Nancy Martin's Blog, page 25

Random Cool Things About my Mom

Random Cool Things About my Mom

By Cornelia Read

1. She has a tattoo of a star on her left inner thigh. She got this done with three friends from Pine Manor in Scolley Square in Boston in the fall of 1957, and used to charge a quarter at deb parties to show it to people.

2. Mom and her roommate, Anne Batterson, used to keep their "revolution clothes" in the bottom drawer of their dorm-room bureau at Pine Manor: white jeans and black turtlenecks. Just in case.

3. Mom raised three kids without a lot of help from her first two husbands. Like, NONE. Dad paid child support up until 1972, when I was eight. And then she took in a fourth kid, a twelve-year-old friend of ours for whom it was no longer safe to be at home. That takes serious ovaries, my friends.

4. In the early Sixties, at a friend's housewarming party on Centre Island, Mom got up on the beams two stories above the living room and started doing The Twist. This guy called Tony Peck followed her up there, but didn't have quite as good a sense of balance. He broke and arm and a leg when he fell.

He lived, though. Here is is in Palm Beach, recently.

5. Mom broadjumped seventeen feet. In eighth grade.

6. No matter what, if something cool and cultural came to town when we were kids, Mom made sure we were there. I especially remember the flamenco dancers.

7. She is always finding us treasures at garage sales. Occasionally, some really weird shit. But mostly intensely personally ideal treasures, because she knows each of us so well. She found me a tuxedo at the St. Vincent de Paul in Salinas, the summer I was a junior in high school. I wore it for my yearbook picture--she got a pretty famous photographer to take the pix of me, too.

8. She hates the death penalty, and has done a great deal to try to end it.

9. She took us to peace marches, and now she has taken my daughter to one, too.

10. She took me with her when she helped bring food to striking farm workers in Salinas when I was a kid. She even brought a box of Pampers, just in case there were little kids in the group. It turned out they were all young guys. They thought the diapers were really funny. The sheriff came and made us leave, but we were on the mailing list for the AFL-CIO's newspaper for years after that--lots of stories about "Teamster Thugs" in every issue. Lots of smiling pix of Cesar Chavez.

11. Whenever I used to tell her my marriage was in trouble, she'd say, "well, for God's sake, don't take any advice from ME. I'm in awe that you and your sister have lasted this long, with your husbands. After five years I always get bored."

12. I think she probably has about a thousand friends. Seriously. People she adores who adore her in return. And she is always making more. She's about the most effervescent person EVER.

13. She collects cans of weird food, which she has displayed in her last four or so kitchens. To the extent that people send them to her for Christmas and stuff. Right now the grossest is a can of "Kitchen-Sliced Slugs." When we were kids, she had a can of elephant meat and a can of rattlesnake meat--both "in creme sauce."

One night, she served them to us over noodles. For dinner.

My sister and I found this revolting, and told her so. 

"You should eat it," said Mom. "That way you'll always have something to talk about at cocktail parties."

She was right.

14. In 1968, she tried to paint her Volkswagen Beetle, which was looking a little rough. Halfway through the project, she got invited out for dinner in New York. There were bugs stuck in the paint forever afterward.

15. Sometime in the late eighties, she found some boat paint on sale. She bought it because she was about to go down to Florida to help a boyfriend rehab a boat he'd just bought. She decided to bring the paint along in her checked luggage. It blew up in the baggage compartment. All over Cecily Tyson's luggage. Poor Cecily.

16. When my sister's boyfriend Mark proposed, and Mom came to New York and cooked us all dinner, she hid a plastic spider on top of the heart in Mark's artichoke. "He needs to know what he's getting into, with all of us," she said.

17. When my twin daughters were born, Mom came to New York and stayed with us for a month. "Mummie and Daddy got me a baby nurse for me when all of you were born," she said, "and it's a wonderful help." She slept on the sofa in our tiny living room, and split overnight feeding shifts with my husband so I could sleep. She should be beatified for that alone.

18. She made it possible for my sister and me to travel around the world for a year together, when we'd both graduated from college.

(Me and Freya's beau, Tony Ruwald, on Bali in 1988. I look pretty good after three months of dysentery.)

19. On that trip, Mom came to India and met up with us. The third morning we were in Delhi, she looked out the window and said, "I hate India. It's just so Sixties."

20. But she travelled all over with us anyway--to Jaipur, to Agra, to Kashmir, and on to Nepal. In Nepal, we went trekking to the base camp of Annapurna. The trek was led by her Pine Manor roommate, Anne Batterson--who was herself on her honeymoon with her second husband David, an Episcopal priest. David then performed my wedding ceremony, and christened my daughters.

21. Mom thought the lyrics to Donna Summers' "Hot Stuff" were about hot tubs, as in, "I wanna hot tub baby this evening/I wanna hot tub baby t0ni-igh-ight."

