Welcome the New Reds!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  This is SUCH a big deal—it’ll take three days this week to celebrate it! And a fourth day next week.

Ta dah: we are so thrilled to welcome our new Reds! The fabulous friends and fabulously talented authors Jenn McKinlay and Ingrid Thoft.

I will pause now while you give them a standing ovation.

Since they’re now officially Reds, it’s only fitting that I bring out my Jungle Red Questions, right?  (They have not seen each other’s answers!)

Jenn at Poisoned Pen

HANK:  When was the first moment you thought: I could be a mystery writer?

INGRID: Honestly, I don’t remember an exact moment, but I can identify a turning point when I was first shopping for an agent and got positive feedback.  It’s transformational when someone other than a family member or close friend reads your work and asks to read more.  I always wanted writing to be my career, but things shift when someone else sees that in your future, too.

      

JENN:  Honestly, it was when I had nothing left to lose as I had failed at all other types of writing. I avoided writing mysteries for years because I didn't think I was clever enough. Life lesson: Failure is good!

HANK: I love that you both started with “Honestly.”

Okay, what’s the book from your childhood that most affected or inspired you?

Ingrid and Hank 

INGRID:  You really have to ask?  Nancy Drew had a big effect on me, as did the Encyclopedia Brown series.  I remember loving “The Phantom Tollbooth,” by Norton Juster, “Meet the Austins” by Madeleine L’Engle and “The Westing Game,” by Ellen Raskin.  All of the Judy Blume books were favorites, and I still have my copy of “Just the Beginning” by Betty Miles.

JENN: Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier was a game changer for me when I was eleven. It opened up the world of suspense and I never looked back.

HANK: When and where are you happiest?

Jenn

INGRID: I’m happiest with the people I love when they are happy and healthy.  The deal is sweetened by a good book, a beach, and a healthy coral reef to snorkel over or scuba dive.  Good food and a good cocktail are also important ingredients in the happiness recipe.

JENN: At my family's summer cottage on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. Truly, the most beautiful and peaceful place on earth.

HANK: So, the new Reds are water/beach people!

Where do you live? And give us… one sentence about your family.

Ingrid signs

INGRID: I live in Seattle with my husband, Doug.  I’m from Massachusetts and make frequent trips back for research purposes and to see family.  I was responding to these questions in my family’s presence over Christmas, and my niece Zoë suggested the following sentence: Zoë is the greatest niece ever.  Hmmm…not the sentence I would choose.  My one sentence would be that my family is funny, and we get stuff done.

JENN: I live in sunny Arizona in a house overrun with kids, pets, and my husband's guitars. I'm the lone girl so I call it the frat house.

 HANK: West Coasters!  So does that make us…four east, four west?

You can tell I like to organize. But NOT outline! How about you?

INGRID:  I’ve been an outliner for the Fina books, and I’m currently outlining a stand alone.  I am trying to be a little more open-minded about not outlining too strictly this time around, but just typing that makes my skin start to itch with the possibility of hives.  I’m a planner, in life and in my books, but I’m intrigued when I hear other writers talk about a less regimented process.  We’ll see how it turns out!

JENN: Yes, I work from a ten-page outline and I rarely deviate from it. Writing, for me, is much easier with a map.

HANK:  When I first read that answer, Jenn, I thought it said “nap.” That writing was easier with a nap. Also true. So when’s your next book out—and what is it?

INGRID: My next book, DUPLICITY, will be out on January 10^th.  It’s the fourth book in my Fina Ludlow series.  Fina is a private investigator in Boston, who works for the Ludlow family firm of personal injury attorneys.  She breaks the rules and the law when it suits her, and she has a strong code of ethics.   In DUPLICITY, she is hired to investigate the activities of an evangelical church and the hold it seems to have over its members.

JENN:  ASSAULT AND BERET comes out on Jan 3rd. The fifth and final in the London Hat Shop mystery series. London milliner Vivian Tremont and her American cousin and partner, Scarlett Parker, tip their caps to their beloved shop on Portobello Road in Notting Hill and set off for Paris, where Viv can’t wait to teach a hat-making class. But she has another reason to travel to the City of Light: to find the man she impulsively eloped with years ago and have their marriage annulled.

HANK: What’s the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done?

