Carolyn Hart Interview

by Jean Henry Mead

With more than three million copies of her mystery novels in print, Carolyn Hart is best known for her Henrie O and Death on Demand series. Her most recent series features red-haired ghost Bailey Ruth Raeburn of Adelaide, Oklahoma, Carolyn's home town.

Carolyn, when did your Death on Demand mystery series originate?

In 1985, I attended a meeting of the southwest chapter of MWA in Houston and visited Murder by the Book. I had never been to a mystery bookstore and I was enchanted. I had just started a new mystery set in a bookstore. I immediately decided to have a mystery bookstore named Death on Demand.

Tell us about Dare to Die.

Dare to Die is the 19th title in the Death on Demand series which is set on an idyllic South Carolina sea island. My protagonists are Annie Darling, who owns the Death on Demand mystery bookstore, and her husband Max Darling, who runs Confidential Commissions, a small business devoted to helping people solve problems. Annie and Max’s move into a refurbished antebellum home is on hold after water damage and they are staying at Nightingale Courts, the resort cabins managed by Ingrid Webb, Annie’s clerk, and Ingrid’s husband Duane. Annie and Max agree to take care of the Courts when Ingrid and Duane are called away by a family emergency. As they are leaving, Duane asks Annie to keep an eye on the young woman who checked in yesterday. "She came in the rain. Alone. On a bicycle." Annie befriends the young woman. When she is murdered, Annie and Max are plunged into fear and danger.

How much of your series is autobiographical?

Henrietta O’Dwyer Collins, a retired newspaper reporter, is the protagonist of the Henrie O series. Henrie O is taller, thinner, smarter, and braver than I but she reflects the author’s attitudes.

I’m intrigued with your impetuous red-haired ghost Bailey Ruth Raeburn of Adelaide, Oklahoma. How did the series come about?

I loved the Topper books and films when I was growing up. I see ghosts as reflections of the person who lived. I always wanted to write about a fun-loving, energetic, impetuous ghost returning to earth to help someone in trouble and Bailey Ruth answered the call.

You’ve received an amazing number of awards including the Malice Domestic Lifetime Achievement Award. Has the recognition resulted in increased book sales and reader awareness of your work?

I hope that the awards, which I very much appreciate, help to attract readers. It’s hard to know whether such awards increase sales but any mention of a book or books is helpful to an author.

What's your writing schedule like and do you aim for a certain amount of words each day, no matter how long it takes?

I try to write five pages a day (approx. 1,500 words) when working on a book. Some days I meet that goal. Some days I don’t. When I am stuck, I take a long walk and usually something will occur to me.

Tell us about your writing background.

I worked on school newspapers and majored in journalism at the University of Oklahoma. When we started a family, I didn’t return to reporting but decided to try fiction. I wrote juvenile fiction, then YA, and in the 1970s began writing adult suspense and mystery.

How much research do you conduct before you begin a novel and do you always visit the locale?

The novel dictates the amount of research. I wrote several early novels, preceding the Death on Demand books, which had World War II backgrounds and required extensive research. I’ve visited the locales of all the books written since Death on Demand. Once I set a book partly in the Philippines which I have never visited and a woman who grew up there asked me how many years I’d spent in the islands and I knew my library research had been successful.

What lies ahead for your well-known character Henrie O? How did her character come about?

My original ambition was to be a foreign correspondent. Henrie O enjoyed the career I didn’t have. One of the joys of writing fiction is living out lives that appeal to you. I am currently committed to write one Death on Demand and one ghost book each year so Henrie O is currently "resting," as they say in Hollywood.

Advice for novice writers?

Care passionately about what you write. If you care, somewhere an editor will care.

Copyright © 2009 Jean Henry Mead

Humble Beginnings

By Beth Terrell

Last night, at our Sisters in Crime meeting, Chapter President Chester Campbell arranged a Q&A session with several of the published authors in our group. Because Chester is a generous guy, I was invited to be on the panel, which also included Chester, Jennie Bentley, and J.T. Ellison.

One of the questions asked was, "What inspired you to start writing?"

We all had different answers. Chester had never considered being a writer until a friend mentioned that, if he could do it all over, he would be a journalist. (The rest is history.) J.T wrote poetry and short stories in college, where a professor told her she had no talent and would never be published. (Really? J.T has a successful series, which is selling like hotcakes, thank you very much.) She turned to writing again after reading John Sandford's books and realizing she could do that too. Bente can't remember ever NOT writing; for her, it's like breathing.

