Back Home Again in Indiana

I'm on a mini-vacation this weekend for my 25-year high school class reunion. I've been looking forward to this trip for about 6 months now, and I think I was grinning on the whole drive up here. (Makes people look at you funny on the interstate, though.) I know it sounds silly, and I can't explain why I'm so giddy, but I feel like I'm taking a trip back in time.

See, it's been about 20 years since I spent any quality time in my little hometown. Which is why I came up early and am making a weekend of it. Last night when I got in, I hooked up with one of my best friends from school for dinner - and a whole lotta laughter, which is always good for you - and today we're meeting another one of our 'posse' for lunch at one of our favorite old hang-outs. After that she's taking me on a refresher tour, of sorts, around town.

The class reunion planners made a weekend of it, too - tonight we're going to our high school's football game, kicking it off with a tailgate party, and tomorrow morning we're taking a tour of the new high school and then having a dinner banquet tomorrow evening.

In between the tour and the banquet, I'm going to get the opportunity to spend some time with the BF and her mom. As any long-time Lunch Roomer knows, I only get to see the BF once a year, so this is an extra treat.

Long story short, I have plans for a nice-busy-relaxing-exciting weekend. It's the best kind of thing to recharge the ol' tired batteries. And this morning, I'm going to get back to the writing. What better way to spend a rainy Indiana fall morning than sitting at the laptop, working on the next manuscript? I think I've died and gone to heaven. Really.

And to start the day off right, when I went down to the hotel lobby this morning for the free continental breakfast (you know I gotta have my OJ), I got into a conversation with a couple of nice ladies who were experiencing technical difficulties with the waffle maker. Turns out they're both avid readers, and they ended up walking out with my name, directions to the Lunch Room, and my autograph on a little piece of paper one of them snagged from the front desk. How much fun is that? (And in case you're reading this, hello to the lovely ladies from Ohio, and safe travels home!)

I'll pop back in at some point in the not too distant future to let you know how the weekend went. There may be too much to tell, but then again, I am a writer - it's my job to tell stories, right?

Enjoy your weekend. Talk to an old friend. And read a book!

=) JB

Lunch Room Surprises - Robert Fate Returns

I am ecstatic beyond reason - my pal Robert Fate has graced us with his presence here in the Lunch Room yet again. Bob's fourth Baby Shark book, Jugglers at the Border, is now available at your favorite bookseller.

Bob and I sat down and had a conversation about the Baby Shark series, and I learned a lot of really fascinating things I didn't know before about Kristin, Otis, and the story behind the stories. The iced tea's fresh and cold, so grab a seat and 'listen in.'

JB: Thanks so much, Bob, for coming back to the Lunch Room again – it's always so great to have you here!

We're going to talk about Jugglers at the Border, but first let's give our guests a quick rundown on Baby Shark's history. Tell us a little bit about Kristin, where she came from, and how she became Baby Shark. Sans too many spoilers, of course. ;)

BOB: J.B., I am so delighted to be here – let me put my menu down and pay attention. I agree with you – a little in front info about Baby Shark is a good idea. So – Kristin Van Dijk was born in the mid 1930s in a small rural town on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. Her father was "off at war" for a large part of her young life and her mother died of cancer when Kristin was in high school. She dropped out of school to be with her father and spent eighteen months "on the road" with him, traveling around Texas, sometimes living in his new Cadillac, as he made his iffy living hustling pool. Kristin and her dad actually spent more time parked beside the road reading books than shooting pool – and from Kristin's point of view, being with her father was more important than anything else happening in her life. When she was seventeen, their vagabond, pool-hustling life caught up with them. In one tragic event in a roadside pool hall out west of Abilene, Kristin's life was changed forever. That story is told in Baby Shark, book one in the Baby Shark Crime series.

