An outrageous day

 

Let’s talk mystery for a minute. Because “the mystery” as a literary genre is so varied, no one definition fits, so over the years sub-genres have developed: the traditional mystery (for which everyone keeps trying without success to find a definitive description), the sci-fi mystery, the thriller, the hard-boiled/noir, the police procedural, the historical, and of course the cozy. Frequently, the lines between blur.

But I think there’s a new kind of cozy—the outrageous cozy. The reader must suspend disbelief with these books—no individual, no set of circumstances could possibly be that outrageous. These books have one thing in common: a snarky, irreverent narrative voice, lots of spoofs about society and pretensions.

Of course I’m think of my Irene in Chicago Culinary Mysteries. Irene Foxglove, my diva chef, was never intended to be a believable character. You won’t meet her in the grocery store or the beauty salon. Henny keeps rescuing Irene from kidnappers and death threats, but the truth is Irene’s behavior is so impulsive, so demanding, so difficult that any self-respecting criminal would have dispatched her long ago. After one book, Irene rekindles her love affair with the fabulously wealthy French father of her only child and spends her time jetting back and forth across the pond in his private jet. Once again, she’s unbelievable—and it takes Henny’s voice to make the reader accept her outrageous behavior. Escape literature with no heavy moral message but some good food hints and recipes.

A few other series fall into my outrageous category—there’s Lois Winston’s Anastasia Pollock craft series, in which trusting wife Anastasia learns her husband, supposedly at a business meeting, has died at the Vegas roulette table and lost their nest egg, the tuition money for two sons, and the money he owes a loan shark who’s threatening her. He left her with the burden of his mother, an eighty-something, card-carrying, loud-mouthed Communist.

Or there’s Julie Mulhern’s Country Club Mysteries. featuring wealthy and widowed artist Ellison Russell who has probably stumbled over close to fifty bodies. She finds them in swimming pools, the hostas in her front yard, the country club parking lot. These murders are set against the waning of country club social ways in the 1980s, with Ellison dealing with her stereotypical dominating mother, her rebellious teen daughter, the cop she’s fallen in love with, and her almost psychic housekeeper.

And then there’s Finley Donovan Is Killing It by Elle Cosimano. A struggling novelist and always-broke single mom, at the mercy of her smarmy ex, Finlay is overheard talking about the plot of that novel that’s stalled and is mistaken for a hit woman. Lured by an enormous pay-out, she goes along with the charade, thinking she can bow out at any time. Of course the consequences are frightening—and hilarious.

In Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder by Valerie Burns, social media expert Maddy Montgomery, left standing at the altar, is #StartingOver in small-town Michigan after inheriting her great-aunt’s bakery and a 200-pound English Mastiff named Baby. Her plan to sell the bakery and go back to her sophisticated life is spoiled by a restriction in the will requiring her to spend a year in New Bison. Maddy doesn’t bake, and her Louboutins aren’t made for walking giant dogs. But when she is prime suspect in two murders, she has no choice but to stay.

And today I discovered another outrageous cozy: The Ex Who Wouldn’t Die by Sally Berneathy. When Amanda's lying, cheating, scam-artist husband, Charley, saves her life in a near-fatal motorcycle accident, she can almost forgive him for dragging his feet on their divorce. Then she discovers he'd been dead for several hours at the time she thought he rescued her. And not just dead…murdered. She's the primary suspect in Charley's murder and, as if that isn't bad enough, Charley's ghost shows up in her apartment. He was rejected, not allowed to go into the light. He claims to be unable to go more than a few yards away from her. She can't even be certain he isn't peeking when she undresses for bed. She must solve his murder so she can send him back to the light and be rid of him forever.

I don’t think outrageous cozies will ever become a big trend, but they’re fun to read—and I’m having fun writing one. If you’re looking for a way to escape all the stresses of our world, try an outrageous cozy.

Me, ten years ago

 You know that old saying, “Time flies when you’re having fun.” And it’s true—the last ten years, my years of retirement, have flown by. And yet it’s been a long time encompassing many changes. All that is on my mind this evening because three things popped up on my computer—those automatic memory things that the computer world offers (or forces on) us.

First was a reminder that ten years ago today I posted about the publication of my second mystery, No Neighborhood for Old Women, featuring Kelly O’Connell, the intrepid real estate broker/renovator who led me down the mystery trail for eight books. When I submitted my first manuscript and notes on the second to a major NY publishing house, the editor, an old friend, wanted me to scrap the first and replace it with the second which was about a serial killer—no fears, it was still cozy, just with too many bodies. I didn’t want to do that, and I declined. I liked the way the first book, Skeleton in a Dead Space, set up the backstory for the series. Sometimes I wonder how different my career would have been. I might be rich and famous, or at least an inch closer, with the backing of a big house and more people would have read Kelly’s stories, but I’d had have to deal with sales quotas and contracts and deadlines. I think in the long run, I made the right choice.

The novel is still available in print and digital form. And, yes, for those who think the title is familiar, it is a play on Cormac McCarthy’s much more successful—and much grittier—No Country for Old Men. Since that novel, I have published, either through a small press or independently, fourteen more mysteries, two non-fiction titles, and a cookbook, which I’m now thinking of updating. Retirement has been good for me.

The second thing that came up was a picture of me, taken ten years ago by neighbor and photographer par excellence Polly Hooper. It was one of several shots she took that I used on book jackets, blogs, etc. for years because I thought it flattered me. Do you look at other people and think something like, “My, she’s aged. I am so glad I haven’t”? I do that, or, snarkily, I look at women my age and think, “I’m sure glad I don’t look that old!” Truth is, as the photo shows, I’ve aged a lot.

But it’s been a tumultuous ten years. Ten years ago I lived in a 2,000 sq. ft. house—today I am in 600 sq. ft. No matter that I love my cottage, it’s still an adjustment. I did say to someone today, however, that it seems like I’ve lived in the cottage forever, and I’m so content in it that some of my friends worry about blasting me out now that we don’t have to quarantine as strictly. Jordan, Christian, and Jacob lived clear across town in Hulen Bend, but I saw Jacob almost every day and kept him a lot. Pictures of that cute kid pop up a lot too, and they really make me nostalgic.

In these ten years I’ve broken an ankle so badly it was beyond surgical repair, had major hip surgery which landed me on a walker, been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and acute kidney failure, and had scary eye surgery. Ask me today, and I’ll tell you I’m in good health. It’s all relative, but I sure hope the next ten years bring a more peaceful health scene.

