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Greetings to all my Sisters in Crime. This is the September blog hop, for which I need to answer some of the following questions: • Which authors have inspired you? • Which male authors write great women characters? Which female authors write great male characters? • If someone said “Nothing against women writers, but all of my favorite crime fiction authors happen to be men,” how would you respond? • What’s the best part of the writing process for you? What’s the most challenging? • Do you listen to music while writing? What’s on your playlist? • What books are on your nightstand right now? • If you were to mentor a new writer, what would you tell her about the writing business? I’m going to keep this short and sweet. Inspirational authors: Craig Johnson, C.J.Box, Sue Grafton, Kathy Reichs, and P.D. James are the first that come to mind. Clearly my favorite crime fiction authors are NOT all men, and each of these authors takes a different approach to their stories. The best part of the writing process for me is the actual writing. Losing yourself in your writing is exhilarating! Right behind comes research. I was a scientist for my career, and research was one of the academic legs I had to stand on. Research for a book is far more fun. The most challenging part for me is the endless rewriting and editing. Well…there is marketing. I don’t listen to music when I’m writing because I need to hear the dialogue in my head. I have occasionally used soft classical music, but mostly I enjoy the quiet. The pile of books on my nightstand is teetering, and the list of books I’ve downloaded on Kindle is prodigious. I just finished a novella by Kathy Reichs based on the snake hunts occurring outside the Everglades National Park, in an effort to reduce the overpopulation of boa constructors. I recommend it, lots of twists and turns and general yuck. My advice for new writer is to join a critique group as soon as possible. My group taught me to write by patiently working though my first book, and I still rely on them for ideas, criticism, and encouragement. I can’t emphasize more the importance of this! I am going to invite R. M. Byrd to join the blog hop. His first book, The Fir, Fish, Flea and Beagle Club is a wonderful read – a coming of age story about two boys just before WWII. His current book is a mystery with a twist, and he attended the recent Writers’ Police Academy, which is sponsored each year by Sisters in Crime, to hone his police procedural and investigative writing skills. R.M. Byrd: http://byrdwords.wordpress.com/ 0 0

Many years ago, front porches were an important part of our society. People would gather on the front porch after dinner in the evening, sitting in straight chairs or more likely rocking chairs, and talk with each other. No TV, no video games. They talked, and not only with each other but with passers-by and neighbors, and kept an eye on the neighborhood children. This provided a sense of community and cohesiveness and may have solved a lot of problems. Today most houses don’t have front porches, or if they do, they aren’t used. As neighborhoods get larger, communication ceases. I loved our first house in Evanston, Illinois; it had a front porch, and the first thing we did was buy some rocking chairs and sit outside. We met all our neighbors that way! Today we have a lake house with a front porch, but it’s so far from the road that sitting there is not likely to encourage interaction. That’s when I discovered the beauty of the back deck and the boat house deck. We have visitors on a regular basis to our lake house, and one of the joys of those visits is sitting out on the back deck in the morning with coffee and the evening with a glass of wine and just talking. The boat house has an extensive deck, and when the weather is warm we bring down a cooler with drinks and food or snacks and sit on the deck. Boats going in and out of our cove have to go slow – it’s a no wake zone – and that almost always leads to conversations with the people on the boats. We swim in the cove and will occasionally swim over to another boat deck and chat with the people sitting there. Sometimes, if everyone is in the water, we gather floating on our noodles and just talk. As our lives have evolved, so have our front porches! 0 0

