Vinnie Hansen's Blog, page 4
October 18, 2013
Ghosts of Killer Nashville
The elevator of the Hutton Hotel howled like an aggrieved ghost. The occupants exchanged nervous glances even though we were mystery writers on our way to a conference called Killer Nashville. For an hour we could watch a grisly slideshow of bones, and listen to Dr. Hugh E. Berryman discuss cleaning the remains with Biz soap, but none of us wanted to get stuck in an elevator! Still what could have been a better overture to a murder mystery conference than a howling ghost, especially when ghosts haunted Killer Nashville 2013.
Elmore Leonard died August 20th, and the conference started August 22nd. His spirit hummed about the event. On early Saturday morning, I attended a round table. An agent and publisher heard the first two pages of the manuscripts of the author participants and then rendered their judgments. I’d brought the prologue of Black Beans & Venom, my mystery-in-progress, and a finalist for Killer Nashville’s Claymore Award. When my pages were handed out, it took restraint not to apologize for breaking Leonard’s second rule from his 10 Rules of Writing: No prologues. The publisher at my round table, Martin Shepard of Permanent Press evoked Elmore Leonard as his favorite writer. I gulped. (Still he liked my prologue enough to invite me to send my first 24 pages.) After all, even Elmore Leonard no sooner stated his prologue rule than he pointed out exceptions. However, a brash young agent in a later panel pronounced, “I skip prologues.” I walked away from my two round-table experiences thinking perhaps I should not try to be Elmore Leonard’s exception. The young New York agent added, “Don’t start with a prologue, especially if it doesn’t focus on the protagonist.” Mine focused on the villain.
Elmore Leonard’s name passed the lips of Chris Knopf, panel leader for Literary Mysteries: What Are They and How Do You Write One? This was no surprise. Permanent Press published Chris Knopf, and I had already heard Martin Shepard compare Knopf to Leonard. Guest of Honor D.P. Lyle, MD also touted the wisdom of Elmore Leonard in his Awards Banquet speech. Elmore Leonard’s voice rippled through the conference as many presenters read passages from his works.
I heard another ghost, too. The second Guest of Honor Anne Perry, an award-winning author of over fifty books, spoke—without notes--for an hour and a half on the topic Anne Perry: How Does She Do It? How To Write 3 Books Per Year. Her eloquent voice lilted. With an accent from Scotland, her current home? Or did vestiges of New Zealand remain? There at age fifteen, Anne Perry, then known as Juliet Hulme, and her best friend Pauline Parker bludgeoned Parker’s mother, Honorah Rieper, to death. The audience politely ignored the shrieking ghost of Honorah Rieper. In attendees’ questions, I heard envy of Anne Perry having both a secretary and research assistant. No wonder she can crank out three novels a year. But I do not covet any part of her life. Even though her crime was committed in 1954, a month after I was born, the murder will always be part of who she is. Anne Perry has constructed an exceptional life, but it can never be a normal one.
The sounds of Killer Nashville weren’t limited to the conference. On the street youngsters cheered as they drank and pedaled a tavern. I’d never seen one of these contraptions—a bar on wheels with four pedaling drinkers on each side. A person in front steered the vehicle along West End Avenue. The participants hooted in such a way that the first time I thought they must be a youth group promoting a carwash. The pedal taverns provided a reminder that Nashville is a tourist and party mecca.
People come, of course, for the music. I would have been remiss not to hear the real sound of Nashville. Fellow mystery writer Heather Haven and I boarded the hotel shuttle and ventured to the neon-lit downtown strip. We poked our ears into two bars before heading across the street to Robert’s. Hoards packed this long, narrow bar, but the music that spilled out the door was foot-stomping good. We shouldered our way through the throng to the back where we found a magic stairway to an upper floor. Here we discovered an uncrowded bar with seats at the rail. We had an unobstructed view of the Don Kelley band , the best bar band I have ever heard, playing twangy country to bluesy Allman Brothers tunes. At the stroke of nine, they played their signature song, a whacked out, six minute jam of what else--Ghost Riders.