Now, as to how Kristin became Baby Shark – well, that's because of her pool shooting ability. Like father, like daughter, Kristin became a pool hustler. Her nickname had always been Baby, but after she began cleaning out pool halls all over west Texas, she became Baby Shark. Also, after she trained for a couple of years at "taking care of herself," the name seemed particularly appropriate. Baby Shark carries knives and guns and knows how to use them.

Let's see – Kristin is five-eight, weighs 130, and has platinum blonde hair. In Jugglers at the Border, the most recent book in the series, she's 23 years old. She doesn't think of herself as pretty, but people say she is. She turns heads, so she probably is.

I hope I didn't just run on here, but I think you have the essentials now.

JB: Run on as much as you like – we can't get enough Baby Shark around here!

Since Jugglers at the Border features Kristin's partner, Otis Millett, so prominently, let's talk a little bit about their relationship. Otis pulled a lot of strings to get Kristin licensed as a P.I., which speaks to how highly he values her and her abilities. Considering this is 1950s Texas and she's female, this is a bit atypical of most men in that time, but Otis strikes me as a bit atypical anyway. Now that we know more about Kristin, can you tell us a little more about Otis? Obviously they make a great team, but what advantages did you see in putting these two characters together?

BOB: Okay – how about a quick sketch of Otis first?

Otis was born in a rural East Texas community in the early part of the twentieth century – twelve pounds at birth and over six feet tall by age fourteen. Fully grown he weighed 280 and was six five. He was raised on a dairy farm and could wrestle a heifer to the ground by the age of twelve. He was in grade school during World War I and during the Great Influenza Pandemic and had a clear memory of death happening all around him. He also remembered riding in horse and buggies when he was little, and how motorcars and trucks replaced that form of transportation. He rode to school and delivered newspapers on horseback, and recalled sleeping on his way home from those pursuits secure that his horse knew the way. He wore overalls during the week and knickers and long socks to church. He was one of three children. He had an older sister and a younger sister and a father that encouraged him to protect them. He told Otis, "The only fighting at school I'll put up with is if you are protecting the good name and honor of your mother and sisters." The Millett girls didn't marry until their brother left home, because every boy in the county was afraid of Otis.

After the Great Depression, Otis moved up to Dallas/Fort Worth and got into police work. He was in his twenties, tough as nails, and seriously honest; he made a good policeman. He was in his early thirties when he joined the Army. He was a Master Sergeant by the time he landed in France on D-Day. He was wounded at the Siege of Bastogne while single-handedly destroying a Nazi pillbox. He spent six months in a hospital in London, and returned to the Dallas PD in 1945. Less than a year later, he had earned the rank of Detective.

Otis was a married man. The first four books in the Baby Shark series each tell some part of his relationship with Dixie Logan, the Dallas Firecracker, as she was known on the Texas strip tease circuit. So, I won't repeat it here. Suffice it to say, his marriage to Dixie was the major turning point in Otis's life. She took him by storm, and he never got over her.

It was Otis' mother, Hattie May, who encouraged his addiction to caffeine and cigarettes. She smoked a pack a day and was a ten-cup-a-day coffee drinker. She outlived her husband and siblings and died with her boots on while striding to the milk barn at the age of 92. Otis adored her.

Otis entered Kristin's life shortly after her father's murder, and was instrumental in assisting her in locating the killers and making them pay for their vicious attack on her, her father, Henry Chin, and Henry's son Will. That was from 1952 to 1954. Shortly after that, Otis asked Kristin to be his partner at the Millett Agency. He saw in her the makings of a first rate detective and wanted to be her mentor. She was nineteen and he was in his late forties. Perhaps – though it's not easy to see into a man's heart – he may have thought Kristin needed a strong, positive male figure in her life.

But let's be honest, Kristin had several strong male figures to influence her after her father's untimely death. There was Henry, Harlan, Sarge, and Albert besides Otis. Each of these men helped shape her, each of these men helped blur the lines for her between law and justice. I think you could say that without them, she would not be the Baby Shark we have come to know.

