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Connecting Through the Ether

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VP Chandler

By V.P. Chandler

Have you ever researched something—like a purse, a computer, or even a car—only to suddenly notice it everywhere, even though you hadn’t before? Inspiration for stories works the same way.

One of the most common questions authors hear is: “Where do you get your ideas?” The answer: pretty much everywhere—news articles, books, movies, history, snippets of conversation, personal experiences… inspiration can spark from the smallest detail.

I’m currently writing a historical novella, and inspiration is coming from all directions. I feel like a goalie in a soccer match—I’m fully immersed.

Story Settings and Characters

My protagonist is a young woman named Martha. She’s married to Tom, who has moved her far from home—and life isn’t unfolding as she expected. (Isn’t that always the case? But is it simply the way things are, or is something nefarious at work?) They’re building a cabin in the East Texas woods around 1830. I imagined they’d arrived at the tail end of the Old 300, grabbing land wherever they could. (Although the story could take place anywhere from 1820 to 1880, west of Virginia in pine country, I discovered that pines aren’t as widespread as I once thought—which is why research matters.)

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/old-three-hundred

As I write, Martha is revealing herself to me—like she exists on another plane and there’s a conduit between us through something I call “the ether,” a metaphysical space. (Is that a real thing? I don’t know—dammit, Jim, I’m a writer, not a metaphysicist!) Her voice is growing stronger. Her past and current life are becoming clearer. When she speaks, it feels like she’s speaking directly at me. I think most writers go through this—and when it happens, it’s exhilarating. To me, it means the character will have depth and feel real.

And, as in the past, there have been “signs” that I’m on the right track with characters and story. Sometimes these signs are even eerie. In the first chapter, when it was new and amorphous, I was writing a dream sequence to explain her inner thoughts, worries, and where she’s from. I imagined she came from a large family, and she had had a brown and white dog named “Peaches”.

A few days later I was on Facebook and came across this picture. It caught my attention because a cabin is a major feature of the story, and I took a screenshot for inspiration to look at details. Later I read the description. Look at what I circled. That’s right! I wasn’t too surprised by the date. But the dog in the picture was name “Peaches”! And it looks brown and white to me. It gave me inspiration that I’m on the right track with the story and characters.

(Picture from https://www.facebook.com/TracesofTexas. They post historical and modern pics taken in Texas.)

Another time, while writing my (currently unpublished) novel Gilt Ridden, I created a character in West Texas, educated and obsessed with gold, known locally as “The Professor,” living in a dugout. Years later, I came across a local-history book about Stonewall County describing a man known as “The Professor” who lived in a dugout and searched for gold. I hadn’t known he existed—but the parallels were uncanny. At first, I worried that people would think that I borrowed someone’s real story. But then it comforted me. I took it as a sign that I had created a realistic character from imaginary circumstances.

So when you’re writing—or working on any project—block out the world and tune in to the voice or idea coming from the ether. Who knows what will be revealed?

Bonus Content

I’ve been obsessed with one song lately. It’s been playing in my head nonstop for a week. I didn’t know much about it until I watched the YouTube video. The character is pregnant and contemplating life choices, just like Martha! Now it’s really stuck in my head. Hope you enjoy it:

Sara Bareilles – “She Used to Be Mine” (from Waitress)

READING WHILE TRAVELING

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by Helen Currie Foster

Just before a trip I get anxious: is there enough stored in my Kindle to keep me happy? You constant readers know that feeling. Did you upload enough for the waiting room at the airport? For the plane? For a sleepless first night, jet-lagging? Enough to keep you happy even if weak (or no) wi-fi at the (tent, cabin, hotel, boat, campsite, rental) precludes another download? Yes, there’ll be news–but I am escaping!

We’re on a family trip to France, with children and grandchildren. I loaded up the Kindle diligently beforehand. Of course there are way too many wonderful things to do besides read…

Still, my heart sang when we entered the rental in the French mountains and spied—A BOOKCASE!

Moreover, the shelves held mysteries! Ian McEwan, Patricia Cornwell, Elizabeth George, Janet Evanovich, V.I. Warshawski, Alexander McCall Smith…

Also serious nonfiction and titles from Kazuo Ishiguro, Dostoevsky, Graham Greene, Julian Barnes and more. Then I spotted Kinky Friedman’s Frequent Flyer and thought—eclectic tastes! Perhaps some were left behind by guests. Still, the shelves made me want to meet the owners. The welcoming bookshelves and, to boot, a choice of comfortable corners where a tired tourist can flop, prop up the well-used feet, and read…what more can one ask?

(Sidebar—when you see a Talking Head on your screen, with a bookshelf behind—do you wonder if the books really belong to the Head? Or are they just a prop intended to impress? Maybe we’ll see some interviewer pose a question: “How did you like Crimes Against Humanity?” Blank stare.)

I know I’ve mentioned her in a prior blog, but have you discovered Dorothy Dunnett yet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Dunnett

If you’re familiar with Dunnett’s stunning two historical fiction series, The Lymond Chronicles and The House of Niccolo, you already know she delivered powerful (and powerfully surprising) plots, magnetic characters, and vivid reconstructions of the 15th and 16th centuries. Using (for all that detail) an omniscient narrator.

But in her spare time she also wrote the Dolly mystery series, involving an astoundingly talented portrait painter named Johnson Johnson (yes, two), who happens to turn up in scenic locations in his yacht, the Dolly, on secret missions for the British ministry of defense. I’ve reread three of those on this trip—one set in Ibiza, one in Morocco, one in Canada. Unlike the Niccolo or Lymond historical series, Dunnett’s heroines in these first-person mysteries are in their late teens or twenties and trying to make their way in the world (as an au pair, a cook, an executive assistant, etc.). Naturally they find themselves in dangerous situations while trying to identify a murderer, and Dunnett gives each her own first-person voice—each interestingly different.

