Too Close to Home to Write About

Too Close to Home to Write About by Debra H. Goldstein

This is not a political rant. Nor is it a commentary on the Second Amendment, guns, or what shade of blue, if any, the sky is. I don’t care what you think about any of these things or what candidate you follow. I’m merely looking, from an author’s viewpoint, at the question of when a situation is too close to home to write about.

 

As many of you know, there was a recent shooting at St. Stephens Church in Vestavia, Alabama. Vestavia is a bedroom community which, like Mountain Brook, a block away, and many other communities that surround the defined borders of the city of Birmingham, gets mail whether you address it to Vestavia or Birmingham. The church is located in the last place you’d expect violence.

 

There are homes behind it and across the street is a neighborhood Publix. Catty-corner to it is a strip center with a wonderful bakery. The bakery is around the corner from its secondary building, which is used for youth activities and four days a week is rented to another faith’s organization that runs a non-sectarian respite program for individuals with dementia or Parkinson’s. The area is affluent, predominantly white, and peaceful.

 

St. Stephens and the neighborhood made national news because three elderly people attending a pot-luck supper were randomly shot. A fourth octogenarian subdued the seventy-year-old shooter by using a chair, tackling him, and holding him down until the police arrived.

 

I have many friends who pray at St. Stephens. The church’s now-retired rector has spoken at many events I have attended. My husband and I know many of the volunteers and participants involved with the respite program. In other words, I know St. Stephens and the wonderful people associated with it. It would be easy to steal the situation and create characters for a story or novel from knowing the church and its members, but it is too close to home for me to write about.

 

Many years ago, author Elaine Viets was on a panel talking about her then new first book in what is now the Angela Richman mystery series. She explained that Angela Richman was a death investigator returning to work after suffering and recovering from brain surgery necessitated by a series of major strokes after a doctor misdiagnosed her. Like Angela, Elaine, too, was a stroke survivor who was misdiagnosed. Although the story of what had happened to her was waiting to be told, it took Elaine eleven years to write some of the facts from her illness into one of her books. Until then, it was too close to home to write about.

 

Dr. Alexia Gordon was also on the panel. She turned to Elaine and laughingly noted that she had been writing for six or seven years but hadn’t been able to incorporate medicine into her writing. She was glad to know she only had to wait a few more years to be comfortable writing about medicine.

 

Hearing the two of them made me feel better. As a lawyer and judge, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to write books or stories featuring my personal knowledge. Now, I understood – it was too soon to write about something so close to me.

 

For the past few weeks, my thoughts and prayers have gone out to those who belong to St. Stephens and those who cannot understand how such a tragedy happened in our community. It is a similar reaction that many had to the AME church shooting in Charleston, the supermarket massacre in Buffalo, or the school slaughters in Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, and Uvalde. As an author, my mind churns these horrors over, but for now, these stories are too close to home to write about.

 

As an author or a reader are there incidents you can think of in your lives that are too close to home to write or read about?

Finally Fall! by Nancy Eady

          Some of you may remember last month’s blog where I discussed the insufferable heat wave we were experiencing in late September. (https://writerswhokill.blogspot.com/2019/09/its-hot-yall-by-nancy-eady.html). The heat wave continued through the middle of this month, but it has finally broken and we have reached fall.

Oak Mountain State Park

          Fall is one of my favorite seasons in Alabama. The leaves in middle through north Alabama do change, but not at all once. In the Northeast, fall causes a brilliant explosion of color that lasts for a couple of weeks, and then is gone. Down here, the trees transition more gently, hues of green slowly transitioning to reds, oranges and yellows. The fall color lasts longer, too. We will still have patches of trees waving with color in November, and it will be December before most of the trees are bare.

Oak Mountain State Park

 

         This morning, another fall phenomenon appeared – morning fog. I like the mystery fog brings to the otherwise normal routine of driving to work. The mist swirls in front of my car, sometimes clearing to let me see several car lengths ahead, sometime closing in to make me feel like an explorer faring forth into an unknown void. Then, as the sun comes up, the fog slowly lifts until the way in front is clear. If I’m lucky, I’ll hit the bridge over the lake I cross every day just in time to be able to see the fog lifting off of the water, another mysterious sight.

          When my daughter was little, I would tell her a story about the fog – the fog was made of confused clouds who came to rest on the earth rather than float in the sky, and as Mr. Sun rose, he reminded the clouds where they were supposed to be. She loved that story, as well as the one about Ms. Moon coming out in the daytime to talk to Mr. Sun, whenever it was daytime but the moon could still be seen. Looking back, Mr. Sun was doing a lot of talking!

Oak Mountain State Park

     

     What is your favorite season?  Do you like fall?  What about fall do you like best? 

A Weekend Booked for Murder

Murder in the Magic City 2014

Because I have family in and nearby Birmingham, Alabama, I've attended Murder in the Magic City since 2005. MMC is a one-day mystery readers and writers' conference sponsored by the Southern Sisters Chapter of Sisters in Crime. Held the first Saturday in February and coordinated by the extraordinary Margaret Fenton, author of Little Lamb Lost, this event attracts one hundred plus audience members to hear from twenty or more mystery authors. It takes place at the Homewood, Alabama, public library, which has a large auditorium with a stage for speakers, and an adjoining room where books are sold and signed. In the morning, Krispy Kreme donuts and coffee are available. For lunch, everyone lines up in the signing room to get box meals, then sits down in the auditorium, authors and audience together, to eat and talk. Baskets of books and goodies, beautifully prepared by Margaret's mother-in-law, Lynda Fenton, are auctioned off to benefit a local or national cause. This year's recipient is the Shoals Animal Advocates.

