I Would Like to Return...

LUCY BURDETTE: This pandemic and isolation has brought us so many gifts. (Can you hear hysterical laughter?) So I thought today rather than focus on counting our blessings in the mess, we could line up at the customer service counter and return something that is not working out. I’ll start. Mine is called “texting thumb.“ Yes, this is more commonly found in teenage gamers who can’t get off their phones. But what about middle aged doom scrollers? Yes this has happened to me, and it hurts and cramps my style—a person needs her thumb for so many things. It’s impossible to open a jar without a thumb for example. I place the blame squarely on the pandemic. And I haven’t been able to work on getting it fixed, because it’s a pandemic and you’re not supposed to be visiting physical therapists on a daily basis. And besides, with the new virus variants, I am still madly scrolling. How about you reds? Anything you would like to return?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Return? The fear. I have to return the fear. Soon, if all goes as planned, I will have two vaccinations. Jonathan, too. And yet I thinking--I am not going anywhere. Jonathan mentioned that he will go back to his law office. I said--no! Not unless I go with you. I seriously have a kind of PTSD about re-entry. That is--awful. When will we feel safe? We have been terrified for a year. If it takes 30 days to make a habit, how long does it take to un-do?

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Can I return the -mumblemumble- pounds I’ve put on during the past year? I put on close to twenty pounds after Ross died; not surprising, as I am a stress-eater. (Why couldn’t I take after my mother, who couldn’t consume a thing when she was troubled? At least when she had grief/stress/problems her clothes fit her better.) 

The second year after I became a widow, I managed to lose the weight PLUS take more off. I was swimming at the Y regularly, walking with friends, skipping dinner for salad in a bag since I wasn’t cooking for a family and, after Youngest went off to uni, I stopped buying ANY of the sweets and desserts my family loves (sugar is like a combination of kryptonite and heroin for me.)

Then… the Maine Millennial moved back in. And the shut-down started. And Youngest came home with Guest Son and suddenly I was cooking for four hearty appetites and stocking the pantry with cookies and candy and ice cream. And now my super loose, must-wear-a-belt jeans… aren’t. Please direct me to the counter where I can return these extra inches.

Tell me a Yarn by Bernard Spragg 

JENN McKINLAY: I would like to return the mountain of yarn I bought online with some grandiose vision of all the knitting I would do during the pandemic. I enjoyed shopping for the yarn and unboxing it, but after admiring the pretty colors and textures for a few minutes, I had less than no interest in knitting. I did not knit one thing. Not one. I just picked up my needles the other day and while I am enjoying it, I look at the mountain of yarn and realize it will be years before I use it all. What was I thinking?

HALLIE EPHRON: I would like to return the yeast. Early on I thought now would be the perfect time to learn to bake bread. Then I couldn’t find yeast at the market - like the owl and pussycat, it and the toilet paper had fled. So I posted on Facebook. 

Soon after that, one friend dropped off a plastic container of yeast. Another dropped of a 1-lb package. And… so now I am awash in yeast and bread baking no longer sings its siren song. 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I would like to return mopping, thank you very much. I feel terribly spoiled to complain about doing without our housekeepers for a year, but oh how do I miss them. It's a big house and it takes me days (time that would be much better spent writing) to do what they do in a couple of hours. And mopping is the worst! I don't mind vacuuming--I do at least the downstairs most days (otherwise we would live in a sea of German shepherd hair) with our battery-powered Dyson, but mopping I will put off until my feet literally stick to the floor. Ugh.

RHYS BOWEN: No housekeeper here either, Debs. I have had enough of vacuuming the stairs. However, I would like to return my acid reflux that became really bad with all the stress of pandemic plus the uproar over the election, plus the storming of the Capitol. Now I’m on an extremely cautious diet that means no coffee, chocolate, alcohol, citrus fruit, spices… in short everything I love. If it’s not bad enough waking with burning pain in my stomach, I’m supposed to eat kale to cure it!

I wonder how many people would like to return the toilet paper they stocked up?

LUCY: Reds, anything you'd like for us to return for you when we're at the customer service counter?

Rhys remembers Jello Salad.

 

RHYS BOWEN: I saw this old advertisement the other day and boy did it bring back memories. When we first arrived in the United States one of the first things we were introduced to was jello salad. What a shock. Nothing like it in England. In England jelly was eaten at children’s parties along with custard or blanc mange. One served various things like cold chicken in aspic, but jello salad did not exist. In fact when we had English friends visiting us and took them to a neighbor’s house their son (aged 4) demanded loudly “why are they serving me my afters before my meat?”

 It was only one of the culinary surprises I was introduced you in America. In England we never served sweet and savory at the same time. No pancakes with syrup along with eggs and bacon. No biscuits and honey beside the chicken. It simply wasn’t done. 

 And when I was given recipes from older women—those who became housewives in the 1950s, every single recipe contained either cream of mushroom or chicken soup or cool whip. And a left-over from those days, I am still required to make green bean casserole for the family thanksgiving: cans of beans, cans of cream of mushroom soup and those fried onions.

 The other thing that shocked me was the size of the portions. In England a ham sandwich was two slices of bread with a slice of ham between them. A ham sandwich here is an inch thick of ham with all the trimmings! I remember a fellow Brit coming to New York for the first time. She stayed at a fancy hotel and ordered room service. She thought a chicken sandwich sounded good. Then she thought she was hungry so she ordered two chicken sandwiches. Each one came up with half a chicken on it!

 English cooking has always had a bad reputation—mainly because the average housewife used to boil all the goodness out of her vegetables and overroast the meat. But English cooking at its best relies on fresh, unadulterated ingredients. Cows and pigs are raised in pastures in UK. Eggs taste like eggs. Fresh fish comes from the sea the same day. There are now hundreds of small market gardens where organic produce is grown. And it’s interesting how Indian cuisine has been universally adopted in UK, ranging from curry and chips in a lowly café to wonderfully spiced delights in an upscale restaurant.

 So I’m interested to hear your memories of food growing up in the US. Did you actually like Jello salad? Did you ever cook with cream of chicken soup or cream of mushroom or cool whip? 

Getting Crafty

RHYS BOWEN: At the beginning of an unforeseen length of isolation I assumed I’d use the time well. Not only would I write stellar books but I would take up all those things I planned to do during my life and never had done. I was going to perfect playing my Welsh harp. I was going to take my knowledge of Italian beyond ordering meals and talking about the weather. Ditto with my Welsh. I have both programs downloaded onto my computer. Both untouched to date.

 Also I was going to be really crafty and make all sorts of wonderful things. Well, I did make some masks before you could buy them, including one from a bra! It looked okay but since I couldn’t breathe with it on was hardly a great success. 

 I bought a big cross stitch picture and I actually started it. I’ve done about an inch along the top by now. At this rate I’ll finish it by 2030.

I cut up many lengths of yarn intending to thread my loom and weave a scarf, but they sit, draped over the loom, not threaded, not ready to begin even. But I did knit an outfit for a German doll given to my daughter Clare as a baby by my best friend when we were visiting in Germany. Clare never really took to the doll (it has a carved wooden head) and so it lay there, too dear to throw away. But the doll was dressed as a baby and I thought he ought to be a little German boy. So I’ve made him lederhosen and a traditional green jacket. I’ve decided i can knit doll’s clothes. I like something I can finish in one evening.