Clearly Dunnett didn’t merely set foot in these locales: she absorbed them. The action’s fast-moving, but she paints a landscape with details that place you right in the square where the villains are about to—well, here’s an example from Moroccan Traffic, in the Atlas Mountains, where Wendy, a young executive assistant, watches as Johnson and the engaging inventor Mo pursue two ruthless adversaries up perilous cliffs:

…where they had set their faces to climb was the flank of the mountain; the boulder slope rising to cliffs and ridges and rock bands interlaid with tongues of snow, and scree-fields, and stony pockets of pasture. And further up, behind escarpment and terrace, the burning forepeaks of the range.

         I had seen it all from the road. Somewhere there, already entrenched, already waiting, were Gerry and Sullivan, ex-SAS marksmen.

You can also tell that Dunnett (as well as her character Johnson) was a painter:

All around us the hills, limp as blankets, glowed in soft reds, their milky hollows the colour of amethyst. The snow on Sirwa was tinged golden pink, and cast china blue shadows which were technically impermanent. A man walked by the road, a black goat like a scarf around his neck.

         And from Roman Nights – the young heroine, an astronomer, battles spy dealings in Italy including the Aragonese Castle on Ischia in the Bay of Naples:

         On a plateau the cathedral reared its three roofless sides like a kind of dismembered Versailles, white and flaking; the walls furnished with crumbling cherubs and statues, with rococo arches and pillars and architraves.

Dunnett gives her astronomer heroine plenty of tongue-in chic wit:

Johnson and Lenny sailed out of Amalfi, in a pure, warm air blowing about eight on the bloody Beaufort scale, and the rain lashing down. After becoming exceedingly well acquainted with the water filling the Gulf of Salerno, we fled into a fishing harbour called San Marco and spent the night offshore in a cat’s cradle of other boats’ cables.

Thank you, Dorothy Dunnett, for stupendous scholarship and for witty mysteries in places so believably described. What a gift to the traveler! Sorry, gotta go—I’m deep into Tropical Issue, set in Madeira, where I’ve never been—but it sure looks great in this prose…

What gifts they are to humans—to write, to read!

Award-winning writer Helen Currie Foster lives and writes in the iconic Texas hill country, supervised by three inquisitive and persistent burros. After practicing law for more than thirty years, she found the Alice MacDonald Greer Mysteries had suddenly appeared in her life. Book 10 in the series, Ghost Justice, is expected to debut in August 2025. Helen is continually fascinated by human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps invading our parties. Follow her on Facebook and Amazon, and in Austin at BookPeople.

https://www.facebook.com/helencurriefoster

https://www.amazon.com/Books-Helen-Currie-Foster/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AHelen%2BCurrie%2BFoster

Walking the Dark Side of Summer: A Personal Look at For Every Evil Under the Sun

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VP Chandler


By V.P. Chandler

When I first sat down to write the stories that would eventually become part of For Every Evil Under the Sun, I didn’t know exactly where they would lead me—I only knew I wanted to stretch my writing skills, try new things, and be a part of a hot, cool collaboration. (Yes, I like puns.)

Now, I’m proud to announce that this collection is out in the world, published by the brand-new Fredonia Ink Publishing. I’m honored to be sharing the pages with two powerhouse writers, Alexandra Burt and Laura Oles—both of whom are not only incredibly talented but also deeply committed to telling stories that explore the dark, complex corners of the human experience.

This collection is a bit of a literary experiment. We each approached the idea of “evil” through our own unique lens—psychological thriller, family drama, crime, horror, western—and let the stories guide us. What came out of it is a collection that isn’t just eclectic, it’s electric. It shines! (Yes, another pun.)

As for me, I leaned into the grit—into crime, revenge, justice. I wanted my stories to carry that weight—to explore the consequences of violence and vengeance. And also add a little bit of fun to the mix. And the stories by Alexandra Burt and Laura Oles are equally as dark and entertaining.

And hey, if you’re in Austin this summer, I’d love to invite you to join us for a special event at Vintage Bookstore and Wine Bar (1101 E. 11th St.) on July 18 at 7pm. Alexandra, Laura, and I will be discussing short story craft, the experiences of women writing crime fiction, and what went into shaping this haunting little book. It’ll be an evening of books, wine, and maybe a few goosebumps.

So if you’re in the mood for stories that simmer under the heat of summer and explore just how far people will go—to protect, to avenge, to survive—then For Every Evil Under the Sun might just be what you’re looking for.

Hope to see you in July.

—VP Chandler
vpchandler.com


🗓️ Event Info: July 18, 7pm @ Vintage Bookstore and Wine Bar, Austin, TX
🔗 Learn more, here is the Amazon listing. Ebook now available and paperback will be soon on Amazon and bookstores everywhere: https://tinyurl.com/2tph4xcz

The Enduring Value of Third Spaces

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By Laura Oles

Why do so many of us choose to work or study at our favorite coffee shop? Even if we have a fully equipped office, we pack up our laptop and relocate, settling in with likeminded people doing the same thing.

If this sounds like you, you’ve adopted a favorite “third space.”

Urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third space” in his book, “The Great Good Place,” (originally published in 1989 and revised in 2023).  Popular third spaces include coffee shops, pubs, diners, libraries, parks and gyms. The third space, Dr. Oldenburg stated, were ones that allowed people to leave private and professional concerns behind to connect with others in conversation. Third spaces “host the regular, voluntary, informal and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.”  