Baby Sophie

Finally, a picture of Sophie popped up. She was a new pup, probably about nine months old. I still had Scooby, my beloved Aussie, and the two were inseparable, though Scooby tried hard to teach Sophie to be a good companion. She was wild, full of Border Collie energy and puppy mischief. If I have aged, so has she—in some ways. She’ll spend days, as she is now, lying by my desk. But when she takes a notion that there are too many squirrels in the yard, Katie bar the door! She is getting a bit of middle-age spread though I defensively claim that once she is groomed next week, she’ll be thin again. She’s a girl with a strong personality, a diva among dogs, and I’ve loved the last ten years. Hope we both get ten more.

So that’s my ten years. I won’t say I wouldn’t trade for a minute of it, because if I could go back in time, I’d change some things and hope not to have the health problems I’ve had. But I’m sure happy with where I’ve landed. Taken as a whole, it’s been a good ten years.

Going to school on Saturday

 

Saturdays are supposed to be a mini-vacation from work and responsibilities, but I went to school today. Specifically, I want to a webinar on the importance of first lines taught by Hank Phillippi Ryan and sponsored by the Grand Canyon Writers chapter of Sisters in Crime. If you haven’t read any of Hank’s books, you should immediately seek them out. They’re thrillers, and she’s really good, over and above the fact that she’s won several major awards in the mystery world. Her newest title is Her Perfect World.

Today she talked about what the first line of a book should tell the reader. I’ve always known, or thought, that the first line should hook a reader in, and that’s been m goal. But Hank says it must do much more, and she traced the scenario of an average customer considering a book in a bookstore. Our Jane Q. Pubic considers the cover—the first selling point—and then flips to the back cover to study the author’s bio and look at the photo. Believe it or not, readers want to know what the author looks like. But then, Jane Q. will open the book and read that first line—and right there, in a few seconds, she decides whether or not she’ll buy that book. Ideally, the first line will so grab her that ten minutes later she’ll still be standing there, reading the first page.

Hank says the first line must set the tone for the book—is it action adventure, spy thriller, sweet romance, cozy? It sets the book in time and indicates forward motion because the plot of a mystery always must be moving forward. We know from that first line that something has happened, something significant, and that the story will develop to tell us what that something was, how it affects the main characters. And the first line must introduce the main characters—that is, to use Hank’s phrase, “who we’ll be on the train with.”

She used several examples. One that sticks in my mind comes from Ken Follett (not being a Follett fan, I can’t tell you which one): “The last camel collapsed at noon.” So what do you know? The narrator is almost certainly in the desert, there have been several camels, but this is the last one, and it doesn’t just die—it collapses. It’s noon, and you can almost feel the desert heat. And undoubtedly the narrator is with a party, if there were several camels. So now they are in a bad place—the story has to go forward. How will they survive? What will they do?

The program sent me scurrying back to look at some of my own first lines, and I decided the best one I ever wrote came from The Perfect Coed: “Susan Hogan drove around Oak Grove, Texas, for two days before she realized there was a dead body in the trunk of her car.” What does that tell you? The narrator is not part of the story but a detached observer. Susan is in a small town in Texas. She’s not very careful about her car. This is a serious murder mystery, though with a light touch—it’s almost laughable that she wouldn’t know there’s a body in her car. And we as readers know we’re going to hear whose body it is and how it got there—and the story is on! I don’t know what Hank would say about that line, but I think it still needs improvement. Now I’m going to look at the first line of the forthcoming Irene in Danger.

Aside from the webinar, the highlight of the day was coffee on the patio with a new neighbor, a former teacher who founded a non-profit to help with the education of military children who are frequently transferred from school to school. Mary was CEO for twenty years, traveled extensively during those years, and has lots of stories to tell. It was a lovely morning, with a cool breeze, my friend Subie was with us, and we told our own stories about children and grandchildren and growing old.

A satisfying Saturday

 

 

Another day, but, alas, not another dollar

 

Coming October 1 - watch for it.
The fascinating history of the largest ranch under one fence
and the colorful family who owned it and lived there
for four generations.
Everybody recognize Harry S. Truman?

Today did not go as I planned at all. Fired up to continue working on that mystery I’m in the middle of, I got up early and was at my desk, checking email. By nine o’clock, I was ready to write. But I realized I also had slotted a fairly complicated cooking project for this morning, so I thought I would do that, get it out of the way, and then devote myself to the novel.

What I thought might take me an hour, took and hour and a half. When you cook from the seat of a Rollator, everything goes more slowly. I haven’t figured out for sure why, but I know it’s a truism. But I finally had my dinner in the fridge, ready to pop in the oven when my happy hour guests left, and I had the dishes all done. More about what I cooked in a week or so on my Gourmet on a Hot Plate blog.

But when I got back to my computer, one email had a chore for me—fill out a lengthy form for each of four novels that I am submitting for serialization. A company called Crazy Maple has a program called KISS whereby they serialize mysteries—they had some success serializing romance novels, so they jumped over to mystery.

They reached out to me, and after doing some checking on both other authors’ experiences and the content of the contract, I decided to do a trial with the four books in my Blue Plate Café Mysteries series. But today that meant I had to fill out these forms for each of the four books—lengthy and involved, wanting such things as my Pinterest URL (not only did I not know, but I also wasn’t sure where to find it) or the cover art for a book for which I inexplicably had no files. I did the best I could, but it took me the rest of the morning and much of the afternoon.

I submitted the final file just before friends came for happy hour. They are traveling to Canada to see her parents next week, the first time they will have seen them in almost two years. But the journey is fraught with border difficulties—the border between Canada and the U.S. will open August 6 and they go August 9, but there are still difficulties such as taking a rental car across the border and a possible strike by border personnel. I never have been much of a traveler—though I’ve enjoyed a lot of trips over the years—but listening tonight made me glad I’m content to stay at home. Among other things, to cross the border, you have to present evidence of a negative Covid test within 72 hours or some such narrow window. So you have to find a testing site—they will go to the local hospital. I have my fingers crossed for a calm and happy journey for them.

So now it’s late, and Sophie and I are settled down for the night. How about you?