JB: Yes, I think you could say that. In your third book, High Plains Redemption, we see a little bit more of Kristin's coming to grips with who she is and how she handles the necessary evil of killing people that she faces nearly every day. Let's talk a little about the progression of that into Jugglers at the Border. The killers she faces in the fourth book are a lot different from the ones she's faced before. Did that make it easier for Kristin to justify what she had to do?

BOB: The first killer Kristin faced in Jugglers was a cold-blooded sociopathic thief, a man who found it more expedient to kill and rob than just to rob. Taking life was of no concern to him. Kristin got the drop on him and tried reason, tried to talk him down, but he wasn't having it. From his point of view, she was just another problem that could be solved with murder. She realized her position was deteriorating and moved to control him by shooting him in the shoulder. The wound rendered his right arm useless, but didn't change his mind about killing her. The next few seconds – because these things seldom take more time than that – saw an exchange of gunfire that finalized their disagreement in Kristin's favor, but afterwards, it was clear it could have gone badly for her had he not made a mistake.

Kristin viewed killing the sociopath as self-defense. Lt. Lynch of the Fort Worth Police agreed with her and ruled the killing justified. However, Otis and Lt. Lynch both felt that Kristin was quick to the trigger. Then – Otis, just being himself, confused things by being proud of her killing skills.

Kristin's real problem is that she is good at what she does. She was an excellent student when she was being taught to kill and, when she is put in the position of having to decide how to act in the face of danger, her instincts take her to the extreme. She has said that she will never be taken advantage of again and that any fight she has is a fight to the death. She is working with her tendency to "overreact," but it is an uphill battle.

JB: I love how intimately you know your characters. Have you always known them this well or have you come to know them over the course of writing the books?

BOB: I remember thinking, before deciding to pen novels, that it was a truckload of bull when writers said their characters often told them what was correct to say or do. But four books into the Baby Shark series and I must admit Kristin, Otis, Henry, et al, have many times straightened me out about who they are and what they will and won't do or say. Henry, for instance, has worked too long and hard at learning English – especially mastering the idioms – not to expect his speech to improve from book to book, from 1952 to 1958. There are other examples like that one. Characters grow and change.

My writing habits contribute in a meaningful way to the surprises I confront at times in my stories. As you know, my story outlines are rudimentary at best, more just a mental list of events in a sequence that is often fluid. I also think about times, places – that is to say, scenes – and what I want to see accomplished by that point in the happenings. I couldn't prove it, but I think everything that happens is in the service of a distant goal, an ending that I hope for, that always seems to magically come to pass. One of the more peculiar things is how the correct length of the book happens without any conscious effort on my part. Somewhere around 280 pages, give or take a few, the story has been told. This was a page total that was suggested by my publisher for his own reasons. I agreed to it and have never thought about it again. Like I say, it just happens.

Reading the above, isn't it easy to believe what I have always contended – that is to say that I don't write these books at all. It's another guy. A guy who shows up and does all the work while I'm in alpha state. "Are you working?" my wife asks when she sees me staring out the window. I tell her yes, but in truth I'm doing nothing. It's that other guy who has his shoulder to the stone.

So, let's see – your question. Getting to know them is a process, I think. You know how I prefer allowing Kristin to tell the story so that she and the reader discover things at the same time? First person, it's called. Well, it's like that for these folks. We all kind of get to know them as we go along – you know Otis was raised in a rural Baptist house by parents who brought him up to respect things many people today not only don't respect, they don't even know they're supposed to respect them. A different world, you know? When Kristin becomes Otis' partner and he removes the words painted on the door to his office, it was because he was sensitive to something most people today wouldn't notice or even think about. Maybe you remember this little narrative from Kristin in Jugglers–

      The Millett Agency was painted in black letters on the frosted glass door of our office. When I became Otis’s partner, he removed the two words that had been lower on the glass.
      Otis felt that Suspicions Verified conjured up lascivious acts that would be inappropriate now that he had a female partner. I appreciated his sensitivity and was glad to see the words go, but for a different reason. I thought they narrowed our expertise.
      Exposing infidelity might make up the larger portion of our business, but it hardly described everything we did.

