On Secret Languages

Letter from Aix-en-Provence

JAN: When I was a kid, I loved secret languages. My friend Karen had older sisters who taught them to us. There was one language that involved adding "ub" or "ubba" between the syllables. As in Jungubbalububba Redubba writubbaters. Or something like that. All that mattered was it sounded incredibly exotic and your best friend could understand you in the playground. Better yet, you could talk about boys when they were right there, and they never got it. Boys didn’t go in much for secret languages.

That quickly gave way to Pig Latin, which was a more highly respected and widely understood secret language. You had to be more careful in your usuage, but there was the possibility of an older junior high school student actually picking up on something you said and responding to you in your oh-so-in-crowd special code.

When I got to high school, I quickly fell in love with first year French, which was so pretty and way more exotic than Pig Latin. Had Cinderella originally been from France and spoken to her fairy godmother in French? I was pretty sure she had.

But French was a hell of a lot harder to speak and understand. And the challenge was on. I wound up taking eight years of French, minoring in it in college and did a semester abroad in Aix-en-Provence. Although I work hard to try to keep up on my French via Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone, I’m still pretty much a piker. But God knows, I try.

Which is why I’m back in Aix-En-Provence for a month, living in a condo, and shopping at the Monoprix and the market, which requires more use of French than staying at a hotel where the concierge can step in and help. Last week, my daughter and I went to the market to buy ingredients we were making for a special dinner that night. We bought cheeses, which I promptly put down when I went to another vendor and searched through my wallet for five euros to buy sunflowers.

By the time I got home, realized I didn’t have the cheeses and ran back to the square, the market stalls were down, the garbage trucks had rolled in, and everyone was cleaning up. I raced back to the cheese guy to see if I could buy more cheese. To get him to reopen his stall and sell me some, I had to explain what I’d done.

J’ai perdu mon sac du fromage quand j’ai achete des fleurs, I told him. This also included a lot of hand gesturing to both indicate where the sunflower vendor had been and that I was clearly a space shot (finger pointed to head with roll of the eyes and shrug).

Not only did he open to sell me the cheese, he gave me a one Euro discount because he felt sorry for me.

And I thought, my God, the SECRET LANGUAGE WORKS.

I realize that on some level, I think that every time I say anything to anyone in French and they understand and respond. There is always this rush of both surprise and excitement that these exotic words I’ve strung together form a sentence that can be decoded.

It's why I spent all that money on airfare. And well worth every penny.

So I think, that the thrills in life haven’t changed much for me since I was a kid in the playground, only in France, I’ve noticed that the crowd "in" on the decoding is pretty signficant. And you have to watch what you say -- and not just to the junior high schoolers. All the boys are in on the secret language, too.

(Do you remember any secret languages from elementary and junior high school? Apparently, it's a regional thing with Ubba Dubba in the Northeast and Gibberish in the South. Gungi was spoken in Waltham, MA and Opish in New York City.)

Thursday's guest hunks

While we're in between our author guest hunks, we thought you'd enjoy a visit from our private fellas. These are the guys who bring us coffee in the morning, attend book events, laugh at our jokes, and generally Make Life Worth Living! In order of appearance, here are Roberta's John, Jan's Bill, Rhys's John, and Hank's Jonathan. (Missing but not forgotten are Hallie and Ro's guys.) Aren't they adorable?

Facing our darkest fears

HALLIE: At last, "Never Tell a Lie" is published. I labored over that sucker for nearly three years, so now when people tell me "I couldn't put it down! I finished it in three hours!!" I have distinctly mixed feelings.

The idea for the book came to me, innocuously enough, at a yard sale. Just like the yard sale that opens the novel, it was at a big Victorian house around the corner from me. New owners had painted the outside mauve and purple. I was dying to know what they'd done to the interior, so I peppered the poor woman throwing the yard sale with a million questions.

Finally, probably as much to get rid of me as anything else, she said, "Would you like to go inside and look around?" She pointed the side door. "Let yourself in."

I did. Inside, there was a brand new kitchen. Upstairs, the bedrooms were straight out of House Beautiful. As I started up to the third floor, the mystery writer in me kicked in and I thought: What if a woman goes to a yard sale and somehow she manages to talk her way into the house? She goes inside. . . and she never comes out.

Thoroughly spooked, I bolted down three flights and out the door.

Have you ever been spooked by a thought that turned an everyday situation sinister?

HANK: OH. Constantly. Daily. It's a sickness. Even that, you know? I'll cough, and then think--what if this is the beginnning of the plague, and I have it and... And suddenly, I'm in The Stand.

Jonathan goes out to get the paper. It's just at the end of the driveway. "Be careful!" I always tell him. "Of WHAT?" he says. It's potentially dangerous, in my mind. In his, it isn't. What if the people handing out free food samples at the mall are really terrorists, and the food is poisoned? (Actually, I may use that in a book so forget you read it.) And I completely got PTSD after seeing the movie "The Dark Knight." I was clutching Jonathan all the way to the car, terrifed someone/something was going to leap out of the darkness.

I may have seen too much TV news.

HALLIE: LOL. That's gotta be it.

Not sure why but that reminds me of once when I was walking with my daughter and we were playing "what's that thing" (pick up a small scrap of trash from the street and try to guess what it was part of)...and I picked up a red plastic tab that said "DO NOT REMOVE." Where's CSI when you need 'em.

HANK: I still have a little red ticket from a sweepstakes drawing that says "Keep this ticket." So hey, I kept it. Because what terrible thing might happen if I don't?

RHYS: Congrats on the new book, Hallie. As you say, this is one of the pitfalls of being a mystery writer. The brain switches so easily to "what if?" And we have trained ourselves to act on that what if. A snippet of overheard conversation becomes sinister, a stranger lurking on the corner becomes a potential ax murderer... And I've always been afraid of the dark. I grew up in a big spooky house that I was sure was haunted. The wind used to make the rug outside my bedroom door flap up and down and sometimes windows opened on their own. When I talked about this to my brother, years later, he replied, "of course it was haunted." So I'd never go up three flights of stairs in a purple-painted house.

RO: Oooh, as a diehard yard sale fan, I'll never be able to go to one again and walk up those stairs to where I've been assured "the good stuff" is. Even if the house isn't purple. That's my idea of something really scary, the everyday thing that turns into a nightmare. I mean, who's going to be fooled by a drooling 7-ft stranger with tattoos and an eyepatch? Just run...no story.

My sort-of-scary moments occur whenever I'm on a driving trip and I have to use the facilities - or buy a can of diet red bull- at a gas station. It's not the toilet that scares me (Dr. Roberta...you hear that?)Ever see The Vanishing or Breakdown? Yikes. It crosses my mind every time I stop in one of those remote service stations.

HANK: Oh. The Vanishing (the Dutch one) is the scariest movie I've ever seen. Ever. I almost wish I hadn't see it.