22. Once, when I called a kid in my fourth-grade class "a homo," Mom looked at me very seriously and said, "Cornelia, do you even know what that MEANS?" I said, "Duh. Homo sapiens..." 

To her credit, I almost couldn't tell how hard she was laughing.

23. When my sister Freya was really depressed once, during college, she came home to where Mom was living on Long Island.

"Mom," she said. "I'm really depressed."

"You know," replied Mom, "Anne Batterson's daughter was really depressed a while ago, so Anne took her to Elizabeth Arden for the day..."

Freya looked up at her hopefully.

"So," continued Mom, "maybe I should take you to get a tattoo. I just saw this place out near Belmont racetrack."

24. Freya got a tattoo of a dollar sign, because she wanted to work on Wall Street.

25. That spring break, I was incredibly depressed, having just found out that I'd failed a couple of courses on my junior year in Ireland, and wouldn't be graduating on time.

"You know," said Mom, "when Freya was depressed over Christmas, we got her a tattoo. Cheered her right up."

26. I got a cents sign. That was Mom's idea, when I couldn't think of anything I wanted.

"You can tell people your mother said you needed more sense," she said.

Luckily, my pal Candace says "it stands for change." She should know, I got her a tattoo at that same place out by Belmont a couple of months later, when she was really depressed.

27. Mom works really hard to support a homeless shelter in Monterey, and she's on the domestic violence council for the county.

28. For her seventieth birthday, Mom wore black knickers, striped socks, and these weird clog things with "70" emblazoned on each one, in gold sequins.

29. One year, we made her a monogrammed towel for Christmas, with iron-on calico letters. Her initials went all the way around to the back, with a hyphen.

30. Mom says she wants to found Marriage Anonymous. "That way, when I feel a wedding coming on, I can call a friend and they'll talk me out of it."

31. Mom is damn sure she was a bulldancer on Crete in a previous life. I believe it.

32. Mom used to take us out of school every once in a while, just to go on picnics.

33. This summer, Mom is taking us all on a cruise to Alaska. Like, TEN of us. To celebrate my daughter's and niece's graduation from high school.

"That's what grandmothers should DO," she said. "Things we can remember forever."

34. When the husband of a friend of Mom's died recently, Mom called her every morning for a couple of months, just to check in.

"Someone did it for me," she explained. "It helps."

35. The night before we drove across the country one summer in the early Seventies, our favorite babysitter in Carmel came over for dinner--Dana Angel, aged sixteen. 

Mom said, "You should come with us tomorrow. You've never seen the East Coast, and it's pretty interesting."

Dana went home and packed. We had a great time with her that summer.

36. Mom always picks up female hitchhikers. Once it turned out the hitchhiker was Cousin Susie Read, on her way to visit us. We kept her "CARMEL" sign over the shelves of weird food in our kitchen for years after that--she'd made it on shirt cardboard, with each letter done in a different color crayon. Mom also put up a great photo of Susie in our downstairs hallway--black-and-white, of Susie sitting on a motorcycle, wearing a Superman suit.

37. Mom took me to Florida this winter. "I figure you'll want to get out of New Hampshire, around February," she said.

A friend of hers who used to be homeless in Carmel but now lives in Florida lent us a car to drive around in. He's doing really well now.

38. The year before, she took me and my daughter to Hawaii for New Year's. I am not sure where she finds the money to do so much for us. But it's amazingly lovely that she does. And she is the world's best partner on a road trip.

39. Mom is a total babe.

Happy Mom's Day!

 

Tell me five things about your mom, or someone who stepped in when you needed one...

Mother's Day Mailer

By Sarah

Years ago, when I won the Agatha Award for Best First Mystery for Bubbles Unbound, I got to the podium and broke down in tears. Okay, so not one of my finer moments.

Anyway, it wasn't just the free wine. It was because Bubbles had been a collaborative work with my mother, a fantastic editor, who never got to see it published beyond the ARC. Though Mom lived in Alaska, she and I would talk at least four times a week (when long-distance calls cost extra) and go over the manuscript that I wrote after dinner - after a day's work! - while my children slept. 

She kept me on track. She corrected my grammar. She remembered details of Bethlehem and the murder that inspired the book. And she made me laugh.

Mom loved mysteries. She loved Agatha Christie in particular because Agatha didn't cheat by revealing surprise evidence withheld from the reader. She would have been so proud to see me accept an Agatha and that night, hoping I might win, I wore her treasured gold and elephant hair bracelet my father had brought her back from Nigeria after a teaching stint there. 

The great thing about mothers is they see - or think they see - superior qualities in their children that elude the rest of us. In Bubbles, Mom saw substance beyond the Spandex and blond hair.

"Don't sell Bubbles short," Mom would say. "Frankly, I don't think you'll ever come up with a better character than this dim bulb." Hey, she was honest, too.

No wimp she, a newspaper reporter starting when she worked as a stringer for the Boston Herald-American while attending Boston University at a precocious 16, Mom loved the quintessential male writer. Hemingway, Joyce, Mailer, Steinbeck, and, especially, Wolfe.

