Lea Wait's Blog, page 300

Want a Scary Day Job?

Vicki Doudera here.  I’m traveling this week and so am recycling a column from three years ago about my double life.  Enjoy!

Last week I was telling a woman about my murder mystery series, and she shivered and asked me how I slept at night after imagining such spooky scenarios. The truth of it is, penning fiction at my comfy desk with the wood stove crackling away isn’t frightening – not like my “day” job, the profession I entered nine years ago as a way to counter the isolation imposed by writing.

I’m an agent. Not a secret agent, special agent, double agent, or FBI agent… I’m a real estate agent.  Not creepy enough for you?  Just read on.

Take the obvious first: safety. There don’t appear to be any real solid statistics on the number of agents who fall victim to murder, rape, assault, or robbery, but practicing real estate almost by definition puts us in potentially hazardous situations. Agents often meet customers for the first time in front of a vacant house, or drive or ride with them to an appointment. It is not uncommon for an agent to be alone in the office late at night, finalizing an offer or catching up on paperwork, and some agents still go door to door “prospecting,” or looking for listings.

My second Darby mystery, KILLER LISTING, begins with the murder of a real estate agent at her own open house. Sadly, this scenario isn’t wholly fictitious. The real-life murder in 2006 of Sarah Ann Walker in McKinney, Texas, was definitely in my mind while I was writing. Ms. Walker was presiding over an open house at a new housing development when she was stabbed 27 times. More recently, real estate agent Ashley Okland was shot to death last April while holding an open house in West Des Moines, Iowa. No arrests have been made in the case.

I try to take precautions when I meet a stranger at a property, either bringing along another agent or my big and bearded husband. (I used to take my chocolate lab, but now that my canine companion is a toy spaniel, that option’s out.) I lock the office door if I’m alone at night and try not to share too much personal information on-line. My series protagonist, Darby Farr, is even better. She carries pepper spray and knows Aikido. Like me, she’s had some frightening experiences while on the job.

I once worked with a white-haired, elderly man who turned out to be a very capable con artist with a rap sheet as long as your arm; I spent months emailing back and forth with an eager Japanese doctor later revealed as a total fake; and showed the listing of a man further up the coast who subsequently threw his wife in a dumpster. (She survived. Let’s hope they divorced.) I’ve encountered sellers who hoard garbage and others who hoard cats. I’ve been asked to give a value for a customer’s dazzling waterfront estate and then seen his photo in the paper a month later as he’s led off to prison for scamming millions of dollars from investors in his phony insurance company.

I’ve known desperate sellers, greedy buyers, and agents who are both.

Houses themselves can be creepy. Some are soul-less shells; others so scarily organized they scream Stepford. One of my listings contained a hidden “Armageddon Room” stocked with provisions for the end of the world; another, a basement brimming with porn.  Some places are stigmatized properties, where murders, suicides, or other tragedies have occurred. A few contain strange odors, dead vermin, or unidentifiable suspicious stains. I once kicked something in a garage drain that looked like a miniature “Creature from the Black Lagoon” yet managed to continue flawlessly with my spiel describing the house.

There are frightening house-eating fungi that lurk out of sight, such as poria incrassata, a mold that lives in dank cavities and makes mummified skin out of studs. There are blatant examples of greed unearthed in old deeds, a scenario I wrote about in A HOUSE TO DIE FOR. There are so-called “spite” wells that are placed near property lines to prevent someone else from building. The list goes on and on.

One of the oddest things to cross my path happened only a few months ago at a new listing our office viewed. The owner, a kindly man in his 70’s, showed us the snapping turtle he’s tended for 37 years in a plastic kiddie pool in his basement. He’s periodically provided his “pet” with other turtle playmates, but, he told us with a wink, they always end up eaten.

Despite the inherent dangers, stress, and the ever-shifting housing market, I enjoy real estate. The money I earn allows me to splurge on writing conferences; the hours give me flexibility to write; and the camaraderie keeps me sane and connected. I’ve found that I use my time more efficiently when I’m busy, and I enjoy transitioning from my public persona as Realtor to private role as author, and vice versa. Even with the oddballs, I have many, many delightful clients.

