the Beginning, There Was...Confusion

By Beth Terrell

I've met writers who say their first chapters never change. The first words they write are the first words the reader reads. Let me just say, I hate those guys. Okay, hate is a strong word, especially since every single one of them is someone I like. Let's go with, I wish I worked that way.

My beginnings apparently serve one purpose and one purpose only: they help me start the book. They act as a springboard from which I can cobble a story with a middle and an end. Then I go back and realize that nice shiny opening I thought I had just doesn't work. What the...? How did that happen?

The first draft of my first book, Racing the Devil, began with Jared, our hero, musing on the circumstances that led to his being framed for murder. "I think every guy has one woman he wishes he'd said no to. I wish I could say mine was a tall, busty blonde with legs up to there and a smile like a Swedish supermodel, but the truth is, she was just a not-bad-looking woman with dishwater hair and big teeth. All I can say is, if I knew how things would play out, I'd have held out for, say Cindy Crawford."

Bleah. Awful. To begin with, nothing's happening. Just a guy thinking back on a relationship that went badly. How boring can you get? To make matters worse, it's one of those, "little did I know" sections that I absolutely hate. Whenever I see them, I hold up a cross and a string of garlic in hopes that they'll slink back into whatever crypt they crawled out of. Worse still, while it was necessary for Jared to become...uh...intimate with this woman, it was completely out of character for him to pick up a complete stranger in a bar and shag her. No matter how I twisted and turned this scene, I just couldn't make it believable. He wouldn't do it.

I needed a better opening. It had to be evocative, and it had to plop the reader directly into the scene, and something had to be happening. Most of all, it had to make sense in the context of his character. Since the plot depends on her having seduced him (so she could plant his DNA at a murder scene), I needed to figure out what would make him do something so uncharacteristic. Yes, he's grieving over the dissolution of his marriage, but that's just not enough. Fortunately, he has a weakness I could exploit: he's a sucker for a woman in trouble. If I can convince him that this woman is in distress, he'll relax his defenses. Or, for all you Star Trek fans, "His shields are down, Scotty. Phasers set on stun!"

With that insight, I knew I was on the right track. I needed a damsel in distress. I just had to figure out what kind of distress. A flat tire or vehicular breakdown would get his attention, but how would she be sure he would be the one to stop? Then I had it. She is--or seems to be--a battered woman with an abusive boyfriend, and she asks Jared to protect her. His Galahad complex rears its head. Once he's agreed to help her, she pushes for a more intimate encounter and he realizes she wants something more than a protector. He resists at first, not wanting to take advantage, but she insists that she needs the comfort. With the hook set, she reels him in.

The new beginning goes like this: "Even in the dim light of the bar, I could see the bruises. Beginning just below one eye, they spread down the side of her face and neck, tinged the blue rose tatoo above the swell of her breast, and seeped beneath the plunging neckline of her scarlet halter. She paused inside the door, hugging herself. Her gaze swept the room, lit briefly on one face, then another. Looking for somthing, or someone. Or maybe for someone's absence."

It may not be Faulkner, but I think that's a heck of a lot better.

You'd think I'd have the whole beginning thing down now, but no. Book 2 began with what I still think is a terrific first line: Flirt with the devil, and don't be surprised if he asks you to dance. Unfortunately, the scene it preceded was the wrong place to start the book. Not too soon, the way most books on writing warn, but too late. As it turned out, I needed to start the book about three scenes earlier. Of course, I couldn't just figure this out in one blinding flash of insight. I realized I needed to show the scene before "flirt with the devil." Then, when I'd done that, I lollygagged around for awhile, thinking it was the new shiny beginning I needed. After awhile, I realized I needed to go back and do the scene before that. More pemature satisfaction. Finally, I found the right first scene. The ending of the scene is spot on, maybe the best thing I've ever written, but I'm still struggling to find the perfect first pages to lead into it. I've written two very different versions and still can't decide between the two of them. I know I will, but those first fifty pages are crucial, and I want to get it right.

Fortunately, writing is a fairly forgiving pursuit. In writing, unlike professional baseball, there are do-overs.

