Eric Mayer

Two Mongolian Detectives

maywrite2@epix.net — Sun, 31 Aug 08 13:34:00 UT

During the nineties, Mary and I wrote four stories about Inspector Dorj, a detective in modern-day Mongolia. Three appeared back then in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and the fourth, more recently, in The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries.

Mongolia interests me for much the same reason sixth century Byzantium does. Both provide exotic settings but, more importantly, they are societies in transition, where past and future co-exist and continue to contend. The Eastern Roman Empire was a Christian society, built on the pagan foundation of ancient Rome. Mongolia is moving from communist rule to an elected government. In both societies contradictions abound. In Constantinople the Hippodrome -- the racetrack modeled on Rome's Circus Maximus -- sits practically next door to the Great Church built in veneration of the Christian God whose followers were slaughtered in Rome. Mongolians have democratically returned communists to power.

As is often the case old ways persist, particularly outside the cities. During the sixth century farmers might still, informally, have maintained a pagan shrine. In Mongolia herders are still moving their livestock as the season's change and living in the remarkable moveable round tents called yurts.

A decade or so ago, before we found ourselves writing Byzantine mysteries, Mary and I wanted to write a Dorj novel. In fact, we had the basic idea for a plot which would see the city bred, communist functionary, have to contend with the native Mongolian ways with which he was so uncomfortable. However, we sold One For Sorrow first and we have not had time to write even one Byzantine mystery a year, let alone anything else.

I doubt the Dorj book would have been written even if we'd had the time. When we penned our first story, The Obo Mystery, Mongolia was still, as far as we knew, a remote and little vivisted corner of the world. But we were writing before the Internet really got going. As soon as that happened it became apparent that Monglia had become an exciting destination for many adventurous travelers. Suddenly there was a huge amount of information on the country available.

I am not uncomfortable setting down my impressions of the sixth century Constantinople based on what I've read -- because no one alive has experienced the place first hand and my guess is as good as anyone's. But I am reluctant to present to readers a second-hand view of a place when there are plenty of first-hand views available. So you will have to live without the Dorj novel.

However, you will not have to live without a novel featuring a modern Mongolian detective! Mary and I just discovered the Nergui novels, a series of modern crime thrillers set in modern-day Mongolia. Author Michael Walters has first hand experience of the country.

Michael kindly mentioned our stories on his blog and rather than me saying more here please continue reading A Rival for Nergui.

How to Misplace a Pope

maywrite2@epix.net — Fri, 29 Aug 08 23:17:00 UT

While cruising around the Internet last Tuesday (August 26) I was stopped short by a note that on that day, thirty years ago, Pope John Paul I had been elected and embarked on a papacy that lasted a mere 33 days.

At first I thought it was a joke. At the end of the article the writer would say Pope John Paul I had been succeeded by Pope George Ringo. I had no recollection of a Pope who had reigned for little more than a month during my own lifetime, when I was in my twenties and reading the news. I was familiar with John Paul II of course. But a predecessor who shared the same two names? When I looked him up though, there he was.

Had I stumbled into some alternate reality? I am not a Catholic but, really, how do you misplace a Pope? Particularly one distinguished by such a short tenure. As a baseball fan I am drawn to records or near records, even futile ones. How about those 1962 Mets who lost an all time "best" 120 games? I was aware that Pope John Paul II was the second longest serving Pope, behind only the nineteenth century pontiff Pius IX, unless you count Saint Peter, but that was before they started keeping official statistics.

It seemed impossible I could have overlooked Pope John Paul I or forgotten him so thoroughly that a mention didn't spark some vague recollection.

Then I recalled what I had been doing in the late summer of 1978: moving to New York City to go to law school. What a thrilling and traumatic and terrifying few weeks that had been for an English major from the sticks. I probably hadn't looked at the television news or bought a newspaper during the whole time that Pope John Paul I reigned. If I had heard about him in passing it must not have made any impression what with the upheavals in my own life. I wonder if I missed anything else of interest during that hectic month?

I guess that even in our own lives, history is only what gets noticed.

