Have You Had Your Colors Done?

RHYS BOWEN: The other day I met my good friend Jacqueline Winspear for coffee. As we approached each other I saw we were wearing almost identical gray and white striped outfits. Jackie smiled and said, "Oh good. You got the memo.'

But isn't that weird? I went home and found that everything I've bought in the past year has been gray or gray and white. Why is that? I've even just bought a new house that is painted gray and white. For house decoration I gather it's the IN color of the moment but I'd been buying gray clothing before I saw it this winter. So why am I so attracted to gray right now? Is it somehow a popular color, an evil strategy of those in power in fashion? Is there a secret power that meets each year to decide what color we will wear? But I haven't seen too much gray in department stores.

I realize that for most of my life I've suddenly fallen in love with a color, bought items, worn them and then moved on to another color. If you look at my closet you will see my royal blue period, my turquoise period, my navy period. You will never see my black or brown ages because I look awful in both those colors. This year I bought one pink jacket. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I did that.

So why did a particular color appeal to me at a particular time? Was it how I was feeling about life? Bright and confident in royal blue? Bright and hopeful in turquoise? More solemn in navy blue?  I suppose it's as simple as I buy a navy and white dress and then I think, "Oh, I need a jacket to go with that." and I buy a navy jacket, and then I think, "Navy pants would be useful," so I buy navy pants. And then I see a navy and white cardigan and so on...
But there must be something about how a particular color makes me feel at a moment in time. Silvery gray looks good with my hair right now.

I'm actually not a huge clothes person. At home you'll find me in sweats or athletic gear, sitting at my computer. I don't change to go out shopping or to the gym. I'm the sort of person who buys a pair of white pants when I see that the old pair is fraying around the hems or won't do up around my waist. I was born sensible. I rarely buy clothes on impulse, (and usually regret it when I do. I'm thinking of you, pink jacket).

However, as a writer who has to appear in public I do need a wardrobe of respectable clothing. And a problem is that I am sent on book tour to the same stores every year. So I have to be careful that I don't wear the same jacket  to the same place. There is nothing more embarrassing than having a fan come up to me saying, "I took this photo of you signing a book for me last year," and I'm wearing the same outfit. Mortification!

So what about you, Reds. (apart from Hank who wears black, black and more black). Do you find you wear a certain color for a while, then move on to another one? Did that color define a particular period in your life?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Rhys, actually, yes, there is a group that meets every year! In Italy, Milan, maybe, and decides what the color of the year will be. That's why, in years past, you've suddenly seen--everything is apple green! Or fuchsia,  I remember (for some reason) that was 2001.  I think it's been ultra-violet,  and this year MIGHT be "living coral." Maybe that was last year.  One  a recent year's was claret. It's called the Pantone color convention, something like that.

One year, long ago, I wanted a hunter green leather couch, and someone who was more au courant told me--oh, no, dear. You want navy blue. That's what the color of the year was. So we THINK we're just gravitating to a color, but in reality, it's all be decided for us.

Remember that wonderful scene in The Devil Wears Prada when they discuss turquoise? That's ALL, essentially, true.

And yup, social media has really created a clothing situation! I'm just hoping nobody really notices.

(And I just bought a pink jacket, Rhys....:-))

RHYS:  But it wasn't Living Coral, Hank. It was dusty, blah pink. I still have no idea why I bought it.

LUCY BURDETTE: Gray looks horrible on me so I'm holding out for the next color! One year I made the trek to an Eileen Fisher outlet with a good friend and found all these beautiful orange tops (one of my GOOD colors!) Now that color can't be found anywhere. Did anyone else have their colors done? They had a special guest at the hair salon many years ago and now I have a little wheel of good colors for my hair, skin, and eyes (though heaven knows the hair color is mutable...) But I always forget to take it shopping...

HALLIE EPHRON: I like gray but it washes me out. Maybe I'll like it better when I've got full-on gray.
TURQUOISE! RED! BLACK!! Strong colors. Pastels: Feh.
I do think it matters where you live. Go to LaGuardia Airport en route to Florida - your black outfit is perfect for NYC but the minute you land in Florida you want to switch to whites and colors. Traveling in the winter gets complicated.

JENN McKINLAY: Jeans. I like jeans everything else is superfluous. Because I live in AZ it's jean shorts and tank tops (all colors) in summer and jeans and sweaters (also all colors) in winter.The only time I can remember gravitating to a certain color was when I turned forty. I went through a pink phase of epic proportions. I think I was having a midlife crisis and thought the pink would cheer me up. No idea if it worked or not but the pink did eventually fade from my wardrobe.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I'm trying to expand the amount of pink in my wardrobe, since, despite having natural silver hair for almost a decade now, it still thrills this former redhead that I finally look good in pink! Actually, letting my hair grow out (and accepting my skin tone had changed with age as well) necessitated a major color switch for me. I used to look great in Autumnal colors - mossy green and browns, camel and cream. Now it looks muddy next to my face and hair - I have to limit it to the lower half only.