The Simpler Life

By Mark W. Danielson

The best thing about my flying job is being able to drop in on distant friends. I was recently able to visit my best buddy during a short LA layover. Dan and I grew up together, have known each other for fifty-four years, and every visit feels like old times. We did everything imaginable growing up, riding our bikes up and down the East SF Bay hills delivering The Richmond Independent, and when we finished, would race through Wildcat Canyon on what we called the “Inter-Canyon 500” to Tilden Park and other regional parks. My paper route had a particularly steep hill near its end that frequently had a radar cop parked near the bottom. My goal was to get stopped for speeding, but in spite of my many efforts at exceeding forty miles per hour in a twenty-five zone, it never happened.

In our early teens, Dan and I were either kayaking, sailing, or piloting sailplanes or airplanes. Steve Canyon was our hero, and Twelve O’Clock High was our favorite TV show. Dan soloed a glider at age 14, and we both soloed airplanes on our sixteenth birthdays. Dan’s dad was my flight instructor, doctor, and mentor. He bought a J-3 Cub so that Dan could build flying time, and I was fortunate to be included in that, too. Being two years older than Dan, I earned my license first, and the two of us flew a plane around Northern California, sleeping under the wing. Neither of us took anything for granted, and we worked hard for what we achieved. Although Dan had hoped to be a test pilot, his vision declined during college. Instead, he has had a remarkable thirty-three year career with Northrop Aviation, has designed nine civilian aerobatic airplanes as a side-line, was an aerobatic champion, and is a third degree black belt. I’ve had an equally successful thirty-nine year piloting career with the Air Force, Navy, and numerous civilian aviation positions. We are who we are because we had supportive parents and a thirst to achieve our dreams.

(Dan and his J-3 Cub. Me and our under-wing tent.)

A lot has changed since we were kids, though. Cell phones and personal computers keep inescapable pressure on kids and under-develop their minds. Instead of jumping off a fence with a pretend parachute, or building models as we did, they play video games, or chat electronically, all the while gaining weight from their lack of exercise. The President’s Physical Fitness program faded along with daily gym class. Kidnappings and random shootings have become far too common. One day, meaningful conversation between two people may even become extinct. But while today’s kids may not have the same opportunities as Dan and I, nothing says they can’t have dreams and work to achieve them.

Our Schwinn bikes riding gave Dan and I our independence. Not only did they get us around, they also taught us coordination, energy management, and geometry. To me, there is nothing better than seeing young kids riding bicycles. Two boys in my neighborhood are just like Dan and me, but they are the exception. It’s easy for me to make a value judgment, but instead, I’ll chock this up as the new reality.

Looking back, life was simpler when Dan and I were growing up. All we had to worry about was the Cold War, and remember to “duck and cover” when out teachers told us to. Perhaps because most moms stayed at home to raise their kids, we respected adults, and identified them as “Mr.” and Mrs.” Another difference is we were happy living with one TV, one phone, one family car, and ate meals at home.

Children today face many more challenges, and the pressure to be perfect is outlandish. The media portrays unrealistic lifestyles, and kids are bombarded with technological interference. While I view these changes wishing their lives could be simpler, I must realize that they aren’t complaining because their perspective is different from mine. In that regard, I suspect they will one day look back, and like me, wouldn’t change a thing about how they grew up.

Writing - a Different Kind of Business

By Chester Campbell

The common wisdom is that we authors should treat writing as a business. I agree, but it requires a little shift from the normal business model. Unless Uncle Sam thinks you're "too big to fail," normal businesses face the prospect of going under if they operate in the red for too long. Most writers operate in the red most of the time.

Good old Wikipedia says of businesses that most are privately-owned and formed to earn a profit that will increase its owners' wealth and grow the business itself. The owners and operators have as one of their main objectives the receipt or generation of a financial return in exchange for work and acceptance of risk.

So where do we fit in this picture? Writers do plenty of work. Writing, researching, promoting, selling, and, of course, business management. That's right, management. Who pays the bills, keeps the books, makes the decisions on what needs to be done, negotiates over book signings, websites, and all that good stuff? And we accept the risk of the time and resources we put into the job.