ROBERTA: Ro, I'm not worried about the toilet, I'm worried about the diet Red Bull!:) Hallie, big congratulations! So excited to see your book on the shelves! And what I've learned from the tag sale story is to never, ever, let a stranger into the house, even if she SEEMS like a nice, nosy middle-aged lady. Maybe especially that. I too see danger and plot twists everywhere. It's kind of exhausting, isn't it?

HALLIE: What about never ever GO INTO a house, no matter how hunky the man is who invites you in to "have a look around."

JAN: Wow, was it really three years, Hallie? It seemed like that book flew off your computer!! Congratulations on its release and the many terrific reviews.

When I was still dealing with my plane phobia (now conquered!!) I once had a cognitive behavioral therapist tell me that my problem was I had too much imagination and I applied it to EVERYTHING. That probably applies to all of us!

For me, it really was the toilet.... but not the germs. It all started as a small child, when I convinced myself there was a monster in it. I used to open the door, flush the toilet and run like hell. Sometimes when I go to lock the garage door at night, I'll let in the thought... what if someone was in the garage just waiting.... and I get that full body fear thrill people go to the movies for. But I've spent a lot of energy trying to NOT let those thoughts in my head, and I think it's net gain.

HALLIE: My daughter used to be afraid of squirrels, so I'd send her out with a can of Lysol (AKA magic squirrel repellant) to protect her on her Hot Wheels.

So, is your monster in the toilet? Or in your attic? Or up a tree and hopefully staying where it belongs? (Hopefully not in your bookstore where I hope you are ALL headed.)

Please join the conversation. We're dying to know.

Happy Holidays from Jungle Red Writers

(With apologies and appreciation to Clement Moore...and maybe Dr. Seuss.)

Twas the week before New Years'
And all through this site
Not a blogger was working
Not even to write.

Our books are all saved on our thumb drives with care
In hopes that bestseller lists soon would be there.
Our new novels were nestled all snug in their beds
While visions of royalties danced in our heads.

The Jungle Red sisters, five east and one west
Had just settled our brains for a well-deserved rest.

When in PW’s pages--There arose such a clatter
We opened the mag to see what was the matter!

To the review pages we turned in a flash
To see Hallie and Jan both praised with panache!

The bookstores were loving “A for M’ by our Ro
And Rosemary’s gardener continued to grow!

And what to our wondering eyes should appear
Rhys and Hank pubbing new ones—and early next year!

But what makes us the happiest—keeps every day new?
We knew in a moment—it’s our blogging crew!

You listen, you chatter, you join in the game
We cheer you, we love you, we call you by name!


Thanks, Laura! Thanks Edith! Thanks Becky and Lee!
Thanks Michael, Susannah and S. Con-no-lly!

We love Maddy, and Rhonda, Felicia and Clare
We hope Amy and JB will always be there

To June and to Karen, to Marianne, too
Love to Janet. And Mo. And to Peter. (He’s new.)

Our guest bloggers were stellar
Chris! Mary! La Barnes?!
To the Paulas, and Maddee, and the fab Cathy Cairns.

To Jane, Gin and Charlaine (queen of the LIST!)
To the Femmes and to Lipstick--consider you're kissed.

Christina! Elizabeth! Alex! Michelle!
Hail “Anonymous” too—your comments are swell.

We had memories, recipes, tales of our youth
We’ve had jokes, and disasters, and telling the truth.

To the top of the lists! To the top of them all!
We’re revising, and writing, and sharing our call!

As dry words before our reviser’s pen fly
When they meet with cliché, and we fix them (we try):

We’ve landed at New Years, and our thoughts go to you
May you read perfect books, may your wishes come true!

May you waste not a word, may you write fresh and new
And fill all your stories with mysteries and clues

And remember: on days that things don’t turn out right
And you wonder if this was a fraud and a fright

You have sisters on line—there are six of us here!
And each one is wishing you all-the-year cheer.

And we all say—we love you! ‘Fore you click from our site--

Happy New Year to All

—and long may you Write!

On scrimping

"We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs." --Gloria Steinem

JAN: My mother, were she still alive, would have an awesome carbon footprint.
Although she had a dishwasher, she preferred to handwash dishes because it used less energy. She was okay with the washing machine, because it was gas fueled, but spurned the dryer, because it was electric. She hung clothes to dry outside in good weather, and in the basement otherwise.

She also recycled religiously because she couldn't stand the idea of anything being wasted. Once she yelled at me for pouring a leftover pot of boiling water down the drain. "You could let that cool and it could go on the plants, you know."

But my mother wasn't green. And God knows she wasn't politically correct. What she was, was a child of the depression. She was forever telling stories of having to wash the floor in her father's bar with a scrub brush, and the economies of sewing her own clothes.

So each night as I hear some new dire economic prediction on Kudlow and Company or Charlie Rose, I wonder, will we all learn to scrimp and save? I've already cut out the gym and lowered my thermostat. But more importantly, could that scrimping and saving be a good thing for us all, benefiting the culture and the planet in ways we couldn't predict?

HALLIE: Learn? I've always been green. AKA cheap.
Call me what you will, I have rarely buy paper towels or plastic wrap. Dish towels work. I mortified my kids by wrapping their peanut butter sandwiches in wax paper (not made of petroleum). Store leftovers in bowls with plates for lids. Compost organic waste. And of course nowadays I bring my own cloth bags to the grocery store.
We also eat a lot of beans--white, kidney, black.... Still a great bargain and very healthy.
And...tah dah...I used cloth diapers for both kids!

HANK: Yes, I remember asking you, Hallie, for a paper towel. And got a nice cloth instead.
Today I took back a container of fruit to the grocery store. The berries had gone bad, gray and fuzzy, in two days, and that meant the fruit was old when it was sold. In the past, I would have just tossed them, angrily.
Now. I saved $3.00 by taking back the fruit. I spent--how much? by driving there. But--here's what I'm learning. I only buy EXACTLY as much as I think we'll need. No more random handfuls of green beans. I think: One bunch for me, one for Jonathan, done. I'm not throwing away any more food.

RO:This is hard to answer..because in some ways I'm thrifty and green and in other ways not. I don't bring my own bag to the market but when I remember I ask for paper (when I have plastic ones I use them for dog poop, which I'm sure will horrify some people.) I've changed most of the light bulbs to the squiggly ones, don't use chemicals in my garden, and I'm very happy shopping at tag sales and thrift shops. I rarely eat meat which makes me feel good about both my health and the fact that I'm not a part of the ginormous beef industry. And we only have one car for the two of us. But I don't compost. That's my dirty little secret. I've tried it a few times and the raccoons drive me nuts.
Right now my refrigerator in CT isn't working. Bruce and I went food shopping and spent $34. Maybe we shouldn't bother getting a new one.
(BTW that gray fuzzy stuff on the berries is botrytis. If there's even a speck of it, your berries are goners.)

ROBERTA: I love seeing all those cloth bags at the supermarket! It's just a matter of getting the old brain cells to remember to put them back in the car.