This is the second of two books I’ve recently read, about the relationships between women and their slaves in the South before the Civil War (which I discovered is also called “The Recent Unpleasantness”). Yellow Crocus was written by Laila Ibrahim. In her own words,”I self published Yellow Crocus in 2011 when agent after agent told me that no one would want to read a story about the love between an enslaved black woman and her privileged white charge.” She is currently working on her next novel, set in a different time period, but with a similar theme: loving across difference. On April 14, 1837, 20 year old Mattie, a Southern slave with a small child, is called to her owner’s house to serve as a wet nurse to his newborn baby, Elizabeth. She has to move into the plantation house, leaving her own baby behind. When yet another baby is born, Elizabeth is taken from Mattie, who is given the new baby to wet nurse. Mattie becomes sick and nearly dies in Mattie’s absence, so her mother reluctantly returns her to Mattie’s care and finds another wet nurse. Thus begins an intense relationship that will shape both of their lives for decades to come. Mattie is more of a mother to Elizabeth than her own remote, societally governed mother, and from her trips to the slave quarters with Mattie, forms lasting bonds with the slaves related to and surrounding Mattie. As in The Invention of Wings, talk of abolition and the legality of slave-holding penetrates the Oak Hill plantation, and the reader is reminded -in less graphic ways – of the way in which slaves were treated, worked, rented out and sold, including Mattie’s son, Samuel. When Elizabeth outgrows Mattie, their stories diverge, Mattie being sent to another plantation where she is defiant and is whipped, but continues to seek a way to escape with her son, a plan that was hatched at Oak Hill many years before. Elizabeth is forced into the societal norms of parties and events designed to find her an appropriate husband; she gradually becomes aware of the vast difference between the lives of slaves and whites and rebels against what is expected of her. The author lovingly and imaginatively makes their separate lives evolve and eventually re-entwine. This is a well-written story of love, determination, courage, cruelty and heartbreak – one which inexorably draws the reader in and tugs at your emotions. It is definitely a much more gentle novel than The Invention of Wings; it has a satisfyingly happy ending, which ties things up in a neat package, but is somewhat less than realistic. However, the historical details are well researched, and the writing is so good that I recommend it and will definitely read the next book by this author. 0 0

The Writer’s Police Academy has been held in North Carolina for the last five years at Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown. I lucked into it this year and managed to register before this incredibly popular event sold out. There were people from as far away as Texas and California who flew in for the WPA! THe WPA combines lectures on law enforcement and forensic topics with hands on training to allow the attendees to try on gear, train with firearms, and even in some cases, take part in simulated exercises. All of our instructors laced their talks with personal experiences, which for writers is like manna from heaven. Here is a review of the event, first two days. Thursday evening • After an orientation, the attendees were given a visual on “Disarming the Bad Guys” and got to practice taking a gun or knife away from someone attacking you. Very exciting and not as instinctual as you might think. The gal who taught this – Eli Jackson – is a 2nd degree black belt in mixed marital arts, and not someone you would mess with, ever. And the takeaway could hurt, as it should! Friday morning Up at 6:30 for breakfast and then on the buses to Guilford Technical Community College for the all-day session. Before the day’s sessions began, we were treated to a EMS scene, where a drunk driver had plowed into a table at a flea market where people were grilling while selling their wares. Over the next 45 minutes, we watched as the first police car arrived, then the EMS buses, and more police. The scene was organized chaos in slow motion, in order for everyone to see what was happening. As a trained EMT myself, I know how fast those scenes go, and no one would have seen anything if it went at the normal pace. I had a good laugh with the EMTs who ran the scene at lunch that day. • There were so many good sessions to choose from, first come, first served, that I had a hard time choosing, but I started with Women in Law Enforcement, taught by Sgt. Catherine Netter of the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office. She gave a wonderful talk on her career, obstacles she faced, and jail procedures. Lots of questions from her class and wonderful insight on being a woman in what is only now less than a man’s world. • My next session was Cybercrime with Detective Jeff Flinchum, of the Greensboro PD. I learned a lot about the current forms of cybercrime (cyberstalking, hacking, real eastate fraud, sexting) and how difficult it is a lot of the time to catch the bad guys, or kids, since cyberbullying has become a major problem. Friday afternoon • My first afternoon session was Prostitution Sting run by Emily Mitchum, an officer with the Greensboro Police Department. She came dressed as a hooker! She talked to us about a Reversal operation, where the police go after the johns. When you get rid of the johns, the prostitutes leave the neighborhood, and drugs and assaults leave too. She gave us a good primer in the laws that apply to prostitution, and I learned that Solicitation of Prostitution is only now a felony in North Carolina; it still is only a misdemeanor in many states. Complete with film of her at work under cover (so to speak) and an explanation of the teams backing her up, this was an excellent presentation. • The second session was Firearms Forensics by Dave Pauly, retired from the US Army Criminal Investigation Command and graduate of the FBI National Academy. While I had had a firearms introduction from a knowledgeable friend of mine, this session talked about ballistics: the physics of what happens in the barrel of a gun, bullet identification, what happens to the barrel upon firing, blow back, and the torus judge, a really deadly gun he recommends for women. Stay tuned for a subsequent post on the Saturday events. I am going to try to type up my notes – rushed as they were – from the various sessions, if anyone is interested. 0 0

