Flipping for Flops

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I have to give you a little background on this one. For several years now, as I have seen the flip-flop morph from "that rubber thing you wear at the public pool" to "suitable footwear for a visit to the White House," I have consistently ranted (usually to my poor husband, who neither notices nor cares what women wear on their feet) about the sad decline in standards in Today's Modern World.

But at the same time, my feet have become increasingly less tolerant of heels. They pinch, they hurt, they make me think twice about going to the ladies room because I don't want to have to go another twenty-five steps.

Then this spring, my son went to his Junior Prom. I got to drop him and his date off at the banquet center, and thus got an eyeful of what the girls were wearing for this, the most important formal of their young lives. Lots of them were in the traditional, kick-them-off-after-the-second-dance heels. But a significant number were wearing pretty, blinged-out sandals. Flip-flops, to be precise.

Fast forward to Thrillerfest. As I write this, it's nearing midnight, and I've been on my feet for most of the day. But instead of having to soak the dogs in a sitz bath, I'm wiggling my happy toes in the Grand Hyatt carpet. Why? Because I've been wearing a pair of blinged-out flops all day. Oh, they're made of leather, not rubber, and they have a bitty strap, but they're flops all the same. I wore a different pair, with a thick, wedged bottom, on the trip down to NYC. I have given in. I have thrown in the towel, I have flipped on flops, and it feels great.

What do you think, Reds? Should we all start wearing flops on flights? Can they go to summer weddings? And does this mean I'm just one step away from wearing Birkenstocks with socks during the winter?

HALLIE EPHRON: I'm all for comfortable shoes - nothing makes more of a difference in my mood, except perhaps if I've had my morning coffee. And I WISH I could wear flip-flops, but they hurt. Not more than heels, but they do hurt, and my poor little toe muscles go into a virtual rictus of protest.

But here's the question: if you wear them does that mean you have to have painted your toenails?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Yes, Hallie, you do have to paint your toenails! This from one who lives in flip flops from April to October, whether is cheap rubber ones around the house or different levels of bling when going out.  You can even get orthopedic flip flops! I'm all for anything that will actually let you stand and WALK without being torture. (Think of Bouchercon in SF, when I walked blocks back to my hotel in my cocktail dress, carrying my snazzy heels.  Of course, I do wear socks with my Tevas in the winter, so maybe I'm not the best fashion guru....

RHYS BOWEN: I couldn't believe my eyes in a catalog that arrived at my house the other day--flip-flops for nearly 200 dollars??  Two tiny straps of leather on a sole and it wasn't as if they had real diamonds stuck on them. Another indication that the world has gone mad.

But I'm secretly glad that high heels are no longer required with formal wear. I've never yet found a comfortable pair and I'm in awe of Hank and her elegant high heels. I do manage a two inch heel on occasion but guess what--I've bought a pair of bejeweled flip-flops for the formal nights on the Queen Mary next month.And I do paint my toe-nails (even indulge in the occasional pedicure with my daughters)


JAN BROGAN: Yes, Hallie. You must have your toes painted. That's the downside. But the upside is worth it. Have you all discovered FIT FLOPS? I swear I am not working on commission, but these are not instead of high heels, these are instead of sneakers. No kidding, they have sparkling ones the look good (but not for the prom) for day wear. Really, last summer when I was in France, I did not have a car. I had to walk everywhere and probably clocked four to five miles a day, most of the time on cobblestone and often up the steep 1 mile hill to my friend's houses.  I have temperamental feet that need a lot of support, this sandals were better than my running shoes. I tried to walk around New York City one day in regular flip flops and did serious damage to the bottom of my feet.  The world is not going to hell in a hand basket, Julia, it's moving just that much further away than the feet-binding the Chinese initiated and we've been inadvertently carrying out.

