On Libraries & Librarians

Ro: This week I'm in Philadelphia preparing for the American Library Association's MidWinter meeting. Twenty-five mystery writers from MWANY will be meeting and greeting librarians from all over the country.

Almost every writer I know has a favorite library or librarian story. Tell us yours. In the meantime here's one from best-selling author Clea Simon

Clea: How do I love libraries? Let me count the ways. While I was researching my last nonfiction book, “The Feline Mystique: On the Mysterious Connection Between Women and Cats,” I saw a mention on a TV special of a study done in England on predation by cats in a small West Country village. Seriously. Being the tech savvy girl that I am, I immediately went online to find it. Well, I did. In German. Which I do not speak. And when I tried the Google “translator” the result was wildly humorous, but not at all useful.

So I went down to my local brick-and-mortar (or, this being Cambridge with its beautiful 19th Century H.H. Richardson Romanesque castle of a library, hewn-stone-and-mortar) library and explained my predicament to one of the librarians. “No problem,” she said to me. “But it may take a few days.” Within two days, she had the original journal article – in English – copied for me. Once again, I was reminded that electrons in the ether are still easily trumped by human ingenuity, know-how, and (I suspect) a phone call from one research librarian to another, perhaps overseas. I thanked her profusely, and in the “Feline” acknowledgments, but it hardly seems enough.

I wish I could drop by my local library tomorrow, seek out that librarian and thank her again. But for now, I can’t. My library is being renovated – its beautiful lawn with the names of great Greek thinkers set in stone, its Japanese peace garden, and its shady walks are all torn up, replaced by a construction site that looks more like a crime scene. There is hope: The copper beach, such a pleasure to read under, is still standing. And all the plans posted along the makeshift fence promise everything else will soon be back, perhaps as early as this summer. But until then, it’s a mess, more than half the books in storage, accessible through a temporary library housed in a nearby school. And that’s not the same, somehow, and I miss my library something fierce.

So when I was asked to contribute to a small volume by local writers celebrating the return of our library – oh, soon, I hope! – I wrote a mini-mystery featuring a local cat, who waits under that tree, and waits and waits for the day her book-borrowing friends will come back. I guess at heart I am that cat, waiting and hoping. How could I not?

Neither libraries nor librarians figure in my current full-length mystery series, in “Cries and Whiskers,” “Cattery Row,” or “Mew is for Murder.” The heroine of these books, Theda Krakow, knows how to research, but as a freelance music journalist. One of her best buddies, Bunny, works in a newspaper library – aka the “morgue – but while she invariably helps Theda dig up useful and interesting background tidbits, she hasn’t had a huge part in the action. Not yet. But in a nonseries book that I’m working on, my grad student heroine spends much of her time in Widener, the main Harvard College library. It’s a place I came to know and love during my undergrad years, and I’ve recently signed up for an alumna pass so I can revisit the scene of my youth – and figure out where exactly a killer would hide. I have very mixed emotions about setting a scary chase scene in a library. But, hey, mysteries all resolve, so I won’t be chasing anyone out of the stacks, will I? Maybe a little bit of suspense will just lure more of us in to that wonderful world, a mystery of its own.

Clea Simon is the author of the Theda Krakow mysteries, most recently “Cries and Whiskers,” and three nonfiction books. She can be reached at http://www.cleasimon.com

ON EPIPHANIES

Epiphany: A sudden intuitive perception of or insight into reality or the essential meaning of something often initiated by a simple commonplace occurrence.



****The Random House Collegiate Dictionary


RO: I also refer to epiphanies as St. Paul moments. Not that I'm religious - I just like the image of someone falling off his jackass and "getting it" whatever "it" is. In this past year leading up to the publication of my first book, I've fallen off my jackass a bunch of times. I'm not sure what I've learned, but here are a few possibilities.
1.I'm thrilled to be getting published, it's a start, not an end.
2.If things work out for me, great. If they don't, it isn't the publisher's fault. Or Barnes & Noble's. Or Dan Brown's.
3.I love everyone who takes the time to read my book.
What have you learned this year?

JAN:
That....1. Opportunity comes when you least expect it.
2. Whether you call it prayer or positive energy or simply intention, it can make a difference.
3. Whether its writing, music, tennis, baseball or even buying the right gift, for me, it's all about the story.

HANK:
1. You never know if something that happens is "good" or "bad" until later. And even then it can change. So I try to just decide it's a good thing and go from there.
2. Worrying never helps.
3. My books mean so much to me it's impossible to have predicted or explain. Even my books that don't exist yet.
4. Ditto to Rosemary's number 3.
5. My hair doesn't always have to look perfect.

HALLIE:
I'll believe Hank's #5 when I see her with a strand of hair out of place.
The big epiphany for me is the one that whispers, "Move on already!" until you can't outshout or ignore it. This is especially difficult when you've done something really hard, like write a novel and sold it to a mainstream publisher, and then written another in the series, and another...and then a) the novels are a) good but not remarkable, or b) so-so successful or c) you just get tired of writing that same-old same-old but-slightly-different, or... it's time to grab yourself by the earlobes and yank. "Same" is safer and easier, but "different" is ripe with possibilities. It's especially hard because the mantras that got many of us where we are is "stick with it" and "don't give up"--it's true that a main difference between a published and unpublished writer is that the published one refused to cave in the face of rejection. But there is a time to move on, to step off into the abyss. Then dig in, pat yourself on the back for your courage, and hope you won't live to regret it. This year I took that leap--look for the results, "Baby, Baby," a psychological suspense novel from HarperCollins in Winter 2009.