A really dumb mistake

 

No blog tonight. I was almost done with a brilliant (of course) blog on how to write a mystery. No joke—I knew exactly what I wanted to say, and the words flowed. Then I noticed a funny symbol by the second paragraph and tried to delete it—and deleted the entire rest of the blog. Then spent way too long searching for ways to recover it. Finally located the recycle bin, but it wasn’t there. None of Windows’ helpful hints were helpful. If you want my newfound take on how to write a mystery, you’ll have to wait for another night. I will say that in a long career of writing on computers, this is maybe only the second time I have lost copy. I’m really lucky. But now I’m burnt out and too frustrated—or angry with myself—to rewrite it.

I will content myself with some trivia: one is that my oak leaf hydrangea survived the snowmageddon and is flourishing with big, beautiful blooms. But it is another dark and stormy night in North Texas. Thunder rolling, but we are lucky—the hail all around missed us, and we got a nice rain. I’m grateful the hail didn’t batter those new blooms. Jacob moved the deck plants under the roof overhang, just in case. Now we’re sorry they didn’t get the blessing of the rain, but there’s a better chance tomorrow with a 90% chance of rain—a mixed blessing. I will have to get out in the late afternoon for a medical appointment, and it is the day the neighbors come for happy hour. I have said since we’re all well vaccinated, we can move happy hour indoors if need be.

I had planned to go to dinner at a patio restaurant with friends who live perhaps a mile from me, but we cancelled because of the prospect of rain. She emailed to say she was glad we weren’t there in the lightning, but I honestly did not see any lightning tonight. Sophie for sure heard the thunder though, and it didn’t please her.

The other thing is to post a picture of my second-oldest grandchild and her father (my second son). She was ready for her high school prom, and since graduation will be distanced and limited—we won’t get to go—I am grateful she had the prom experience and an all-night after-party that I am assured was well chaperoned. This is Eden, getting a kiss from her dad, Jamie. Needless to say, I love them both a lot.

G’night all. Maybe tomorrow I’ll share my new secret on how to write a mystery. It’s an untried theory at this point anyway, so you’re not missing much.

Tuna salad with emotional baggage

Yellow fin tuna

Who knew that the subject of tuna salad was fraught with so much emotion! Yet a long—and I do mean long—thread on the Facebook New York Times Cooking Community page demonstrates the intensity of feelings. As someone who has eaten tuna all my life, staring with plain with lemon and progressing to salad, I was amazed at the variety of suggestions. And the passion behind some choices. One woman wrote that she knew tuna salad would be an emotional and deeply triggering topic. She did? I had no idea.

The big thing seems to be the binder—and mayonnaise wins over Miracle Whip hands down. People who don’t like Miracle Whip were not iffy about it—they were downright intense. Like never, never, never speak those words. The second big choice was water pack vs. oil pack. For years I’ve sought out the best water pack I could get—I now order it from a cannery in Oregon, as I’ve said. But a woman from Oregon wrote that they know tuna should be packed in oil; otherwise your salad gets watery. I will admit that my friend Betty makes the best tuna ever with oi-packed, hard-boiled egg, sweet pickle (not relish), and onion. No lemon, and that surprises me.

Mayonnaise, onion, lemon, seem to be the usual, with the frequent addition of hard-boiled eggs, pickle (some choose sweet, some choose dill). A few add mustard—I’ve tried a bit of Dijon, and it does add a nice spark.

But some unusual additions: panko (doesn’t it get soggy?), fish sauce (really?), jalopeno (okay, I don’t like peppers much), olives, curry, Old Bay seasoning, raisins, and carrots (shredded we hope). A suggestion I intend to try—a pinch of sugar to lessen any bitterness, not that I find tuna salad bitter, but it might act as sugar does in a tomato sauce. My mom said it rounds it off, and I was never sure what that meant but it seemed to be a good thing.

In the United Kingdom, wrote one woman, they put corn nibletts in tuna salad and serve it in a “potato jacket”—your imagination can probably supply that. A man wrote he marinates a tuna loin overnight in herbs, olives and EVOO, bakes it and then, I suppose, flakes it—or maybe he slices it and isn’t talking about salad at all.

A local restaurant serves a “deconstructed” tuna salad—but to me, it’s regular tuna salad, with slices of cheese and tomato and melon on the plate. The salad itself isn’t deconstructed.

This thread went on for days and weighed on my mind, so I made tuna salad today and decided to be bold and add pickle. But I didn’t have Betty’s sweet pickles, so I put in sweet relish. It was okay, but I prefer my basic which is chopped scallions, salt and pepper, lots of lemon, and mayonnaise to bind. I’m a purist. And I have two sons-in-law who won’t either one touch tuna salad. I worry about what they’re missing.

That was my big preoccupation today, but I remembered what I was going to mention yesterday. Several years ago, my son Jamie registered me for 23andMe—the results were a bit skewed from what I expected, and I was disappointed—not much Scot in this proud Scot. But yesterday unexpectedly I got a summary—I am something like 99.9% from the northern and western part of Europe, mostly United Kingdom, followed by France and Germany (I have always thought I was half Scot, half German). Other things were minimal, and my Neanderthal heritage had shrunk to “trace ancestry” which I suppose is a good thing. Being part Neanderthal is hardly something one wants to put on a resume.

Lazy day—other than doing quite a few housekeeping chores like emptying garabage, hanging up clothes, mopping up the muddy footprints (I created more streaks—mopping is not one of my talents and it’s hard to do seated in a walker). But I devoted some time to an absorbing mystery I’m reading. Imagine my shock when I checked the Amazon reviews and found I’d written one in 2017! And here I am reading it again as though for the first time. I’m not sure if that’s a tribute to the author or not. When I was at TCU Press, a member of our editorial board rejected a mystery because, he said, mysteries are forgotten the minute you finish the last page. I would like to think that’s not true and that, instead, my re-reading is a tribute to the author’s skill at drawing me into a plot. I won’t reveal the title or author so as not to prejudice you.

Here we go into another week, this predicted to be chilly but no cold with slight chances of rain until the end of the week. Hope it’s a good one for everyone.

