Books and Cooks

I seem to be in the mood for zany lately, but here are some books I've truly enjoyed. I think I've read all of the Blackbird sisters series by Nancy Martin (Murder Melts in Your Mouth, A Crazy Little Thing Called Death, Have Your Cake and Kill Him Too, and others). The sisters are zany beyond belief, as are the circumstances of their life. But the main sister, Nora, fall in love with the son of a New Jersey mobster, an alliance deemed absolutely unfitting in view of the sisters blueblood if impoverished status. The on-again-off-again state of the love affair provides a thread throughout the series, but like many amateur sleuth heroines, Nora keeps running into murder after murder--many lead her into danger, from which she is rescued by her mobster boyfriend. All great reading. I emailed Nancy Martin to tell her how much I enjoyed the series and learned to my regret that she is moving on to a new series. But you can find most of them on Kindle, and Martin has a Kindle page.
I just finished the book I was reviewing for Story Circle Network--Ann B. Ross' Miss Julia Renews Her Vows. It's the gentlest of cozy myteries, no murder, no perilous situations (besides great embarrassment) but some serious stuff--a young woman wrongly accused of theft and assault, the heroine's marriage in jeopardy or so she thinks, a smooth-talking, self-promoting marriage enrichment counselor. Through it all Miss Julia (really Mrs. Sam Murdoch) remains charming, slightly ditzy, very southern, cleverly scheming, refined (thought she hints at matters of the flesh), and absolutely charming. After beginning hesitantly, I dove into the novel and tonight sent off my review. Look for it on amazon (maybe) or Story Circle Network Book Reviews, though I don't know when it will be posted.
For those of you who don't know, Cooks' Illustrated is a magazine and a book resulting from kitchen research. The cooks try dozens of methods of cooking one thing, then tell you which is best and what was wrong with the others. They also test products the same way--cocoa, ketchup, you name it, they've probably done it. And yes, they have a TV show--on PBS I think. For some time (years) I've had their best recipe for roast beef in my "Never Tried" file, so this weekend I decided to try it and bought a 4 lb. top sirloin roast. I doubt Jacob and I will make a dent in it tomorrow night, but I had been wanting some lunch meat around and I really don't like the prepackaged kind.
The recipe involves something my mom used to do--inserting slivers of garlic into the roast. But it's much more complicated than Mom's version. You roast the garlic, unpeeled, then peel and insert the slivers. Then rub a mix of salt, thyme, and more garlic all over the roast and let is sit, uncovered, in the fridge overnight--which is where it is now. It's not the first recipe I've found recently that calls for meat to be uncovered--I think I recently did a roast chicken that way, though it was always a no-no to me. Tomorrow, I'll brown it in a high oven, then rub a garlic/oil paste on it and bake. It should come out rare, which will make Jordan stick it in the microwave if she eats the leftovers. But it sounds really good, and of course I like experimenting.  I may even see what Jacob does with corn on the cob.

The problem of voice in fiction

I was about 10,000 words into a new novel and a bit stymied when I put it aside for other projects--some office work for the press, an editing project for another press, some book reviews, and life in general which, happily, always gets in my way. During that time I read a couple of mysteries by Nancy Martin about the Blackbird sisters, who are zany beyond belief and lots of fun. Aha, I thought--see light bulb going off in my head?--I need to make my characters funnier, more zany (like that word). So this week I've gotten back to the novel and guess what? My characters have told me they don't want to be zany. The grandmother who raised them has just died suddenly, possibly under suspicious circumstances, her inheritance is at stake, and each of the twin sisters has an agenda--their agendas don't come anywhere near meeting. Besides, at three o'clock one morning I figured out who murdered Gram and why, and I could see the whole novel in my head. Well, sort of. It's a long way between 10,000 words and 80,000.
But it's a truism of fiction, repeated to me by many successful authors, that if you listen to your characters, they'll tell you what's going to happen. Elmer Kelton talked of it with The Wolf and the Buffalo, a novel he intended to be about a buffalo soldier, freed slave, just after the Civil War. But a Comanche chief kept working his way into the story, and eventually the novel was about both--one on the rise in the army and the other losing his way of life and his culture. Elmer also said the characters in The Good Old Boys took over like a "cold-jawed horse grabbing on to the bit and about all I could do was hang on for the ride." I've even had it happen to me, notably in Mattie where as I neared the end I was astonished to realize that the man in her life was going to ride away and leave her (it also proved to be a forecast of the man in my life at the time).
Point of all this: I'm not writing a humorous cozy. Yes, it's a cozy, but the characters, while sometimes light-hearted and fun and even rebellious, aren't zany. I guess that's just not my voice.
I talked with my agent today, an encouraging talk--he has sent my manuscript to his top four picks (I forgot to ask when) but he said the good news is that he hasn't had a rejection yet. We also talked about getting some of my older books into e-book format for all the different platforms out there--not much money in that, but I think the name recognition would be good.
Thanks to the anonymous reader who posted a comment about yestrday's blog and how our children are statistically mch safer today than years ago. It's just that the media focuses on every kidnapping, every case of bullying, etc. I'm sure it's true, but I'm still a bit worried about my grandchildren. But I want to thank the reader, whoever, for adding that nice comment about my children. Yes, they are indeed wonderful. And that blog sparked a long Facebook conversation with an old friend I never see any more--fun!

Cliche characters and situations

Today on a blog I read an interview with a seasoned mystery writer--been at it 30 years--who said she created her new series featurig a tough woman with a salvage business (read junk yard) because she thought she'd scream if she read one more mystery about a sweet woman sleuth with a cat and a cop for a boyfriend and a meddling mother. Ooops! She just described Skeleton in a Dead Space, which my agent is trying right now to market. Well, Kelly Jones isn't sweet--she's pretty savvy, and she's a harried real estate agent trying to raise two little girls (I think they're the best characters in the story). No cat, but she does acquire a cop as a boyfriend during the course of the novel--and a dog. The blog is making me think outside the box and go back to that series I started on the Blue Plate Cafe.
I was particularly interested to read Martin's comments because I'd just discovered her Blackbird Sisters series, read two (just finished Dead Girls Don't Wear Diamonds tonight), and found them delightfully different, funny, and suspenseful. The Blackbird sisters are about the wackiest trio I've found in fiction recently.
I've been thinking for some time how frustrating I find mysteries in which the protagonist deliberately, for less than believable reasons, cuts herself off from the man in her life--she distrusts him, or she thinks she can't share her secret knowlege about the mystery with him, or she just erects some barrier between them. You just want to shake the woman or scream at her to be sensible. It's a great device for drawing out the plot, but it's a trap I hope I avoided, at least to some extent. Talk about cliches!
Thunderstorms in North Texas tonight. I just got Scooby in before they started--he is terrified by them, and I didn't want to have to try to dry him off--he won't stand still for having his feet toweled, so I have him dance around on some old rugs I put by the back door. But now we're both snug in the study and listening to the rain. Good for all those plants that Greg put in yesterday.