A Museum Story by Mary Dutta

On a recent visit to Chicago, somewhere between the Art Institute and the deep-dish pizza, I found time to visit the American Writers Museum.  According to their website, their mission is to “excite audiences about the impact of American writers—past, present, and future—in shaping our collective histories, cultures, identities, and daily lives.” I am happy to say that they are achieving that goal.

To the museum’s credit, their timeline of four hundred years of American writers included a range of voices that reflected the breadth of our national identity and experience. But I was also looking for another form of representation: crime fiction. Genre fiction is not always accorded the same respect as more literary writing, so I was pleased to discover that the museum believed Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett worthy of inclusion. Chester Himes, whose popular Harlem Detective novels featured some of the first African-American protagonists in mystery fiction, also received recognition.

In addition to the timeline, the museum has numerous interactive exhibits. My favorite hands-on display was not the word wall or the multi-user touch tables but rather the table full of manual typewriters. Visitors were encouraged to sit and type out a story, which they could then add to the display of works created by other guests.

After helping a flummoxed twenty-something roll a piece of paper into her typewriter, I moved on to composing my own story. It started out being about how hard it is to type on a manual machine, but ended up a bit more mysterious. I share it here in its entirety, minus the errors introduced by my rusty typing skills:

Once upon a time a typist struggled to free her words. Her fingers lacked the strength to go on. Her story remained trapped inside her. No one would ever know the truth. Maybe it’s better that way. For everyone.

I don’t know how long my creation stayed on display, potentially helping to shape our “collective histories, cultures, identities, and daily lives.” I’m guessing it has since been replaced by other visitors’ tales, and that’s as it should be. Because as the museum itself makes clear, there’s always a new American story to tell.

 

Who would you include in the American Writers Museum?

 

Reassessing Patricia Highsmith

 

by Linda Rodriguez

Patricia Highsmith was the writer of powerful, compressed narratives of psychological complexity and transgressive violence. Her short fiction and novels are gems of tight, spare narrative that carries an outsized emotional impact. Her reputation was often injured because she wrote almost exclusively crime fiction of one kind or another.

 When a biographer of Patricia Highsmith interviewed Norman Mailer about Highsmith, Mailer said, “Remind me? Who was Highsmith? A high-class detective novelist?” Well, not really. She rarely created detectives and when she did, they were failures at solving crimes. All of Highsmith’s authorial sympathies were with the performers of the criminal acts. In Highsmith’s works, the suspense is usually whether or not the protagonist will be able to get away with one or more violent acts.

Highsmith wrote 22 novels, a number of which have been made into successful movies. Her protagonists were usually outsiders—neurotic or even psychotic—and they usually carried out criminal acts, for which most often they were never caught or punished. She records extraordinary characters acting out bizarre fantasies and strange intimacies in precise, flat, simple prose.

 There is little resolution in a Highsmith novel. Her characters succeed or fail in their (mostly criminal) endeavors, but they almost never work anything through or develop. Her books and stories are usually explorations of morbid psychology. Her psychological thrillers, however, are often loaded with satire and black humor. Many European critics see her as an “existential” writer.

 Disturbing violence was one of her trademarks. Murderous impulses lurking behind facades of normal lives was another element of the Highsmith brand of chilling psychological suspense novels. A third element was always her emotionally and morally ambiguous young men of uncertain sexuality who served as her protagonists. Told in stark language, her startling and ironic books have long been admired for their daring themes and uncompromising vision.

 Filmmakers were always drawn to her work, and a number of successful movies have been made from her books, beginning with Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, made from the novel of the same title. The Talented Mr. Ripley was made into three different movies, and Ripley novels, Ripley’s Game and Ripley Underground, were also filmed.

In later years, her misanthropic and misogynistic tendencies, not to mention her racism and anti-Semitism, became more and more prominent and pronounced. This and her choice to live abroad helped to keep her reputation in the United States lower than it should have been. Highsmith had spent a great deal of time at the writer’s colony, Yaddo, during her early career, and though she became an expatriate in Europe for the last half of her life, she left her $3 million estate to Yaddo when she died.