A radio interview, self-control, and forgetfulness

For me, the highlight of this dull and cold day was a live radio interview. Thanks to Priscilla Leder of San Marcos for hosting me on her show on the San Marcos radio station. The show was an hour, with station breaks every fifteen minutes. Having been on the interviewing end of things a time or two, I was worried about having enough to say. But Priscilla sent me three pages of notes of things she wanted to talk about, and the hour flew by. We chatted a lot about Saving Irene, but also about mysteries in general, Chicago, food, and a few of my other books. It was a thoroughly enjoyable hour, and I’m grateful to her for hosting me. Bonus: I didn’t have to put on make-up, make sure my hair was okay, put on something besides my T-shirt and tights. Radio is sometimes a nice relief from Zoom. I will be getting a link to the program if anyone wants to listen.

I worried about Sophie getting needy or demanding during the hour, but she was good as gold. Almost the minute I hung up, she was at my elbow with that soft growl-like noise that means, “Feed me. And I want my chew!” She got both. We have both been house-rats today—weather is too nasty for going outside. I have both heaters going (the kind that hang from the ceiling) and still a sweater around my shoulders. So glad Christian is fixing a post of chili tonight.

I’m patting myself on the back. The current sermon series at our church stresses that we are all in this together, listen to the other person instead of reacting with argument, etc. It’s a struggle for me because I feel so strongly about the sins and corruption of the current administration. Sometimes I can’t keep my mouth shut when people praise trump or Cornyn. Today, a friend posted a note of congratulations to Amy Coney Barrett on her appointment, and I penned a quick retort: Congratulations for what? Hypocrisy? Breaking tradition about distance between the courts and the president? Succumbing to a wannabe authoritarian who sometimes can’t think his way out of a paper bag? Being a political tool? And then I deleted it! The same friend posted a video celebrating our lovely first lady. It took will power but I scrolled right on past without comment.

I saw a post today, in reference to attacks on Joe Biden’s mental acuity, that when a young person is occasionally forgetful, no one pays attention, but when an older person forgets something, it’s seen as the first sign of senility. We all forget things from time to time. I found great comfort in that. Sunday night I placed a grocery order, and Monday I sent Jordan to get it. She came back empty-handed and reported they had no record of my order. When I investigated, I found all the items still in my cart—I had forgotten to finalize the order.

Last night I was making that tourtiere I mentioned and Christian’s green beans, which require bacon and vinegar—like wilted lettuce, if your mom ever did that. It was after five before I remembered that I had defrosted the ground meat but not the bacon or the pie shell—yes, I confess, I used a pre-made shell, and it wasn’t as good as made from scratch. But I just can’t imagine rolling out dough in my tiny kitchen. Besides, at that point, it was my memory I was more worried about than the quality of the food, although the tourtiere was quite good and Christian’s beans are always welcome.

My closing thought on this chilly night: I think Biden will win a fair election, but I am terrified that the Republicans will steal it through voter suppression or the courts they’ve stacked. It is a fight, as Biden and others have said, for the soul of our country. What kind of country are we? What kind do we want to be going forward? Please vote if you haven’t already.

 

 

The silver lining

When I was young my mom sometimes sang a WWI song to me with the line, “Through every dark cloud there’s a silver lining shining.” I think I found my own silver lining in the pandemic and quarantine. And it’s Zoom.

Yesterday I was on a panel discussing culinary mysteries, part of the annual Bouchercon international mystery convention, named in honor of writer, critic, and editor the late Anthony Boucher. Each year, Bouchercon is in a different city, and a local committee works for two or three years to put together a program. It’s a fan con, designed to attract readers, rather than a writers’ craft workshop. For writers, it’s a prize to be on a panel because it’s a terrific way to say to readers, “Look at me! Read my books!” Rumor has it 800 fans registered this year.

I have only been to Bouchercon once, when it was in Austin, many years ago. A friend and I drove down, and I remember coming home laden down with free books, book bags, lots of bling. I also remember being overwhelmed by the size of the meeting and number of panels available. Back then, I was a fan, directing TCU Press and writing Texas history. I’d never thought of writing a mystery.

By the time I turned my sights to mystery, it was usually too far and too expensive to go to this meeting. I really don’t like to travel alone (I know—reveals the shy girl who lives inside me), especially if there’s flying involved (yes, I’m a white-knuckle flier). And then when walking became difficult for me, I just wrote off the idea of ever going to Bouchercon.

But the pandemic changed everything. This year the Bouchercon committee in San Diego had to switch horses in mid-stream and plan a virtual conference! And voila! I could easily attend from my computer at home. I registered and was fortunate enough to be put on a panel. “Let’s Eat” was moderated by Mary Lee Ashford and panelists included Nancy Parry (aka Nancy Coco), Leslie Karst, Maya Corrigan, Shawn Reilly Simmons, Kaira Rouda, and Bharti Kirschner. Note to mystery readers: look for their books. They offer a wide variety, from Bharti’s set in India to Leslie’s Sally Solari mysteries in Santa Cruz.

Yes, it was intimidating. No, I didn’t disgrace myself, but I didn’t come across as brilliant and scintillating either. As one friend wrote to me, I did just fine. Still, it was fun to hear other authors talk about where they got their ideas, how they incorporate food into mysteries, why culinary mysteries are so popular. And it was great to bring Saving Irene to the attention of readers, most of whom had probably never heard of me and my books.

I spent much of yesterday and today watching panels. I”ve enjoyed discussions about creating fictional small towns, one on “furry friends” in mysteries, one on writing humorous mysteries, and another on marketing. Who knows? I may tune in for the awards ceremony tonight where the coveted Anthony Awards are announced in several categories.

Even if I only went to Bouchercon once, I have been to many writing- and book-related workshops and events over the course of a long career in publishing. For years I was a regular at Western Writers of America, Texas State Historical Association, Texas Institute of Letters, Texas Book Festival. I know that the big attraction at such gatherings is the “schmoozing,” the friends encountered and deals made in the aisles of an exhibit or over a drink in the bar. And of course that’s what’s missing from Zoom conventions. Technology will never replace that, and many will be grateful when we can resume in-person meetings.

Meanwhile, though, technology is offering wonderful opportunities. The complexity that went into planning Bouchercon amazes me—pre-recorded interviews with guests of honor, business meetings, live panels, all with appropriate graphics. A sure-fire way for registered attendees to tune in without difficulty—once my “magic link” didn’t work, but I got a quick message that I needed a new magic link and one appeared promptly in my inbox. I’ve written before about how impressed I am with the technology my church has put in place for remote services—Bouchercon took that technology to an entirely different level. I see a whole new career field for young people—or maybe it’s been there a while and I’m just learning about it. Either way, I’m blown away!