This February, I was one of the MMC featured authors, my first occasion to serve as a panelist and sign books. I was tremendously excited about the opportunity. It was like coming home, yet I was nervous about making a good impression. I had the privilege of moderating the first panel of the day. Our topic was the "Long and Short of It" and we discussed how writing short stories influenced and shaped our writing careers. My panelists, distinguished authors of both short story and novel writing, were Kaye George, Bert Goolsby, James M. Jackson, Toni L.P. Kelner (aka Leigh Perry), and Denise Swanson.

Kaye George, Toni Kelner, me, Jim Jackson, Bert Goolsby, Denise Swanson

I struggled, wondering how to present such terrific authors and make the most of our limited time. My introductions came together when, like Cinderella, I discovered the pair of shoes I wanted to wear to the event -- black flats decorated with small silver skeleton heads that reminded me of Toni Kelner/Leigh Perry's character Sid, the ambulatory skeleton featured in A Skeleton in the Family. I looked at the outfit I had chosen and realized it reflected each of the panelists' work: (1) purple for Bert Goolsby's legal novels; (2) gray for the gray matter Jim Jackson's detective Seamus McCree uses to solve his financial investigations; (3) a casual jacket like Denise Swanson's school psychologist Skye Denison might have worn; and (4) a necklace in the shape of a treble clef for Kaye George's Cressa Carraway musical series.

Of course, our time went by quickly. We concluded with each panelist presenting a six word story, a la Hemingway's "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

After we finished, we sat back and enjoyed the rest of the day, which was filled with wonderful presentations. Our guests of honor were Julia Spencer-Fleming, Agatha, Anthony, Macavity, Dilys, Barry, Nero Wolfe, and Gumshoe award winning author of the Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne mystery series, and Robert Dugoni, New York Times bestselling author of legal thrillers.

Julia Spencer-Fleming

Julia Spencer-Fleming's first novel, In the Bleak Midwinter, was published as the 2001 winner of the St. Martin Minotaur's "Best First Traditional Mystery" contest and received the Agatha award for Best First Novel. Born at Plattsburgh Air Force Base, Julia moved often with her military family, then studied acting and history at Ithaca College, and received her J.D. from the University of Maine School of Law. She has been an Edgar and Romantic Times RC Award finalist, and her most recent novel, the eighth in her series, Through the Evil Days, is nominated for an Agatha for Best Contemporary Novel this year.

Robert Dugoni is the author of The Jury Master, Damage Control, Wrongful Death, Bodily Harm, and The Conviction. For Murder One, he was selected as a finalist for the American Bar Association's 2012 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. With Joseph Hildorfer, he wrote The Cyanide Canary, a nonfiction account of how EPA agents and a government team prosecuted a case against an environmental polluter. Robert became a writer after working as a journalist, lawyer, and actor, and he is one of ten siblings. I met Robert at the S.C. Book Festival, and have had the privilege of collaborating with him on a short story. He is truly a good friend as well as a terrific writer.

Robert Dugoni

Other featured authors included: Kaye Wilkinson Barley, Brynn Bonner aka Brenda Witchger, Jennifer Brooks, Don Bruns, Karen Cunningham, Flo Fitzpatrick, Polly Iyer, Linda Lovely, Mike Orenduff, Dee Phelps, Neil Plakcy, Jaden Terrell, Jane Tesh, and Ellis Vidler. Some I met prior to MMC, but listening to all of them made me realize I had many more books to explore.

Following the program, we returned to our hotel where Margaret provided a barbeque dinner with all the fixings. A number of us stayed up late talking about writing and publishing.

The next day, we started out early, driving in caravan to Wetumpka, Alabama, best known as the location where the movie Big Fish was filmed. I was delighted to be traveling with Bert Goolsby and his wife Prue. Bert's family is from the area and he showed me some of the local landmarks.

At the Wetumpka Civic Center, we gathered for Murder on the Menu, sponsored by the Friends of the Wetumpka (Alabama) Library. Tammy Lynn, who organized the event, explained that Julia Spencer-Fleming, on a previous visit to MMC, suggested the Library partner with an existing conference in order to attract authors. We shared a wonderful meal with an audience of over a hundred and alternated by going from table to table and participating on panels. Mike Orenduff moderated the panel I served on, including Brenda Witchger, Kaye George, Robert Dugoni, and Jaden Terrell, about the importance of settings. Mike started us off with a great card trick. Again, it was a wonderful day with people who loved books and writing.

Murder on the Menu

I can't thank Margaret Fenton and Tammy Lynn enough for all the work they did in organizing and orchestrating these events. In addition, I'm grateful to Steve Herring, Margaret's brother, and Bob Witchger, Brenda's husband, who took and shared such great pictures. If you would like to read more about the weekend, please see Kaye Wilkinson Barley's and Kaye George's blogs.

Also, I'm so glad that the snow storms came the week before and the week after the events, so we were all able to make it to the meetings, then back home before inclement weather prevented travel!

Have you had the opportunity to attend a mystery conference? Which one would you recommend?