Real estate is my current profession, while writing is my career. I feel very fortunate that the two overlap in the Darby Farr Mystery Series, and that I’m able to put the wackiest of situations (watch for that turtle…) to good use.

Weekend Update: January 24-25, 2015

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Vicki Doudera (Monday), Barb Ross (Tuesday), Vaughn Hardacker (Wednesday), and Kate Flora (Friday) with a special guest on Thursday.

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

Lea Wait:  Saturday January 24 at 10:30 a.m. Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett and I will be talking about mysteries at the Ellsworth Library on State Street in Ellsworth, Maine. We’ll have copies of our books available for purchase and signing. Addenda from Kathy/Kaitlyn: There’s a chance the weather may force us to postpone. If so, I’ll add another update to that effect. If you’re reading this after 7AM Saturday, all’s well and we’ll see you there!

And January 28th I’ll be visiting several fourth grade classes in Kensington, New Hampshire … via Skype!

Don’t forget that if your reading group or class or library isn’t close to Maine, but would like one of us to “visit” – Skype is always a possibility!

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share. Don’t forget that comments are entered for a chance to win our wonderful basket of books and the very special moose and lobster cookie cutters.

 

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora: mailto: kateflora@gmail.com

 

Marketing and Competitive Reseach Before You Write? Oh, Yes.

Lea Wait, here. Many of you know that my new mystery series (Mainely Needlepoint) has just debuted with TWISTED THREADS. Traditional publishing being what it is, I’ve already finished the second book in the series(THREADS OF EVIDENCE), which is in the middle of copy edits. THREAD AND GONE, the third manuscript, is due the first of March. Writing (and publishing) are challenges .. one of the largest of which is keeping ahead of readers!

Many people have asked me “why needlepoint?” As some asked last spring, when UNCERTAIN GLORY, my most recent historical (set during the first two weeks of the Civil War) was published, “How did you choose that time period?”

The answer to both questions is “competitive research and marketing.” Although the idea of sitting down and writing what is in your heart (or mind) sounds wonderful, in truth, writing without research can lead a writer down a path to manuscript rejection.

So … what kind of research would you do for a book that isn’t even written?

Publishers want to know what the competition for your books will be, and how many people will be interested in buying it. A growing number of publishers (like mine) want to see the numbers before they sign onto a new book, or series.

But, don’t panic. Sometimes the research is relatively simple.

My publisher for UNCERTAIN GLORY was enticed by the Civil War timing of the book — even though the book was set in Maine, far from the 1861 front. Reason? The book would be published during the 150th anniversary of the war, when people would be thinking about 1861-1864. It’s a period covered in most schools in grades 4-8 … the right age for young readers, and for teachers and librarians to add to their collections. (I’d written an earlier version of UNCERTAIN GLORY set in 1859. It didn’t sell. The Civil War connection made the difference.)

Three of the book’s major characters are boys. (Conventional wisdom says few boys will read a book with a girl as a major character; girls will read books about boys or girls.)

I’d also checked the title. UNCERTAIN GLORY is taken from Shakespeare (“the uncertain glory of an April day”) and it had only been used as a title for an early Errol Flynn movie. Although titles can’t be copyrighted … it’s not great to have a dozen books in print with the same one. I also included an annotated list of other books for young people set during this period, and why UNCERTAIN GLORY would be different.

OK. That all sounds good for an historical – especially one for young people. But what about a mystery? How would you do market research for one of those?

Funny you should ask. Because the publisher of my Mainely Needlepoint series wanted competitive analysis/market research done as part of my proposal. (Yes, they also wanted summaries of the first three books in the series and about fifty pages of the first book and the reasons why I would be the best person to write the series.)  I believe my market research tipped the scale in my favor.