Update

maywrite2@epix.net — Tue, 26 Aug 08 15:25:00 UT

It is past time for a little update. Mary and I have been trying to get some work done on the eighth Byzantine mystery. We're still near enough to the beginning of the book to make it tough sledding. There are still plenty of characters to be introduced (and invented) and background to be filled in. At some point books begin to move of their own accord, but we aren't quite there yet, at the top of the hill, from where we we can just toboggan down. (Since we haven't escaped the clutches of summer heat yet I am going for winter metaphors)

Mary has found time to contribute to The Rap Sheet's Friday feature, "The Book You Have to Read" with a review of Ethel Lina White's 1933 mystery Some Must Watch. During a stormy night, the residents of an isolated country house are menaced by a killer.

I've read the book myself and it is terrific -- exceedingly creepy, with a a surprisingly modern emphasis on psychology. It's also available on the web. A later novel by Lina White, The Wheel Spins, was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock as The Lady Vanishes. Read Mary's essay and see if she can convince you to read it as well.

Mary has also reviewed a Golden Age mystery The Scarab Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine for Steve Lewis' Mystery*File site. Steve has supplied some neat old covers and a map from one edition of the book.

As for me...well, just trying to get to the top of the hill with the mystery novel has been more than enough. But soon I'll be able to leap on my metaphorical literary sled and glide. Unless, there's a rock hidden in the snow, or I turn over in a rut. I hope I don't veer into the trees and can stop before I slide out into the busy street. Yes, I have enough to worry about without writing reviews.

Reconciling Fact and Fiction

maywrite2@epix.net — Fri, 15 Aug 08 14:17:00 UT

On his JournalScape blog Rambler posed some perceptive questions about One For Sorrow which got me thinking about the historical basis for our characters. I posted answers in his comments section and then, since the newsletter deadline was bearing down I decided to expand on my comments into an article.

This edition of The Orphan Scrivener also contains some news and a much more interesting essay by Mary about Sunday excursions to the windy shore of the North Sea when she was a youngster.

Mary and I do our best to stick to the known facts. We don't change the dates of events to fit our plots or decorate Constantinople with architecture that wasn't there at the time. At the beginning of the eighth book, which we've just begun, we were forced to remove a monument we wanted a character to see because, unfortunately, the monument -- which would have been a nice touch -- had yet to be erected.

Most of our characters are figments of our imaginings but even they are occasionally threatened by reality.

What about Thomas, we were asked, the knight from King Arthur's court who appears in One for Sorrow in search of the Holy Grail? Does he make any sense, historically? Probably not from an academic point of view since the knights of the round table legend seems to be a medieval literary creation. On the other hand, there is no reason why Wolfram Von Eschenbach's fictional Parsifal, or a character like him, should not meet up with our fictional Lord Chamberlain John.

We decided to include a knight in our story after being surprised to discover that if King Arthur were indeed a real person -- and there may have existed a powerful warlord around whom the legend sprung up -- he was a contemporary of Emperor Justinian. Since Constantinople and its many churches were awash in relics, such as the famous Virgin's girdle hauled out to protect the walls when the city was under attack, it struck us that it would be the first place in the world a questing knight with any sense would look. I'm not sure the grail legends have the knights looking for the grail or finding it in any locations that can be reliably linked to known geography. But they did travel a lot. One of the places associated with the grail -- the island of Sarras -- has been said to be in the vicinity of Egypt, even further from Britain than Constantinople. Then too, Mary and I are still not convinced that Thomas is really a knight rather than a fortune-hunting con artist. Or, he could actually hold the Roman knight's rank of eques and be prone to exaggeration.

Then there is the self-styled seer, Ahaseurus, who also plays a role in the first novel, and returns in the fifth. Does he have a foot in reality? Again, he is based on a legend of later vintage. Ahaseurus was one of many names given to the Wandering Jew, a man who supposedly mocked Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was subsequently condemned to walk the earth until the Second Coming. In some versions of the story he is identified with Joseph of Arimathea who, in certain variations of his own story, is a guardian of the grail. Those old legends serve up a smorgasbord of tempting possibilities for authors.

And like King Arthur, the Wandering Jew was not made up out of thin air. Some conjecture that the legend arises from Jesus's words in Matthew 16:28: "Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."(King James Version)

Anyway, Mary and I are agnostic on the question of whether our Ahaseurus really is a supernatural being or just a clever charlatan.

