Edith Maxwell's Blog, page 290

Spring Clean- Household Management Tip

Even if there is still a wicked lot of snow on the ground all through the month of March we’ve decided spring is in the air. On Fridays this month the Wickeds are celebrating spring by talking spring cleaning, for the home for the body and for the mind.

Jessie: One of the best ways I know to keep things running smoothly is to make a menu each week. I look at the calendar to see who will be home and what my work load will be. Then I plan a meal for each week night. I make my grocery list at the same time and add in the staples we need for breakfasts and lunches. I tend to be flexible about switching days around if plans change but I love knowing I have a plan in place if I want to use it and the ingredients on hand to make it work.

Liz: I, unfortunately, am abysmal at running a household. I get most things done on a wing and a prayer, especially when I’m crazy busy. So I’ll definitely be filing away the rest of your tips for when I’m not on a deadline and can get focused!

Edith: My household is a total of two people these days. I figure if we have food in the fridge, the laundry doesn’t back up too far, and the bills are paid, we’re managing. I do most of the cooking, he does most of the meal cleanup. I do the laundry, he folds it and takes it back upstairs. I pay the bills, usually while listening to one of my favorite NPR shows on Saturdays. He buys the beer and fixes everything. Housecleaning tends to slide until it’s either too far gone to ignore, I start sneezing, or we have guests coming! As far as cooking goes, it helps to have a well-stocked pantry and freezer, and to have two awesome farms within a two- mile drive.

Julie: I do find that the change of seasons helps me rethink my systems, or lack thereof. Since I am a Virgo, I love systems, and am always exploring new ones. I revisit Flylady, and try to think through my routines, and make tweaks. I also go through my closet, and use the “if I haven’t worn it in a year, and I don’t wear it in the next two weeks, I am going to bless someone else with this” rule. Now, I have weight I am trying to drop, so there are some clothes I am holding on to for ten more pounds. But if those ten pounds don’t happen, I need to get rid of them. I also spring clean cabinets, one at a time. In spring I am all about toss, toss, toss.

Barb: I’m with Julie. Spring is all about toss, toss, toss. As my brother has said, “We must be the only culture every on the face of the earth burdened by getting rid of things, rather than desperately needing to acquire them to survive.” Every year, twice a year when I switch out my warm weather clothes for cold weather clothes and vice versa, I make a sizable donation. I know that clothing drives have constant shortages of clothing for large-sized woman like me, so that helps me feel good about sending those clothes on their way.

Sherry: I love what your brother said, Barb — it’s so true. I highly recommend moving every two to three years to help control the amount of stuff that gets accumulated. Okay, so it isn’t very practical but worked for me during our years in the military. When you are constantly packing and unpacking you find a lot of stuff you really, really don’t need. Julie’s “if you haven’t worn it in a year” works for other stuff too. If you have items tucked in closets, in basements and attics and haven’t used it for a year maybe it’s time to get rid of it.

So dear readers, do you have a tip to start spring in an organized way?

Filed under: Group posts Tagged: donating clothes, FlyLady.net, household management, sharing chores, spring cleaning

A Pause

by Barbara Ross

Looking out at the melting snow and knowing there will be a fresh coating tomorrow. Sigh. This winter…

There comes a time with every book when I have to take a pause from rolling up word count to figure out what really happened. Not the vague hand-wave of the synopsis, but the mechanics of the crime and the precise roll-out of the who-knew-what-when. And then solve the problem of how, in a first person narrative, the sleuth figures it out. What can be revealed to the audience gradually so there’s not a big information dump at the end (which is where my current book was heading–hence the pause), but at the same time doesn’t give the game away?

I have to make a time sequence, minute by minute, of what happened on the night of the crime. If my murderer and several credible suspects have opportunity, as well as motive, I have to keep them all from running into one another. I have a book, unpublished, where the body is found on the golf course with the sprinklers running. II have so many people walking around that golf course in the middle of the night in question, it feels like I need a traffic cop.

Then I have to list every thread of the story beat-by-beat and then interweave them again into their most dramatic sequence, but also a sequence that makes sense in the story’s time and geography.