 One thing I did do a lot of, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, was watercolor painting. I found it calming and I liked that I was totally absorbed and so did not worry while I was working. Having done landscapes I tried my hand at portraits and painted several of the family for Christmas gifts.

This was a picture of my mother, done from an old black and white photograph. It does look like her!

 But I notice I haven’t picked up my paints since Christmas. IN fact I haven’t done much in the way of creativity except for starting on my next book--and that’s because the word DEADLINE looms. But I think I feel burned out… too much underlying worry for too long, and then adding additional worry about crazy mobs storming the Capitol. Now all I want is for life to return to normal. I want to feel free to pop to the store whenever I feel like it, not just during senior hour, to meet friends for lunch, to go to a theater again. I’m sure you all feel the same.

 So who else has found her artistic and crafty side during this time? I saw a post from Jenn that she had ordered masses of yarn, intending to do great knitting projects.

I know Hallie has been doing jigsaws like crazy. Has anyone else found a hidden artistic bent? A new hobby that will be continued after the pandemic lifts? I think my new hobby will be research for upcoming travel!

And who found they were more creative? Less creative? More inspiration? Less inspiration?   For me it was the latter. I find I have had to drag out the words for my books, force myself to sit at the computer.  Now I have my vaccines maybe I'll be bursting with new creativity--make that cross stitch, weave that scarf, oh, and write a few brilliant books along the way.

AND drum roll please! 
The winner of Ellie Griffith's book is Joan Emerson.  Joan please email me at authorrhysbowen@gmail.com with your street address and I'll see that a copy is sent to you.  Congratulations.

Cara Black Reminds us of How Much we Miss Paris!

 

RHYS BOWEN:  For many years Cara Black and I had a book out in the spring and we toured together, having adventures, some fun and some alarming, but always relishing each other's company. Last year Cara's book came out in the summer and alas there was no touring. There is no touring this year either, but the paperback of Cara's very successful thriller THREE HOURS IN PARIS comes out at the same time as my THE VENICE SKETCHBOOK, so of course we had to do some things together, if only virtually. And I had to have Cara back to remind us what we are missing in Paris this spring.

All yours, Cara:

CARA BLACK: Bonjour Reds, 

 Ça va? How’s everyone doing? 

 A big thank you to Rhys for inviting me back!

 I’m feeling nostalgic for Paris, wishing I was there right now. You, too? Normally, I would have been doing research and staying with my friend, Anne-Françoise, in Paris. March and it’s not quite spring. Soon, the buds in the rose garden in Jardin du Luxembourg will start to blush pink, yellow and antique white, the leaves on the trees surrounding the boat pond will begin to shimmer with silver and green. Soon, at least in a normal year, people will gather and play boules by the puppet theatre or hit the tennis courts. I’d be with Anne-Françoise, picking up her daughters after school which is across the street. We’ll get in line for a sweet crêpe before the girls ran to play under the budding trees. In that soft filtered light, we’ll be chatting on the green benches, watching the girls on the swings. 

From the window of the Ministry of Marine, overlooking the Seine.

The cafés would be open, crowded tables spilling over the sidewalks with Parisians non-stop talking, drinking and meeting friends. I would be here now leading a walking tour of places featured in my book, Three Hours in Paris, set in 1940. 

Scenes that take place here in Jardin du Luxembourg, by the Medici fountain. 

 But of course, I’m not. I’m at my desk in San Francisco, where I have been for the past year, dreaming of colour and light. But now more than ever – when we are all imagining elsewhere – we can still visit other places in the pages of a book. The old Paris, by this I mean 1940, is everywhere. Sometimes you have to dig and go literally underground which I’ve been lucky to do in my research. Underneath this grass, these gravel paths, and the tree-lined alleys lie the tunnels with shelters full of German graffiti and a rusted Nazi toilet!

 The high school, Lycée Montaigne, at the end of the garden, was the Luftwaffe barracks. Every day, with notebook and my old maps, I’d set out to discover the Paris my characters would have discovered. As writers, we must be detectives and archaeologists, always seeking to find the hidden history of the city beneath our feet, behind the walls. Layer upon layer. I’ll stop at my favourite Saint Germain florist, she’s a floral magician and pick up a spring bouquet. 

Soon I’ll cross the Seine on the oldest bridge in Paris, the Port Neuf. Below on the river, bateaux mouches glide sharing space with barges. Onto the Marais passing the ancient national archives and Bibliothéque, the remnants of a medieval wall, go down a cobbled alley. There in the smallest Chinatown in Paris, at the edge of the Marais, I’ll visit my friend Naftali, and give him flowers. During World War II, Naftali, a young Polish boy wore a yellow star and became a Résistant at 14. Now he’s 90 + years and loves driving at night - yes he still has a license! - so we pick up his girlfriend - she’s in her 80’s and they met online. 

Chanel now and in 1940

 During our night drives he points out his hideaway next door to Shakespeare & Co bookstore, his old school, the boulevard where as a young boy he watched the German soldiers march in. It’s time travelling to the 1940’s through his eyes. Naftali’s always up for finding me a ‘new murder spot and corpse locations,” for my books, too. It’s always good to do this at night, he says, so I don’t get arrested. Ah..dreams. I’ll have a ticket to the newly renovated and re-opened Victor Hugo museum, in the 17th century Place des Vosges - one of my favorites - and where Aimée Leduc hid and climbed over the rooftops in Murder in the Marais. Then I’ll walk under the arcades of the rue du Rivoli, eyeing Coco Chanel’s first boutique on rue Cambon - till there, and the Place Vendôme to the right, and across from the Tuilleries garden. Beyond the art nouveau restaurant Maxim’s and then to 17th century Hôtel de la Marine, it’s not a hotel but the Naval Ministry which has just re-opened after several years of renovations. The pictures are stunning and the museum will be amazing. The windows overlook Place de la Concorde, beyond that the Seine and Left Bank. It will look quite different from 1940 in the German Occupation when the Kriegsmarine took it over.

 In my book Three Hours in Paris, Kate Rees, dons a disguise and with a French scientist, sneaks her way in to steal German naval documents that could change the course of the war. So much of my research involved this incredible building from ten years ago when I took a tour of the basement and found German signs and artifacts from WW2. The scent of spring will fill the air and the almost palpable energy of new exhibitions, fashion shows and art openings. I’ll have a list of research to do, flics to take to dinner, archives to visit, a walking tour to lead for readers, and meeting retired homicide detectives from la Crim’ over apéro’s. 

Yet, as Simone Signoret, the iconic French actress said in her autobiography of the same name, ‘Nostalgia Isn’t What it Used to Be’. My nostalgia will fade when finally, I can return to Paris. It’s a moveable feast as Ernest Hemingway said. Or as Rick tells Ilsa in Casablanca ‘we’ll always have Paris’. N’est-ce pas?  

 à bientôt, Cara 

 PS Continuing our touring tradition Rhys and I will celebrate our book birthdays virtually at Book Passage on April 18 and Poisoned Pen on March 30.  THiP is out in paperback on March 30 Cara http://www.carablack.com http://twitter.com/#!/carablack http://www.facebook.com/cara.black1

RHYS: If you haven't read Cara's book yet, I highly recommend it. An absolute page turner that whisks the reader through Paris in 1940. 

THE COAT THAT HID MY SECRET by Ellen Byron

Jenn McKinlay: As always, I am ever delighted to welcome our dear friend, award winning mystery author, Ellen Byron, to the Jungle Reds and, boy, does she have a story for you. Take it away, Ellen!

