Scotland

by Bill Kirton

I’m on a train. Leaving Aberdeen to go to Glasgow and spend a weekend with my daughter and her two sons. ‘So what?’ you ask. Well, I’m just feeling lucky to live in such a place and have the sort of freedom that lets me do such things. Because the sun is shining, the North Sea is sparkling and swirling round the base of its cliffs to my left and on the right there are fields, great rolls of gorse in full bloom and, in the distance, the folds and peaks of the Cairngorm Mountains. And this is just the relatively tame bit of the country. I know that, if I turned right when I got to Glasgow and drove along the coast, each turn of the road would make me want to stop, get out, breathe the air and take a photograph which would never do it all justice.

I know there are beautiful areas in almost every country but, for me, the west coast of Scotland is a magical place. The mountains dive straight down into the sea lochs and their Gaelic names give them all a specific character. One of my favourites is An Teallach – the sleeping man. As you drive towards it, that’s what it looks like – some giant has decided to have a nap and has stretched out on his side. Nearby is Slioch. Many years ago, I canoed the length of Loch Maree, which lies beneath and along it. It took several hours and, whereas normally you feel your progress in relation to places on the shore, Slioch seemed to just stand there, not budging. I know, I know, mountains don’t budge. It’s not in their nature, but try spending some time amongst them and you feel there are presences there. It’s their place, not yours. As I’ve said before, I’m not a believer in anything religious or paranormal, but the Scottish Highlands don’t fall easily into rational definitions. Yes, they’re geographical things, but their silences, the ruined cottages you see here and there and some other indefinable sensations recall the people who lived here. It’s not a romantic fancy to feel that life lived here is qualitatively different from the noisy complicated way we pass our days now. In these mountains, we know that we’re small, absurd intruders, but we also know we’re part of something that stretches beyond our comprehension and suggests that somewhere, buried miles deep in our psyche, is the knowledge that we belong here.

Unfortunately, so do the midges. I don’t think it was a snake which drove Adam East of Eden, I think it was a midgie.

Sand In My Britches.

by Ben Small

I knew I was in trouble when my foot missed the gearshift and the engine started to sputter, so I made the turn, hoping to throat up the power to carry me through and back on the downward slope. Trouble is, I was on the wrong side of vertical, some two hundred feet above my son, and my engine died.

The four hundred pound ATV -- with me on it -- was about to roll down a sand dune two hundred feet high.

My son, down below, yelled something, but I couldn't make him out. I was too busy leaping free as the ATV leaned at a no-recovery angle.

I tucked into a ball as I struck the soft sand. I could hear the machine tumbling after me, three, four times, so I rolled five or six, encouraging my rolls and steering myself off to the side. Don't want a burning engine, a gasoline tank and four hundred pounds of hard, hot, edgy machine anywhere near me when we're tumbling together. Still, as I fell, I feared impact.

I'm sure my safety was secure in seconds, but I'll tell ya, it seemed like minutes at the time.

My son ran up the dune and helped me roll over the machine, helped me inspect it. For all the rolling and tumbling, both machine and I seemed in good shape, just one small ding on my arm where the soft, sticky grip of the handlebars tore some skin.

"Thought you'd bought it," he said with a grin. "Dad's Last Call."

I laughed. "Well, it's been a good life..."

We started my machine, and I dusted myself off, at least as much as I could considering I was wearing jeans, a jacket, boots and was at an angle and at a place where sand blows across dunes hundreds of feet high. The Imperial Dunes National Recreation Area, just twenty miles west of Yuma, in California.

We'd been there before.

My son pointed to a trail leading around the dune, not straight up it. I shook my head, and tore off, making a wide circle, as my son sat on his machine, helmet in hand, watching me. I built up speed to about forty and shifted into third. More speed, and up I went, the same path as before.

"You're crazy!" my son yelled as I blew past him.

I gunned the engine and tore up the dune, straight for as long as possible, then as power ebbs, downshifting -- where I'd screwed up the last time -- for more torque. I raced for the top, angling as I approached, so I didn't just shoot over the top and maybe fall fifty feet. Nearing the crest at a steep angle, I leaned far over the engine, adding weight to the front end, so the machine wouldn't wheelie-over on me.

Skill management. Important for doing the dunes on one of these machines.

I made the dune easily, and stopped at the top. Gave my son the thumbs-up. Then, he, too, made the wide circle to gather speed and roared up the dune behind me. On his own trail. "Yee haw!" he roared. "Nothing beats this!"

Yeah, it's probably a father-son thing...

He pulled off his helmet and I pulled mine. Across mutual grins, I said, "This never happened. Rebecca need not know."

My son laughed. "No kidding," he said. "Grounded for life."