I recently read two books about the relationships between women and their slaves in the South, before the Civil War… or as it is called here in North Carolina, the War of Northern Aggression or the Wowah Between the States. Both books were good, each in its own way, and quite different from each other. One book was The Invention of Wings, an Oprah selection and a recommendation from my sister-in-law, when she heard I was reading Yellow Crocus by Lara Ibrahim. I’ll review Yellow Crocus separately. The Invention of Wings was written by Sue Monk Kidd, the author of The Secret Life of Bees; it is a historical novel about the Grimké sisters of a wealthy slave-owning family in Charleston, South Carolina. I’d never heard of Sarah and Angelina, who broke from their family to become 19th-century Southern American Quakers, educators and writers who were early advocates of abolitionism and women’s rights. I was immediately taken with the wonderful prose of the author and her insider’s experience of life in Charleston, a city that still retains much of its Civil War era charm and history. Both Sarah and Angelina, the younger sister whom Sarah raised as her godchild in their family ten children, moved in elite social circles. They were subjected by a harsh and unrelenting mother to all of the social norms of the day, including the established interactions and treatment of their household slaves. The story is voiced by two powerful narrators, Sarah, and fictional character, Hetty Handful, a young girl slave who is given to Sarah on her eleventh birthday. Sarah is strong headed and indulged early on by her father, a judge, allowing her to access his library and debating current issues and the law with her and her brothers. When Sarah expressed a desire to become someone in her own right, a lawyer, her horrified father takes away her books and her mother pushes her into the social season with the end goal of finding her a rich husband. The book details Sarah’s efforts to get away from Charleston and her family and establish her own life, pulling her equally strong-minded sister with her. Handful is a wonderful character with a determined and resilient mother, who teaches her to push the boundaries of her slavery and to find a way to freedom. The author did a fantastic job of researching the life of slaves in Charleston, the cruelties and punishment to which they were subjected, and slave customs. This is not an easy book to read in parts because of the history, but it reminded me of the true story of the American South in the early 19th century, and made my trip to Charleston and the surrounding plantations much more meaningful. In learning about the Grimké sisters, I added two more names to the list of women to whom we owe our freedoms today. Sarah was the first woman in the US to write a comprehensive feminist manifesto, and Angelina the first woman to speak before a legislative body. They stand alongside Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sarah Mapps Douglass, all of whom find their way into this book. A five star novel, certainly, and I recommend everyone to read it. 0 0

As I wrote about recently, I spent my first two school years at Sacred Heart School, the parochial school in Plymouth, MA. My parents asked me (what a revelation, they asked!) if I would mind transferring to public school the following year. Finances were tight, and my brother would soon be going to kindergarten, and I figured he needed parochial school more than I did. More about my brother later. So for third grade I went to Cornish-Burton, two schools that faced each other across a playground. Burton had opened in 1896, according the Report of the School Committee for that year, and was preceded by the Cornish building. (The Report for that year stated that the total amount of pay for all the teachers in the school system was a little over $21,000! Imagine that.) Thus I was entering a school with a lot of history. Both schools were closed in 1963 and subsequently torn down, so they now only exist in my memory. My classroom was on the second floor of the two story wooden Burton building. I don’t remember the name of my teacher, but I do remember two things: I was bored because I’d already learned everything in the curriculum and the teacher was aghast when I wrote with my left hand. She insisted I write with the other hand, even rapping me on the knuckles with a ruler when I tried to write with my left. Somehow I managed to convince my mother of my indignation, and she went to see the school principal, Miss Eleanor White. Miss White was a tiny woman, sort of like a hummingbird, always in motion and thoroughly on top of things going on in her two school buildings. The end result of that meeting was that I joined the fourth grade in the Cornish building, several weeks into the school year. There I was at grade level in my learning, but it was a tough transition socially, a transition that continued through fifth grade and into sixth grade in junior high school, as it was called then. I remember only a few things about that year, but I do remember more of fifth grade. There were some great books to read in the classroom; I loved to read and couldn’t wait to get my hands on them. Even though I was already tall for my age, I grew more inches that year, both up and out, pushing the seams of my clothes and springing my shoes. My mother was asked to visit the principal, where she was told needed some larger clothes because of my, uh, expansion. She and my Dad were having some problems around that time, and since I took care of my clothes myself, I guess she hadn’t noticed. She also started giving me iron pills in the morning, probably thinking I needed it for my bones since I was growing so fast. The pills gave me horrible abdominal cramps, so bad that I ended up having to go home in the middle of the day more than a few times, something I had never, ever done before. I managed to convince her to discontinue the pills, but only after a heated discussion and a phone call to our family doctor. The memory of those cramps stand out and may have been why Mom and I had “the talk” when I was barely ten. I have one very vivid memory of Miss White, who wore spike high heels to give her some height. I was eating lunch in the cafeteria when I was distracted by the tip tap of her shoes, heading over to where a sixth grader having lunch with his friends. The boy was probably about six feet tall, with shoulder length, greasy hair. Despite his size, she pulled him up out of his seat and forced him to stand upright in front of her. Looking up at him, she asked him why he had not gotten a haircut, as she had previously directed. In those days, long, greasy hair was not allowed, and especially not in her school! He stammered and fidgeted under her glare. Finally she took two bobby pins from her upswept hairdo and ordered him to pin his hair back out of his face. Then she wheeled him around and marched him out of the cafeteria. She was one tough lady. And the boy had a buzz cut the next day. Times have certainly changed. 0 0