Ellen Byron: Before I began writing mysteries, I wrote for TV and film—sitcoms mostly, like Wings and Just Shoot Me, to name a couple you’ve heard of as opposed to the many shows I worked on that died a quick death. I wrote as half of a team, my partner being a friend I made in a sitcom writing class. Eventually we each got married and then segued into parenthood. She had a baby first, a glorious little boy. And we quickly learned that nobody wanted to hire new mothers, even if you had a perfectly great childcare plan in place, like she did. So when I became pregnant, I made a choice I hoped would help us land a new job. I hid my pregnancy. Not for the first trimester, like many do. I hid it for eight months.  

I was lucky on one count. As I gained weight, I gained it all over. I wasn’t one of those pregnant women who aside from looking like they swallowed a bowling ball, remained slim. Every part of me puffed out, which allowed me to present as rotund rather than expectant. I went to a thrift store and bought a giant black men’s overcoat that I’d wear to meetings to hide myself from the neck down. We met for a position on Sex and the City when I was at eight and a half months along, and to justify my girth, I blathered on about how excited I was to move back to my hometown of NYC and eat my way through the city. But by that point, my poor coat was busting at the seams. We didn’t get the job.

 

Attendees to my baby shower were sworn to secrecy. My husband didn’t even tell his coworkers we were expecting. Then preeclampsia put me in hospital and dictated a delivery three weeks before my due date. My husband rushed to the hospital, sharing the news that his wife was about to give birth with his stunned work friends on his way out the door.

 A secret shower, a giant coat over a burgeoning belly - my pregnancy was straight out of the sitcoms I wrote for. In my new release, LONG ISLAND ICED TINA, events at a baby shower set the mystery in motion. But I spared the poor mother-to-be in the book my own nutty subterfuge. Still, writing it brought back a lot of memories. 

 

Recently, I took a stab at Marie Kondo-ing a closet and in its farthest reaches I found that old black overcoat. Aside from a few loose buttons, it was in great shape. Debating whether or not to donate it, I asked the classic Kondo question: did the coat give me joy? The answer was yes. Crazy as those eight months of my pregnancy were, they brought me the joy of our daughter —who turned twenty-one two weeks ago. 

I kept the coat.

 

Readers, do you have a piece of clothing that has a special memory attached to it? Comment to be entered to win a copy of LONG ISLAND ICED TINA.

BUY NOW!

LONG ISLAND ICED TINA SYNOPSIS - KENSINGTON

 

In the second installment of Maria DiRico's new Catering Hall Mystery series, Mia Carina is back in the borough of Queens, in charge of the family catering hall Belle View Banquet Manor and keeping her nonna company. But some events--like murder at a shower--are not the kind you can schedule...

Mia's newly pregnant friend Nicole plans to hold a shower at Belle View--but Nicole also has to attend one that her competitive (and mysteriously rich) stepmother, Tina, is throwing at the fanciest place in Queens. It's a good chance for Mia to snoop on a competitor, especially since doing a search for "how to run a catering hall" can get you only so far.

Mia tags along at the lavish party, but the ambience suffers at Nicole's Belle View shower when a fight breaks out--and then, oddly, a long-missing and valuable stolen painting is unwrapped by the mom-to-be. Tina is clearly shocked to see it. But not as shocked as Mia is when, soon afterward, she spots the lifeless body of a party guest floating in the marina . . .

Ellen’s Cajun Country Mysteries have won the Agatha award for Best Contemporary Novel and multiple Lefty awards for Best Humorous Mystery. She writes the Catering Hall Mystery series, which are inspired by her real life, under the name Maria DiRico. Ellen is an award-winning playwright, and non-award-winning TV writer of comedies like WINGS, JUST SHOOT ME, and FAIRLY ODD PARENTS. She has written over two hundred articles for national magazines but considers her most impressive credit working as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart. 

Newsletter: https://www.ellenbyron.com/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/ellenbyronauthor/

https://www.facebook.com/CateringHallMysteries/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/ellenbyronmariadirico/

Bookbub:

https://www.bookbub.com/profile/ellen-byron

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/maria-dirico

Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/23234.Ellen_Byron?from_search=true&from_srp=true

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19130966.Maria_DiRico?from_search=true&from_srp=true

A Chat with Elly Griffiths.

RHYS BOWEN: This is a fan-girl moment for me because Elly Griffith is a writer I admire. I blurbed her last year's The Stranger Diaries that won the Edgar best novel (deservedly so for once). And I was given this year's stand alone novel, The Postscript Murders, to read. Quite different in tone but still enchanting.

The book comes out this month so I had to have Elly as my guest.  We have only met once, at a loud boozy dinner at a Bouchercon, so I'm glad to reconnect by interviewing her today.  Welcome Elly:

 RHYS:  This book follows the incredibly successful The Stranger Diaries which won the Edgar award last year. It features some of the same characters, yet the tone is quite different. The Stranger Diaries had a brooding, gothic feel to it but this is more traditional cozy. Had you had enough of darkness for a while? 

ELLY: It's funny the way each book is different, isn’t it? I didn’t set out to write a lighter book but I suppose the subject matter – books, literary clues, writing festivals – did lend itself to a cozier, more traditional tone. As soon as I’d finished the book, the UK was locked down and everything became much grimmer. Certainly my next book, The Night Hawks, has a darker, more claustrophobic tone. I now look back to The Postscript Murders as a halcyon time of travel and adventure – even though it does include several murders!

 RHYS:  Your detective is again the young Sikh woman, Harbinder Kaur, whom we met in the Stranger Diaries. Are you intending this to be a long term relationship so that this may become another series for you? 

ELLY: I hadn’t originally intended Harbinder to be a series character but, after The Stranger Diaries, I kept thinking about her. So, when the characters in The Postscript Murders consulted a detective, I knew who it would be. I think there might be one more Harbinder book but not a long series.

RHYS:  What made you choose an Indian Sikh woman as your detective? Do you have connections and insight into the Sikh community? 

ELLY: Harbinder just suddenly appeared, the way characters do. I think it’s always a consideration, though, when you create a character whose cultural background is very different from your own. On one hand, I felt Harbinder deserved to be centre stage but I wanted to be sure that I was presenting her in an authentic way. I do have a good friend who is from a Punjabi Sikh background and she – and her mother – were invaluable advisors on the book.

RHYS:  This book features an ensemble casts with four points of view, each using their personal approach and experience to put together pieces of the puzzle. Was that something you wanted to try or did you find that you needed more than one person to tell the story? (And as an aside, it worked beautifully and I found it very refreshing) 

ELLY: Thank you! I have toyed with this structure before but this is the first time I have written each chapter from a different point of view. It was challenging, especially when I needed to drop in a clue that the narrator might not notice, but it was also a lot of fun. I liked describing the way the characters saw each other too – Edwin being irritated with Benedict’s slow eating, Natalka starting to see Benedict in a different light, Harbinder becoming increasingly irritated by the amateur sleuths. 

RHYS : Also you choose to use the present tense. Was that easy to do? Did you find limitations? 

ELLY: The Ruth books are also written in the present tense so I’ve had a bit of practice. I like the immediacy but it can sometimes feel a bit relentless – action following action without much respite. I did feel that it suited this book though, so that the reader could accompany the characters on their road trip.