Finally, we were asked whether someone checking the history books would find that Justinian actually did have a Lord Chamberlain and he was, unfortunately, not named John the Eunuch. To which the answer is, yes. By 538, according to one scholar, Narses -- a eunuch like John -- served Justinian in the capacity of Lord Chamberlain, having held other high offices for several years.

The term Lord Chamberlain, or sometimes Grand Chamberlain, appears to be a rather loose translation by Victorian historians of the position called "praepositus sacri cubiculi" or more literally "person placed over the emperor's palace." (Somehow I can' see a books being subtitled "A Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi Mystery.") The title doesn't describe the actual duties, which apparently depended on the emperor's whim. Narses is best known to history, not for running the palace, but rather for his efforts on Justinian's behalf during the Nika riots, when the emperor was nearly overthrown, and for his command of the Byzantine armies in Italy. Although he was in his mid-seventies when given his generalship, he helped bring Rome back into the empire, albeit only temporarily.

Narses is an interesting character in his own right, but Mary and I are not fond of historical figures as detectives. We prefer to make up our own protagonists. But where does John fit in?

We reasoned that since Lord Chamberlain meant whatever Justinian wanted it to mean, he could also appoint more than one Lord Chamberlain. The Byzantine Emperor was not only an absolute dictator but even headed the church. The emperor stood at the pinnacle of society and all power flowed downward from him. Our Justinian answers to no one, aside from Mary and me who insisted he appoint a second Lord Chamberlain.

Aside from John once remarking that he prefers to stay in the background rather than being a public figure like Narses, Justinian's real Lord Chamberlain is barely noted in our books. This, however, is due to change since the eighth novel deals with the Nika riots and is more firmly rooted in specific historical events than the previous seven. Narses, unavoidably, will be a major character.

We are still in the process of figuring out in detail his relationship to John. When we do come up with an answer, we hope readers will agree that it doesn't do too much violence to historical fact.

The Yankees of Malfi

maywrite2@epix.net — Fri, 8 Aug 08 20:25:00 UT

Last night I had open in one tab in my browser John Webster's 1614 play The Duchess of Malfi and in another tab the boxscore to the Yankees' baseball game. In between betrayals and murders I clicked from Italy to Texas. Having taken a course in Elizabethan drama during a time much nearer to that era than today, I had a pretty good idea that the Duchess was not going to have an all singing all dancing finale while there is at least a possibility that the Yanks might avoid the tragedy of their first non-playoff season in fifteen years, though the foreshadowing hints strongly against it.

Mary had been reading Agatha Christie's Sleeping Murder and mentioned that at one point some of the characters see a performance of Webster's play, so naturally I was motivated to read the play rather than Christie's book.

Yankee starter Mike Mussina was throwing blanks at the Rangers, appropriately enough since I was reading blank verse. "Moose" as he's know might even have read some Webster himself, or Marlowe or certainly Shakespeare, since the pitcher holds a degree in economics from Stanford and apparently enjoys doing the Sunday New York Times crossword. Then again, he is nicknamed "Moose."

Just as the villainous Bosola dupes the Duchess into revealing her secret marriage, Alex Rodriguez struck out with a Yankee runner on third, fooled by the pitch. Although they still led 2-0 the Yankees had left themselves open for a loss. Luckily, their families and their happy liaison with Antonio were not in jeopardy.

As the game moved into the late innings, Ranger's slugger Josh Hamilton still presented a menace but at least leading hitter Milton Bradley was out of the lineup with an injury. Unfortunately neither of the Duchess' two evil brothers -- the Cardinal nor the Duke -- was sidelined, though the latter was clearly afflicted.

An inning after Michael Young's long fly died at the warning track to end the eighth the Duchess prepared to die young. The Yankees clung to the lead in the bottom of the ninth as the crazed, evil and lecherous Duke placed his hands around the neck of the Duchess. Manager Joe Girardi called on reliever Mariano River to choke off any Ranger rally.

"We are merely the stars' tennis balls, struck and bandied which way please them," Bosola says at the end of the play. It was up to Rivera to make sure opposing batters didn't strike and bandy any balls the way they pleased. For a moment I expected Mariano to stride into the room where the Duchess was imprisoned and sit the Duke down with a few nasty cutters which would have been quite in keeping with the rest of the play.

