A quiet, peceful day--and an Oops!

Today was what I hoped--quiet and peaceeful. Since it was to be so hot, I made an early trip to the vet to get cat and dog food--costs more to feed them their special diets than it does me! Then to Central Market for a few things--when you get out of there for under $30, I figure you're really doing good. Then home to stay. It was a good day to stay inside--temperature of 102 and heat index of 105--I wish that darn heat index had never been invented. Makes you feel so much hotter just to heart it. I also think the heat makes you sort of lethargic. By the time I got home from my errands, did a little laundry, and emptied the garbage, I was tired.
But I went ahead and did my yoga. About halfway through my routine, I decided that the house wasn't cool and I wasn't hearing the a/c kick on. I'm an a/c neurotic since my unit is on its last legs and will be replaced Thursday--my birthday present to myself. In retrospect, I was only hot because I was doing a pretty good yoga routine. But I got up off the floor to check the thermostat (it was fine) and stubbed my toe so hard that I lost my breath, my balance, my good sense if I have any. Stood there recovering for a few minutes and then went to check the thermostate. When I came back there was blood on my yoga mat. In fixing that, I discovered I'd left a small trail of blood throughout the house. I have a funky toenail that I cannot do anything with and take to the podiatrist every so often--and of course that was the toe I stubbed. Tonight, I am limping around. It was one of the "Judy Alter wishes to recall this minute" moments. I foresee a visit to the podiatrist.
Got a lot of work done today, mostly reading a corporate history, which amounts to looking for the nuggets of human interest tucked away amidst lists of corporate officers, mergers, advertising campaigns and so on. The book was, however, full of fascinating pictures of artifacts. In between--at lunch and dinner--I gave myself permission to read a mystery. I did it again--ordered a book from amazon without asking for the sample first, in which case I wouldn't have ordered it. One of the things I've heard over and over about writing mysteries, especially cozies, is that you have to have characters that the readers like and identify with. Well, I flat out do not like the central figure--she's schemingly ambitious, even about a murder that happens on her territory. She may be growing on me a bit, and I'll finish the book, but it makes me wonder why this one was published and mine wasn't!
Someone on the Sisters in Crime listserv posted a website where you can insert a couple of paragraphs of your work-in-progress and it will tell you who you write like. Seems I write like Margaret Atwood, which is such a far stretch as to be laughable. But one of the members who writes police procedurals says he posted three times and each time got Raymong Chandler; then he posted his blog and got Stephen King. He's a happy camper tonight. Hmmmm--Margaret Atwood. I wanted to write like Sue Grafton or J. A. Jance or Susan Wittig Albert.
I heard on TV tonight that conservatives are criticizing the Obamas for going north instead of south for their vacation--I can't even begin to fathom the reasoning there. Surely not based on race. Tell me it isn't. But although right now Bar Harbor, Maine, is apparently as hot as the rest of the nation, going north in July for a weekend getaway seems like a no-brainer. I know liberals criticized everything George Bush did, and I admit to joining the chorus, but I swear if President Obama said the sky was blue Senator John Cornyn would object on procedural groundds. As my friend Fran would say, "Give me a break!"