I wanted to write a traditional, cozy, mystery series with a little edge. I knew cozies with “craft” backgrounds were popular, so I looked at what was already being published. I wouldn’t have wanted to suggest, say, a series with a background of beading, to a publisher that already had one. Or a series about quilt shops when there were already several being published.

How did I find out who was publishing what, and how successful they were? The answers were simple to find. We’re lucky today to have Amazon and BN.com. Search for “beading mysteries” on those sites and you’ll have a good start on research. In my case I found one other needlepoint series, an embroidery series, a machine embroidery series, and five knitting or crochet series, which I included in my analysis since I suspected they shared some of the same readers.

I then looked to see how many books were in each series; whether the series was still being published; what their publishers were; and whether they were mass market originals, hard cover originals, or trade paper originals.

After reading one or two books in each current successful series it was clear that needlepoint would be a good topic: of the three series featuring embroidery, even the one listed as a Needlecraft Mystery included other forms of stitchery.

But I wanted my series to stand out. All the craft mysteries I’d looked at were set in embroidery/needlecraft/yarn shops, and all but one of the protagonists owned such a shop. I looked at geographic locations, too:  only one series was set in New England.

I decided to set my series in Maine (a plus because many readers know me as a Maine author,) to have my series connected to a custom needlepoint business run by a young woman with a past and by her grandmother … allowing for plots involving people of different ages. And since my earlier series was set in the antiques world, I decided that my Mainely Needlepoint series would build on that, and my needlepointers would also identify and restore antique needlepoint. (More story ideas …)

But how many readers were interested in needlepoint? A little googling told me. Needlepoint is a popular craft, especially among middle-aged and older women … and men. Women over forty are also the largest readers of traditional mysteries. But — I still needed numbers. Publishers want numbers.

The American Needlepoint Guild has 164 chapters, 9500 members, an on-line presence and a bimonthly magazine. The National Needle Arts Association is the professional organization connecting the 873 retail shops and 256 wholesalers of crafts/yarn. Two magazines and several national conventions each year reach needlepointers. Needlepoint is also popular in the UK and in Canada.

Result of that research? A three-book contract, and suggestions of several specific ways to reach readers who might be interested in a needlepoint series. My agent told me he liked the marketing plan so much, if it hadn’t sold to one publisher, he was prepared to market it to other editors. (Note: he didn’t mention the plots of the first three books in the series, or my writing style.)

It took me about two weeks to research and write the proposal for the series. And not only did it help my editor make a decision, it also helped me develop the background for the series, and its characters.

Right now I’m busy promoting TWISTED THREADS, and writing the third in the series. THREADS OF EVIDENCE, the second in the series, will be published in August of this year.

I’m not focusing on writing another series: two is plenty for now! But I do have several other ideas. And, before those ideas get too far along, I’ll be doing some market research. It just makes business sense.

 

 

 

 

 

“Slum and Blight”

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, pondering the fact that residents of the same village that was listed as fourth among the ten prettiest in central Maine in a Kennebec Journal feature in 2012, recently voted to accept the designation “slum and blight” because it was the only way to qualify for Community Development Block Grant funding—much needed federal funds to improve the infrastructure of the downtown area.

Say what?

Blame the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for this one, folks. They are the ones who changed the way they calculate the percentage of low and moderate income households in a given town, thereby making Wilton, Maine, which had previously been eligible for funds, ineligible unless they were willing to admit to this less-than-pleasant-sounding description. Same place. Same conditions. Under the old method, using figures from the U. S. Census, Wilton qualified. Under the new system, using something called the American Community Survey, the town fell short of eligibility by two percent. Only 49% of our population was considered to have low or moderate income when we needed to hit 51% to qualify for help. Left with a choice between conducting an income survey, something that would be both time-consuming and expensive, and voting at a special town meeting to declare a specific section of town a “slum and blight,” there wasn’t really much choice about what to do.

There’s no question that there are things that need fixing—vacant buildings, aging street lights and sidewalks, a particularly uneven stretch of road I drive over every day to get to the post office—but my downtown is a slum? Was it really necessary to go that far?