It was Wolfe who inspired her at a young age to realize there was an existence beyond the mealy-mouth pap offered by her own family. Look Homeward Angel saved her soul. Robert Parker saved her sanity.

So, I can only imagine what Mom would have thought when a New York Times slide show of Norman Mailer's apartment, including a shot of his overflowing library, showed a stack of Bubbles books. In hardcover. Their jackets worn from use.

Yes. Mailer loved Bubbles.

God bless you Norman, wherever you are. And here's to you, Mom, and to so many mothers who see the good in us that we cannot see in ourselves.

 CALL YOUR MOTHER!!!

 

Sarah

When Our Stories Come True

When Our Stories come True

By Nancy Pickard

It's spooky when scenes from my books come true.

That happened just a couple of weeks ago, in Abilene, Ks., but before I tell you what happened there, I'll tell you what happens in the book:

In The Virgin of Small Plains, our heroine goes with three women friends to a restaurant in the small town.  As they travel there, they're aware of severe storm warnings.  At the restaurant, while they're seated at a round wooden table, one of them looks out the windows and notices that the sky has turn seriously ominous.   She tells the others, and they all get up and troop to the windows to look.  At that moment, a tornado warning siren blares.  The women hurry to the restaurant basement with the rest of the customers, except for our heroine who hangs back to stare at the boiling clouds.

In Abilene, our heroine (me) goes with three women to a restaurant in that small town.  (The photo is of the restaurant, "The Kirby House.")   As we travel there, we're aware of severe storm warnings.  At the restaurant, while we're seated at a round wooden table, I look out the windows and noticed that the sky has turned seriously ominous.  I tell the others, and we all get up and troop to the windows to look.  At that moment, a tornado warning siren blares.  We hurry to the restaurant basement with the rest of the customers, except for our foolish heroine who hangs back to stare at the boiling clouds and to exclaim, "Wow, this is just like in my book!"

 

  Years ago, I wrote a book called Dead Crazy that featured--God knows why--a victim who was an old woman who collected porcelain pigs, plastic pigs, pigs made of every craft material.  Her body was found in her bathtub, with pigs floating around her.  (Why in the world did I ever think this was an attractive idea??)  About three years after the book's publication, I opened the local paper to read of an old woman who had been murdered.  She collected porcelain pigs.  Her body was found in her bathtub.  At least there were no pigs in there with her!

I have a dear friend, Randy Russell, who named the characters in his first novel after some of his buddies, just for the fun of it.  In the book, his protagonist--named after Randy's best friend-- gets shot and killed.  Not long after the book came out, Randy's real-life best friend was shot three times in a bizarre incident that came out of the blue as he was minding his own business.  Thank God, he was not killed, but Randy was so spooked that he vowed never to name characters after real people.  Or at least, knowing Randy's sly sense of humor, never after people he likes. 

Then there's the story of the bird who went missing in my book and the one who went missing in real life, and how similar their happy endings are.  Again, this is from The Virgin of Small Plains, which I'm beginning to think I spirited out of the same ether that creates real life.

 In the book, a big red parrot escapes during the aforementioned tornado.  His current owner, Abby, is heartsick to lose him and puts up signs, etc., all over town.  His original owner was Abby's teenage love, Mitch.  In the novel, Mitch shows up in town after a 16-year absence.  He goes to his parents' home.  The big red parrot just happens to fly into the back yard at that moment when Mitch is there.  There just happens to be an old cage in the basement, and Mitch collects the bird, glad (and amazed, as are we all) to be reunited with his old parrot again.

When I wrote that, I thought, "nobody's ever going to believe this."

But I left it in, because that's what happened, dammit.  I can't help it if it's the truth!

Now here's what happened a few months after Virgin came out:

I have Friends With Birds.  Cockatiels.  One day, one of the birds escaped and flew away.  My friends were heartsick, just as Abby was in the book.  We put posters on posts, just as in the book. A week passed, the temperature was dropping, we were sure the bird was a goner in more ways than one.

They got their beloved bird back, just as in the book!  Here's how. . .

On the day it flew away, it apparently headed straight toward Kansas City, Mo, where it landed in the back yard of people who keep Cockatiels!!  

They had an old cage, and they brought the bird in, just as in the book.

The happy ending to this real life story is that the people who found the bird finally saw one of the "lost bird" notices my friends had put in the local papers, and called to say, "We have him." 

And what is the moral of that story to me, as a writer?  It's that I can trust my instincts about what is "true."  Just because something is a wild coincidence doesn't mean it can't happen.