RHYS: This is a story of the murder of an old woman who has made a career of helping writers to come up with brilliant, new ways to kill people. I loved it! Have you met such a person yourself? Have you used such a person? (Aside note: it may become my next career when I retire from writing!)

ELLY:  Hahaha. Peggy is based on my Auntie Marge (happily still with us) who often comes up with gruesome murder ideas for me. Like Peggy, Marge lives in a seaside apartment and seems to know everything that is going on around her. She even has a good friend who runs the nearby Coffee Shack…

RHYS: Brilliant!  You also write a successful series, featuring forensic archeologist Ruth Galloway. What did you find different about writing a stand-alone? Which do you now prefer? Are there more stand-alones in the works?

ELLY:  I find that the stand-alones help with the series and vice versa. I enjoy the freedom of creating a new world in each stand-alone book but I do miss the familiar world of Ruth or the Brighton Mysteries and go back to them with added vigour. I will certainly continue to mix the series with stand-alones.

RHYS : And lastly something more personal. How has the pandemic affected your writing? Have you found yourself more productive/less productive? 

ELLY: I consider myself very lucky. I have friends and family who are doctors, nurses and teachers and I have seen how tirelessly they have worked during the pandemic. Also, I’ve seen friends with young children struggling with home-schooling. I can work from home and my children are grown-up. All I have to do is walk a few yards to my garden shed and make stuff up! I’ve written three books in lockdown so I certainly haven’t been less productive. Having said that, I have struggled at times. I miss seeing friends and family. I miss Norfolk and Italy. I feel very lucky to be able to travel in my books. Th

RHYS: Oh travel to Italy! How I miss that too. And there have been times, cooped up with John, when I would love a garden shed, or as it is called these days A She Shack!  It was lovely having you come to visit, Elly. I'm sure the new book will be a great success

 and I have good news for our readers:

Elly's publisher will give a copy of the POSTSCRIPT MURDERS to a commenter Elly picks! 

RHYS on Getting it Right

 RHYS BOWEN:  I have just finished teaching an online class on writing historical mysteries to the Sisters in Crime Guppy group. One of the things I've stressed is the need to GET IT RIGHT. Gone are the days when your train could arrive at London Station and your characters could claim to be British by saying "Pip pip, cheerio" to each other. Everybody is savvy these days. The internet is there to check everything and if you get one small thing wrong you will know it.

Sometimes the writer feels like shouting "IT'S FICTION, DAMMIT!" but the point is that if you choose a real place and time for your story, the everything has to be right about that place or you have jerked some readers out of the story.  I read a book by a well-known author (who shall remain nameless) in which she got several things howlingly wrong...incorrect procedure and form of address at the English court, the wrong island, and I was so angry I couldn't finish the book.

I was asked to blurb another book in which a train from Yorkshire came into Victoria Station in London. That one got thrown across the room.  How can authors get such basic things wrong?

It should be easy to do the big research--when I wrote the Molly Murphy book, For the Love of Mike, I read the senate depositions after the Triangle Fire so that every abuse that happened to a girl in my book had happened to a real girl. Not necessary but really satisfying for the author and a way of making the reader feel that everything you are telling her is real and valid.

It's not always easy to avoid anachronisms, however. (Isn't that a lovely word. Anachronism. Say it out loud. Most satisfying). When I was writing my first Molly book my copy editor queried the use of Streetlight. And she was right. Not in use at that time. They were still lamps--lit by lamp lighters in many places, and even when electricity had been introduced they were still referred to as street lamps.

A very small thing and one that wouldn't upset anybody but it's satisfying to get it right.  I remember researching once with a friendly librarian when elastic came into use in women's undergarments. I wanted t know how easily my hero could rip them off? Such are the small things that obsess a historical writer.

Also in the Molly books I found that the word Car park was not in usage before 1920. Also Freud was just in the process of formulating his theories so none of the characters could be stressed, need to relax, be obsessed... such concepts didn't exist.

I am very conscious of anachronisms recently because I have watched Bridgerton and The Crown.

Bridgerton--OMG, anachronism laden, and I don't mean the choice of actors of various ethnicity. I was unable to recognize one thing about what is supposed to be London. It's the Georgian period. When I lived on Queen Anne Street when I worked for the BBC my house was Georgian. Plenty of Georgian buildings to use, but I had no idea where we were in any of the scenes. Was this perhaps because it was meant to be a fantasy world? Maybe.

But small things annoyed me too: court etiquette. Three daughters are presented at once to Queen Charlotte. The mother remarks she can try again next year. I'm sorry but unless things have changed significantly you are presented once, at eighteen. I rather think that court etiquette is written in stone.

And then there is the Crown: You should see the buzz it created in UK with all the little things they got wrong: the scenes at Balmoral when they go out stalking the stag. Those who know about these things say you'd never shoot at an animal without a backdrop (ie, a hillside behind it) so that there is no risk of the bullet going through the animal and striking someone beyond.  You'd never shoot without wearing ear muffs to deaden the sound.  I can't believe they didn't offer Mrs. Thatcher a pair of boots, not let her tramp through the heather in high heels. Nor can I believe she was clueless enough not to find out in advance what the dress code might be with her hosts! If I were going to spend some time in the wilds of Scotland I'd definitely take warm trousers and a rain jacket and stout shoes, wouldn't you?  It's easy enough to find pictures of the royals and see what they wear--of course, they wear kilts and she couldn't...

When Prince Charles is fly fishing apparently he's using the wrong type of rod for the stream. Again something that wouldn't matter to you or me but would matter to a fisherman.

I also find when I am writing that sometimes my problem is the opposite. I know something is true for the period but I can't include it because my readers would never accept it. It might be a form of slang that just sounds wrong or it might be a photo that I have of Macy's food counter in 1900. The center of the display is a stack of cans of chili con carne.  If I wrote that Molly went home and opened a can of chili I would be besieged with letters telling me how stupid I was.

So I'm interested to know how much it bothers you if you find a mistake in a book you are reading?

Do you continue to read or do you, like me, throw it across the room? And writers--have you ever made an error you came to regret? (confession time--I put Claridges Hotel on the wrong street in a Royal Spyness book. Unforgivable as our next door neighbor was the night manager of Claridges!)

Free to Fly Again!

RHYS BOWEN: Ten days ago I got my second vaccine shot, so by the end of this week I should be safe to venture beyond the confines of my own home for the first time since March last year. Actually that’s not quite true. I have been to the supermarket during senior hour, at seven thirty in the morning once a week. We walk twice a day in local parkland. I’ve actually braved the post office when I’ve had to send off books. But that’s about it.

 So no lunches out, no evening restaurants, no theaters, museums, bookstores. Nothing that makes life rich and exciting. We’ve had take-out from a few restaurants but on the whole we’ve found it disappointing as it’s usually cold by the time we get it home. And most of all no meals with family and friends—indoors at least. We have dared to meet from time to time outside on my balcony or patio. But at distance, with masks and no hugs.

 

And in our professional sphere we’ve missed book launches, book tours, conventions, fans, fun lunches, late night chats with friends in the bar. I know it’s been the same for all of us—a long, boring, worrying slog with no end in sight. Until now.  Later this week I am heading to Arizona. We haven’t been able to spend our usual winter at our house there,  so I’ve missed drives into the desert, meeting friends at favorite restaurants and especially barbecues in my daughter’s backyard and the twins school activities. So I’m so excited to be with them again. Clare and Tim have both had their shots so I’m hoping for lots of hugs. And also looking forward to seeing our granddaughter in a leading role in the school musical. After a year of isolation and learning from home, the kids have finally gone back to the class room. TJ is wrestling and Mary Clare is singing and dancing. I’m so happy for them.

