D-minus

March 31, 2016September 21, 2016 / Austin Mystery Writers / 1 Comment

First posted by Kathy Waller
on Writing Wranglers and Warriors
and on Telling the Truth, Mainly

Very long, but sort of necessary

On January 29, I was diagnosed with Stage IV metastatic breast cancer. Two kinds of cancer are present, not a common occurrence. One kind is aggressive but easier to treat than the other, which is slow-growing. There is a lesion in each lung. One was biopsied, so we know which kind it is. My oncologist said there’s no reason to think the lesion in the other lung is the same kind, but since that lesion wasn’t been biopsied, we don’t know. The radiologist preferred not to biopsy it because it’s near the heart. Sticking needles near the heart isn’t a preferred protocol.

Before I go further, I must say this: Please don’t say you’re sorry. I don’t feel ill. I have no symptoms except one lump I can feel. I’m sorry–really, really sorry, big-time sorry–I’m in this fix, but I already know you’re sorry, too, so it’s okay not to say it. Hearing it can be a bit of a downer.

I announced the diagnosis to a friend over lunch. We discussed the situation from all sides. Before we parted, she said, “You know this is an opportunity to write.” I said, Yes, I’d already thought of that.

Newbie writers repeatedly ask themselves–and each other–When can I call myself a ***writer*** without feeling like a fraud?

Answer: When no matter where you are, or what you’re doing, or what you’re feeling, you think, I can write about this.

From now on, when people ask what I do, or what I am, I shall say, in a firm and forthright manner, as if they’d better believe it or else, I am a writer.

I responded to the diagnosis with a combination of O God and Okaaaayyyyy…. The oncologist spoke of palliative care and statistics. I despise the word palliative, and the statistics were mind-boggling, and not in a good way. But I told David I’m going to fight, and he said he was, too. I said I was going to be happy while I fought. He said, “That’s what fighting is.” I’ve never heard a better definition.

When a navigator (survivor) from the Breast Cancer Resource Center (BCRC) called to introduce herself, I told her I hadn’t read the stack of literature the surgeon had given me–a looseleaf notebook, a spiral notebook, and a passel of booklets–because after glancing over a couple of pages, I decided I didn’t need that much information. I said I guessed I was in denial. She said a little denial can be a good thing.

I dumped the stack of paper in David’s lap and invited him to read it. He did. He’s a good person. A brick, if I may use an old-fashioned word that sounds funny now but in this case isn’t. He takes copious notes, asks questions, knows what meds and chemo drugs I take, records appointments on his calendar, remembers what other questions we need to ask, and and and… He can recite most of the info from memory.

I’ve vowed several times to step up and take more responsibility for the fight. To date, I’ve learned which anti-nausea pill to take first and which to take if the first one hasn’t worked. I know chemo #4 is scheduled for April 15, too, plus a few other random facts.

On the not-denial side–and to date–for a few days after a chemo infusion, I feel kind of meh but generally okay. However, I become fatigued easily. But I forget about the fatigue and do too much and then pay for it. The oncologist said, “Yeah, everybody does that.” The first time, I paid with a day in bed. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I stayed up half the night, three nights in a row, trying to write three hundred words for a guest blog, and paid for over-reach by thinking, What if the chemo doesn’t work?

The good old, What if?

The thought had already crossed my mind, of course, but this time it was accompanied by the line from It’s Always Something, Gilda Radner’s account of her experience with ovarian cancer:

I had wanted to wrap this book up in a neat little package. I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned the hard way that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

I’ve not read the book, but a long time ago, I read that sentence, and it stuck.

The BCRC navigator called again to see how I was getting along. We I met for iced tea and conversation, and I unloaded a couple of million words on her and said I would attend a meeting of a group the oncologist had strongly recommended (twice already). I perked up some more.

But then came the third visit with oncologist. He ordered a CT scan to check progress, as in, Is the chemo working?–and the possibility of No surfaced again. After a while, No morphed from possibility to probability. Then it began to feel like a prediction. More sighing, combined with an undeclared expectation of the worst.

But I knew that surgical oncologist Dr. Bernie Siegal says cancer patients must tell the truth, that if you go around claiming, I’m fine, just fine, your subconscious, which takes words literally, will believe you, and won’t tell your body it must fight. He recommends using a grading system: When you feel like C-minus, admit it. So I told people who asked, and some who didn’t, that I was a D-minus: scared to death.

Anyway. I had the CT scan yesterday (Thursday) afternoon. The oncologist had stressed that he wanted me to have the results by the second day at the latest–I like him a lot–so if we hadn’t heard by then, to call his office.

Later I realized that when you have a scan on Thursday, the second day is Monday, which leaves a weekend of not knowing in the middle.

But. Here’s where things get better.

The oncologist called yesterday afternoon, not two hours after we left the imaging center. One lung lesion has almost “resolved,” the other has reduced in size by nearly half, one lymph node has reduced significantly. However, a lymph node near where the bronchial tubes branch off from the trachea has enlarged significantly. He said it could be just “reactive,” doing what lymph nodes normally do when you have, say, a cold–but not to count on that. We’ll follow it closely, see what it does, and if it doesn’t shrink, figure out what to do next.

In short, this is a mixed result, but the oncologist is pleased. What pleases him pleases me. So I’m pleased.

Backing up a bit, at our second visit, the oncologist asked whether I had more questions. I said, “No.”

He said, “Okay. Well, your next question should be, ‘How will we know the chemo is working?’” I told him I’d assumed he’d get around to that when he was ready.

Now, Dear Reader, your next question should be, Why did it take you so long to write this post?

For a variety of reasons, I suppose. Because I’ve only now decided how to approach the topic. Because I wanted to hear some good news before writing. Because I wanted some grounding–I like certainty; even relative certainty–before writing.

Because I didn’t want to.

Because writing about any subject makes it real.

Years ago, I put off writing a letter because I’d have had to say in it that my father had died. I still haven’t written that letter. Writing it would have made the death real, and I preferred it stay as it was, hovering on the edge of reality.

Writing about Stage IV cancer would have made every detail, every statistic, real. I wasn’t ready for that. Now it’s okay. It’s real, not like it was yesterday with No in the ascendant, but real with mixed but pleasing results.