I'm a lot like Bente in that respect; from the time I could hold a pencil, I scribbled "stories" onto notebook paper. I was fortunate to spend much of my time with my grandmother and three elderly great-aunts. Aunt Augusta (Dossie) and I would cut out figures from the Spiegel catalog, sort them into families, and use them to act out stories. Aunt Frances taught me to read when I could hardly walk. Aunt Genevieve (J-wee) and I acted out stories with a collection of tiny glass figurines. My grandmother and I filled the car with imaginary animals. When we crossed the Kanawa River bridge, I would wrap my arms around an imaginary sea turtle and hang on for dear life. When I woke up with tangles in my hair, we made up the adventures of the little mouse who had tangled it. ("Wow. Marty must have had a time last night. What do you think he was doing up there?) My mother told me stories of her childhood until I almost felt they were my own. These wonderful women filled my life with books and love.

Is it any wonder I grew up to love stories?

We all come to writing through different paths. This is why you can give a dozen writers the same topic to write on and end up with a dozen different stories. Our experiences affect our perceptions, which color our writing.

How about you? What led you to writing? Why do you write about the things you do?

The Empty Nest Syndrome

By Mark W. Danielson

Most people equate the “empty nest syndrome” with their kids leaving home. All of a sudden – or maybe not so suddenly – parents are abandoned, left rocking in their porch chairs, contemplating their navels. At least that’s the festered image. After all, kids would be scarred for life if they saw their parents celebrating their departure. But fear not -- this story is about a dove that shouldn’t have been a mother, so it has nothing to do with people.

Let’s face it; doves are the symbol of peace because they are clueless about everything. When hawks attack, doves are the first to be picked off. When walking your dog down the street, they fly twenty feet ahead and land, repeating the process five or six times. Sure, doves are pretty, but they’re also pretty stupid. Thus, I present to you the empty nest with two eggs.

Now, in her defense, this dove did sit on her eggs for a couple of weeks, but she didn’t pick a great location for her nest. Located just below our bedroom window, the fireplace vent seemed an unlikely place for a nest. Unprotected from the rain and sun, we watched her every day, thankful that it was summer so no one turned on the fireplace. Still, we were hopeful that the birds would hatch. But for some reason, the mother just took off and left her eggs exposed to the elements. She came back once or twice, as if she was having second thoughts, but then she was gone forever. In all fairness, I suppose she realized she messed up and these birds probably wouldn’t survive the morning sun, day after day. From this perspective, her leaving these un-hatched eggs was an act of kindness. Then again, I’m not sure doves think things through.

Sometimes manuscripts can be like un-hatched eggs. The intent was good, but the follow-through wasn’t. If left unattended for long periods of time, the thoughts will die and it will never see the light of day. Likewise, there may be times when it’s best to hit “DELETE ALL”. Then again, if rescued early enough, you may be able to restore life to your manuscript.

The good news is authors are generally smarter than doves. You don’t believe me? Then show me one manuscript that’s ever been published by one – and don’t tell me it’s Lonesome Dove!

One surefire way to evaluate your work is to tuck it away for at least six months, and then give it a fresh look. Now when you read it, you’ll be in a better position to decide whether it’s worth more of your time. Oh, by the way, it never hurts to take a break and look out the window. You might just spot a nest egg.

Metaphorical Musings

By Chester Campbell

I’ve had an off-and-on toothache for the past two or three months. You know the feeling. A toothache is like having a bunch of little old men working around your gum line with miniature jackhammers. That’s a simile, of course, one of the most commonly used figures of speech. We use them all the time in conversation as well as our writing.

Did you know there are hundreds of different figures of speech? I don’t recall learning more than a dozen, at most. That was back in high school 60-plus years ago, so I’m not sure what they teach now. Here’s the simple definition for figure of speech from my resident computer dictionary:

“An expression such as a metaphor or simile or a device such as personification or hyperbole in which words are used in a nonliteral way to achieve an effect beyond the range of ordinary language.”

About.com gives an even simpler definition: “a rhetorical device that achieves a special effect by using words in distinctive ways.”

Besides the aforementioned metaphor, simile, personification, and hyperbole, the figures of speech I recall most vividly include:

Alliteration – repetition of an initial consonant sound
Antithesis – placing contrasting ideas next to each other in balanced phrases
Euphemism – using a term that sounds less offensive
Irony – using words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning
Onomatopoeia (I used to love that word) – using words that mimic the sounds of the objects they refer to
Oxymoron – placing incompatible or contradictory terms side by side
Paradox – a statement that appears to contradict itself
Pun - a play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words.


They say Shakespeare had to memorize more than 200 figures of speech in grammar school, and he probably used all of them in his writing. Ever drop a letter from the end of a word? You were being Shakespearian. It’s called apocope. The Bard used it in The Merchant of Venice with I am Sir Oracle,/ And when I ope my lips let no dog bark!