And that’s just the plotting. Then there’s understanding the characters and their motives. In mysteries almost every character has a secret and at some point in the process, I have to know exactly what each secret is.

I hate doing this, because I know with every decision I’m making, the perfect, but perfectly vague, platonic ideal of the book in my brain is disappearing.

In a recent article in the NY Times Magazine, Catherine Martin, Oscar-winning costume and production designer, said about her collaboration with her husband, director Baz Luhrman-

Often, when he starts a new project, she said, she can feel herself straining to grasp the idea. “I imagine it as if there’s something out there, like a shape that I can’t quite make out, and that he’s actually pushing my synapses to map the surface of this object. You can feel the pain of that mental effort.

Sometimes I feel that way chasing my own brain.

I have to push myself to do these tasks and it is exhausting, but I also know I can’t finish without doing them

So, fellow writers, does everybody feel this way? I know we all have different processes, but at some point in every project, do you have to take that trip through the tunnel into the light?

Filed under: Barb's posts Tagged: mystery writing process

Coffee, tea or…?

Sometimes you just need a little something to get you going in the morning. Or to keep you going in the afternoon. So ladies, which beverage is it that keeps you perky through long writing sessions?

Barb: In the morning it’s coffee, coffee, coffee. I drink two largish cups and they last all morning. I don’t care if it gets cold as it sits on my desk. In fact, I think I’m overly sensitive to hot. I have to drive for miles before I can drink a coffee I’ve picked up at Dunks or McDonalds. Unfortunately, if I drink anything with caffeine in it after 2:00 pm, that night it’s like the scene in the Big Chill where Glenn Close takes the cocaine. So in winter, afternoons are herbal tea, and in summer iced herbal tea or water.

Sherry: Too funny, Barb! I don’t drink coffee. And as the Wickeds well know I’ve quit drinking Coke Zero. Over the summer they got a day by day, blow by blow, description of my “Coke” withdrawals. Now I drink Chai or ice tea.

Liz: I was probably the biggest coffee addict around for years. I couldn’t make it out the door without out a pot of heavy duty, black Starbucks dark roast in my system. Then just over a year ago I started drinking Chinese Pu Er tea recommended by my Chinese healer doc. Without even meaning to, I stopped wanting so much coffee. I mean, it was crazy. So now I drink the tea (the darker the better), and can make it through most days with just one cup of coffee – and somedays, none. It’s kind of a miracle.

Julie: I drink black coffee in the morning. In the afternoon, I move to tea. I love Starbucks’ Chai Tea Latte with soy, though it is more of a drink than coffee. And I’ve recently discovered London Fogs–Earl Grey tea with steamed milk. Delish. I have to balance the caffeine in the afternoon–I try to stop by 3 so I can get some sleep that night.

Jessie: I start each morning with a couple of cups of black coffee, no sugar, the stronger, the better. By mid-morning I switch to water. If we happen to have any in the house, I love to pour a couple of fingers of grapefruit juice in to a tall glass and top it with seltzer. In the afternoons I usually have tea with my children when they return home from school. Peppermint is my favorite but I like black teas too like Earl Grey and PG Tips.

Edith: I learned to drink coffee as a seventeen-year old exchange student in Brazil, so I love a deep, rich dark roast coffee. But since I quit the caffeine habit twenty years ago, I’ve had to search out a deep, rich dark roast decaf. So now I fresh-grind and brew two cups of that (these days two-third decaf and one-third caf) and drink those with a little milk in the morning. After that it’s water all the way. Until it’s wine o’clock, of course.

Readers, which beverages bring a smile to your lips?

Filed under: Group posts, Uncategorized, Wicked Wednesday Tagged: beverages, coffee, tea

Opening Lines

Write an opening line for the picture below.

Sherry: It was my first day on the job as a private investigator. I tried to be subtle when I snapped the picture but he spotted me.

Liz: I thought I had chosen the best spot around to meet with my hitman-to-be – seedy, private, not many “normal” people around. Boy, was I wrong.

Julie: She had to laugh. Who knew the old cockroach in the salad trick would work so well? That would show her lying, cheating, SOB of a husband that leaving her for his hostess was not only bad for their marriage, it was bad for business. And she’d only just begun.