Ending tacked on Tuesday night: That’s the post I wrote last Friday, or most of it. I started working on it during chemo infusion #3 and continued that evening and into the night. Chemo drugs seem to invigorate me. Sunday, however, the crash came. The “flu-like” symptoms the oncologist had been asking about finally hit. That lasted only thirty-six hours or so, and it could have been worse. However, it left me in a nasty mood from which I haven’t emerged.

Last Friday, this was a chirpy post about adventures in breast cancer. Tonight–or, as it will probably post tomorrow, the 30th, a day late–it’s a non-chirpy post written by someone who’s in a nasty, nasty mood. Because I took all the chirpy parts out.

I shouldn’t admit that. Even if it’s evident, I shouldn’t admit it. I should pretend to be chirpy. I really, really should. That’s what nice Southern girls are supposed to do. Chirp.

But I remember the name of the English honor society I joined in college: Sigma Tau Delta. Sincerity. Truth. Design.

And I think of Dr. Siegal: If you’re feeling D-minus, say you’re D-minus.

So what this post lacks in Design, it makes up for in Sincerity and Truth. Tonight, I’m D-minus.

Having said that, however, I think tomorrow I’ll be much improved.

###

Oh, all right. As long as I’m already late, I’ll mention one achievement: After watching selected videos on YouTube, I have learned to wrap a scarf into a turban. For one devoid of manual dexterity, that’s big. The first two times we appeared together in public, the turban stayed put, and I received compliments. During Friday’s chemo, filaments of fringe kept popping out. They looked like little bitty antennae.

Obviously, Friday’s edition was poorly engineered from the get-go, because as soon as I got home, one end slipped out and draped down the side of my face. Fringe crawled over in front of my glasses.

©MKW. Any person who even thinks about copying, reproducing, grabbing, stealing, purloining, or otherwise taking and placing, positioning, or using this photograph anywhere else in the Universe should recognize, understand, and know that if he, she, or it does, Something Bad will happen.

I reminded myself of Lord Byron in Albanian dress. Except Byron’s headgear probably isn’t called a turban.

And he’s absolutely gorgeous.

I look like I wrapped a scarf around my head, and shouldn’t have.

###

Kathy Waller blogs at Telling the Truth, Mainly and at Writing Wranglers and Warriors.

Interview With AMW Member Kathy Waller

March 22, 2016March 22, 2016 / vpchandler / 2 Comments

In continuing my series of interviews with fellow AMW members, I introduce you to Kathy Waller.

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Hi Kathy!

VPC- Tell us about your professional career.

KW- I earned a B.A. in English in August 1973 and two days later began teaching high school English and biology. Eleven years later, I moved to Texas State University (then Southwest Texas State University); the first year I was a teaching assistant while I completed my M.A.; the second I taught freshman comp as a lecturer in the English department. After that, I taught another two years at the secondary level.

Then the fun began: I was invited to take the position of school district librarian, and, seeing a challenge—I‘d never taken any library science courses—I accepted. I spent a full semester working as a librarian before diving back into graduate school, this time at the University of Texas. At the time, I planned to complete the M.L.I.S., but life got in the way and I stopped with a learning resources specialist certification.

Two years later, the school district for which I worked partnered with an independent library association to form a joint-use library, extending services to all members of the community. I was fortunate to be involved in designing, building, and networking a new library. I loved the job—selecting and purchasing books and materials (with other people’s money!), doing booktalks, dealing with so many different tasks to make the program work. I especially enjoyed working with adults. Student patrons asked similar questions every year based on recurring class projects, but adults’ needs differed widely. “Is cabbage juice good for you?” “How do you build a beehive?” “Can chemotherapy help treat multiple sclerosis?” “What years and what nights did ‘I Love Lucy’ air?” Someone told me that to make a librarian happy, all you have to do is ask a question—that’s true, and a question the librarian has never been asked makes her the happiest.

VPC– Where did you grow up? What was it like?

KW– I grew up in a rural farming community, Fentress, Texas, on the San Marcos River, about fifteen miles south of San Marcos. I believe I’m the fifth generation of my father’s family to live in the area. The town was settled just before the turn of the century–that’s the 20th century–around a cotton gin and a Presbyterian church, and soon became a resort town, with a skating rink, an aerodrome theater where silent movies were shown and Chautauquas were held. (Note from VP- Chautauquas were an adult education movement in the U.S. that were popular until the mid-1920s. They brought entertainment and culture with speakers, teachers, musicians, entertainers, preachers and specialists of the day. More at Wikipedia.) A dam generated power, and there was a natural swimming pool with slide, diving board, and bath houses, and a large campground. There were boarding houses, a bank, a cafe, an ice cream parlor, grocery stories, a filling station, a drug store, a doctor’s office, and in 1929, a population of about 500.

When I was growing up there in the 1950s and ’60s, however, things were different. The gin, the skating rink, the grocery stores, and the doctor were still there, but a slight change in the river’s course had taken the swimming pool and resort, and post-World War II urbanization had reduced the population to about 125. By the time I started school, most of the residents were over the age of forty.

So I grew up surrounded by older people, most of whom I was related to by blood or by marriage. It could have been a boring existence, but parents there could turn children loose without fear of anything worse than skinned knees or wasp stings, so I had a lot of freedom. Except, of course, with all those aunts and uncles and great-aunts and -uncles, I knew I’d never get away with doing anything particularly interesting.

Still, I got to hang around the post office and listen to the old men sitting on benches outside, and help my postmaster-uncle put up mail (my mother was sure a postal inspector would find me doing that and haul my uncle off to jail), tag along with my grandfather and my farmer-uncle wherever they went, sit under a tree on the river reading American Girl magazine to my horse…. That kind of thing. And to sit on front porches watching old ladies play forty-two and listening to them gossip.

I think the reason many people my age love To Kill a Mockingbird is that we see in 1930s Maycomb, Alabama, the little towns we knew when we were kids twenty and thirty years later—slow, hot, dusty summers, old people sitting on front porches, the feeling that the past is still with us.

VPC– It sounds Idyllic. 🙂 You certainly can paint a picture with words. How did growing up there affect your writing?

