Memories of Malice

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Only Rhys and I will be at the Malice Domestic mystery conference, but we’re representing the Reds in a big way - we are both Guests of Honor! It’s exciting and scary and feels very strange to be going back to such a familiar setting for the first time in several years. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the same place with more than ten people, y’all! I’m also getting to slip in an overnight visit with my family in Alexandria after the con ends on Sunday, so that’s even more of an enticement to lure me out of the house.

Malice has been a feature of my career since before I was a published writer. In 2001, the manuscript for IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER won the St. Martin’s/Malice Domestic Award, and along with a contract, I got a free trip to the convention! I didn’t know a soul, and hung bashfully around the edges until the night of the Agatha Awards, when I was announced as the winner. I remember sitting at my table with my dear editor, Ruth Cavin - who is going to be the feature of a panel at this year’s con - obsessing over a thick cloth napkin that someone had dropped on the carpet between tables. I rehearsed walking to the podium over and over in my head, because I was convinced I was going to slip on the napkin, go down with a whoop and a thud, and my mystery writing career would be over before it began!


Reds, what are some of your favorite memories of Malice?


JENN McKINLAY: I’ve only been to one Malice - 2012! I went because Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels was guest of honor and I had loved her work since I was a teen. I just wanted to see her.

As luck would have it, I got to meet her! But I was so overwhelmed by what her work had meant to me - she’s one of the reasons I became a writer - that I burst into tears and only managed to choke out a garbled “I just…thank you.” To my surprise, she understood all that I had left unsaid. With sparkling eyes, she looked at me with a big smile and said, “No, thank you, my dear.”

It was a moment of perfect author-reader connection and understanding and I’ll cherish it always.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: My first Malice must have been 1992, the year before my first book came out. I met my dear friends Kate Charles and Marcia Talley at that conference! It's so wonderful that these connections can last decades! The next year that first book, A SHARE IN DEATH, was a Best First Novel nominee. (Didn't win, boo.) Then DREAMING OF THE BONES was a Best Novel nominee for 1997. (Didn't win that one either!) And somehow I've just never managed to get back to Malice. That's a terrible thing that must be remedied! Maybe next year!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yes, yes, next year, absolutely. As you might know, since I have been sharing the bittersweet news on social media, I was ALL PLANNED to go this year, and doing my best to be two places at one time with an incredible flurry and back and forth plane trips–because my darling grandson Josh is having his Bar Mitzvah on Saturday in Brooklyn. ONE THE SAME WEEKEND. (Yeah, after two years of nothing, both of these life changing things are at the same time.)

So I made all the reservations, and vowed it would work but, it just couldn’t. Especially with the air travel industry in chaos–one canceled or delayed flight (Thurs BOS-DCA, Fri DCA to LGA, Sat LGA to DCA, Sun DCA to BOS) the whole thing would have been a disaster and I would have been stranded in the wrong place.

SO! SO bummed to miss the hoopla and glory for our TWO GUESTS OF HONOR! And I cannot wait to hear all about it.

And SO bummed to miss seeing HER PERFECT LIFE lauded as a nominee for Best Novel. Wah.

My big moments at Malice–SO many. But I remember at my first Malice, the guest of honor was Charlaine Harris. And I will admit to you, Reds and Readers, at that time I had no idea who she was. Can you believe it? It must have been 2006.

In 2007, I won Best First for PRIME TIME! And I still remember the feeling of shock and honor and amazement. (Many stories about this, for another time..) But that was the time, at the banquet, I felt a tap on my shoulder, and it was Carolyn Hart, saying–”Katherine Hall Page says I should know you. May I sit here?” I almost burst into tears.

HALLIE EPHRON: I’ve been to three or four Malices and loved every one of them. My favorite memory is the year we did a Jungle Red Jeopardy game for our panel. We ran a survey to corral good questions, and I put together a working Jeopardy board in Powerpoint and acquired a set of buzzers so we could dink the right answers and doink the wrong ones. My grandkids still love to play with those buzzers, and we got to trot them out to another conference when we did a Family Feud game.


I did love the hats. Julia, Rhys, do let me know if there are still hats.

LUCY BURDETTE: My first Malice must have been in 2001, before I had a book out. I knew no one and was a complete nervous wreck. Then the next year, SIX STROKES UNDER was nominated for best first, against Julia’s IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER. Margaret Maron moderated our panel and was so welcoming and gracious. Julia won, and the win was so well deserved!