The uncanniness doesn't end with stories that come true after we make up our fictional ones.  Sometimes things from our books come true before our books are written:

Since publishing Virgin, two people have told me of murders in their small towns that were nearly identical to what I used in my novel, right down to the cover-up and the same roles that the characters played in the real-life towns. I have no memory of every hearing of those actual murders, and yet I re-created them in my book!  How can that be?  I suspect what happened is not so much uncanny as it is the strong likelihood that I did learn about those cases years ago, they stuck in my subconscious, and then they percolated up as "plots" that I thought I made up.  I'll never know for sure if that's what happened in my creative process.  The whole thing gives me the shivers anyway, whatever the explanation.  I'm horrified that my plot actually happened to (at least) two women.

I've thought--or maybe other people have suggested to me--that stories like this might make an interesting book about the shivery connections between art and life.   Maybe I can collect some of those connections from you!

Have you ever known of a fictional story that came true?

If you're a fiction writer, have any of your story ideas materialized in real life?

 

 

 

 

Festivity

Festivity

by Nancy Martin

Some weeks, there's more to blog about than we have space to fill here at TLC.  Bid Laden's death, the royal wedding night, the president's speech at the DC  Correspondent's Dinner.  (When Mr. Obama  made the joke about Trump's firing of Gary Busey being the kind of decision that might keep him--the president--awake at night . . . he knew at that very moment our military team was in place to take bin Laden. Puts a different spin on the joke now, right?)  But this week, I must celebrate the Festival of Mystery--an annual event here in Pittsburgh that draws writers and readers from all over the country.  Writers sell scads of books.  Readers go home laden with bags and bags of good reading.  Here are some highlights:

At the pre-festival librarian's tea, the irrepressible Brad Parks dipping the lovely and talented Rosemary Harris.  (Note favorite authors in the background!)

 

Authors enjoying tea are L-R  Julie Hyzy (whose series about a White House chef is big fun) and Avery Aames (winner of the best first novel Agatha!) and Hannah Dennison (who knows a thing or two about tea) and Heather Webber, nominated for best novel Agatha. All deelightful ladies, and the problem with an event like this is that you never get enough time to talk to any individual long enough for a satisfying conversation:

 

My close buddies and Pittsburgh authors (and contributers to Pittsburgh Noir short story anthology--Kathryn Killer Haines, Kathleen George and Heather Terrell) gathering their courage to face the onslaught of eager readers:

 

Mystery Lovers staff and volunteers ready to ring up sales (and you can get a glimpse of the stacks of books on tables in the foreground:

 

The first 100 customers through the doors receive a free bag of books! Then everybody shops for a while before everyone sits down to hear Mystery Lovers Bookshop owner Richard Goldman inteview the authors:

 

Look! Look!  The TLC gang! L-R that's me, LauraInPA (who drove 6 hours!), Mary Alice, Elaine, KarenOH (also drove 6 hours!), the suspiciously tall Kathy Sweeney, Karen (aka Peach) and hiding back in there is Julie (Peach Blossom) and Annette Dashofy (who has a short story in the Guppy anthology FISH TALES, which was released this week--Yay!):

 

After the festival, Mary Alice Gorman and Richard Goldman invite the authors back to the store for pizza: 

 


Then the authors line up to sign the store's bathroom wall. P l (Paul) Gaus,
Alice Loweecey and Lois Winston:

 

After the pizza party, I had to sneak away for dessert with some shady characters across the street.  Among the TLC regulars who made the trip to the festival?  That's Karen with the huuuge piece of coconut cake in front of her, then Peach/Karen, Laura, and Peach Blossom/Julie:

 

And just in case he's feeling left out, here's Josh at my signing two weeks earlier at the wonderful Borders store in Springfield, PA. (Shout out to Jenn and Maureen for a great night!)

 

Book people are so delightful.  Writers enjoy meeting everyone, and the festival Mystery Lovers Bookshop throws every year is a real hoopdedoo.  If you haven't made the trip, you should come next year.  We have a blast.

KarenInOH thinks we need to put together a TLC cruise.  Or our own convention.  Imagine the discussion panels. The cocktail parties. The dress-like-Me, Margie contest.  Our version of the vampire ball! Heather will run the karoke bar. Harley Jane and Nancie the Gun Tart will escort the group to the gun range. Etc, etc.  Suggestions welcome.  We need to start planning the extravaganza.

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead

By Kathy Sweeney

Yeah, I know, we're not supposed to rejoice when a human dies.  Sanctity of life and so forth. But if there ever was a time to make an exception to a rule, it's this week.  A few people put it nicely:

Mark Twain said: "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it."

Charles Dickens said: "He would make a lovely corpse."

Clarence Darrow said: "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."

Samuel Goldwyn said: "The reason so many people turned up at his funeral is that they wanted to make sure he was dead."

The munchkins said (okay, sang): "Ding, dong the witch is dead."

 It took nearly ten years but Osama Bin Laden, #1 on the Terrorist Most Wanted List, is finally dead.  I didn't celebrate, but then again, it was pretty late at night and I was tired.  If I lived in Manhattan or Washington, DC, I might have been out in the street.  If I were still in college, and it was finals week, I would most definitely have been out in the street.  Because anything is better than studying for finals, even if it is just a bit short of barbarism.