KW– Eudora Welty said, “Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.” I was a listening child. I think I was sometimes quiet enough people forgot I was around. And it was evident early on that I recognized which parts of conversations should not be repeated elsewhere. But for whatever reason, adults didn’t seem to censor their conversations around me. And I’ve always had a tape recorder in my head. Hearing so much about the past, both from my parents and from my grandfather and his brothers and sisters, I grew up grounded in local history. I’m really more at home in the past than in the present—sometimes I feel as if I’ve never made it past 1965. Although I don’t remember the busy resort town, the stories I heard were so vivid, I feel as if I‘d been there watching Tom Mix at the aerodrome theater on Saturday nights.

As to how this affects my writing—my background provides material. My characters come from rural Texas, that’s what they know, that’s how they speak. Their levels of education differ, their professions differ. Their speech differs—some are grammatical, some aren’t, some use the figures of speech I grew up hearing—but same Southern voice runs through all my dialogue.

Concerning the people I knew—It was like Charles Dickens created a bunch of characters and gave them Southern accents and set them down in Caldwell County on the banks of the San Marcos River. Everybody—here, I’m talking about the old people—had some little quirk that set him or her apart. It as if they were intended to be re-placed in fiction.
As to my settings, there’s nearly always a river, and usually a cow. The less I see of cows in life, the more I have to see them in my fiction.

VPC– How did you come to be a member of AMW?

KW– I first met Karen MacInerney in a writing practice group the late 1990s. She founded AMW. When I moved to Austin in 2003, I visited one meeting, but the timing wasn’t right, so I declined. A few years later, Gale Albright and I met at a Writers’ League of Texas meeting and became critique partners; we called ourselves Just for the Hell of It Writers. That was good, but for the best critiques, more than two pairs of eyes are needed. Then I met Kaye George through the Sisters in Crime Guppies online chapter. She’d taken over Austin Mystery Writers from Karen and invited me to join. This time I jumped at the chance, and then Gale joined as well. That marked the demise of Just for the Hell of It Writers, but joining AMW is the best move I’ve made toward a writing career. Receiving thoughtful critical evaluation of my work is invaluable, and receiving it from writers who are supportive while telling the truth—I couldn’t ask for a better situation.

VPC- This is a tough question. Do you have any favorite authors/mystery authors?

KW– When I was eight, my grandmother gave me copies of The Secret of the Old Clock and The Clue of the Tapping Heels, so my first favorite was Nancy Drew. From there I jumped to Agatha Christie; I’ve read most of her books two or three times. When I’m sick, I want Campbell’s tomato soup, saltine crackers, and a Christie. Of the contemporaries, P.D. James and Ruth Rendell–I love Rendell’s tight plotting, where even on the last page, one more thread unravels; it feels like one final bolt falling into place. I like Robert Barnard, Ngaio Marsh… My absolute favorite is probably Josephine Tey. Her books are definitely mysteries, but they’re also more than that. I can’t say just why—later editions have a foreword in which Robert Barnard analyzes what makes Tey’s books special. She can write a satisfying murder mystery without a murder, and an even more satisfying mystery without a hint of murder at all. And I can’t leave out Austin’s Mark Pryor, whose Hollow Man is a devastatingly devastating read—think Ruth Rendell; and Texas native Terry Shames’ Samuel Craddock mysteries, where the low-key police chief keeps twenty head of white-faced Herefords in the pasture back of his house, which is about as authentic small-town Texas as you can get.

Thank you, Kathy for that insight into your past. And I’ve found a few more books to add to my To Read list. (Another note to readers: I can vouch for her recommendations. She’s never steered me wrong. After all, she was a librarian!)

Rhys Bowen is a brick and an old bean

March 15, 2016March 17, 2016 / Austin Mystery Writers / Leave a comment

Rhys Bowen at Fonda San Miguel in Austin By Gale Albright

I will say unreservedly that Rhys Bowen is a brick and an old bean.

I believe these were compliments among the aristocracy in old time England. Bowen married into an upper-crust British family and became familiar with their Downton Abbey-esque manner of speech that flourished in the early part of the twentieth century. Her Royal Spyness series is set during the Great Depression on the UK side of the Atlantic. Her protagonist, Lady Georgie, is a royal who is far removed from the throne. She’s just royal enough that she can’t work because “the queen wouldn’t like it.” Lady Georgie must find ways to earn money and solve murders that crop up. She has a deplorable sister in law called “Fig.” Enough said.

Bowen’s Molly Murphy series is about an Irish lass on the run from a date with the hangman’s noose in Ireland around the turn of the century. The series takes Molly through Ellis Island, into New York City, marriage to a policeman, and the occasional murder.

Bowen’s talk at the Sisters in Crime: Heart of Texas meeting on Sunday, March 13 at the Yarborough Public Library, was about “getting it right.” Since the stories about Lady Georgie and Molly are historical mysteries, Bowen is meticulous about doing her research. She feels that there’s nothing worse for a writer than to make a mistake about a historical detail. “I won’t blurb a book that has an historical error,” she said. Readers won’t tend to trust a writer if they run across mistakes in her novels. She talked to us at length about the importance of research and creating the correct time and feel for place in a novel.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Sisters in Crime national organization, Bowen was our guest for the weekend of March 12 – 13. She appeared at a book signing on Saturday, March 12, at BookPeople for her new Molly Murphy book, Time of Fog and Fire at 3 p.m. Afterward, some of us went to dinner with her and had a royal good time.

On Sunday, March 13, our vice president, George Wier, and I had brunch with Bowen at Fonda San Miguel, drove around to look at bluebonnets and rolling hills, and came back to a packed house at the Yarborough Library. Afterwards, we repaired to La Mancha for libations and more food.

I hope she enjoyed it. We certainly enjoyed her. She is a most elegant– yet down to earth–lady with considerable wit, charm, and professionalism. We thought she was swell.

Bowen has won many writing awards, including the Macavity Award for Oh Danny Boy and Agatha Award for Murphy’s Law. Last year’s book, Malice at the Palace, won the Lefty Award for the best historical novel at the Left Coast Crime convention.

To find out more about Rhys Bowen, New York Times best-selling author of the Royal Spyness and Molly Murphy mystery series, go to http://rhysbowen.com

Guest Blogger Janet Christian

March 8, 2016March 8, 2016 / Austin Mystery Writers / 2 Comments

Today’s guest blogger is Janet Christian, author of the Marianna Morgan PI murder mystery series (she’s working on book two at this time) and the soon to be published Virgilante paranormal mystery. She also has a dystopian science fiction novel, Born Rich, which she’s expanding into an epic, so it’s currently not for sale.