Maybe some of you read the article in the NY Times this weekend about the couple who decided to try eating on a dollar a day for a month. They ate tons of beans and homemade tortillas and had to cut out almost all vegetables and fruits. The woman said she almost wept when the month was up and she allowed herself to have strawberries. But she also noted how time-consuming it is to cook from scratch. Bottom line, I worry less about the conserving my family has to do--I think it is a useful exercise for us and good for the world. But what about the folks who are already living on the edge? these times are going to be hard, hard, hard.if

JAN: Roberta's right, it's a lot easier to take satisfaction in scrimping when it's not a matter of survival. But I think all of us are going to find ourselves scrimping more and in all this gloom, there might be an upside. (Researchers are already predicting a decline in obesity because of fewer restaurant meals.)

I'd like to hear from everyone out there who may be viewing the world with new or even old-fashioned frugality.

On Halloween

Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage ? **Erasmus, "The Praise of Folly"

Rosemary: The folks at cozy library discussion group recently asked what our favorite Halloween costumes were - as kids and as adults. I don't remember dressing up that much as a kid. I must have, because I certainly remember the candy - candy corn and tootsie rolls being my favorites. And I always hated those cellophane wrapped packages with the pastel colored disks in them. Yuck. What was that stuff? I do remember dressing up as a Volkswagen once when I was a teenager - that was my only memorable costume. It probably got uncool to dress for Halloween for a while. Then in my twenties, it got cool again.

When my husband and I worked for large companies we used to have great Halloween parties, lots of people. Sometimes the parties had themes. We had a Hitchcock party once. I decorated with birds all over the house, rope hanging out of a trunk and a bloodsplattered bathroom. One clever girl came as Marian Crane (from Psycho) complete with shower curtain and hooks. For the dead celebrity party, my fave partygoer was the guy who came as Marley's Ghost - Bob Marley, that is. Dreadlocks, chains. Ingenious.

In recent years I've been Cruella de Ville, Frida Kahlo (I made my husband dress as Diego Rivera), Jim Morrison, and various ghouls. This may be my favorite though - Wilma and Fred Flintstone. I'm Wilma.

HANK: They were NECCO's, Ro. (Made by the New England Candy COmpany.) In college, one year, we were all supposed to dress as a song title. I got some RIT dye (remember that?) dyed a sheet black and went as "She's Not There." (Kind of a reverse ghost idea, see?)

I've dressed up as a tea bag--brown leotard and tights, then covered myself with a plastic dry cleaning bag I filled with torn up pieces of orange and brown construction paper. I hung a string around my neck and at the bottom was a tag that said Constant Comment.

An old boyfriend and I went as spaghetti and meatballs. We created this enormous contraption, like a table, which we then hung from our shoulders with ropes. We covered the base with a red and white checked tablecloth. We stapled a big cardboard cone on top of it to hold the spaghetti. I cooked spaghetti, and figured I could just glue it to the cardboard thing.Well of course, that was ridiculous.

So I ended up sewing the strands to the cardboard with a huge needle and heavy thread. Then we covered brown paper bags with cotton balls, and sprayed them red and brown to look like meat balls, punched holes for eyes and put them over our heads.

We could not get the thing in the car, so we had to strap in onto the top. So imagine the spaghetti table flying down the Mass Turnpike, stands coming off along the way. When we got to the party, we stepped into the table of spaghetti and put the meatballs on our heads.

It worked, but it was hard to dance.
Two years ago, Jonathan and I were the Ark Family. I was Joan of Arc, and he was Noah.

Last year, I was too busy to make new costumes. So I printed out a new flag to replace the Fleur de Lis, put on a bandana, and went as Joan of Arkansas. (Jonathan was Noah of Arkansas, which I know makes no sense.)
Those are little animals pinned to his tunic, two of each, of course.

JAN: Hey, Ro, Bill and I went as Fred and Wilma Flintstone once, too -- those styrofoam balls from the crafts store make easy Flintstone jewelry. But my favorite costume was from the college years. My roommates and I hosted a party, in our lovely but pest-ridden apartment. Bill and I went as a cockroach and a can of Raid. I was the cockroach in a dark brown body suit with lots of attached legs and cute silver antennae. Bill got inside a huge wire cylinder we covered with paper?? Paper mache? Can't remember now, except that we had an artist friend who did an awesome job of copying the RAID logo and making it look just like the real can.
I also had a room-mate who was quite funny and notoriously loud. Bill and I carved a pumpkin to look like her, gave it an enormous mouth, stuck a radio inside it and squirted with her signature perfume. She had a good sense of humor and got a kick out of it.

HALLIE: You guys are aMAzing! I'm so impressed. You could have been contestants on Project Runway. (Don't you think they should have a challenge: making Halloween costumes?) The only memorable costume I ever made was a fried egg (a white sheet with a big yellow circle of fabric quilted over my stomach. I was pregnant which helped. Jerry went as a pencil wearing a bathing cap on his head for an eraser.
My kids always made awesome costumes. (Early on they felt this was child abuse). Naomi once made a cardboard box into a milk carton with a cutout for her face and under it HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD. Another year she went out painted green: the state of Florida. My (now grown) daughters still get together every Halloween and make costumes to go out.
Halloween is my favorite holiday.

ROBERTA: Funny thing that I can't remember childhood Halloween costumes at all. Now if we were describing dance recital outfits, I could tell you in detail...

But we had wonderful, wild parties when I was in graduate school. My very favorite costume was Wonder Woman. I wore a skimpy purple leotard, then made big felt breast plates with stars on them and sewed a short, flared skirt to match. I had a headdress of course, and knee-high maroon boots. It was the best. The next year, I sewed a Kermit the frog outfit which was technically gorgeous. The problem was no one knew who I was under all that green felt, so it got lonely. Then I ditched the frog and moved to Marilyn Monroe.

Love all these stories. We should definitely host a Jungle Red Writers Halloween party!

Ro: You're on!

On Bouchercon

From Baltimore,



The Jungle Red Writers had a great time, with Hallie moderating our panel on Do You Want to Know a Secret? What we all wish we'd known BEFORE we'd gotten into the mystery writing business.

This was Hank's idea and we attracted a packed crowd because everybody wants to know a secret.



We did our best to offer entertainment and encouragement, and had a lot of fun exchanging war stories.


Characters who won't behave, plots that won't work and writing ourselves into tight corners.

And of course, rejections, bad reviews, and the pros and cons of promotion.



At the Sisters In Crime luncheon earlier that day, Roberta said farewell as president of the national organization, where she'd wowed everyone with her hard work, cool hand and attention to detail.

We had a great weather in Baltimore, and lots of fun attending panels, auctions, and parties at this well-organized event.

Not to mention all the fun smoozing with other writers, editors, booksellers, reviewers and most of all READERS.

On words that need a comeback

You don't carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation. Charles Dickens

Jan: Everybody always writes about the overused words or phrases that irritate them. Lately, I've been collecting the underused ones that fell out of fashion. I'd like to see these make a comeback.