There’s some science that indicates it’s not simply the lure of a fantastic latte. A 2012 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research indicated that lower levels of ambient noise can spur creative idea generation. In a later 2019 study, researchers pointed to “stochastic resonance,” a measure of a particular background noise level that benefits our senses and can help in those moments where we are temporarily distracted or in a contemplative state. 

In short, the “coffee shop effect” has been cited in several studies. This, coupled with being surrounded by others seeking a similar environment, can further motivate us into action.  The idea of parallel work—working alongside others but not directly with them—can help us in our solitary efforts. All while feeling less alone.

Still, not all coffee shops will become beloved third spaces. A place where you will regularly spend both money and time is chosen. It is special. It draws you in and invites you to linger for a bit, often in the company of friends or colleagues.

The third space has evolved from being a place where people gather to connect with community, to one that incorporates these components and adds a welcoming setting for students and WFH employees and solopreneurs. As someone who raised three kids while working from home, I sometimes struggled to tune out tasks and chores. So, I sought my own third space and found it at Mochas & Javas. In addition to business articles and columns, I wrote much of my debut novel at the Wonder World location.  

My “MJ office” in 2016

Mochas & Javas continues to be part of my regular routine—sometimes to chat with friends and other times to stare down a deadline—and I was curious to learn more about not only this beloved local institution but the guiding principles behind the business.

Mochas and Javas was founded in 2003 by four family members—Kevin Carswell, his brother Kirby Carswell and their wives, Michelle and Kelly Carswell. The idea originated when Kevin and Michelle began brainstorming about a local venue where San Marcos residents could gather to enjoy quality food and beverages as well as “legendary customer service.” Like many fantastic ideas penned on the back of a napkin or a business card, Michelle sketched the now well-known logo on a napkin and named the business Mochas & Javas (Community Impact, 2019). Over the last twenty years, Mochas & Javas has thoughtfully expanded into five locations.

I asked Kevin if he would share his insight about Mochas & Javas as a trusted third space in the San Marcos community and his philosophy regarding building this popular Hill Country destination. He was kind enough to share his thoughts with me in the following interview:

LO: “Getting together for coffee” is a common refrain we share with friends and colleagues.  What encouraged you to take the first steps to create Mochas & Javas as a gathering space for the San Marcos community?

KC: When we began the discussion about opening our own business we discussed several types of business. But coffee made the most sense at the time, because it was in the food and beverage industry, which is my background and in 2002, the coffee industry was rapidly expanding. I had heard the term “third” space before, but not sure that I fully grasped the concept until we opened, expanded and then had time to grow MJ’s (I’ll abbreviate the full name) over several years and then see how many of our guests became daily/weekly regulars or made MJ’s their third space. Coffee does bring people together, I’ve seen many relationships built from the connection our guests made with one another while at MJ’s, it’s a great thing to see. And for myself I’ve made many friends over the years through MJ’s, lifelong friends. It’s a good feeling. 

LO: Do you find that each location has its own personality/vibe or is the community based on proximity? Or a combination?

KC:  One of the areas that I enjoy about MJ’s is that they all have their own “vibe” or connection to the community or the surrounding area that they are located. Such as WW, many locals with a mix of students and visitors. Whereas LBJ is a more concentrated number of students and professors with a nice mix of visitors, usually families coming for informal or formal visit to TX State University. Our Frisco store is very similar to our WW store, as where it’s mostly locals and business professionals with a mix of students. 

LO:  Why do you think local writers, artists, students and businesspeople are drawn to Mochas & Javas as a third space? 

KC:  Over the years many writers have used the WW store as their office. Paul Pullin for example is in his third book and has become a good friend over the years, he’s been a regular for 22 years. We’ve chosen not to place TVs at any of our stores. I believe they are a distraction, and most people today already have plenty of screen time. If our guests were staring at a screen, they may never meet someone new. We need more face-to-face conversations and MJs provide this. 

LO:  How has Mochas & Javas expanded and evolved since you opened the first location over twenty years ago? 

KC:  MJs opened the LBJ and WW stores the same year, 2003, about 6 months apart. We have always had plans to expand, sometimes slower than we first thought, but moving a bit slower is not a bad thing. Keeping our debt in check and growth at a steady pace. Five stores in 22 years is no record, but we have five stable stores with a strong following from our loyal guests. We are planning to continue with our expansion but will plan accordingly based off good solid numbers which allow us to grow without taking on more than we can manage. 

LO:  Mochas & Javas has strong ties to the Hill Country community, and I wonder if this stems from your philosophy of “always giving back.” Can you expand on this?

KC:  I grew up in San Marcos, our family moved from the Houston area in 1967/68 to San Marcos. So, I’ve seen the city change over the past 57 years. Giving back not only to the San Marcos community but all the communities that we serve great coffee to. Giving back is an important part of owning and operating our business in the communities we serve, and we are grateful that we have the success to do this. We’ve made many small donations and added some larger ones over the years. They are all worthwhile. It’s a great way to say thank you to our community and guests for the many years of support.

The best part of working at MJs, from my standpoint, is our guests and staff. The interaction with both groups of people is the most enjoyable part of our business. I never get tired of working at the register or being a barista. It’s a lot of fun. 

Learn more about Mochas & Javas here:  https://www.mochasandjavas.com

Laura Oles is the award-winning author of the Jamie Rush mystery series. Her debut mystery, Daughters of Bad Men, was an Agatha nominee, a Claymore Award finalist, and a Writers’ League of Texas Award finalist. Depths of Deceit, her second novel, was named Best Mystery by Indies Today. Her novella, Last Call, won the Silver Falchion award. Her work has appeared in crime fiction anthologies, consumer magazines and business publications. She lives in the Texas Hill Country with her family. (https://lauraoles.com) 

Just Look Around!