I recently reviewed Britannia:The Wall by Richard Denham and M.J. Trow for Rosie Amber’s blog. I am re-posting the review here. I seem to be doing a lot of book reviews lately, but promise more memoir and other things very soon! The year is AD 367 and four Roman soldiers of different age and rank return to their fort after hunting for deer to feed their garrison. They find everyone at the fort slaughtered, horses taken and food pillaged. Their fort is one of many along Hadrian’s Wall, a defensive fortification built by Romans in AD 122 and separating Britannia – the furthest extent of Roman rule – into a north and a south. North of the Wall are a dozen wild peoples, while south of the Wall there is Roman rule and an uneasy peace with other tribes living there. The four soldiers are 19 year old Leocadius, a foot soldier who is a womanizer and braggart; Vitalis, also a foot soldier, who is two years younger and still in reality a boy untried in battle; semisallis Paternus, who has a wife and child living at another fort; and Justinus, a phlegmatic circitor or cavalry non-commissioned officer, who at 30 years old considered an old timer and is their leader by rank. Horrified by what they find, they decide not to bury the dead but are led bu Justinus to the next nearest fort, in the hopes of finding reinforcements. There they find the same scene, but Paternus’ wife and son are is not among the dead. The soldiers follow along the road between the forts, finding more slaughter and raiding, while heading south to a major town in the region. When they stop to rest by a cold stream, they are nearly discovered by the raiders, tall blond men riding Roman cavalry horses and speaking an unknown language. What were Saxons doing in Britannia? Thus begins Brittania -The Wall, an historical novel which has excitement, a good amount of brutality and gore, as befits the times, and wonderful historical detail and content. The authors have created an accurate world of Britannia at the times: the tribes and their characteristics, the organization and leadership both within the Roman army and the settlements, the gods and religious practices, as well as the living conditions. They are especially effective in their description of ancient Londinium, which would evolve through the centuries into the London we know. The soldiers discover that the destruction of the raid was actually carried out by an army made up of many tribes, using Roman fighting techniques, and led by a giant of a man wearing a distinctive silver helmet, who is called Valentinius. There is a mystery running through the story of how these four soldiers became heroes of the Wall, how the Wall is rebuilt, how Londinium is fortified against attack: who is this elusive, charismatic leader? And when will Valentinius and his unholy alliance of Picts, Saxons, and Scots attack again? This is a book for an audience of male readers of historical fiction; while I enjoyed it, it is not something a woman would pick up at first glance unless she was enamored of that time and area, as I am. The major drawback to the novel is the Latin terms used are not defined. I took four years of Latin and even translated a portion of Caesar’s Gallic Wars, but I still had to look up a lot of terms along the way, which took me away from the story. I strongly suggest a glossary of terms, which will open the book to a larger readership. The authors have created real and engaging characters in the four soldiers and provide us with lyrical and colorful descriptions of the times and society in which they live. I do recommend this book as an historical novel of substance, and I look forward to the next volume in the series. 0 0