Janet served as 2003 President of the Heart of Texas Sisters in Crime in Austin, and became a published author in 2012. She also maintains an author’s blog.

Janet and her husband Eric Marsh live on a 100 acre ranch near Lockhart, TX – 30 miles south of Austin. They have four goofy dogs, an ever-changing population of cats (usually around 10), and a small herd of spotted-wool Jacob sheep. When she isn’t writing, Janet creates pottery art pieces in her combination pottery studio and tiki bar.

Janet, welcome to AMW!

Three steps to research success

I was inspired to write this article after conversations with several writers who said they just wanted to write, and factual details weren’t that important to readers, anyway. The writers were willing to do limited online research, but had no inclination to talk to experts or visit locations. Research can certainly either be the bane or the joy of writing, regardless of genre or time period of the story. But research is always important, so why not find ways to make it work in your favor, and perhaps to even be enjoyable.

I understand that we writers tend to be a solitary bunch, but please make the effort to do thorough research beyond just surfing the web. You’ll be happy that you did. And so will your readers. Besides, at least to me, one of the joys of writing is learning all those amazing and cool facts and bits of trivia.

Here are three tips to help ensure your research is thorough, useful, and hopefully fun to acquire.

1. Surf the web

Google and other search tools are amazingly complete storehouses of information, but searching can be tricky. If you want to know what year an event occurred, one search usually provides the answer. But if your goal is more esoteric, it can take dozens of searches, tweaking the keywords each time, before you find the information you seek.

Like most writers, I’ve attempted searches for some pretty obscure facts. And once recently my search resulted in the message “No results found.” I’m both simultaneously tickled and frightened that I “broke” Google. Maybe I need to rethink that plot twist.

While search tools are powerful, and can provide a world of search results, you should not count on it as your sole research tool. We all know the internet is chock full of not-quite-true “facts” and information. But the biggest reason is because of the amount of results one search provides. It can be overwhelming to sift out the clutter and get to the specific facts you seek. You can also find search results that directly contradict each other. (Try searching “are vaccines safe” or “is global warming real” for proof of just how contradictory results can be.)

Use a search tool as a springboard for where to go next. For my first novel, The Case of a Cold Trail and a Hot Musket, I wanted my protagonist, Private Investigator Marianna Morgan, to search for a stolen Brown Bess musket. In fact, my novel was inspired by a newspaper article about a long-lost Brown Bess being donated to the Alamo. Online searches gave me many facts about the musket, including images of its wooden stock and unusual triangular, cross-section bayonet. But there were many variations of the musket. And nothing online told me what condition it would be in after having been buried for thirty-five years. This is the point in research where it’s good to move on to step 2.

2. Contact an expert

I was fortunate in the case of my Brown Bess research that my sister has a business acquaintance with Dr. Richard Bruce Winders, Historian and Curator of the Alamo. I was granted an appointment with Dr. Winders and had the privilege of holding the actual Brown Bess mentioned in the article that inspired my murder mystery. Dr. Winders also described in detail how I could safely hide one in my story.

But don’t let your lack of a direct or indirect relationship with an expert deter you. When I needed to research how the abduction of a child would have been handled in an unincorporated area near San Antonio in the days before 911 emergency service existed, I called Chief Don Davis, who was the Police Chief of Terrell Hills, Texas at the time I was writing. He was more than happy to see me. The accuracy and detail I included in my novel were a direct result of Chief Davis’s informative and helpful answers.

I’ve interviewed many other experts as well, covering topics as diverse as reptile exhibits, how many UPS drivers are assigned to a given geographic area, vintage Mustangs, and what would happen to a koi pond if a decomposing body were buried beneath the rubber liner. Some experts I met in person, others I talked to on the phone. I recommend face-to-face where possible, but phone calls are a perfectly acceptable alternative. I’ve yet to contact an expert who wasn’t happy to help, and all patiently answered my many questions. I always make sure to thank them in the back of the book and send them a signed copy once it’s published.

Whether you’re writing contemporary or historical mysteries, and regardless of whether they’re cozies or hard-boiled, there’s always an expert who can provide those gems of detail that really bring a story to life. And bringing reality and life to a story is where the third tip in research comes in.

3. On site visits

In addition to my expert contacts on reptile exhibits, I visited the Animal World and Snake Farm Zoo near San Antonio. It was an hour and a half drive, but well worth it. Because of that visit, I was able to add multiple sensory experiences to the scene where Marianna visits a roadside reptile exhibit while tracking the bad guy. I believe my experiencing the assault of smells, sounds, and sights in person gave the scene in my novel a realism I could not have created any other way.

An actual on-site visit may not always be practical, but when it is, take advantage. If you’re writing a mystery that takes place in London, unless you have an extensive travel budget, you may not be able to visit. And if your story is set in 1800s London, a visit may not be all that useful, anyway. But sometimes there are other ways to accomplish a sense of “being there.” And even those alternatives can be invaluable.

Want a feel for Victorian England? Visit the largest Renaissance Faire you can find within a reasonable drive. Setting your charming cozy in a small town populated by quirky characters? Visit two or three cool small towns.

We’ve likely all read stories where it was clear the author published without doing any research. Even little mistakes can throw a reader out of a story. Did a football fan buy your mystery because it involves a murder during a Super Bowl? You can bet they’ll write a scathing review if you set the story in 1966 (the first Super Bowl was in 1967), or even if you describe the wrong concession foods. But if you’ve done your online research, talked to a football expert, and actually attended a football game (even a high school game, especially in Texas, will give you the sense of the crowd’s excitement and behavior), your story will “ring true” and that football fan will love it and look forward to buying your next book.

Isn’t at least one of our ultimate goals to have readers who love our books and can’t wait for each new release? Research can be one of the biggest keys to helping that happen.