Jessie: Doug had finally come up with a winning business plan. After all, where better to unload a van full of day old meat products than outside a bar?

Edith: Yeah. Of course he hadda park in the tow zone, draw a bunch of attention to him and Tonio unloading all their bloodstain-removal equipment. If they notice anything inside, and I mean anything, I’m going to have to hire Pattie, my favorite bloodstain-remover remover.

Barb: What he was doing transporting 500 rolls of toilet paper across state lines, I’ll never know.

Filed under: Group posts, Opening Lines Tagged: opening lines

Festival Madness Yields Festival Madness

Edith: I’m delighted to welcome fellow New Englander and Sister in Crime Judith Copek to the blog today. She has a new book out, Festival Madness. I have a few friends who attend the Burning Man festival in the desert every year, but I was surprised to hear that Judy and her husband Hans did, too, so I asked her to tell us about how she got there and then wrote a book about it. Take it away, Judy!

“You won’t be the oldest people there.” Thus spoke our son to convince my husband and me to attend the Burning Man Festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. He was right. I wandered around taking in the sights: the unbelievable sculptures arrayed in the desert, the art cars, fire belching (mechanical) dragons, the costumed (and occasionally buck naked) denizens on the “playa,” and the whole mind-blowing scene, including the burning of the Man and the temple. When I got back to staid, laced-up Massachusetts, it occurred to me, there has to be a book in this. We returned to the “Man” two years later, this time with a camper, supplies and an agenda. I took notes and photos. Characters from a prior novel stepped up to the plate, providing even a rudimentary plot.

Not having a deadline, it took two-plus years to write Festival Madness, and a couple more years to realize that no one was salivating to buy the story. Last summer, I decided, “Amazon Kindle, here I come”. Due to some unforeseen copyright issues, another story, I couldn’t use my favorite cover, and negotiations dragged on until January, when the Kindle and Createspace versions of Festival Madness finally debuted.

You may wonder if there is anything remotely cozy about Burning Man or my novel? Actually, yes.

Our second trip, we camped at the “Airport” next to one hundred little planes and a dirt landing strip. Sitting in front of the roaring Franklin Stove by night, and lounging in the shade of the pilot’s tent by day; even cooking (in my pajamas) for the pilots and airport volunteers in the primitive kitchen facility were friendly, laid back experiences amid the craziness of the festival and the challenging desert climate.

In Festival Madness, hanging out in the main character’s kitchen feels warm and safe, even if a murderer is out there somewhere. What could be cozier than a hearty breakfast at an Adirondack diner on an autumn morning before the exciting climax? Even a mystery with a decided edge can have scenes where the characters recharge for the next crisis, scenes that feel “cozy”.

Everyone wonders what The Burning Man Festival is like. It’s like no place you’ve ever been or even imagined. You can read Festival Madness and visit the web site, but you should really experience it. Remember, you will not be the oldest person there.

E: Thanks, Judy! What an amazing experience. Readers, have you ever been to Burning Man? Any questions for Judith? She’ll pop in and answer all day.

 

 

An information systems nerd for twenty-plus years, Judith Copek is a survivor of Dilbert-like re-engineering projects, 3:00 a.m. computer crashes and the Millennium Bug. In her writing, she likes to show technology’s humor and quirkiness along with its really scary aspects.

Occasionally Judith takes a vacation that spins off into a novel. Festival Madness arrived after multiple trips to the Burning Man Festival and years of observing high-tech hi-jinx. World of Mirrors was born when Judith and her husband visited the Baltic island of Rugen shortly after the reunification of East and West Germany

Judith is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, New England PEN, and Toastmasters International. She has published poems, short stories and memoir as well as an earlier novel, The Shadow Warriors.  

Filed under: Guest posts Tagged: Burning Man, Festival Madness, Judy Copek, mystery, Nevada desert

Spring Clean-Health Tip

Even if there is still a wicked lot of snow on the ground all through the month of March we’ve decided spring is in the air. On Fridays this month the Wickeds are celebrating spring by talking spring cleaning, for the home, for the body, and for the mind.

Jessie: I know everyone knows this but it bears repeating: drink more water. Being well hydrated is the fastest, cheapest, most readily available way to feel vibrant and energetic. I struggle with this daily but when I bother to make drinking water a priority I feel fantastic.