British cozies, recipes, weightloss and a dictionary reader

I'm reading Death of a Cozy Writer by G. M. Malliett, winner of the Agatha Award for a first novel and a nominee for the McCavity and IPPY awards--all big deals among mystery writers. Amazon sales rank it as #6 in British detective mysteries and somewhere around 5,500 in overall sales listing--which is really high. Plus it's gotten great reviews from the major review sources plus a lot of mysteries writers. Praise includes such ideas as it is perfectly written in the Agatha Christie style and the British cozy is alive and well in this one, which is the traditional house party, mostly of unpleasant family members; someone is murdered and a Chief Detective Inspector or whatever the British term is comes riding in. Having heard this much hype about it, I ordered it for my Kindle and started it yesterday--only to be struck by the reason I really don't like British cozies. The language in this one is beautifully used, the wrting wry and full of wit, the characters almost unpleasant enough to be caricatures, and though I'm barely into it I can see the plot will develop well, with several suspects (we all know from the beginning who the victim is). So yes, I'm hooked enough that I'll continue reading. But the truth is I much prefer Cynthia Riggs' Martha's Vineyard series, with its 92-year-old protagonist, or J. A. Jance's two series, one with an Arizona lady sheriff and the other with a world-weary Seattle detective. Why? Because I don't identify with the stereotypical, upper class characters in the British mysteries. I don't understand their bizarre ways--from the daughter who is described as a stupid fat cow to the youngest son who is a failed actor and rapidly deteriorating sot to the oldest son who is cool, calculating and married to a lady with great societal pretensions. It's not my world, and I can't get into that kind of a story. That's why I'm trying to write mysteries about ordinary people in ordinary American cities (and incidentally wrote a difficult scene I'd been dreading last night). Note to self: stop buying British cozies. I have friends who love them, but I don't.
Last night, bored a bit with my reading and having written a thousand words and given out in imagintion, I went through the most recent issue of Bon Appetit, tearing out recipes I'd checked on my first quick run-through and giving others much more careful consideration before I threw the magazine away. I used to save stacks and stacks of them and finally had to bite the bullet and admit that I would never go back to old ones. But now I have this appalling collection of recipes that I've cut out, and I can tell my budget will go all to pot (no pun intended) because there are so many I want to cook and mostly they aren't the kind of thing one cooks for one, though I did find one I may try for myself. Steak with a blue cheese/horseradish sauce--think I could try that on a lamb chop and it would be delicious--and I often cook one loin lamb chop for myself for dinner. But tomato-cucumer gazpacho or creme fraiche (sorry I can't do the accent marks on this program) roasted salmon or asparagus vichyssoise with mint require an audience.
And speaking of food: the good news today is that I've lost 2.1 lbs. in the last week and 5 lbs. overall since I started Weight Watchers--lost for two weeks, gained one, and then lost this week. The hoot is I got an automatic message that I was losing weight too fast which could have disastrous results for my heart rate and all numbers of other things. All I can figure is they recommend you lose 2 lbs. a week, and I went over that and triggered the message. Doesn't seem to me 5 lbs. in four weeks is too fast. I know all too well weight lost quickly is soon regained. But I am laughing. I had lunch today with a friend who asked how you know how to assign points to a food, and I said you have to sort of eyeball how many cups, Tbsp., oz, whatever it is. "Well, what if I have a pastrami and cheese sandwich and assign it three points?" I explained you have to be honest or you're defeating yourself and wasting your money. I'm really trying on that score.
Finally, a tidbit I heard on the news today as I was pulling in the driveway. I have always been fascinated by the book Julie and Julia (of course now I can't find it in its usual place on one of my shelves to give the correct subtitle). It's about a young disenchanted, bored married girl in a tiny apt. with a tiny kitchen in New York who decides to give meaning to her life she'll cook all the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering French Cooking in one year. It's funny and interesting--some of the recipes call for pretty bizarre ingredients--and I enjoyed it thoroughly except that Julie has a potty mouth. Now it's being made into a movie with some popular young actress playing Julie and Meryl Streep as Julia--one of the few movies (along with Marley and Me) that I want to see. But I digress: what I heard on NPR today is that they were about to interview a man who had in one year read through the entire Oxford English Dictionary--some 21,000 pages and I forget how many entries. An astounding feat--but to what purpose? Will he write a book about it? I'm still puzzled.