Countenance: The general impression given by the facial features. Kind of a mix of appearance and what today we might call aura. But it hints at intrepretation of the observer, rather than an energy emitted from the observed.

Fortnight: In Charles Dicken's and Jane Austen novels, everyone always goes away for a fortnight. What an economical way to say a two-week period. Why not use it? As in, I clean my house fortnightly!

Coupling: One of the nicest euphemisms for having sex, and a whole lot better than the much cruder term we overuse today. Wouldn't it be great if rappers converted to the use of Mothercoupler?

Singular: Big favorite of Somerset Maugham. I remember looking it up when I read one of his collections because he used it in pretty much every short story. The first definition is separate, individual, but Maugham used it to mean deviating strongly from the norm. Along the lines of extraordinary.

Physiognomy: -A favorite term of Sherlock Holmes if I remember correctly. It means judging human character from facial features, which fell out of favor for good reason. It was biased against anyone non-white or unattractive. But if you read Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink, you know that we still unconsciously assess people this way. So why not use the correct term for it -- if only to define it as a flawed human practice.

Strumpet: A much nicer way to say slut. It seems to imply a certain amount of flair --- or maybe musical ability.

Malarky: So much better to be full of than bologney or worse.
Come on, if you think about it, there are lots of these. We can force them into everyday conversation and make it a mission.

HALLIE: Oh, Jan, get thee to a library and check out H. L. Mencken's "The American Language" (1921). You and Mencken would have been soulmates. He was chronicling how American-English was diverging from English-English, and doing so with his own particular brand of wit.

In the book, you'll find a plethora(!) of colorful terms and their origins--like palooka, belly-laugh, and high-hat. And mourn colorful terms that have faded like infanticipating (expecting), shafts (legs), and Reno-vated (contemplating divorce).

JAN: Oh, I forgot about high-hat. I'm reading Millers Crossing, from the Coen brothers screenplay collection. The setting is Chicago during the prohibition years and the gangsters repeatedly use high-hat, as in "you were giving me the high hat." The uppity, condescending blow off.

RO: I love throwing in an underused word or expression every once in a while and watching the faces. Has she lost it? Is she that old? Hallie, I actually used Reno-vated yesterday! (Shades of the orginal Women, come-a ti-yi-yippee!)

Of the Damon Runyon-type words I like malarky and hooey, but really prefer the Brit-sounding (is it?) balderdash. I vote for strumpet or hussey over the all-too-popular slut. Even twelve year-olds are calling each other that.

Let's see...brouhaha...that's a good one...what else..I may need a cuppa joe first...

ROBERTA: yes, love brouhaha--I still use that one. and how about "rhubarb," as in "What a rhubarb!"

JAN: What a rhubarb? I never hard that before. Is that a Minnesota-ism, like Holy Buckets? And what is a rhubarb anyway? A jokester?

HANK: A rhubarb is a dustup, right? I like piffle. As in oh, piffle. And I just read about the word "wifty," which is like ditzy and fey. All three of those are lovely.

JAN: Piffle and wifty can double as excellent names for puppies and kittens.

It seems there are just so many useful words and slangs benched before their time. Please come tell us your favorites.

ON ASSIGNMENTS

"Once upon a time, there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith..."

*** the first line of "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein

HANK: On the way to work this morning, I said to my husband--what books did you read in college? What books did you love?

You know Jonathan. He gave me that droll look. And he said: In college, I didn't read books for pleasure.

That's no doubt why he powered through law school, and my college career was spotty. At best.

I practically majored in a field the college did not know it was offering: listening to records and reading the books I wanted to.

Yes, I did devour some of the books that were assigned. Hemingway. Fitzgerald. Dickens. Austen. Tolkien's Ring books and CS Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet Trilogy were part of one course I took in my oh-so-liberal college. I think the class was called "Exploring Allegory." I also took the invitation-only "Seminar in Alice in Wonderland" which my mother still can't believe was an actual college course.

I was still devoted to Sherlock Holmes, of course. And all the Agatha Christie novels. But they weren't cool for school. So I was a closet mystery reader.

Was Catcher in the Rye college? I started talking and thinking like Holden the moment I met him--although my own language was carefully censored, I remember. (And I still think about him, every time I'm on the subway. Carrying the fencing equipment.) I forget who told me recently--the intial copies ofcatcher came out with the famously shy Salinger's photo on the back. He apparently freaked, and demanded all the copies be destroyed.

Stranger in a Strange Land. I just read something about that, how in revisionist criticism it's almost reviled as a screed against women, a pedantic rant. I don't remember that part. I remember "groking" and how that was one of them most evocative and descriptive made up words I'd ever heard. I still say--sometimes--yes, I grok that. And sometimes, people understand me.

I think Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was just after college. That has stuck with me, profoundly. As a writer, the search for the understanding of quality haunts me every day. I found this copy in Amazon, as you can tell by the 'look inside' gizmos, which won't work here. But I really think my copy was pink.

I was so taken with Hallie's topic on our favorite books as kids--now I wonder, what books did you love in college?

ROBERTA: Okay, I'm drawing a blank on this one. I was busy making trouble I guess. And after wandering through biochemistry and art history, I finally settled on Romance language and literature as my major. So I was plugging through light reading such as The Stranger--in French!

HALLIE: I confess, I'm with Jonathan. College was a black hole for me as far as reading for pleasure goes. I’d read all the time through high school, but in college it was as if I’d undergone aversive conditioning… all those dense history and political science texts I ploughed through made reading painful. In four years I might have made it through “Exodus” and “Hawaii” and “Dr. Zhivago” but that’s about it.

When I finished school and could read just for the fun of it, I ploughed through all of Agatha Christie’s and Dorothy Sayers’ novels and short stories. Graduated to P. D. James’ “An Unsuitable Job for a Woman” with the delightful Cordelia Grey, and read everything else James wrote the minute it came out. Re-read all of Sherlock Holmes. Then I wallowed in the library mystery stacks and indiscriminately grabbed books, some of which I made it through.

When I got back to ‘real’ literature it was to discover Amy Tan (“The Joy Luck Club”) and Dorothy Allison (“Bastard Out of Carolina”) and Barbara Kingsolver (“The Bean Trees”) and Carolyn Chute (“The Beans of Egypt Maine”) and John Irving (“A Song for Owen Meany”). And to re-read Alice in Wonderland and my favorite Sci-Fi novels (“Stranger in a Strange Land”, “A Wrinkle in Time”). And to rediscover the poems of e. e. cummings.

It should come as no surprise that I also got hooked on food writers—Calvin Trillin (“Alice, Let’s Eat) and Laurie Colwin (“Home Cooking”) and Ruth Reichel (“Tender at the Bone”), just for example.

JAN: During college, I think I was busy validating myself as a wild thing by reading books like: The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, On The Road by Jack Kerouac, The Electric Koolaid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe, One Flew Over the Cuckoos by Ken Kesey, and Kurt Vonnegut's short story collections.