You can go home again—or, using your hometown in fiction

I grew up in the Hyde Park/Kenwood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, and Chicago still holds a large part of my heart. So it was no surprise when I began to write a new mystery, Saving Irene, with new characters, that I discovered the protagonist lived in Hyde Park. What was a surprise was the learning I had to do to create a realistic fictional world in that familiar neighborhood.

If my character—Henrietta (Henny) James, a TV chef’s gofer--was to live in Hyde Park, she needed first an apartment. I chose Cornell Avenue, because I remembered rows of three-story buildings, some once private homes, others always apartments, but most with the bay window that for me characterizes much of Chicago’s older residential architecture.

Henny, who hates her full name, must learn where to shop, and dine out, and go to church, all the things that tie us to the neighborhoods where we live. All these years later (we won’t say how many), I found my memory was good on the big things but weak on the details. I would have to do a lot of research to create a believable fictional world. The internet proved to be a huge help.

Online, because I had no inclination to travel to Chicago during the pandemic, I discovered that some places prominent in my memory are gone. The YMCA where we had sock hops has been moved now far south and renamed. Cunag’s, the candy shop that made the thickest chocolate milk shakes ever, closed years ago. But the United Church of Hyde Park still dominates its corner at 53^rd and Blackstone, its congregations dwindling and the church in financial difficulty, the result probably of an aging congregation. Henny goes to church there—once.

Promontory Park

Keying in remembered names, I learned a lot: the Point, a grassy finger of land extending into Lake Michigan, is now part of Burnham Park which extends along the lake shore from 12^th Street to 57^th and is called Promontory Point. Its shelter house looks in much better shape now than when my friends and I went there to sunbathe and swim. Henny and her friend, Patrick, bike to the Point on rental bikes—yes, Chicago has a Bike Share program. I can even tell you where the rental stations are.

Being the assistant to a chef, even a second- or third-tier one with a show on a local television channel, means a lot of cooking off-screen. I discovered that the venerable Coop, once a pioneer in changing community grocery shopping, is no more, but Henny shops at a nearby Whole Foods and at Harper Foods on 57^th Street. The Hobby House coffee shop, where we went for late night coffee, disappeared, but there is a wealth of small restaurants—Valois, rumored to be a favorite of the Obama family, an upscale restaurants called

appropriately Promontory, and a university neighborhood pub, The Woodland Tap, known familiarly as Jimmy’s after the late owner, where they serve terrific Polish sausage sandwiches.

In my day, Hyde Park was the home of the first Morton’s Steak House. When I was in college, I worked in a hospital administration office (the hospital now condos), and my boss used to take me to Morton’s for lunch and let me have a Brandy Alexander. It’s gone downtown now, but there is a boutique hotel, the Sophy. Henny has a lobster roll there and luxuriates in a place she can ill afford.

Searching for cookbooks for her chef employer to reference, Henny goes to 57^th Street Books, an independent bookstore with an electric choice of titles with plenty of browsing chairs and corners. I used to go there on Sundays in college to buy The New York Times.

Henny’s work requires her to consult with Irene Foxglove, the chef, at the Foxgloves’ North Shore apartment. A search led me to put the apartment on North Clarendon; actual buildings there gave me details to describe the apartment. Henny is not quite brave enough to drive on Lake Shore Drive, known in my day as the Outer Drive (it always scared me a bit), but I learned that she can take a public bus from Hyde Park right up to Clarendon Park—an hour-long bus ride.

Writing about and discovering the changes in my little corner of Chicago was a lot of fun but also educational. I hope the combination of memory and internet research allowed me to create a realistic fictional world for Henny, Irene, and Patrick. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details.

Coping with summer

Chicken stir-fry

Texas heat shouldn’t be a problem since we’re all quarantining anyway, right? Wrong. It doesn’t work that way. The other night, as we ate supper, Jordan glanced at the wall thermometer which is supposed to tell indoor/outdoor temperatures and announced it was 82 in the cottage. It does no good for me to tell her that thermometer has given up totally on the outdoor temperature and is wildly inaccurate about the indoor. Besides, I didn’t have a counterargument. It truly was hot.

It’s an old battle between us. I swear she has Mediterranean blood somewhere, and I lean toward my Scottish ancestors of the Highlands—Celtic and all that, but thin-blooded. I am cold all the time. I like my patio door open so that I feel a bit like I’m in the outdoors or bring the outdoors in to me and also so that Sophie can come and go as she pleases—mostly these hot days she pleases to stay inside. Jordan wants the a/co on and the door closed, which in summer makes me feel closed in.

Between them, Jordan and Christian “fixed” my living room a/c unit—the kind that sits up by the ceiling. I never can think what they’re called, but it’s both a/c and, in winter, a heating unit. Jordan washed the filters, a much overdue job, and Christian moved the fan from the first notch to the highest setting. Please do not ask why I didn’t think of that. And last night I also turned on the unit in my bedroom.

The result was that the cottage was at a chilly 70 degrees this morning, and I was chilly—not cold, just a bit uncomfortable—all morning. I kept the door closed in the afternoon but opened it again this evening for company on the patio. Tonight, the unreliable thermometer says its 81 in here, but I am quite comfortable. Jordan is engaged with a guest on her front porch, so I don’t have her take on the temperature.

We haven’t been cooking “dinner” much, since when dinnertime rolled around Jordan said she was too hot to think about food. So last night I had a hot dog, and tonight it’s tuna salad with cottage cheese. Tomorrow night, though, we plan to do salmon—I bet we do it in the oven, rather than asking Christian to grill.

We always try to make Sunday night dinner special, and last Sunday we had chicken stir-fry. When I suggested it, Jordan said, “Oh, good, Christian loves to stir-fry.” Later Christian said, “I’ve never made stir-fry before.” But he gamely found a recipe, followed it, and created a truly wonderful dinner for us. Monday night I fixed steak fingers, something I used to fix for my kids all the time. Had a hard time making Jordan and the butcher figure out what I wanted—minute steaks or cube steaks. With some surprise, after I’d blown a fuse trying to cook supper, Christian said, “The meat is good, Juju.” Watch for these recipes in an upcoming “Gourmet on a Hot Plate” blog. Along with two easy sides, which I’ll feature tomorrow.

