I Wish Mom Could See This

Mom at age 20 or so...

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  My mother died a few years ago—you know that, right? And I still think of her, of course. The times when I roll my eyes at something, and know she’d be doing the same thing. Or when I have a big realization, and want to give her the opportunity to say I told you so. Or when I need to make a decision about a crisis. Or a dress.

Though I became “Hank” in 1967—thanks to some unremembered classmate in college—she ever called me that. Not through all my years as a reporter with my name “Hank” on the screen.  She called me Ann, unwaveringly. Or Harriet Ann, if I was in trouble.

 It wasn’t until my first book came out, with the name on the cover, that she embraced “Hank,” It was--and this is just between you all and me—as if I had finally done something that was good enough.

She was quite the character. Brilliant, and stylish, and funny, and artistic. Generous.  And, um, opinionated.

I laugh every time Mother’s day comes around, too. Every time, when we were kids, we used to whine: “Why can't there be kids' day?”

Mom would inform us "Every day is kids' day. You just don't realize we're celebrating."

Anyway, Mom loved that I was writing, although once it led--almost--to a battle royal. I had sent her the galley of Face Time. I was all excited, I knew she'd love it.

She called me, soon after she received it, and said (please imagine a somewhat imperious tone here), "I have just read the first ten pages of Face Time. Would you like to know my reaction?”

I was all excited, even though I should have realized that question was a sure sign of imminent disaster. Silly me said, "Sure!”

Mom said: "My emotion is… rage.”

Rage? I thought--rage? How could that be?

So I said, all conciliatory, "Mom, Mom, I don't understand. Rage? Why?"

And she said (please still imagine the tone of voice) "Charlotte McNally's mother is going to Boston for a face lift. Now everyone will think I did that!"

I tried not to laugh. I explained to her, as gently as I could, that it was fiction. That Charlotte McNally was fiction, and Charlotte McNally's mother was fiction.

"You're not Charlie's mother," I tried to assure her.

My fifth birthday

There was a pause. And then she said, "Of course I am, dear."

(And now I must confess. She was kind of right. But I could never admit that. Oh, not the coming to Boston for a face lift part. But other parts.)

Anyway, finally we made a deal. 

She promised to read the whole book, and then let me know how she felt.

She did, and called me a day or so later. Crying.

Mom said, "Oh, honey. I loved it! And this is the first time I've ever cried at the end of a murder mystery. It's actually a mother-daughter love story!"

And indeed, it is. And that's exactly how I meant it.

As Mother's Day draws near, I wish Mom could see this gorgeous brand new edition out today from Forge. Like all Charlie books, you don’t have to read them in order, and if you’re a fan of Serial and Making a Murderer, Face Time is just the book for you. And your mom.

So, Reds, here's a contest! If you buy Face Time in any format and send me proof of purchase you'll be entered to win. Two lucky fans will receive a $100 gift certificate to the bookstore of their choice. And five lucky entrants will win a copy of PRIME TIME. It's easy to buy and enter. Click the following link for all the info - https://a.pgtb.me/8cxcN4

And Happy Mother's Day to all. (Wouldn’t FACE TIME be a great gift to your favorite mom? Let me know if you need a signed bookplate!)

And Reds, and readers—did your family or friends or classmates have a nickname for you? I was Pook for a while (thanks, Dad!), then Ann, or Annie.  How about you?  

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...

Sophomore Slump?..never heard of it.

Ro: There are certain things I don't even like to say, for fear that saying them will make them happen. Like...well...use your imagination..certain diseases, for example, unhappy altercations between cars and men walking dogs late at night. You get the picture.

On a far less tragic, but still unhappy, note is one expression a new writer can't seem to get away from - Sophomore Slump. I'd heard of it for years, even before I started writing. One publisher I know went so far as to say that publishers should bind a blank book (for number two) and then just leapfrog ahead to number three. I can tell you that wasn't a very encouraging conversation since I'd just spent the best part of a year banging out book two in my Dirty Business mystery series.

I guess there's some truth to the myth of the Sophomore Slump...many writers spend ten years or more polishing their first books and are then expected to push out number two in record time - generally one year if they're mystery writers.

Needless to say, I was determined not to fall victim to the dreaded SS. It goes without saying that I tried to write the best book I could. I held on to that manuscript until the bitter end, rewriting and revising until my normally calm and gentle editor pried it from my bony fingers with a look that told me it was now or never. We agonized over the title, the cover, the different PMS colors for the cover, the ARCs. Everything that went smoothly for book one was more of an issue for book two.

