Lifescapes

New stuff

                                                             New book. I was one of the crowd yesterday at the launch party for Lone Star Sleuths--a big crowd, around 150 people, at the Alkek Library at Texas State University in San Marcos. Good Texas music, good food, and lots of people with books to sign. Lone Star Sleuths is an anthology of selections from the published work of mystery/crime writers, from Texas or writing about Texas. A piece of Rosemary Remembered is included, so China is now an "officially recognized" Texas sleuth. About 15 of the 30 authors were there. Good to see fellow writers Bill Crider and Mary Willis Walker, and many of the faculty from my former incarnation as a university administrator at TSU--called Southwest Texas, in my days there. The launch was held at the university because the anthology was hatched there (by editors Cunningham, Davis, and Newsom) and published by UT Press. Bill Crider and his wife took photos and posted a slide show on Flickr. If you couldn't come to the launch, you can see it here. Too bad, though: you missed the chippies and dippies.

Also new, at our house. A "roof-over" in blue steel panels, which meant that the roofers were tramping around overhead all day Thursday. We might have gone another few years without doing this, but last summer's torrential rains opened up a few seams, so it was a good idea to do it now. Of course, the last rain was in September, 2007, and it will probably never rain again. But just in case....

And best of all, a new uplink. I am now on satellite broadband. Yay! We've kept the dialup as a backup, but I can now load pics to this blog and surf around the Internet at a reasonable speed. One happy camper here. There are a few bugs to work out: can't get to my Google Desk Top Search via the satellite, have to go through the dialup. I'm learning, though, that there are some things that just never work exactly the way you want them to. You live with the work-around and stop whining. But if any of you have found a quick fix to this problem, please let me know.

Finished Wormwood (China Bayles #17) this week and will send it off to NY as soon as Bill has read it. Made several entries in the current journal project (An Extraordinary Year). Took Zach to the vet--his treatment for Cushings isn't going well, and we need to find an alternative. Fixed the fence and moved the cows and sheep to a new pasture. Pruned roses. Pruned more roses. Pruned still more roses.

And admired the daffodils.

Reading note: I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else . . . The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves--we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other's destiny.--Mary Oliver

Audio books and other thoughts

I lurk on a couple of mystery list-servs, just to see what people are saying about the mystery business. There've been a couple of interesting things lately, having to do with the growing availability of audio books through library downloads. I've followed this with interest, because when I was on tour, a reader told me that her library made the China Bayles books available as an MP-3 file for free download to her computer. (Check with your library to see whether that's available to you.)

But there seems to be a widespread misunderstanding out there about the way audio rights work. Recently, one person wrote something like this: "I wish more authors would let their books be recorded, because there are lots of times when I'd rather listen to a book than read it."

I agree. I love to listen to books, too, and a good reading brings out aspects of a book that even the author may not have understood. (I certainly feel this way when I listen to Virginia Leishman reading The Tale of Hill Top Farm.)

But the author usually has nothing to do with whether her/his book gets into audio. Either the publisher records the book (if the house has an audio division) or the publisher's sub-rights department sells the audio rights on behalf of the author--if they can. Many (most?) books are not deemed popular enough to warrant any audio recording. This has nothing to do with how "good" the book is--it's a bottom line, just-the-numbers-ma'am kind of decision that is made by the bean-counting department, rather than by editorial. I am sure that all authors would LOVE to have their books sell to the audio market, but it just isn't always possible. For instance: China Bayles and the Cottage Tales are available in audio, but the Robin Paige books that Bill and I used to write are not. The decision to record the book has nothing to do with quality, just quantity. Period. Paragraph. End of story.

Is this a bad thing? Well, probably. It's always sad when a good book goes unread or unheard or unwritten because the accountants are calling the shots. But we live in a market economy, and in the end, a book's success (or failure) is up to its readers. Readers vote with their dollars--and not on the used book market, either. (Used books don't get counted.) Vote for a good book by buying it, and that book is more likely to be available more widely (in large print, audio, film, and foreign translations) and will stay in print for a longer period of time. Don't vote, and the book will go away.

And yes, the bad sometimes drives out the good, doesn't it?

That's my rant for the morning. Here's something much, much prettier.

Reading note. If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves.--Don Marquis

Your book orders

Now that I'm home (more or less), I've started to work on the backlog of book orders for Story Circle (mostly Dagger, but also some Days and What Wildness.) I'm hoping to get these signed and shipped by early next week, before Thursday, when Bill and I head off to D.C. for the Malice Domestic conference. Toro (our blue heeler) has promised to help me sign your books and get them packed for shipping. (He also promises to keep his paws clean.) Our two black Labs (Lady and Zach) are not very good at volunteering, unless it's volunteering for Nap Time or Meals--they're promising nothing. But Bill has agreed to schlep your books to the post office, so we're all set.