And I'm daring to dream about travel again. This is the first time we haven't spent the summer in England and Europe for many years and oh, how I miss it. But I've tentatively booked a cruise for NEXT spring. Fingers crossed.

 Okay Reds, Where do you stand in the vaccine line? And what will be the first thing you do when you are finally free to spread your wings again?

LUCY BURDETTE: We are very fortunate to have both shots under our belts. That means we are going out to dinner tonight (outside, I still won’t eat inside) to celebrate a friend’s birthday (they are vaccinated too). So thrilled! And we have plane reservations at the end of March to go to CA and finally see the grandchildren. That all could change in a minute if the virus ramps up, of course, so we stand nervously ready to pivot. And I’m working to help some other elder friends who aren’t Internet savvy find their shots. Sigh. The system was broken before it started.

JENN McKINLAY: I’m at the bottom of the list for a vaccination, I’m afraid. I’m not old enough or essential enough -- darn it! But Arizona does seem to be rolling them out swiftly so my hope is that I’ll be vaccinated by the end of April. I sincerely hope so because I have a lot of research to do for my book set on Martha’s Vineyard, and I really need to do the boots on the ground walking tour of the place to get it just right. 

HALLIE EPHRON: I’m finally scheduled for my first shot. My intrepid daughter spent two and a half hours on line battling with the scheduling system and finally scored an appointment for me. I’ll drive about 40 minutes to our local football stadium to get the first dose, then wait and go again for the second one, and then wait… what are they saying, 10 days to develop full immunity? But we’re not planning any trips or events, not until we see the numbers that are going down stay down.

I think the roll-out is going to accelerate quite a bit and certainly they’ll fix the registration systems. I’m optimistic. And dying to see my grandchildren.

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I’m in Jenn’s group - neither old enough, nor essential, nor (thankfully) do I have any comorbidities.  My poor daughters are desperate to see me vaccinated, but frankly, I’m fine - I work from home anyway, and I can continue with Zoom church and Netflix instead of movie theaters for the foreseeable future. I’m hoping maybe sometime in May? June? 

The travel that’s most tantalizing isn’t my own - I’d love to have the Sailor and his girl visit this summer. She’s already had the vaccinations (works in the medical field) and the Navy is prioritizing getting its people immunized. (Which is an interesting topic, because I’ve seen nothing about vaccines for the Armed Forces in the public discourse.) 

I can spend another summer socializing outside and staying six feet+ away from my friends. I just want to get to summer - at this time of year, it’s very hard to imagine it will ever get here.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: We are now more than two weeks past our second shots. Rick has been able to make plumbing supply runs to the hardware store (masked, of course) without worry, so we were very grateful for that after the storm here in Texas. I've done little errands, just popping in a few places for this or that, which I would not have done pre-vaccine, when pretty much my only outing was a weekly senior hour grocery trip to Trader Joe's. It felt enormously liberating just to do some ordinary things. I think we will be gradually ramping up our expectations. A haircut (yay!!! After a year!!) An outdoor lunch with my daughter! A dash in B&N to pick up a British home magazine! But I'm not ready to contemplate travel until a lot more people are vaccinated and the numbers are down.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Jonathan has had both shots---hurray, and it is such an amazing relief! He had absolutely no side effects. Not a shiver or even one moment of discomfort. It’s so reassuring and it feels like I am a thousand pounds lighter. In two weeks, he’ll be back in court, and that'll be incredibly weird. He now has a dentist appointment too, and I said--I’ll go with you! He said--why? And I realized, we have not done anything separately for a year. What a transition.

As for me, I’ve had my first shot, no side effects. And, if all goes as planned--please cross fingers for me here in Massachusetts, which is ridiculously disorganized--I’ll have my second one on March 9.

And let me say, how weird is it? That we are living in a time where the universe says: Okay. You won’t die IF you get a shot of something that will save you, but MAY make you briefly sick and unhappy, but in 12 hours you’ll be fine, so--will you do it?

And of course I will, with endless delight. 

RHYS: So who else has had their vaccines? And what does everyone dream of doing first?

In that space is our power

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Lucky lucky (and smart you) for being here today!

 Let me introduce you to Damyanti Biswas. Here’s how we met: Damyanti was on our schedule for First Chapter Fun. (You know it, right? If you don’t, more on that later.)

To prepare for reading the first chapter of her book YOU BENEATH YOUR SKIN out loud, I, um, had to read it. (You can watch the reading here. And hear some amazing things about what Damyanti does.) And I fell in love with it. Then I read her bio, and fell in love with her. Then we exchanged emails, and blogs, and interviews, and then she asked me to do a guest blog and I asked her to write a short story for the Bouchercon anthony. Which turned out to be one of the best stories ever.

And now, if you don't already know her from her amazing writing blog or her book or her work, you get to meet Damyanti, too.

And you tell me whether this changes your life. It did mine.

In that space is our power

By Damyanti Biswas

Last year, during this week in February, I’d begun to hear of covid in distant news: it was happening in other countries. I was upset for my Chinese friends in quarantine. Then of course the world as we knew it changed, and we all got a taste of isolation, anxiety, and a crippling loss of certainty.


With nowhere else to go other than parks, I discovered many green places not far from where I live, and rediscovered the joy of an activity I’d forgotten: nature walks. When walking, I couldn’t doom-scroll and consume the barrage of negativity that was my social media and newsfeed. I could control where I was going—and better still, take refuge in the green.


Cocooned in my privilege of not having to know all that’s going on in the world, I switched off my social media and landed in a weird but increasingly welcome mind-space of blank stillness. Strolls brought new pleasures. The much-spoken-about joy of noticing the small things. The way a road curves in a series of arcs. Weeds by the highway, flowering. Tiny butterflies no bigger than my nail flitting among them. Snails sliming their way onto mossy walls. Beetles and birdcalls, big and small. Dewdrops lingering on spiderwebs in stray sunlight. A dog panting up at its owner, all adoration, frolic, eagerness.


These are (poetic but undeniable) reassurances. Things that go right, creatures and people about their business, the security of knowing I’m a link in this chain, in interaction with it all. That I’m a part of the picture in other people’s eyes. The world goes on, despite humanity’s cumulative attempts at destroying it. We are getting a lot of things right.


I also got hooked on podcasts as I walked. Many of them were about fantastic books. I tried making my way through all those recommended reading lists during the day or at bedtime, but soon realized that an anxious mind could not focus for more than five minutes.


This was when someone suggested audiobooks. I’d never taken to them before because they either tended to put me to sleep, or sent me into a daydream. I wondered if they might work with my morning walks. By this time, I was putting in 2 hours of walking every day, beside the sea, under the shade of trees, in neighborhood parks.


The first audiobook I listened to was Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens. The long lyrical nature descriptions hooked me in. It didn’t hurt that the reader had a soothing lilt. Simple as the concept was, having a story read into my ears as I walked turned out to be an experience I hadn’t considered or imagined before.