Vinnie Hansen
Elmore Leonard died August 20th, and the conference started August 22nd. His spirit hummed about the event. On early Saturday morning, I attended a round table. An agent and publisher heard the first two pages of the manuscripts of the author participants and then rendered their judgments. I’d brought the prologue of Black Beans & Venom, my mystery-in-progress, and a finalist for Killer Nashville’s Claymore Award. When my pages were handed out, it took restraint not to apologize for breaking Leonard’s second rule from his 10 Rules of Writing: No prologues. The publisher at my round table, Martin Shepard of Permanent Press evoked Elmore Leonard as his favorite writer. I gulped. (Still he liked my prologue enough to invite me to send my first 24 pages.) After all, even Elmore Leonard no sooner stated his prologue rule than he pointed out exceptions. However, a brash young agent in a later panel pronounced, “I skip prologues.” I walked away from my two round-table experiences thinking perhaps I should not try to be Elmore Leonard’s exception. The young New York agent added, “Don’t start with a prologue, especially if it doesn’t focus on the protagonist.” Mine focused on the villain.
Elmore Leonard’s name passed the lips of Chris Knopf, panel leader for Literary Mysteries: What Are They and How Do You Write One? This was no surprise. Permanent Press published Chris Knopf, and I had already heard Martin Shepard compare Knopf to Leonard. Guest of Honor D.P. Lyle, MD also touted the wisdom of Elmore Leonard in his Awards Banquet speech. Elmore Leonard’s voice rippled through the conference as many presenters read passages from his works.
I heard another ghost, too. The second Guest of Honor Anne Perry, an award-winning author of over fifty books, spoke—without notes--for an hour and a half on the topic Anne Perry: How Does She Do It? How To Write 3 Books Per Year. Her eloquent voice lilted. With an accent from Scotland, her current home? Or did vestiges of New Zealand remain? There at age fifteen, Anne Perry, then known as Juliet Hulme, and her best friend Pauline Parker bludgeoned Parker’s mother, Honorah Rieper, to death. The audience politely ignored the shrieking ghost of Honorah Rieper. In attendees’ questions, I heard envy of Anne Perry having both a secretary and research assistant. No wonder she can crank out three novels a year. But I do not covet any part of her life. Even though her crime was committed in 1954, a month after I was born, the murder will always be part of who she is. Anne Perry has constructed an exceptional life, but it can never be a normal one.
The sounds of Killer Nashville weren’t limited to the conference. On the street youngsters cheered as they drank and pedaled a tavern. I’d never seen one of these contraptions—a bar on wheels with four pedaling drinkers on each side. A person in front steered the vehicle along West End Avenue. The participants hooted in such a way that the first time I thought they must be a youth group promoting a carwash. The pedal taverns provided a reminder that Nashville is a tourist and party mecca.
People come, of course, for the music. I would have been remiss not to hear the real sound of Nashville. Fellow mystery writer Heather Haven and I boarded the hotel shuttle and ventured to the neon-lit downtown strip. We poked our ears into two bars before heading across the street to Robert’s. Hoards packed this long, narrow bar, but the music that spilled out the door was foot-stomping good. We shouldered our way through the throng to the back where we found a magic stairway to an upper floor. Here we discovered an uncrowded bar with seats at the rail. We had an unobstructed view of the Don Kelley band , the best bar band I have ever heard, playing twangy country to bluesy Allman Brothers tunes. At the stroke of nine, they played their signature song, a whacked out, six minute jam of what else--Ghost Riders.
Vinnie Hansen
May 8, 2013
Smollett & the Modern Gustatory Mystery
When Steve, an eccentric local publisher, invited me to join his spring literary soiree, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. The group would discuss Humphrey Clinker by Tobias Smollett. I’d never heard of the book, and had never read Smollett. That alone was enough to entice me. But Steve had also helped me enormously over the years with the publication of my mysteries.
Because my mysteries have food words in the titles, Steve assigned me the topic “Smollett & the Modern Gustatory Mystery.”
Gulp.
