Connie di Marco's Blog, page 5

Year’s End

This time of year is magical.  I love the holiday decorations, the lights, and the crispness in the air.  Even though I don’t live in a part of the country where I can enjoy the snow, I like to pretend I’m having a white Christmas.

As the Winter Solstice of 2017 rolls around, I dig out my jewelry collection of reindeer and Santa earrings and boxes of decorations.  Each ornament holds a special memory — the pearl-encrusted heart my daughter chose for our tree many years ago.  The tiny porcelain head of Jerry Garcia – yes, someone, have no idea who, hung it on our Christmas tree a long time ago.  It’s such a hoot I keep it.  Styrofoam balls covered in ribbon and sequins that my aunt, gone many years now, made for every church fair.  But my favorite ornaments are the ones my children made in school.  A felt triangular Christmas tree stitched together with yarn and sequins, a wreath of white fuzzy yarn with red balls, a paper stocking, in need of repair, but I still treasure it.

There’s a reason so many religious holidays occur around the time of the solstice — Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Christmas, Ramadan, Yule, Saturnalia, Bodhi Day.  It’s that special time when our planet tilts away from the life-giving sun.  As if the earth itself pauses in its rotation at that very moment.

This year the solstice occurs today, December 21st at 8:38 a.m. Pacific Standard time.  That’s the moment we creatures of the earth experience the longest night and shortest day.  And if you’re interested in some of the practices and ancient monuments built to celebrate the winter solstice, you can read more here.

The first book in the Zodiac Mysteries, The Madness of Mercury, takes place during the holiday season.  Julia, my San Francisco astrologer, knows all the fun and free things to do in her city.  So if you just happen to be in San Francisco this month, don’t miss the Christmas lights, or the tree lighting in Union Square, or the lighted boats at Fisherman’s Wharf.

Take a moment today, December 21st, to pause and contemplate the magic of the solstice.

Happy holidays!

Blog Talk Radio with Fran Lewis

Today was the last day of my blog tour for All Signs Point to Murder, but the highlight of the tour was my interview and chat with Fran Lewis on her site!  You can listen to it here!

Two Astrologers Chatting

When I started writing the Zodiac Mysteries, I didn’t know of Sunny Frazier and her astrologer protagonist, Christie Bristol.  But I was thrilled to discover someone else was writing another astrology mystery series.  Later, I found The Precious Pachyderm, by Karen Christino.  Yes, another astrology mystery!

Thanks to Kings River Life,  Sunny and I interviewed each other about mysteries, astrology and our protagonists.  Read on at Kings River Life to learn how we became fascinated with this subject!

 

Can you guess?

Julia Bonatti, my protagonist in the Zodiac Mysteries solves crimes using astrology.  And I hear from readers all the time – some love the subject of astrology and want to know more, while others aren’t particularly interested and are happy to skip those parts.  That’s fine with me.  It’s not everyone’s cup of tea.  Julia just happens to have an unusual occupation.  Hopefully, there are enough thrills and chills in her investigations that will keep readers turning the pages.

Mostly, people want to know how Julia figures things out and what she sees in a chart that alerts her to possible danger.  She can tell an awful lot about an individual from a chart and can make an educated guess about how that person approaches life.  Here’s an example that might help explain a few things:

This is a chart of a man born on July 26 at 7:29 p.m. in Kesswil, Switzerland.  I won’t mention the year, not yet.  What can we tell from the chart, without knowing the man’s name or his profession?

He’s a Leo with a Moon in Taurus and Aquarius rising.  All fixed signs – he’s proud, stubborn and not easily swayed.  There’s a heavy emphasis in his 6th house.  Mercury and Venus are conjunct on the cusp.  And the Sun and Uranus are also in the 6th.  The focus of his life will be his work (6th house).

He’s possibly involved in medicine.  But since Mercury and Venus are in Cancer, a sign ruled by the Moon, there’s an element of “feeling” and “emotion.”  The Moon/Pluto conjunction tells us he’s an intensely emotional individual.  In the 3rd house he’d probably be a writer of some sort.

Aquarius rising — he’s eccentric and marches to the beat of his own drum.  With Saturn on the Ascendant he would appear cold or clinical, but Uranus (the ruler of his Ascendant) is very close to his 7th house cusp.  He’d be radical and eccentric in his relationships.

Sagittarius is on the cusp of his 10th house (Midheaven), along with Mars in Sagittarius.  In his career, he would pay absolutely no attention to what his mentors or colleagues thought.  He’d be fearless and innovative.

