It's an Honor to be Nominated by Steve Ulfelder

 LUCY BURDETTE: We writers have some really special moments and one of them is getting nominated for an award. (Right now, Hallie's book COME AND FIND ME is nominated for the Mary HIggins Clark award, and Rhy's NAUGHTY IN NICE is nominated for a Malice Domestic's Agatha award for best historical novel, and my story "The Itinerary" is nominated for an Agatha for best short story.) One of our good New England friends has a book nominated for an Edgar best first novel--as you've heard in other blog posts, we'd all kill for to land an Edgar. Instead of wallowing in envy, we're so thrilled for Steve. And as he's going to tell us, there's nothing better than the days and weeks before the winner is announced.

STEVE ULFELDER: While waiting for a panel at Bouchercon 2011 in St. Louis, I struck up a conversation with a guy who looked even more overwhelmed than I was by the
massive conference. (No mean feat, that - I'm easily overwhelmed. It's my
natural state.)

We had a lot in common. Like me, the guy was from Massachusetts. Like me, he'd recently seen his debut novel published. And like me, he was - I remember this great line - "waiting for the parade to come by my house." Unspoken follow-up: It would be unwise to hold your breath waiting for that particular parade.

The guy turned out to be Leonard Rosen. His debut was the brilliant All Cry Chaos. And half a year after that Bouchercon meeting, the two of us are up for the Best First Novel Edgar.

Small world.

Funny thing, publishing your debut. It's the biggest moment of your life. People tell you you're pretty great. You are queen or king for precisely 24 hours (release day) plus the duration of your launch party.

And then.

The wheel keeps rolling. The machine grinds on. The next batch of writers, debut and otherwise, get their turn. Their reviews are (at least) as good as yours, their blurbs (at least) as impressive.

So you take one last glance out front just in case there is a parade going past (there isn't), then do what writers do: plop yourself in the chair and work on another book. A better book.

As it turns out, Len Rosen and I have become friends. We bump into each other at panels, conferences, and festivals, and I'm always happy to see him. Len, who has the right perspective on life in general, is quick to point out the true value of an Edgar nomination: It serves as validation
from folks you very much admire that your book is good, that it does stand out.

And boy, do this year's Best First nominees - my competition, I guess, though I (naively?) don't view them that way - stand out. I read them all, starting with All Cry Chaos, and damn are they fine books. Edward Conlon's Red on Red, David Duffy's Last to Fold, and Lori Roy's Bent Road are utterly different from one another. And they're all ridiculously strong.

I'm honored that Purgatory Chasm is among them.

Here's the part where you roll your eyes while I insist I truly mean it: I  feel like I've won by being nominated. This week's Edgar Awards in New York will be a blast, icing on somebody's cake, but it's the nomination that made my year.

Knock it off with the eyes. I mean it! Truly!

After all, I got a nice bump in sales. I've received congrats from writers I admire. I'll benefit from the Edgar Finalist Author tag for the duration of my career.

Which, when you think about it, means I got a parade after all.


Steve Ulfelder is an amateur race driver and co-owner of Flatout Motorsports Inc., a company that builds race cars. In addition to being nominated for MWA's Best First Novel Edgar, his debut, Purgatory Chasm, has been named Best First Mystery of 2011 by RT Book Reviews. His second novel, The Whole Lie, comes out May 8.

Our own Hank Phillippi Ryan will be moderating a panel of the Edgar best first nominees this Wednesday--including Steve!

Do Clothes Make the Character?

JAN BROGAN: Hilary Clinton's pantsuits, Rick Santorum's sweater vests, Jimmy Carter's cardigans,and Sarah Palin's glasses.

What do they have in common? According to Time Magazine, the are among modern history's 10 top Political Fashion statements.  As I read this, it made me think just how useful a single article of clothing can be. In one of the many Larry McMurtry's novels I have read, there is one I remember mostly because  the character always wore a T-shirt with a stupid saying on it.

I personally find clothing tricky in writing because I'm never sure where to squeeze it in. I also am not always sure what to include -- if you start out mentioning her blouse, for example, must you itemize the remainder of her clothing, the jeans and high heels, or otherwise sound like she's going about in JUST A BLOUSE. And if the outfit isn't unique enough, or saying something about the climate, should you even bother?