INGRID: We’ve taken a helicopter to the top of a glacier in Alaska and climbed ice cliffs with ice axes and crampons, but I didn’t find that particularly dangerous.  Maybe scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef?  We didn’t do the shark dive during which they chum the waters, but we encountered sharks on other dives during the trip.  It’s their ocean, after all! 

JENN: My dad was a glider pilot, so I took some lessons and flew the ship. I even managed to steer it through a wingover! It didn't occur to me that crashing was very real possibility until my feet were back on the ground -- probably a good thing. 

HANK: Yeah, I had a boyfriend who was a glider pilot, and I was so proud of myself for going up with him. (The things we do….)  At one point in the flight he said “Damn!” 

I was terrified! “What?” I yelped.  “Oh nothing,” he said. “I  was just thinking I could have done that maneuver more perfectly. I said: “That’s not ‘Damn!’ That’s ‘Hmm.’ Or—tell me later.”

But wait—there’s more! Tomorrow, we’ll hear much more about Jenn’s new book. And on Wednesday—more revealing answers. We’ll discover which new Red is a singer. Which Red cannot for the life of her make banana cake, and which new Red has galeophobia.

Welcome to the Jungle, sisters! And we are so thrilled you are here!  (And happiest of New Years and much love to Reds emeritae Jan, Rosemary and Susan—once a Red, always a Red!)

Also! In the comments tell me what questions YOU’D like us to ask! And later in the week, we’ll have the answers from Jenn and Ingrid!

Each House Has A Story

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I wish you could see our basement. Well, no I really don’t. 

But someone else lived in our house, many someones actually, before we did (Jonathan moved in 30 years ago, and I moved in 20 years ago, but our home was built in 1894.)  

The changing owners came and went –and some of them didn’t take all their possessions from the basement. A while ago,  under a pile of other stuff, we found a box of old newspapers.

Turned out, they were from World War I , and were filled with articles about trench warfare  and  photos of camels in Africa. The newspapers are incredible, and I am thinking of sending them to Charles and Caroline Todd. It made me realize that though we love our home, others loved it before us. Others with their own experiences and fears and joys. 

Our dear Susan Van Kirk  has a special house, too.

Ben Franklin: “Marry in haste, repent at leisure.”

                       by Susan Van Kirk

We all have a watershed year in our lives when everything changes forever. Mine was 1968. Within ten weeks I graduated from college, married, began a high school teaching job, and moved into the first floor of a 4,410-square-foot Victorian house that had been converted into apartments in the small town of Monmouth, Illinois. At the time I was a superficial twenty-something and totally oblivious to the history that mansion must have witnessed.

Here I stop to mention that we caught seven mice in the bedroom the first autumn (one of which jumped out of the bed covers I turned down); the upstairs tenant left her bath water on, overflowing into our kitchen; and we saw cockroaches—yes, cockroaches—in that kitchen. I didn’t even know what those ugly things were!

But, I digress. Time and distance add layers of gauze around memories like those.

Well, maybe not the cockroaches.

Years later, this late 19^th century house was still visiting my imagination, but now I had a more mature appreciation for its past. I decided to research the McCullough House, using its rooms for the setting of my mystery, Marry in Haste. I wanted to write a novel set in two time periods: 1893 and 2012. The house would connect the stories of two marriages with, of course, a murder or two.

Researching, I discovered that in 1893, Sarah McBroom, a widow, sold the corner lot to a contractor who built the Victorian for W.W. McCullough. McCullough owned a lumberyard, brickyard, and a pottery. He also had shares in a railroad and a local electric trolley line.

He later sold the house to town newcomer John C. Allen, a former Nebraska secretary of state. Allen built a huge dry goods store on the public square, became quite prominent, and was voted into the U.S. House of Representatives. After Allen, other townspeople lived in McCullough House until the 1940s, when a lawyer bought it, converting it into apartments.

The house had mahogany woodwork throughout and leaded glass windows in the foyer with an impressive front staircase that rose to a third-floor ballroom. A servant’s staircase was on the opposite side of the house—not nearly so grand—and city directories listed a number of Irish servants. Although the house was converted to electricity around 1905, the original gas lighting fixtures peered out of the walls.

Our first-floor apartment had three pairs of mahogany pocket doors and a huge living room that used to be two parlors—a public parlor and a private family parlor. I remember my husband and I were up in the wee hours on a summer night in 1969, painting those never-ending walls and watching Armstrong’s walk on the moon.