ROBERTA:
First of all, hooray for Hallie! Okay, here are some things I may have learned.
1. It's the job of bookstores to sell books, but not just MY books.
2. Push hard, but also know when to back off.
3. You've got to have friends! Truly, that's the gift I never anticipated when I started this whole crazy business--the number of smart, funny, dedicated (driven even), lovely writer types I would meet and enjoy along the way. Not to mention the lovely people who have bought and read my books!

JRW: So what have you all learned? Or hope you've learned?

**BREAKING NEWS!**

Face Time, the second in Hank's Charlotte McNally Mysteries, has been named a Book Sense NOTABLE BOOK for January 2008! Thank you so much to Dede Gallagher of Book Ends of Winchester MA http://www.bookendswinchester.com/ for nominating Face Time--she called it "a fast moving and tense mystery" and said "Ryan tells the tale with highpowered energy." (Yay for the independent booksellers and Book Sense. And Hank is beyond thrilled.)

Where do YOUR babies come from?

“It may come as a surprise to those who don’t care for my work that I’d hardly ever doubted the significance of any idea I’d had, and I’d had very few ideas. I’d written twelve finished works. I’d had fourteen ideas.” Jane Smiley

“I have an idea once every 19 years…” Overheard on NPR


ROBERTA: A couple of months ago, I spent the weekend with my writer friend SW Hubbard to brainstorm our works in progress. We worked on the details of her thriller and then it was my turn.

“So the character is a woman psychologist,” I said, “and she’s written a self-help book that’s starting to gain momentum. She’s a guest on a radio talk show, and someone from her past calls in. She recognizes the voice.” Then I stopped and waited.

“Yeah, then what happens?”

“That’s it,” I said. “That’s all I’ve got.”

“Who’s the voice from the past?”

“I don’t know, that’s all I’ve got,” I repeated.

She tried to help me out with a number of leading questions but I’d hit a wall. Why is it, I wondered, that other writers seem to toss off an idea a minute? Take my friend, Lori Avocato. Spend a couple hours with her and she’ll have 3 or 4 ideas for books just in that short time span.

I do keep a file folder full of headlines and articles from newspapers and magazines. But I can leaf through all of them and end up with nothing. Zippo. Nada. Zero.

So that’s my question for the day—I want your secrets! Where do you get your ideas and what tricks do you use to keep them coming?

JAN: This is my trick. When all I should be doing is focusing on the end of whatever book I'm writing, all I can think about is the GREAT IDEAS I have for the next book.

But honestly, most of my ideas come from the newspaper or a real event. Or some social ill that's been bothering me for a long time. Like gambling and the lottery. Kids on the Internet. Or the potential for a scam or heist.
The murders are harder. I really hate to think about people taking a life.

HANK: Oh please. Don't bring this up now. Or maybe, do. At this very instant, I'm pleading with my brain for an idea. You have to picture me, sitting at my computer. Arms limp, slumped, head on the back of the chair. Eyes to the ceiling. Imploring the universe to present me with something. I can think of a million million ideas, but they aren't good enough. Boring. Derivative. Silly. No payoff.

I like to remember Thomas Edison--you know, who was encouraged and inspired when his first 2000 (or whatever) ideas for what to use in a light bulb didn't work. He said--now I know 2000 things that don't work. And that's so revealing about how things get invented. Like books.

But (and I hope this stays true) sometimes I just think and think and think. Deeply deeply think. Try Hallie's "what if" exercises. And then, I let go. Do something else. And soon after, something bubbles to the surface.

HALLIE: Hank is right about that bubbling when you're not trying thing. Always it's in the shower, or in the car, or when and I'm up to my wrists in bread dough. Or or or... the solution sometimes is to shake things up, to get out of my comfort zone and go somewhere or do something that isn't part of my usual day to day. Like...go to a Star Trek convention. Or a Tupperware party. Or a rocket launching. Once I HAVE a good idea, then definitely brainstorming with friends (what iffing it to death) is a huge help.

JAN: It's so true. I always say I get my best ideas on Route I-95. I think just like athletes play better when they are "loose," writers think more creatively when they are relaxed. Maybe the analytical part of the brain has to be silenced to let the creative side of the brain be free.

RO: I'm definitely a "ripped from the headlines" kind of gal - no, let me rephrase that. Not the headlines. My fave place to prospect for ideas is in the back of the paper. The tiny story that most people never read. The local misdemeanor that (at least in my "what if" scenario) is the cover-up for the bigger, deadlier crime.
Another thing I enjoy doing is ripped from a movie -The Usual Suspects - one of my faves. In it the Kevin Spacey character, the infamous Kayser Sosa, deceives the police by weaving an entire story out of the items in the cop's own office. Brilliant. I've yet to name a character after the manufacturer of my coffee mug, but it's a fun exercise and always gets me thinking.

ROBERTA: ok, now time for the rest of you to step up and tell us where YOUR babies come from!