Highsmith books that I particularly recommend are Strangers on a Train, The Blunderers, The Talented Mr.. Ripley, This Sweet Sickness, Edith's Diary, The Boy Who Followed Ripley, The Snail-Watcher and Other Stories, Little Tales of Misogyny, The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder, and Nothing That Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories. That last book was published posthumously. Highsmith also wrote an excellent book on writing, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction. I think you'll find that Highsmith stands the test of time.

 

Linda Rodriguez's 13^th book, Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging, will publish in May 2023. She also edited Woven Voices: 3 Generations of Puertorriqueña Poets Look at Their American Lives, The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, The Fish That Got Away: The Sixth Guppy Anthology, Fishy Business: The Fifth Guppy Anthology, and other anthologies.

Her Skeet Bannion mystery novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, Every Last Secret—and books of poetry—Skin Hunger, Heart's Migration, Dark Sister—received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin's Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices & Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Oklahoma Book Award finalist, Thorpe Menn Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. She also published Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop.  Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in Kansas City Noir, was optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International Thriller Writers, Native Writers Circle of the Americas, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Learn more about her at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com or follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/rodriguez_linda  or on Mastodon at https://mastodon.social/rodriguez_linda.

 

Savannah’s Other Cemetery

By Shari Randall

 

Ever since John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was published in 1986, many have fallen under the spell of hauntingly beautiful Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia. Readers embraced Berendt’s exploration of Savannah’s mysterious dark side and the book was made into a film directed by Clint Eastwood. The iconic cover image from the book and film was The Bird Girl statue by Sylvia Shaw Judson, which had graced the cemetery but was moved to the Telfair Museum when fans trampled the graves at Bonaventure to get a closer look and selfie. 

 

On a recent trip, I discovered that Savannah has other intriguing cemeteries and one can be found just steps from Chippewa Square. 

 

Colonial Park Cemetery lies in the heart of Savannah’s historic district. Those interested in history will enjoy a stroll among the luminaries of Savannah’s colonial past. Those who enjoy a good spooky story will revel in a ghost tour of what’s been called Savannah’s most haunted cemetery.

The cemetery was established in 1750 and was known by several other names over the years, including the Old Brick Cemetery, South Broad Street Cemetery, Christ Church Cemetery, and simply, the Old Cemetery. Luminaries abound in Colonial Park, including military heroes, US Continental Congressmen, and the marvelously named Button Gwinnett, Georgia’s signer of the Declaration of Independence, who was killed in a duel just outside the gates of the cemetery.

 

I’ve found that writers have an affinity for graveyards. Cemeteries are a supermarket of names, especially for writers of historical fiction. From inscriptions, one can learn so much about a time period, including which names were popular. If I ever need to name a character with Southern charm and a Savannah pedigree, these names gleaned from the stones at Colonial Park Cemetery might turn up on the page: Patridge Adams, Preserved Alger, Oliver Anguheart,  Mary Ann Victoire Armaignac, Valeria Josephine Burroughs, Philura Paine Spalding Claghorn, Missouri Douglas.

 

Besides being a trove of interesting names, cemeteries are full of stories. 

 

In Colonial Park, historic plaques and markers stand by headstones and cenotaphs, offering silent history lessons, inspiration, and more mysteries. Especially evocative is the Duellist’s Grave, a memorial to Lieutenant James Wilde, who died on January 16, 1815 in a duel with Captain Roswell P. Johnson. The cause of the dispute in this “affair of honor” is undisclosed, but the disdain of Lt. Wilde’s brother for Captain Johnson is clear. What caused these officers of the same regiment to meet and exchange four rounds of gunfire? Only the ghosts know.

 

Do you enjoy a good stroll in a cemetery? Or is it just me?

Shari Randall is the author of the Agatha Award-winning Lobster Shack mystery series from St. Martin's Press. You can see her travel photos and learn more about her books on her Facebook page, Shari Randall Author.