Liz: I’m a smoothie fanatic – and with a Vitamix, it’s easy to serve up all your fruits and veggies in one shot. Even if you don’t have a Vitamix or something like it, you can easily use a regular blender to get a cold, delicious, healthy treat. I love to make my own creations by experimenting with nuts, seeds, veggies and fruit, but if you’re just getting started, check out Crazy Sexy Kitchen by Kris Carr for some awesome smoothies and juices.

Julie: I am trying to get my health in order. I try with the water (why is that so hard?), and my Vitamix is killing the kale. I have also started wearing my FitBit every day, with a 10,000 step a day goal. I am quite convinced that layers of clothing is not registering all my steps, but I am mindfully trying to walk more, and I come pretty close most days. One goal would be to get more sleep, but since I write at night, this isn’t happening right now.

Walking on the beach, even! La Promenade by Theo van Rysselsberghe

Edith: Totally agree about the water. For me, an hour of exercise every day is critical. I either walk outside or go to the gym. It clears mental cobwebs, shakes off my hours of sitting, and lets ideas percoloate. I don’t run any more, and I might not walk quite as briskly as I used to, but I still get out there and do it. I don’t wear earbuds, either. I sometimes see quirky characters or hear snippets of conversation that could easily end up in my WIP or next short story.

Sherry: I’ve been working on moving more. It’s easy to sit at the computer for long periods of time. Since the New Year I’ve been making a concentrated effort to get up and move. I walk our dog, Lily, two or three times a day. Since we don’t have a fenced-in yard I am out in all sorts of weather. It’s good for her and better for me.

So dear readers, do you have a tip for starting spring on a healthy note?

Filed under: Group posts Tagged: energetic, getting outdoors, healthy, hydration, juicing, La Promenade, moving, spring cleaning, Theo van Rysselsberghe, Walking, West Highland Terriers, Westies

Wicked Good Late Winter Reads

We’re heading into March and February is over at last. What are you reading this week, this month, to get you through the end of winter (which in New England has been good old-fashioned cold and snowy)?

Edith: I got four new cozies in the mail and have started with Julie Hyzy’s Home of the Braised in her fabulous White House Chef series. And can’t wait to read the other three, too!

Liz: I’m a little behind in my reading, but in addition to Lucy’s and Sheila’s mentioned above, looking forward to digging into Murder, She Barked by Krista Davis and Graveyard of Memories by Barry Eisler.

Barb: I’m reading Bertie Plays the Blues by Alexander McCall Smith. I love his gentle optimism and laugh out loud humor. I’m a fan of all the series, No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, the Sunday Philosophy Club series, the Professor Von Igelfeld Entertainments, but most of all the 44 Scotland Street series and the adventures of poor Bertie, stuck with an overbearing mother. Perfect reading for the start of March. I’ve seen McCall Smith a couple of times, at the Boston Book Festival and the Key West Literary Seminar, and he cracks himself up, giggling at his own words as he reads. So charming.

Jessie: I just finished Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman and am now reading Stardust by Neil Gaiman and Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer.

Julie: I am so behind in my reading! Aside from the book I mentioned yesterday (Jab Jab Jab Right Hook), and the four books pictured above (all on my Kindle), I have downloaded A Tough Nut to Kill by Elizabeth Lee. This is a new series, and I noticed Facebook friends promoting it. I thought I’d give it a try–I love finding new series to love.

Readers: What’s up next on your bedside table or Kindle or i-thing?

Filed under: Wicked Good Reads Tagged: Alice Hoffman, Andrew McCall Smith, Barry Eisler, Home of the Braised, Jeff Vandermeer, Julie Hyzy, Krista Davis, late winter, lucy burdette, March, Neil Gaiman

Wicked Wednesday: Print Books, E-Books and Audio! Oh, My!

Hi. Barb here and I’m wondering how my Wicked sisters consume their books. I know the Wicked Cozies are all diligent readers, but I’m wondering, do you read print books, e-books or listen to audiobooks dominantly? And if you consume books in two or three ways, is there a pattern to which you choose? And finally, how do you read periodicals like magazines and newspapers? Inquiring minds want to know!