Neptune is in square (90 degree) aspect to his Sun sign.  This would give him a mystical bent, but he could possibly misuse the Neptune energies and be vulnerable to addiction.  He might avoid that escape as long as he is dedicated to his work.

Can you guess whose chart this is?  I’ll give you a hint.  He was born in 1875.  He died in 1961 at the age of 86, a nice long life which he dedicated to developing analytical psychiatry (medicine and emotions).  The chart belongs to Carl Jung.  He was a prolific writer and a protégé of Sigmund Freud until he broke from his mentor to pursue his own path.  He was married with five children and maintained an open extra-marital relationship for many years, heedless of what society at the time thought.

He was also an astrologer!  (Uranus)  He worked with dream states (Neptune) and observed recurring archetypes in his patients’ dreams.  He came to believe that the archetypal images in astrology represented experiences and emotions common to all people and theorized that humans share a collective unconscious.  He said, “Whatever is born or done at a particular moment of time, has the quality of this moment of time,” i.e., an astrological chart.

So that’s how Julia does it.  How I do it is struggling to find a believable chart for my murderer or his victim.  Just in case any astrologers out there are paying attention!

This post first appeared at CMash Reads on August July 23, 2017.

San Francisco Detectives

I knew when I started writing the Zodiac Mysteries . . . well, let me backtrack . . . I knew even before I started working on this series that I wanted it to be set in San Francisco, a city of bright windy days, dank and foggy nights haunted by the baritone voices of the foghorns.  Lots of people think of Los Angeles when they think of noir, but in my opinion, San Francisco is the capital of noir.  And the idea of an astrologer as my amateur sleuth seemed very fitting.

I’ve always known that lots of mysteries have been set in the city, and I thought it would be fun to write a post about fictional San Francisco detectives, but the more I researched and surfed the web, the more overwhelmed I became.  The list is unbelievably long.  The upside of that is that I must be in good company if lots of other authors had the very same idea.

I realized I had bitten off much more than I could chew.  Then I thought perhaps I should break it down?  Maybe by noir or police procedurals or amateur sleuths or . . . what?  Or maybe by time period or books and films or even TV episodics based on books.  And I was working on a list that didn’t even include “the Bay Area” or Northern California.  I was focused strictly on San Francisco but the more facts I unearthed, the longer the task seemed.

If I only included amateur sleuths, my list wouldn’t be quite that long, but then I’d have to leave out some of my favorite authors and favorite films.  Films like The House Across the Bay where George Raft watches and bides his time through the bars of his prison on Alcatraz.

Or The Golden Gate Murders with David Janssen as a cop and Susannah York as a nun who team up to catch a silent murderer.  Those scenes have stayed in my mind for years and I don’t think I’ve ever driven across the Golden Gate Bridge and not remembered the orange-caped (to match the color of the Bridge) murderer.  Perhaps he’s still lurking in the towers of the Bridge.  Lots of foggy atmosphere too!

But my all time favorite fictional San Francisco detective is Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon.  I loved it in book form and in film (the 1941 version) with Humphrey Bogart of course.

I can just imagine the author at 891 Post Street writing his novel and even using his own apartment as the setting for Sam Spade’s digs.  But the story of the Dingus wasn’t the first crime novel set in the Bay Area. Not by a long shot.  There had been scores of other books.  The earliest I’ve read of is The Mysteries and Miseries of San Francisco (1853) by an anonymous author.  It has the distinction of being the earliest known crime novel with a Bay Area setting.

As for film and television, how could I not mention The Streets of San Francisco?  Starring Karl Malden as Detective Mike Stone with Michael Douglas (1972-1977).  Or the Dirty Harry films (1971-1988) — Inspector Harold Francis “Dirty Harry” Callahan, an icon of an antihero who crosses all sorts of ethical boundaries to pursue justice.   Or even Nash Bridges with Don Johnson and Cheech Marin as inspectors with the SFPD.  Or how about Monk?  Adrian Monk, a truly unique detective with OCD and multiple phobias?

The list goes on and on – there’s Juliet Blackwell’s witchcraft mysteries with Lily Ivory, and Robin Burcell’s inspector Kate Gillespie and Kate Carlisle’s Brooklyn Wainwright, a rare book expert.  There’s Dianne Day’s Fremont Jones series set at the turn of the century and Meg Gardiner’s Jo Beckett and then Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini, Joe Gores, James Patterson, Laurie R. King’s Kate Martinelli and John Lescroart’s Dismas Hardy.  The more I searched, the more I found.  This couldn’t possibly be covered in a blog post, there’s enough material for ten volumes at least.