The Austrian holocaust survivor, psychiatrist, and author Viktor E. Frankl once said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”


The first two hours of my day will be my self-care, I’ve decided, the stimuli I seek in my life. Unless someone in the family needs immediate medical attention, you’ll find me walking, often before sunrise. I’m fortunate to live in a tropical country, but on mornings with tropical downpour, I head to an indoor stadium. Audiobooks plus walks is my new formula for sanity, even on days my anxiety makes it hard to breathe.


I find myself in absolute agreement with Søren Kierkegaard, who said, “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”


I heard this passage in an audiobook, during one of my morning walks.


HANK: See? How much is walking a part of your life, reds and readers? Does it work for you like this?

All author proceeds from You Beneath Your Skin go to Project WHY and Stop Acid Attacks.

Damyanti Biswas is an Indian author currently based in Singapore. Her short fiction has been published or is forthcoming at Smokelong, Ambit, Litro, Puerto del Sol, Griffith Review Australia, as well as other journals in the USA and UK. Her work is available in various anthologies in Asia, and she serves as one of the editors of the Forge Literary Magazine. Her debut literary crime novel, You Beneath Your Skin, was published by Simon & Schuster, and optioned for screen by Endemol Shine.




YOU BENEATH YOUR SKIN


LIES. AMBITION. FAMILY.

It’s a dark, smog-choked new Delhi winter. Indian American single mother Anjali Morgan juggles her job as a psychiatrist with caring for her autistic teenage son. She is in a long-standing affair with ambitious police commissioner Jatin Bhatt – an irresistible attraction that could destroy both their lives.

Jatin’s home life is falling apart: his handsome and charming son is not all he appears to be, and his wife has too much on her plate to pay attention to either husband or son. But Jatin refuses to listen to anyone, not even the sister to whom he is deeply attached.

Across the city there is a crime spree: slum women found stuffed in trash bags, faces and bodies disfigured by acid. And as events spiral out of control Anjali is horrifyingly at the center of it all …

In a sordid world of poverty, misogyny, and political corruption, Jatin must make some hard choices. But what he unearths is only the tip of the iceberg. Together with Anjali he must confront old wounds and uncover long-held secrets before it is too late.

Remembering Margaret Maron

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, such a bright light extinguished in mystery world. The incomparable Margaret Maron. I’ll wager there’s not a reader among us in Reds territory who has not read her books, and loved them, and learned from them. And if you have not, today is a good day to begin. In honor of her talent, and her joy, and her love and her legacy.

As a tribute to our Margaret, who changed each and every Red’s life. And isn’t that pretty amazing? She was so tough, and so sure of herself (it seemed) and hilarious.

She taught herself to write, she’d tell you. And when she’d visit new places, she’d ask those who lived there: “what might get a person killed around here?


She won every major mystery award, including the Edgar (for her first novel, The Bootlegger’s Daughter), Agatha and Anthony and everything else. She wrote 10 Sigrid Harald books, about a New York Police lieutenant, and the 20-volume set of Deborah Knott books, the groundbreaking series about a district court judge in North Carolina. (Which is not the half of it.)

She wrote short stories, and magazine articles and a wonderful essay for Writes of Passage, the Sisters in Crime anthology I edited. She wrote her own obituary.

I met her--gosh, in 2007. At the Malice Domestic conference in Bethesda, the mecca for traditional mystery authors, and to bestower of the Agatha Award. I was the newbiest of the newbies, and, like some enormous rite of passage, I know that Margaret Maron--a name everyone said with reverence--would be the moderator/questioner/interrogator for the infamous Best First Novel nominees panel. We were told, sotto voce, “Be very afraid.” I was, indeed.

She had obviously read every one of the nominee’s books-- my Prime Time, and those of Deanna Raybourn, Beth Groundwater and Charles Finch.

She asked me (with that accent, and that confident demeanor): “Looking back on your book now, what do you wish you had done differently?

I looked at her, feeling like a spooked rabbit. I blurted out the truth. “Nothing,” I said. “I love it.”

She burst out laughing.

JENN McKINLAY: Margaret Maron was for me one of the reasons I became a mystery writer. I discovered Bootlegger’s Daughter in 1995, before writing mysteries was even a concrete idea in my head and I became a diehard fan of her Judge Deborah Knott series, eagerly anticipating every new release. I only met her in passing at Malice Domestic once, but I remember she treated me as an equal, even though I was very new to the mystery world, and I appreciated it so very much. She was one of the unofficial ambassadors of the genre and she will be greatly missed.

LUCY BURDETTE: My first published mystery, SIX STROKES UNDER, by the other me, Roberta Isleib, was nominated for an Agatha award for best first mystery. Julia was the ultimate winner on that same panel, which also included Nancy Martin, Pip Granger, Lea Wait, and Claire Johnson. With the esteemed Margaret Maron moderating. It was my first public panel and I was absolutely terrified. Margaret was so perfect for that panel because she made each of us feel completely special. I know she had read each of the books--her questions showed this. And if she thought some of us were hacks who didn’t have a clue what we were doing, that never leaked through. It was truly a highlight of my career. Aside from her writing, which was lovely, she was a pillar of the mystery community--outspoken when she needed to be, level-headed, kind and oh so very smart. We have lost a bright light in our little part of the world.

RHYS BOWEN: In this time when every day seems to bring a news loss, a new grief to our mystery community Margaret Maron’s death hits particularly hard. She was a brilliant writer, of course—the only person to have won every award, including the Edgar, for her first novel. But she was also a kind, generous person who embraced the whole of the mystery community as her family. She was a founder of Sisters in Crime and a champion of women writers.

I learned of her when my first novel, Evans Above, was published in 1997. I received a hand-written letter from Margaret Maron telling me how much she loved the book.Margaret Maron had taken the time to tell me she loved my book. I was gobsmacked.

Then at my first Malice I met her in person and soon became friends with her and Joe. We shared many a meal or drink at subsequent conventions. She was an essential part of Malice and I can’t imagine it without her. First Parnell Hall and now Margaret. So much grieving.

HALLIE EPHRON: I was thrilled to meet Margaret at several mystery conferences. She was always warm and welcoming and generous. And of course I was a big fan of her series… a woman judge was trailblazing.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Hank, my memories of Margaret have to do with the Best First Novel panel at Malice as well. Like Jenn, she was a writing idol to me, and her work heavily influenced my own choices when I began my series. So knowing she was going to read my book! And sit on a panel with me!! And ask me questions!!! I was more nervous and excited about that than the actual Agatha Award ceremony. She was a dream as a moderator - gracious, even-handed, and so well prepared. Afterwards, in the bar, I was sitting with Ross and a few others and she and Joe passed by. She stopped, put her hand on my shoulder and bent down, and said, “I thought your book was just wonderful.”

I told Ross I was never going to wash that shoulder again.

And speaking of Ross, one Malice he somehow fell in with Joe Maron and Julian Cannell, despite the fact they were old friends both old enough to be his father. The three of them went off to lunch and I found them later in the bar (of course) having a wonderful time - three men who were proud and supportive of their wives. Poor Joe! I grieve for him. Losing your spouse after sixty-plus years of marriage is a cruel blow.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Margaret was one of the first people I met in the mystery community, at my very first Malice. The following year I was a Best First Novel nominee, and Margaret was, as others have mentioned, incredibly supportive and generous. She was not only an enormously talented writer, but a genuinely lovely person and a light in the mystery world. She will be much missed.

HANK: Let’s remember Margaret today, reds and readers. What can you share?

How Much Do You Like Her?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: What do we do when times are tough and a job is difficult--but we need to celebrate?

