December and Time

by Julia Buckley
Forty-five years ago this month my mother gave birth to me. There we are--my mother a glamorous 1960s gal, and me a little bundle in footy pajamas. (Yes, my mother dressed up around the house. Look at those stockings! I wonder if my children will reminisce about my sweats? Or on special occasions, sweats with a racing stripe?)

I was my mother's fifth and last child. My siblings suggest that I was babied all my life, although I never felt that I was. (That will have to be a whole other post--birth order and psychology, or some such thing).

I can't say that babyhood feels like just yesterday. Yet it also feels odd to be an almost 45-year-old person, simply because when you're twenty and thirty, you never think you'll be 45. A similar illusion to thinking you'll never die, I suppose.

30 years after I was born, on this very day in December, I had my first child. As you can see, he was a sweet little fellow, and he still is, under the standard teen veneer of sarcasm and know-it-allness. I asked him how he would like to celebrate his 15th birthday. He is already immersed in one of his early presents: a mini laptop--a no-frills affair that his mom got on sale--which will probably now become the center of his universe. He shrugged and said that he'd like a couple more things to open, and he'd like to go out for dinner. This I can handle. Yet it seems there should be something more to herald this occasion--trumpets or fireworks or something. My baby is fifteen, and before I know it he'll be in college.

I remember my mother having similar moments of prescience. I would catch her, back when I was in high school, watching me as I ate my bowl of cereal, or studying me when I overslept in the morning. "What?" I'd say irritably.

"You look like an angel when you sleep," she'd say.

"Yuck. I drool, and my mouth hangs open."

My mother would sigh, (as I sigh now when my son claims that everything is boring or dumb. "Boring as balls," is his favorite simile, but apparently balls are metaphorically flexible, because his last English test was "as easy as balls." Whatever that means. Mostly he just wants to say "balls.")

"You used to be such a sunshiney person," she would say. What she didn't say was that she hadn't recovered from me hitting the teen years and becoming Dorothy Parker overnight.

"I'm still sunshiney," I told her. "Underneath."

We made it through the teen years, my mother and I, and she considers me sunshiney once again. Now our biggest problem is distance, and her yearning for the time when her children were all around her. I can already feel the pangs of that future fate. It's not so evident yet, except in my son's growing social life--his private phone calls and his not-so-subtle clicking out of Facebook if I happen to wander into the room. (Not that I can't see what he was typing--I am his Facebook friend, after all). :)

Every December brings a revelation--my son becomes a year older, I become a year older, and we move farther and farther from my mother's youth, my youth, the snows of yesteryear. I love December for the celebrations it brings, but December is a reminder, as well, of time's relentless passage.

Still, it is beautiful to me, because it binds my son and me together--the month of our birthdays, always 30 years apart. It will be easy for him to remember no matter what age I am, I tell him. Easy as balls. :)

Happy Birthday to my son Ian, and Merry Christmas to you all!

My Take on a 10 Best Mysteries List

Keith here.

Best 10 lists are proliferating everywhere. So I am humbly offering mine. But I’m not restricting myself to 2009. These are my ten favorite mysteries of all time. One caveat: I have not included any books published in the last decade. To get on my favorite list a novel has to age like a good cabernet. Feel free to comment with or without insults aimed at my taste and intelligence. The books are listed in chronological order. They are all still in print. Happy holidays!

The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett, 1930: The ur-text of all modern detective fiction. Sam Spade, the main character, might appear to have questionable ethics, but when it comes to justice, he always does the right thing. I’ve heard the story that John Huston got a first draft of his movie screenplay by having his secretary type all the dialogue out of the book while he went out drinking.

Murder Must Advertise, Dorothy Sayers, 1933: What a romp! A duke’s younger brother, always ready with a quip, infiltrates an ad agency – under the alias of Death Bredon! – to find a murderer. Sayers knew her way around interwar advertising. Funnily enough, Sayers herself disliked the novel.

Farewell, My Lovely, Raymond Chandler, 1940: Others will chose The Big Sleep or The Long Goodbye, but for me this is the one where Chandler hit his stride. The characters of Moose Malloy (“He was a big man, but not much more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck.”) and Velma Valento (“A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.”) were never bettered. And Philip Marlowe’s knowing cynicism infuses the book. (“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”)

The Drowning Pool, Ross Macdonald, 1950: Like Chandler, Macdonald hit his stride in the second book in a long-running series. Who better than Southern California’s Lew Archer to delve into a rich family’s secrets and found how they lead to murder?

Time and Again, Jack Finney, 1970: Simon Morley has a mystery to solve in 1882 New York City. One problem: he lives in 1969. How he gets there and what he finds out is compelling reading. The best book ever for Manhattan-philes.