Thanks to those of you who have waited so patiently. And if you haven't ordered your signed/personalized Dagger yet, now's the time and here's the place. The profit from your order supports the Story Circle Network.

I also wanted to share this yellow iris. Too gorgeous for words.

Cozy Library

In the fifteen years I've been writing mysteries for adults, I've seen a great many changes--not just in the books but in the book business. One of the things I've noticed has been the enormous growth in what are known as "cozies": mysteries that feature an amateur detective, are set in a domestic (often small town or rural) environment, usually do not involve "stranger crime" (that is, the villain is known to most of the characters) revolve around relationship issues, focus on characterization, tie up all the loose ends, and don't engage in a great deal of bloody violence, kinky sex, or bad words. Some cozies are edgier than others (China's mysteries, for example, don't always tie up the loose ends and the characters have been known to use bad words from time to time). But most cozies aren't especially "thrilling." They are . . . well, cozy. Comfortable. Friendly.

And now comes Cozy Library, a very fine website focussing on cozies, written and compiled by Diana Vickery. The website offers the usual reviews, author links, a super list of author blogs--lots of good stuff. But it's the monthly newsletter that has caught my attention, because it does not offer the usual stuff. Diana does the unexpected. In the October issue, there's a fascinating article about a start-up press that is re-publishing out-of-print mystery titles. The article is comprehensive, deeply researched, and very well written. The August issue featured one of the most informative essays on the mystery market that I have read lately, plus a short piece on "continuous partial attention" (with links to background reading) that taught me something important about the way I function. Like you, I get a lot of stuff in my mailbox, but I always take the time to dig into Diana Vickery's newsletter. It's always worth the effort. Thanks, Diana, for putting together something that dignifies and lends stature to a kind of mystery (the cozy) that is often thought of slightingly.

Yesterday, back to the writing, with pleasure--1500 words. Yesterday evening a cold front roared through, with high winds, lightning, and a possible tornado. It was a chance to go through our tornado drill again: getting the dogs and cats and ourselves to the shelter (not an easy thing!). But the worst of the storm missed us by a few miles, so all is well. Today, it's really feeling like fall, with gray skies and temps in the 50s. I'm off to Dallas to talk to a garden club. (I didn't post it, because the session isn't open to the public.) Saturday, back to the writing again, and looking forward to it.

Reading note: "You know, you don't always have a choice of what you're going to write. You're not a cow that can give cream with one udder and milk with another."--Bruce Duffy

how to read 2

Hey, they're here! Our FedEx guy came around noon, so yesterday was sign-and-pack day. This morning, Bill (bless him) toted 10 crates of books to the post office. Mark opened up our little post office a half-hour early, so other folks would have to wait while he processed the books. So the first big shipment is out of here. More in the works today. The weekend's coming, which will slow things down a bit, but by Monday, all the advance orders will be filled. Yippee! (You'd get a pic, but the camera's in-op.)

On the "how to read" Days issue from yesterday, here's another thought. When I wrote this book, I wanted to give it some continuities and patterns. If you'll look in the "Special Features" index on p. 383, you'll see these listed. There are entries on the 14 published mysteries (through Bleeding Hearts). There are 14 entries from my journal and from this blog. Pecan Springs is represented through the Myra Merryweather Herb Guild, and there are 9 pages on "Places To Go"--herb farms/ shops. There are 12 entries about the Celtic trees (yes, some herbs are trees!) and 12 on herbs that have been traditionally related to the zodiac. (Ruby helped with this stuff, of course.)

So another (and I hope interesting) way to read this book is to choose one of these special features and read those entries sequentially. That would certainly make sense with the tree months and the zodiac herbs. Try that and see what you think. There's also a recipe and a medicinal/craft index--hope you find that helpful.

Reading note. After ecstasy, the laundry.--Zen saying

how to read?

No books yesterday. Sigh.... I'm beginning to think this must be a conspiracy.

However, the online bookstores have been shipping, and a reader (Suzi) writes to ask about the best way to read China's Book of Days, which I thought was an interesting question. "From beginning to end?" she asks.  "Or is it ok to start with the current month/day?" Her question--which seems simple, on the face of it--isn't really simple at all. It started me thinking. I'm still thinking.