One thing I've noticed recently is that my winter wardrobe is 85% red and black. I like it, but I really need to stretch out from there. It's hard because as Rhys says, once you have the pants, you get a sweater to match, and then a shirt that works with both... on the plus side, I'm so grateful when summer arrives. I dress like a toucan in hot weather.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: No gray for me, ugh, although I can see that it would look fabulous on you, Rhys. And I cannot wear mossy, autumnal colors. I had this in mind when first writing about Gemma, because she can wear all colors I can't, and I still get a kick out of "shopping" for her. I did have my colors done years ago, and had a little booklet with the things I supposedly should wear. I was supposedly a "summer" which is a fairly muted palette, but I actually prefer brighter colors. I can wear white, and black, and I LOVE turquoise and hot pink.

Rhys, I totally get what you said about the book tour, and the same is true for conferences. If you buy really smashing clothes for these events, you can only wear them once because they will be in photos. I'm sure Hank has the solution--just wear black. But instead, we could always wear turquoise!

RHYS: I remember now that I did have my colors done, years ago. But as other Reds have pointed out, our skin tone changes as we age. I was a spring then and I think I'm still a light pastel type of person (when I'm not wearing gray).

So is gray the color of the year for anyone else? Did you all get your colors done when it was so popular?

Terry Shames on Minor Character Magic

RHYS BOWEN: It's amazing how attached we get to minor characters in our series, isn't it? I've had characters who were only intended to have a cameo role but would not go away--Sid and Gus in the Molly Murphy books and the Princess ZouZou in the Royal Spyness books who inserted herself into the story in a major way!

well, today on Jungle Reds we are hosting my good friend Terry Shames who has had interesting encounters with her background characters and is going to tell us about them today.

TERRY SHAMES:

Thank you so much to the “Reds” for hosting me on the occasion of the publication of my eighth book in the Samuel Craddock series.

Today I would like to have a conversation about background characters in our books.

I base my mystery plots on real life events or tales that I craft into stories complete with clues and red herrings. But to me what feels like magic is how background characters participate. When I start a new book, I feel like I walk into town and say, “What has everybody been up to?” And they tell me.  This has not always been the case. I’ve had to grow into it.

I like to read series, because I like to watch characters change over time, sometimes in surprising ways. But I had no idea when I started my first Craddock book whether it would become a series.  I barged into the first book without a thought of how an older protagonist would stretch and grow, much less how minor characters would change over time.

The first three books had a natural arc and they were centered around the protagonist, Samuel Craddock. I wanted  Samuel, an ex-chief of police, to become the chief again. In the third book, Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek, when the town went broke, it gave him the opportunity to step into the role of chief. Craddock didn’t need a salary, so when the town couldn’t afford to pay a police chief, it was natural for him to step in.

By the fourth book, when Samuel’s neighbor, Jenny,  became the focus,  I was beginning to see that the stories of supporting characters were important in their own way. I could keep the series fresh by having minor characters’ lives change—the way real people’s lives change. But I couldn’t depend on “magic.” I had to have a sense of direction.

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But what direction? Sometimes, characters seemed to take off on their own. One character had an affair—and his wife did not take it well. Another left town. One got a new hobby. In one case, I took direction from my readers. Fans asked if Samuel, a widower, was ever going to have a relationship with a new woman. So in book three, I introduced a new character, Ellen Forester, who moved to town to start an art gallery and workshop. She became Samuel’s love interest. They didn’t have much in common, and after the next few  books, I began to grow a little weary of her. Meanwhile, Dru Ann Love asked me to do a “Day in the Life” portrait of Ellen, and to my surprise, at the end of the “interview” Ellen revealed that she had a secret. I didn’t know what the secret was, or how it was going to play out, but I knew it would come out at some point. And did it ever!

By book five I felt the series needed a jolt. I was still okay with Ellen and Samuel’s relationship with his friend Jenny had been thoroughly explored, so what next? More tweaking of minor characters .I decided to give  Samuel a new sidekick, Maria Trevino. It turned to be the perfect foil: Samuel’s wisdom and experience played off against Maria’s idealism and fresh perspective.

Several people were interested to know how Samuel “became” the man we know as an older man. The prequel, An Unsettling Crime for Samuel Craddock, was written to explore Samuel’s past—including his relationships with his destructive family and his wife.