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by HELEN CURRIE FOSTER

Not enough rain fell this year to allow the brilliant cerulean fields of Hill Country bluebonnets we usually expect, but the hardy lupines are busy making seedpods. “Maybe next year,” they say. Now instead we have the bright yellow coreopsis lanceolata, nodding their heads with any breeze,

the wine-cups with their indescribable color—a member of the mallow family, not quite fuchsia, not maroon, just—heart-stopping,

the milkweed flower globes beloved of monarch butter-flies, and others. Heaven includes a few prairie celestials, magically opening in early in the afternoon, then vanishing by dusk.

Also, “Sweet Mademoiselle,” planted a couple of years ago, and who has never bloomed, produced her first rose!

Meanwhile, the ever-interloping cactus hope to assuage my fury at them (remember those secretly spreading roots and the huge basal “plates” that help the Cactus Conspiracy spread?) by popping open their yellow flowers. I am not fooled. I’ll continue to battle them with shovel and hoe. And a picker-upper.

Now for some Hill Country facts.

BIG CATS?  Just in case you thought the animal that appears in my mystery Ghost Cat was, perhaps, unrealistic? Over-the-top? Mere fantasy? Couldn’t have played a part at beginning and end? Not so! https://www.statesman.com/story/news/state/2025/04/21/mountain-lion-san-marcos-trail-texas-sightings/83194256007/

See? Perfectly possible. It’s still wild out here in the Hill Country, even as suburbs press upon us. At dusk I often find myself glancing at the edge of the drop-off behind the house, wondering if I’ll see a pair of ears. You can say mountain lion, puma, cougar…they’re secretive, strong, and active in the spring.

But the big cat I once saw on Bell Springs Road west of here was likely a large bobcat. I was alone, driving home from the post office. Up ahead a golden vision, spotted, walked slowly to the edge of the asphalt. I stopped. The cat stood, gazed at me, and after a breathless (for me) interval, gracefully turned and vanished through a fence into thick cedar. A magical moment. Every time I drive that road, I hold my breath, longing for one more sighting of something looking like this:

https://images.app.goo.gl/K9VMv8bW92CpoSacA

ANCIENT BONES? I wrote about old bones in my Ghost Bones (2024)—and now have learned that our Hays County police deal with ancient bones more often than you’d think. One resident recently called to report she’d found a skull in her firepit. The skull, with its lower jaw present, was obviously fairly old, but in an unexplained death Hays County is not permitted to send a body to the Travis County Medical Examiner without including the name of the person whose skull it is. (Hays County doesn’t have its own medical examiner.) So this skull traveled instead to Texas State anthropologists who reported, after testing, that the skull apparently belonged to a long, long-ago teenager who’d gone through hard times, as was evident from the “enamel lines” (a bit like tree rings) in the teeth.

But how it wound up in that firepit? So far as I know, that’s still a mystery. We forget—until reminded by a skull in a firepit—how long humans have roamed these hills, drawn by hunger and thirst to spring water and the hunt for food.

We also forget the age and history of this landscape. Some trees have sheltered native Americans, deer, and buffalo. The Columbus Live Oak near the Colorado River in Columbus is estimated to be over 500 years old. Others may be as old as 1,000 years.

https://tfsweb.tamu.edu/websites/FamousTreesOfTexas/TreeLayout.aspx?pageid=26882; https://goodcalculators.com/tree-age-calculator/

I revere the live oak in our front yard as if it were a beloved ancient relative and a symbol of stability and the power of trees. If anything were to happen to it—woe! I tried to estimate its age—using the calculator instruction to measure girth in inches at 4.5 feet, divide by pi, then multiply by a “growth factor” of 4, which gave me 127 years old. Perhaps this tree was a sapling in 1900, before either World War, before the Viet Nam war, before our current fraught politics. On a nearby hill there’s an ancient patch of even bigger live oaks. Perhaps those particular oaks depend on the odd little ribbon of wet white clay that lies about five feet underground and has been there—who knows how long. But the feeling of walking in beneath these old live oaks can confer a sense of being in the protection of one’s elders.

So, welcome to the Hill Country in spring—southeasterly winds from the Gulf, blowing the flowers back and forth; reasonably moderate temperatures; fields and trees as green as green, as far as you can see. At the bird feeder, more color! Purple house finch, yellow-throated vireo, lesser goldfinch with brilliant gold breasts, vermilion cardinals, black-crested titmouse, white-winged dove—and the shy and tiny, but utterly gorgeous, painted bunting. (Reportedly it loves millet.) They provide not just color but music, from the titmouse, the tiny but high-volume Carolina wren, plaintive doves, whistling cardinals, and, at night, chuck-will’s-widow.

Not for long, of course. In winter ice can wreak havoc on trees and people. Summer sun? Scorching. Autumn? Nothing like the colors of New England, but hey—the sumac turns red. So welcome, Spring, with your bluebonnets and live oaks, with bird music and color, and with your reminder of the power and beauty of nature!

***

Progress report: madly working on Book 10 of the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series, set in the Hill Country. Have ordered “Forest Bathing” by Dr. Qing Li. Would enjoy hearing what you all are reading too, and any reports of “forest bathing”!

 

Helen Currie Foster lives and writes the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series north of Dripping Springs, Texas, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She remains deeply curious about our human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party.

Follow Helen at http://www.helencurriefoster.com.

Words, words, words . . .