I shifted out of my hippy theme years into a literary phase. This involved reading everything by Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky,Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Thomas Hardy and Somerset Maugham.

Then for a while there, I got into reading every single book by Barbara Pym. Her novels were always set around some sort of English vicarage. There was no real theme here, I just really enjoyed her books.

RO: I was about to say that I was with Roberta...having too much..uh, fun..in college to remember what I read. Then Jan reminded me of all the hippie-type books I read. Vonnegut must be like Disney. Every generation gets to discover - and claim - him.

The cobwebs have cleared a bit and I'm probably getting the decades confused (all that sangria, I guess..)but I remember loving Small Changes by Marge Piercy, Something Happened by Joseph Heller..everything by Richard Yates.

I'll probably wake up in the middle of the night and say something like..Birdy! I loved that!! And wisely, my husband will sleep through the outburst.

HANK: I'm going to ask my interns--all attending colleges across New England--what they're reading now. After you tell us what you read during those four (okay, or so) years, or if you read at all, care to predict what the students will say?

AND COMING UP LATER THIS WEEK! A visit from current double New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris, whose darkly hilarious novels are getting even more fans after the HBO blockbuster True Blood made Sookie Stackhouse a household name.

And that's not all--we'll chat with the new owners of Murder by the Book, the beloved bookstore--and how they stood up to Hurricane Ike.

But wait, there's more. Come chat with Lori Andrews, whose newest mystery Immunity is just out. Her real life? Is just as exciting than any fiction.

On Our Harry Potters...

HALLIE: I was over at Buttonwood Books this week to talk about my "1001 Books for Every Mood" and as I wandered around the store I found myself, as usual, drawn to YA titles. There were all the Harry Potter books which I read and loved.

There, too, were so many of the books I devoured as a kid. "Wind in the Willows." "A Wrinkle in Time." "Stuart Little." "The Little Princess." "The Secret Garden." "Anne of Green Gables."

But my "Harry Potters" were the Oz Books, starting with "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." If you haven't read the original, you're in for a treat. The cyclone is in the opening chapter, and the description of Kansas would make any little girl want to run somewhere green: "When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it.

Shades of "Grapes of Wrath."

From the Wonderful Wizard I went on to "The Marvelous Land of Oz" and "Ozma of Oz" and on until I'd consumed all 15 or so that Baum himself wrote, each one with new fantastical creatures, good against evil, a Homeric journey in the guise of an episodic trek to somewhere (or to get BACK from somewhere), overcoming obstacles along the way.

So...what were your Harry Potters?

JAN: I guess I was never much for fantasy -- not even as a kid. My aunt Clare lived next door and was a former school teacher, and pretty much the source of all novels that both my mother and I read. She gave me "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott, which I adored, and then "Eight Cousins." I also loved "Celia Garth" by Gwen Bristow, which was about a young woman, a dressmaker in Charlestown, who becomes a spy for the patriots during the Revolutionary War. I think I was especially intrigued with the descriptions of muslin and the idea that each dress had to be specially made. Then I read Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, no kidding, seven times.

To this day, I love going back in time, not forward to sci-fi. Magic doesn't do it for me, I absolutely hated "Alice In Wonderland". I did read and enjoy "The Hobbit", but couldn't get through the trilogy. I enjoyed the first Harry Potter book, but not enough to read the later books.

ROBERTA: I can't say I had a "Harry Potter", although I read and loved plenty of books. "Wind in the Willows"--a total classic. Ditto "Winnie the Pooh". And all of E.B. White's books, "Charlotte's Web", "Stuart Little", "The Trumpet of the Swan". Need I even mention Nancy Drew?

But I don't remember waiting on the edge of my seat for a sequel, maybe because there was no media/Internet working us up into a frenzy for an author's next book?

Now this is embarrassing, but when I was a young, gawky, geeky, miserable teen, I adored the short stories in "Stories to Live By"--a collection gathered and originally published in "The American Girl" in the '50's. Stories about going steady, cheating on the football field, being overweight, first dates--I read these until the binding crumbled. In fact, in the very first article I ever had published, I wrote about one of these stories--how I showed it to my stepdaughter and we had a mini-connection over it. (Those moments were few and far between in the early days.)

I think there's a link back to Harry Potter there too:). After all, he never quite feels like he fits in either....

HANK: You mean other than sneaking "Marjorie Morningstar" and "Butterfield 8" from my parents' bookshelves? And I read the "Thurber Carnival" when I was about 12, I think. And love love loved it.

I had a huge love affair with horse books--there was some series, which I can't find now but I bet Mom still has them...which included "Golden Sovereign" and "Midnight Moon"? And "Silver Birch"? About a teenaged, maybe, girl who had horses. I adored them. Anyone know more about these? There was another author who wrote "Cammie's Choice" about another equestrian teenager who obviously had to make some choice which I forget what was. Plus all the Misty of Chincoteague books. (I had to clean out stalls in the mornings, so I loved reading about others who did, too.)

"Diamond in the Window" by Jane Langton, was so pivotal for me. Charming, intelligent, clever, and shows kids could be smart and still be cool. I could read that again, right now! Love it. It's right up there with Wrinkle in Time, another true true classic.

And because my grandson Eli is really a great reader now, at age 5, I got to share the Edward Eager books with him. They're also fantasy, about 4 siblings who have adventures. "Knight's Castle", "Half Magic", "Magic or Not". So witty and so clever! And even at my age, 53 years OLDER than Eli! still wonderful.

Let's see. Narnia--didn't read til college! Hobbit and Rings--also college. Harry Potter, loved. Loved them all.
Oz, yes. Little Princess, no. (I just never liked that book. I think it's creepy.) Charlotte's Web, loved it but too sad for me as a kid.

My next door neighbor two year old and I read "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus", which is pretty great. And "Knuffle Bunny". And I'm pushing "A Hole is to Dig" pretty hard. But that's probably funnier for adults.

RO: I wasn't much of a fantasy fan as a kid - not now either. I seem to remember reading a lot of biographies when I was little. And of course, like Hank, my spiritual sister..horse books. Although I wasn't shovelling too much horse manure in Brooklyn. I devoured the Misty and Black Stallion books. And dog books...Irish Red was one of them. Then I stumbled upon a copy of The Group. 'Nuff said?

HANK: Hallie, are you doing a 1001 books for kids? (And yay for Buttonwood Books. That's a fantastic store.)

HALLIE: No 1001 Books for Kids...but what a great idea. And "A Hole is to Dig" is a favorite of mine, too, and it's in "1001 Books for Every Mood. When Jennie the dog packs her bag to leave home, the potted plant asks: “Why are you leaving?” “Because I am discontented. I want something I do not have. There must be more to life than having everything.” Ah, words to live by.

So...what books have stuck with you since way back when?

On Bananas

“…so it's easier for me to cut the stupid banana."