Briarpatch, Ross Thomas, 1984: I myself write books about ordinary people thrown into extraordinary circumstances. There’s no better example of the genre than this one. Benjamin Dill is just a dull guy until he gets the call that his homicide detective sister is murdered. Tracking down what happens changes him profoundly in a way that even scares the woman who loves him.

Devil in a Blue Dress, Walter Mosley, 1990: I’m not sure anyone has ever recreated a place long gone better than Mosley in this book. You feel you’re right there with Easy Rawlins in post-war African-American LA.

Booked to Die, John Dunning, 1992: How can you go wrong with a hero who’s both a book collector and a cop? There's a murder and a beautiful widow. The ending haunts me still.

The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Laurie King, 1994: What if a 15-year old girl ran into the retired Sherlock Holmes beekeeping on the Sussex Downs? What if she were his intellectual equal? A tour de force.

River of Darkness, Rennie Airth, 1999: I’m no fan of serial killer mysteries, but this one about a psychopath and the quiet, decent cop who tracks him down is about as good as it gets. Airth brings the violence of the World War I battlefield home to a quiet English village.

Inkspot News - December 19, 2009

Patricia Ruocco of the Lisle Library in Illinois has created a (wonderful) Death of a Cozy Writer page at Murder Among Friends - complete with maps, photos of bedsits and King's College Chapel, links to Agatha Christie's Greenway, etc. An illustrated Cozy Writer, in other words. Thank you, Patricia, and may you have a wonderful holiday!

I'm a fan of Mystery Scene Magazine

Yes, I'm a fan of Mystery Scene Magazine and have been subscribing for years. For me, its the best way to keep my finger on the pulse of the mystery publishing business and community, and I'm happy to report that the patient is "not dead yet." Far from it! New publishers, new imprints, new series, and new authors spring up all the time, and Mystery Scene is where I often read about them first. When the magazine arrives in the mail, I immediately sit down and read it cover-to-cover.

The latest issue, Number 112, 2009, is no exception. First is the wonderful in-depth article on cover model Sara Paretsky, and her protagonist, V.I. Warshawski. I've admired Sara since joining Sisters in Crime and learning that she was the founder of this worldwide organization to support women crime writers, which earned her Ms. Magazine’s 1987 Woman of the Year award. Modern-day women crime writers like myself can now walk blithely through the doors that pioneers like Sara pounded open for us.

After the cover article, I usually go to the book reviews to find out which books I should add to my growing to-read list. I'm especially heartened that books from my three favorite mystery publishers (two of which publish my books) are often included and well-reviewed in the pages of Mystery Scene: Five Star, Poisoned Pen Press, and Inkspot's own Midnight Ink. It's wonderful that books from mid-sized presses like these, and even smaller presses, are given the same attention by Mystery Scene's reviewers as those from the big New York presses.

Next, I go to the New Books section to read entertaining, and often funny, articles by authors about their new book releases. The articles give behind-the-scenes glimpses into authors' lives, the research we do, how we develop our characters and plot ideas, and early influences in our childhoods that led us into becoming so fascinated with reading and writing mystery books. I've been very lucky that Mystery Scene has accepted two of my own New Books essays, one each for my two Claire Hanover gift basket designer mystery books, A Real Basket Case and To Hell in a Handbasket. Probably because I'm such a eager reader of these essays, I know what the editors are looking for.

And let me digress and praise the editors, Kate Stine and Brian Skupin, for all they do for the mystery community. I, and many others, always look forward to the New Author Breakfasts and Speed-dating Sessions that Kate and Brian host at mystery conferences to acquaint attendees with new talent in the field.

Finally, this latest issue of Mystery Scene has two very special feature articles. First was the "Mystery Lover's Gift Guide" by Kevin Burton Smith. I can tell you that quite a few of his suggestions made it onto MY gift list! And last but certainly not least was Lawrence Block's debut column, "The Murders in Memory Lane". What a fascinating story he had to tell about where a particular book title came from! I'm really looking forward to future columns by him.

The only thing that I don't find in the pages of Mystery Scene to satisfy my cravings for all things mystery is short fiction. I'm a huge fan of the mystery short story form, am a member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and have even written and published a few of my own mystery short stories. I've decided that to satisfy my craving for short mystery fiction, I should subscribe to another mystery magazine that features at least one short story a month.

So, here's a challenge to Inkspot readers. What other mystery-related magazine do you read and recommend (and tell me why you like the magazine so much)? I want to put one that includes short mystery fiction on my Christmas gift idea list that I'm giving my husband. Which one do you think he should subscribe to for me? I'll go with whichever magazine gets the most votes.