Let's be honest here; this psychotic murderer deserved to die.  But he's not the only one.  Hitler, for example?  Dead = good.  Ted Bundy - better dead.  Jeffrey Dahmer - that's why you put guys like him in Gen Pop.

Would I kill someone if I was sure they deserved it?  Hell no.  Because if I could, there would already be a trail of bodies.  I mean, I swore vengeance on Chico Lind and Stan Belinda, for heaven's sake, and all they did was lose a play-off game to the Braves.  Know who else is lucky I never snapped? The people who cancelled "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" - and don't even get me started on whomever green-lit "Caddyshack 2" or "Scarlett".  I would also have taken out that little girl in "The Bad Seed". I couldn't even watch the entire movie, but Hannibal Lechter?  One and done.

And what about that "sweep the leg" kid who tried to cripple Daniel-san?  As a matter of fact, that whole Cobra Kai operation should have been leveled.  You know who else should have been erased? Bob from "Twin Peaks" - that much creepy just should not be allowed to stroll around any town.

See where I'm going here?  Since we're already celebrating the end of one of the most evil people of our time, which is as close as most of us hope to get to real blood lust, let's get it out of our systems. And don't try to tell me you never thought about it.

Who would you like to eliminate?

Let's play nice here, and not mention any live people who might be under Secret Service protection and or who might cause all of us to be indicted for some kind of conspiracy.  Not that some of those people don't make my short list - because they do.  But I am simply not a person cut out for prison.  I mean, the food is just ghastly and I'll bet they don't let you vote on Dancing With the Stars (Hines Ward: 3403).

So just for the helluvit, if you could have a free pass to whack somebody, who would it be?  So what if they are already dead?  In this game, they are legit targets.  Here are a couple of more to get the murderous rage really flowing:

Joseph Stalin - remember this happy-go-lucky cat?  He was responsible for more deaths than Hitler.  No kidding.   I'd whack him.

ER's Dr. Robert Romano.  Has to be the only time I rooted for the helicopter.

Y'know, I just realized there are no women on my list.  The kid from The Bad Seed doesn't really count because she was a kid. Hmmmm.  I feel like, in the interest of gender equality, I should come up with at least one.  Okay, how about Bellatrix Lastrange?  That loon just reeked of evil.  I won't spoil it for those who didn't read the book, but let's just say you don't poke the Mama Bear.

Your turn.  It's just a game, so go ahead and let loose. A round of fake immunity for everyone!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things We Learned By Not Actually Watching the Royal Wedding

by the 3H's

Q: Did you watch the royal wedding?

Hank:  Well, no. I did consider it. Briefly. For the feeling that no matter what, live is live and taped is always over. But I opted for sleep. Bad bad reporter.

Heather: No. I was holding out for the sixty second recap.

Harley: Yes, but I didn't mean to. Friday at 4 a.m. I was at LaGuardia but my flight was cancelled, so I raced to JFK to catch the next one, and ended up at Gate 43, watching as Kate & William said their vows. Fate! I was mesmerized.

Q: Are you a Anglophile?

Hank: In many ways, of course. Anything sounds better with a British accent. And I'm fascinated by British history. And authors. Morse. Hugh Grant. I'm so tired from Malice that my brain is not working too well . . . but I 'm sitting in the airport right now getting ready to read The Secret Diaries of Agatha Christie. BUT! I did participate in an event of July 4 where I stood on the balcony of the Old State House in Boston, and read a bit of the Declaration of Independence out loud to the crowd below. So--there is that.

Heather: My dad was born in Scotland, my mom in Ireland. I'm not sure what that makes me. I'm from Florida and I married an Italian. Oh! I have taken the Jack the Ripper tour at least ten times and would stood at the Tower of London imagining the past dozens. I'm just not into the hour down the aisle kind of entertainment. Wait! I have Brit friends I adore. And I am a sucker for a great accent. Yeah, yeah, I'm an anglophile!

Harley: You bet I am. Ever since I discovered my mom's stash of Georgette Heyer, Mary Stewart and Agatha Christie as an adolescent, and thought, "I have found my people."

Q: What do you think about the hats worn by the princesses Beatrix and (what's her name?)

Harley: Brava! Could we expect anything less from the offspring of Fergie, whose toes were once sucked, and Andrew, who once dated Koo Stark?

Heather: I think that the one princess got stuck in the middle of an Alice in Wonderland set and came away wearing half of a Wonderland royal fence.

Hank : Pitiful. Embarrassing. Rhys Bowen told me--and she should know of course--that they wore the hats and silly dresses on purpose, in protest because their mother was not invited. I can believe it! 

Harley: I love that. You go, girls. Mad hatters!

Q: What about tradition?