Yet, food is elemental in writing, appealing to our sense of taste, and characterizing with each mouthful. Does the protagonist eat rare steak or tofu? Sue Grafton’s heroine, private investigator Kinsey Milhone, eats peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. What does that tell us about her? She’s accustomed to dining alone, has little food in the ‘frig, and is not afraid to experiment. Martha Grime’s Aunt Agatha gobbles up all the petit fours and fairy cakes on the tea tray. Her picky freeloading consumption captures most of what we need to know about her character, and tea, of course, persuades us the book is British (although Martha Grimes is American). S.J. Rozen’s private detective Lydia Chin lives dutifully at home with her mom who communicates her feelings by what she prepares for dinner. Dim Sum and all is good. Food is so predominate in Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Series that spinoffs include cookbooks, so we can all prepare the pumpkin stew apparently popular in Botswana. Even one’s taste in mystery is subdivided gastronomically into hard-boiled or soft-boiled.
Humphrey Clinker is not a mystery. The story relates a road trip through England and Scotland in the 1700’s. The epistolary style offers five fictional characters composing the letters, giving various perspectives on the stops along the way. The main character Matthew Bramble is piercingly sarcastic, but I often only half understood his political and cultural barbs because the time is so foreign to me. However, when Matthew Bramble turns his attention to food and drink, as he often does, he is hilarious. Here he is on the subject of the waters at Bath: “But I am now as much afraid of drinking, as of bathing; for, after a long conversation with the Doctor, about the construction of the pump and the cistern, it is very far from being clear with me, that the patients in the Pumproom don’t swallow the scouring of the bathers. I can’t help suspecting, that there is, or may be, some regurgitation from the bath into the cistern of the pump. In that case, what a delicate beveridge is every day quaffed by the drinkers; medicated with the sweat, and dirt, and dandruff; and the abominable discharges of various kinds, from twenty different diseased bodies, parboiling in the kettle below.”
Food and drink have the omniscient power to cross cultural barriers and to span the chasm of time. Breaking bread or sharing a toast offer powerful connections in our lives, and to the worlds we encounter when we open a book.
Because my mysteries have food words in the titles, Steve assigned me the topic “Smollett & the Modern Gustatory Mystery.”
Gulp.
Yet, food is elemental in writing, appealing to our sense of taste, and characterizing with each mouthful. Does the protagonist eat rare steak or tofu? Sue Grafton’s heroine, private investigator Kinsey Milhone, eats peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. What does that tell us about her? She’s accustomed to dining alone, has little food in the ‘frig, and is not afraid to experiment. Martha Grime’s Aunt Agatha gobbles up all the petit fours and fairy cakes on the tea tray. Her picky freeloading consumption captures most of what we need to know about her character, and tea, of course, persuades us the book is British (although Martha Grimes is American). S.J. Rozen’s private detective Lydia Chin lives dutifully at home with her mom who communicates her feelings by what she prepares for dinner. Dim Sum and all is good. Food is so predominate in Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Series that spinoffs include cookbooks, so we can all prepare the pumpkin stew apparently popular in Botswana. Even one’s taste in mystery is subdivided gastronomically into hard-boiled or soft-boiled.
Humphrey Clinker is not a mystery. The story relates a road trip through England and Scotland in the 1700’s. The epistolary style offers five fictional characters composing the letters, giving various perspectives on the stops along the way. The main character Matthew Bramble is piercingly sarcastic, but I often only half understood his political and cultural barbs because the time is so foreign to me. However, when Matthew Bramble turns his attention to food and drink, as he often does, he is hilarious. Here he is on the subject of the waters at Bath: “But I am now as much afraid of drinking, as of bathing; for, after a long conversation with the Doctor, about the construction of the pump and the cistern, it is very far from being clear with me, that the patients in the Pumproom don’t swallow the scouring of the bathers. I can’t help suspecting, that there is, or may be, some regurgitation from the bath into the cistern of the pump. In that case, what a delicate beveridge is every day quaffed by the drinkers; medicated with the sweat, and dirt, and dandruff; and the abominable discharges of various kinds, from twenty different diseased bodies, parboiling in the kettle below.”
Food and drink have the omniscient power to cross cultural barriers and to span the chasm of time. Breaking bread or sharing a toast offer powerful connections in our lives, and to the worlds we encounter when we open a book.