Let the voting begin!

What Makes a Bestseller?

I took a class “How to Write a Bestseller” a few years ago. The instructor had never written a bestseller, but he’d read and analyzed a whole bunch to determine what they had in common. He planned to write his own novel titled—you guessed it—How to Write a Bestseller.

I haven’t seen his book or even his name in print since. Maybe I’m just not looking in the right places. But I like to think everyone has a little genius in them, and some of the things he said bear repeating. In fact, he may have been repeating the genius of others. I may, therefore, be guilty of the same.

Here’s the “How To” rules I remember:

*The opening chapter lets the reader know immediately where the story is headed.
*The stakes start high and escalate.
*The setting takes us somewhere extraordinary.
*The conflicts are layered.
*The characters are complex with unique voices.
*Two named characters dominate each scene.
*Tension leaps off every page.
*Every chapter ends with an irresistible cliffhanger.
*The story affirms the reader’s values and beliefs.
*The writing is concise, utilizing an economy of words.
*Dialog is more prevalent than narrative or description.
*The writer believes the reader is intelligent (hence no need for a lot of back story or explanations).
*Framing is used within the story.
*Bestsellers start with a “high concept.”

The last bestseller I read was Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts. Although the book is from 1995, my book club just selected it for our upcoming meeting. Oprah picked this novel for her book club in 1998. Its film release followed in 2000 although the film rights sold in 1995 (I saw the movie years ago, too—love Natalie Portman). Don’t ask me if Oprah propelled the book onto the bestseller list, because I don’t know for sure. But I don’t think so. She most likely sent it into the stratosphere.

For those of you who don’t know the story, a pregnant seventeen-year-old, Novalee Nation, takes up residence in a Wal-Mart after her boyfriend abandons her there during their move across the country. I won’t bore you with the analysis, but I could check off almost every item on the list after reading the book. In fact, the book was so good, for while I thought it might have been a true story (because, of course, truth is stranger than fiction).

Now I haven’t written a bestseller yet, but I have to admit when I analyze my work, I can’t check off all these items on the list either. I do think about this list when I write, when I read, and when I watch movies, wondering if a bestselling formula really exists.

So, what rules do you keep in mind when you’re writing? And when you think about the bestsellers you’ve read—or viewed on screen—what would you add or subtract from this list?

Tacky Light Tours

In our neck of the woods, one can rent a stretch limo and view the best light displays in town. With a television displaying crackling fire and an endless supply of hot chocolate, one could have a three-hour tour for right around $400.

I decided to take the cheap route. I printed a map of the best light displays from

http://www.tackylighttour.com, loaded my kids in the car, and turned the radio to a local station playing Christmas music all day long until December 25^th.

Most of the houses were fun to look at, but nothing took my breath away until we arrived at our last stop – a mother-son team who had more than 500,000 lights strung between their neighboring houses. The son, who begins hanging lights in September, has some displays (like this traffic signal tree) that I’ve never seen before.

My kids and I got out of the car and walked around, giddy and giggling. Dozens of other families were there and everyone was smiling and pointing at one wonder after another. In that moment, we were all little kids. It was truly magical.

Do you have a tacky light house near you? Do you love them or hate them?

Drunk Writers, by Jess Lourey

Keith Raffel, acclaimed writer of Smasher, is famous for his love of green tea. He’ll be the first to tell you he has a multi-cup habit, and as I type and drink my red wine, I wonder if “green tea” is a euphemism for something a bit edgier. (Sorry, Keith. It’s all those undergrad psych classes catching up with me. Or the red wine.)

The myth of the drunk writer is long and storied (ha! storied): Truman Capote, while writing In Cold Blood, got so drunk one night that he fell on the pavement, chipping his teeth and smashing his head open. Jack London tied his first one on at age five. Hemingway swigged tea and gin for breakfast and absinthe for lunch. And don’t forget Edgar Allen Poe, Steinbeck, Lowry, Faulkner, O'Neill , Parker, and Sinclair Lewis.

Are these stories aberrations? Not according to the American Journal of Psychiatry, which in a study found that 30 percent of writers were alcoholics, compared with 7 percent in the comparison group of nonwriters. The author of Alcohol and the Writer discovered that after bartenders, more writers die of cirrhosis of the liver than people in any other occupation (but maybe he was drinking when he wrote that).

So what gives? Is Freud correct in his assertion that creativity is a response to emotional pain, and artists are simply suffering more than the average folk? Or is it the necessarily lonesome life of the writer that makes us more likely to self-medicate?

I’d like input on this from both drinking and non-drinking writers. And for the record, I have a hard time remembering to blink both eyes simultaneously after a couple glasses of red, forget writing a novel.