Apparently, it was. The special town meeting was duly called. No, I didn’t attend. My bad. Then again, in a town with a population of 4,116 in 2010 (down eight from the population in 2000), only thirty-five people did show up. Like most of the rest of Wilton’s residents, I read about the meeting in the next day’s online Daily Bulldog.

Here’s the fact that swayed those attending to approve the new designation: using the same income standards as the current “slum and blight” description requires, the town applied for an earlier federal grant back in 1988. At that time, they received $500,000, which was used to build a new parking lot, update street lights, tear down several dilapidated buildings and do paving work. Infrastructure improvements aren’t cheap. Ask the state government for help? Forget it! Not under this administration. Private funding? We don’t have any millionaires living in Wilton anymore. Heck, we don’t even have any industry. Once upon a time, Wilton was the home of Bass Shoe (Weejuns), Forster Manufacturing (toothpicks and clothes pins), and a thriving tannery. The former shoe factory on Main Street has taken on new life and now houses a restaurant, businesses, and apartments, but elsewhere we have industrial waste and abandoned factory buildings to deal with.

All things considered, there was really no question about how the vote would go. The downtown area, all the way from Wilson Lake along Main Street to the Academy Hill School and then down Depot Street to U. S. Rt. 2 is now officially a “slum and blight.”

I’m pleased that Wilton qualifies for federal assistance but I can’t help but wonder what hoops small rural towns will be made to jump through next. I have a good imagination. The possibilities boggle the mind.

Remembering to See

Kate Flora here, on a topic I revisit on the blog at least once a year–the importance of refilling the well of creativity and remembering to pay attention to the world around me. Right now, I’m enjoying my annual escape to San Francisco. From a window atop Russian Hill, I can watch the morning fog swallow up the city below me, eat the Bay Bridge and the Transamerica building and then spit them out again. I have a rhythm to the days–work in the morning, walk in the afternoon, see friends in the evening. All of these events remind me to be aware, to notice, to think about what I’m seeing through new lenses. The lens of me on vacation. The lens of me as a reader, remembering what things I admire in the works of other writers–how vivid description or the careful rendering of a small detail can make a whole scene come alive. The lenses of my characters, who see the world differently from me. Burgess, whose mother make him an observer; Thea who orders her world through language.

These observations span a wide range, from the macro–fog engulfing the city, to the micro–the way a strange shape dropped from a tree onto the ground can become poetry. What are the textures of the tree bark? What does the trunk of a tree fern look like? How can a single while calla lily stand out in a mass of hot pink camellias?

I’m a country mouse, so there is also the world of sound. The almost silent electric cars that creep up. The masses of green parrots holding forth in the trees across the street, almost unseen when I look up until I realize those aren’t red flowers but red beaks. A cackling mass of blackbirds swirling and looping above downtown at dusk, forming and reforming and changing direction like precision pilots, so perfectly in symmetry as they swoop above the workers heading home that I expect any moment they’ll start skywriting and sending us messages from bird world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And of course, because the people we visit with are readers, my phone is filled with photos of things I want to remember, books I have to pick up and read, the names of contacts, and ideas for workshops, writing, and things to follow up on.

This visit reminds me that I can do the same thing at home. There is a world there to be observed as well. It’s just that sometimes I need to leave my desk to come back to it, renewed, refreshed, and ready to settle back into my obsession, my pleasure, my life–storytelling. Only now I hope I can remember to look out those windows, walk those yards and woods, stare out at the seabirds and stop and pay attention to the hawks and robins.

 

And finally, because one of the things I’ve talked about here in San Francisco is storytelling, I urge you to watch this short TED talk by Andrew Stanton:

 

 

 

MYSTERY OR SUSPENSE?