Woody Allen

HANK: Did you read the article in Newsweek? It’s haunting me. Woody Allen (and we can pick cinema favorites later) says he cuts his banana into exactly seven slices each morning. According to Newsweek:

‘Six slices, or eight, and something bad might happen. "I know it would be total coincidence if I didn't slice it into seven pieces, and my family were killed in a fire," he says. "I understand that there could be no correlation, but, you know, the guilt would be too much for me to bear, so it's easier for me to cut the stupid banana." ‘

Here’s Woody Allen, okay, notoriously neurotic and sometimes a little creepy but certainly talented and inarguably successful, who relies on banana-cutting to make himself feel in control.
Silly stuff first. This means there has to be a banana every morning, which in our house would be problematic. Did you get the bananas yesterday, honey? Either of us might say it. And it’s just as likely that the answer would be “no.’

But banana requirement aside. Let’s talk about superstitions.

Oh, yes, I have them. But (and I’ll somewhat afraid to bring this up because it might jinx everything) it trying to catalogue them today, I’m discovering that I have fewer than I used to. What does that mean? Would I walk under a ladder? Huh. Probably. It would cross my mind, I admit. Put shoes on a table? Yeah, if there was a reason to. Step on a crack? Do it all the time. And I have a beautiful glazed black papier-mâché raven in my living room.

My darling step-father, gruff and hard-nosed, corporate lawyer and all that entailed, would have told you he was absolutely not superstitious, that such things were idiotic. But try putting a hat on a bed. He’d whisk it off, appalled. “I thought you weren’t superstitious,” I remember, so clearly, how perplexed I was. “I’m not,” he insisted. You just don’t put hats on beds.”

Okay. I do throw salt over my shoulder if I spill it. And I have two little carved rocks on my desk, one says ‘patience’ and one says ‘imagine’. And I recognize them every morning before I start writing. But is that superstition? I don’t think something bad will happen if I don’t look at them. But why find out? I could write if they weren’t there. And I sure don’t have to cut my banana, if I had one, in exactly seven slices.

Do you have superstitions? And why?

(And oh, my faves are Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors. Bananas? Hmm, now that one has hidden meaning.)

JAN: The worst superstition I had -- and I'm told this is an Irish thing -- is that I used to believe that worrying about something prevented it from happening. Conversely, if I didn't worry about something, and it happened, it was my fault for not worrying. This superstition is not good for cortisol levels -- especially when you have children. Not to mention when your husband has a small plane (gone now, thank god) Luckily, I went to see a cognitive behavioral therapist about five years ago in my ongoing battle with my plane phobia. He was Jewish, not Irish, and had an effective way of poking fun at my thinking. He didn't completely cure the plane phobia (that came later, another therapy, another story) but he did an amazing job of getting under the hood of my car/brain and fixing the faulty wiring. The biggest wiring problem was this particular superstition.

I also have a pair of tiny gold guardian angel earrings that the kids bought me for Mother's Day when they were still little. I believe these are good luck and still wear these whenever I fly or play a tennis match.

HALLIE: Can you even imagine living with a man who has to cut his banana into exactly seven slices each morning? Two-year-olds have fixations like that (Mommy...cut the bread in TRIangles). No wonder he and Mia never shared an apartment.

The one thing I do is knock wood whenever I take pride in my beautiful (knock) smart (knock) daughters' accomplishments...or my own (knock, knock). It's like the Jewish expression that my grandmother used, Kineahora, and then she'd spit to distract the evil eye.

I also imagine the worst most terrible scenario (baby born dead...with two heads...) that could possible happen. That way I can't be disappointed. Is that being superstitious? I think psychologists would say it's being "well defended." Fer sher.

HANK: But it's universal, isn't it maybe, the search for control?

Hallie, you knock wood (and I do, too, okay, I admit) almost as a motion of gratitude, you know? A recognition that something, whatever, has more power than we do and tht anything could change at any momoent. (Rosemary is off at Glacier National park, one of my favorite spots, a place where the sense of something like that is incredible and immense.)

Jan, did the therapist call worry a superstition? Interesting.

We wouldn't think Woody was weird if he couldn't go to work in in the morning without meditating. If he said: every Monday, I simply have to meditate for fifteen minutes. That would be--a coping strategy for an unpredictable world.

And yet, if he said the reason he did that was to prevent his house from burning down, then we'd think: whacked.

Why do we feel that if the universe is keeping score on us somehow? Oops, Hank didn't throw salt. That's a minus. But she said rabbit-rabbit on the first of the month? A plus.
How about you all? Step on a crack, anyone? Cross fingers, it won't matter.

You Can Leave Your Hat On.... Randy Newman

Anyone who remembers the movie Nine and a Half Weeks will have one recollection of that line, but...get your mind out of the gutter! This blog is really about hats. Long ones, tall ones, short ones...crazy ones..as Eric Burdon might say (I guess I'm in a musical mood.) What is it about hats? Who wears them and why? Is it a genetic predisposition like blue eyes or lefthandedness? And what's the difference between those of us who buy hats and those of us who actually wear them?
Maybe I'm inspired by the wonderfully inventive Cha-Poe created by Liz Zelvin for last spring's Malice hat contest. (She won, of course!)


Or our recent pic of Jan in her saucy Norma Shearer-like wedding chapeau.
Or maybe it was my dentist. I may have the coolest dentist on the planet. Not only does she keep my pearly whites, um, pearly, but she is a photographer, a diver, and an adventuress. She's been everywhere, keeps exotic pets and everything in her apartment is from some far flung destination. If this was the thirties, she'd be Jean Harlow singing for her supper on a Chinese junk and engaging in drinking contests with Mongolian warlords. And the winner would get the big furry hat. Because she also has a worldclass hat collection.

This is one she just gave me -



btw...Caroline if you're reading this the butterfly fell off..I didn't take it off! After a few glasses of wine we agreed it looked fabulous. (I thought it was Italian movie star from the 50's ...she thought Lara in Dr. Zhivago. In my dreams...) But will I ever leave the house with this thing on my head? Or will it stay in the box like the $600 Tracey Tooker number that I bought for a wedding and wore only once because I felt like I couldn't move my head all afternoon?


ROBERTA: I'm also in the camp that buys hats and very seldom wears them--except for baseball caps for the sun. Reason why? I look at pix taken after the fact and I look darned silly. Take for instance the straw boater that I bought after much agonizing and wore to my first-ever member-guest golf tournament with my mother-in-law as my guest. The picture is priceless because it marked the beginning of our relationship, but that hat perched on my head like a dying possum. My tennis friends made fun of me for years for wearing a white cap with a big sunflower in front. When the flower fell off, I still wore it with the glob of glue that used to hold it. I did find success with a headdress I created for a toga party during grad school days--it had fake ivy and large plastic dangling fruit. That one was a winner!

RO: We want pix!!