But along the way, I stumbled upon some fabulous mystery sites.

Here’s Don Herron’s website.  He’s a collector of San Francisco mysteries.  Or this one – A Woman’s Place is on the Case featuring female sleuths of all sorts.

And then I discovered Golden Gate Mysteries! And guess what?  My San Francisco sleuth is there!  Check out this listing!

I breathed a contented sigh of relief.  Julia Bonatti isn’t alone.  She’s in some great company and proud to join the ranks of fictional San Francisco sleuths.  And so am I, thrilled to be able to contribute to a great genre.  I hope every reader will enjoy Julia’s world as much as I enjoy writing about it.

This post first appeared at Jane Reads on August 3, 2017.

 

 

A Remarkable Woman

No, I’m not referring to my protagonist in the Zodiac Mysteries – Julia Bonatti — although she is a remarkable character and a very talented San Francisco astrologer who solves crimes.  I’m referring to Gladys Cox Hansen (June 12, 1925 – March 5, 2017).  A Gemini!  I’m sure Julia, the astrologer,  would appreciate that!

If you’ve never heard of Gladys Hansen, it’s well worth learning about her work.  Because if it were not for her, we would still be woefully uninformed about the real history and the aftermath of the great earthquake of 1906 that destroyed San Francisco.

On April 18, 1906 at 5:12 a.m., a quake, somewhere between 7.8 to 8.3 magnitude, ripped the northern 296 miles of the San Andreas fault.  Geologists now consider it had a Mercalli intensity of XI, i.e., extreme!  It lasted approximately sixty seconds, a very long time for an earthquake.  And if you’ve ever been in a quake, you can appreciate just how torturingly long that time span is, as you hang on and pray and hope to survive.

Approximately 28,000 buildings were destroyed, 498 city blocks were leveled and a quarter of the city burned.  After the dust settled and the ensuing fires were put out, the powers-that-once-were in the city were determined to rebuild.  In order to do that, they had to attract money and investors and there was only one way.  They had to lie.  A lot!

They worked hard to propagate the myth that fire destroyed San Francisco, not earthquake.  They even went so far as to alter photographs to show buildings, destroyed in the quake, still standing.  So began a conspiracy of disinformation that lasted for many decades.

Thanks to dedicated researchers like Gladys Hansen we are now closer to the truth.  Not all the way there, but at least a lot closer.  Gladys was a librarian and City Archivist Emerita of the San Francisco Library system.  One day in 1963, well prior to her retirement, she was asked to provide a list of the dead from that fateful day in 1906.

She was sure the library could offer accurate records, but when she searched and found no names and only a vague figure of 478 dead, she was positive this number could not be correct.  She later discovered the city never reported casualties from either Chinatown or the slums and she came across many victims with Chinese, Irish and Italian surnames.  She’s quoted as saying, “The lack of death [in these areas] simply isn’t credible.”

Gladys decided to make it her mission in life to find and name the dead.  She searched all available records — birth and death records, tenant rolls of buildings, voter registration lists, military files, church records and coroner’s records.  She requested information nationwide, and letters from other parts of the country came pouring in.  Her task was monumental and it continued for years.

Mrs. Hansen created an online museum The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco and in 1989 co-authored a book, Denial of Disaster with Emmett Condon, retired Chief of the San Francisco Fire Department.  It’s a shocking account of the disaster and the ensuing political machinations.

Here at the museum site, you can find a partial list of “Who Perished.”  The research she gathered also led to a cookbook:  After the Shake, They Baked, containing actual recipes created by people who were living among the rubble or in Army tents in Golden Gate Park.  In fact, I have met people who as young kids remembered living in Golden Gate Park in order to survive.  Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get a copy of this book from Mrs. Hansen’s heirs, although I would dearly love to have one.  With the museum’s permission, here are a few teasers:

Shrimp salad, to be served in a dozen eggs “boiled hard.”  This specifies the amount of pickles, celery, parsley, radish and onion to be used, but neglects to mention how many shrimp are needed.  The recipe suggests to “chop the shrimps a little.”  I guess it depends on how many shrimps a housewife can get her hands on.  The amount of butter called for in a fricassee of oysters was defined as the size of an egg.   Bread puddings were prepared in covered pots and pies were cooked in Dutch ovens set directly over an open fire.   Every recipe is a tribute to ingenuity under hardship.