A study off the living room contained an outside door, but by 1968, that door had disappeared, and the study had become our bedroom and bathroom. The main staircase was above this room. Most mornings around three, one of the upstairs tenants beat a staccato rhythm that jarred us awake as he careened down the stairs to work. His speed and volume indicated tardiness. A kitchen, large walk-in pantry, and dining room completed the downstairs. To give you some idea of the size of the house, the front to the back was the length of a bowling alley.

Now, I look back on that house fondly, and I have made it the 1893 home of Judge Charles Lockwood in Marry in Haste. The powerful Judge Lockwood is on his second marriage, and his new bride is uncovering dangerous secrets. A diary hidden in the house and found in the present day reveals clues to those secrets and parallels a murder in present-day Endurance.

This is the wonder of writing fiction. This lovely 19^th century mansion, minus the mice and cockroaches, has been restored to its former splendor just in time to accommodate murder.

Do you have a favorite book that revolves around a particular location?

HANK: What a great question! Can’t go wrong with Maycombe County. Or the Mushroom Planet.  What do you all think?

Marry in Haste

It is 2012 in the small town of Endurance, and wealthy banker, Conrad Folger, is murdered and his wife, Emily, arrested. Emily Folger was one of Grace Kimball’s students in the past, and Grace knows Emily could never murder anyone. So, Grace joins Detective TJ Sweeney to investigate the murder, and they uncover a dark secret.

In 1893, Olivia Havelock, age seventeen, moves to Endurance to seek a husband. She finds one in Charles Lockwood, powerful and wealthy judge, but her diary reveals a terrifying story.

Two wives—two murders a century apart—and a shocking secret connects them. Marry in Haste is a story of the resilience of women, both in the past and the present.

Anything can happen on Friday, even if it's Thursday night!

ROBERTA: First of all, if you haven't yet started to read the Sisters in Crime blog entries this week, trot right over and take a look. The reports from the publishers summit team's visit to New York are now posted, along with lots of interesting discussion about the state of publishing, mysteries in particular. http://sisters-in-crime-sinc.blogspot.com/

And second, if you're feeling depressed about the business, may I present our guest poster for the day, debut author Eugenia (Jeannie) West. Lest you feel there is not one speck of hope left for getting published, read on about how Jeannie won an amazing contest through St. Martin's. Welcome to JR Jeannie!

JEANNIE: Thanks, Roberta, for inviting me on Junglereds. I loved the blog about contests, and here’s my twist on that subject. Several years ago I was a unpublished member of Guppies, collecting a large pile of rejection slips for my first mystery. The biological clock began to tick, so I decided to go the POD route and at least have Christmas presents for family and friends.
The response was amazing. “I couldn’t put it down, and ” I lost a good night’s sleep.” Taking a deep breath, I entered the Malice Domestic contest sponsored by St. Martin’s Press. The chance that a POD book would be accepted seemed miniscule. Stuck the entry in the mail and forgot about it.
Imagine the shock when I opened my computer one June morning in 2006 and there was a message from the grande dame of mystery editors, Ruth Cavin of St. Martin's, offering me a contract for this book and a sequel. Suddenly the wannabe with nose pressed against the glass was a real author again.

As we know, the production wheels turn slowly. Without Warning appeared in the bookstores in December 2007 with a new title and cover, but few changes in the text.
Right now, the sequel is in editor Ruth Cavin’s hands--relief, relief---and am tossing around ideas for Emma Streat’s third set of disasters, and reviving a serious historical ms. (Some years ago Doubleday published The Ancestors Cry Out, a historical/suspense.)
Judging by Guppies and Sisters in Crime, there’s a great support system of mystery writers out there. I’m looking forward to being a ”rookie” panelist at the New England Crime Bake next November. In the meantime, I’ll be keeping up with junglered and hope you’ll let me blog with you again. Eugenia L. West (Jeannie)

ON GOOD NEWS

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.
**Stephen King


It's BSP Day on Anything Can Happen Friday.
We're so delighted with all the good news you sent us! Congratulations to all from Jungle Red Writers. And keep us posted. We love to hear the latest.....

