Do you have geek genes or Levi jeans?

By Joe Moore

I consider myself to be tech savvy—maybe more so than the average PC user. I believe I have geek genes. My wife has Levi jeans. She is always calling me into her office to say that there's something wrong with her PC and could I fix it. It’s usually a result of pilot error.

I wasn’t born with a geek gene. I believe I got it while in close proximity to someone who was born with it: my son. I remember when he passed it on to me. Many years ago, he came home from school one day with a Radio Shack TRS-80. He had traded a friend an old CB radio for it. The TRS used a TV for a monitor and had a paltry 16k of RAM. No hard drive. Storage was on an external 5.25” floppy disk or an audio cassette tape. Within a week, I got my hands on a basic word processing module and was using the computer more than my son. I wrote lots of stories with it as I dreamed of becoming a novelist.

Being an official geek, I soon grew tired of the TRS-80 and moved up to the highly advanced Commodore 64. Same external storage but a whopping 64k of RAM. Now we were getting somewhere. I found a better word processor program and kept writing more stuff. My first novel was years away, but I was on a roll.

Somewhere along the line, I learned how to use an Apple Macintosh. Built-in floppy storage and a massive 128k of RAM. I could feel the power.

Then I purchased a dedicated word processing device made by Magnavox called a VideoWriter. It was a computer, printer and monitor built into one unit. I wrote my first book using it--an action adventure novel set in Cuba and South Florida called DIRE STRAITS.

My first real, bigboy computer was a 286 made by Emerson. It had 4MB of RAM and a 40MB hard drive. Today, you can find toys in a McDonalds Happy Meal with more memory than my Emerson.

Next came a Micron which I used for many years until settling into my trusty Dell running three 19” LCD monitors and a bagillion giggawatts of flux capacitors and hot-swapping Terradactyl bites of quadrophonic, plutonium multiplex demodulators. When I turn it on, it’s like the scene from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation where the whole power grid dims.

Does having geek genes help me write better novels? Probably not. But when you're a geek, it doesn't really matter. All that does matter is staying on the "bleeding edge" of technology.

So whatever happed to my son who gave me the geek gene? He went on to become a federal agent for the Department of Defense. His specialty: computer forensics.

Which do you have: geek genes or Levi jeans? What was your journey like along the techno highway to get you to your current computer? And the biggest question of all: will you stay with Windows XP or upgrade to Vista? I'm running the Vista compatibility test right now.

No Reservations about Murder with Reservations

by Joanna Campbell Slan

News that author Elaine Viets suffered a stroke has hit the writing community hard last week. Many of us know Elaine personally, and many more of us have been the beneficiaries of her kindness.

Here in St. Louis, Elaine has long been a celebrity. She gently probed and explored our city’s foibles in a colorful column for the daily newspaper. One piece was about our odd custom of “forking” or sticking hundreds of plastic forks in the ground, handle up. Yep, you gotta love a town that knows how to have fun. Only in St. Louis can you say, “Fork you!” and not have to duck.

I can’t imagine the fear that accompanies having a stroke. Especially for those of us who make our living by wits. And if you’ve ever chatted with Elaine, you know what a bright and agile mind she has. When she lived in Washington, DC, she protected herself on the streets by wearing a custom-made pair of vampire teeth. That plus her height—six feet—gave her an “don’t mess with me” air which is totally at odds with the real Elaine. She’s a sweetheart.

And a dynamo. Right now, she’s a whirling dervish confined to her bed.

So here’s a great Mother’s Day idea…if you know Elaine…or if you want a terrific book to read…or a gift for your Mom…or if you’ve ever had a friend or relative cut down by a stroke…buy a copy of her newest release Murder with Reservations. Email msbstchas@sbcglobal.net and Main Street Books will take care of your purchase. And then give yourself a BIG pat on the back!