We love to write, but we go into it with the objective of generating a financial return and making a profit. The fact that few of us do but still remain in business is what separates us from the "normal" company ranks.

I'd always heard that you should break even with your fourth book. Didn't happen for me. Or the fifth, shown here. Actually, I'd show a profit this year if I hadn't spent money on two conferences where I only sold enough books to pay for a couple of meals. So, like a good business owner, I'm reconsidering the best expenditure of my book income next year.

Up to this point, I've been spending not only my book income but bunches of money from other sources, like investments and retirement benefits. I don't plan to go down like Lehman Brothers, and I don't expect to get  bailed out like AIG. But it would sure be nice to see a little green at the end of he rainbow.

Maybe next year.

Writing Software

by Ben Small

Most writers I know have found little tricks they use to simplify their production of quality work. Of course, there are dictionaries, thesauri, and books delineating traits of various personalities. Those go without saying.

But software plays a role, too.

While I use several different software programs to help me, the one I've found most beneficial is PowerWriter by Write-Brothers.

PowerWriter is a word processor, but it's oh so much more. First, it's convertible into text, so I can write my novel, save it as text and then pull it up into Word, perhaps with some additional formatting required. But the formatting has not been a problem.

The real reason I use PowerWriter is that it's such a powerful organizational tool. There are three screens, a center composition screen, with many of the same tools and methodologies as Word. That's where your novel goes. To the left is the outline screen. Type in a plot point there, and it automatically shows up as a grayed-out plot point in your composition screen. Type in the plot point in the composition screen, and it shows up in your outline. A simple way for someone like me, who sometimes outlines, sometimes follows the muse, to keep up to date on both outline and composition.

But it's the third screen that's most helpful, a database for characters and settings. Not only does PowerWriter offer a database of character names, it permits you to store character characteristics, so you can refer to them later.

Let me give you an example. In The Olive Horseshoe, I gave Mandy Shattuck a thin scar through one of her eyebrows. By recording (cut and paste) this information into the database, when I get to page something-or-other and need to refer to the scar and can't remember which eyebrow was involved, there's an easy way to search: Just go back to the character database. I've found using these character databases much more useful than the much more detailed process of creating a biography, like Elizabeth George does for instance, for each character. And it's easier and more useful than the Search function in either PowerWriter or Word. Sometimes Search doesn't give you what you need, and sometimes staring at the character database refreshes you the writer about some other aspect of the character that it would be good to mention in conjunction with the characteristic you were looking for.

Write-Brothers, the producer of PowerWriter, also produces PowerStructure, a software program that interfaces with PowerWriter and provides structural organization of your plot and suggests ideas for improvement. While I own PowerStructure, too, I don't use it. PowerWriter offers so many of the same tools and organizes one's work so well, I just haven't needed PowerStructure. From time to time, however, I've called Write-Brothers, usually over a software validation issue, and they now tell me they may soon introduce a software program that combines PowerWriter and PowerStructure. If so, I don't plan to buy it, unless there's some new significant feature that PowerWriter doesn't currently have, because I've found PowerWriter to be so perfect for my needs without the added PowerStructure platform. If, on the other hand, the new software offers a transition to Word that doesn't require re-formatting, I might well dive in and buy it. But they've been telling me the new software will be out soon for over two years now, so I have no idea when the launch date, if it occurs will be.

As an aside, Write-Brothers also produces PowerTracker, a database and submission and expense management program, which I also own and use, primarily to track expenses. While I use this software, I expect to switch over to QuickBooks because my accountant hates the PowerTracker printouts. It's not a spreadsheet, and he prefers spreadsheets or QuickBooks.

So, if you're looking for tools to make your job as professional writer easier, I'd recommend trying PowerWriter.

As an aside, I should mention that I used Word for Alibi On Ice and PowerWriter for The Olive Horseshoe. I found PowerWriter cut my production time down by about half. Needless to say, I'm currently using PowerWriter to produce Vendetta, a sequel to The Olive Horseshoe.