One I’ve used occasionally and never knew it was a figure of speech is epizeuxis. It’s the emphatic repetition of a word with no others between, as in Location, Location, Location! I’ll bet you’ve used prosopopoeia at sometime or other. It means to represent an imaginary or absent person as speaking or acting; attribute life, speech or inanimate qualities to dumb or inanimate objects. Shakespeare used it here:

With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies,
How silently, and with how wan a face!

Figures of speech were originally cataloged by the Greeks and Romans, who referred to them under the categories of schemes and tropes. A scheme is an artful deviation from the ordinary arrangement of words, while the trope refers to an artful deviation from the ordinary or principal signification of words. Personification is a scheme; a simile is a trope.

Google “figures of speech” and you’ll find links to all kinds of arcane listings. A lot of things we write come under that heading, although we were unaware they had a name. Do you make a conscious effort to include figures of speech in your writing, or just let them fall where they may?

Sorry

by Ben Small

I am sorry I don't have a post today. I thought of a good one on Thursday, but unfortunately didn't write it then, and then today, I just plain forgot. I'd love to have a whopper of an excuse, but the truth is I was out all day doing errands. Sprint took half a day to figure out my new Palm Pre wasn't working correctly, finally just replacing it, and then I had to drive thirty miles to have a mechanic friend fix my car. After that, it was off to Office Max because we ran out of paper and folders necessary to copy all the freaking documents the IRS needs to prove my Summer Book Tour, 2006 was legit. Since my first publisher went belly up and didn't pay me for all the books I sold, they wondered why I had expenses and only the book income from books sold out of my trunk, so to speak. Think we've got everything covered, but the only way to do all the receipt organization was to cut and paste onto sheets of paper and then scan everything. Then when I started printing, my toner died and we ran out of paper. When dealing with the IRS, I've learned it's best to organize everything and hit them with a mountain of organized paper, cross-referenced to our tax lawyer's work papers.

Fun stuff.... But at least we found some deductions we should've claimed but didn't.



And then the pool pump quit, so we spent time deciding that the pump wasn't working... I'm about as mechanical as Don Knotts. Three calls pestering the pool expert, no doubt sounding like a whale out of water, and nobody will talk to us. Did I mention it's 105 outside?

Yeah, it's a dry heat... especially when there's no pool. Just the green creeping in and some floater-frogs.

So I have no excuse except to say I forgot and am so freaking tired -- did I mention I did a 7:00 A.M. workout? -- and headachy that I may pull a LiLo and just collapse in a pile. To relieve my frontal lobe drum beat, I may need a lobotomy. I'd try an Excedrin injection, but the amount I need would bleed me out.

So, I apologize and promise to be back next Monday.

As for my Murderous Musings today, I spent them all on Sprint.

But at least Facebook reinstated me, even going so far as to apologize. Seems they thought I had too many Friends.

Summer Shorts: Casablanca, Fact and Fiction

Photos:

Oriental Lilies -- “As Time Goes By Casa Blanca Lilies and Ferns” from White Flower Farm in Litchfield, Conn. (www.whiteflowerfarm.com)

Production shots, 1942 movie “Casablanca,” from Yahoo! Movies

By Pat Browning

My friend Marlene called while I was reading Wendy Bartlett’s Comment on last week’s blog. Marlene and I laughed ourselves silly remembering our 1984 trip to New Orleans. She reminded me that we always meant to put that week into a mystery novel. Maybe it’s not too late. In fact, I have an idea …

Besides the 1984 World’s Fair, New Orleans was hosting a medical convention. French Quarter hotels were booked solid so we got a room at the Airport Hilton. It was a perfect choice for two fancy-free women who meant to go to Marrakech and wound up in New Orleans, thanks to a scheduling disaster at the Denver airport.

First crack out of the box, we checked into the Hilton and headed for the bar. The sign over the door read CASABLANCA. We fell up against the wall laughing. Finally composed, we went through the swinging door, and five minutes after we slid into a booth some guy named Rudy tried to buy us a drink. Oldest pickup line in the world: “Don’t I know you?” We spent the rest of the week dodging him.

Our first day out we were adopted by a freelance cab driver who wore brass knuckles wrapped around his fist. It’s true. I couldn’t make that up. For the whole week he was at our beck and call, hauling us back and forth to the French Quarter and the Fair. I never felt so safe in my life, and we tipped him handsomely. Why not? It was only money, and a lot cheaper than plane fare to Morocco.

The French Quarter was a small place. Everywhere we went, there was Rudy, hanging out the window of a limousine yelling, “Marlene!” He wanted her to call him. He wanted her to take a cruise on his yacht. Yeah, right. But Rudy is a story of his own, as is everyone we ran into.

My phone conversation with Marlene about the bar named Casablanca reminded me of a story I wrote for The Hanford Sentinel in 1978. I went to Morocco twice that year, first, with a group of travel agents, and again with Marlene and some other friends.