We spent the rest of the day roaring up and down dunes, when possible chasing lizards on the sands. Some were large. And man, they run fast, sometimes on two feet. We couldn't catch them -- not that we'd try -- and they live under the sands, so one doesn't know where they are. They just pop up and begin running. Then, next thing you know, they get smart, turn and...poof, they're gone.

Watching those lizards low-tail it, I couldn't help but think of the Geico geko...

Returning from largest dune

We'd rented two monster ATVs (my son and I), a smaller ATV ( his wife) and a two-seater for my wife and our three year old granddaughter. While my son's wife would brave the dunes much like my son and me -- they own two back home in North Carolina -- albeit less spectacularly, my wife and granddaughter rode the valleys and some of the easier trails. Her two-seater came equipped with a storage area large enough for our lunch, umbrellas and beer cooler, plus four folding chairs. We dined out among the dunes, not far from the U.S./Mexico border fence.

My wife, Ella's Chauffeur and our Two Seater

A Rest after Lunch

I want one!

You can't do this at the Imperial Dunes National Recreational Area during summer months. It's closed. Out in the dunes, temperatures can soar twenty degrees above the Yuma furnace. Trust me, you don't want to be in the dunes when it's 130 (F). In fact, it's probably illegal.

We shared the dunes this late February weekday with Border Patrol Jeeps, dune buggies over thirty feet long and a few other nutjobs like my son and me. I wouldn't want to be on the dunes on a weekend, when the crowds descend. These monster dune buggies, some of them twenty feet long and weighing a couple tons only have a ten foot flag, and they can fly over a dune with almost no warning. It's no wonder lives are lost here every year.

Call me stupid, call me reckless, but this is fun. And, hell, I'm sixty-three. If I have to go out, I'd much rather go out having the time of my life.

That night, as we tucked L'il Ella in, she said to me, "I love the sandbox, the bumps. Let's do it tomorrow!"

Whew! It took my muscles three days to recover.

Now I wonder how my son will feel when L'il Ella grows up and comes home at fifteen on the back of a Harley?

Do You Judge A Book By Its Cover?

Good morning from sunny Cape Cod, where the temps are hovering around 40. Hey, this is a warm spell for us! I'm thinking spring will be here by June.

I just finished reviewing another book for Suspense magazine. I'm having such fun doing these, as I'm discovering writers whose books I haven't yet discovered. The down side to this, however, is that most of these books come from the publishers as ARCs, without the finished cover. Instead, as I'm sure all my fellow bloggers know, the publisher slaps a plain cover with book title and author name, publication date, and usually a label which warns in HUGE letters: "Uncorrected proofs for limited distribution. Not for sale. For review purposes only." Sort of like the warning label on mattresses:"Do not remove!" Etc. etc.

When I'm in my local indie bookstore checking out (and usually buying) the latest in cozy mysteries that I haven't yet read, I try to check on any books I've read in ARC form. I'm always amazed at how the cover art influences my feelings toward those books. I may know that the book itself is great, because I've already read and reviewed it, but if the cover art turns me off, and I knew nothing about that particular book, I probably wouldn't buy it.

For the second book in my Baby Boomer mysteries, Moving Can Be Murder, which will be released May 1 (little shameless self-promotion there), I worked for months with artists and designers to pick colors, theme, etc. I hope our decisions are the right ones to attract readers. Guess we'll know on May 2!

So here's my question to all of you reading this: How much does the cover of a book influence your buying? A little? A lot? Not at all?

Blame it on Mardi Gras

by June Shaw

I was supposed to blog here today, and I forgot.

Well blame it on Mardi Gras.

Just do not blame it on my age.

Since I live about an hour southwest of New Orleans, we have lots of parades. So do most of the cities around us.

Our parades are not as flamboyant or the carnival balls as extravagant as those in the big city, but we do take our carnival season seriously. No, actually, we just have fun and play.

So that's what I've been doing instead of noticing that it was time for me to write. Why I didn't get it done before is a mystery.

A Visit with Tony 's Hillerman's Daughter, Anne

by Jean Henry Mead

Anne is the author of the award-winning Tony Hillerman's Landscape: On the Road with Chee and Leaphorn, as well as seven other books. Her latest release, a collaboration with photographer Don Strel, is Gardens of Santa Fe.

She served for more than twenty years as editorial page editor for the Albuquerque Journal North and the Santa Fe New Mexican, and as an arts editor for both papers. She's written the Santa Fe restaurant reviews for the Albuquerque Journal since 2001 and works as a writing coach on fiction and nonfiction projects. In addition to writting a new book, she's the director of Wordharvest Writers' Workshops and the Tony Hillerman Writers' Conference: "Focus on Mystery."

Anne, your father must have been pleased that you inherited his writing talent. Has being the daughter of Tony Hillerman helped you in your writing career?

As the eldest of Tony and Marie Hillerman's six children, and the only writer in the mix, I have been lucky to have received some of the residual good will my father built up over his long career as a journalist, teacher, writer and lover of the West. The name gives me a great ice-breaker at writers' conferences!