Edith: I never listen to audio books. These days with both limited bookshelf space and income, I tend to buy paper books only from authors who are friends. Otherwise I read on my Kindle or get the book from the library. I do read two physical newspapers every day and get through most of the physical New Yorker every week, especially when I am diligent about going to the gym, because I can read on the elliptical strider!

Jessie: I rarely listen to books on tape. As to magazines I prefer physical versions but I happily read newspapers digitally.I read books in physical format as well as ebooks. What matters to me when choosing between ebooks and physical books is the content. I like to read fiction either way but I do not like non-fiction on e readers. For me, anything that functions as a reference is cumbersome  to navigate digitally so I don’t if a print version is available.

Julie: I walk and take the T as my usually travel route, and listen to podcasts a lot. I have begun to think that I should start listening to audio books to help keep up with my “reading”. My usual mode of purchased book consumption is ebooks. I only buy dead tree books in two cases. One, when a friend does a book release. And usually that is to pass it on, since I usually pre-order my Kindle books. (Does that help authors at all?) I also buy books that I know I will use again and again for reference. Recent example, Gary Vaynerchuk’s Jab Jab Jab Right Hook. I started reading it on my phone (how great is that, I ALWAYS have a book with me) and realized I needed to have it on hand.

Barb: Well, we’re turning out to be a pretty homogenous group! I’m so lucky to have a great neighborhood bookstore near my home in Somerville (Porter Square) and another in Boothbay Harbor (Shermans), so I do try to make my print book purchases there. I love ebooks for travel and convenience (though I still have too many print books on my night table.) I don’t listen to audiobooks. My mind wanders too much, though on a recent trip Bill and I listened to Tina Fey’s Bossy Pants and I found that essay style worked well for audio.

Sherry: I don’t think I’ve ever listened to an audio book. I guess I like the voices in my head better — and I don’t mean weird telling me what to do voices — I mean the author’s voice. I read books on my Ipad, some that I buy some from the library. I still buy lots of books and am always asking for gift cards as presents.

Liz: I love audio books for long drives. But I don’t listen to them as often as I’d like to. I either read on my Kindle Fire or I buy the real thing – sometimes there’s just no substitute!

Edith: I’ll add one note. When my kids were young and we drove eight hours to Quebec at least once a year to visit my sister, their aunt, we listened to E.B. White reading his own Charlotte’s Web. It was on cassette tape at the time, but how lovely to hear his Maine voice reading his own story. So if I were traveling with children these days, I would definitely be packing audio books.

Readers: Where and how do you read these days?

Filed under: Wicked Wednesday Tagged: Charlotte's web, E.B. White, iPad, kindle, public library, The New Yorker

Where Do They Come From?

Jessie, battling frozen toes and vitamin D deficiencies somewhere north of most everywhere

I needed an idea for this blog post. I’ve been hard at work on recent projects and I felt like the source of inspiration had run dry. Which caused me to ask myself that question writers are so often asked by others: “So where do you get your ideas?”. I had no clue how to answer the question so I resorted to another strategy: Google.

Clicking open the search engine, I looked at the Google logo and felt a thud of disappointment that there was no special artwork honoring the day. Which made me ask why it wasn’t a special day. I googled some more and came across this thought-provoking website where I learned at the time of this writing it was simultaneously National Cold Cuts Day, National Mulled Wine Day and National What if Dogs and Cats Had Opposable Thumbs Day. Suddenly, I was having some ideas. Not for a blog post but for a story involving household pets who had developed opposable thumbs in order to use cork screws and to carefully close the plastic zip bags containing smoked ham in order to preserve freshness.

Which, of course, made me wonder if household pets care a jot about cold cut freshness. It also got me wondering which other days might be out there. I clicked on all sorts of dates, most of them significant to me as either birth dates of loved ones or days like anniversaries. I was surprised to find how often the dates seemed to fit with the person born on them. For example, one of my sisters was born on National Maple Syrup Day. She taps her own trees and boils down sap most winters. One of my nieces, an artist in multiple disciplines, was born on National Day to Create. I was surprised to discover I married an immigrant on International Kissing Day.