As it turned out Rivera dazzled the eyes of the hitters he faced. The Yankees won. The Duchess lost. Webster's play continued on its usual bloody course. Tonight both the Duchess and Yanks are at the Angels.

Still Around

maywrite2@epix.net — Sun, 3 Aug 08 19:16:00 UT

Yes, I'm still around. I've even been doing some writing but it hasn't found its way into this journal. If I were doing regular entries about writing here, they'd probably resemble the answers Mary and I gave to Kim Malo who interviewed us for MyShelf.com.

Kim asked some great questions. For example, she wondered if we could change places for a day with a character in the books, which one would it be? Read our interview to discover the awful truth.

Up on the Roof

maywrite2@epix.net — Tue, 15 Jul 08 19:55:00 UT

I spent most of the morning on the roof. No, I wasn't driven up there by thinking about the publishing industry. A few weeks ago Mary noticed a patch of wood where roofing should have been. I'd have fixed it sooner except for the incessant rain we've had. You have to appreciate the irony.

Hammering a few nails and brushing on cold patch is within my handyman abilities, just barely. Getting up on the sun porch roof is a bit more difficult. I don't like heights. Hate them, in fact. I probably fear being at any altitude above ground level more than I fear stinging insects. I'm sure I'd be giddy in high heels.

Also the roof isn't safe. Which is one of the few advantages of weighing 108 pounds. I can patch the rotted sun porch roof without falling through -- so far -- and I don't have to feel guilty about not giving blood because I don't weight enough to be a donor. Needles remind me too much of stinging insects, or is it vice versa?

Once I managed to pull myself up off the ladder onto the roof I wasn't too nervous. For the most part I stuck close to the house wall and reached to do the necessary repairs. There was still a narrow band of shade beside the wall while everything else was in blazing sunlight. Plus, I know the boards along the wall will still hold my weight. Or at least they did when I cleaned the gutters last fall.

The sun glared off the white coating of the new rolled roofing blindingly. After a few minutes my pupils must have contracted to the smallest aperture. When I looked up and out over the yard I might have been seeing the scene through sunglasses.

Every so often a small shadow flickered across the roofing. A flying insect! Was it armed with a hypodermic-like stinger? I resolutely refused to glance up. I didn't want to have to throw myself over the edge to escape. I also did my best not to think about the publishing industry since I was, uncharacteristically in a position to do something about it, at least from my own point of view.

The hardest part, aside from forcing myself to climb up in the first place, is getting down. I always feel like a cat up a tree, unwilling to risk the descent. There's no point trying to create suspense, though. Since I'm writing this you know how it came out. Now I suppose it won't rain until Christmas.

We're All Over

maywrite2@epix.net — Tue, 8 Jul 08 13:09:00 UT

You can tell it's July. We're drowning in humidity. Our cat, Sabrina. has abandoned her fuzzy commode seat on the bookshelf for a patch of bare wood floor.

I didn't do much celebrating over the Fourth of July weekend. Mostly I worked on a legal article. Being self-employed, I quite enjoy working when I would normally be off. It allows me to occasionally revel in goofing off when everyone else has to work. Not that it makes my hours any shorter. Now that the holiday is over maybe I should resume blogging.

But first, a word from our sponsors.

If you liked Mary's story about the parade, and if you enjoy mysteries -- particularly those of the Golden Age -- don't miss her review of The Abandoned Room by Wadsworth Camp at Steve Lewis' Mystery*File. Sf fans might be interested to know that Wadsworth Camp was the father of Madeleine LâEngle, author of A Wrinkle in Time!

If you enjoy science fiction you might want to check out our long interview in issue 153 of Mike Glyer's File 770. Mike has been covering science fiction publishing and fandom for more than thirty years and has eight Hugos for his efforts. If you have any interest in sf you're bound to find File 770 great reading, and never mind our bit. The zine is available in pdf format at eFanzines. Download issue 153.

We don't talk about sf, though. As usual we blab on about writing mystery novels. I expect Mike thought the interview might be of interest to his readership because Mary and I both started out writing for sf fanzines and have been involved in sf fandom both as writers and as publishers for a long time.