Life Goes on

When you're really feeling bad, so bad you don't have the energy to think about food or brush your teeth, it's hard to imagine you'll ever feel better. But I really do. I'm back at work, going full steam, trying to make up for time lost. I started today with a doctor's appt.--I'm better but not 100% over it; not contagious however so I can go to Houston this weekend. Went to the office and then to meet old and dear friends for lunch--he was my ex-husband's trainer when Joel was a resident and then his senior partner. Years ago I told Connie that when I was a single parent I always had the feeling Russ was looking over my shoulder and would take care of me, and she said he would have. I remember as a resident's wife I was sort of scared of him or intimidated or something, but now we're old friends. We laughed a lot--and were quite honest about some people we've known--and when I ordered the twice-baked potato, Russ changed his order and said he'd have that too, and that's what we all three ended up with. Halfway through the meal, Russ looked at Connie and said "What am I eating?" Connie is a wonderful caretaker but quite forthright with him, as when she said, "Neither one of us know what you're talking about." They're moving to a northern suburb to be near their son next week, so I was particularly glad for today's luncheon--I'll see them again but not as often as I have. It's funny to think how relationships grow and change over the years--maybe as I've grown and changed and become my own person.
After lunch though, boy, was I ready for my nap. John said to me tonight that pneumonia will do that to you, so I immediately began to worry about getting worn out at our family get-together in Houston for Easter. But I think I'll just beg off whenever I need to.
Tonight I cooked for myself for the first time in two weeks or longer--stuffed a zucchini with the core of the zucchini, bread crumbs, sauteed onion and celery, and then put cheese on it to bake. Pretty good, and for once I didn't overcook the zucchini until it was mushy--this was almost crisp enough to need a knife.
Two days ago I wrote in a frenzy on my novel--ideas kept tumbling out of my fingers. But last night I only wrote a dull little piece that covered some necessary business--a funeral. But I have ideas percolating in my mind, and I guess I'll just have to let them percolate. In a way, nearing the end of the novel, I'm afraid--afraid of how to work it all out, afraid of the word count, just downright intimidated. But I am distracting myself with a J.A.Jance novel I hadn't read before.
I'm so glad I live in the technological age--my oldest granddaughter sent me a text message today about whether or not I as getting rid of my convertible. I guess her dad told her I thought, maybe for a day, that I'd get a Smart Car. But I loved writing back and forth with her. Have a few texting questions to ask the cyber folks this weekend--like is message length limited?
Oh, it may be time for another nap!

Being a writer again

I have sadly neglected the writing part of my life in the last few months. I can give all kinds of excuses beyond the holidays (though that was a factor too)--but I got tired of querying and getting no response, not even a polite "no thank you." I was quite comfortable with my first mystery but not really sure where the second was going, etc., etc. etc. I read an interesting response to an online question about writer anxiety. The mentor of the day was an experienced editor and she suggested that many writers fear that the truth will out--I'm a fake, not a good writer. I'm full of cliches and don't have any original thoughts. Or, maybe, as has occurred to me, I've written my one best book--I think I know which one it is--and will never equal that again. Sometimes anxiety is ambivalence--should I continue to "polish" that first book or should I work on the second. For heaven's sake, you can polish forever, even over-polish.
The suggested ways of dealing with this anxiety were to acknowledge that every writer feels that way (a big plus, because I didn't think it was true), that fear is based on a "what if," which means you're borrowing trouble. Recognizing the fear is good, but as most of us know in the back of our minds the way to conquer it is to act. Writer's block? Write your way through it. As J.A.Jance once said to me in a mostly forgettablel meeting, "We all know the way to write a mystery is to put your seat in the chair at the computer." Easier said than done.
Belonging to Sisters in Crime and the Guppie (Going to be Published) group has taught me so much about the business of writing mysteries, but it has in some ways intimidated me--those ladies (and a few gentlemen) are so intense about marketing, the ins and outs of the business, that I think, with some 60 books or more to my credit, I'm a novice. I liked it when I could wirte, send the mss. to my agent, and she'd send it off to a publisher who liked my work. I didn't expect the business side of writing to be so all-consuming that you almost lose heart for the writing.
Tonight I took a big step in getting past the fear and the block: I sent my first mystery, Skeleton in a Dead Space, off to a small publisher, along with the requested bio, writing history and synopsis. They said either send the first three chapters or the entire manuscript, so I opted for the latter. I chose this company because getting an agent when you're unknown in the field seems nigh impossible, and I've contributed to anthologies produced by this same company, so I thought that gave me some credibility. Besides, because I work daily at a small press, I think I would prefer to deal with one. It will never make me rich, but it won't put the sales pressure on me that a major house would, nor the publicity pressure. I will of course be crushed if I get a rejection, but then I'll go back to plan B, whatever that it.
Meantime, tomorrow, I'm going back to the second novel, No Neighborhood for Old Women. It's mushy in my mind and maybe after having left it sit this long, I can sharpen it.
Meantime, I'm working at home tomorrow, once again waiting for an AT&T person, but I brought a stack of proposals with me, in addition to a new manuscript to read. Two weeks out of the office makes me fall really behind, and a lot of things have kept me away from the busineses at hand this week. Every doctor's appt. I canceled in December is catching up with me in January! I guess it's good to have a lot of work to do--I can avoid the January, post-holiday blahs.