Susan Vaughan here. Although I’m working on shifting my genre into the mystery arena, I’ve been published in romantic suspense for a long time. When I tell non-romance readers what I write, they look at me blankly. I usually keep the explanation simple that I write romance interwoven with a mystery, and I don’t distinguish between mystery and suspense. Understanding that difference has come up in a couple of my online email groups, so I thought this might be a good time to address it here for readers. There’s certain blending and crossover, but here’s my take on the general difference.

A mystery begins with the crime, usually a murder, and the remainder of the book involves a sleuth, either police or a PI or a citizen with personal reasons for getting involved, trying to identify and apprehend the murderer.

Barbara Ross’s mystery CLAMMED UP features an amateur sleuth whose search for the murderer is tied to her need to save her family’s clambake business.

In AND GOD GRANT YOU PEACE, Kate Flora continues her police-procedural mystery series with Portland Detective Joe Burgess as the sleuth.

A suspense novel, whether romantic or not, involves the hero (protagonist) who may be a federal agent or a police detective or an extraordinary citizen (Think Jack Reacher.), trying to stop the villain (the antagonist) from carrying out his dastardly scheme. Sometimes there are additional crimes/murders as well, and more often than not, the sleuth is in danger at the end when confronting the killer. In a suspense novel, both the hero and the reader might know the villain’s identity. The tension and “suspense” come from the rising action, often a time factor, and from keeping the reader wondering if the villain can be stopped.

My book TWICE A TARGET has elements of both but is primarily a mystery. Holt believes the car crash that killed his brother and his brother’s wife was murder and enlists the help of the heroine, Maddy, a woman he doesn’t trust (old baggage I won’t go into), to help him learn the motive for the attack and identify the killer.

Another of my books, PRIMAL OBSESSION, is more obviously (romantic) suspense. Sam, a Maine Guide, and Annie, an investigative reporter and one of the canoeists on his wilderness trip, discover that the serial killer Annie was writing about has followed her into the woods. To save her life and the lives of others, they must evade him and eventually try to capture him.

Whether mystery or suspense or thriller, readers have more flavors to choose from than vanilla and chocolate.

*** The ebook of TWICE A TARGET is only 99 cents Jan. 20-24 on Amazon, http://amzn.to/11rQpDk. You can find more information about my books at www.susanvaughan.com.

Bullet Points

We had a burst of winter here in Eastport, snow all day and plows rumbling by outside. It’s a different place now from the one summer visitors experience, and in its way just as lovely. You can’t see him but there’s a guy on the tugboat, shoveling off the deck.

Since I took these pictures yesterday the temperature has risen to 48 degrees. Just to soften us up for the deep freeze forecast for next week, do you suppose?

 

I have been in the throes of rewrite, coming now and then upon passages whose original appeal just escapes me entirely. That’s when I spend Way Too Much Time on a few lines, trying to wrestle them into something…well, if not graceful, at least halfway tolerable. It’s also when I try to remember an old tip that I learned after lots of struggle: if nothing works, if the thing just won’t be word-wrangled, give a bit of thought to: (1) Deleting it entirely, or (2) rethinking the event the passage describes. Often I find deleting is the correct move.

 

I’m reading NO ORDINARY TIME by Doris Kearns Goodwin, about FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt and WWII. The people are all fascinating and the prose feels effortless. It’s what my old friends in the science fiction world called window-pane prose…you don’t see it, you see through it to the world being depicted.

 

Speaking of prose…do you have someone you read when you need to get your mojo back, or you feel that you do? My favorite is Dickens, and especially the multi-point-of-view BLEAK HOUSE, just because he does handle point of view so well, and because the prose sounds like someone specific, someone with quirks and traits and opinions.

Which is another way of saying how well he does point of view, isn’t it?

 

Eastport has sidewalks and streetlamps and public art, city features that make downtown’s relative emptiness in winter all the more striking. The atmosphere is one of knuckling down, doing the necessary, and keeping warm — not bad ideas when you have a novel in progress, hmm?

And about the time it’s done (she said hopefully), spring will be here. The seed catalogues are spread out on the kitchen table in bright profusion. I’ve discovered that potatoes keep well in the butler’s pantry, and that I miss garlic when I don’t grow it, and there’s a zucchini relish recipe to try. So: something to work on now, something to look forward to later…life is good.