In terms of creating a memorable outfit - that is,  used repeatedly to mean something -- I believe I've only done it twice. In Final Copy, Addy McNeil carried a big, sloppy leather satchel that initially helped illustrate the chaos of her life,(everything was always falling out)  but later the recovery of her career, as she began to use it as a prop and to collect  evidence.

In Teaser, The two teenager girls in the suggestive video wore bikinis one in  a bright pink, the other in lime green.  The neon colors screamed youth and brashness, but their real use was as synecdoche. They became monikers for the teenagers before we knew their names. My protagonist, Hallie Ahern, would refer to them as "Lime Green" and "Pink" until she figured out their identities.


So my question Reds, is do clothes make the character? Have you ever created a truly memorable outfit for a charactes?  Clothing that served more than one purpose in the scene or story? Any tips you'd care to share?

HALLIE EPHRON: Clothing can speak volumes. In "Come and Find Me," my agoraphobic main character wears furry slippers and sweatpants with a stretched-out T-shirt that says HACKER on it. I don't need to explain that she's depressed.

When Diana realizes she has to leave the house and look for her missing sisters, the only way she gets up the courage to go is by dressing up like her avatar (skinny jeans and a great leather jacket and boots) -- her avatar's outfit is the embodiment of the courageous person she once was.

What else speaks volumes is what a character has in her purse. Diana's sister carries around a copy of Vogue Magazine and a quart-sized container of hand sanitizer.

RHYS BOWEN: Because I write historical novels the clothes my characters wear tie them firmly to their period. Sometimes it's the clothing they don't wear... Molly Murphy has always refused to wear a corset, thus setting herself apart form the conventional. But she finds the clothing of the period restrictive when she has to run away or follow a suspect.

Lady Georgie is conscious that she lacks the clothes to move among the smart set and clothing has been her downfall a couple of times when she has had to act as a model--the second time for Chanel. I describe the clothing and accessories her mother and other smart women wear to remind us of the 1930s. And of course Georgie's clothing is constantly being ruined by Queenie, her hopeless maid. So I suppose you can say that clothing plays a vital role in the embarrassment of my main character.

JAN:  I think one of my most favorite parts of historical research is looking up the clothes they wore. I have a fabulous book Nineteenth-Century Fashion in Detail by Lucy Johnston that is just beautiful to look at.

LUCY BURDETTE: Maybe because I'm not a fashionista, I find it difficult to make my characters' clothing really stand out. That said, Hayley Snow wears red high top sneakers as a matter of course, which her mother hates! In book two, Mrs. Snow comes to visit bearing gifts, including a pair of fancy sandals that cause blisters immediately. The clothing item I try to remember from book to book is the yellow silk shirt with palm trees on it that all the staff (all 3!) at Key Zest wear--their company uniform. It makes Hayley look a little sallow, but it proves she's made the team...


And I almost forgot--her new housemate, Miss Gloria, is famous for sweatsuits with sequined patterns on them--palm trees, the Conch Republic flag, a map of the Keys. I have a feeling I'm predicting my future wardrobe...

JAN: I'd say red high top sneakers sound pretty memorable.

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  I think I want Haley's wardrobe... If any writer decided to cast me as a fictional character these days, the description would say "writer working hard on a book and not bothering with anything else." Except, of course, for the book promo events.

I love clothes on characters.  Gemma never wears the standard female detective dark suit, although she sometimes envies her colleague, Melody, who does wear suits and manages to look fabulous in them.  Duncan does have to wears suits when he's officially on the job, and a friend in London gave me a hint as to where the CID blokes from Scotland Yard buy their suits, so I've been in and checked them out. (The suits, not the detectives.  Unfortunately, they weren't shopping that day.

And I love women's handbags and men's pockets.  You can tell so much about a character by what they carry and how they carry it.  In NO MARK UPON HER, Duncan has another detective list the contents of his wife's handbag to make the point.