Heather: Hey, well watching the sixty second recap thing, I learned that Queen Victoria was the one who made wearing a white gown traditional for weddings. Before that, people, wore colors or black. Black. There you have it. The perfect color. I always liked Queen Victoria. (Didn't know her personally, just the history about her, devotion to Albert, all that.) I really like the color black. What a great color for a wedding dress! You get rid of all that angst about your dressing sweeping the ground before the wedding!

Hank:I read that they were married in the same place William the Conqueror was crowned 1000 years ago. I mean, that's cool. 

Harley: I think the fact that the brides wear rings and the grooms don't is a little . . . convenient. 

Q: Will the British Monarchy survive the 21st Century?

Heather: I think that will depend upon the new Royals. Let's face it, the world was in love with Diana, and looking back, she was sweet and adorable and seemed earnest. She was so naive, and young, and like all young people--hey, looking for love. Anyway, she added some nice genetics into the mix. And Kate looks like an all-right girl. I think there's a chance. I mean, seriously, the inbreeding thing has to stop. In my sixty-second recap, I learned, too, that they stopped the first cousin marriage thing. (Prince William of Orange/William of Orange and Mary Stuart.) Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip are only second cousins once removed. What's "once removed" anyway?

Hank: Yes, someone here can explain the removed thing, I bet. And Kate and William are fifteenth cousins, right? Something like at? And in fact, (leaning in closer) my next door neighbor, a Saltonstall, is related to Kate. Inside Edition called her for an interview! of course she said no. What was the question again? Oh. yes-you know, I did love it when William drove the Aston-Martin. That's a good sign.

Harley: I can explain "once removed" because we use it all the time in my family. Not that we have intermarriage among the cousins. That I know of. Anyhow, "once removed" means that you're of different generations. If my first cousin Fritzie has a son named Oliver and I have a daughter named Harriet, then Oliver and Harriet are second cousins. However, I am a first cousin once removed from Oliver. And Fritzie is a first cousin once removed from Harriet. And Harriet's children and Oliver's children are third cousins, but Harriet is a second cousin once removed from Oliver's kids, and Oliver is a s.c.o.r. of Harriet's   kids. Actually, I'm not at all sure that's accurate, but that's how Aunt Olga always explained it.

Love them or hate them, everyone gets to have an opinion about the Royals. God only knows what they're saying about us.

Great? Expectations

This is the not-writer, Holly, again. I met Chris Merrill on the Cherries, the rabid fan email group of Jennifer Crusie. Chris's posts were invariably hilarious and we kept asking, why haven't you written a book? She had. And it won the Golden Heart at the Romance Writer's of America annual conference. In full disclosure, I have to admit that I have designed a new website for Chris [Steve rushed to get it finished by the time you are reading this, but couldn't quite discover all the bugs].  Here is Chris's site, visit now and then in a few days when we've changed it all around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christine Merrill

I recently got a call from my mother, who announced that she'd found the perfect job for me.  "You could be a librarian," she said.  "Because you like to write books, and you like to read books…"  In her mind, it followed that the library was the best place for me.

This was worrisome for several reasons.  Before I began writing, I was a librarian for about ten years. This means that Mom's forgotten thing du jour was a big chunk of my recent past. But I have gotten used to the fact that at 84, Mom's memory wavers somewhere between revisionist and absent. She once asked me to help her write a book, which she wanted to call "Memories of my Heart's…. Whatchacallit".

Yeah, Mom.  I'll get right on that.

The thing that really worries me, is the fact that she thinks I need a job. She asks fairly frequently if I am "still writing those romances." She is not so much embarrassed by the idea, as puzzled.  Of course, she is also puzzled by the idea of French kissing, which she said was "kind of gross."  But then, she announced that she was going to donate my books to her church, so that the minister could see, and would have Dad read them aloud to her, because she is very proud of me.

My screams of horror at those ideas are still echoing in the Midwest. I do not think, if she feels slipping someone the tongue is icky, that she is quite ready for some of the scenes I've written.  This is, after all, the woman who promised to have "the birth control talk" with me when I needed it.  At fifty, I am still waiting. 

There are some things we just don't share.

I don't know why I am so horrified at the idea of my Mom finding out what is in my books.  I have much less trouble talking about the work with my own kids.  In the middle of Walgreens, I told my twenty year old son that I'd written "a version of A Christmas Carol, for people who think Dickens doesn't have enough sex," and just about made him walk into a wall.  The younger boy, who is a senior in high school, only allowed me to donate the translation of my first book, Le Château des Passions, to the high school language department because he "didn't take French" and was "almost out of there anyway."  [Almost, but not quite. I am under strict orders to keep Verführerische Unschuld away from the German teacher until after graduation.]

Both boys chose a different approach to the dilemma of what mom does for a living.  The younger had to assure his friends that he is "not ashamed" of me.  He just doesn't talk about my job. Ever.  The elder once announced in the middle of English class that his mother wrote PORN!

He was in a pissing match with a friend whose Grandmother wrote children's books. While I am very clear to them on the fact that I am not a pornographer, I respect the need, when playing the dozens, to resort to the nuclear option before it can be used against you.