 

 

Understanding by Nancy L. Eady

It didn’t take long after I started writing in earnest before I discovered that non-writers do not understand writers on certain crucial issues. Here is my top ten list.

1)    Writers anxiously await non-writers’ opinions of our work when we let them see it before sending our story or book out into the cold, cruel world. We will not assume that they liked it if we don’t hear from them. The longer it takes to hear from them, the more we fear the writing is terrible.

2)     Writers cannot control our characters. They have a will of their own. Yes, we are creating them. Yes, we build the world around them. But then they take over. To push them to act in a manner contrary to their nature is to invite a revolution, or even worse, a complete strike a/k/a writer’s block.

3)    Writing is not nearly as lonely a profession as non-writers think. We meet fellow writers through many types of organizations – local, regional, national, and virtual. Various list-serves and other contacts keep my email box humming, while on-line communities on Facebook and Twitter keep up a running dialog between authors.

4)    Our fellow mystery writers are not competitors but colleagues. Business people selling products have the hardest time with this concept. Unlike laundry detergent, where buying Tide means I’m not buying Gain, buying Book A does not mean a reader will not buy Book B and then Book C. The more enthusiastic readers of mysteries out there, the better.

5)    Finishing the first draft is only the first step in writing a book. After that, developmental edits, copy edits and proof reading remain. We may have to rewrite our book yet again to satisfy agents or publishers. And yes, the rewriting and editing can take longer than writing the first draft did.

6)    Writing is hard work. It requires time and dedication. While writing, we are not free to discuss homework, our plans for next weekend, what we want to watch on TV or whose turn it is to walk the dog or take out the trash. We may not even hear the non-writer the first three times he or she speaks.

7)    NaNoWriMo. To be fair, not every writer gets NaNoWriMo either. (NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, where hardy souls set a goal of writing an entire novel during the month of November. NaNoWriMo has become quite the annual writing event.) 

8)    Receiving an email from a fellow writer is a friendly wave that lights our souls.

9)    We write because we can’t not write. Our writing won’t let us alone. Yes, life interferes at times and we put it aside for a while but we are always compelled to return.  

10)    A subtle bond exists between writers that transcends political beliefs, religion, race, creed or life-style. Only fellow writers understand the power, the pleasure and the pain of putting your ideas on paper and watching them take flight. A fellow writer understands the euphoria of being in “the zone.” Frustrated by writer’s block?  Fellow writers have been there, done that. A fellow mystery writer won’t bat an eye when you post a question on-line asking about the best way to kill someone, the best weapon to use and what poisons work best.

If you are a writer, what have you noticed non-writers fail to understand about us?  If you are a non-writer, what are some of the oddest things you have discovered about writers? 

Do you Write Daily or in Spurts?

Do you Write Daily or in Spurts? by Debra H. Goldstein

There are many articles and blogs written about whether a writer is a pantser or a plotter, but what about the motivation to write? How do different writers respond to the muse – or do they?

I have a friend who retired the same week I did to follow her passion for writing. Although I have had more short stories published during the intervening time period, she has written three times as many books as I have. She writes every day. If she knows she isn’t going to be able to write on a given day, she anticipates the extra words she needs to stay on schedule and works overtime in advance. Her books are excellent, but it is her productivity that overwhelms me.

For me, writing is a passion, but I don’t do it every day. When I try to be that rigid, I usually end up throwing out the words I write. They feel and read forced. I work best when I have a book deadline or am writing in response to a prompt or concept. In those instances, it is like having an out of body experience. Hours pass without me even realizing it. Often the final product needs little to no revision.

Sometimes, when I’m writing with this sense of freedom, I hit a brick wall. The words stop flowing or the idea doesn’t seem right. Some writers push through when this happens, but I pause and let my subconscious work. It may take days until I write again. Often, the answer comes to me in my sleep. Unlike a story idea that I may dream and forget, the thoughts that come to me in my sleep are more of an understanding of how the piece should proceed. The words may not be there, yet, but the mechanism for moving forward is.