Note: This is a rerun of a post from last year — because just like last year at this time I’m hip-deep in rewrite. The more things change, etc. See you next time!

 

 

Weekend Update: January 17-18, 2015

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Sarah Graves (Monday), Susan Vaughan (Tuesday), Kate Flora (Wednesday), Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Thursday), and Lea Wait (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

Lea Wait:  I think our weekend update is a little quiet this week because … we’re all writing! (Gee.)That being said, next Saturday, January 24, Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett and I will be speaking at the library in Ellsworth, Maine at 10:30 in the morning, bringing copies of our books for purchase and signing.  Hope some of our friends will stop in to talk mysteries!

Kate Flora: So, while we’re all chained to our desks, writing away so you’ll have new books to read, here’s a bit of entertainment for you from Dead River Rough Cut:

 

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share. Don’t forget that comments are entered for a chance to win our wonderful basket of books and the very special moose and lobster cookie cutters.

 

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora: mailto: kateflora@gmail.com

A most unusual tour

Sun or moon?

I count those assembled, matching name tags with the ones listed on today’s tour sheet. “Nice number,” I say quietly as I check off the last couple who just hurried up and are slightly out of breath. I cough discretely and wait until I have everyone’s attention.

“Glad you all could make it. I think you’re going to enjoy yourselves big time. I’ve been taking people on this one for the past three years and I never get tired of watching the reactions as people look into some of the more exotic rooms. Heck, I learn something new on pretty much every tour because things are constantly changing.

“Let’s go over the ground rules. First, stay together. If you get lost or wander off so you can’t see the rest of us, it might get dicey. Last October, we lost a young couple and couldn’t find them for three days. By the time we did, he was howling like a banshee and she refused to wear anything but a ratty Patriots sweatshirt and fur undies, so be careful. Photos are fine, but remember that what lighting there is can be strange so you might not get the image you expect. Finally, The tour can’t cover everything and you might feel like you need a place to stop and rest. Unfortunately, the nature of this area is such that we must ask you not to touch, sit on, or lean against anything. This was covered in your waiver agreements that each of you signed. If you’re uncertain whether you can abide by the terms, please let me know before we get going and I will have someone wait with you until we return. Any questions?”

Nobody raises a hand or asks to back out, so I stash the clipboard and make sure my flashlight is working properly before leading the group through the funny shaped portal and up a spongy pink incline. After pausing at the top, I take a deep breath and head into the warm darkness. There are no actual lights, but the amazing amount of energy surrounding us often manifests itself as shimmering sheets of luminescence, most often blue, but depending on the overall emotional climate, these can shift to green, purple, crimson, or on very rare occasions, black.

“We’ll start with the rooms on the left and spend about ten minutes exploring each one. When we’re finished, I’d really be curious as to which one each of you think is most interesting and why. First up is what we call childhood memories. You will note that some of the displays look like professionally made dioramas, while others are more like abstract paintings. We suspect this is directly correlated with how clear the memory that created each one was as this room was developed.”

Bet Alfred would like this picture

I stand off to one side as the group moves slowly, making quiet comments as they look over various exhibits. I’ve become pretty familiar with the contents of this room because it has barely changed. Over in the corner is the miniature replica of Frontier Town with an unhappy boy sitting in a car in the parking lot. The same figure appears in almost every other piece on display, one with a friend bending over a downed weather balloon, another where he’s awkwardly casting a bamboo fly rod on a sun-dappled river, one where he is carrying a small wooden boat down a hill, one playing chess with yet another boy, still another where he’s curled up in a corner listening to an ancient radio in the dark.