With my novels, I expect a reader to open the book, begin at the beginning, and read to the end. (In fact, I confess to being a little surprised, even annoyed, when a reader tells me that s/he reads the ending and then goes back to the beginning. I feel somehow that the reader has broken a rule, which is pretty silly of me.) This beginning-to-end business happens because narratives tell a story, and stories are always set in a temporal dimension. We experience time as moving forward--which doesn't mean that the story itself is straightforward, of course. Lots of stories do backflips and forward somersaults, and generally mess around with time. (One of my favorite novels is Faulkner's Absolom, Absolom!, which you can't understand until you've figured out the time of the telling and the time of the event being told.) Still, the general rule is: start at the beginning and read to the end. And since we're reading print in our Western culture, we're reading left to right, top to bottom. Even the pages are arranged so that we read the left-hand page before we read the right-hand page. (Don't know about you, but I always have the feeling that time, too, marches left to right. That's how strongly print has affected my brain!)

But of course, there are all sorts of books that have nothing to do with time. Cookbooks, for instance. Craft books. Catalogs, dictionaries, reference books. We still read them right to left, top to bottom, but we enter the book wherever we want or need to. To find what we're looking for, we use the index.

And then there are calendars, which are all about time. We go to them to see what day it is, what we're going to do that day, etc. Related to calendars are almanacs, which Wikipedia defines as a publication "containing information in a particular field or fields often arranged according to the calendar." If this is the kind of thing that turns you on, you'll find a history of the almanac here.

Strictly speaking, Days is a daybook, which is a personal almanac--an almanac that is organized by the writer's personal interests, but is not quite so personal (or private, or idiosyncratic) as a diary. You could write your own daybook. Lots of people have. I don't know when the first daybook was written--when people began to write, probably. There are published examples from the seventeenth century on.

(And here's something else for you to chew on: is a blog an online daybook? Think of all the themed blogs you know about, blogs about cooking, knitting, weather, and so on. Blogs are daybooks, maybe?)

Days is China's and my daybook. There is information about herbs, compiled from different authors, different sources, different cultures. There is stuff about China's life in Pecan Springs, entries about the mysteries, even entries from Lifescapes. And Suzi's question makes good sense. What's the best way to read this melange of material? Like a calendar, day by day? Like a story, from beginning to end?  Or are there other ways to get into this book?

I'm still thinking. I'll post something more about this tomorrow. In the meantime, maybe you have some thoughts on this question that you'd like to share. Feel free.

Reading note: I have herein communicated such Notions as I have gathered either from reading of several Authors, or by conferring sometimes with Scholars, and sometimes with Country people; To which I have added some Observations of mine own, never before published: Most of which I am confident are true, and if there be any that are not so, yet they are pleasant. —William Cole, The Art of Simpling, 1656

Madeline has them!

Madeline Wajda, at Willow Pond Farm (Fairfield PA), not only has the books, but has a gorgeous display to put them in! Thanks to Madeline for sending the photo. And yes, all that luscious lavender on display comes from Madeline's and Tom's great lavender fields, the site of the Pennsylvania Lavender Festival.

Yesterday afternoon, our FedEx guy brought four books. (That's right. Four books. Not forty, not four hundred. Just four.) Peggy and I think this must be a teaser, and that our cowboy with the big load will ride over the horizon today. (If this is obscure, see yesterday's post.)

Not a good day yesterday, all told. The books didn't come. Typepad was down for a while and I lost part of a post. My dandy digital camera got broken (we won't say how or who, although the finger of blame isn't pointing in my direction). The weather has turned off hot again, and the thermometer rises to 91. Worst of all, we have acquired a new computer, and you know what chaos that causes in a household. Tempers are short. Words are said. Anger flares. Little writing gets done (only 800 words yesterday, what with first one upset, then another).

However, chin up. Eyes forward. Fingers on the keyboard. We soldier on. Today will be better be better be better be.

Reading Note: When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.--Jorge Luis Borges

Another mystery

Okay, where are they?

Madeline Wajda, at Willow Pond Farm just emailed me to say that her copies of The Book of Days arrived and they're beautiful. Amazon and Barnes and Noble started shipping a couple of days ago, and the Georgetown bookstore just called to tell me that they have a big stack for me to sign.

So where are the books Peggy ordered? The publisher says they've been shipped (Friday) AND delivered (yesterday), but I promise you, they are not here. Were they rustled by book rustlers? (Anything is possible out here in the wilderness of the Hill Country.) Were they left (all 27 cartons of them) on the doorstep of a bewildered neighbor? (This has happened before.) Is the delivery person lost, wandering lorn and forlorn through the backroads of Burnet County? Where ARE the the books?