LUCY BURDETTE: I have bad feet too, Jan, and I blame it partly on wearing heels back in the days when I used to waitress. I thought I looked very glamorous, but now I pay. My go-to shoes as long as it's not snowing are Mephisto sandals. They have a high arch and lots of support and I can walk anywhere in them. Hallie, if you're getting a pair, do as Rhys suggests and splurge on the pedicure too--heaven!

HANK PHILLPPI RYAN: Rhys, I cannot wait to see photos of your cruise. Fabulous.
I still think of rubber flip-flops as beach things..I wear them around the house
and at the pool, but no where else. My family all hoots at me because one year
J Crew had a huge flip-flop sale, and it was all flips were five dollars. I
FLIPPED and you cannot believe what's stored upstairs now. (And still I default
to the black ones, sigh.) Jan, my producer Mary wears FitFlops (to work!) and
loves them, too..

But I think leather "flip-flops" are not FF's. They're sandals. And that's a
different deal. Perfectly acceptable everywhere. Except in a TV interview. (Isaw someone do that the other day..and I thought: Eeeeww. Feet on TV.)   




JULIA: Pedis are a must. But after hiding my feet inside boots (outdoor and indoor) for six months, I like showing off some snazzy nail polish. Added benefit: unlike the polish on my fingernails, which chips off almost every time I start writing on my laptop, my pedi color lasts for weeks. Unless I take up toe-typing, I suppose.

How about you, dear readers? Are you sticking with your stillettos? Or have you, too, flipped for flops?

The Mystery of the Missing Character: a guest blog by Jill Edmondson

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: The descriptions for Jill Edmondson's Sasha Jackson series include words like "classy madam," "fetish party," "naughty sex" and "talking dirty," so you KNOW the Reds are all over this like gin on olives. 

Ahem. Because, of course, we're fascinated by the way Jill has set the traditional PI story on its head. In a field crowded with flat-foots and and gumshoes, her sleuth has a penchant for high-heels and phone sex. When a unique character like Sasha Jackson pops up, it's easy for other writers to say, "Why didn't I think of that?" Well, you're in luck, because Jill is going to tell us exactly what sort of research and planning goes into "thinking of that."

Attention All Aspiring Crime Writers!!!! Here’s a $1,000,000 dollar whodunit idea, and it’s yours this week for free! That’s right: FREE! You just have to read the rest of this post and then act on the advice contained herein...

First some background...

Quite some time ago, long before I was published or before I had even finished my first manuscript, I attended a seminar for wannabe mystery authors. The speaker emphasized that a writer should know – really and truly be familiar with her genre (whatever it may be). Get to know the best-selling and most prolific mystery authors of that genre. Get to know the characters, the settings and the conventions of whodunits. In addition to being a sort of training - which reading the genre most certainly is - a great degree of familiarity with whodunits will also help you to figure out WHAT’S MISSING FROM THE GENRE. And that’s what you should write.

Let me explain...

If there are few-to-no police procedurals, then you should write one. If there are few-to-no gay detectives, then you need to create one. If there are no visible minority private eyes, then that’s what you must invent.

Some more background (but this time it’s nerdy...)

As part of the course work for my MA, I did a number of papers on Crime Fiction, and in particular I looked at women in crime fiction. After reading something like 728,351 mystery novels featuring female main characters, I could safely say I knew what the genre had to offer when it came to female lead characters. There are bodacious bounty hunters, ingenious investigators, cunning caterers, awesome attorneys, terrific taxi-drivers and so much more.

It is interesting to note (and I’m not the first one to notice this) that crime fiction, overall, has mirrored and embraced demographic shifts. Verisimilitude is contemporary mystery fiction’s word of the day. Crime fiction protagonists are no longer overwhelmingly male (let’s give a round of applause to Marcia Muller for this). Whodunit protagonists are no longer isolated loners walking down those mean streets.

Modern sleuths now have families and close circles around them, whether those bonds are with traditional families or chosen ones, such as a “little sister”, an elderly landlord, a niece, or someone else. Indeed, many sleuths have children of their own, which is cool. It’s nice to see art imitate life.