With a week to go before Mother's Day, it does well to remember that it is the job of mothers everywhere to embarrass and mortify their children. In my family, it's an extreme sport.   

 

 

Once upon a time, many years ago, when her two boys were small, and she was a stay at home mom, Christine Merrill decided it was time to fulfill her childhood dream and become a writer. 

Since romance writers were obviously the easiest sort of writer to be, she would do that.  And she would live the lapdog petting, chaise lounging, tiara wearing life, just like Barbara Cartland, and be happy ever after.

Years passed.  She wandered in the wilderness and was punished for her hubris.  She learned about writing:  why it is bad to head hop, why she should have listened closer in 8th grade English on the whole 'conflict thing' , and first hand what it was like to live stages three through eleven of the Hero's Journey.

And then, everything changed.  She won the RWA's Golden Heart contest for unpublished manuscripts. The winning story, soon to be known as THE INCONVENIENT DUCHESS, was bought by the contest judges, the delightful editors at Mills & Boon, in Richmond, Surrey.

Chris is now living the life of her dreams which, strangely enough, is a lot like the life she always had.  Her tiara is plastic and lights up if you press a button.  Her chaise is an overstuffed recliner, and the labradoodle lounging on it thinks that, at seventy pounds, he is still puppy enough to sit on her lap. 

Chris's most recent is an e-book, The Tourist of Zenda is available here and her next Harlequin is Dangerous Lord, Innocent Governess to be released in June of this year.

 

From guest blogger, Jill Mansell

Holly, the blogwerker here. I'm most likely to reach for a fun-sort of women's fiction [not the sob-sort] when I settle in for the evening. This winter I discovered Jill Mansell. Where has she been keeping herself? Over in England, apparently. Jill writes fun, yet meaty stories that I have eaten up. I was so happy that when I fawned all over her, Jill agreed to come over here [electronically] to guest blog

Hello! Question for you - do you like yourself? If it could happen, would you like to be your own best friend? I think the answer has to be yes, because you'd enjoy each other's company, love doing exactly the same things ALL the time...enjoy the same TV shows, visit the same shops, read the same books... Perfect, really.
(Yes, I know. These are the kinds of things I think about when I can't sleep at night.)

Then I started to wonder if I would be as happy if I had to be best friends with a younger version of myself. And that was when I realised how very much I'd changed over the years. It had never occurred to me before, but I'm different now- at 53 - in so many ways.

I used to be passionate about clothes and wore different outfits every day. I adored high heeled  shoes. Now I wear pretty much the same thing all the time - long bias cut skirts, long flowing tops and jackets, almost all of it black. I have refined my style to such a degree that I own many versions of the same clothes and would never consider trying anything else. I own no pairs of shoes at all, just a few pairs of boots for winter and jewelled flip-flops for the summer. The twenty-something me would be utterly baffled by this! (Can I just say, I do aim nowadays to look elegant rather than frumpy. And I do go wild with the accessories. I don't actually resemble a nun.)

I used to read only non-fiction, and mainly books about world war two. Now, I read chiefly light commercial fiction. That's the wrong way round, surely?

I used to LIVE for music and knew the lyrics of practically every song ever written. Now I rarely listen to it and never buy any. My younger self would WEEP if she knew this.

On the plus side: all those boys who broke my heart, made me cry and had me wondering miserably if I would ever be happy again? I can't remember most of their names or even what they looked like. Although when I'm enjoying a particularly glamorous best-selling author moment I'd be lying if I didn't occasionally think wouldn't it be great if they could see me now...?

Another major difference is I now spend most of my working day home alone, which is something I couldn't have done in my twenties. I had a genuine fear of solitude and made sure I was NEVER on my own. I shared apartments with friends, then married at twenty two. When my marriage ended after five years, I became a landlady and filled my house with tenants.

My life is so different now. I have changed so much. I might still like my younger self - she's basically a nice person, after all! - but we wouldn't be best friends, not in a million years. But what of the future? It's only just occurred to me that twenty years from now I could have metamorphosed into something completely different again. What might I start doing then that I wouldn't dream of doing now? There's sky-diving...triathlon races...nude modelling...

Oh my goodness, I could turn into one of those completely outrageous and fearless old ladies who are always up to all sorts. I want to start now, right away. That's it, I'm going to dye my hair purple and get a tattoo!

 

  Jill Mansell lives with her partner and children in Bristol, and writes full time. Actually that's not true; she watches TV, eats fruit gums, admires the rugby players training in the sports field behind her house, and spends hours on the internet marvelling at how many other writers have blogs. Only when she's completely run out of displacement activities does she write.

Jill Mansell's books have sold over three million copies and her titles include her most recent (in England) To The Moon and (here in the US) Staying At Daisy's

 

 

Innocence

By Joshilyn Jackson

She is on the tail end of it. It is going. She is my youngest, and her eyes are still wide and feckless. She is a flibbertigibbet. She cannot be pinned down. She gets every solo and the lead in every play, she is the only girl in jazz who can do a full split. She is built like a blade of grass.