InkSpotters at Malice Domestic

Lotsa InkSpotters will be traveling to Arlington, Virginia for Malice Domestic, May 4-6, 2007. Be sure to check out their panels, or just say hello.

Deb Baker
5/5/2007 at 9:00 am
The Craft of Detection-Sleuths Who Craft More Than A Killer's Fate

Karen MacInerney
5//07 at 9:00 am
New Kids On the Block

Sue Ann Jaffarian
5/5/2007 at 10:30 am
Gumption-These Sleuths Have Plenty!

G.M. Malliet
5/5/2007 at 10:30 am
Short Story Panel

Chuck Zito
5/5/2007 at 10:30 am
Moderating "It's A Man's World: Guys With Attitude"

Susan Goodwill
5/5/2007 at 2:30 pm
Murder in Paradise:Death among the Beautiful People

Candy Calvert
5/5/07 at 4:00 pm
Mystery and Medicine: What makes the murder go down?

Joanna Slan
5/6/07 at 10:30 am
Undaunted Sleuths: Murder Most Adventurous

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

by G.M. Malliet

Photo credit: See http://www.theboatrace.org/

The photo is a reenactment of the scene at my house when Midnight Ink offered me a two-book contract. Only the original event was much, much wilder. I just wish I could remember it. ;-)

Writing the first book was exactly like this: rowing, rowing, rowing for miles, unable to see where you're headed, finally crossing the finish line...and realizing, you've won! Someone is standing on the shore, waving a book contract!

As I now work on the second book, I no longer feel I'm out there rowing alone, thanks to this group of Midnight Ink authors. I have people to call on for advice and information, and for reminders of why I wanted to be a writer in the first place.

I just came back from the Mystery Writers of American conference in New York, where a huge crowd of mystery writers also made me feel I was no longer alone in this strange and annoying desire to write a book. Stephen King was there, being interviewed in his role as Grand Master. (He is, by the way, not remotely scary in person.)

He talked about his book, On Writing, which is IMO pretty much the only book anyone has to read on the subject of writing. His summarized advice:

--Read everything
--Write every day
--Omit all adverbs

Yep, that about covers it.

He talked eloquently and with humility about how all writers--even famous, experienced writers like himself--can get lost, make mistakes, have to back up or throw away or revise and cut. How they waste days or weeks or even years on the wrong track. (The best writers just make it all look simple.)

And writers do this work with absolutely no sense that anyone cares or will ever care about what we've written. It really is a form of insanity. King emphasized it is also a form of therapy. It got him through the aftermath of his accident, acting like a painkiller once he got into "the zone"--that place writers go when they are too busy writing to notice the house is on fire.

At the conference, I had just reached the "slog" part of writing a novel--that middle part where you also have to make the tough, no-going-back decisions about where you're headed with this book. It was energizing to be reminded, once again, that I am not alone here on the river. I've got the Midnight Ink authors and Stephen King (but he has got to leave Cujo on the shore and that is final.)

Standing Together

I had planned to follow up my "Lunch With Agatha" blog with a "Lunch With Dracula" entry, but real life stepped in and has changed the nature of my post. I recently returned from a three-day trip to North Carolina. I drove down to visit my mom and my grandmother, who has recently entered a hospice. It has been a tough year for my grandmother, as she has gone from using a walker to barely being able to stand, to the complete loss of the use of her legs. She has always been a fiercely independent woman and this physical weakness has really taken a toll of her emotionally.

I’m not sure if there are bleaker places than rest homes and hospices, but her sparse room became even colder when she asked me to go over to her house and pick out the things I wanted “once she was gone.” I didn’t want to, but it was important to her that I fulfill this request, so I did. My mom and I walked around her quiet, clean house using subdued voices and found ourselves reluctant to touch anything.