Was Sophomore Slump a self-fulfilling prophecy? Did things screw up because people expected them to screw up?

Time will tell for The Big Dirt Nap. My pub. date is next week, and I've already had a pre-launch party to benefit the Chalula Community library, which my husband and I helped to found. (At the legendary Friar's Club in New York...went well, thank you.) Kirkus, PW and (yippee!) Crimespree have all given me good reviews. So, so far, so good...

Any words of wisdom or war stories from the rest of you seasoned travellers?

ROBERTA: Ro, you've done everything you can. Now let it go and move on. And enjoy the launch! I did have a sophomore slump and lived to survive it:). Although I loved a lot of things about my second book, A BURIED LIE, I lost patience with working on it at the end. The research was impeccable (I paid to play in an LPGA pro-am tournament), the characters developed nicely, but the plot had holes. Big ones. I think I learned a lesson on that one--at any rate, my sweet husband reminds me of it when I'm tempted to rush another ending.
And yes, many writers find writing the second book to be very different from the first. With that first one, there was no deadline, no editor, no real audience in mind. But for the Big Dirt Nap, let's all enjoy the party!

RHYS: I don't think it has much to do with the quality of the book, Rosemary. Collectors buy first in series, especially signed. People try a new series and some decide it's not right for them. The second is often not accompanied by the buzz of the first book. Having said that, the numbers went up on the second book in all my series. So think positively.

JAN: My second book, A Confidential Source, was the most successful, but then again, it was launched as first in a series, (a few name changes but initially written as a sequeal to Final Copy). So I think Rhys is right. It's not in the writing so much as the buzz. You're awesome at generating buzz, Ro, seemingly tireless in promotion. If anyone shouldn't second guess herself, it's you!! Congratulations. I predict another success!

HANK: In college, I gained five pounds my sophomore year. That was also the year I decided going to class wasn't that important. Now that's slump. That's--falling off the chair.
I loved writing my book 2, Face Time. You know why? I had learned so much in the writing and revisions of Prime Time that I wanted to see if I could put it to use. For instance, PT was 723 pages when the first draft was finished! And I had to edit it to 325. That was one of the most educational experiences I've ever had. I learned my crutch words, my weaknesses, my digressions. That sometimes I wasn't that funny. I learned it was all about advancing the plot. Face Time, when I typed The End of the first draft? Bingo. 325 pages.

RO: I have a great group of blog sisters to learn from! Anybody remember that song from Damn Yankees...A Little Brains, A Little Talent? I shall try to employ both - and not gain five pounds!

Come back on Wednesday to meet this week's guest blogger, Joanna Campbell Slan who writes the Kiki Lowenstein Scrapbooking mysteries

Based on a True Story

RO: Some years ago I read a book called An Inconvenient Woman by Dominick Dunne. I thought it was pretty good and was surprised to learn after the fact that it was based on the true story of Alfred Bloomingdale (as in "would you like a sample of Daisy by Marc Jacobs?"...that Bloomingdale)and his longtime mistress Vicki Morgan.

I wasn't so naive as to think all fiction sprung full-blown from the author's head - even Shakespeare ripped things from the headlines - but I was a little surprised that there weren't legal ramifications in creating a story so close to an actual event.How close do you tread to that line? And does the line move as you get more involved in a story?

JAN: I once wrote three quarters of a fictional book based largely on a true story. I worried that even though I had the protagonist's okay on the book, that I might get sued by one of the more minor characters. It also started to make me feel a little queasy about what I was doing with a real person's tragedy.(The victims, not the perpetrators), but I don't think there's anything wrong, ethically or creatively, with it.I don't know how Dominick Dunne, who I believe has based more than one novel on a true crime event, avoids a legal suit. Especially since he is a bestseller and thus, a potentially profitable target. But I'd guess that he knows what he has to change, character-wise, to avoid liability. And he's an awesome writer, so ripping that closely from real life creates some great books.

HALLIE: The legal issue for the writer is 1) are the characters recognizable and 2) if they are, is what you tell about them the truth. As I undertand it, if you create a character recognizably based on a real person and defame them in your characterization, you can be (successfully) sued. So, if you write a character based on an ex-friend and disguise that person's identity by making her horrendously ugly, only people still recognize her, she could sue you and win.