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By Dixie Evatt

Words, words, words . . .
~ Shakespeare

Before we had powerful computers in our pockets or on our laps, we had reference books. . . shelves and shelves of them.

One of my favorite possessions is a vintage Webster’s dictionary, published 1956 – when I was 10 years old. All 11-plus pounds of the five-inch-thick book teeter on a top shelf in my office. I can no longer safely lift it and the pages are laid out in three columns of typeface so tiny that my aging eyes strain to make out the words.

My book is a holdover from the days when library dictionaries were housed and opened on a specialized wooden lectern. I wonder, do libraries still have these throwbacks to that bygone day or have the enormous books all made their way to the shredder?

I never look at mine that I’m not reminded of the 1950s movie, Born Yesterday, starring Judy Holliday. She won an Oscar for her portrayal of the brassy girlfriend of an uncouth tycoon. Her character tries to overcome her limited education and rudimentary vocabulary by reading, among other texts, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. In one of the more humorous scenes, she struggles to make meaning of the archaic text and is advised to simply check the dictionary if she encounters any words she doesn’t understand. The increasingly frustrated Holliday would no more than read a sentence before she is up again, consulting a dictionary. Word by word. Trip by trip. Written today, the scene would surely lose its charm since she would likely be reading Tocqueville on a Kindle where all you must do is press and hold a finger on a word for the meaning to flash before you.

Like Holliday with a Kindle, writers don’t have the need for shelves full of reference books since language prompts are everywhere from the demons in autocorrect to the drop-down menus in word processing programs that produce synonyms.

The 19th Century French author Jules Renard is credited with saying, “What a vast amount of paper would be saved if there were a law forcing writers to use only the right word.

Yet, finding the right word isn’t always so easy even with all our modern assets. Luckily there are still some reference sources to help. Here are a few:

Evan Esar’s “20,000 Quips & Quotes: A Treasury of Witty Remarks, Comic Proverbs, Wisecracks and Epigrams.” If she’d thumbed through this one, Holliday would have learned that Tocqueville said, “The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.”

“The Allyn & Bacon Handbook” by Leonard J. Rosen and Laurence Behrens. You must love any book that is willing to devote 22 pages to the uses and misuses of the comma alone.

Theodore M. Bernstein’s “Dos, Don’ts & Maybes of English Usage.” For instance, he explains why Mark Antony didn’t say “Friends, Romans, countrymen, loan me your ears.”

“Describer’s Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations,” by David Grambs and Ellen S. Levine. It indexes illustrative passages of more than 600 authors from travel writer Paul Theroux to contemporary British novelist Zadie Smith.

Eli Burnstein’s “Dictionary of Fine Distinction Book,” offering a humorous look at often misused words and phrases. For instance, couch vs. sofa.

Valerie Howard’s “1,000 Helpful Adjectives for Fiction Writers,” promises to spice up characteristics, qualities or attributes of a noun when a writer is having trouble capturing just the right word.”

Bill Bryson’s “Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer’s Guide to Getting it Right” sets out to decipher the idiosyncrasies of the English language. Things such as 126 meanings of “set” when used as a verb and another 58 when used as a noun.

Brian Shawver’s “The Language of Fiction: A Writer’s Stylebook.” Need to be reminded when to use a comma or semicolon? Shawver’s there to help.

Kathy Steinemann’s “The Writer’s Lexicon: Descriptions, Overused Words, and Taboos.” Among other things, she offers writers cures for overused modifiers (I’m talking about you “very”).

John B. Bremner’s “The Columbia Dictionary for Writers: Words on Words.” Here you can learn the history of H. L. Mencken’s inspiration for coining the term “ecdysiast” to replace “striptease.”

Christine Lindberg’s “The Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus.” Writing about bread? How about a baker’s dozen choices: dal, pita, rye, naan, tortilla, focaccia, ciabatta, challah, corn, sourdough, pumpernickel, baguette, etc.

“Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law” has been found on the desk of every journalist for decades since it dictates uniform rules for grammar, punctuation, style for capitalization and numbers, preferred spelling, abbreviations, acronyms, and such.

“Words, words, words,” is the sarcastic response Hamlet gave when Polonius asked him what he was reading. Fortunately, authors still have no shortage of excellent reference books to help them find the right ones.

***

A former political reporter in Austin, Dixie also taught writing at Syracuse University. When she teamed up with Sue Cleveland to write fiction, they sold a screenplay to a Hollywood producer. Although the movie was never made, the seed money financed ThirtyNineStars, their publishing company. Through it they published two award-winning thrillers (Shrouded and Digging up the Dead) under the pen name, Meredith Lee. Dixie’s first solo mystery was Bloodlines & Fencelines, set in a tiny Texas town near Austin. Kirkus reviews described the book as, “A twisty whodunit that’s crafted with care and saturated with down-home Southern charm.” She is working on second mystery in the series.  www.dlsevatt.com

***

Image of dictionary by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

Publicity photo of William Holden and Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday via Wikipedia

Image of tablet  by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Equinox!

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by Helen Currie Foster

An excess of animal spirits”–springtime! Really? Molly Ivins was right as usual when she wrote, “Texas–land of wretched excess!” We’ve had ridiculous lows, unseen for decades. Early daffodils and hyacinths came, shivered, and shriveled in the unholy cold winds roaring across the plains. But we’ve also had the earliest 90 degrees in decades! Wretched excess indeed!

Just two days until the vernal equinox on March 19, and spring. What makes us wander outside, searching for the first bluebonnet, the first violet? What makes us huddle outside the garden store, searching through the little plants shivering in the breeze, fingering seed packets, carrying home small pots of basil and blue salvia even though the weather’s far too untrustworthy for planting? What is this proto-agricultural spirit that makes us lug home the potting soil, hoe the garden bed? More sunlight? Cabin fever? Some early human gene? We, the Animal Kingdom, working with the Plant Kingdom?