We do it together! And that’s exactly what these four fabulous author friends (including our own dearest FOTR Liz Milliron/Mary Sutton) --and here they are:











--are doing with their brand new releases from Level Best Books!

And here THEY are!








And we are so thrilled to hear about them--and, for even more fun, they’ve all agreed to answer one important question. See what YOU think!


How Much Do You Like Her?

By Liz, C.L., Mally and Kerry

Thanks for hosting us at Jungle Reds! This is such a wonderful community and we’re happy to be here – and we’re having a blast celebrating our February books and exploring our theme: Truth and Lies.

While we all write slightly different stories, we all have female protagonists, as well as other female characters. As we brainstormed blog topics, one of us remarked how a reader said of a female character, “I don’t like her very much.”

It got us thinking about this idea of “likeability” and how so much more is expected of women (in fiction and in real life). Women are supposed to be soft and approachable. Editors and agents want “likeable” characters, especially women.

Some readers do as well.

Sometimes, as a writer, you feel a definite push to make your women less hard-edged, less pushy, less anything that might alienate a reader.

But is it true that an unlikeable character can’t succeed – or is that a lie?


Mally Becker: How likeable must female protagonists be?

Hold on while I spit nails, because this question makes me feel really, truly unlikeable.

Chapter One of my American Revolution mystery, The Turncoat’s Widow opens as Rebecca–Becca–Parcell is wrongly accused of betraying her husband to the British. Mortified and angry, she curses both the Americans and British for all the loss and distrust they have wrought.

“I don’t like her,” one agent said. Two others said the same thing.

After I got over wondering what had made me think I could write, I got angry. No one tells authors that their male protagonists need to be more likeable. (Double standard much?) Can’t a mystery heroine be a badass?

But I had a problem. On the one hand, I couldn’t ignore identical comments from publishing experts. On the other hand, I liked Becca just fine. I didn’t want to change her. So I packed away my manuscript for a while.

When I pulled it out again, I begrudgingly saw what I’d missed earlier. I’d left too much of what motivated Becca in my head and not on the page. I hadn’t explained well enough why she was angry, what she feared, and whom she loved.

That was a breakthrough. I wouldn’t aim to make my protagonist more likeable. What does “likeable” mean, anyway? Instead, I would try to make Becca more fully human with all the cross-currents of logic and emotion, longing and passion that move each of us.

Becca is still a badass. That hasn’t changed. But is she more likeable? That’s for readers to decide. All I know is that The Turncoat’s Widow, which Level Best Books published this month, is a better story now because Becca is a more complex and interesting character.

Liz Milliron: I’m less concerned with likeability than I am with being invested in a character. I don’t have to want to invite someone over for coffee or dinner to read the story. But there has to be a journey I’m interested in. Maybe the character is on a redemption arc. Maybe that arc fails. Maybe it succeeds. Or the character might be a good person who is doing horrible things for good reasons.

When I sat down to write Betty Ahern, I didn’t think about likeability too much. I wanted readers to be interested in her story and want to follow her. Betty is young, she only has a high-school education, and she comes from a working-class neighborhood. She’s not some society debutante – she can’t afford to be. That’s how I tried to write her. It took me by surprise when my editor said Betty had a hard edge that might be a turn-off for readers. But I wanted that edge. My editor and I went back and forth on it, and I think we came up with a picture that stayed true to who I believed Betty is without making her distasteful to be with.

I also think this question comes up way more for female characters. Why aren’t unlikeable men as much of a concern?

Kerry Peresta: A few years ago, when “Girl on the Train” and the TV series, “House,” ruined me forever, I decided I liked flawed protagonists much better than perfect ones. Or even good ones. I could not get enough of Hugh Laurie, who was the protagonist everyone loved to hate. And, I suspect, most people secretly loved, if the ratings were any indication. I was so sad when that show ended! But between those two characters, I was hooked. Flawed protagonists, likable or not, became my go-to.

My protagonists have the best of intentions. Honorable and righteous. Dependable and responsible in many ways. But they ultimately have a fatal flaw that inspires my plot arc, and creates a story that is, in my opinion, much more complex than if the character is too perfect or agreeable. I want my protagonists to have depth, and flaws drive that depth for me. I want them to do things that are unexpected and often shocking. The breakout novel, “Girl on the Train’ garnered mixed reviews. Some loved Rachel, the book’s protagonist, but many disliked her intensely. I mean, it was extreme! Not me, though. I adored her. She was someone pathetically flawed and deficient but somehow heroic. Perpetually hopeful. In short, someone I could relate to.

When I am crafting characters, even the outliers have a distinctive vice or struggle—trying to quit smoking, for instance, or perhaps recovering from a less-than-perfect upbringing. All things that my readers can relate to. Everyone, I’ve found, struggles with something. If a character has no struggles, I don’t personally perceive them as interesting.

In short, I don’t consider likability so much an issue as relatability and authenticity. I believe if we relate to and believe the protagonists we, as writers, create; then so will the reader.

C.L. Tolbert: My protagonist Emma Thornton, is female, and not only that, she’s an attorney. I hate to admit this, but attorneys are universally disliked, and I imagine the numbers are greater, if that’s possible, for female attorneys. So, Emma has two strikes against her. Emma is also a mother of two, who in the current book, is also a hard-working law school professor. She cares deeply about her children, her students, and her clients. She is in a relationship and cares about that as well. But few people can relate to a woman who, as an attorney, also solves murders. Flawed and reckless, she regularly makes mistakes, which is an off-shoot of her enthusiasm, and desire to solve the case. Yet I’ve been told that Emma’s determination, grit, and tenacity make readers care about her character, and that is what makes them want to keep reading.

In 2015, Forbes magazine noted that being “…genuine and honest is essential to being likable.” But it’s never been essential for a fictional character to be to be likeable, or even pleasant. But it is necessary for readers to care about the protagonist or they won’t continue to read the book. A protagonist with a short fuse, or an annoying manner is usually forgiven by the reader, especially in the midst of conflict. A weakness, a flaw, or even an eccentricity is often the element of a character’s personality which makes him or her more relatable.

Is it Sherlock Holmes’s skill on the violin that makes him relatable, or is it his drug addiction? Perhaps the addiction makes this brilliant, eccentric character, who otherwise seems impossibly inaccessible, vulnerable and more human. Poirot is vain and narcissistic. Both Holmes and Poirot are moody and lonely. Is it the loneliness we sense in these two men that, in addition to their brilliant crime-solving brains, keep us coming back for more?

A flawed character is more relatable, more interesting, and more sympathetic than one who is merely likeable. What seems to matter more than likability is what makes the reader care about the protagonist, and keep turning the page.

Readers, how important is it that you “like” a character? And do you think likeability is more of an issue for female characters than male?

HANK: Oooh! Good question! What do you think, Reds and readers?

********




Mally Becker became fascinated with the American Revolution when she peeked into the past as a volunteer at the Morristown National Historical Park, where George Washington and the Continental army spent two winters. A former attorney, advocate for foster children, and freelance writer, Becker and her husband live in Warren, NJ, where they raised their son. The Turncoat’s Widow, featuring Becca Parcell, is her first novel.



Liz Milliron is the author of The Laurel Highlands Mysteries series, set in the scenic Laurel Highlands of Southwestern Pennsylvania, and The Homefront Mysteries, set in Buffalo, NY during the early years of World War II. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Pennwriters, and International Thriller Writers. A recent empty-nester, Liz lives outside Pittsburgh with her husband and a retired-racer greyhound.