You see how much more practical – or modern, if you will – Kristin is than Otis? This was in the early fifties and Kristin is already pushing for women to be treated equally and Otis is still concerned about their feelings because they're women. He believes they should be treated differently, protected.

Do you remember in High Plains when Otis is in the hospital and Kristin tells him the baby girl he helped to birth has been named after him?

      "There was a baby girl," he said.
      "They named her after you. They call her Millie."
      It was just humming machinery for a stretch of time while he gazed at me. I was afraid he didn't understand until tears came to his eyes.
      He said, "She's gonna get a good education, Missy. That's how gals go places and get what's theirs. Education."

These are breakthrough moments in the development of these characters. Otis is seeing into the future. He's imagining a time when a woman can earn the same as a man. This was revolutionary thought in 1957. There are members of Congress who to this day vote against equal pay for women – fifty years after Otis dreamed of it for his tiny ward. He is a complex character when you watch him ask Kristin, a young female, to become his partner in a man's business, and then show a lack of sophistication by growing tongue-tied when he must converse with a nun who speaks French. The thing about Otis that keeps him steady in all our minds is he knows right from wrong. You can never trick him about that. He never gives a second thought to ridding the world of a bad guy.

So, to get back to your question again – it's a process. The characters are constantly introducing themselves. I don't know from one day to the next what they're going to say, but you can trust they are who they are.

You know what the problem is? You make it too comfortable in your lunchroom, the coffee is too good, and the atmosphere is so congenial. It's your fault I ramble on.

JB: Oh, I'm so sorry about that. I'll have to slack off a little bit from now on.

And now the last – and probably most burning – question, the one your fans are on tenterhooks over. Are we going to be seeing more of Kristin and Otis in the future?

BOB: Did I mention before that I am writing a standalone? There is a story I want to tell about a guy who makes a mistake without knowing he's done it, falls on the bad side of a mobster, and ends up on the run. I'm calling it Kill the Gigolo, a contemporary, third person tale with a male protagonist. This book is half finished, so things can change, but right now here is what the back cover would say–

Erik Lamar, a smooth-talking ladies' man, is on the run. Gangster Al Foley has a grudge to settle and only Erik's head will even the score. The Irish Mob is given an assignment: kill the gigolo.

When the mutilated corpse of Erik's friend, Freddy, is found dumped in the street, Erik gets the warning – what happened to Freddy was a Girl Scout demerit compared to what is planned for him.

But first, they have to catch him. One step ahead of Foley's thugs, Erik flies off to Mexico, thinking he has traded terror for a life of leisure. But it's not so easy: Lies and deceit become his way of life in the tropics. In no time losing his head becomes the least of his worries.

So, here's the thing, JB, in reference to Sharkdom, I'm already thinking about book five, the subject, the title, all of it – very different with Kristin doing some new things, big new things. But first, Kill the Gigolo, and then after that, a new Baby Shark story.

Be honest. Will slipping in the standalone book between Baby Shark books four and five make you totally bugnuts from the wait?

JB: Probably. But to paraphrase an author I know, talking about another author – "I'd read anything written by Robert Fate." Kill the Gigolo sounds like it'll be great too.

Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me today, Bob. It's truly a pleasure, as always, to be allowed to spend time picking that fascinating brain of yours!

Well, folks, that's the end of the Lunch hour for today. Don't forget to visit Bob's website to keep up with what's going on in Kristin's world, and we'll keep you posted on new Robert Fate books in the future. Thanks for hanging out with us today, and come back soon!

=) JB

P.S. - Read a book. It's good for you!

What I've Been Up To

My apologies. I disappeared again.