Thanks Janet! You can find more of her writing at www.janetchristian.com

A Mind Unhinged

February 24, 2016August 2, 2018 / Austin Mystery Writers / 9 Comments

Posted by Kathy Waller

So you start writing your post about the incomparable Josephine Tey’s mystery novels two weeks before it’s due but don’t finish, and then you forget, and a colleague reminds you, but the piece refuses to come together, and the day it’s due it’s still an embarrassment, and the next day it’s not much better, and you decide, Oh heck, at this point what’s one more day? and you go to bed,

and in the middle of the night you wake to find twenty pounds of cat using you as a mattress, and you know you might as well surrender, because getting him off is like moving Jello with your bare hands,

Elisabet Ney: Lady Macbeth, Detail (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Attribution: Ingrid Fisch at the German language Wikipedia. GNU_Free_Documentation_License

so you lie there staring at what would be the ceiling if you could see it, and you think, Macbeth doth murder sleep…. Macbeth shall sleep no more,

and then you think about Louisa May Alcott writing, She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain,

and you realize your own brain has not only turned, but has possibly come completely unhinged.

And you can’t get back to sleep, so you lie there thinking, Books, books, books. Strings and strings of words, words, words. Why do we write them, why do we read them? What are they all for?

And you remember when you were two years old, and you parroted,

The owl and the pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea green boat,

because happiness was rhythm and rime.

And later when your playmate didn’t want to hear you read “Angus and the Cat,” and you made her sit still and listen anyway.

And when you were fourteen and so happy all you could think was, O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!, and you didn’t know who wrote it but you remembered the line from a Kathy Martin book you got for Christmas when you were ten.

And when you were tramping along down by the river and a narrow fellow in the grass slithered by too close, and you felt a tighter breathing, and zero at the bone.

And when you woke early to a rosy-fingered dawn and thought

By Dana Ross Martin, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

I’ll tell you how the sun rose,
A ribbon at a time,
The steeples swam in Amethyst
The news, like Squirrels, ran –
The Hills untied their Bonnets –

And when you saw cruelty and injustice, and you remembered, Perfect love casts out fear, and knew fear rather than hate as the source of inhumanity, and love, the cure.

And when your father died unexpectedly, and you foresaw new responsibilities, and you remembered,

We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise.

And when your mother died, and you thought,

Oh, if instead she’d left to me
The thing she took into the grave!-
That courage like a rock, which she
Has no more need of, and I have.

Fentress United Methodist Church. © Kathy Waller

And at church the day after your father’s funeral, when your cousins, who were officially middle-aged and should have known how to behave, sat on the front row and dropped a hymnbook, and something stuck you in the side and you realized that when you mended a seam in your dress that morning you left the needle just hanging there and you were in danger of being punctured at every move, and somehow everything the minister said struck you as funny, and the whole family chose to displace stress by laughing throughout the service, and you were grateful for Mark Twain’s observations that

Laughter which cannot be suppressed is catching. Sooner or later it washes away our defences, and undermines our dignity, and we join in it … we have to join in, there is no help for it,

and that,

Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand.

And when you fell in love and married and said with the poet, My beloved is mine and I am his.

And when, before you walked down the aisle, you handed a bridesmaid a slip of paper on which you’d written, Fourscooooorrrrrrre…, so that while you said, “I do,” she would be thinking of Mayor Shinn’s repeated attempts to recite the Gettysburg Address at River City’s July 4th celebration, and would be trying so hard not to laugh that she would forget to cry.

And when your friend died before you were ready and left an unimaginable void, and life was unfair, and you remembered that nine-year-old Leslie fell and died trying to reach the imaginary kingdom of Terabithia, and left Jess to grieve but to also to pass on the love she’d shown him.

And when the doctor said you have an illness and the outlook isn’t good, and you thought of Dr. Bernie Siegal’s writing, Do not accept that you must die in three weeks or six months because someone’s statistics say you will… Individuals are not statistics, but you also remembered what Hamlet says to Horatio just before his duel with Laertes,

There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all.

And by the time you’ve thought all that, you’ve come back to what you knew all along, that books exist for pleasure, for joy, for consolation and comfort, for courage, for showing us that others have been here before, have seen what we see, felt what we feel, shared needs and wants and dreams we think belong only to us, that

Photograph of Helen Keller at age 8 with her tutor Anne Sullivan on vacation in Brewster, Cape Cod, Massachusetts (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

everything the earth is full of… everything on it that’s ours for a wink and it’s gone, and what we are on it, the—light we bring to it and leave behind in—words, why, you can see five thousand years back in a light of words, everything we feel, think, know—and share, in words, so not a soul is in darkness, or done with, even in the grave.

And about the time you have settled the question to your satisfaction, the twenty pounds of Jello slides off, and you turn over, and he stretches out and leans so firmly against your back that you end up wedged between him and your husband, who is now clinging to the edge of the bed, as sound asleep as the Jello is, and as you’re considering your options, you think,

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
   In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
   Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
   And sang to a small guitar…

and by the time the Pussycat and the Elegant Fowl have been married by the Turkey who lives on the hill, and have eaten their wedding breakfast with a runcible spoon, and are dancing by the light of the moon, the moon, you’ve decided that a turned brain has its advantages, and that re-hinging will never be an option.

###

20 pounds of cat. © Kathy Waller

###

http://nfs.sparknotes.com/macbeth/page_58.html
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1315.Louisa_May_Alcott
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171941
http://www.vintagechildrensbooksmykidloves.com/2009/06/angus-and-cat.html
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182477
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epithets_in_Homer
http://biblehub.com/1_john/4-18.htm
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2002/10/15
http://www.twainquotes.com/Laughter.html
http://biblehub.com/songs/2-16.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Music_Man_(1962_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_to_Terabithia_(novel)
http://www.shareguide.com/Siegel.html
http://nfs.sparknotes.com/hamlet/page_320.html
http://www.shorewood.k12.wi.us/page.cfm?p=3642

Interview with Manning Wolfe

February 15, 2016February 15, 2016 / vpchandler / 2 Comments

One of the perks of being a writer is having interesting and talented friends. Today I’d like to introduce you to Manning Wolfe. Manning Wolfe Headshot 2

VPC – Manning, welcome to the AMW blog and congratulations on your debut novel! Can you tell us a little something about it?

MW –Yes, it’s called Dollar Signs:Texas Lady Lawyer vs Boots King. It’s the first in a series and this one is set in Austin, Houston, and Port Aransas, Texas. MERIT BRIDGES, an Austin attorney and widowed mother with a lot of sass is the lead protagonist. She works hard, drinks too much wine, and sleeps with younger men. When she goes after a shady corporation threatening her client, she finds Boots King, a hired gun, threatening to kill her.