Elizabeth Zelvin's debut mystery, DEATH WILL GET YOU SOBER, will hit bookstores on April 15. That's just around the corner, especially if you haven't started working on your taxes yet. The book is available for pre-order at online bookstores and some bookseller websites. And everybody in New York is invited to the launch party at Otto Penzler's Mysterious Bookshop, says the veteran psychotherapist and addictions professional author. It's not just Liz's launch date and Income Tax Day--it's also her birthday.

http://www.elizabethzelvin.com/

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Murder On The Mind, by L.L. Bartlett
The mind is a complex entity; it can play strange tricks. Jeff Resnick's recurrent visions of a slaughtered buck take on terrible new meaning when a local banker is found in the same condition. Jeff sets out to find the killer--no matter what the personal stakes.
Dead In Red, 2nd in the series, debuts June 2008
http://tinyurl.com/3yp5xv

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Keep an eye out for the first book in Sarah Atwell's Glassblowing Mystery Series, appearing in March 2008! In Through a Glass, Deadly, glassblower Emmeline Dowell has made a home for herself among the artists of Tucson's Warehouse District. Between teaching her craft and selling her wares, Em has plenty to do–not to mention the occasional murder to put a crack in her routine. (Berkley Prime Crime, ISBN 978-0425220474)
(Sarah Atwell is the pen name of Sheila Connolly, whose Orchard Mystery series will appear in August.)

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From: Earl Merkel
My new website at Redroom.com: Where The Writers Are?? is now up and running with several audio interviews I've done for a talk-radio show I co-hosted and produced-- one of them involving Mr. Larry Block, MMA Grand Master.
On this audio segment, Lawrence Block talks about his work as a mystery-writing legend, his writing habits, and the ageless tips he first provided in his ageless writing guide TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND
PROFIT.
Another features Neil Gaiman (ANANSI BOYS, AMERICAN GODS) talking about his novels, graphic novels, screenplays... and the system he uses when he writes in collaboration.
What both writers share about their writing and their insights into the world of books is, I believe, well worth the listen.
They're available at http://www.redroom.com/author/earl-merkel
along with some other interesting stuff (including interviews with Alice Walker and Martin J. Smith, neither of whom write mysteries-- but are mysteriously intriguing in their own ways.)
For those in DL who are among the writers I'll be taping interviews with at next week's LOVE IS MURDER conference, you'll also find out just how crazy some of these segments can be.
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Felicia Donovan, author of THE BLACK WIDOW AGENCY series, continues her fundraising efforts on behalf of the Greater Squamscott Womenade . This dedicated group of women works tirelessly to provide grass roots assistance to neighbors in crisis or who have reached a stumbling block in their lives, without the complexity of red tape. Assistance can go towards things like groceries, automobile repairs, prescriptions and the like. Felicia is donating a portion of the proceeds from every book sold between Oct. 1, 2007 and Oct. 1, 2008. "Women helping other women is a subject very near and dear to the Black Widows' hearts," Donovan said. "It's a perfect fit to send the message that women are empowered when they help each other out." For more information, please visit Felicia Donovan's website at http://www.feliciadonovan.com/ .
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Susannah Charleson's SCENT OF THE MISSING, chronicling the author's adventures with her golden retriever as members of an elite Texas-based canine search and rescue team, taking readers from the wreckage of the space shuttle Columbia to the cold trail of a girl gone missing, to the trials and joys of living with a gifted search dog who isn't especially well suited to the role of obedient house pet, has sold to Houghton Mifflin for hardcover release in 2009.

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From: Jeffrey Cohen
SOME LIKE IT HOT-BUTTERED, the first in the Double Feature Mystery series (Berkley Prime Crime, ISBN: 042521799X) has been nominated for the Lefty Award for Most Humorous Mystery, to be presented at the Left Coast Crime conference in Denver on March 8. And that the second in the series, IT HAPPENED ONE KNIFE, will be available July 1. And I'm tickled to death about both those things.


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Betty Webb's new Lena Jones mystery, DESERT CUT, will be released February 10. Like all the Lena Jones books, it's set in the desert near Phoenix, Arizona, and this time, takes an entirely new look at immigration issues. As a journalist, Betty came across some information that shocked even her.
But for the cozy crowd, Betty is delighted to announce that an entirely new series of hers will hit bookstores early next year (March, 2009). "The Anteater of Death," is just the first. The books are all set in a California zoo, and star a new protagonist -- a non-neurotic zoo keeper who lives on a boat. These books will NOT be as dark as the Lena Jones books. Instead, they're actually cozies! And because they're so warm and fuzzy, Betty's editor at Poisoned Pen Press wants her to use a pen name, so Lena Jones fans won't get a nasty shock (well, a warm and fuzzy shock). So next year, be on the lookout for "The Anteater of Death," by Jo Howell -- Betty's new pen name.
Website at http://www.bettywebb-mystery.com/Blog at http://bloggingwebb.blogspot.com/