What about you? Do you write every day? Do you work out problems with your WIP in your sleep? Is there a motivation difference between a writer who writes every day and one who writes in spurts like I do?

Why Do We as Writers Kill? by Debra H. Goldstein

Why Do We as Writers Kill? by Debra H. Goldstein

Why do the writers on this blog kill? What perverse joy do we or our peers get from dead bodies, dismembered body parts, bashed brains, or subtle symptoms of poisoning? Secretly, do you think our families wish we wrote literary works instead of books and stories in the mystery genre?

What makes us listen to two people in a restaurant and immediately discern a conflict that will result in the death of the one of the two we least like? Do other people observe their surroundings and think about where a dead body can be shoved? Outside of our sphere of friends, are we classified as “normal

The answer probably is “no,” but who cares? I can’t speak for my fellow bloggers, but I write in the mystery genre, because I love it. Although I have written and been published in the non-fiction and literary areas, my passion is whodunits.

Despite reading every aspect of the genre, I primarily write traditional or cozy mysteries. In my other life, I traveled a lot and found traditional or cozy mysteries to be easy plane or beach reads that completely took me away from the stress of my everyday world. Often character driven and with crisp dialogue, these mysteries quickly invested me in their stories and challenged me to figure out the murderer before the great reveal. My goal in writing them is to provide the same fun for other people.

To some, the fun may seem a bit macabre, but I think I can speak for all of us --- we wouldn’t want it any other way.

Herman Melville

Twenty years or so ago, my three sisters, a brother-in-law, and I became interested in the transcendental writers of New England: Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott and some others who may not have been a transcendentalist, but were of that era in New England. We had all visited the areas in which they lived including Walden’s Pond, Emerson’s and the Alcott’s homes, and the cemeteries with their graves. We read and discussed their books.

However, I don’t remember us reading Melville. But when I took a class in literature of writers in the 1800’s, we were assigned Billy Budd, I think. I know I read it. It was a few years later that I read his most well-known book, Moby Dick. Yes, I read the whole thing mostly on an air flight to California and back to visit my daughter.

 

I decided to research Herman Melville for a blog when Garrison Keillor mentioned him on “Writer’s Almanac,” the anniversary of the day he was born, August 1, 1819. I became interested when Keillor mentioned that Moby Dick was a commercial failure with mixed reviews. All the following information is a much abbreviated version from Wikipedia on Herman Mellville. I would strongly recommend you go to Wikipedia and read his whole life story there. He was a fascinating man.

“Herman Melville was the third child of a merchant in French dry goods in New York City. His formal education ended when his father died in 1832 leaving the family in financial straits. For a short period, Melville became a school teacher before he took to the sea as a sailor on a merchant ship in 1839. In 1840 he signed aboard the whaler Acushnet for his first whaling voyage, but jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands.

After further adventures, he returned to Boston in 1844. His first book Typee (1845), a highly romanticized account of his life among Polynesians, became such a best-seller that he worked up a sequel Omoo (1847). These successes encouraged him to marry Elizabeth Shaw, of a prominent Boston family, but were hard to sustain.  His first novel not based on his own experiences, Mardi (1849), is a sea narrative that develops into a philosophical allegory, but was not well received. Redburn (1849), a story of life on a merchant ship, and his 1850 expose of harsh life aboard a Man of War and White Jacket yielded warmer reviews, but not financial security.

In August 1850, Melville moved his growing family to Arrowhead, a farm near Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he established a profound but short-lived friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom he dedicated Moby Dick. As I mentioned above, Moby Dick didn’t earn much money and was published to mixed reviews.

Melville’s career as a popular author effectively ended with the cool reception of Pierre (1852), in part a satirical portrait of the literary scene. His Revolutionary War novel Israel Potter appeared in 1855.