Charming (def.): pleasant, endearing, wonderful, amusing, satisfying, entertaining Charming is a wildly overused word, but in this case it is totally appropriate in describing Greening of a Heart by Stepheny Houghtlin. This book reminded me strongly of the novels of Maeve Binchey and Rosamunde Pilcher, who happens to be one of the author’s favorite writers. Hannah Winchester is the wife of the Reverend Martin Winchester, Vicar of St. John the Baptist Anglican church in the Cotswald village of Burford, England. For the last several years, her marriage has been problematic, her husband cool, irascible and unengaged. His temperament has extended to his pastorship and his friendship with the Bishop, an old Cambridge friend. When the Bishop insists that Martin take a sabbatical at St. George’s College in Jerusalem during the summer, Martin goes with great reluctance. Hannah hopes the summer apart will allow her to determine the direction in which she would like to grow, reinvigorate her husband’s life and rekindle their love for each other. Hannah’s passion is gardening and when the story begins, she is in the middle of the redesign and expansion of the vicarage garden. The original garden was well-known and was the pride of the previous vicar, Robert Myers, who led the church for 30 years. Hannah acquires an intern for the summer, Henry Bernard, who works at the famous Kew Gardens and ostensibly comes to Burford to help Hannah and to study English clergy-gardeners and the role of gardens in their spirituality. His real reason for applying for Hannah’s position is a mystery weaving through the book. During the summer, Hannah’s garden expands and blooms, along with her creativity in its usage and goals for herself. The reader meets a cast of village characters that delight and enthrall with their talents, humor, occasional pettiness, and gossip. Not all of them are happy with what Hannah is doing with the Garden and as the months pass, the lives of the villagers entwine with Hannah’s in surprising ways. Hannah’s own daughter is trapped in an unhappy marriage of her own. How can Hannah help her? Will the new garden be accepted by the village? Will Hannah’s plans for it come to fruition? Will Martin accept the changes she has made to herself, the garden and the vicarage? And most of all, can Martin win back Hannah’s heart? The author’s knowledge of gardening is a strong thread through her novel, and I learned a great deal about it as a result. There is also a spirituality to the telling, which is never overwhelming but entirely germane to the story of a vicar’s wife. I enthusiastically recommend this book – it is worthy of Oprah’s Book Club. 0 0

My blog has suffered in the last couple of weeks from lack of input. I’ve had things I wanted to blog, but with all the wedding preparations getting into gear, the most I’ve been able to scrounge for time is the occasional morning. Which is my favorite time to write, but – I’ve got the line edits to finish on the second book before I send it off and the second chapter of the third book needs to be sent out to my critique group, only it isn’t done. What to do? Is anyone else facing this conundrum? How do you allot your time and how do you get in the mood to write when you sit down and tell yourself this is it, I’ve got three hours! 0 0

I will admit I’m a huge fan of Terry Tyler, so I eagerly downloaded Round and Round to my Kindle a while back. I was not disappointed! How many of you would like to go back to a certain place in your life where you had a choice of which man you would marry or at least end up with. What if you had chosen differently? My head swims just thinking about it. Ms. Tyler has written about just such a thing: Sophie Heron’s 40th birthday is soon and she finds herself fed up with her life, not the least part of which is her longtime boyfriend’s new hobby, which involves, well, I’ll leave the reader to find out. She has recently lost her Auntie Flick, a faerie of a woman who had been her confidant, supporter and mentor since she was little. She and Auntie Flick had shared a special place, a tree by a river, where Sophie goes to ask her now guardian angel to what to do. As a result, she gets to see what might have been, when, at age 24, she remakes herself and in short order has a number of suitors in addition to the man she ends up with. She sees what might have been with each of them, in order to find her way forward. The ending will surprise you! This is a quick read, not only because it’s a novella, a third and a half long as a regular novel, but also because it grabs you. It has a great plot, realistic characters and yes, desperation. I read it in two sittings. And had a good think about what might have happened had I chose differently… Terry Tyler had published nine books on Amazon. She offers a rather unique genre in her writing, what Amazon says readers describe as lying somewhere in the area of contemporary drama and romantic suspense, with the occasional bit of rock fiction thrown in. I recently reviewed Kings and Queens on Rosie Amber’s blog – another 5 star book for me. 0 0