What does your book, Tony Hillerman’s Landscape entail and what prompted you to write it?

Tony Hillerman's Landscape is a visit to the country my father loved with selected quotes from his mysteries, photos of the places he uses as settings, and my own recollections. The idea came from Dad, with a tip of the cap to New Mexico mystery author Michael McGarrity. McGarrity was keynote speaker at one of our Tony Hillerman Writers Conferences. Photographer Don Strel (my husband!) suggested a slide show of the places McGarrity writes about and offered to take the photos. When Dad saw it he said, "Why don't you do something like that for me?" That suggestion led to the book.

You’ve written a number of award-winning books. Which was the most difficult to research and write, and which did you enjoy writing most?

Gosh, I've enjoyed them all. Each had its own challenges and its own pleasures. Tony Hillerman's Landscape was fascinating because it involved re-reading each Navajo detective novel, and visiting the Navajo reservation to find those places where Chee or Leaphorn had to pull over because the scenery is so stunning. I had to examine my own memories of time spent with Dad, and make the book personal as well as informative, something that my journalist self initially resisted. Gardens of Santa Fe, my newest book, involved deciding which of the beautiful gardens to include and then pruning my interviews with the wonderful, outspoken gardeners to stress the uniqueness of each.

Have you considered writing Western mystery novels?

Well, sure. I've got a decent first draft of a historical novel set in Oklahoma, complete with horses and a family farm. My other experiment with fiction is a mystery in progress set in Arizona and New Mexico. It's not a "Western," but certainly flavored by the landscape and people of the Southwest.

Tell us briefly about your Santa Fe-based Wordhavest Writers Workshops and the Tony Hillerman Writer’s Conference.

Wordharvest began as a way to celebrate New Mexico's writers. Instead of paying to hear out-of- state experts, why not use our own experts and let out-of-staters come to hear them? My business partners and I quickly expanded to draw on regional talent such as Margaret Coel and Sandi Ault (who live in Colorado but have family in New Mexico) and Arizona's J.A. Jance. Wordharvest 's first weekend program featured Tony Hillerman. When we decided to do a conference, Dad said we could name it after him (as long as we did the work). He also agreed to sit on a panel and be our first keynote speaker. The conference started with "Focus on Mystery" as its subtitle, but now we focus on good writing in general. The 2011 dates are November 10-12 in Santa Fe.

What prompted you to create the $10,000 Tony Hillerman Prize for best first mystery novel set in the Southwest?

We were looking for another way to promote our conference and to offer encouragement to writers. I went to the well-organized Pikes Peak (Colo.) Writers Conference to steal some of their ideas. We were thinking of adding a session with agents/editors and I wanted to see how their model worked. They had invited Peter Joseph of St. Martin's Press. I told him we'd like to work with St. Martin's and he suggested a writing prize. After more brainstorming, the Hillerman Prize was born.

You’ve received a number of honors,including “Outstanding Woman Author” by The New Mexico Chapter of Women in the Arts. Which means the most to you and why?

The honor that touched me most was being invited by the New Mexico Library Association to be their keynote speaker and present our slide show on Tony Hillerman's Landscape at their annual conference. Don Strel and I did a lot of benefits for libraries in New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and California as part of our book launch. My Dad was a staunch supporter of libraries, as are Don and I. I was also thrilled and honored when the legendary Barbara Peters hosted us for our first Hillerman's Landscape signing at Poisoned Pen in Scotsdale.

Tell us about your journalism background.

After several years of dillydallying, I earned a degree in journalism from the University of New Mexico. My dad was the head of department there--and he was tough on me! I worked in a variety of jobs, some in television and radio, but mostly for newspapers and magazines. I was the first woman to head the editorial page at the Santa Fe New Mexican, one of the oldest newspapers in the West and still an independent, family-owned operation. I also started the opinion page and wrote the editorials for the Albuquerque Journal's Northern New Mexico edition. I currently work as restaurant reviewer for the Journal. That job lead to my book Santa Fe Flavors: Best Restaurants and Recipes, which won the New Mexico Book Award.

What’s your fondest memory of you father?

That question is too hard! I think of my Dad every day and miss him tremendously. I'm grateful for his sense of humor, his curious mind, his gentle kindness, and his absolute passion for skillful writing and well-told stories. And that he had the good sense to find and marry my mother.

Advice to fledgling writers off the West.

Read voraciously. Keep writing. Do your best and don't stop because you can't yet live up to your own standards. Only you have your voice and your stories. Be brave.

Thanks, Ann, for your visit.