VPC – I know you’re a lawyer. In what ways did you use your legal background to write the book?

MW – The plot idea for Dollar Signs came from a client that I had several years ago who had gotten involved with an unscrupulous Outdoor Advertising Company (Billboards). Of course, I departed from that scenario fairly quickly in the book as the characters began to develop and the story took on a life of its own. I felt badly for that client and always wished he had gotten a fair shake. In Dollar Signs, I get to have the story turn out as I would have liked in real life. I’ve never practiced litigation although there are some courtroom scenes in the book. I wanted to show the other side of law – the business of it and the strategy that is involved.

VPC – Have you always wanted to be a writer?

MW – Yes, since I was a small child I’ve been spinning yarns and telling tales. I wrote my stories down as drawings, and then in narrative as soon as I was able to write. I loved Nancy Drew growing up and always wanted to write stories with a strong plot. I had great teachers who encouraged proper basic writing habits, so I received a good foundation early on. Much later, I wrote the screenplay of the life of Buckminster Fuller and found that I like combining cinematic style with novel structure. That blend has led me to the way I write today – fast paced legal thrillers with a strong visual component.

VPC – Where did you grow up and how has it affected your writing?

MW – I grew up in a small town just north of Houston called Humble. By the time I was in junior high, I had read every book in our public library. I still remember the wonderful librarian there and her interest in my constant reading habit. My father often asked me to do research in the courthouse archives in Harris County. Those two things led not only to my legal career, but my writing career as well. Property and business issues in the law are like a puzzle to me. I always loved games and still enjoy online games and cards. Sorting out legal problems in real life or in a story is like a puzzle to my brain. I enjoy figuring things out and documenting that in writing.

VPC – Do you have any favorite authors?

MW – I read a lot and across many genres, but my favorites are thrillers. As far as legal thrillers, I like the early John Grisham novels, as well as Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller series starting with The Lincoln Lawyer. Patricia Highsmith, who wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley, is a master of suspense. John Ellsworth’s Thaddeus Murfee series is very exciting, too. I think Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent, that was made into a movie starring Harrison Ford, is one of the best legal thrillers ever written. And, of course, most people forget that Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, another favorite of mine, was a legal thriller.

VPC – So what’s in store for your next book?

MW – The next book in the series is Green Fees: Texas Lady Lawyer vs Browno Zars, about a young golfer who wants to play the PGA tour and gets snagged up with a dastardly con man. It also was inspired by an actual client who was a golf pro. I’m editing it now for release later this year. I have about a dozen Texas Lady Lawyer novels in mind, some of them are outlined and some are just ideas.

VPC- Sounds good! Thanks for dropping by today and good luck on your new book. 🙂

DOLLAR SIGNS Final Ebook Cover 04

To keep up with Manning and her writing, you can go to her website at manningwolfe.com

Five Reasons To Write Historical Mysteries

February 8, 2016February 8, 2016 / vpchandler / 3 Comments

Today we welcome a guest blogger, mystery writer Jeri Westerson! She writes the critically acclaimed Crispin Guest Medieval Noir novels. Her protagonist is a disgraced knight turned detective, plying his PI trade on the mean streets of fourteenth century London.

Her books have been shortlisted for a slew of mystery awards, including the Macavity, Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Agatha, and the Shamus, the first medieval mystery to be nominated for this prestigious PI award. The Boston Globe calls her detective “A medieval Sam Spade, a tough guy who operates according to his own moral compass.”

Jeri also has short stories in several anthologies and talks around the country about the Middle Ages, demonstrating her cache of medieval weaponry.

Jeri is a member of the southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Private Eye Writers of America and the Historical Novel Society. Jeri is married to a commercial photographer, has a screenwriting son, and herds two cats, a tortoise, and the occasional tarantula at her home in southern California.

Jeri, welcome to AMW!

5 Reasons to Write Historical Mysteries

By Jeri Westerson

I’ve been immersed in history all my life. My parents were rabid Anglophiles, stuffing our bookshelves with historical novels, works of nonfiction, and having discussions at the dinner table about the British monarchy. I can definitely name more kings and queens of England than American presidents. I had my own literary relationship with Geoffrey Chaucer and was probably the only kindergartner in Los Angeles who could recite part of the prologue to The Canterbury Tales…in Middle English.

And so many years later when I decided to become a novelist, it was pretty much a no-brainer that I would write historical novels about the medieval period. I switched to medieval mysteries when the kind of historical novel I liked to write proved to be the kind editors didn’t want to publish, though they translated very nicely to the mystery genre and I found success!

I Like To Research.

Let’s face it. If you never liked doing homework or researching for a term paper, this isn’t the genre for you. I rather enjoyed looking things up, tracking down that little fact like a detective, and coming up with oodles of other nifty things by reading those footnotes (ALWAYS read footnotes). And I love libraries and you’ll be spending a lot of time in them. For the kind of thing I need, I spend time in university libraries. I’d love to travel across the pond to do my research in archives, but alas, it’s not in the budget. Fortunately, you can now reach many of these archives online. Some of the items you need might even be scanned and uploaded. Sometimes you still have to pay the archivist to make a copy for you and they will either scan it and email it, or copy it and snail mail it to you. Either way, you’ve made a new friend and possibly a new reader.

The Timeline is Your Outline

When you write historically, readers expect to get a healthy dose of history with their mystery. And if you write a series that will happen over many years, all the better. In my Crispin Guest series, my fourteenth century disgraced knight turned detective, encounters all the juicier bits of the late 1300’s during Richard II’s reign, including a friendship with one Geoffrey Chaucer, running into his former charge Henry of Bolingbroke as he and his Lords Appellant force the king to follow Parliament’s dictates, encounters his former mentor John of Gaunt and his longtime mistress Katherine Swynford, and is on hand when King Richard is ultimately deposed. There’s a lot of intriguing court politics and threats of war going on in the seventeen years the series is taking place, and each year in history helps suggest plot points on which my detective runs afoul of his monarch.