We leave this room and enter one where the same figure again appears in each painting or diorama. He’s a teenager now and everything in this room is much sharper. I’m never quite sure whether this is due to more maturity or because the memories are more emotionally charged. In one, he’s lying beside a twisted motorbike at the foot of a giant elm tree. Next to it is one where he’s driving a dark blue sedan and a girl is sitting very close to him. In another, he’s on some sort of train in a big city, right beside one where he’s on a long sandy beach at twilight, looking longingly at a pretty girl who is watching fireworks fill the sky over a dark sea. There are a couple more that stand out. One where he’s raking blueberries and the last one where he’s taking care of a large flock of chickens.

After we spend more time than usual in the room I’ve come to call the 20-something memory gallery, a room that’s notable for the sharp emotional contrasts (some dioramas like the one that has to be Woodstock, are brimming with energy, while others like one where he’s sitting alone in a dark bedroom with his face in his hands, obviously filled with despair), we hustle through the rest of the memory rooms that seem to be divided roughly by decade and feature things like the mixed emotions of fear and hope as we see him attend his first AA meeting and then one right beside it where he’s holding his first child, to one a couple rooms away where he has a shit-eating grin as he sits behind the wheel of a $40,000 Dodge Charger that’s tricked out like a race car.

Sunset at Campobello

“Now we move on to the rooms I like best because they’re always just a tad different,” I say as we go up another incline and turn left. “First up is what we call the curiosity storage area. I’ve brainstormed with other staff members who run similar tours and we think this is a repository for oddball questions that might someday be answered and become parts of a book or a short story. You will notice that every wall is chock full of filing cabinets and each drawer has a label, but there’s always a big pile of stuff on the table in the center. Remember, look to your heart’s content, but don’t touch.”

Once again, I move aside to give everyone a chance to study things. I love to watch their expressions as they read some of the labels. There are entire file drawers devoted to things like naked mole rats, oversexed narwhals, which flavor (aside from spruce) chewing gum holds its flavor the longest, what in heck was her name anyway?, is there a town by that name in Idaho?, the list is endless. On the table lie at least a hundred questions that haven’t been filed yet. Today we can see ones like If bigfoot really exists, does he/she have a favorite baseball team? And Imagine what the result would look like if a deer tick was suddenly turned mutant by a burst of cosmic rays. By the time we’re ready to move on, I can see more than a few glazed eyes among the crowd.

Next up is the room of unfinished stuff. It’s scary how many things this guy has in the works. There are short stories about those ubiquitous free AOL discs getting mad at how often they were trashed in the 1990s and what happens when they exact revenge, there are several books in some stage of completion. I’m partial to the one about a magician who fled his world halfway across the galaxy and came to Earth because there were no 12 step programs there and he was a hardcore addict. When he arrived, he found that he had to use his magic in extremely controlled doses or his addiction would flare up big time, but he fakes a college degree and ends up as a librarian, working in Boston where he rescues the rarest cat on the planet and discovers in the process that baddies from all over the universe are trying to take over Earth because they can use portals all over it as shortcuts to move themselves and their plunder from one part of the galaxy to another. There’s another one about a poor kid from the coast who loses his temper and punches out a rich guy and ends up in prison where he’s put in touch with someone who has connections to a rogue group in the Israeli army who work with him on a monster theft on the peninsula where he grew up. It involves a surplus Chinese submarine, blowing up the Piscataqua River Bridge and bamboozling the Coast Guard.

The room also has bundles of short stories in various stages of development as well as a hefty pile of, ‘I think these are cool, but they’ve been rejected’ stories. Depending on my mood, I always leave this room depressed or excited as hell. I notice similar expressions on the faces of my charges.

The next room is my favorite because it’s ever-changing and is guaranteed to freak out at least half the folks on the tour. It’s the one we refer to as the ultimate fantasy room. Unlike most of the others, this has all sorts of videos running simultaneously. Some are pretty tame like the guy pitching for the Red Sox, shooting a ten point buck or holding up a five pound brook trout, but then there are the x-rated ones. I love to watch the way tour members react when they see the one where he’s sitting in a light blue bathtub filled with freshly poured lime jello, accompanied by a very buxom young woman. There are several others that are even steamier than this one and, as I say, they change on every tour.