In fact, there are even a number of single parents in the world of crime fiction. Two of the first hardboiled dicks to have offspring were Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder and Michael Z. Lewin’s Samson, although neither of these divorced dads has custody of his children. Les Roberts’s Milan Jacovich mysteries has dad taking the kids on alternate weekends. Then of course, there is the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly: full time cop and full time single dad with teenaged daughter. 
 

Single moms (more specifically: custodial single moms) abound in mystery as in real life. According to Parents without Partners, single mother families numbered 10 million in 2000, 46% of which have more than one child. Mystery readers can check out single moms like Elaine Viets’s Josie Marcus, Marianne MacDonald’s Dido Hoare, Diane Mott Davidson’s Goldie Bear, and Anne Underwood Grant’s protagonist Sydney Teague. What’s interesting to note is that these characters are a mystery shopper, a bookseller, a caterer, and an advertising agency owner respectively.

I’m almost at my point...

What you may have begun to notice is that the male single dads (whether custodial or not) are all officially employed in law enforcement on some level or another. They may not all be cops or licensed PI’s but they make their living from solving crimes. The female single mothers on the other hand, are all amateur sleuths – shopkeepers stumbling over dead bodies, chefs happening upon a cadaver. For too many of the single moms in mystery fiction, crime solving is an accident, a sideline, a by-product of their “real job”. 

So here’s the idea (and YES, I know!)...

If you want to write the character that the genre seems to be missing, then you should write a single mother who earns her living as a cop or an investigator or something along those lines. There’s room for a new series in which a female protagonist is employed in an official crime solving capacity, and not simply an anthropologist or a photographer who tripped on a corpse. She should have at least one kid her who lives with her full time.

Yes, yes, yes. I know about the Joanna Brady series by JA Jance (and, indeed, Joanna Brady is not the ONLY single mom who solves crime for a living, but given the number of titles in the series, she definitely stands out). The widowed Joanna is the Sheriff Cochise County in Arizona. Great series, love the character. But the genre has room for another Joanna, and mystery readers (you already know that more women buy mysteries than men do, right?) would most likely be happy to have one or two female versions of Harry Bosch.

So there you go: Create a supermom-supersleuth who juggles badges and baby bottles, handcuffs and homework, guns and gummi bears, and my guess is that you’d have a winner.

You’re welcome!

You're going to be thanking Jill for more than her clever writing tips. Dead Light District, the second book in the Sasha Jackson series, is available as a FREE Kindle download today and Sunday, the 14th and 15th of July. The Lies Have It, the third book in the series, will be available as a FREE Kindle download on Wednesday and Thursday, Julia 18 and 19. No e-reader? No problem!  Jill has three signed copies of her first mystery, Blood and Groom, to give away! Leave a comment letting us know what you'd like to see in an original sleuth, and you could be one of the lucky winners.


You can learn more about Jill Edmondson and her books at her website. Jill also blogs, and is on Twitter as @JillEdmondson

Thrilling Weather, a guest post by Paul Doiron

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: In the interests of full disclosure, as they say, I gave Paul Doiron's debut mystery, The Poacher's Son, an enthusiastic blurb. That was after it had gotten starred reviews from every major reviewer, but before it had been nominated for the Edgar, the Anthony, the Barry, the Macavity, etc. etc. Further disclosure: Paul and I blog together at Maine Crime Writers, which is a group of...well, the title really says it all, doesn't it? And a bit more disclosure: we've done enough library and bookstore events together to have our own little act going.

Final, fullest disclosure: I love crime fiction set in small towns and deep woods, in places where the weather can kill you if you're not careful - and sometimes even when you are. If you're like me, you're going to love Paul's upcoming thriller chiller.