This reminds me of the time, ten years or so ago, when I ordered 32 cartons of books (I think it was Rosemary Remembered) and they were delivered in a cattle truck. No foolin'. There was still hay in the truck bed, and other indisputable evidence that it had recently been occupied by cows. The driver was a cowboy with boots and hat (although he wasn't wearing spurs). Bill and I still laugh about the time our books came via cowboy.

We hope they'll come today, so I can start signing/packing/shipping tonight. In the meantime, you can click on over to China's blog, where she has posted an interesting bit of news about another mystery connected to this book. (File this under Nothing Goes As Planned.)

I'm working on Nightshade, which is going great guns. I'm nearly half-way through the book, although I'm running into a few plot snarls between this book and the previous installment, Spanish Dagger. Luckily, Dagger is still at the copy-edit stage, so there's plenty of time for me to do the rewrites on that book that are necessitated by the what's happening in this book. These book-bridging plots can be tricky.

Cross your fingers that the books will turn up today!

Reading note (file this under Lessons Learned the Hard Way): There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.--W. Somerset Maugham

murder-free mysteries?

Does every mystery have to include a murder? I've just posted some reflections on this question on my Amazon blog.

Reading note. "There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred pages is far too much pother for a crime other than murder. After all, the reader's trouble and expenditure of energy must be rewarded."--S.S. Van Dine, creator of Philo Vance, 1928

more book talking

I live in books. I can't imagine going a day without reading pages in two or three books, often more. I try to finish a couple of books a week--but admit to dropping a book after 10 or 50 pages or whenever it stops holding my interest. When I was teaching, or when I was a student, I HAD to finish the book, whether I liked it or not. Now I don't have to finish a book, any more than I have to eat every bit of food on my plate. It's a simple and amazingly liberating rule!

The Story Circle Reading Circle met today, to talk about Ann Patchett's book, Truth and Beauty, a memoir of her friendship with Lucy Grealy, who wrote Autobiography of a Face, which we read the month before. If you don't know these books, the story (briefly) is that Lucy had almost half of her jaw cut away after suffering childhood cancer. She grew up to become a poet and writer of considerable promise, but died in her 30s of a heroine overdose. Ann Patchett (author of Bel Canto) was a close friend. Lucy's memoir tells the story of her many surgeries and her fierce desire to become a writer; Ann's memoir retells Lucy's story as it intersects with her own: two enormously provocative books that, read together, are much more significant than either alone. Together, the two books are a dual memoir about (among other things) the pain and hope and joy and despair of building a life as a writer.

What really interests me here is the way these two books overlap, contradict, expand, enlarge, redefine, and reimagine the nature of personal story and the moral issues that are raised when we tell (in this case, retell) another person's story, especially one that is so intimately entwined with our own. Ann shows us that Lucy was an incredibly needy, manipulative person, at the same time that she shows herself to be person who desperately needed to be needed, especially by Lucy, whose special magic was making Ann feel enormously special. What one friend lacked, the other supplied; while the friendship was in many ways dysfunctional, it was absolutely and unquestionably necessary to the survival of each, and to the triumph of each, as a writer.

In our reading circle, whoever chooses the book writes a reading guide and leads the group. This was my book, and I wrote the guide. (Last month's session on Lucy's book was led by Peggy Moody, who wrote the guide.) Both discussions were lively, insightful, energetic, sometimes even profound--but neither Peggy nor I "led" them: they just took off on their own, because every person in the group connected deeply with these two stories and had some significant light to shed on their complexities. I came away from both sessions feeling that this is exactly how important books are meant to be experienced: read and absorbed in private, discussed and shared together. I felt enormously privileged to be a part of the group. (And yes, this is certainly a plug for Story Circle!)

Reading note, from Truth & Beauty:

On this point Lucy and I were completely united. We had written in graduate school and had our small successes, but we were writing to impress our friends, our teachers, possibly ourselves. Now writing meant something else entirely. Without writing, Lucy was just another patient in the surgical ward, waiting for her tissue expander to fill with the saline and stretch out her skin. Without writing, I was another waitress like all the other waitresses in Nashville who were waiting for their big publishing deal.... We had each come to realize that no one was going to save our lives, and that if we wanted to save them ourselves, we only had one skill that afforded us any hope at all. Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon. In her hospital bed or in her lonesome room back at her flat, Lucy brought out the sentences she knew and twisted them into poems and chapters, the same way I stood in the kitchen every night at the end of my shift at Friday's and rolled 150 silverware packets, dreaming up characters with problems more beautiful and insurmountable than my own.