My last book, A Reckoning in the Back Country, was a particularly hard book to write because it was about dog fighting. I had to make the back story really enjoyable and compelling to balance the horrendous main story.  I was tired of Ellen and I wanted Samuel to have a frisky new “main squeeze.” Wendy Gleason showed up at a Thanksgiving feast when Ellen was out of town, and they were off. But what to do about Ellen? Aha! I remembered that she had a secret. The way it played out was so perfect, that it seemed as if I must have known long before what was going to happen. That’s magic at work.

In the book that just came out, I wanted to feature long-time character Loretta Singletary, whom  I think of as a Greek chorus. She provides a lot of knowledge about Jarrett Creek’s citizens that Samuel uses in his investigations. I was also interested in doing a story about on-line dating. Again, here’s where magic seemed to be at work. In the end of the previous book, Loretta had showed up at Samuel’s house with a new hairdo and wearing stylish clothing. At the time, I had no idea why she was doing that. So when I started A Risky Undertaking for Loretta Singletary, I realized that the reason she had been gussied up was to find a new beau. On a dating website!

 Mystery plots unfold against a background of “real life” for ongoing characters. The characters grow, and learn, and try new things, sometimes at their peril. If that didn’t happen, the stories themselves would be stale. For me, it seems to have an element of magic to it. Their growth is not something I plan. It’s something I take advantage of.

How do  other series writers come up with movement for their minor characters? Do you meander along letting characters act much the way real life seems to—without particular intent, letting magic happen? Or are you keenly aware of exactly the direction you want your characters to go?

RHYS:  Terry is on her way to Malice today. Do say hi to her! I wish I could join all of you.

Only a Woman--On Dealing with Put-Downs.

RHYS BOWEN: On a plane to Seattle the other day the man in the next seat struck up conversation with me. He said, “Are you going to visit your grandchildren?”

“No,” I replied. “I’m going to be visiting Amazon headquarters.”

He smiled. A patronizing smile. “Oh, you have a son working for Amazon?”

“No,” I replied. “I’m one of their best-selling authors.”

Silence for a moment, then he asked the question we writers get so often.  “Should I have heard of you?”

“Only if you read books,” is now my standard reply.

He was a nice enough man. He was trying to be pleasant, I know. But the assumption that any woman over a certain age is traveling to see her grandchildren really irks me. As does the perception that it had to be a male who allowed me access to Amazon headquarters. Also the perception that any woman has to be attached to a man. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stood in line behind a man in a restaurant or at a car rental counter and been asked, “are you two together?”

Would you ask that question of two men standing one behind the other in line? I don’t think so.

Since the me-too movement I think we all have become aware that women are treated differently. Of course most women have known that for years.  In any job we have to be smarter, quicker and do twice as much work to be accepted. We have become used to put-downs. “You girls”. “The girls in my office”. “Honey, get me a cup of coffee, there’s an angel.” Would any man accept being spoken to that way?

            I read an interesting piece recently in which a boss complained that one of his employees took too long with clients, therefore wasn’t working hard enough or was too slow. Then one day he was handling clients and got a particularly rude one. The client queried everything he suggested, told him he didn’t know what he was talking about and was generally obnoxious. It was only later that this boss realized he was using the joint email account and the client thought he was dealing with someone who signed the message Nicole. This shocked him. So for a week he tried an experiment. He signed all his messages Nicole and his employee Nicole signed all hers Martin. She zipped through her business with no problems. He was queried and confronted at every turn. Are you sure you know what you are talking about? Are you clear with the law on this? These were common comments. One even asked if he was single.

My friend’s daughter is a building site inspector for a bank. Every time she shows up she gets comments like “Ooh look, we got us a princess.”  It is only when she starts talking in their jargon that she is accepted. Actually she flings out hard questions at them, cites building codes and finds things wrong. Then she gets their attention!

I’ve been lucky, I suppose. When I worked at the BBC women were treated as equals. And in my writing life I haven’t had any problems either—except from people outside the profession who think that writing is a little hobby. “Are you still writing those little books?” I was asked once. Or better still. “When are you going to write a real novel?”

Some of these questions come from other women, who are equally good at put-downs. At a college reunion I was asked by someone I hadn’t seen since college, “So, have you ever actually had a proper job?”

I replied “Not since the BBC days. But my improper job has allowed me to put four children through college, to buy two homes and several pieces of rental property and to live rather well.”

Some put-downs are more subtle. On a radio interview I was asked how I would compare myself to a literary novelist. Bloody cheek!  I replied “I want you to picture me walking beside a literary novelist. We are going up the steps together. We are entering a bank. And one of us is smiling.”

Nuff said.

So have you encountered condescension, rudeness, prejudice in your professional life? How do you deal with it?