From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, most notably “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853), “The Encantadas” (1854) and “Benito Cereno” (1855). These and three other stories were collected in 1856 as The Piazza Tales. In 1857, he voyaged to England, where he reunited with Hawthorne for the first time since 1852, and then went on to tour the Near East. The Confidence Man (1857) was the last prose work he published during his lifetime. He moved to New York to take a position as Customs Inspector and turned to poetry. Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the Civil War. In 1867 his oldest child, Malcolm, died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land, a metaphysical epic, appeared in 1876. In 1886, his second son, Stanwix, died and Melville retired.

During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, left one volume unpublished, and returned to prose of the sea: the novella Billy Budd, left unfinished at his death, was published in 1924.

A slight reviving interest in Melville’s work was cut short with his death from cardiovascular disease in 1891. However, the centennial of his birth in 1919 became the starting point of the “Melville Revival.” Critics discovered his work, scholars explored his life, his major novels and stories have become world classics, and his poetry has gradually attracted respect.”

So if we hang in there long enough as writers, maybe our work will reach some acclaim even if we’ve been long dead.

I’m Sorry Ishmael

-  Gloria Alden

                                                I’m sorry, Ishmael, the editor said

                                                                as he looked at me and shook his head,

                                                                I know you worked hard on your memoir,

                                                                but there’d be many changes I’d require.

                                                                I feel the characters are too weird.

                                                                Queequeg, he mentioned as he stroked his beard.

                                                                Captain Ahab’s an infidel from hell

                                                                so Christians and fair ladies he’d repel.

                                                                And the name Moby Dick for a whale?

                                                                Seems Killer Fish would fit better the tale.

                                                                There’s too much written about sea and ship,

                                                                all superfluous description I would skip.

                                                                There’s much that’s unbelievable to me.

                                                                Fedallah long hidden in hold, you see?

                                                                The cabin boy Pip and Ahab both insane?

                                                                It’s too incongruous to entertain.

                                                                But what most stretches my imagination

                                                                is you surviving on Queequeg’s coffin

                                                                when the Pequod’s destroyed, all lost but you.

                                                                Now tell me, Ishmael, that can’t really be true.

                                                                I know you’ve worked long on this manuscript

                                                                and you hate to see any of your words stripped,

                                                                but unless you follow my advice I foretell,

                                                                nary a book my dear friend will you ever sell.

                                               

                                                                                 

I wrote the above poem for one of the Ohio Poetry Day contests that wanted a poem from the point of view of some character in fiction or someone connected with the character in some way. I didn’t place, but out of many entries from around the country, I did win an honorable mention.

What do you think?  Do you think our work might become more popular with our death or die with us? Does it matter?

Solving the Mystery of Holiday Shopping for Writers

It’s almost Thanksgiving and you know what that means – you are already behind on your holiday shopping. If there is a writer on your holiday shopping list and you want to go beyond a bookstore gift certificate, check out these ideas for gifts sure to please the literary on your list.

Coffee and writers go together like F. Scott and Zelda. Literarygiftcompany.com has mugs that can be personalized with the title of one’s own book! The classic design will brighten your writer’s morning (and afternoon and evening) cup of coffee.

What to buy for the mystery author who has everything?

Elementary!

Try the Sherlock Holmes Action Figure complete with magnifying glass and deerstalker hat. The pipe is removable and the magnifying glass really works. You can find it on Amazon.

Does your writer need a pep talk? This pencil set from iceydesigns.com offers writerly advice and solace. 

Looking for the perfect accessory for your writer’s Malice Domestic 

banquet outfit? The Whodunit Charm Bracelet is complete with miniature charms of a syringe, Ouija board, knife, magnifying glass, revolver, book, and puzzle piece. You can find it on Etsy, a trove of unique gifts for the writer and reader.

Want to give a writer friend – or yourself – recognition for an especially well written scene, story, or blog post?  The Storyteller Merit Badge (Etsy) is an inexpensive way to say "Well done!"

Garrets can get very drafty in the winter. Keep your writer warm with the Edgar Allan Poe scarf from storiarts.com.

 Do you have any gift ideas for the writers on your list?