Fortunately, this time it was not for health reasons. In that respect, I'm doing spiffingly. No, this time it was because I've just been so darn busy, and haven't really had much to say other than I'm still alive. Rest assured had that not been the case, you would have heard something from someone before now.

At any rate, things in the JBTAuthor study are swimming along ... I've started doing a bit of freelance writing, I'm still editing (and available for new clients), and have recently taken on a couple of other projects (writing-related, more or less) that have been keeping me hopping. Not to mention I'm still working on the manuscript and am on the verge of plunging into the submission process again.

The WGH made the comment last night on our way to church that my plate was getting kinda full. I said, yes, but it's a fun full.

I'll be around and about the Lunch Room, and will pop in with updates when I have something interesting to say. I hope that will be more often than not. For now, I'll leave you with my latest efforts courtesy of Suite101.com in the hopes that you will enjoy them:

Movie Review - Stage Beauty

Becoming Jane - Movie Review

Wit - Movie Review

Oh, and read a book. It's good for you.

=) JB

Getting Down to Business (or T.G.I.F.)

Today my Wonder Twin shares her thoughts on creativity. I found an old post I did back in '07 that's pretty much along the same lines (Arts & Crafts), which I wish I'd reread before I commented on Sister's essay. What I did say was that to me, "creativity is digging down into the deepest part of your soul and turning it inside out, so that what comes out is the most unique part of yourself. After that, it's your choice whether to share it with the world."

That's original. It took me a few minutes to come up with that. And yes, you can quote me.

The day job has been a little thin on work lately, so that I've had to set aside a few hours on Saturdays to catch up a little on time served. I'm okay with that once in a while, but I steadfastly refuse to give up my Fridays, the one day each week where I am alone and free (at the same time - which is a rarity in this house). This is the day to which I stake my claim with a big red flag that screams, "Writer at work - enter at your own risk!", hole myself up in the study and get creative.

Music of the Moment: The CD player is back to cranking, this morning with the Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl soundtrack. This is music that will get your blood pumping, which is what I need, as I am working full tilt on a rewrite of this manuscript. I've had my coffee (decaf, thank you) and Dunkin' Donuts and am ready to rock and roll ... er, swashbuckle. That's Captain Jack Sparrow.

Enjoy this beautiful Friday, and I hope you weathered yesterday's storms without incident.

And read a book. It's good for you.

=) JB

"And since you know you cannot see yourself, so well as by reflection, I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself, that of yourself which you yet know not of."
-- William Shakespeare, English dramatist & poet (1564 - 1616)

Sproing-g-g-g!!

Spring has sprung, although it's a cool 36 degrees in our little burg at the moment. Brrrr ... may wait an hour or so before I take my morning walk. It's not like I don't have 12 other things on the to-do list to keep me busy until it warms up enough to stuff myself into the walking clothes and set off. This is one of them (really - it says "blog", right there on line 9).

I've had a lot of things on my mind lately, so I'm probably going to muse on them all here. In all likelihood, there will be no rhyme, reason or point to this post. You'll just have to forgive and bear with me.

Junk mail. For about a week, I didn't clean out the messages that found their way into my 'junk mail' folder and kept track of how many I was getting every day. Don't ask me why I did this - I was just curious, okay? I was astonished at the results - 33, 25, 26, 11, 28, 32 and 14. That's 169 pieces of garbage cluttering up my Inbox from people I don't know, don't want to know, and don't want bothering me. What is up with junk mail, anyway? Do people actually get paid to create and send junk to every Tom, Dick, Harry and Sally on the planet? Why? How can this be productive? I can think of so many things that would be of greater benefit to mankind. I know of the old saying, "One man's junk is another man's treasure." Pfft. When it comes to junk mail, I just don't get it.