ROSEMARY HARRIS: I have sometimes been taken to task for not providing enough info about what a character is wearing. Babe Chinnery (who is a former rock n roller and owns the diner where Paula hangs out) is a hottie of a certain age and I probably describe her outfits more than any other characters'. I sometimes describe the male and female "suburban uniforms" either when I want to make a point about how straight-laced someone is or how appearances can be deceiving.

My fave outfit from one of my books is one I want to own! In Slugfest, Paula is going to a blacktie event at a legendary flower show and she borrows and red dress, which she thinks is a little bare so she covers it with a Balenciaga jacket. Me want. I actually have her say "I guess as long as I'm wearing this dress I'll never be lonely."

Interestingly enough, someone has pointed out that I spend more time describing people's teeth!

HANK PHIL LIPPI RYAN: Ah, Jan, sometimes I just say one thing the person is wearing--a nine-year-old boy "his spindly arms flailing in a too-big red Sox t-shirt",  a guy in a bar wearing   "a fashionably wrinkled flannel shirt, fashionably untucked." Jane Ryland (a reporter in The Other Woman) always wears a black turtleneck and jeans.  But it is a minefield.  The other day I had to check with my college-student intern: "When you see a person wearing a baseball cap, bill in the back," I said, "Do you consider that on backwards or forward?"

JAN: Thanks, Hank, that helps actually, Anybody else have good advice on how to clothe our characters or have any insight into just how important or unimportant it might be?

Travel Traumas "Come and Find Me"

RHYS BOWEN: We Jungle Reds have had a lot to celebrate recently, including Hallie Ephron's nomination for the prestigious Mary Higgins Clark award, to be presented during Edgars week at the beginning of May. And now we're celebrating with Hallie today because her nominated book, COME AND FIND ME, is coming out in paperback and will be at stores near you on February 28th.

Hallie is also a great traveler, so it seemed only fitting that she step into today's travel spotlight.

Take it away, Hallie! We're raising our champagne glasses to you.

HALLIE EPHRON: Raising my glass back at you Rhys! Rhys Bowen's NAUGHTY IN NICE is nominated for an Audie award for best audio book!

Back to... Thank you! Thank you!

Is the new cover cool or what? Clink, clink, clink, all around. (Some of you have heard me talk about how important it is to celebrate. I'm CELEBRATING!)

This week's posts on travel got me thinking...
Travel can be exciting. Sometimes too exciting. My trip to Barcelona was like that. I got mugged. (Doesn't everyone get mugged in Barcelona?)

I was standing on a street corner near the famous Ramblas and a man came running up from behind me, grabbed the strap of my shoulder bag, and threw me to the ground. He got my purse, but fortunately I had my passport in a pouch around my neck and a spare asthma inhaler in my suitcase. Best of all my two kids were across the street so they didn't see it happen.

I was badly bruised, but fortunately nothing was broken. What really got shaken was my travel confidence. I'd always felt comfortable venturing out into unfamiliar places. All of a sudden, not so much. In crowds, in particular.

When I was writing "Come and Find Me" I was channeling some of that residual fear. I hope never to have a travel trauma like my character, Diana Highsmith. Her lover fell to his death when they were ice climbing in the Alps. Ever since, she's become intensely agoraphobic -- just opening her front door to the UPS deliver man can trigger a panic attack.

When her sister goes missing, Diana has to get up the courage to leave her house. The only way she manages to leave her safe world is by taking on the persona of her avatar -- a cyberspace character she created who is the embodiment of her former fearless self.

If you got mugged in Barcelona, raise your hand!

So today's travel question: Any travel traumas in your past, and any tips for getting over the residual fear (short of dressing up as Wonder Woman)?

Come and Find Me

JAN: It's the moment we've all be waiting for. Halle's new thriller Come and Find Me is about to hit the shelves. It's about a recluse who works and lives online who must now brave the real world when her sister goes missing.

I asked Hallie to tell us about her recluse protagonist, Diana Highsmith, a computer security expert and reformed hacker and how she came up with her character.

HALLIE: The inspiration for Diana in "Come and Find Me" came to me when I tripped over an ad for a year's supply of dehydrated and freeze-dried food. The photo showed a pyramid of cans in lovely pastel colors.