Even if you don't like mysteries or science fiction, you must enjoy eating. Who doesn't? So you'll want to read Christine Verstraete's Fatal Foodies blog. Well, OK, it is about mystery books featuring food. And in case you didn't guess there's bit devoted to the cuisine of 6th century Constantinople as featured in the books of someone or other.

Now back to our normally scheduled sweltering.

First Fourth

maywrite2@epix.net — Fri, 4 Jul 08 15:08:00 UT

[Here's another guest blog. Mary, who you may recognize as the co-author of our Byzantine mysteries, writes about her first Fourth of July after arriving here from the UK.]

On my first July 4th in this country I was living in a small township in Florida, one of a number forming a necklace strung out along Highway A1A to the south of Cape Canaveral, lying between the ocean and the Banana River. It was small enough so that by standing by its name sign -- necessary because one township merged into the next along the highway and there was no way to distinguish them otherwise -- a person with good eyesight could make out the name sign at the other end of town.

It was a parade in keeping with the town. It was led by the local mayor in an open car, waving to the crowds lining the short route, and a police car came next, followed by a fire engine. The occasional oooOOOooo of the police siren interspersed with the woot woot woot of the fire engine announced several pompom waving cheerleaders behind them. Virtually clones of each other with shapely tanned legs under short pleated skirts, they all seemed to be possessed of beautiful white teeth well displayed as they smiled, somersaulted, and strutted to cheers and whistles from the flag waving crowd. A drum majorette preceded them, twirling a baton and flinging it with wild abandon into the air, catching it one handed and yet somehow never dropping it.

Right behind the squad the high school band whose uniforms provided a bright splash of colour as they marched along playing a lively Sousa melody. The youthful players looked uncomfortable in the heat, but valiantly kept step, even unto the big bass drum player at the rear. A small group from the local VFW, one carrying the flag, followed and was greeted with roars of approval and more cheering, and then came a few flatbed lorries carrying displays created by local businessmen, from which candies or pennies or trinkets for the children in the front rank of spectators were thrown. And finally another police car came into view, escorting the end of the parade, adding a few oooOOOooos as it went past.

The crowd then dispersed to picnics and barbecues, to reassemble after darkness fell and the little municipality put on a fireworks display above the sea. Standing on the sand dunes, I could see several such shows up and down the coast, their multiple golden chrysanthemums and red and white star bursts lighting up the night sky and reflected in the water below.

When I stood in the crowd earlier that day I had thought, as I do now, it is these small town 4th of July parades that can best represent America to the world. A day celebrated with pride and featuring family gatherings and fireworks must surely strike a common chord of sympathy with those who live in other nations

--Mary Reed

Women in History (An interview)

maywrite2@epix.net — Thu, 3 Jul 08 08:37:00 UT

We have a new interview at Michelle Moran's History Buff. The blog focusses on women's lives in history. Among other things, we talk about Empress Theodora, who figures prominently in our Byzantine mysteries as John's arch-enemy -- a kind of female Joker to John's Batman.

Michelle knows something about women in history. She's the author of the historical novel Nefertiti which you can read about, along with her upcoming novel, The Heretic Queen, at Michelle's website.

Memories and History

maywrite2@epix.net — Fri, 27 Jun 08 13:58:00 UT

Here is another essay from a fellow Poisoned Pen Press author. Priscilla Royal is the author of Forsaken Soul, to be published in August. Her series is set in late 13th century England and her two sleuths -- Prioress Eleanor and Brother Thomas -- belong to the very real Order of Fontevraud, a double house of monks and nuns headed by a woman. This arrangement was most unusual for the time period but the Order was quite popular with English royalty. History buffs might like to know Eleanor of Acquitaine was buried in the mother house in Anjou and her grand-daughter-in-law, Eleanor of Provence, was buried in an English daughter house at Amesbury. Wiltshire. Forsaken Soul is the fifth entry in the series. Be sure to check Priscilla's website for more information on this and her other books. Meantime, today Priscilla explains how it was she came to write her highly-regarded historical mysteries.

Some months back, I went out for the morning paper, took a deep breath, and was transported to 1948, Winthrop WA, where the sharp autumn air was warmed with bacon-scented smoke from wood burning stoves. That was 60 years ago.