In 2005, I remember being told by my editor that the publisher was cutting the golf lovers’ mystery series after 5 books. I was devastated, but had to go to a booksigning and pretend everything was fine. I ended up sitting next to HRF Keating who couldn’t have been lovelier, as I tearfully told him the news. He told me he believed that 7 books was a natural arc for any series. Then they opened the door to fans, who rushed in to queue up for him. Only later did I realize he was a Lifetime Achievement Guest of Honor who’d had 20-something books in his series! DuH!

I’ve had lots of wonderful times at Malice, but those moments are etched in the stone that is my brain:)

RHYS BOWEN: I’ve been to almost every Malice since 1998. So many good memories: being toastmaster, the ghost of Agatha Christie, singing with Parnell Hall and meeting so many lovely people. A fond memory was Robin Burcell reading a sex scene from her only romance novel. It was so improbable that we all ended up lying on the floor laughing. And we were so noisy they called security! This year I’m joining Julia as guests of honor so we’ll have to behave ourselves.

JULIA: Since Rhys and I just left a party, each bringing some wine back to our rooms, we will see exactly how well we managed to behave over the next several days.

Now it's your turn, dear readers. Do you have memories of attending Malice Domestic? Have you been a conferencegoer for other industries? What did you love and what did you find less lovable?

I want to give photo credits, but Blogger won't let me caption! The first photo, of Gigi Pandian and Elizabeth Peters, is from Gigi's blog. The photo of Lucy at dinner comes from Leslie Budewitz. The photo of Rhys and Laurie King is from Poisoned Pen.

Hacking it Back: Julia in the garden

Back yard? Property? The landscape?

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I really need to find a better name to describe the 3 acres around my old Maine farmhouse, because "garden" conjures up the wrong vibe (as the kids say.) It's not really landscaping, because, well, so much of it is overgrown. There are the bones of previous decades landscaping  - Ross's many, many bulbs, the other flowers he's planted in beds that were once nice and round but now seem to have melted slightly, the initial three forsythia that have become 300 forsythia, etc, etc.

 

 

The garden enthusiast in my marriage was Ross; my job was to help pull and prune where he told me and to have a cold beer waiting for him when he came in from mowing. So it's been a steep learning curve, now the whole she-bang in my responsibility. The last time he was able to work on it was the summer of  '15, and I was, shall we say, taken aback at just how quickly my nicely maintained grounds were determined to become Longfellow's forest primeval.

 

Can you spot the apple tree?

I decided to rally my forces and tackle one or two important tasks each year to push back the jungle. I really don't want visitors to expect me to come to the door in a head scarf and fur coat. Two summers ago, when the Guest Son was living here, he took down and chopped a whole lot of deadfall wood, made me a compost pile and several garden bed containers, and killed 90% of the Japanese knotweed infesting the back with Roundup. (I've always tried to keep it organic, but sometimes, you need to hire an assassin.)

 

 

Last summer, one of my young friends helped revitalize my front porch flowerbed, my cousins chainsawed the Yews of Doom that were literally darkening my front door, and we kept all the grassy areas - one half to three quarters of an acre - well mowed.

 

This year, my goal is to get rid of my foul nemeses, the Asian invasives. I have oriental bittersweet. I have multiflora roses. I have non-native honeysuckle. And, native but oh-so-annoying, the forsythia that's rooted itself everywhere and the sumac saplings that must have been spread by seed to different zones in the back, as the ONE parent tree I want to live is next to the shed in the front yard.

 

My enemy, the bittersweet

Every non-rainy morning this month, after doggie breakfast, I head out back with the pups, my deerskin working gloves, and my lopper. I've pulled bittersweet vines out of the ground. I've cut out raspberry canes (they also spread everywhere.) I've taken out multiflora roses that have grown fifteen feet up into the apple trees. 

 

This is neither glamorous or creative work, but it is deeply satisfying. Unlike, say, writing a book, where a good day's work is 1/120th of the whole, when I've clipped my way through a tangle of thorny vines that look like the defenses around Sleeping Beauty's castle, I can see the tangible results in a pile on the ground and in a path through the briars. 

 

 

 

Cleared! Well, partly.

There are still real roses and wanted forsythia to prune, grape vines to rehang, flower beds to mulch and daffodils to divide and replant. Non of that is going to happen this year, and that's okay! 