There are no hedges in Phoenix. The WGH is an eBay junkie. I could list a gazillion things he has in his garage that he purchased online. In the last couple of weeks he decided we needed hedge trimmers. So he goes to eBay, finds a gas-powered hedge trimmer that's very nice, bids on it and wins it. Woot. So this package is coming and he's tracking its progress ... turns out the seller was in Phoenix. Now, I don't know about you, but the first image that pops into my head when someone mentions Phoenix? Not hedges. Cactus, maybe. Granted, it's been a while since I visited the area, but still. Hedges? I talked to the WMVR about it. She obviously thinks a lot more reasonably than I do most of the time. She said that the person probably had hedges where he lived before, but had just moved to Phoenix and as he no longer needed the hedge trimmer, he sold it on eBay.

Okay, I'll buy that. But still, wasn't your first thought, "There are no hedges in Phoenix"? With the same inflection Tom Hanks used in A League of Their Own when he said, "There's no crying in baseball"?

Tournament time again. As most of you know, I love love love basketball. On any level. So my blood really gets pumping around March Madness time. Sadly, our poor alma mater had a less than stellar season, but with Coach Crean at the helm I feel confident that in a few years, Indiana will once again be a force to be reckoned with. Bring back the glory of the Knight era, only softer (Coach Crean is a much calmer man on the sidelines).

The WGH and I printed out brackets and filled in our picks. I actually took the leap and went all the way to the championship game this time (normally I go round by round). My Final Four: Louisville, Duke, UConn and North Carolina. I picked Louisville and Duke in the final game and Louisville to win it all. Call me crazy. I don't really put much stock in picks, anyway, because I firmly believe that any team can defeat any other team on any given day. Case in point - #12 seed Western Kentucky's defeat of #5 Illinois last night (although I should mention that the WGH did pick WKU to win that one, and I'm 13/16 so far in the first round). That's okay. I don't think the Hilltoppers will get past Gonzaga in the next round. I could be wrong. It's happened before.

Paint. One of the items on my to-do list for this, the first weekend I haven't had to work the day job in about 6 weeks, is to prep and paint the foyer and the living room. The WGH had a painting accident a couple of weeks ago - slipped and wrenched his ankle - so he's out of commission for a while, at least as far as getting on a ladder. But that's okay. He wants to do yard work. It's a fair trade - I hate yard work and like painting, and he hates painting and likes yard work. Isn't it convenient how that works out?

A writer's life. One of the other things on my list, of course, is to get this manuscript into shape and start submitting again. It's really almost there. I know what you're thinking - it was there last summer, and it was. Kinda. I did submit it a few places, but when some very kind and constructive comments came back from several agents, I decided it needed a little more tweaking. The BMWs have helped with that as well, and it's an even better book now. So don't hold your breath, but do keep your fingers crossed, pray, and send good vibes my way. We'll be there eventually.

Since the to-do list won't check itself off, I'm working on it. Number 9 is now complete.

Read a book. It's good for you.

=) JB

"I feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience."
-- William Shakespeare, English dramatist and poet (1564-1616)

Happy Happy Joy Joy

I thought it would be nice to have a more lighthearted post today to contrast the last one. After all, life is full of both happy and sad moments, and you can't have one without the other, right?

The Project. We've lived in this house for just over 5 years now, and we finally decided that it needed a bit of an overhaul. So we're painting. Now, the WGH loves to paint about as much as I love to go shopping. Ranks right up there with cleaning up dog barf at midnight, having a root canal or having someone jab you in the eye with a sharp stick. But it needed to be done, and we're working on a room or two at a time. It's the same answer as the one to the question, "How do you eat an elephant?" (One bite at a time.)

So here we are in the paint department at Lowe's, looking at every Valspar Signature series color sample under the sun. I never knew there were so many different shades of green, beige and pink. We bring the little cards home, prop them up on the baseboards and door frames and spend some quality time with them until we find the color we like the best. After several trips, we finally found a combination we really like.