It’s a long story, so here are excerpts:

***
In the case of “Casa,” as everyone calls it, if you liked the movie, the city may be something of a disappointment. It’s like meeting a lovely lady with a shady past – your imagination keeps trying to bridge the gap between appearance and reputation.

There is, alas, no “Rick’s Place” in Casablanca. Nobody named Sam plays piano and the plane to Lisbon is a Boeing jet. … On boulevards lined with palm trees, businessmen in dark suits mingle with local folk wearing djellabas, burnooses and caftans. A veil here, a fez there, slippers and sunglasses everywhere …

The city center is reminiscent of San Francisco’s Union Square in the fifties. … On the map, Morocco lies due east of the Carolinas. In climate, topography and architecture it could be California. …

And what of the old image? Well, if you knock on the door of a disco at midnight, you may see a pair of dark eyes peering through a slot, while you stand there wondering if “American” is a proper password. (It is.) You may hear an occasional guarded reference to the “white market,” which apparently still exists, like a skeleton that keeps falling out of the closet. Guides warn against “long fingers,” as they call pickpockets.

But this is tame stuff in today’s world. You are as safe in Casablanca as you are in your own hometown, and how safe that is depends to some extent on you. …

Morocco’s recorded history goes back 3,000 years, to the Phoenicians, and its legendary history even further back, to Hercules. At one time or another, everyone has had a piece of the country – the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Portuguese … the Spanish, the French. Perhaps that is why the people, who have seen them all come and go, are so cool and so hip.

They are honest, courteous and hospitable. They are also clever, canny and shrewd. An outraged tourist who feels cheated in the market, in most cases, has simply been outwitted or outlasted. The merchant, after all, comes from a long line of camel traders. …
The whole country is a stage. The whole country is a canvas. And in Morocco, to the dismay of tourists conditioned by the sights of Western Europe, that’s all there is. No Westminster Abbey, no Louvre, no Basilica of St. Peter or castles on the Rhine.

In Morocco, there is only the land, the people and time – time and a sense of timeliness. It hangs like a haze above the clay-colored countryside, an endless landscape both harsh and beautiful. It falls like a shadow over the cities, which are little more than oases. …

Casablanca, for all its charm, is a better place to be than to see. For more exotic sights, you must leave Casa and go inland to Fez or south to Marrakech.
***

Keep in mind that was written 30 years ago. How much, if at all, Casablanca may have changed is not for me to say.

But thank our lucky stars – we’ll always have Bogie and Bergman – as time goes by. And at least in memory – and possibly in that mystery waiting to be written -- there will always be a New Orleans bar named Casablanca.

Copyright © by Pat Browning 2009

"Un-Wanted"

by Jean Henry Mead

Telemarketing calls are not only disruptive and annoying, they’ve been known to cause marital problems. A friend sent me a list of suggestions to handle telemarketers, who always seem to call ten minutes before the alarm goes off or halfway through our dinner.

Rather than hanging up on the caller, the list suggests saying: “Hold on, please . . .” Put the phone down, walk away and return the receiver to its cradle only after the party has disconnected. Or, if you have more than one line, say: “I have a caller on the other line. Please hold.” Then click to the other line.

We’ve been plagued with hang up calls from a “Private Caller” who's never there. The practice brings to mind the old saying, “Hang up if a man answers,” referring to an illicit call which can lead to marital problems. It’s a telemarketing technique which utilizes a devise that records the time of day when a resident answers the phone, so a telemarketer knows when to call.

To discourage such calls, immediately hit the pound key (#) on your phone six or seven times in quick succession, which confuses the dialing devise and eliminates your phone number from their system.

Telemarketing calls are not the only bothersome intrusions. I’m on everyone’s mailing list and receive stacks of junk mail nearly every day. My friend’s list also suggests ways to eliminate the problem.

Return the advertisements enclosed with your payment. And when you receive 'pre-approved' letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to second mortgages, send them back in their post-paid envelopes. According to my source, it costs more than the regular postage if the company receives them back, and hopefully you’ll be removed from their mailing list. It costs them nothing if you toss unwanted mail.

"Sixty Minutes’" Andy Rooney broadcast the following tips:

1. Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to Bank of America.
2. Send a pizza coupon to Citibank. If you don't receive anything else that day, mail them back their blank application.
3. Send the envelope back empty if you want to keep them guessing. It still costs them postal rates.
4. The banks and credit card companies are currently receiving their own junk mail, but they need to be overwhelmed. Let's let them know what it's like to get lots of junk mail, and best of all, they're paying for it...Twice!
5. Keep our postal service busy. They’re complaining that e-mail is cutting into their profits, and that's why postage rates are constantly increasing. So help them out by increasing the volume of mail.