I am knee deep in fixing edits on my WIP. The editor was kind, but some of her edits make me feel really dumb to have made such mistakes or omissions. She skewers me on two points—misogyny, for directing cooking instructions at housewives when in truth, a lot of career women and men cook these days. I know that, because both my sons are terrific cooks.

The other, which I am sure will delight Jacob, is that she suggests I use old-fashioned language. I’m trying to correct, because I realize thirty=somethings won’t talk like I do. But Jordan, bless her heart, said tonight, “You’re the least old-fashioned person I know.” Made my day. If I asked you “THE” question about a relationship with a previous partner, what would you think? Yeah, that’s what Jordan thought too.

Stay cool, safe, and well.

Some thoughts on writing

Yesterday, I wrote 1,721 words on my work-in-progress, otherwise known as my WIP. Today I wrote 1,652. Proud of myself, except that it got me to thinking about measuring writing, if you can do such a thing. Most writers I know judge their daily progress by words written. They set a daily goal—for many it is a thousand words. And they judge themselves at the end of the day and then at the end of the week by how many words they have written. Lord knows I’m among the guiltiest.

Mostly here I’m talking about mysteries, because those are the authors I know who fall into this word trap—and I hasten to add that not all of them do. But bear in mind that the average mystery runs about 80,000 words, so if you wrote a thousand words a day, it would take you eighty days to write a novel, not counting weekends, holidays, and those days when the words just don’t flow.

The downside to all this is that there’s a temptation to set increasingly more difficult goals for yourself. Mine used to be a thousand words a day, but with this new novel the words seem to come easier and I’m averaging about 1500 a day. So now that becomes my goal, and if I only make a thousand, I feel somehow deficient. I’ve slacked off, not tried hard enough, given up. It becomes a contest with yourself.

Of course, the goal of writing should be quality, not quantity. But that somehow eludes many of us. My mysteries these days are indie published, which means I publish them. So I have no deadlines. I may say to myself that I want to get this novel out in time for summer beach reading, but there is no contract under which I’ll be punished if I miss the deadline. No one cares but me.

On the other hand, some among mystery writers—and I’m taking this from posts by Sisters in Crime—believe that what really matters is getting that first draft written. Just pile up the words. You’re going back to revise and edit anyway, and that’s the time to seek quality, not quantity. Some writers do five or ten drafts—or more—before they are satisfied with a manuscript.

I don’t. I tend to write it, go back and check for inconsistencies, awkward phrases, repetition, etc. But I rarely if ever revise to the point of changing major structures in the plot. So what I write is pretty much what stays there and becomes the final book.

When I moved from writing western historical fiction to mysteries, a move I haven’t really finalized yet and don’t intend to, I discovered a whole new world of everything from rough drafts to agents and publishers and, most of all, promotion or marketing or whatever you want to call finding clever ways to say, “Please buy my book.” But one big thing I learned was the difference between plotters and pantsers. Plotters map out the book in advance. Well before that first sentence, they have down on paper what is going to happen in each chapter, how it fits into the arc of the book, and so on. They know how each character looks and feels and how they will act. When  you write historical fiction, this is easier, because history gives you the road map.

When you’re a pantser, like me, that road map is not there. Literally, I write by the seat of my pants. I have a general idea, and often it’s the first sentence that gets me going. But then I’m off and rolling—at least that’s what I hope. The plot unravels as I write. Frequently I can’t tell you until well into the novel who is the murderer, sometimes not even who is the victim. My characters surprise me and take the book in wildly different turns.

Texas novelist the late Elmer Kelton used to say, “Listen to your characters, and they will tell you what’s going to happen.” I have known very few authors who disagree with this.

With the cozy mystery I’m currently writing, a culinary novel set in contemporary Chicago (my hometown), I am fortunate because the plot easily moves along, often without my interference. For instance, yesterday when I was napping and semi-asleep, I worked out the backstory that the protagonist needs to know to solve the mystery. So now I have notes that will carry me forward for several days. And I find maybe the mystery is going to be a small part of the story. The relationship between characters is the main story.

Writing, for me, is an exciting process of discovery. But I wish I could get over the fixation with word counts. Even as I say that, I’m checking to see how long this blog post is and finding its way longer than most. Sorry.

Storms, salads, and a workday

Everything outside my cottage is almost eerily still right now, the ornamental grasses that I so love barely stirring. In the distance I hear occasional thunder that I am sure will move closer quickly. There were wild storms to the north of us last night with good-sized hail, and tonight storms are predicted for us. High winds, possible hail, possible flooding but little danger of tornadoes—praise be for small favors. Sophie is terribly apprehensive and sticking to my like glue. Jordan has laid out a candle and matches for me, made sure I have a flashlight, though none of us can find the good big one I had. It’s foolish in Texas, I know, but I sort of like that feeling of anticipation.

Today was the workday I wish I had every day. Sophie got me up a little before eight—our newfound routine with the crate works well, except that last night I didn’t latch it tightly and she worked her way out. (Tonight, with storms, I won’t crate her, because I know she needs to be close to me.) Anyway, she woke me a bit before eight, and I drank my tea while checking email, two professional lists, and Facebook. Yes, I am a Facebook devotee and ready to do battle with anyone who scorns that social medium. I learn a lot from Facebook, being careful about sources (okay, sometimes I slip up). And I’ve made new friends, re-hooked with old friends.

Today, on another list—professional for mystery writers—I contacted a woman who lives in Chesterton, Indiana. May not sound like much to you, but when I was a kid, we had a primitive summer cabin (really! No plumbing or electricity) at the Indiana Dunes State Park, on a high bluff looking down at the southern tip of Lake Michigan. We had to carry our clothing and groceries in through a mile in the woods, but I cannot describe adequately how wonderful that cabin was nor what great memories I have. Chesterton was the charming town where we went to shop. Author Nancy Nau Sullivan tells me it still retains a lot of its charm today. What a nice surprise.

Back to my workday—after checking social media, I spent the morning and early afternoon writing. Achieved 1,721 words today. Since I’m pretty much a first-draft writer, most of those are probably keeper words. But by two-thirty, I’d written my words, had my lunch, and was free to spend the rest of the day as I wanted, without offending my work ethic. So I read, explored specialty pages on Facebook—the New York Times Cooking Community and one called Reminders of Growing Up in Chicagoland. I didn’t end up with time to read much today, but that also is part of my ideal day. I am reading a novel that doesn’t really grab me and yet I’m determined to finish, which may account for my not working it in to my day. But I have two waiting that I am anxious to read.