I’m rereading Barry Cunliffe’s Europe Between the Oceans: 9000 BC-AD 1000, a book I value not just for the stunning photographs of prehistoric sites and art, but for describing a history of human inventiveness. Cunliffe, Oxford Professor Emeritus of Archeology since 2007 (many books), says “massive transformation” occurred in Europe between 1300-800 BC. Population growth required developing more crops than wheat and barley, including lentils, peas and—“the celtic bean (Vicia faba).”

Immediately I ordered a giant pack of fava bean seeds.

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Then I read the label: they’re mostly a winter crop–but this year I’m desperate. With last year’s blistering hot drought, I wound up with only one pot of cherry tomatoes on the porch and a dozen wilting jalapeno plants in the garden. Cunliffe’s reference to Vicia faba fired my imagination—envisioning myself harvesting large fuzzy green pods, containing delectable beans, and adding a little vinaigrette…olive oil (since 4000 BC) and vinegar (3000 BC). Using an ancient bean and ancient vinaigrette recipe! Possibly those beans were harvested, and the vinaigrette shaken, by some long-ago ancestor 3000 years ago, making me wonder if we have genetic preferences, genetic recipe roots? After all, we of the Animal Kingdom depend on the Plant Kingdom (oxygen, vinaigrette, and wine!).

Mysteries offer escape—a protagonist we like, an intriguing plot, a vivid setting. Like plants, favorite old mysteries offer much when we revisit. Mystery writers? They’re good to “talk to.” This morning I discovered on the shelf my dad’s 1934 Modern Library edition of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, with a brief bio and the “new introduction” by Hammett.

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I didn’t know Hammett had worked as an operative for Pinkerton’s Detective Agency before he started writing! “Drifting through a miscellany of ill-paid jobs, he found a temporary solution to his economic problem by shadowing real malefactors with what might be called conspicuous success.” Then came the World War: “He won a sergeantcy and lost his health.”

Hammett can remember where he got his characters. Here’s a snippet of what he says about The Maltese Falcon:

“Dundy’s prototype I worked with in a North Carolina railroad yard; Cairo’s I picked up on a forgery charge in Pasco, Washington, in 1920; Polhous’s was a former captain of detectives…Effie’s once asked me to go into the narcotic smuggling business with her in San Diego…”

Hammett then muses about his own protagonist. “Spade had no original. He is a dream man in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been and what quite a few of them in their cockier moments thought they approached. For your private detective does not—or did not ten years ago when he was my colleague—want to be an erudite solver of riddles in the Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a hard and shifty fellow, able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with, whether criminal, innocent by-stander or client.”

What a great description, and didn’t Humphrey Bogart nail it?

It strikes me that this new character of his upended the vision of the members of the London 1930 Detectives Club—Hammett gave the wide-eyed mystery audience a protagonist who is not a secret member of the aristocracy (Albert Campion) or a perfect gentleman (Roderick Alleyn) or a hyper-particular French veteran drinking tea and waxing his moustache (Hercule Poirot)…but a “hard and shifty fellow…able to get the best of anybody.” Welcome to the New World’s new-style mystery protagonists, the children of Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Sara Paretzky and others…including that hybrid protagonist, Mary Russell, in Laurie King’s Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series.

For Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, the scent of honey is a repeat theme (her Holmes is a beekeeper). I like her Holmes, I like her Russell, and just finished her Garment of Shadows (2012). King has chosen a fascinating and ambitious setting: the 1920’s, with Spain and France fighting for control of Morocco, each coveting its crucial strategic location at Gibraltar, while various Moroccan groups—Berber and otherwise—fight for independence. King uses first person point of view for Mary Russell, who’s suffering from acute amnesia—forgetting her childhood and even her marriage––but uses third person POV for Holmes’s chapters. Those shifts sometimes confused me. But her depth of history and geography, and her vivid descriptions of the magical city of Fez with its souk, bring the setting alive. Mary Russell herself has become quite a protagonist, with linguistic skills—including Arabic––and the imagination and drive to devise a daring escape from a horrible prison. I’d like to learn knife-throwing like Mary Russell (she keeps one in her boot) but the likelihood seems dim.

Writer/theologian Bruce Reyes-Chow mentioned how, when stuck, he’d “talk through ideas with myself, my plants…” I intend to follow his lead. On our deck sit five jasmine plants we’ve toted around since the seventies. I think they sometimes do communicate with me—“I’m dry-y-y-y!” But from now on, when I’m stuck on a plot, I’ll go consult them. Every spring, those jasmine produce tiny white flowers with an unmatchable scent. In search of even more scent, this year I’ve planted another mix of old and new. Rose de Recht is a fragrant pink heirloom damask, Fragrant Blush promises pink perfume, and Star of the Republic is tough, like her name, but delicate pink with exquisite fragrance.

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And now suddenly the redbuds, with their irresistible yet evanescent fuchsia buds, are blooming. I’ve seen our first bluebonnet,

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and the first purple prairie verbena. The live oaks know it’s almost the equinox—they’ve flung down their old leaves (aided by the fierce winds) and are preparing their catkins and baby leaves. The cedar elms have put out tiny chartreuse leaves just in the last two days.

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So it’s spring! Grab that trowel! And after all your work, you deserve to loll on the couch at night with a good mystery. I’m halfway through the tenth book in my Hill Country murder mystery series. This one raises a question I find intriguing and difficult. Can justice be served when, unauthorized to pronounce justice, we take justice into our own hands? Is that still justice? I’m discussing it with the plants. More to come….