My first book was based on a true case. I decided not to pursue publishing it for the same reason Jan said so perfectly above -- because I got queasy about what I'd be doing to the survivors. Everything I've written since is 150% made up, though news stories do inspire. Anyone see that story last week about a wealthy relator who was bludgeoned to death with a yoga stick (whatever that is) by her assistant who said she was provoked because "she wouldn't stop yelling at me." Truth is often stranger than fiction.

Ro: Do any of you Beantown babes know if Gone, Baby, Gone was based on a true story?

HANK: Hmm.. Don't know. And a quick Google search did not produce any clues. Google aside, though, I did hear that the movie's release was delayed because the plot was too close to the story of Madeleine McCann, the little girl who vanished from her parents' hotel room in Portugal.

As for real vs fiction. Well. I must say my closest brush with disaster in that realm is how angry my mother was (briefly, but unpleasantly) about the portrayal of Charlie McNally's mother in Face Time. Seriously. And the more I insisted it was fiction, the more she insisted I was being absurd. Now THAT was just about as close as I want to get to the line. Now that's she's read it of course, she's delighted. Although she still thinks she's Mrs. McNally. Even though she isn't.
The more I write fiction, the more careful I am not to get anywhere near reality. Everyone always thinks it's them.

Plus, I had someone say to me--oh, you're so lucky to have a husband who's a lawyer. It makes it so easy for you. You don't need to make up plots, you can just get them all from him.
Snort. Thanks lady. Straight to the moon.

RO: I just had a friend tell me that she couldn't recognize anyone in my book...as if I was going to describe all my pals in excruciating detail. Cheesh.
OTOH, Hank, I'm very disappointed to learn that your own mom is nothing like Charlie's. I think she's a riot! Haven't finished the book yet, but hope we haven't heard the last of her.

ON DREAMS

Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another. It’s a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.
**Federico Fellini




Dreams have a poetic integrity and truth. This limbo and dust-hole of thought is presided over by a certain reason, too. Their extravagance from nature is yet within a higher nature.

**Ralph Waldo Emerson



















HANK: I used to have a recurring dream where I am supposed to write a story for the 6 o'clock news, and I'm in the car on the way to the station to edit my video. I know, in order to get it done, I have to write my script in the car. (In reality, this happens every day for a general assignment reporter.) But in my dream, I can't find any implement to write with. All my pencils break. All my pens are dry. I finally wind up writing my story using my fingernail to make indentations in my notebook, hoping I'd be able to read them.

The first time I had this dream, I was so freaked out when I woke up! My husband said I should put that time on my time sheet as having worked--I was certainly as tired and stressed as I would have been if I were awake through it all!

Clearly this is a TV stress dream, and I had it over and over. (Anyone have the "I have to take a test and I can't find the classroom and why didn't I study" dream? I certainly have. I think it's so prevalent they call it the "Yale Dream." And I've always wondered whether they have it in other cultures, or what stress dreams are in, say, Siberia.)

But the last time I had the TV dream, I said to my sleeping self, and I remember this clearly: Oh yeah, this is that stupid pencil dream. And it stopped. And I've never had it again.

What do you think about that?

And is there a book dream? A writer's dream?

RO: A lot of people seem to have "The Test Dream." Anthony Soprano even had one....he was "unprepared." If I've ever had that I don't remember. I do have one recurring dream - all of you wannabe shrinks out there, get your pencils sharpened.

I'm in a one story house in the middle of a barren landscape. It's warm and everything in the dream is some shade of brown or gold. There are a lot of doors to the house. I'm outside and so is a pride of lions. They start to approach me and I manage to walk slowly to the house and get inside. One of the lions comes in another door. I go out a third door. I'm concerned but, I never run. This goes on for a while, but the lions never catch me.

Then there's the dream where Julia Roberts options my book. (Just kidding.)

HALLIE: Ah, anxiety dreams. I used to teach, so I have teaching anxiety dreams. I can't find my classroom. I can't get the class under control. Lately, it's that I've taken a job teaching and I'm going to have to do it, all year. That's a real nightmare.

What I love is when I realize I'm dreaming and I can make the me in the dream do what I want. Like fly.

Oddly, I never dream about the book I'm writing.