To go on with my day: I nap somewhere around two-thirty and get up around four. No, it’s not sound sleep, but it’s a good time for me to doze and dream and plan—and write in my head. Then I catch up with Facebook and, most evenings now during the quarantine, I cook, and the family has dinner in my cottage.

Tonight it was Cobb salad—cut up a rotisserie chicken, fried some bacon, added cherry tomatoes, quartered artichoke hearts, crumbled blue cheese, sliced avocado. All dressed with leftover herb sauce I’d made the other night for salmon. Although I've written about Cobb salad as a composed salad, this one ended up more tossed. Still so good.

I know it’s self-indulgent and spoiled of me in these days when so many are suffering so terribly, but I would love to spend each day like this. I often think that I live in two worlds—in mine, where I am safe and happy in the cottage but out there is another where people are suffering horribly and dying gruesome deaths and medical personnel are risking their lives as are the people who make our world go round—delivery people, mail carriers, grocery workers and so on.

It strikes me that why I am so vehement against trump and McConnell and Barr and their cohorts is that daily my sense of moral outrage increases. How can they, how dare they play politics and satisfy their personal grudges and greed at the cost of the suffering and lives of Americans .what is it now—a million cases and seventy thousand dead? More than Vietnam? I can imagine no punishment great enough for their sins against humanity and against democracy. And because of them, I do not sleep soundly at night. But I do speak out, often and loudly. 

The days run one into the other

S

Sophie protecting her food

For her, eating is a competitive sport, and one of the 

Cavaliers always tries to share her dinner

Sophie is having none of that

Jordan lost her driver’s license and a credit card today, and in the process of searching for it we all tried to reconstruct what had happened yesterday. She knew she had them when she ran errands in the early afternoon, but after that the day was a blur. In the process of trying to remember yesterday, we realized how much the days now run not each other with a sameness. What did we do yesterday that made it stand out from the day before—or from today? We couldn’t solve it. A great commentary on the way we are living our lives in this pandemic.

Today stood out because it was Palm Sunday, and we went to church online, whereas we would normally be dressed in our fines, sitting in the pews to watch the church children and youth parade into the sanctuary waving palms. The church had called for pictures of us waving our palms, and that was among the many things on my to-do list that didn’t get done. But it was fun to see pictures both contemporary and from previous Palm Sundays—we spotted Jacob in one, apparently from the year he was baptized.

The rest of the day was, as I said before, like any other day. I wrote the blog I should have written last night—I really think keeping to my ideal schedule of a blog every night helps keep me alert and in some kind of discipline. I hope it doesn’t bore you.

I finished the mystery I was reading and began to explore what to read next. But I also went back to the last notes I had made for my Kelly O’Connell Mysteries and found an idea I thought might work. At first, I thought of checking in on Kelly and Mike to see how they were handling the pandemic, but all advice on the writerly lists I read is against pandemic novels now. No one wants to read about them when that is our reality. I may have found myself a new project, after floundering for over three weeks with a possible non-fiction project and a compilation of blogs. A new mystery might give me just the thing I need, though I’m hesitant to say that out loud.

We had sausages, northern-style beans, and a lemon potato salad for supper. Making the potato salad took a bit of my time. It calls for making the dressing and boiling the potatoes and peeling immediately so you can pour the dressing over warm potatoes—always hurts my thumb that takes the peel off, but I know that warm potatoes absorb dressing much better. When I was young the hospital where my dad worked had an older Italian cook. She taught my mom to peel and dress warm potatoes with a bit of vinaigrette, even  if you were making mayonnaise/mustard potato salad. Said it gave them more flavor and over the years I have always followed her advice. But I dislike peeling hot potatoes.

Jordan in my TCU mask

Before supper tonight Jordan came out and made me a mask out of a TCU bandana—then she promptly modeled it. Good thing we are related and are not practicing social distancing within the family. A good neighbor also gave us four masks, and I am indebted. We are all set—if I ever get to leave the cottage again.

Be safe, my friends. This too shall passl

Change—and new directions

No, don’t go! You’re not in the wrong place. This is still Judy’s Stew, only dramatically changed, even with a new name.. I’ve gradually been changing the look of my social media presence to reflect my change away from cozy mysteries and back to where I started—writing about women of Texas and the American West. So I thought a western look would be more appropriate.

The URL for the blog remains the same— http://www.judys-stew.blogspot.com but I’ve added a new title: “View from the Cottage.” When I was first in the cottage, I was recovering from surgery and got out very little, so what I saw of the world was viewed from the cottage. In my files, I’ve called the blog that ever since, and it’s true—my world view is as I see it from the cottage, which I guess distinguishes it from those who write from positions in the middle of politics or academia or the commercial world. It’s sort of an onlooker’s perspective. Anyway, changing the look seemed a good time to change the name.

              Change, though some resist it mightily, is usually a sign of growth, and that’s what I’m taking my writing change as. Mysteries were fine, I wanted to try my hand at them, and I think I did a credible job with fourteen either in print or available digitally. I certainly broke no sales records, but my books were consistently given four and five stars, and the comments I got encouraged me that I wasn’t embarrassing myself too badly.

But the inspiration was running out, and I knew I would never compete with younger, more dedicated authors, those who daily study their reviews and ratings, who compile statistics about what advertising works and what doesn’t, who take the business end of being a writer more seriously than I ever wanted to. It embarrasses me a bit that I wasn’t willing to do all that, to master the technology, but all I ever wanted to do was write and tell stories. Writing has, to me, always been my first calling (beyond being a mother), but it has always been second in a way—for years, I had a demanding—and satisfying—day job, so I wrote in the evenings. Now in retirement, I write at a more leisurely pace. Making room for reading and cooking and naps and lunches and dinner with friends. So the business side was low on my list.

In many ways, I see this change in focus as my career taking off in a second reincarnation at my somewhat advanced age. I have said I owe it to Debra Winegarten who, knowing she was dying, asked me to write her Alamo book for her. I did, and that book, The Second Battle of the Alamo, will launch March 7. Working on that book drew me back to history and westerns and women, as I realized how much I was enjoying working with the material. The publisher liked the manuscript well enough that they gave me a contract for another book—tentatively titled “The Most Land, the Best Cattle: the Waggoners of Texas.” And they issued contracts to reprint five of my historical novels about women of the American West. I said to a friend that I felt a bit that I was riding on a dead woman’s coattails—Debra died over a year ago—but the friend reassured me by saying, “Debra cracked the door for you, but you opened it with the manuscript you turned in.” Heady stuff.