You can visit Anne at her website:
http://www.annehillerman.com/
and her blog site: http://www.wordharvest.com/

© 2011 Jean Henry Mead

Butchering Your Darling

By Jaden Terrell

I recently had to do some edits for the publisher who is doing the German translation of my first two Jared McKean mysteries. The edits were for the first book (which had already been fairly extensively edited) and involved a subplot that I felt was integral to the development of my character and also for laying the groundwork for the second book. At first, it sounded like they wanted the entire sub-plot cut. Awhile later, thank goodness, I got the email laying out several options, none of which were as draconian as I had first feared. They all, however, involved cutting out some things I'd grown pretty fond of.

Who was it who said that, when editing, you have to kill your darlings? Anybody? That author was talking about those sections that seem like "especially fine writing." Here, I'm talking about the book itself. So what do you do when your editor asks you to butcher your darling?For me, there's a process not entirely unlike the seven stages of grief.

First Stage: Panic and Resistance, Cleverly Concealed

You don't want to come across to your publisher as someone who is belligerent, difficult to work with, and who thinks his or her every word is plated in platinum, so you speak calmly and ask reasonable questions designed to discover the extent of the butchery required and see if the darling seems likely to survive it. How extensive is this change expected to be? What exactly is expected? The mind is racing. What can I salvage? How can I do this if I lose that? Aloud you say, "Hmm. I hadn't thought of that. Let me see what I can do...Of course, of course. I'll work on it and get back to you. By when, did you say?"

Second Stage: Panic and Resistance, Shared with Trusted Friends and Advisers.

In some circles, this might be known as whining. Keep it good-natured and don't go overboard with it, and your writer friends will give you the sympathy you deserve ("What? Are they crazy? That was my favorite part!") followed by some constructive suggestions about how to perform the butchery with the least amount of heartache. My go-to people were my critique group (thank you, Chester) and my agent (thank you, Jill), who asked me the question that saved the day: "What is absolutely no-compromise? What are the things you absolutely can't live without?"

Third Stage: Eat Chocolate.

Everyone knows a writer about to engage in plot butchery needs sustenance and comfort. If chocolate doesn't do it for you (what's wrong with you?!), try macaroni and cheese--or putting glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling, or covering the wall behind your computer with glittery stickers of unicorns or racing cars. Whatever makes you happy.

Fourth Stage: Get to work.

In my case, I tried the publisher's first two suggestions (A, cut the subplot completely, B, have another character settle it offstage), but the story didn't feel complete. I worked the story and re-worked it. Keeping my agents question in mind, I cut the parts that I could live without (no matter how much I liked them). I settled on the publisher's third suggestion (keep the subplot but combine scenes and cut as much of it as possible) but was able to incorporate parts of the second into it by having a secondary character do some of the legwork.

Fifth Stage: Acceptance, and--dare I say it?--Pride in the Outcome

Hmm. This is...not bad. It's kind of like realizing your perfect baby has an extra toe you hadn't noticed. And...what's that? A blotchy birthmark you somehow missed. Somehow it feels less like butchery and more like surgery. You look back over it and realize that, while you miss some of the things you cut (after all, that birthmark shaped like the Statue of Liberty was kind of cool, wasn't it?), the book as a whole is much stronger.

I sent the revised version to my agent and to the publisher. Both were pleased with the result, and the best part was that even the suggestions that didn't work on their own helped me find the one that did. I tell myself that next time I'll remember this experience and skip straight Stage 4, but somehow I know where I'll find myself. Right back at Stage 1.

How about the rest of you? Any adventures in editing to share?

Death and Taxes: Sheer Folly

by Carola Dunn

I'm in the middle of doing my taxes, not my favourite job, but inevitable, as Daniel Defoe was the first to point out (as far as I can ascertain). Paying was undoubtedly as painful then as it is now, but I doubt if trying to figure out what you had to pay was anywhere near as bad. Forms multiply, the paperwork reduction act notwithstanding. And you'd better keep a paper copy, they advise, because no one will guarantee that the virtual forms you've filled in with such labour won't vanish into the ether, along with all those emails that disappeared en route--not to mention the vanishing blog posts. Somewhere, Little Green Men are laughing their heads off.

The other inevitability named by Defoe was, of course, Death. As mystery writers, we spend a lot of our lives planning Death, accomplishing Death, and explaining Death. With a long-running series, I'm constantly trying to come up with different methods of producing Death, as well as new motives and new settings.




In SHEER FOLLY, just out in paperback, the motive is as old as the human race, but the means is new--to the Daisy Dalrymple series, at least--and the setting is somewhat unusual: an artificial grotto, one variety of "folly" of the kind loved by 18th century English landscapers.

The hardcover came out a year ago with the same art, but it wasn't till I received the first copy of the paperback that I noticed the figure of Death in the depths of the grotto. Or is it the mysterious monk who haunts the place?

Or one of the Little Green Men in disguise?






I've posted reviews of Sheer Folly on my website

Now to tackle the local bus tax.