I’m sure everyone out there has had to face some kind of loss and one of the hardest things we must do is sort through the minutia of someone’s life. I picked out some antique toys for my children and a scrapbook full of letters my mother had written about her own three children to her mother, my grandmother. I was dry-eyed and spoke without a tremor in my voice until my mother held up a cheap, chipped hand mirror that had been in my grandmother’s bathroom as long as I could remember. I could see her holding it up as she brushed her long, silver hair. She only has a few white tufts now and I’ve got plenty of gray hairs myself, but it seemed only yesterday that I was a stringy haired blond girl watching my lovely grandmother wind her hair into a perfect bun.

When I got back to Virginia from NC, I was stunned by the violence that occurred at Virginia Tech. The city of Richmond is still subdued this week and I’ve been feeling rather down. It’s been a challenge to write light-hearted murder mysteries when cold-blooded, life-changing murders have ruined lives forever down the road.

There has been a silver lining to all this bleakness, however. Elaine Viets, author of the Dead-End Job and Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper mysteries, is recovering from her stroke. Everyone in the writing community was shocked that someone so young and healthy had been suddenly hospitalized with a dire prognosis. Elaine is doing much better, but clearly cannot tour or promote her new book. The MWA, Sisters in Crime, her promotionist at Breakthrough Promotions, and her fellow authors have rallied around her to promote her latest Dead End Job Mystery, Murder With Reservations.

A call to help Elaine has been answered by many: readers, authors, librarians, bookstore owners, etc. It has made me feel grateful to be a part of such a generous and caring group of people and also reinforced the notion that this is a small world after all. We all feel pain, loss, and fear, but once we reach out to one another, we become aware of the power of goodness.

Please support Elaine by pre-ordering her book. It will be released May 1^st and on that date, it would be great to see it soar to the top of the Bestseller List! Clock here for the Amazon link and learn more about Elaine and her works on http://www.elaineviets.com/

Now, do me a favor and reach out to someone you love. Give them a hug, a kiss, a call, a prayer. Carpe Diem, my friends.

Worts and All by Jess Lourey

I am an efficient (perennially stressed. anal. stretched too thin.) person. Some days, I’m even like Martha Stewart on speed. I am a full-time college instructor of writing and sociology, a single mother of an eight and five-year-old, and a mystery writer with three books coming out within one 13-month period. Crazy, right?

I didn’t necessarily think so, until I noticed I was even altering the English language to accommodate my need to get stuff done sooner. I was making illegal contractions. Word shorts. Worts. The term is an example of what it defines (and if there is a word for that occurrence, please let me know because I bet it’s a cool word).

How it goes is this: I find myself typing really fast (Incidentally, this fast typing happens while I’m giving student feedback to online papers, not when I’m writing novels. I find that when I write creatively, my Muse comes more with the force of a whoopee cushion than a tempest.). So I’m typing so fast that spell check can’t keep up with me. I’ll be four lines past before that little red squiggly line appears, indicating I’ve misspelled a word. I look back and realize that what I’ve actually done is Frankenstein two words. “Awkward wording” becomes “awkwarding.” “Your thesis issues include…” becomes “Your thesissues include…”

What’s happening? Is my brain growing a horn? Is this evolution or a cry for help? Or do I just needitors? Help me.

You Have Chatter

There’s a lot of talk among writers about wasting time online. What if we’re also wasting creative brain cells?

Sure, I’m right in there with you. I maintain a website, read about 20 blogs every day, post on 2, belong to 12 listservs. I have a presence on myspace and crimespace. I try hard to post comments at the blogs, join in the listserv conversations, send personal messages to myspace friends. I’m tempted to join the competition over at crimespace in composing a great forum, and I have fun plans to improve my website.

But how much creative thought can a writer produce in a single day. I’m finding that, on a good day, I have about three hours before my mind shuts down. That means that if I’m creating all this other junk for two hours every day (and it’s probably three) that leaves me short on resources for the book I have to turn in soon.

So the question is - am I throwing away creative juices?