Finally, In 2005, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution, co-authored by Hansen, that set aside the official 1907 death count.  At last count, to the best of my knowledge, the number of named dead is well over 6,000 and still counting.  But there are undoubtedly many more souls to be found and named.

I wish I could have met Mrs. Hansen at some time during the years I lived in San Francisco.  I would have been fascinated by her dedication and persistence.  She died just a few months ago on March 5th at the age of 91 from natural causes.  Even though she has passed on, we can still read her interviews:

SF Gate: Sunday Interview

SF Gate Gladys Hansen

SF Gate San Francisco Archivist

Gladys once said, “Sometimes I think all those who died are right there behind us saying, ‘Keep going.  Keep going.  Keep going.’”  A remarkable woman indeed.  I hope you’ll explore her virtual museum to learn more.

This post first appeared on  July 5, 2017 at The Bookwyrm’s Hoard.

 

 

SOMA Streets

Julia Bonatti, my protagonist in the Zodiac Mysteries, is an astrologer and a native San Franciscan.  She was born there, grew up there and certainly knows quite a bit about the city’s history.  I’ve had to do a lot of research to to keep up with Julia.  She knows a lot, but more importantly, she’s also well versed in the often repeated stories that underlie the historically “accepted” versions of events.

Here’s one example ~

Way back in 1847, when San Francisco city planners were creating grids and streets and plots of land, a man named Jasper O’Farrell (who, by the way, has a street named after him), was commissioned to survey the land south of Market Street.  Market Street runs a diagonal course straight through the city and on both sides, the streets are laid out in grids going in different directions.  It can be rather confusing if you’re not familiar with the area, because the name of the street changes as you cross Market.

O’Farrell made each lot 100 varas square or about 300 feet on each side, four times the size of city blocks north of Market Street.  Consequently as time went on, these were divided by other smaller streets and alleys.

These smaller streets are all named after women!  In alphabetical, not geographical, order, they are Annie, Alice, Clara, Clementine, Eliza, Grace, Harriet, Jessie, Kate, Minna, Mary, Natoma and Zoe.  One explanation for these street names is found in the 1927 South of Market Journal written by Albert P. Wheelan.  Wheelan theorized that pioneers coming west without their wives and daughters and sisters were homesick and named these streets after the women they missed.

Romantic, huh?

Well, that’s not the story I was told when I lived there.  It’s generally accepted that these streets were named after . . . how shall I put this? . . . famous and desirable ladies of the night who held court during the era of the Barbary Coast.  Many of them were the mistresses of city officials.  These streets were their domain.  A lot of reconstruction has gone on in the South of Market (SOMA) area in recent years and Minna Street now even boasts an upscale club called . . . you guessed it . . . Harlot!

What do you think?  Was Mr. Wheelan trying to whitewash the city’s bawdy past?  Being of a suspicious mind, I’m much more inclined to accept the locals’ version of the street names.  And I’m sure Julia would too.

This post first appeared at Read Your Writes on July 3, 2017.

All Signs Point to Murder

City Lights

Julia Bonatti, my protagonist in the Zodiac Mysteries, is an astrologer who grew up in North Beach and is often found visiting The Mystic Eye, an occult shop and bookstore owned by her good friend Gale.  The Mystic Eye is right on Broadway and just around the corner is perhaps the most famous bookstore in the world — City Lights at 261 Columbus Avenue, a San Francisco icon.

Whenever I’m in North Beach, I always make it a point to visit and explore every creaking wooden floor of books.  The first room on the right houses recent additions, history and politics.  Climbing to the third floor, you’ll find the poetry section.  But my favorite, the mystery section, is one floor down via a narrow wooden stairway.  It’s a must see place for booklovers!

City Lights was founded in 1953 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin.  The independent bookstore has always specialized in world literature, the arts and progressive politics.  It was the first bookstore in the U.S. to sell only paperbacks.  To quote their website, “City Lights is . . . a place where booklovers from across the country and around the world come to browse, read, and just soak in the ambiance of alternative culture’s only “’Literary Landmark.’”  The bookstore is still committed to innovative and progressive ideas and resisting the forces of conservatism and censorship.  City Lights grew out of the “beat” movement and its legacy of anti-authoritarian politics and insurgent thinking.