Anyway, here I am—writing about women of the West and now thinking ahead to my next title, even while still working on the Waggoner book. And I’m happy as a clam. Will there ever be another mystery? What has happened to Kelly O’Connell, and what’s going on at the Blue Plate Café? I’m not ruling anything out.

I did have some hesitation about changing the look of my blog, afraid I’d lose readers simply because they didn’t recognize the familiar sketches of my, my kids and dog, my cottage. But Judy’s Stew was running out in another way—originally meant to be about writing, cooking, and grandchildren, it evolved into a personal essay/opinion blog. Cooking spun off into my Gourmet on a Hot Plate Blog, my grandkids are so busy with school and sports and life that I don’t see them as much and don’t have as much to write about them, and I find myself writing more about random topics than writing.

So I hope those who read the blog regularly will stick with me. And check out the new look of my Web page— http://www.judyater.com

 –and my Facebook Author page--   https://www.facebook.com/Judy-Alter-Author-366948676705857/

And please give me some feedback. Let me know what you think.

A demolition report and a day with lots of irons in the fire

It’s really nice to have a son-in-law who pays attention o my books. Brandon sent this demolition picture with the explanation that they found a dead space next to grandson Sawyer’s closet but, alas, there was no skeleton. Some may remember that my first mystery was Skeleton in a Dead Space; that dead space, like the one in my house, was in the kitchen. Haven’t read it? I think it’s one of my best mysteries. And I love that Brandon saw the connection.

Megan reported about five that grandson Ford and friends were having fun tearing out walls, and she was going home to join them. So demolition proceeds but apparently won’t be total for a couple of weeks. Meantime, what excitement for teen boys.

And the local teen is fishing with his grandfather. He called to ask if the tanks on his uncle’s ranch are stocked. The answer is yes, years ago, but the only way to find out if there are still fish is to go fishing. Jacob said we’d plan a day at the ranch, but then he said, “Juju, when you say tanks, do you mean the ponds?” I told him tank is Texas-speak for pond, and he would have to work on his vocabulary.

For me, a busy day, which I like. When I was in my late teens, I was my father’s secretary—he was administrator of a hospital. I always swore that experience made me a perfect executive secretary, though heaven forbid we should refer to a woman that way today. But I can clear a desk of lots of projects in one big sweep. And I like it that way.

Today I met with a co-conspirator about forming a local group of Better Angels, the national organization that brings together people of opposing political opinions for moderated discussions—no arguing, no proselytizing, just learning from one another. I pretty much secured our church as a meeting place and began to compile a list of interested participants—if you’re interested, please let me know. I set in motion a blog tour for my cookbook, Gourmet on a Hot Plate, and committed to write five blogs by early April. I emailed my accountant that I had finished my tax organizer and was ready to turn it over to him. I straightened out some prescription confusion--always a time-consuming chore as you get left on hold. But the biggie was that I got the edits back on the Alamo manuscript, which means I have a lot to do immediately—dealing with edits, adding some new material, and compiling a complete list of photos. I actually love waking up in the morning and knowing that projects like this are waiting for me.

The mystery I’ve been doodling along goes to one side, though I did make enough notes that I would know where to pick it up. A good day, and I’m a happy camper.

The lazies and a discourse on language

What happened to the sunshine? Tuesday was such a pretty day. Seems, though, that spring was teasing us, and March will come in like the proverbial lion. We apparently got precipitation overnight, but all was dry this morning, despite scary TV coverage of fender-benders and icy bridges. Jordan and I got out for a quick grocery run, and then I was in for the day.

It was a soup for lunch, a good book, and a long nap kind of a day. The kind of day when I sit at my desk with a sweater around my shoulders and my prayer shawl draped across my lap. Talk about stereotypes of a little old lady! All I need is a cat and some African violets. Still, it’s the kind of day when you never really get toasty warm.

I have a bad case of the lazies. Spent the late day mostly reading—yes, some in social media—but the book that should really capture my attention is the one I’m supposedly writing. I wrote 500 words, far short of my daily goal but that’s okay. This is the book I tell myself I’m not being compulsive about finishing. I did have a revelation today—about the naming of characters. The protagonist is Cordelia Smith—she makes a fuss about that highfalutin first name with such a simple last night. I gave her Cordy for a nickname, but it never sounded right to my ear. So today I played with nicknames and came up with Delia—I have known women named Delia. But then it occurred to me that in childhood her name might have become Dilly in the speech of other children. I think that fits her personality. At least I’ll try it on her for a while.

Dilly is an assistant to a haughty, pretentious TV chef (with no real reasons for pretension) whose name is Irene Foxglove. I like the play of a chef, fixing food, with a last name that is also a poisonous plant. Too much? I think I even have a title for this fledgling novel—either Saving Irene or Protecting Irene. Opinions welcome. See the conundrums authors deal with, in comparison to weighty matters like the future of our planet?

And since I’m worrying about language in my writing, I’ll share a concern. My church, in its drive to be inclusive (which I much admire and applaud), has announced a change in wording. The word “Creator” may be substituted for “Father”—it’s that gender thing, you know. But if you feel comfortable with “Father,” in say the Doxology, you are welcome to say it. I’m just old-fashioned enough that I do prefer the traditional language. I even wrote a note to the senior minister expressing my hope that in the rush to be inclusive, church leaders would also consider the flow and beauty of the language.

The words of a traditional hymn, “The Church’s One Foundation,” were changed several years ago to be gender neutral. Here’s the original version:

The church's one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is his new creation
By water and the Word.
From heaven he came and sought her
To be his holy bride;
With his own blood he bought her,
And for her life he died.

Well, you can see how that upset the gender-neutral applecart. That’s the version I grew up with, and I cannot quote the revised to you. I can only tell you it violates grammatical rules such as subject/pronoun agreement, is awkward, and grates on my ear. It seems significant to me that I could not find the revised lyrics online. I’d like to go on record as believing in the generic pronoun.

So call me traditional, a little old huddled in her prayer shawl. Change is good—but not all the time. I’ll be watching what happens to the language.