Musings about authors

I once knew a man involved with books who delighted in telling you about all the famous writers he'd met--well, actually I've known several of those. But this one seemed to always say, "When I rode in an elevator with . . . . " and name someone famous. (I actually once rode in an elevator with James Garner, told him I was a fan, and he shook my hand and said, "Well, bless your heart." I also once rode in an elevator with Tom Sellick, but it was early morning and he looked pretty forbidding, so I didn' speak--neither did anyone else.) But this is sort of that kind of column--a couple of authors I've encountered one way or another, and a comment on authors.
A couple of years ago J. A. Jance was in town for an evening program. At the time she was probably my favorite mystery writer (she does the J. P. Beaumont series set in Seattle and the Joanna Brady series set in Arizona, and among other things I admire her ability to go from one to the other--but both are great reading.) The host of the evening, knowing I was a fan, invited me to meet her for a glass of tea in the late afternoon--he was giving her an early Mexican dinner. I tried not to gush, just to say I admired her work a lot, and I was trying to wrote mysteries and did she have any advice. She said something to the effect of, "Well, we all know how you do that. You put yourself in that chair in front of the keyboard and you stay there." I felt dismissed, insignificant, stupid--you name it. Later at the performance I learned that her son-in-law was dying half a continent away while I sat there blathering like an idiot about wanting to write. And in spite her family situation she gave a witty, charming interview onstage that night. So I don't hold it against her at all, and I still love her books.
But her quick comment was all wrong. Some people can sit at the computer all day every day and never turn out a publishable work. I've known that since I taught freshman English--some people can write, others can't. And mysteries are a whole different thing. In the not quite a year that I've belonged to Sisters in Crime I've learned an incredible amount about plotting mysteries, character, marketing, selling to an agent, a thousand different aspects that I never learned when I had an agent happily marketing western historical fiction for me. There are women in the Guppies (Going to be Published) group who have four, five, and six unpublished manuscripts, have been working on them for years. They obviously put their butts in the chair and the hands on the keyboard a lot but so far to no avail. I don't know that I have that patience. I want to sell the one I've completed. That will encourage me to move on to others. But I'm so impressed with the helpful spirit, the willingness to offer advice and to cheer for victories, commiserate over rejections, of Sisters in Crime and its sub-groups.
I've never met Sara Paretsky, another of my mystery writer heroes and a founder of Sisters in Crime. Her heroine, V. I. Warshawski, is a pretty hard-boiled p.i. in Chicago, so the setting appeals to me. Maybe a year ago I read Paretsky's nonfiction Writing in an Age of Silence and was so impressed by parts of it that I tracked her down on the internet and sent an email--and got back the most gracious personal reply. Paretsky contributes to a blog that I follow--The Outfit: A Collective of Chicago Mystery Writers--and once when she posted something about Chicago's South Side, I left a comment about how it resonated with me as a child of the South Side (though V. I.'s South Side is Calumet City, far south of where I grew up). Once again, I got a graciou response.
So I guess my point here is that in general seasoned successful writers aren't territorial, afraid of competition. They're more than willing to reach out and help beginners, to encoruage, to give advice. And that's comforting. I'd like to meet J. A. Jance again, under better circumstances.
Meanwhile, tonight I'm not going to put my fingers to the keyboard. It's Friday night, and I've been working frantically all week, and I'm going to read a good mystery.