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Here are Helen, Noreen Cedeno, and Juanita Houston at the Texas Book Festival!–Heart of Texas Sisters in Crime

***

Award-winning Helen Currie Foster lives and writes the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series (9 volumes so far) north of Dripping Springs, Texas, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s working on Book 10. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She’s also deeply curious about our human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party.

Follow her at Helen Currie Foster and at her author page on Amazon.

Merging Family History With Fiction

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VP Chandler

by V.P. Chandler

Previously posted on vpchandler.com

My most recent blog post announced the publication of my short story, “Under The Blackjack Tree” in Killer Nashville magazine and now I’m now doubly thrilled to announce that the short story was also chosen by Otto Penzler and John Grisham to appear in the 2025 edition of Best Mystery Stories of the Year! (Mysterious Press)This is a huge honor. Honestly, at first I didn’t think it was true. I read the email about three times and did some online research before I believed it!

Picture of the jail that I took several years ago.

But another reason why this is so special to me is because my story is steeped with bits of my family’s history.

It began when my mother told me several years ago that one of her most cherished memories was when she got to help her grandfather feed the inmates at the Huntsville jail when she was about four. (Wait, what?) That’s when I learned that my great grandfather had been sheriff of Walker County. I later learned that it was common practice for the sheriff and his family to live on the first floor of the jailhouse while the inmates would be on the second floor.

The image of an innocent girl closely interacting with a potentially dangerous person was so intriguing to me, I was compelled to put it in a story. (I played with the timeline and instead of my mother being the little girl, I made it my grandmother. It simplified the story.) I had no idea where the story was going to go, but I knew that I needed that opening scene. It took me places that I didn’t expect!

Some of the things that were true are-

  • My great grandfather was sheriff at the time of Bonnie and Clyde. I thought that would make an interesting backdrop. A lot of tension in Texas at that time.
  • My grandmother’s first mother did die in childbirth and her loving stepmother was called “Cullie”.
  • There really was a bank robbery in Conroe at that time. (I don’t think it was ever solved.)
  • Trusted inmates often cooked the meals for the other inmates and sometimes for the family.
  • It was my mother that fell into the yard with the hunting dogs and was almost mauled.
  • My grandmother was shot in the face with a shotgun, by accident. It was a miracle that her eyes were spared, and she had not one single scar. That is such an amazing part of our family history that I had to include it.

And two things that I didn’t know until after I wrote the story.

  • My grandmother was sometimes called “Mary V” at school because there was another Mary in her class.
  • When she attended Sam Houston to get her teaching certificate, she would often cut across the cemetery when her classmates wouldn’t. She was never a squeamish person.
My grandmother, the flapper!

Although the Mary V in the story is pure fiction, I hope that my grandmother would be proud the story and that some of our family history is saved and shared with others.

In the Window or On the Table? What I Learned from Amor and Anton

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By: Dixie Evatt

Ever since I read A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) I’ve considered Amor Towles’ writing style to be nearly perfect. So when my niece told me Towles was making an appearance at the Empire Theatre in San Antonio, I booked it. He was there to support the San Antonio Book Festival and to talk about his latest book, Table for Two. It’s a collection of six short stories plus a novella. Unlike some of his other stories, these all take place in the current Millennium.

Over the evening I learned a interesting things about Towles.

I learned that he is what we used to label in the news business, an “easy interview.” Austin’s own Stephen Harrigan (Big Wonderful Thing, 2019) was on the stage with Towles as moderator but he didn’t get to ask many of the questions on his notepad. Towles was in a talkative mood so needed little prompting.

I learned that Towles took up writing full time only after success in his first career at a small Wall Street investment firm.

I learned that once he gets a project in mind, he begins to fill notebook after notebook with hand-written outlines, ideas, scenes, characters. It may take years. He says this process frees his imagination and subconscious to go where beautiful language and the characters’ inner lives take him.

There was more but of the many memorable things I learned about this accomplished author, what I remember best, and took to heart, was his description of his research process. He said that when writing he intentionally postpones what he calls “applied research” until near the end. During this time he is also reading novels written by others that are set in the same historical period as the book he’s working on. His novel is almost written before he begins deep research.

That’s why he waited until A Gentleman in Moscow was almost finished before traveling to Moscow and checking into the Hotel Metropol, the exclusive hotel where his story about Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is set.

Towles advised that details gleaned from this kind of active research should be written into the story much the way one might design the stage for Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1903). Of course Towles would choose this particular play as a point of reference because, like his own novel set in Russia, Chekhov’s tragicomedy also deals with a period of decline for the Russian aristocracy.

He said that when the curtain rises for the play the audience might see only the suggestion of a cherry orchard through large windows as if were rendered by an impressionist such as Claude Monet or Mary Cassatt. The windows might be framed by plywood bookcases painted to resemble mahogany. In the center of the room there would be a table set with a porcelain tea service.

When an author is ready to fold research into the story, Towles said it should be presented with similar layers of reality. Some details are just suggested in the background. Some, like the bookcases, give the scene the appearance of reality but need not be too detailed. Then there are aspects of research that can’t be given short shrift. For these, the author must adhere to absolute authenticity. The audience needs to hear the chair move across the floor and the teacup rattle in the saucer. The challenge for me is where all of the information that I’ve accumulated in my own research belongs – in the window or on the table?

Charles McNulty, theater critic for the Los Angeles Times, said in a June 6, 2022, review of a local revival of The Cherry Orchard, “Big things occur in Chekhov. Houses are lost, guns occasionally go off, and people die. But the focus is on muddling through.”