Kerry Peresta’s publishing credits include a popular newspaper and e-zine humor column, “The Lighter Side,” (2009—2011); The Hunting, women’s fiction/suspense, Pen-L Publishing, 2013; and The Deadening, Book One in the Olivia Callahan Suspense Series. Recently, she worked as editor and contributor for Island Communications, a local publishing house. Her magazine articles have been published in Local Life Magazine, The Bluffton Breeze, Lady Lowcountry, and Island Events Magazine. Before starting to write full time, she spent twenty-five years in advertising as an account manager, creative director, and copywriter. She is past chapter president of the Maryland Writers’ Association and a current member and presenter of Hilton Head Island Writers’ Network, and the Sisters in Crime organization. Kerry is the mother of four adult children. She and her husband moved to Hilton Head Island, SC in 2015.



Cynthia Tolbert is the author of the Thornton Mystery series. In 2010, she won the Georgia Bar Journal’s fiction contest for the short story version of Out From Silence. Cynthia developed that story into the first full-length novel of the Thornton Mystery Series, which was published by Level Best Books in December of 2019. Her second book in this same series, entitled The Redemption, which is set in New Orleans, will be released in February of 2021. Cynthia has a Master’s in Special Education and taught children with learning disabilities before moving on to law school. She spent most of her legal career working as defense counsel to large corporations and traveled throughout the country as regional and national counsel. She has four children, and three grandchildren, and lives in Atlanta with her husband and schnauzer.

Confessions of a Closet Prepper

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I know we’ve talked here about the stuff we stashed during the pandemic: light bulbs, and aluminum foil, and canned tuna. Canned tomatoes, and nail polish and toothpaste. Etc.

 But preparation is a lifetime thing, not always as a result of panic—but more a moment of reality. Or—coping with it.

Debut author (yay!) Shelley Nolden has some true insight about that.

Coming up, secrets of the zombie apocalypse. I am not kidding.

But first, a tiny bit about her incredibly chilling and astonishingly timely new book THE VINES. (There's more below.) But read this, and tell me how long it takes you to say “Ooooh!”

In the shadows of New York City lies North Brother Island, the remains of a shuttered hospital hide the haunting memories of century-old quarantines and human experiments. The ruins conceal the scarred and beautiful Cora, imprisoned there by contagions and the doctors who torment her. When Finn, a young urban explorer, arrives on the island and glimpses this enigmatic woman through the foliage, intrigue turns to obsession as he seeks to uncover her past—and his own family's dark secrets. By unraveling these mysteries, will he be able to save Cora? Or will she meet the same tragic ending as the thousands who have already perished on the island?

Okay. Told you. And now: preparing for the zombie (or whatever) apocalypse. (And a copy of THE VINES to one lucky commenter!*)

 

Confessions

of a Closet Prepper

by Shelley Nolden

Some preppers are born into the lifestyle, perhaps even drawing their first breaths within a remote, self-sustaining compound. Others find inspiration later in life. My amateur prepping began with a book entitled Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide: Food, Shelter, Security, Off-the-Grid Power and More Life-Saving Strategies for Self Sufficient Living.

 

The main character in my debut novel, The Vines, carves out a solitary existence on the abandoned, forbidden North Brother Island in New York City’s East River.

To make that feat believable, I researched survival techniques, and in doing so, learned all the possible ways those skills might suddenly become critical.

 

Natural disasters, a superflare from the sun, EMPs or other acts of terrorism, revolution, a pandemic. For a writer with a big imagination, the eventual occurrence of at least one of these threats, ominously outlined by the preppers who’d authored the books I consumed, seemed all but certain.

 

After all, I knew firsthand that low probability events do occur. At the age of 31, I was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, which, admittedly, has left me with a tinge of PTSD.

 

So, I ordered more guides, including one focused on surviving a Zombie apocalypse, and took comfort in knowing that if I ever needed to devise a rainwater collection system or kill a chicken, I had illustrated instructions. I also procured a package of 40,000 heirloom garden seeds and hid them in my basement. And we now have a German shepherd dog named Storm.

 

 While I mostly kept my new obsession secret, I could talk openly with my father. Two years ago, after deciding that more should be done, we compiled a “Zombie Apocalypse Survival Kit” as a Christmas present for my mother. My parents were big fans of The Walking Dead; I’d thought she’d love it. She didn’t. Later I learned that she’d been hoping for diamond earrings.

 

When COVID-19 first gripped Wuhan in January 2020, my recently acquired knowledge of doomsday scenarios, coupled with the fact that The Vines deals with contagious diseases, spurred me to step up my prepping game. I convinced my mother to accompany me to Costco so she could push my second cart.

My immediate family then humored me by helping carry the goods down to what became known as our “Emergency Supply Closet.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During the lockdown last spring, my closet gained their respect. Between donations to the local “giving table” and our own needs, we burned through most of the goods.

Except for the Chili Mac.

That remains.

When our elementary school holds its next food drive, we’ll donate it, even though a part of me thinks it would come in handy during an alien invasion or zombie uprising. 

 

Has COVID-19 changed your view on prepping? Which would you rather receive: diamond earrings or a Zombie Apocalypse Survival Kit?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Ohhh. Sadly, that’s not even a choice. I cannot wait until it is.  But in the meantime, #keepthechilimac.

How about you, Reds and readers? What if someone, out of love, gave you that gift?

*And a copy of THE VINES to one lucky commenter! (US and Canada only, please.)

A graduate of the University of Minnesota, Shelley Nolden is an entrepreneur and writer, now residing in Wisconsin. Previously, she lived in the New York City area, where she first learned of North Brother Island. At the age of 31, Shelley was diagnosed with leukemia and completed treatment three years later. The sense of isolation and fear she experienced during her cancer ordeal influenced her debut novel, THE VINES.

 

THE VINES by Shelley Nolden (Freiling Publishing Hardcover; March 23, 2021) is historical fiction and suspense at its best. It’s both a breathtaking novel that explores a long-forgotten place and an ominous thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat as the story unravels. In this debut—the first book in a planned series—Nolden skillfully weaves together a page turner, spanning over a hundred years, that’s set on New York City’s abandoned North Brother Island.

“It took me over four years to write THE VINES, and I’m excited for its debut,” said Nolden. “I’m not a full-time author, though I’d like to move in that direction. My writing career initially began with my cancer blog after I was diagnosed with leukemia. It focused on the themes of disease, fear of death, isolation, loss of a child, and infertility, but also of survival, courage, healing, and hope. Through that process, the heroine of THE VINES—and her foil—were born. And shortly after reading Christopher Payne’s photography book, North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City, I had the perfect setting for my epic tale.”

In the shadows of New York City lies North Brother Island, where the remains of a shuttered hospital hide the haunting memories of century-old quarantines and human experiments. The ruins conceal the scarred and beautiful Cora, imprisoned there by contagions and the doctors who torment her. When Finn, a young urban explorer, arrives on the island and glimpses this enigmatic woman through the foliage, intrigue turns to obsession as he seeks to uncover her past—and his own family's dark secrets. By unraveling these mysteries, will he be able to save Cora? Or will she meet the same tragic ending as the thousands who have already perished on the island?

THE VINES intertwines North Brother Island's horrific and elusive history with a captivating tale of love, betrayal, survival, and loss.