Chirpy ad copy explained: "...this package will give you variety, nutrition, and peace of mind."

Now, maybe if I lived on the San Andreas Fault or in a floodplain I might have ponied up $999.99. But instead I sat there trying to imagine who in the world would see 84 gallon-sized cans with a shelf life of up to 25 years as the ticket to peace of mind?

The answer was Diana, a recluse who is afraid to leave her own house. Someone who's been traumatized. As I gazed out my office window, looking at the one-story ranch house next door, I imagined that the person lived there.

JAN: On the surface Diana seems completely different from your last protagonist Ivy Rose. Is she or are there any similarities? And how hard was it to create a completely different heroine?

HALLIE: At one level they're very different. Ivy in "Never Tell a Lie" is married, pregnant, and desperate to have a child. Diana is single, a recluse whose only "real" friend, other than the ones she interacts with on the Internet, is her sister.

Both books are about betrayal and trust. In "Come and Find Me," Diana has to brave the real world when her sister vanishes. Along the way, she has to trust real people or she won't survive.

JAN: How did you go about your research into computer hacking and security?

HALLIE: I used to work in high tech, so networking with old friends I found a couple of amazing experts on computer security, one of them an expert on cyber-terrorism, another an ex-hacker. They helped me understand why people hack, and what real dangers they pose.

I envisioned Diana working in a virtual world where she could conduct business meetings, investigate security breaches, and "climb" Alpine mountains without ever leaving home. After a little research, I discovered Second Life on the Internet was just such a virtual world.

Armed with enough information to be dangerous, I created an account for myself on Second Life and logged in. First, I created an avatar, a skinny brunette with attitude. I figured out how to make her walk, run, turn, sit, and it was so exhilarating when I finally got her aloft. It felt like I was perched on her shoulders (think: Harry Potter on the shoulders of the Buckbeak the hippogriff) as she soared over the island at the entrance to Second Life. Not so exhilarating was when, seconds later, she plunged into the virtual blue (very blue) ocean. I actually found myself gasping for breath. After that my computer crashed.

Neither me nor my hardware were ready for SecondLife, so I turned to some generous folks who play and work in Second Life, and who let me ride shotgun while they went about their business in virtual reality.

Among other things, I learned that a good percentage of female avatars are created by male players. I learned that even bucolic corners of the virtual world can be infested by "griefers," mischief-makers who rain down toasters or phalluses on unsuspecting players, and how genuinely terrifying it feels to have a cage dropped down on your avatar, even when you know it's "only a game."

JAN: Where will you be talking about the book?

HALLIE: First stop is Brookline Booksmith next Monday, March 21 at 7 PM. Then BookEnds in Winchester Thursday, March 24. Then I'm off to Florida, Ohio, Pittsburgh (A shout-out to Mystery Lovers Bookshop!), Sacramento for the Bee Book Club, and more. I'm updating my web site with new events all the time. I hope lots of Jungle Red readers will COME AND FIND ME.

You Are What You Eat?

ROBERTA: At the beginning of January, I was lucky enough to attend the Key West Literary Seminar, this year focused on food writing and called The Hungry Muse. Such fun to hear the likes of Ruth Reichl, Frank Bruni, Calvin Trillin, Billy Collins, and Judith Jones talk about writing and food. Judith Jones, if you don't know, "discovered" Julia Child and served as her editor for many years. Fascinating to hear her talk about the old days and how cooking and food writing have exploded since Julia wrote her first cookbook.

Besides being great fun, all this was in the service of researching background material for my new character, food critic Hayley Snow. Hayley is, naturally, a good cook and an enthusiastic eater. So there will be many meals enjoyed in the new series. But I also realized that all of my characters have been food-centric. Cassie Burdette, the aspiring pro golfer, had no kitchen skills and a horrible diet but she still enjoyed eating. (I was once asked to contribute a recipe from her collection. She offered her company special, Hot Dog Casserole.) Psychologist Rebecca Butterman was an excellent cook--she liked nurturing herself and her friends with delicious meals and even interrogating suspects after luring them to dinner.