Much the same might be said about A Gentleman in Moscow and the subtle use of active research by Towles so that his story isn’t swallowed up in the details.

***

Cover of A Gentleman in Moscow via Amazon

Image of Anton Chekov via Wikipedia. Public domain.

Image of stage of The Cherry Orchard via Wikipedia. Public domain.

***

A former political reporter in Austin, Dixie also taught writing at Syracuse University. When she teamed up with Sue Cleveland to write fiction, they sold a screenplay to a Hollywood producer. Although the movie was never made, the seed money financed ThirtyNineStars, their publishing company. Through it they published two award-winning thrillers (Shrouded and Digging up the Dead) under the pen name, Meredith Lee. Dixie’s first solo mystery was Bloodlines & Fencelines, set in a tiny Texas town near Austin. Kirkus reviews described the book as, “A twisty whodunit that’s crafted with care and saturated with down-home Southern charm.” She is working on second mystery in the series. www.dlsevatt.com

 

Curious Animals And Recent Reads

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by Helen Currie Foster

New reads! If, like me, you desperately miss John le Carré, consider A Spy Alone, the 2023 debut spy thriller by Charles Beaumont, a field operative veteran of Britain’s MI-6. https://bit.ly/3ZzHjHs His premise is fascinating: we know of the “Cambridge Five” who spied for Russia from the 1930’s to 1950’s—Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Five But has there ever been, or could there be, a spy ring linked to Oxford? Beaumont’s protagonist Simon Sharman feels real, right from the first page:

“It is their shoes that give them away. As a lifelong fieldman, Simon Sharman hasn’t forgotten the lesson: walkers might change their jackets, pull on a pair of glasses, even a wig. But nobody changes their shoes on a job. Look at their shoes. “

I was hooked. Warning: Beaumont’s book is contemporary, well-written, tense, and may interfere with sleep. 

Two other recent reads: old adventure and a new “adult fantasy.” I’d never heard of The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson (1954).

Set from 980 to 1010 A.D., the book recounts the wide-ranging adventures of Norseman Red Orm Tostesson, and the collision between Christian priests (the “shaven men”) and the Norse culture of Skania at the south tip of Sweden. Now I know what it meant to go “a-viking”—to go sea-raiding! 500 pages, with Red, a very engaging Norseman. Great maps, too.

The Lost Bookshop, by Evie Woods (2024), offers time travel between the 1920’s and 30’s in Britain, and the present; a search for a lost Brontë manuscript; a disappearing attic; and disappearing and reappearing characters. I confess I flipped through big chunks, relieved when true love finally won out after two women, generations apart, survive appalling treatment. The disappearing attic reminded me of Susan Cooper’s Over Sea, Under Stone, and of course the wardrobe into Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I’m always up for secret doors.

I’m rereading a fascinating and fairly demanding study by Graham Robb, who has probably bicycled and walked further in Britain and France than most humans:

In The Search for Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts (2013), he describes how the Keltoi, or Celts, developed a system of surveying based on a midline transected by the lines of the summer and winter solstice to estimate travel distances and times—a feat not replicated for centuries. He maps the Heraklean Way, the path from southwestern Iberia that runs northeast across the Pyrenees to the Alps along the diagonal of the solstice sun, which Hannibal took when he invaded Italia. He describes Druid schooling (20 years to learn) and maps out protohistoric forts which turn out to lie along survey lines. He provides amazing maps. Two ongoing lessons from Robb’s devoted research: the winners write history; and humans tend to underestimate the accomplishments of earlier civilizations. 

Several of you asked about the three burros, given the recent cold snap. Thank you, they’re well. Their hair’s not waterproof so in cold rain they gather on the south side of the stable, under the roof, safe from rain and the north wind. They were relieved to see green grass again after the drought broke, but they’re also eating—and rolling in––green hay. And mud!

Yet despite hay, they gather outside the gate every morning and afternoon for carrots. They consider this part of their deal.

Burros are curious. They amble over to watch us garden and hang up laundry. They need company. They graze near each other. They may live into their 40’s. Sebastian, the short stubby knock-kneed male who invited himself to live here, may be 35 or more. Amanda (who insists I tell you she’s registered, with papers) may be 20. Her daughter Caroline is 12. Sebastian deems it his duty to bray loudly when any person or car appears at the end of the driveway, and to welcome the sun every morning with a stunningly loud bray. Now both Amanda and Caroline have begun to bray occasionally. 

Only donkeys can bray. Unlike horses or zebras, donkeys begin a bray on the inhale and continue braying on the exhale. They have great hearing—supposedly they can hear another donkey bray 60 miles away. 

They especially detest canids and will attack, dance on and kick dogs, coyotes, bobcats, foxes. A spooked horse will run away: donkeys stand together until they decide what they’re going to do. This morning, leaving for the post office, I saw the three donkeys standing together, knees locked, ears cocked, eyes fixed on two trespassing dogs who’d strayed across the cattleguard and into the donkeys’ domain. 

The dogs immediately acknowledged their gross error of judgment, raced frantically away and never returned.

If donkeys could read (wait—maybe they can, but have trouble turning the pages), I predict they’d prefer mysteries. They enjoy puzzles (like how to lift the chain and invade the fenced garden). 

Humans and donkeys. We are both curious animals.

Helen Currie Foster lives and writes the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery Series north of Dripping Springs, Texas, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She’s also deeply curious about our human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party! Currently she’s working on Book 10. Her protagonist, Alice, gets into legal drama, and matters of the heart. Alice does have a treehouse…

Follow Helen at http://www.helencurriefoster.com and on Amazon and Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/helencurriefoster