She wants toe shoes. She wants to know who she will marry. She wants a puppy. She is incapable of turning in her book report on time. She likes a boy, a boy, a boy and she doesn't even know what that means, but she knows enough so that I am pretty sure she would die if I told you what his name was.

Setting: The pediatricians office, waiting for her check –up. While we wait, and wait, and wait, she gets bored enough with her own book to ask me to read her the pamphlet on puberty in girls. We read it. We get to the part about periods.

Her, in outraged tones: Does that really happen?

Me, very matter of fact: Yup.

Her: Well whose idea was that?

Setting: My basement. A commercial for insurance or banking or something comes on and someone who might be 5 for Fighting is singing, "I'm 22 for a moment..."

Maisy: I don't get that song. It makes it sound like your twenty-two for, like, a second, and then BANG, what, you are forty-five all of a sudden?

Me: Yes. Exactly.

Maisy: Mama. That doesn't make ANY sense to me.

Me: *I wait til she prances out of the room to say, in an ominous tone* It will.  

Setting: We are rubbing the belly of a nice dog.

Maisy: Why do Ansley's nipples look like that, like, weird and poinky down like that?

Me: Ansley was a mommy-dog. The puppies nursed there, and pulled them down a little.

Maisy: EW! It's kinda gross. I'm glad that doesn't happen to PEOPLE!

Me: *crickets*

It's going. She used to look like this, and now? She's nine.

The last day I was truly innocent happened when I was nine. Things changed that year --- a hundred things happened. Here is one: I stole Alex Haley's ROOTS and read it under the covers. The slave ships, the rape, the foot. I never knew people could be so mean. Literally. I did not know there were people in the world capable of such things.

Her last day is coming, but I take her to rub the bellies of adoptable dogs and read her Frances Hogsden Burnett because it's not my job to end these days. The world will do it for me.

When did you lose yours?

Kevin Kline Owes Me

 

By Elaine Viets

I don't know what you did in 1973, but I helped Kevin Kline.

Kevin was born and raised in St. Louis. In '73, he toured the country with the City Center Acting Company, along with other Juilliard drama school graduates, including Patti LuPone. The troupe performed "Threepenny Opera" in St. Louis.

I was a 23-year-old feature writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, interviewing the up-and-coming actor with a hometown connection. Kevin was going far beyond St. Louis. He was one of John Houseman's first students at Juilliard.

During the interview, I asked Kevin about his acting. We talked about Duke Ellington, too. Don and I heard Ellington play at the Rainbow Room in Manhattan. Ellington, in the twilight of his career, was magical.

So was Kevin Kline at the beginning of his career. His Macheath was intense and athletic.

After the show, Ellen, the theater's public relations person, sent me a note dated Nov. 20, 1973.

"This thank-you note is a little late in coming, but I do want you to know I appreciated the nice publicity you gave us in the story about Kevin Kline," Ellen wrote. "Immediately after it appeared in the Post, we sold out. I talked to his parents at the play and they were just thrilled about it.

"Please don't hesitate to give me a call if I can help you with anything in the future. I certainly owe you a favor."

I didn't have the pull to pack the theater. I was a cub reporter. But newspapers had tremendous power then. A print story could fill a theater.

Kevin moved on, racking up Tony Awards on Broadway and then Golden Globes and Oscars for his movie roles in "Sophie's Choice," "A Fish Called Wanda" and other major films.

 

"Wanda" has an in-joke. Kevin, trying to identify a caller, asks, "Was it Kevin Delaney?" Those are his first and middle names.

The New York Times called Kevin "America's Olivier." In his hometown, Kevin has a star on the St.  Louis Walk of Fame. The Professional Theatre Council of St. Louis gives out the Kevin Kline Awards. Not bad for a boy who went to St. Louis Priory School.

I've moved on, too. I write mysteries instead of newspaper stories. "Pumped for Murder," my tenth Dead-End Job novel, will be published May 3.

I need your help, Kevin. My Dead-End Job series is making a major change. Helen Hawthorne will still be working those low-paying jobs, but now she's going undercover as a private eye. Helen and Phil have opened their own PI agency. In "Pumped for Murder," they investigate two cases. One is a Miami-Vice style murder from 1986. The other case explores extreme bodybuilding.

The reviews are good so far, but I'd like to pack the houses. I'll be touring seven cities starting this week. Check the Events at www.elaineviets.com. You might be in St. Louis May 25 visiting your mom.

You wouldn't even have to read my novel. Just carry it with you on an airplane. Do you still fly commercial?

"Pumped for Murder" would make a terrific movie. It has sweat, sex and nearly naked bodies. My new book trailer shows the visual possibilities. http://tinyurl.com/5wsr9en

Come on, Kevin. We Catholic school kids have to stick together.