It's a work in progress. And the more I look at the parts that are finished, the more I love them. Sometimes you just need something fresh and new to perk yourself up. And what better way to do that than to spruce up your surroundings a bit? My study, sometime in the near future, is going to brighten up from this very neutral and *yawn* passive shade of beige to a gorgeous color called Oxford Pink. I know what you're thinking - ewwww, PINK???? But believe me, this color is luscious. It's warm and rosy and cozy and I can't wait to see it on my walls. The recliner and my writing desk chair are both of a rather burgundy-esque color (bought at two different places at two different times and they're almost identical - how lucky was that?), and the pink walls will be a perfect complement.

The part that I'm looking forward to the most is being able to sit in here and just soak up the positive energy and turn it into a blast of creativity. It's all about the chi, yes?

Work in Progress. The other thing I'm working on again is the manuscript - slowly but surely. My recent five-month break did not include much writing, so I'm back after it. Unfortunately, the day job takes up most of my days, so I'm relegated once again, as I was so many years ago when the kids were small ... er, young (have you SEEN my kids?), to working on the manuscript in the evenings. Thank God for DVR and a husband who finally caved and ordered the service. ;)

It's finished, for the most part. The story is down. It's just in the tweaking phase once again. I finally figured out what was bugging me so much about the story, that one little plot point that just wouldn't gel quite properly, and once I did that the edits seemed to just start flowing. I have a legal pad on the desk where I've jotted some editorial notes, things I need to fix overall, which I'll get to as soon as I'm through the first pass, taking care of notes from the BMWs (most of which I've discovered have already been done - I told you it's been a while since I've looked at this thing). But the group is about 2 or 3 chapters from the end, and once that's in hand I'll make sure everything's nice and tight, and then ... well, you writers know the drill. The rest of you probably don't care much - you just want to read the book, right?

Soon. I promise.

Music, music, music. As you know, I have a pretty decent collection of CDs full of classical and orchestral and jazz music, which I must, must, must have playing in the study while I'm working, either at the day job or at the writing desk. Right now there is silence in my little room because The Boy is still asleep next door. It's early at our house for a Saturday. The WGH will be up and painting soon, and I have to spend a few hours chained to the day job desk, but this afternoon ... look out manuscript. The music will be blaring and I will be tweaking away.

It's a little on the rainy gray side today. A perfect day to stay indoors and accomplish something.

Read a book. It's good for you.

=) JB

"Action is eloquence."
-- William Shakespeare, English dramatist & poet (1564 - 1616)

The Long-Lost Desk

I have found it once again!

Every so often - like, every four to six months - I have to conduct a major cleaning project on my study. This latest adventure started over the weekend. Long story short, on Saturday I found out there's actually carpet in here. And today I discovered that my desk needs desperately to be repainted.

Of course, because it is now free of piles of books and papers and file folders and old paid bills and bank statements and receipts from six months ago, Haydn has decided that it is safe to once again perch his furry butt on one corner of it. However, he does not pick the corner that is totally free and clear of all extraneous clutter. No. He sits on the one thing I have left on the corner of the desk, a small box of books that I haven't opened yet. (Don't ask me when it was received; I think the bill is around here somewhere, long overdue.)

The upshot of this is that with my study in order, it's a whole lot easier to clear my mind and relax, which is what I need to do to get down to business.

The name of the game is writing, folks, and I'm back off the injured reserve list. ;)

Read a book. It's good for you.

=) JB

"The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing."
-- Winifred Holtby, O Magazine, September 2002

There's a rock band in my basement ...

I'm not kidding. The Boy and a few of his friends have descended upon the WGH's studio - one of them (and I'm not sure which one, but I think it's my son) is on the drum set, two on guitars, and one on our old clunky antique baby grand piano.

The studio is downstairs, of course. Which is why I am not. I haven't heard much but a lot of noise so far, but whoever is playing lead guitar is actually quite good - every so often I'll catch a familiar lick (pretty sure I heard something from Beat It a few minutes ago).