JAN: I have the reporter dream, where I've filed the story and there's nothing I can do but wait for it to appear in the next day's paper. I suddenly realize that I've gotten some key piece of information wrong. Like the name of the subject I'm writing about. Or the correct charges. Or whether the company made money or lost money for the quarter.

Lately, I've had a new dream . Now that my youngest is off to college and by husband and I are officially empty nesters, I keep dreaming I've adopted more children. Last night, I dreamt that I thought I was adopting one more child, only she came with two younger siblings and I was starting childrearing all over again! I don't think I need Freud to analyze what that dream means.





HANK: And if I might add, sometimes dreams do come true...my newest Charlotte McNally mystery, FACE TIME, goes on sale this week! Sara Paretsky says "FACE TIME is a gripping fast-paced thriller with an important story line and an engaging heroine..." There's more from the divine Sara (whose anthology with other Sisters in Crime is on sale right now and a MUST read) but check my website for all the info.

And now--tell us your dreams! Or, if you dare, what ours mean...

On Bad Guys

"The women who inspired this play deserved to be smacked across the head with a meat ax, and that, I flatter myself, is exactly what I smacked them with."

*** Clare Boothe Luce on "The Women."

JAN:
You know when you listen to the sharp, catty dialogue of the women undermining each other in The Women that Luce had a good ear for women at their worst. Have any real, live a**holes in your lives inspired your fictional bad guys?

RO:
Funny you should ask. There is a real life a**hole who lives too close to me to identify beyond that, but I was so pissed at him - for unneighborly behaviour - that I made him a wife beater in my book. As it happens I had too many interwoven story lines and decided to pull that one out, but one false move and the guy makes it into book three.

HANK:
I'm sitting at my computer, staring at the screen. Wondering who inspired my bad guys, and why. And I realized it's not so much specific people, as it is the way some people treat others. My bad guys are self-centered, greedy, manipulative. They're only interested in themselves--and how others can help them get what they want. And if someone gets in the way or interferes, they mow them down. Physically, psychologically and emotionally. Their flaws stem from power, money, and control.

The good guys--listen, think, care about others as much as they do themselves. Their flaws stem from love.As for you, Ro, my darling husband is a lawyer, if you need him.

HALLIE:
Free associating on the lawyer front...it is interesting how mystery readers are far more partial to dead lawyers than they are to dead dogs. I know, off topic. I LOVE that quote, but I confess I hate asshole characters. The 'villain' in my work in progress is based loosely on a girl I barely knew in high school. She was very sweet and needy and clingy (and annoying) and I imagined what might have happened to her if she got twisted, seriously twisted. I like villains who are real, complex people who've convinced themselves that they HAVE to do bad things for all the 'right' reasons. As Hanks says, they're 'flawed.'

JAN:
I hung around with a guy in college who I knew was evil. Okay, no one believes in evil today, so maybe he wasn't evil, just a sociopath. But it was like the air changed in the room whenever he walked in. When asked about his plans after graduation, he announced that he was going to go to Las Vegas and make his "killing" gambling. He never went to Las Vegas, but in the back room in a bar in Boston, he won a couple grand in a backgammon game.

In lieu of the cash, he was offered the chance to make money driving car loads of marijuana up from Florida. He soon graduated from driver to investor, and after a stint in jail wound up distributing a synthetic heroin that killed something like 200 junkies up and down the east coast. The Herald did a story on it and quoted one of his associates as saying that Chris chuckled over this.

When I read the quote, I could actually hear the laugh Chris would have used. To make a long story short, Chris died, execution style, with two bullets in the back of his head, shortly after deciding to turn state's evidence. None of his college friends were shocked.

Anyway, I'm clearly fascinated by Chris. He was the inspiration for one of my earliest short stories, and the basis for my bad guy in Final Copy. Over and over, even when I was doing investigative journalism, I found myself drawn to the subject of charismatic con men (and women). Why is that the trait of utter selfishness is so often coupled with extraordinary charm?

Maybe it's that mystery that keeps us writing crime fiction!

BREAKING NEWS!
We're so thrilled to announce Jungle Red's own Hank Phillippi Ryan's debut novel Prime Time is now on the Boston Globe's bestseller list! Prime Time has been on sale for just twelve days..and now is the number 10 best-selling paper back as listed in New England's flagship newspaper.
(The second book in Hank's Charlotte McNally Mysteries, FACE TIME, will be published this October.)