Writing fiction is damn hard work. It’s much easier to get sidetracked on the internet and write whatever pops into my head, expounding on my personal beliefs, making them come alive for my mailing list, et al audience. Oops, forgot above to mention the newsletter I write.

Yesterday, I woke up with a bad cold. I’m way behind. Manuscript is due June 15th and I’m 2/3 of the way through the FIRST draft. And I have a blog posting due. I didn’t have the energy for both of them. Guess which one I decided was most important? Yup, the posting. It was a bad choice, but I’m making more of those these days.

Gertie Johnson, my protagonist, talked to me through the first two books. In book three, she’s been silent. I’m too busy thinking of witty things to say online to let her voice come through to me. I’m lousy at plotting without her. I need her back.

Look at the authors who are making it, I mean really making it. Are they writing dialogue while I’m writing this blog? Are they creating intriguing characters while I’m hunting down real-life characters to help me figure out problems with html so my newsletter publishes correctly?

Would I produce a better story if I didn’t have access to all these communities and their temptations? I love the writing community. It’s what I should be looking forward to as a reprieve when I ascend from my writing office in the bowels of my home. Instead it has consumed me. Resistance is (almost) futile. I have been assimilated.

What am I going to do about this insidious disease that threatens to eat away at my imagination? I have to try to remember what’s important and cut back on everything else. My husband once asked me, if I had to choose would I want to be a literary success or a commercial success. I didn’t even have to think about it. A commercial success, I said, feeling slightly embarrassed.

So the question I ask myself today is along the same lines – do I want to win over my peers or are my readers more important? And I have to choose. Which do I want? The answer is easy. I have to cut back on my efforts with my writing friends and lure my readers in with the best writing I can produce.

And I’m really, really going to cut back. Just as soon as I write the guest blog I’ve been invited to post, and answer a few myspace messages, and…

Deb Baker

Fiction or Fact?

by Chuck Zito

(Actual conversation:)

"So, do you have to pay this guy when you publish one of your stories?"

"What guy?" I respond, knowing in my heart just how baffling the answer was going to be.

"The Nicky guy. The one in your book. Do you have to pay him?"

My friends read fiction. You don't know them, so you'll have to take my word for it, but they do. They read mysteries, science fiction, literary fiction, thrillers. They read a lot of fiction. I don't think any of them actually believes there is a magical castle somewhere north of London where young wizards train. And, while there may be just a little confusion here and there about the Da Vinci Code, for the most part they don't have any issues when it comes to what is and isn't fiction.

That is, until they read my books. Then a very strange thing happens.

(Composite conversation: )

"That character, the music conductor – that's Alice isn't it?"

"No."

"Oh. But the guy – the best friend – that's me, right?"

"No."

And so it goes. There is an entire group of people on the West Coast who think one of the characters in my first book is based on a theater director we all worked with, even though the book was written before I met any of them. On the East Coast, an entirely different group of people are certain the character is based on a director they and I knew years ago. I've explained carefully that this is not so. They nod their heads as if they believe me, but I can see it in their eyes: "How come I'm not in a book?"

Fine. So I take some joyously idiosyncratic tick from a friend and weave it into a character. What happens? The friend in question never mentions the character who happens to love the exact same type of pickle, squash, and peanut butter sandwich as they. Nope. Instead he zeros in on a character to whom he bears absolutely no resemblance and ask why, after knowing him for twenty-five year, I would be so mean as to describe him as only five-feet four inches tall when he is obviously a prime example of manhood at six-feet one. That's right, my friends who aren't seeing other people in my writing, are busy seeing themselves in all the wrong characters.

Am I upset with people who think I couldn't be making up what I write? Not at all. I'm delighted it's so real to some readers. I'm happy to blur the line as best I can. And I always thank them for reading. It's just that I haven't found the next comfortable response after 'thank you.' What can I say to people who insist that I'm recounting my past and not, in fact, spinning daydreams from everyday life? I cannot possibly be alone in this strange place. What do other writers say?