Yesterday, I remembered my mother telling me how her family gathered together after dinner in Getchell WA, now a ghost town. My grandmother played the beat-up piano, my grandfather a guitar, and they all sang tunes from the Civil War. That was 1908. That was 100 years ago.

These may be my memories, but everyone has them. They are our DNA. They are alive. They are also history.

Whenever anyone says history is boring, I do understand. Itâs become a date, some treaty, too many wars, and the names of people who are frozen in one act as if that is all they ever were. They werenâtâunless we think most of us are also defined by one brief episode in our own lives. Luckily, I came to love history because I learned it first as family stories. If people born in the early 1800s could be three-dimensional, it wasnât a big leap to realize the same was true of those 600, 1000, 3000 years ago.

That is why I came to write historical fiction.

Prioress Eleanor and Brother Thomas like to remind me that they may never have existed but they speak for those who did. The pair are passionate, grieved, thoughtful, both right and wrong in their actions, and they enjoy music or a shimmering drop of water on a rose petal. They spoke a language in the late thirteenth century even Chaucer would need translated, their knowledge of medicine is often primitive, and the symbols they use to define their world are as colored by the beliefs of their era as our own. Yet they also love to demonstrate that people did come to conclusions we would consider âenlightened and modernâ, even if their manner of expressing the ideas is archaic. Not all of their medical practices were as barbaric as we have assumed either, and, yes, they were much cleaner than we often imagine.

As an author of historical mysteries, I may have the right to make their speech comprehensible, but both would rebel if I tried to make them no different than guests at a 2008 costume party. They reserve the right to surprise me with their insights (just as the primary sources of the era often do), but they also remind me that they must prevail if I disagree with their viewpoints or ways of coping with their very human difficulties. Sometimes Iâm more like a playwright, faced with actors who differ on elements of a character, and have learned it is often wiser to listen to those who must give muscles and nerves to dialogue written on thin paper. My books may be whodunits, but there is no mystery about who ultimately wins these arguments: Prioress Eleanor and Brother Thomas.

So, like any family, my characters and I may fight and snip, but we love each other. As any flesh and blood ancestors do, they have their stories to tell, and I happily record them. And like people in the tales my mother told, they reach out with a warm touch and remind me that history is, after all, still about kinâjust a bit farther back in the past than my limited memory.

--Priscilla Royal

How Cozy

maywrite2@epix.net — Thu, 26 Jun 08 11:31:00 UT

Mary has written an essay, In Praise of Golden Age Mysteries , for The Cozy Library. She points out that many of the mysteries written in the early part of the last century would today be classified as "cozies."

I suppose I lean toward cozies myself. True, I enjoy Mickey Spillane, but, really, the books are so over the top as to be part of some alternate reality in which Mike Hammer's actions seem almost sane and reasonable. They remind me of Robert E. Howard's Conan fantasies which I also find entertaining.

Then there's Travis McGee. He does encounter a fair degree of nastiness in his salvage business, but, the house boat he lives on -- the Busted Flush -- is kind of cozy. And his sidekick, Meyer, isn't a psychopathic killer. He's big cuddly teddy bear of an economist.

I tend to classify as "cozy" mysteries that don't feature graphic, realistic violence. Violence is much overdone today. Perhaps, in part, because it is so easy. The most inept writer in the world can elicit an emotional response in a reader by describing, say, the dismemberment of a baby. Big deal. You can get an emotional response out of someone by punching them in the face too. But, let's face it, the tough guys writing violent noir are just sitting in their suburban homes punching their keyboards.

The Byzantine mysteries Mary and I write deal with some dark themes and feature a certain degree of violence. We've had books take place during a plague, stylites incinerated atop their pillars and holy fools dancing with the dead. But we try not to get overly graphic. The violence we depict is usually that which arises unavoidably from the story. It is not there to be enjoyed for its own sake.

I'm not sure how you would classify the kind of mysteries I prefer or the ones we write. How about "cozy noir"?

Dark and Stormy Beginnings

maywrite2@epix.net — Sat, 21 Jun 08 23:26:00 UT

A new issue of The Orphan Scrivener newsletter is now online. As usual there is just about enough news for us to call it a "newsletter." Mary writes most interestingly about what one can deduce from an old pair of shoes. As for me, I blather about writing, and in case that might deter you from taking a look...too late...here's my bit...