A Ready-Made Audience

Now granted, it isn’t a big audience, so prepare yourself that you will be writing in a niche, which means sales won’t be huge. But there are also many sub genres and cross genres when it comes to historical mysteries. There is also historical mystery/romance, historical mystery timetravel, and every other permutation you can think of. So there is every opportunity to widen that base.

Just the Facts

You must be a stickler for facts. Movies seem to get to play fast and loose with facts. There are millions of people out there who watched Braveheart and think that William Wallace sired a child on the wife of the future King Edward II, when anyone who knows a smidgen of history knows that Queen Isabella was a child of twelve herself at the time and wasn’t even yet living in England. But there were many things about that film that make even amateur historians cringe. You won’t be able to do that with a book. Readers will call you on it. They will abandon the book early if you fudge the facts. They won’t be able to trust any of your book and it will spoil their enjoyment. Just consider it your unwritten contract with your reader that you will do your best to get it as historically accurate as you can.

You Write Because You Like To Read It

As I mentioned in number four, it won’t be a huge market. So there’s no sense in choosing to write something only because you think it’s going to make a lot of money. Get it into your head now that you won’t make a lot of money. There now. Don’t you feel better? If by some off chance your book captures the imagination of readers and hits the bestseller list, mazel tov! If by another off chance Hollywood comes calling and offers to make a series of it, then celebrate. But please don’t ever expect it. You should be writing in a genre because that’s what you like to read. That’s where your writing shines. That’s where you get the most enjoyment writing.

Is writing historical mysteries for everyone? Only if you are a person who enjoys research. And if you are, the entire history of humanity is open for grabs.

—

Jeri likes exploring the past, especially with her latest mystery, THE SILENCE OF STONES; A Crispin Guest Medieval Noir, dealing with the Stone of Destiny, Scottish rebels, a dark and brooding knight detective, and murder. Read an excerpt, see discussion guides, and watch the series book trailer on her website at www.JeriWesterson.com.

Who’s on First?

February 1, 2016February 1, 2016 / Austin Mystery Writers / 2 Comments

By Gale Albright

Abbott and Costello invented the comedy routine Who's on First

Abbott and Costello invented the classic comedy routine “Who’s on First?”

Abbott and Costello invented a hilarious comedy routine called “Who’s on First?” about baseball. But my questions are not about baseball, but points of view (POV), such as first, second, and third person.

I prefer to write in first person. I don’t want to know too much, like that know-it-all omniscient narrator. It must be exhausting to know everything about what’s going on in a novel. It sounds way too stressful to juggle all that information.

I prefer to write in first person because there are limitations. The narrator only knows how she feels and what she sees. She finds out about the world through her five senses—what she can feel, smell, taste, see, or hear. The reader only knows what the narrator knows.

The first-person protagonist finds out information by personal observation. If she hears gossip, she can only take it on face value. She doesn’t know if it’s true. The reader doesn’t know if it’s true either.

I’ll give you an example from one of my works in progress. In a small Depression-era East Texas town, young Eva knows that Demon Rum is bad. Not from personal experience, but from what her mama and the church ladies in the Temperance Union tell her. She takes it on faith without really thinking about it. When, through a series of bizarre circumstances, she takes a swig of Demon Rum (for investigative purposes only), she feels she is on the road to perdition. She doesn’t know what perdition is, but it sounds pretty bad. Mama and the church ladies are against it.

When Eva asks her father why some old man is always getting drunk and making a fool of himself on Main Street, he tells her not to be too hard on the poor fellow. “Some men just have a sickness in their belly. They crave it and can’t stop.”

After Eva’s clandestine sip of illegal homebrew whiskey, she wonders why anybody would crave something that tastes worse than turpentine. So the reader knows that Eva has a lot to learn. The reader is part of that learning process. Readers will be privy to Eva’s innermost thoughts and feelings and opinions because they have a privileged position inside Eva’s brain.

Writing a story in first person allows intimacy between narrator and reader. The reader has a front-row seat right smack in the middle of the narrator’s psyche. The reader forms a bond with the narrator and makes an emotional investment in the character.

One of the drawbacks of relying on first-person narrative is the reader doesn’t know if the narrator is telling the truth. The narrator may think she is telling the truth, but she might be lying to herself. Where does that leave the reader? You now have the first-person unreliable narrator, which can add a lot of suspense to a novel. The reader doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going. Is the first-person narrator (whom the reader has come to love and worry about and care about) really a deranged psycho, split-personality nutcase? Mercy.

What’s even more interesting in the point-of-view question is the “head hopping” phenomenon.

Have you ever had a piece of writing critiqued for head hopping? This phenomenon occurs when one is writing a first person novel and the narrator knows what other people are thinking. “Aha!” shrieks a critique partner, shaking a red pencil in the hapless author’s direction. “Head hopping! You did head hopping! This is a first person POV and you have the narrator acting like an omniscient third-person narrator who knows what other people are thinking!” Then everyone laughs gleefully and pelts the author with paper clips.

I made that up. That sort of behavior may occur in ill-bred critique groups, but certainly not mine. In my critique group there is no humiliation. Just a gentle reminder that you totally messed up.

But why not have a narrative with creative head hopping? It’s not always so wrong, is it? What about novels with more than one first-person narrator? What if the book has several first-person narrators and they each have several chapters of their own where they all seem to experience the same events in a completely different way?

A good example of a single novel with different first-person points of view is The Other Queen, by Philippa Gregory. The story of Mary of Scotland’s imprisonment in England before her execution is told from the POV of the captive queen and her two jailers. Somehow, in the midst of all three unreliable narrators, the reader begins to see what really happened.

There’s a scary film called The Fallen, with Denzel Washington and John Goodman. The devilish essence of an executed killer escapes when the felon dies and his evil spirit jumps from one person to another—to fellow police buddies Washington and Goodman–and even a cat. Talk about head hopping on steroids, The Fallen has a nasty entity hopping around and possessing the minds of nice folks who turn murderous. If a nasty killer spirit possesses your brain, you will become an unreliable narrator.

Any thoughts about who’s on second?