So the question for this Monday, Jungle Red Eaters--I mean writers: What are your characters' relationships to food? Is food a big factor in your books?

HANK: Oh, what a great question. IN fact, in FACE TIME, there was a time in the early part of the book where I needed some conflict--not big big conflict, but beginning of the book conflict. SO--I made Charlotte McNally hungry. And then have low blood sugar. And you know how that feels-everything becomes incredibly difficult and all you can think of is FOOD. Then as it turned out, being hungry became the complete key to the whole mystery. (More I cannot say.) But just that one random moment of choosing "food" as the conflict--made the entire book.

ROSEMARY: I think there's a lot of food in my books. In Pushing Up Daisies, Paula has just moved from the city to the suburbs. As a city girl she was mindful about every morsel of food that went into her body. She was a little bit of a pill about it! Hanging out at the diner, she's eased up a bit. It was actually a conscious effort on my part as a way of showing one of the ways that she's changed. Yes, she still works out but bring on those pancakes! In the last book there's almost a Tom Jones-like scene with a piece of olive oil almond cake (which is a real Giada recipe.) If I like to eat it, it just may wind up in a book.

HALLIE: Oh, Roberta, one of my favorite things about you is that you love-love-love good food. So jealous about the Key West seminar! I so would have loved to be there, even though in my new book (COME AND FIND ME) Diana Highsmith is a depressed shut-in who she eats because she has to. Food for her is oatmeal, apples, American cheese. I'm such a foodie, I had to give her something good, so she also likes rum raisin ice cream, my favorite, and which lasts more than a night in our freezer because no one else in the house can stand it.

But a short story ("Death in the Family") I wrote recently for a Spanish anthology has a character who remembers her mother's death by lighting a candle, drinking a toast of chilled Prosecco, and eating a Dungeness crab. Forget the eulogies, that's exactly how I want to go out!

JAN: Rosemary, I love Giada's recipes I even have one of her books - which is terrific. In A Confidential Source, Hallie is under such stress that I couldn't imagine her eating anything. A good friend of mine read it and noted that she seemed anorexic, so I went back and gave her a few meals. And in subsequent books, she hangs around Wayland Square diner and likes to breakfast on BLTs and rye toast. But despite the fact that cooking is one of my favorite hobbies -- food does not play a major role in my books. At least not so far.

HALLIE: Jan, didn't "Hallie" keep warming up canned tomato soups? That's what I remember.

RHYS: I love reading about food. Books like Under a Tuscan Sun and the description of Italian meals eaten in a shady courtyard can create such a powerful yearning in me that I have to be restrained from hopping on the next plane. I do try to bring some of this into my books. Food has beoome an important factor in the Royal Spyness books as Georgie is penniless and reduced to eating baked beans on toast, and then attends 12 course banquets which are overwhelming to her. I hope to focus on life in a kitchen in a future book--maybe have Georgie disguised as a maid, so we can see what goes on there.

DEB: I LOVE food. Eating food, writing about food, reading about food. I think my favorite book last year was Julia Child's A Life in France. It was all I could do to keep from hopping on a plane to Paris . . .

Food is such an important part of the sensory complex that makes stories seem real. That said, I've never centered a book around food, although I had great
fun with Scotch in Now May You Weep. In the meantime, my characters seem to spend an inordinate amount of time drinking tea or coffee, because it gives them something to do when they're interviewing suspects or witnesses or discussing the case. And Gemma has an ongoing battle with the AGA!

Rhys, I would love a peek at the kitchen in a grand house! (Oh, and Hallie, rum raisin is my fave, too.)

ROBERTA: Deb, that was one of my favorite books of the past year too--what an adventure she made of her life! How about you, JR readers, do you like reading about food? And if you write, how does it figure in your books?

Be sure and stay tuned right here all week. Tomorrow for True Crime Tuesday, Allison Leota will be with us to answer questions about the law from readers. And on Wednesday, meet Diana Abu-Jaber, a fabulous writer here to talk about her culinary memoir, THE LANGUAGE OF BAKLAVA. And more fun later in the week too...