Dark and Stormy Beginnings

For the past week Mary and I have tried to get a little writing done while we sweltered in 90 degree temperatures and watched bright red thunderstorms brush past us on the National Weather Service radar. Aside from a handful of half-inch bits of ice which quickly turned to droplets on the sun porch roof, the storms let us alone. The power stayed on and we suffered only from heat and distraction, which was bad enough.

I was reminded of Elmore Leonard's silly first rule of his Ten Rules of Writing -- "Never open a book with weather."

What? Never open a book by mentioning the element we're all swimming in? Weather affects how we feel physically and can color our outlook too. Of course, reading what I write, someone might suppose I was a frustrated meteorologist. There's a weather report every other page of our books and if it's not already teeming, rain is in the forecast. My Constantinople tends to be a dark and stormy place.

No doubt what I write reflects my personal preoccupation with the state of the atmosphere. I tend to be very aware of the weather. It affects my moods and changes my perceptions. The world of a cold winter morning is a far different place than that of a humid summer afternoon, and certainly important enough to mention at the start of a book.

Or is that just me? What about other writers? I opened up some books close to hand at random. Here are some first lines I came across in a few minutes:

"On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge." -- Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

"To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth." ---John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

"The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting." -- Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage

Well, okay, so what do all those old time writers know? How about someone newer:

"A big noisy wind out of the northeast, full of a February chill, herded the tourists off the afternoon beach, driving them to cover, complaining bitterly." -- John D. MacDonald, The Quick Red Fox

Glancing through Travis McGee books it struck me that every other one began with a reference to the weather. How about something totally different, though -- a fantasy written recently:

"Thunderstorms were common in Sarantium on midsummer nights..."-- Guy Gavriel Kay, Sailing to Sarantium

See, someone else thinks thunderstorms are important.

To be fair, as soon as Leonard stated his rule he admitted he was blowing hot air. "Never open a book with weather," he said. "If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want."

Don't start with the weather unless it has to do with the story or you can write brilliantly enough to get away with it. That's probably good advice, generally, but it applies to anything. Not just to weather. And besides, I still think most of the writers I quoted broke Leonard's rule because most of those first lines strike me as being mainly for the sake of atmosphere.

My rules of writing are more concise than Elmore Leonard's:

Rule 1 -- There are no rules.

Oh, and let's not forget that Mike Hammer makes his first appearance coming through a doorway and shaking rain off his hat.

I could use some rain on my hat right now. The office is stuffy. Hot weather makes me curt and cranky. Not that I ought to write about it.

If I'd known then...

maywrite2@epix.net — Sun, 15 Jun 08 14:46:00 UT

[Today I have a guest blogger, fellow Poisoned Pen Press author Jane Finnis. Like Mary and me, Jane writes Roman historical mysteries. Her first century Aurelia Marcella series is set in the province of Britannia right on the edge of the Roman Empire. Buried Too Deep, the sequel to Aurelia's earlier adventures Get Out Or Die and A Bitter Chill, was published this month, see Jane's website. Jane lives not far from the Yorkshire coast, and recently traveled south for an appearance in Cambridge, where a most interesting question was posed to her. Here she ponders further upon it.... ]

If I'd known then...

I've been travelling this week. June is a lovely time to be gadding about in England - trees and hedges in wonderful green leaf and blossom; gardens a blaze of flowers; weather - well, OK, this is England, so you can't guarantee wall-to-wall sunshine, but as it happened I had sunny days for most of my journeyings. Beautiful.

Of course I wasn't wandering about merely to admire the scenery. That was a bonus. My third Aurelia Marcella mystery, BURIED TOO DEEP, is just out, and I wanted to tell the world about it...well if not the entire planet, at least the mystery lovers who went to the CrimeFest convention in the western port city of Bristol, and then the folk who two days later gathered at Heffers bookshop, in the ancient university town of Cambridge, in eastern England.

Whenever I meet mystery readers, I'm always prepared for a bombardment of questions about my work. "Where do you get your ideas from?" is one of the staples. "Why do you write about Roman Britain?" is another. (One of our small relatives, now grown up so I won't embarrass her by giving a name, once asked me, "Do you write about Roman Britain because you can remember what it was like?")