The last room on this floor is called ‘Not Enough Time In This Life’ I’m pretty sure it was set up after the others when the owner realized that there were simply too many things to experience or do in the time remaining before he left this world. If you look at the dioramas and that’s all there are in this room, each one has a distinctly otherworldly appearance. Things like suns with strange hues, extra moons, trees and mountains that aren’t of this world, creatures that must have snuck out of somebody’s imagination. There are a couple common themes running through all of them. In many of them he’s riding a horse, carrying a sword and a musical instrument, while accompanied by an attractive woman who has her own sword and a longbow.

I lead the group around a curved area overlooking the lower floor until we reach another ramp, this one going down. We find ourselves near the next to last room, one that has a polished brass sign over the doorway that says “Never Enough Time, But That’s Not Always A Bad Thing.” I stop and ask the group how many know what a TBR pile is. Several raise a hand. I turn and lead them inside. There are several gasps, mostly of delight and from those who knew what TBR stands for. This could be every man’s idea of the perfect reading room. There are ten foot high dark oak bookshelves lining three walls. Two ultra-soft recliners occupy corners near the unadorned wall and each has perfect lighting for a reader. The shelves are filled with titles that I swear change to tempt whoever is perusing them. I know from previous discussions with tour members that no two people see the same books on a shelf. I’m convinced even a total non-reader would delight in spending time in this room. I lead my entourage out with great reluctance.

Confession: I love NASCAR live.

The final room is reminiscent of those refrigerator magnet sets you give and get for Christmas and birthdays, the ones with themes like literary or garden words where someone starts arranging them in order on the fridge door and two weeks later the person in the family with OCD has turned the whole box into an epic run-on sentence. In this instance, words, questions, puns and jokes lie about haphazardly as if someone was trying to mix up unrelated stuff and have it make sense. There are whiteboards with partially finished sentences and questions on them, things like “My Wife accuses me of being in coherent almost every night, but I swear I can’t find it in my DeLorme Atlas.” Right beside that is “How come nobody is ever whelmed or tached?” Every time I bring a tour through this room, I make sure I check out the whiteboard I’ve come to call, ‘words that ain’t, but should be.’ There are faux words with absurd definitions up there like Fritilarity, the sound an amused butterfly makes, or swornhoggler, criminal activity by a dyslexic fraud artist.

It takes a few minutes for everyone’s eyes to adjust to the afternoon sunlight once we’re back outside. I’m not at all surprised by the rash of positive comments about the tour. It happens almost every time I guide a group through our writer’s brain tour.

The awesome Dodge Charger

Now, it’s your turn dear reader. What would a guided tour through your mind look like?

Some things you didn’t know about me

Jayne Hitchcock here – I’m getting over bronchitis, so I’m doing a quick post for today.

I figured I’d tell you some things you probably didn’t know about me.

1. I’ve been writing since I was very young. I still have a play I wrote when I was eight years old (seriously). I may even post it here if I can find time to retype it. It was about monsters and the school I was in let me direct it.

2. I was the editor of my high school paper the three years I was in school (I skipped my Junior year).

3. I wrote a column for our local paper in Oxnard, California when I was a Senior in high school

4. Although I grew up in California, I was born in Saco, Maine

5. I was in advertising for quite a few years as a copywriter and even had my own ad agency for a few years before my late husband got transferred to California for three years in 1989

6. In 1992 I moved to Okinawa, Japan and worked for an off base newspaper called Japan Update. Because my husband was in the Marines, I had to get permission from the base General before taking on the job. I wrote articles for them the three years I was there.

7. Okinawa is where I got my first six books published – all of them about Japan (see my web site for info on these)

8. I took the Writer’s Digest writing course via snail mail while in Okinawa (they didn’t have the Internet back then, ha ha)

9. The first article I wrote as a result of that course was about llamas. I got to interview the actor Dennis Weaver for it – he had a llama farm.

10. I am a huge Star Wars nerd. Ask my husband!