Comparisons Can Kill (Your Mystery)

January 27, 2016January 27, 2016 / Austin Mystery Writers / 4 Comments

While attending a writers conference a few years ago, I found myself drawn to a panel titled, “Writing While Working Full Time.” This session appealed to me on a number of levels. A writer’s life is often envisioned as one where a good part of every day in spent in solitude, unencumbered by the demands of small children, a traditional office gig, caring for aging parents or other responsibilities that threaten to slice up a day into shards of time. This popular author had two small children and a regular job and had successfully published several thrillers. He was going to share his inside tricks and help me better understand what I was doing wrong, allowing me to finally get consistent about a daily word count and progress on my novel.

I was going to GET. STUFF. DONE.

I had pen in hand, ready to transcribe every bit of knowledge onto paper, committing it forever to a reference sheet that I could staple to my wall (or possibly my forehead). After an explanation of his schedule, which included a teaching position and attending his kids’ various events, he said, “It’s important for me to rise early, usually by six o’clock on the weekends, so that I can get a good six hours or so of work done on my book. “

What does your day look like?

“How do you get six hours of uninterrupted work at your house with two small kids?” one person asks.

“Oh,” he says rather offhandedly. “My wife is in charge of the kids on the weekends until the early afternoon, so she takes them out to the park or to do other things so I can write.”

I closed my notebook.

I would not discover the ultimate time saving hack to help me write my novel amidst the swirling chaos of three small kids, my own work and my husband’s demanding travel schedule.

One thing I’ve come to discover is that whenever I compare myself to other writers, hoping to suss out their secret superpower for prolific storytelling while managing the real world, I realize that I’m making a mistake. I need to make my own way, tweak my schedule the best I can, taking advice but bending its usefulness in my own way.

Jane Friedman’s blog (which is filled with practical advice and counsel) includes a post titled The Secret to My Productivity, where she candidly discusses what advantages she has had in crafting a writing life. Her honesty is such a gift, and it helped me better understand that I needed to work with what I have in terms of time and resources. Yes, some people have more time, more freedom than others. Yes, sometimes that advantage matters. And sometimes it’s a reminder to just get on with it, make better use of what you have, not comparing yourself to others with different life demands.

However, there are cases when more time isn’t better, and I can’t count the number of authors I know who produce quality mystery novels in short periods of time. They have honed their skills, remained consistent and, instead of lamenting the lack of an uninterrupted eight hour day, have embraced time on the subway or early mornings before the kids wake up. They make it happen.

I now understand that comparisons can kill in so many ways. There has never been one path to success, one way to write a book, one way to tell your stories. It’s just important that you tell them, and whatever that looks like..well, that’s the right way…because you’re doing it in the first place.

–Laura Oles

AMW Author Highlight- Gale Albright

January 11, 2016 / vpchandler / 10 Comments

It’s time for another installment of Who Are The Members of Austin Mystery Writers? 😉 So today I’ll interview fellow member Gale Albright. Let’s learn a little more about her.

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V.P. – So tell us a little about yourself. Where did you grow up? Has this influenced your writing?

GA-I was born in Tyler, Texas, in the East Texas piney woods. A lot of generations of my family are from there. I know it has affected my writing because I always have to write about Texas. I had many conversations with older people in my family when I was a little kid, so I heard a lot of stories about hard times picking cotton, taking a lunch to school in a lard bucket and going barefoot until it was time to start school in the fall. I am fascinated with the Great Depression and the WW II years, all from an East Texas point of view. I love Southern story telling, all the rhythms of language and colloquial expressions.

V.P. – What kinds of jobs have you had? Do bits of these jobs appear in your writing?

GA-When my daughter was young, I worked at a credit bureau in Chicago, then went into a training program at the Chicago Tribune to learn to typeset the news and proof galleys of type when the technology involved hot metal. Things are very different these days. I worked for the University of Texas for 23 years as a typesetter and administrative assistant for the Petroleum Extension Service, Engineering, Spanish and Portuguese, and the School of Law.

I’m thinking about incorporating newspaper reporting into an upcoming fiction project. I had one of my fictional characters attending the UT School of Law in a book I wrote several years ago. I might fish it out of the file cabinet and work on it some more.

V.P. – Do you do any other kinds of writing besides fiction?

GA-I do newspaper writing at the moment at a weekly newspaper, The Hutto News, as a writer and editor. I really like it. I worked for a number of years at newspapers, but always in proofing or typesetting. I enjoy getting a byline for writing articles now. Sometimes I even write the front-page story. I also dash off publicity blurbs for Sisters in Crime: Heart of Texas chapter in the monthly newsletter to keep members informed about upcoming programs. I did some interviews years ago for Austin magazines, such as Third Coast and Tech-Connect. The one I liked the best was about the Austin Police K-9 unit for Third Coast. I rode around with Dave Koschel and his police dog, Zeus, from Alsace-Lorraine, who obeyed commands in German. I liked hanging out in the middle of the night in a police car or a vacant lot watching the canine officers train the dogs. That may mean I’m a strange person.

V.P. – Do you have a favorite writer or movie that inspires you?

GA-My favorite mystery writer is Ross Macdonald. In my opinion he wrote great literature in the form of noir private-eye fiction. I’m also a big fan of Jeffery Deaver, who is a master of twists and double twists in plots. His characters are compelling, such as Lincoln Rhyme, a brilliant criminalist who was paralyzed in an accident and now has to solve crimes using only his mind. He also has a lot of medical problems because of his condition and his love affair with police officer Amanda Sachs is complicated because both of them are in love, but both feel unworthy of each other. Rhyme feels he would be a burden to Sachs because of his physical impairments and Sachs feels Lincoln is out of her league because of his brilliance. So the books have a scary killer on the loose, scary crimes, Lincoln and Amanda are working to solve the case, plus Lincoln has medical vulnerabilities, Sachs has psychological hang ups, and they are in love but not always happy about it. And people keep trying to kill them. I love all the weaving in of these plot twists and turns.

V.P. -Do you have any hobbies besides writing?

GA-I’ve always been a little vague on what hobbies are. Do I knit and sew? No. Do I make miniature Civil War soldiers? No. I’ve always been an avid reader, but I don’t consider it a hobby, more like a necessity. I love to organize writing workshops, if that counts as a hobby. I like to attend writing workshops. I’m just a workshop junkie.

Thank you, Gale, for letting me interview you. I enjoy telling the world how interesting our members are!

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Three steps to research success

1. Surf the web

2. Contact an expert

3. On site visits

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