At Heffers bookshop, the questions were good. There were just two of us fielding them, both published by Poisoned Pen Press; Laurie R King, and yours truly. I was delighted to be appearing with Laurie; she's a prolific and popular mystery writer, besides being entertaining company. The queries were put to start with by Richard Reynolds, who's in charge of crime and mystery at Heffers - books, I mean, in case anyone was thinking it didn't sound a very safe place to visit. I must stop using this kind of bookish shorthand - I sometimes find myself saying things like "I went to a great crime evening on Tuesday," and wondering too late what passers-by must make of it.

Richard posed several deliciously challenging questions, and his very first was something I'd never been asked before: "Can you pick out one thing which you didn't know about being a published author until you became one, and which has surprised you?"

Yes, I can. I never realised just how much we authors are expected to be involved in the marketing of our books, even when we're very new and unknown. Of course I knew that best-selling authors gave press interviews and appeared on tv and radio, and signed copies of their books at bookshops, and sometimes even gave talks. But I thought that only happened once they had become best-sellers.

Not so, I learned. We are all roped in to the selling game, from our first novel onwards; in fact it's a necessary rite of passage to becoming a best-seller. I don't know if I'll ever achieve that exalted status, but I sure as eggs won't achieve it if I don't help with the marketing as best I can.

The traditional image has the writer beavering away in solitary state in her/his study, garret, or shed, writing and re-writing the MS till author and publisher are happy. That's true as far as it goes. But I'd assumed, like most readers, that I'd hand over the finished book to my publisher and say, "OK, that's my bit done - now you go ahead and sell it." That isn't how it works at all. Perhaps it never was. But in this market-oriented age, we're all expected to do our bit to help our books sell.

Authors have different ways of doing this, of course. Whether it's going to conferences, signing copies in shops, speaking to readers' groups, organising an interesting website, running a lively blog, circulating newsletters to keep readers up-to-date...the important thing is to be in touch with readers, so they don't forget that choosing and buying a book is a far more rewarding experience than choosing and buying a can of beans.

As I said at Heffers, all this came as a surprise to me. And Richard was too tactful to ask a follow-up question which I, as a one-time BBC radio interviewer, might have lobbed in for good measure. If I'd known then what I know now about marketing, would it have put me off wanting to be published?

Of course not! I write because I want to, and I want people to read my books, and if that means I get to help put the word about, it's fine by me. I enjoy the chance to make contact with my readers or potential readers, face-to-face when I can, or through the wonders of the Internet. And I reflect on this: the out-dated picture of the author cocooned in her solitary garret has one major drawback - solitary can equate with lonely. Many authors in bygone days used to complain that theirs was a lonely craft. Nowadays, it isn't.

Authors in the 21st century may have a more strenuous writing life than their predecessors did; but there's no doubt in my mind that it's a more interesting life too.

--Jane Finnis

Trees in the Middle

maywrite2@epix.net — Tue, 10 Jun 08 21:31:00 UT

Just after the sun dropped behind the mountain across the way, after the storms passed, a pale golden light suffused the air, turning the pink blossoms of the ornamental dogwood in the front yard a vivid rose against the dark leaves.

I'm happy to see the dogwood blossoming again. Last year, for the first time in the seven years we've been here, it failed to display a single flower. I was worried I had trimmed it back too far during the previous autumn. But, then, the tree put on its most spectacular show after I'd trimmed it back for the first time, and even more severely.

It's necessary for me to trim the tree because the previous owner planted it squarely in line with the front window. It may be a miniature but it would quickly obliterate our view if left untended. The tree is taller than I am even in its pruned state.

People will insist on planting trees in inappropriate places. The red maple smack in the middle of the postage stamp sized lawn of our house in Rochester New York probably looked cute there as a sapling, but it was already getting too big when we moved in. By now I imagine the limbs are scraping the roof while the roots strangle the storm drain.

We all know that trees grow over the course of time. Maybe we just never reckon on time moving as fast as it does. That year when the tree will be far too large for where we've put it seems too distant to ever arrive.

But at least the dogwood is back in bloom. In a week or so the pink flowers will fade to white before vanishing for another year. Sometime in the autumn I'll probably have to do more pruning but that's a long way off.