JAN: This is the deal with hats: They are a commitment. You put one on, it flattens the hair underneath, and you are stuck wearing it the entire day or until the next hair wash and dry.
The only time I actually wear hats is when I'm playing tennis in the sun, when I'm on the Vineyard and waiting until AFTER the beach to wash my hair, and on really bad hair days.
My cousin has a terrific boutique in New Jersey. I've bought any number of hats there. Really cool Eric Javits hats.
But after purchase, I generally don't wear them. Why? This is the first time I've really thought about it, but it's probably because cool hats call a lot of attention to themselves. And they tend to be just the tinest bit pretentious-looking when you wear them on your way to, say, the supermarket.

RO: Is that why people were looking at me when I was at the deli counter with this thing on?

HALLIE: Like Jan, I love hats...in principle. But the fact that I had nothing to put on my head at my own wedding (I'd forgotten about it) tells you something. I have an old battered straw hat and some baseball caps but they're just to keep the sun out of my face.
One of my favorite books of all time is "The Five Hundred Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins" in which our hero, when commanded to take off his hat by the King, tries to comply, but another hat even more glorious than the last appears in its place.

HANK: Hats. Bikinis. Not a chance. Up in my off-season closet there's a beauty. A straw sun hat, with a lovely Libery of London fabric band. The front flips up, the back goes down. I wore it in 1972 to my sister's wedding. It still looks good, but the moment I clamped it on my head, as Jan so correctly says, that was it for the hair. (Even when it was long and brown, which it was at the time.) What more, turns out my head is huge. There was the time I was doing an investigative report on fish inspection. Or--how they're not inspected. One day, we were allowed to shoot inside a fish processing plant down by the water front. Pungent, and waterlogged, and fish guts all over. And they demanded we wear hats. Paper baseball caps, you know? Health rules. So they tried to find one that would fit me, and even the largest was too small. Apparently the health rules don't care about fit, so they parked one, precariously, on my head, and called it a hat. I called it ridiculous. The good news: we won a big award for the story. The bad news: guess what they showed in the video clip at the awards ceremony?

RO: What's on your head?

ON WHAT LIES BENEATH

"Originality consists in returning to the origin."

Antonio Gaudi

HANK: The front of our house fell off.Well, not totally off. But pretty much.Our house, a three story not-quite Victorian was built in 1894. And when I moved in, in 1995 (which is kind of cool, coming in a hundred years later...and I'm still hoping there are many ghosts, but there seem to be mostly moths) it was white siding, that (kind of) looked like wood.

Well, last week there was a huge hailstorm here. Yes, hail, and I was home to see it. I took photos, it was literally white-out conditions. Here's the view from the front porch, through the roses. Then the hail on the porch, taken though a second floor window.
Here's a close up of the hail on the porch, with a little maple thing so you can see the size.

The next day, the front of our house was battered. The siding was pooching out, like it had a little belly. And the next day, the belly was bigger, and then bigger. Kevin our contractor guy came over, and shook his head. The siding is coming off, he said. No way to stop it.

Oh, man.

So. They started taking off the siding. And underneath? Are beautiful grey wood shingles. Beautiful, weathered, New England-y grey shingles. Fantastic.

See? Under the whiteTyvek, and just below, are shingles. The rest is gray clapboard.

It's hard to tell. But this house used to be all white siding. Now it's gray.

However. Not all of the shingles are in good shape. A lot of them are. A lot of them aren't. Around the windows is raw wood.How much would it cost, I asked, to just rip down all the siding and fix the shingles?

Jungle redders, you DO NOT even want to know.

So. Do we put up all new siding? Put back up the old siding? (Which would look terrible and patchy.) Have the shingles just in the front?

Now right about here, this blog could turn the corner into editing. How it's all about finding what lies beneath our over-written first drafts, and revealing the beautiful origins?

Or it could be about the money pit. You guys choose.

JAN: I'll go the editing route. Right now, I'm working on a screenplay and I've decided to just let myself get the scenes out. Every other one is too long, or too full of cliches, but I'm getting the conflicts in place. For me, writing is not so much about renovation - unveiling what lies beneath -- but reconstruction. Writing it wrong helps me see what would be right. Either way, the fun part is refinement.

BTW, to really understand Hank's post, you have to understand Hank's house, which is just a wonderful place with nooks and crannies and the details that obviously inspire all sorts of creativity.

RO: Bummer! Hank, I LOVE your house..every time I visit I discover another room that becomes my new favorite.

I'm going the money pit route. First, my first drafts are lean to the point of anorexic. I need to layer, not strip down. Second, I'm currently living in a house with no countertops, no kitchen sink and no floor in the kitchen. And the contractor just sent me an estimate that's double what I thought it would be. (This is why you should never have a handshake deal with anyone holding a sledgehammer..)

If you just replace the shingles in the front what would you have on the sides and back of the house?

HANK: Well, yeah, ain't that the question. I'm considering the "facade" approach. You know in vintage buildings, they leave the old front, and make the back new? So in our case, the back and sides would be from the 1960's, thewhite siding, and the front would be shingles. If you stand in the front yard, looking at the front of the house, you can't see the sides. And thanks for the kind words, guys, about the house. We love it, too. It just needs a little, um, facelift.

HALLIE: Old front, new back. Reminds of me of the wonderful Erma Bombeck essay about her version of home improvement: painting the the house down to the bushes. Our house must have been inhabited by her relatives--only the edges of the floor visible around rugs were finished.
In home improvement, I'm definitely a minimalist. Cheap and easy. But in writing, I tear it back to the studs if I have to...but save the pieces in case I decide to dial it back.

ROBERTA: Ay-yi-yi-yi, more construction metaphors. Recall that I am still a woman with a giant-sized dumpster in her driveway and dusty men tromping through all day! Pardon me while I wander and maybe I'll come up with something useful to say...Isn't it so odd the way the construction workers begin to feel like part of the family? The guys we have yanking off the front of our house love animals. If I take the dog out, they all yell out "Tonka!" from their scaffolding perches. The other day, one commented that they really needed a fourth person to wrestle the windows up the ladders. I demurred. "How about TONKA!" they yelled. "We want Tonka!"

Let's see, what was the question? Money pit, definitely! And Hank, just do the whole house. It'll be cheaper now than in a few years when you decide you made a mistake and call the contractor back to finish the job.:)

HANK: It just makes me think about writing. Yes, it really does. I'll be sitting at the computer--staring at a blank page. And I'll say to myself: what does this scene mean? And when pared down to my original meaning, my orginal goal, suddenly it begins to work.

Still. I'm not sure that means rip the siding from the whole house.

Come back Wednesday for a chat with a brand new mystery author whose book just hit the shelves...and Friday, we'll talk about names.

On ROMAN NOIR

"From first page to finis, NOX DORMIENDA by Kelli Stanley is chock full of chills, thrills, and breath-taking adventure. Fueled by fascinating characters and rich details from Londinium in 83 A.D., this unforgettable tale brings the past eerily alive while leaving you hungering for the next book in what surely will be an exciting series. Stanley is a terrific writer."

Gayle Lynds, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Spymaster

HANK: I first met Kelli--on line, I think. She's one of the stellar debut authors of International Thriller Writers, and I had the delight to see her and her fellow debuters last weekend at Thrillerfest!