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From Jessica Park Conant and Susan Conant:
The Gourmet Girl returns to solve the murder of one bad egg when TURN UP THE HEAT, the third book in the Gourmet Girl series, arrives on March 4th.
Chloe Carter has a lot on her plate-exams for grad school are coming up, and her chef boyfriend needs her support as his fledgling trendy restaurant comes into its own. The staff of Simmer gets along like petits pois in a pod, everyone pulling pranks on one another now and then. Everyone, that is, except for Leandra, a waitress who treats the busboys like chopped liver-and can never take a joke. One morning, Leandra's dead body is found in a fish truck. So people start to wonder:
was this just a prank gone awry? Or did somebody actually want her to sleep with the fishes?
************************************ From Clea Simon:
OK, it's not much of a contest, but sort of...
I'm looking for ideas for the title of my next mystery and somehow I seem to have run out of cat pun/literary references. There are countless "claws/clause" variations I can use for a legal angle, but nothing is clicking yet. And while I love "Bright Lights, Big Kitty," I can't quite make that work either.
Anyway, I'm taking suggestions over at my blog - http://cleasimon.blogspot.com/ . If I choose yours, I'll send you a signed book and thank you in the acknowledgments. (Final title approval is up to my publisher, but if I like it, I'll send you the books and thank you anyway.)

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Pari Noskin Taichert will have the launch party for her third Sasha Solomon novel, THE SOCORRO BLAST, in Albuquerque this weekend. She'll be busy for the next few months with book signings throughout the West (and Alabama).
For more info: http://www.parinoskintaichert.com/

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I will be appearing on panels at Love Is Murder in Chicago the first weekend of February, Murder in the Magic City in Birmingham, AL the second weekend, and the Smyrna, TN library for SINC authors the last weekend of the month to speak about my new book, Fifty-Seven Heaven.
Lonnie Cruse
http://www.lonniecruse.com/

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The large-print edition of Beth Groundwater's A REAL BASKET CASE wasreleased by Wheeler Publishing on January 22nd, she signed the contractfor the sequel, TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET, last month and it will bereleased in early 2009, and her VIRTUAL DEATH manuscript is asemi-finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest and can be readand reviewed at: https://mail.whdh.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0011ZCAME.

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From: Ayn Hunt
I'm being interviewed Friday, Jan. 25th by Melissa Alvarez on her radio show on the Net from 11 to 12 noon EST at http://blogtalkradio.com/MelissaAlvarez We'll be talking about a few paranormal things like the ghost who took up residence at our house when I was writing my first Gothic about ghosts LOL. Talk about first hand experience! And we'll also be talking about my other books and my life down here in Texas as well.
The call-in number for anyone who'd like to ask questions or make comments is 347-215-8473. Thanks!
Ayn Hunt also writing as Ayn Amorelli
Author of Unwilling Killers, Obsessed, The Haunting and
Contract Bride
www.AuthorsDen.com/aynhunt
www.GottaWriteNetwork.com/aynamorelli

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Ken Isaacson’s SILENT COUNSEL was nominated for the Arty Award for best cover art on a mystery published in 2007, to be awarded at Left Coast Crime in March. The New Jersey attorney reports that the book has been doing exceedingly well, hanging in there this month on Amazon’s list of Bestselling Legal Thrillers behind only Harper Lee’s TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and John Grisham’s soon-to-be released THE APPEAL. He tells us that SILENT COUNSEL has gone into its second printing. Check out his TV interview on Good Day Arizona at www.KenIsaacson.com/GDAZ_Video.htm, listen to his radio interview on WBTC Talk Radio at www.KenIsaacson.com/WBTC.htm, or hear him read a chilling excerpt from SILENT COUNSEL at www.KenIsaacson.com/Excerpt.htm .

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You’re invited to join Rosemary Harris to celebrate the publication of Pushing Up Daisies
The first in The Dirty Business Mystery series from St. Martin's Minotaur

February 5, 2008, 7pm
Wine, nibbles, & dirty(business) martinis
Partners & Crime
44 Greenwich Avenue
New York City
212-243-0440
RSVP Hector.DeJean@stmartins.com

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Got Friends? Have them stop by the comments section--we'd be happy to include them. Should we do it again? Let us know!