Sometimes a novel has its beginnings in a question. Bad Little Falls began when I asked myself: What if Jack London had written a mystery novel? I was culling books from my overloaded bookshelves last year when I came across a paperback collection of London's short fiction. I flipped through the yellowed pages until I found "To Build a Fire" — one of my favorite short stories — and I started to read. Within a few paragraphs my fingers began to go numb from the killing coldness of the Yukon setting. By the end of the story, my heart felt as heavy as a block of ice.

"I want to write a book this cold," I thought. I've spent a lot of time outdoors during the winter, and my ears sometimes ache from a bad case of frostbite I suffered as a boy (I bet you didn't know there are long-term side effects from the condition). I've had low-grade hypothermia a few times (another experience I don't recommend) and been caught outside during freezing rain storms. To paraphrase Wallace Stevens, living in Maine has given me a "mind of winter," and I know what it means to "have been cold a long time."

Maine isn't the Yukon, of course, but parts of my state do get pretty damn cold. The lowest temperature ever recorded here was -50 degrees Fahrenheit, not counting the wind chill. "He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow," Jack London says of the luckless chechaquo in his story. 

My novels are about Maine game wardens who spend most of their lives outdoors. Cold weather is a condition of their employment. When a snowmobiler is late returning home after a snowy night on the trails, a warden must go looking for the missing man. When a fisherman falls through the lake ice, Maine Warden Service divers must retrieve the corpse from the murky, viscous depths. And when a murder is committed in the frozen woods, guess who gets to investigate the crime?

In Bad Little Falls the duty falls to my beleaguered young game warden, Mike Bowditch. For his sins in The Poacher's Son and Trespasser, he's been transferred to desolate Washington County, on the Canadian border. It's February, the dead of winter, and Mike is experiencing a coldness that penetrates all the way through his soul. He's living alone in a backwoods trailer, broken up from his longtime girlfriend, far from family and friends. And as Mike observes about his new posting, "when you are reassigned to the easternmost county in the United States—a place known for its epidemic drug abuse, multigenerational unemployment, and long tradition of violent poaching—it's pretty clear your career isn't on the rise."

Things end badly in "To Build a Fire" because the unnamed chechaquo doesn't appreciate the extreme danger of traveling alone through the cruel wilderness. Mike Bowditch's own wilderness has always been internal as much as it is an actual place he is charged with policing. The drug dealers and rogue hunting guides who torment him in Bad Little Falls are dangerous, but the loneliness that drives him to make bad personal decisions is an even greater threat.

 
Settings have always played important parts in my books. In The 
Poacher's Son the setting was the vanishing North Woods in an era of massive clear cutting and real estate development. In Trespasser it was the maze of muddy all-terrain vehicle trails leading from one hopeless crime scene to the next. Here it is the snow-covered heaths of Down East Maine: miserable, desolate places that are the source of the English word "heathen," since they were places of exile for society's outcasts.

Most Americans are used to living at a comfortable remove from the extremes of the natural world. But we are beginning to see the growing shadows of the future in the derechos that tore recently through the Eastern Seaboard. Heat waves are withering our midwestern corn crops and sparking wildfires that burn up our Rocky Mountain cities. Scientists predict that global climate change will usher in an age of newly wild weather, of higher highs but also lower lows. That record low Maine temperature of minus 50 occurred just three years ago. That's probably no coincidence. 

In Bad Little Falls, Mike Bowditch—struggling to solve a puzzling murder before he freezes to death— knows what Jack London's chechaquo doesn't know: that nature is indifferent to the plans and priorities of human beings.

Nature just is. And, ultimately, that's what makes it so terrifying.


If you're interested in being chilled and thrilled, hop onto the back blog and tell us about the most dangerous weather you've ever encountered. Three lucky commentors will receive  a copy of Bad Little Falls!


You can find out more about Paul Doiron and read excerpts from his Mike Bowditch series on his website. In addition to blogging at Maine Crime Writers, he also has his own blog. You can friend him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter as @PaulDoiron