A bit of history here ~ the core group of Beats were friends who joined together and became a movement – Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Herbert Huncke, and William S. Burroughs.  They met at Columbia in the mid-1940s, then moved west to San Francisco and added Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, and Lew Welch to their cadre.  To quote Allen Ginsberg, “Nobody knows whether we were catalysts or invented something, or just the froth riding on a wave of its own. We were all three, I suppose.”

Beat culture — the rejection of standard narrative values, the spiritual quest, exploration of Western and Eastern religions, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, rejection of materialism, explicit portrayals of human life — has always been entwined with the city of San Francisco.  The members of the so-called Beat Generation developed a reputation as bohemian hedonists who celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity. Works such as Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch (1959), and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) are some of the best known examples of Beat literature.  These novels were attacked in obscenity trials, although those trials ultimately helped to liberalize publishing within the United States.

The Beat Generation unwittingly sired a parody group known as the “beatniks.” The phrase was coined by Herb Caen, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, and an icon in his own right, by combining the name of the Russian satellite Sputnik and Beat, implying that the beatniks were far outside of mainstream society and possibly even Communists! The name stuck and became a well known label for the stereotype of the Beat — a man with a goatee and beret, reciting poetry and playing the bongos.

In the 1950’s, Vesuvio’s, a bar that’s still going strong in North Beach, hired an artist to sit in their window and paint.  The artist was dressed in a full beard, turtleneck, and sandals.  By the late 50’s, tourists visiting San Francisco could take bus tours to view the North Beach “beatnik.” I doubt such a character would even raise an eyebrow today on the streets of the city.

City Lights is a unique San Francisco experience, almost as interesting as the fictional Mystic Eye around the corner.  The bookstore is world famous but still retains a casual and intimate charm.  Lawrence Ferlinghetti said, “It is as if, the public were being invited, in person and in books, to participate in that ‘great conversation’ between authors of all ages, ancient and modern.”

If you do visit the city, don’t miss City Lights.  You can check out their website for more information.  And if you’ve enjoyed Julia’s adventures in San Francisco, try to imagine The Mystic Eye, right around the corner on Broadway.

[This post first appeared at Bibliophile Reviews on July 1, 2017.]

Fog

When I first thought of writing the Zodiac Mysteries, featuring San Francisco astrologer Julia Bonatti, I knew that the city itself, its history, its atmosphere, its constantly changing faces should play a big part in Julia’s world.  And one of the most important features of San Francisco is its fog, especially where Julia lives on the outer avenues close to Land’s End and the Pacific.

Julia doesn’t mind the billows of fog that arrive almost every day around three o’clock in the afternoon.  She loves the way it carries the smells of the sea and the silence it creates.  She adores the mist on her face and the way it softens the hard contours of buildings.  And she particularly loves the deep voices of the foghorns as they lull her to sleep at night.

What causes all that fog?  Well, California’s very hot in the summer months, while San Francisco is perched on a peninsula at the edge of the continent surrounded by water, water that brings freezing cold Alaskan currents.  When the cold air of the ocean meets the rising inland heat, fog is formed and it occurs most heavily in the months from July through October.

For many years, the compressed air horns under the Golden Gate Bridge sounded with deep two-tone baritone voices.  There were two fog horns on the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge that made a single blast every twenty seconds, while a mid-channel foghorn sounded two blasts every forty seconds.  During the foggy season, July through October, they sound more than five hours a day.

Inbound ships heading east into the Bay would steer left of the foghorns on the south tower and right of the mid-channel horn.  Outbound ships would stay to the right of the mid-channel foghorn.  Their voices guided hundreds of thousands of vessels safely through the Gate and forewarned San Franciscans when fog was about to envelope their city.

But nothing lasts forever and in the mid 1970’s the two-tone horn at mid span stopped working.  Replacement parts were impossible to find.  So for the next ten years, only a one-tone horn continued to sound.  Eventually that horn too began to show signs of wear and tear and had to be replaced.  The replacement horns are one-tone horns that differ in frequency but operate with compressed air, like the originals.  Each horn has a different pitch and marine navigational charts give the frequency or signature of each.

Then, in 1992, the Coast Guard decided to stop operating the fog horns and replaced them with electronic signals!  Romantics of the city arose and protested loudly until the horns were finally reinstituted.  You can listen to them here:

They don’t quite sound the same as the originals but they still lull Julia to sleep at night and their voices can be heard in the city once again. 

[This post first appeared at A Holland Reads on June 30, 2017]

Criminal Minds

I’m a guest at 7 Criminal Minds discussing all the things that authors do to get attention for their books!