 

Dear readers, what are the long-focus, dirty jobs that you find yourself enjoying?

 

 

Creativity in the Third Act, a guest post by Amanda Le Rougetel

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: If you hang out here at JRW daily (and if not, why not?!?) you'll know we have a real community of commentors, and I think we all feel like we know each other in ways small and large. So I was embarrassed to learn that our own Amanda Le Rougetel has a blog devoted to writing, creativity, and - pertinent for today - how to focus on those pursuits in retirement. Shoutout to Celia Wakefield for pointing me toward Five Years a Writer.

Retirement is much on the mind for many of my group as we all approach the age. For my author friends, the question is: do writers retire? Do artists? Musicians? Amanda says no - and that if you haven't started yet, retirement is the perfect time.

 

 

Julia, thank you so much for the invitation to be on the front side of the blog. I am honoured and delighted.

 

You know that question we ask little kids? The one that goes, What do you want to be when you grow up? Well, I think we should ask that same question of people who are heading into retirement: What do you want to be when you retire from the rat race? But do you know what I was asked, more often than not, when I was heading towards retirement? How are you going to keep busy? The little kids get a question all about hope and promise and dreams. The retirees — what do we get? A question about filling time. And that doesn’t sit right with me.

 

For me, retirement is my Third Act (capital T, capital A) and I want to play it out on a stage that is bright and active and, well, if not exactly loud, then I want to make some noise and I want to be heard. No invisibility for me. This retiree won’t be going quietly into the night…No. This retiree is figuring out how to build community through writing and art and how to translate those heretofore ‘hobbies’ into meaningful and satisfying work.

 

I spent 40+ years in the full-time paid workforce, first in various communications-related jobs and occasionally climbing a step or two up the promotions ladder, then in the education sector as a college instructor for the final years. Teaching was the most creative work I had done and the students, while occasionally frustrating, kept things fresh. Those final years of my formal career turned out to be the springboard into my Third Act as a Creative.

 

I am now ten months into retirement and thoroughly enjoying it, though I didn’t find it easy at first. The abrupt change in routine and schedule threw me for more than a loop; it blindsided me. I was so unused to having so much time on my hands that I could not find my rhythm for using it all. But then I remembered what May Sarton, the famous journal writer, said about time and routine and schedules: “A body without bones would be a limp impossible mess, so a day without steady routine would be disruptive and chaotic.”

 

I took Sarton’s advice, stopped whiling away the time and, instead, harnessed it for all those things that I had been longing to be able to focus on. As a Creative — someone who finds both joy and satisfaction in working with words and images — I no longer needed to squeeze those activities into the interstices of an organizational work week. I could use full days to write and to collage and, yes, even to read. Wow. What a revelation!

 

I had been planning for decades to arrive at this point in my life. I had been diligent about saving money and living within my means, so the money side of retirement was not the issue for me. Though this doesn’t mean I’m wealthy; far from it. I’ve never been wealthy, so it’s no surprise that I’m not wealthy now! Though I am rich — very rich — in that most precious commodity of all: time. And I want to get the very best payback from it I can.

 

For me this means continuing to work. Not as an employee, not in a larger organization with all the constraints that such an arrangement inevitably must bring. No. I am continuing to use my knowledge and experience and am leveraging my skills to develop and deliver writing workshops in the community with my long-time friend and creative collaborator, who is also retired and also a Creative. We have so much fun with this work, it is an endless source of amazement and joy for us. 

 

 

So, when people ask me how I’m keeping busy in retirement, I just shake my head. Because Creatives don’t retire — not from work, though we may, if we’re lucky, leave the rat race. Once we are free from the limits of the boss’s nine to five regime, we are able to work at our craft for as many hours a day as brings us pleasure and satisfaction. These days, that work feels like play to me and it’s certainly the most fun I’ve ever had working!

 

My schedule may be full, but I do not feel busy. I am happy. In charge. Productive. A Creative, retired from the rat race, still working, and totally engaged by living on that bright active Third Act stage.

 

Dear Reds and Readers: What are your post-work plans? Who do you want to be — or who are you already — in retirement?

 

 

Amanda Le Rougetel reads, writes and does collage art in the heart of the Canadian prairies in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She blogs at Five Years a Writer, and teaches writing workshops through Writing as Tool. She is a long-time reader and commenter on the JRW blog and is a loyal fan of the JRW authors.