Not surprisingly, another idea popped into my head, a sort of a science fiction/fantasy tale involving a higher consciousness set on scheduling and sorting out a cosmic calendar with births, deaths and events of note lining up with silly made up holidays. I began pondering a dumbed down horoscope and what all that might mean.

Before long I was thinking about how an international syrup maker and his artistic sidekick could recruit the world’s  pets with opposable thumbs in time to help fight an alien invasion on World UFO Day. Which led me back to the original question. How do writers get their ideas? I guess it comes down to seeing combinations and possibilities in the every day, the inane, the coincidental. It comes from seeking connections no matter how insignificant or dismissible. It comes from slipping down the rabbit hole and having fun while you are there.

Readers, do the important dates in your life give you any ideas?

Filed under: Jessie's posts, Uncategorized Tagged: holidays, ideas, pets

Iconography, or Cozy Cats

by Sheila Connolly

Iconography is a fancy word, eh? According to Webster’s, it means the “traditional or conventional images or symbols associated with a subject.” Dan Brown preferred the term “symbology” for his wildly popular series, starting with The Da Vinci Code (last time I looked, Harvard did not teach “symbology,” but that’s neither here nor there). I know about iconography because I did study it at Harvard, where I was, in another life, a medievalist specializing in twelfth-century sculpture in France, which is rich with symbols (remember, most people who were not monks couldn’t read, so ideas had to be communicated by images), not to mention visual puns and irreverent and occasionally obscene items sneaked into corners.

What does this have to do with writing mysteries? More than you might think. Not a lot of stuff from the Middle Ages has survived, so if you’re studying anything from that era, be it style or content, you’re stuck with working with a very small sample of original data. That means you sometimes have to make great leaps of logic to fill in the gaps.  You can guess things like, “Artist X must have seen Artist Y’s work, because there is a striking similarity between X’s and Y’s depiction of drapery.” Or clouds. Or noses. I swear, I once took a semester-long seminar titled “Giotto’s Thumb,” which, if I remember correctly, used the manner in which the Italian Renaissance artist Giotto painted thumbs to identify a whole crop of his students and thus determine his influence.

But there is a basic principle here: everything in an image has significance. Everything looks the way it does for a reason, because the creator put it there (just as we writers do now). It may be the mainstream symbolism of the church or a powerful family, or it may be the tongue-in-cheek commentary of the artist, but it is not accidental. And there is also the inescapable influence of society—often the church or other religions in the early days. For example, you see a halo, you know you’re looking at a saint. It’s like a code for the viewers.

We as writers are not immune to this, even now. To draw on the iconography of cozies, if you give a character a pet—cat or dog—that tells the reader something about that person, without the author saying anything descriptive.  Give that character a ferret or a tortoise, and that conveys something different. Give that character a phobia about small furry creatures, and you’ve got a different character (and probably one the reader will like less!).

I just happen to have a handy example. What does this cover tell you about what’s inside the book?

You the reader are being influenced by iconography every time you walk into a bricks-and-mortar bookstore and browse the shelves. You can recognize a cozy cover from across the room. Usually there is a lot of detail, whether it’s an interior or an exterior scene. Lots of kitchen or small-shop settings, often with food. Lots of Victorian houses. Lots of dogs or cats. In contrast, if you want a thriller, you look for a dark cover with shadowy figures, often turned away. When you reach for one or the other book, you are responding to the symbolism embedded in each cover.

Having said all that, I’m still puzzling over why there

The Clonmacnoise High Cross

is a large image of a cat carved on one of the medieval high crosses at the former monastery of Clonmacnoise in the middle of Ireland. This cat is not just tucked in the corner to fill out the space, but is up at the top where you can’t miss it. Maybe there’s a story behind it, like the monastery had a much-loved pet cat; or maybe there’s a broader religious symbolism. You have to admit that this cat looks like it’s chewing on a rat, which would be an evil pest because it consumed the grain that the monastery needed. That would make it a “good” cat defeating the “evil” rat, and it gets top billing on the cross.

The Clonmacnoise Cat (and rat)

Aren’t you glad I’ve now drawn a straight line between the art of the Middle Ages and contemporary cozy covers?

Filed under: Sheila's Posts, Uncategorized