She writes mystery-thrillers in a noir tradition,and her first novel, NOX DORMIENDA (A Long Night for Sleeping), is out this week. Can you guess who her personal author-hero is? The answer is below.

NOX is the first of a new series in a new genre Kelli calls Roman Noir. Set in first century AD Britain and featuring Arcturus, a hard-boiled protagonist in the best Marlowe tradition, NOX is "a suspense thriller that combines a classic noir style with the rich texture of the ancient past." And the cover rocks.

HANK: Your book is--noir but not noir? Historical fiction, but not historical fiction? The very very first of the British murder mysteries? How would you describe it--or do we even need such labels?

Well, first let me thank you, Hank, for hosting me on the fabulous Jungle Red Authors! It’s so wonderful—and an honor—to be here!
I think labels can get in the way sometimes … but we’re stuck with them. Since Nox Dormienda is such a hybrid – ancient Roman Britain meets 1930s Los Angeles – I came up with "Roman noir." It’s really a pun on the French literary term for "black novel" – what French critics labeled many mysteries and melodramas of the 20s, 30s and 40s.

Nox is directly inspired by Raymond Chandler, Hammett, Cornell Woolrich, and a whole lot of film noir. Now, some noir purists don’t include Chandler into the noir pantheon, some do, and I’m one of the latter, so I’m comfortable in calling it noir … though it’s definitely not as black as, say, Jim Thompson or David Goodis.

My specific goal was to make history as compelling and visceral as a contemporary headline. I’ve heard too many readers automatically label historical fiction as "boring," and I wanted to create a book to challenge that assumption. So it’s really a historical mystery-thriller written for people who don’t like history!

JRW: Tell us about the title.

"Nox dormienda" means a night you sleep through … forever. Catullus, the Roman poet, wrote exquisite love poems and vituperative verse-attacks (to the same woman!) … "una nox dormienda" is a line from one erotic, romantic poem in particular. The idea is to make love now, since death is around the corner, and the sun will rise, but maybe we won’t be so lucky.

Poets have been selling that bill of goods for thousands of years!

Anyway, Raymond Chandler (an English-educated classicist) lifted the "nox dormienda" concept into popular culture with his first book, The Big Sleep.
So my Nox Dormienda is a tribute both to Catullus … and to Chandler, my literary hero.

HANK: Your main character--how did you "meet" him? And what's he like?

I’ve been told that Arcturus is a hottie! And I’m very relieved, for his sake!

I first met him in a class, when I was pursuing my degree … but I didn’t really "know" him until one night at the Noir City film noir festival in San Francisco … after several days of classic noir films, everything sort of gelled, and I knew the direction I wanted to go.

Arcturus is, for me, the ultimate outsider. Half native, half Roman, he’s not fully trusted by either culture. And his talent—that of healing, whether through medicine or investigation—sets him apart. Also his capacity for violence. Also his guilt, when he can’t save a patient.

He’s impulsive, compassionate, stubborn, sometimes arrogant. Cynical. But he also knows how to laugh … and cry. He’s the kind of man that you could know, and like, but who will always be alone, in his heart of hearts. He pursues what he considers justice, and because he is an outsider, and is alone, he’s sometimes successful.

HANK: How do you get your brain to let you visit first century Roman Britain? Are you in a different place when you write? When you go to Starbucks and use a computer or Tivo a TV show, do you feel as if you're just visiting?

I’ve always been comfortable in the past, though I love technology! And I’ve spent so much time immersed in Roman culture that I’m able to sort of pop myself there … as long as I’m writing in a quiet place. Fortunately, my neighborhood in San Francisco is out by the beach … nature sounds, not too noisy, so I do most of my writing at home.

With the book I’m working on now, set in San Francisco in 1940, it’s just the opposite … I like to have ambient city atmosphere around me. Old-fashioned family restaurants, the clang of the cable cars. And because the year is so close, within my parents’ lives, it sometimes does feel as though I’m "just visiting" contemporary society … especially when I’m at a department store, and there aren’t any shoulder pads!

HANK: Shoulder pads are coming back. I know it.
JRW: We can't imagine the research. Did you write your story first, then make it authentic second? Or, because you're already such an expert in the field--you've lived in Italy and traveled through Europe, learned Latin and Greek, got a B.A. in Art History and Classics and a Master’s Degree in Classics--did you just go with what you already knew?

The degrees gave me the ability to imagine … to synthesize what I’ve learned, and, like jazz, sort of riff on it. Human nature doesn’t—and hasn’t—changed, really. But what sorts of crimes, what forms of resolution, what kinds of justice can be attained … you have to thoroughly understand the culture to imagine that.

The specifics—even with a Master’s—always need extra research, particularly when it comes to daily life (something most Classics degrees don’t emphasize) … you spend your time studying the high art and literature of the culture, and you have to piecemeal the popular, the every day. I had to change a few things in light of what I learned later.

Authenticity is critical … and I really enjoyed using as many historical figures in the book as possible.

And now--speaking of classics! The Jungle Red QUIZ:

Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot?

Miss Marple … because I’ve always loved the incongruity of the little old spinster lady with murder on her mind!

Sex or violence?
No contest there! Sex every time!

Pizza or chocolate?
Mmm … that’s a toughie. I’d have to go with dark chocolate, preferably Richart (French) or Belgian …

Daniel Craig or Pierce Brosnan? (We won't even include Sean Connery because we know the answer. Don't we?)
Ah, Sean … oh, sorry, we were talking Daniel or Pierce, right? Well, prior to that bathing suit scene in Casino Royale … oh, let’s just make it Daniel Craig. He’s like a rougher, tougher Russell Crowe, and SUCH a sexy Bond!

Katherine Hepburn or Audrey Hepburn?
I adore both actresses! And Breakfast at Tiffany’s is one of my favorites … Kate’s like a Rock of Gibraltar for me, though, so let’s go with her.

First person or Third Person?
First person.

Prologue or no prologue?
No prologue. Straight, no chaser, too!

Favorite non-mystery book?
Hardest question of all, and impossible to answer … so I’ll pick a random favorite: Emma, Jane Austen.

Making dinner or making reservations?
Reservations, reservations, reservations!

And finally: The Jungle Red Readers Choice:

Tell us four things about you that no one knows. Only three can be true. We'll guess.

Took Greer Garson home from a production of Sweeney Todd.
Sold escort service and massage ads for a phone company as a summer job.
Am reasonably sensitive to psychic phenomena, and participated in a ghost expedition.
Spent three years of my childhood on a commune in northern California.

Thanks Kelli! S0--any questions out there about the classics? Being a debut author?

I'm guessing--just from knowing her the tiniest bit--that she's reasonably sensitive to psychic phenomena--what do you all think?

(For more information about the world of NOX DORMIENDA (including excerpts) visit her website at http://www.kellistanley.com One DL reviewer says--If Raymond Chandler and Lindsey Davis collaborated on a book, this would be it. )