Meanwhile, it's a mild and pleasant 60 degrees here, so I've shut off the heat and opened the windows for a bit. My plan was to enjoy a nice quiet afternoon, get some writing done, and then kick back and relax with a good book. Sigh. So much for the quiet afternoon. But the "band" apparently won't be staying too long, so perhaps I'll get my opportunity later.

Tomorrow I get to tag along with JT for her gig at the Smyrna Library's Winter Reading Program. I love going with her to these things. She's such a star (not a diva, mind you, but an honest to goodness, gracious, lovely, and entertaining speaker), and she really shines when she's in the spotlight. Okay, that might have been a little too adjectivey and cheesey, but you get what I mean. She's just fun to watch and fun to be with. So Little Ol' Me likes it when she drags Me with her.

Speaking of my Wonder Twin, our mutual pal Timothy Hallinan did a guest spot for her over at Murderati today with some great thoughts on "what not to do." My writer visitors should check it out (you might check it out even if you're not a writer).

The band is in full swing and I can no longer concentrate, so off I jaunt ...

Read a book. It's good for you.

=) JB

"If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die."
-- William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, Act 1 scene 1)

The Lasagna Experiment

On Thursday, I had the pleasure of spending the evening with my Wonder Twin and the lovely Laura Benedict both at and after their joint signing at Davis-Kidd Booksellers here in Nashville. While I was there, the WGH did the dad thing and fixed lasagna. It's become a bit of a running gag at our house – I'm not a big fan of lasagna, so he'll make it for the kids when I'm going to be out for the evening. The other day when I told Little Bit that I was going to be gone Thursday, her immediate response was, "Is Dad making lasagna?" The WGH was hesitant, but when The Boy chimed in with, "Dad, you should totally make lasagna," he relented.

It turned out to be a little different from what he normally makes ... a little extra cheese of different varieties, some spicy sausage that Little Bit picked out ... when I got home I found the leftovers in the casserole dish in the fridge, covered with a length of foil upon which Little Bit had written the words LASAGNA EXPERIMENT. When I saw this, my rather warped sense of logic melded these two unrelated concepts into a moment of lucidity.

JT's third Taylor Jackson novel, Judas Kiss, was released just before Christmas. In describing the writing and research process for this book, she talked about how with a series you have an established cast of characters, and the fun of writing the book is coming up with new situations in which your characters show you what they're made of. This is, of course, a point of debate amongst our circle – some writers say they have complete control over their characters; some, like JT and I, have no earthly idea what they're going to do until they do it. For the sake of argument, let's take the Wonder Twins' point of view; to wit, sometimes you have to throw some unusual things into their paths and then sit back and watch how they react. Vis-à-vis the lasagna, when you add different "ingredients" to your story, the end product can be a gloriously delicious thing.

This morning I was reviewing the notes from the sermon our associate pastor delivered last Sunday, and I came across a verse that sparked something in my brain with respect to this post. In Mark 7:21-23 (NIV), Jesus tells his disciples, "For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man 'unclean.'"

Is this the perfect recipe for a villain or what? Just like your story, your characters have ingredients too – personality elements, quirks, attributes and flaws that comprise who they are and drive them to do the things they do. Your villains, for example, can be as evil as you want to make them – imagine taking all of the characteristics described above and putting them into one person. That would be one killer lasagna. Um, pardon the pun.

Think about your heroes, too. All the good guys aren't completely good – the most interesting ones are inherently good but still have some sort of flaw, a tiny chink in their armor that makes them more real to your reader. More human. Easier to identify with and believe in. And root for. What's better, not all the good guys are the same, either. They all have a different mix of ingredients that blend into something we can sink our teeth into, something special and tasty that keeps us coming back for more. There's that old saying, "Think about how boring life would be if everyone were the same." I may have paraphrased, but you get the general idea. It's a solid truth. This isn't Pleasantville (the black and white part), and it isn't 1984.

Most of you know I am a great fan of Shakespeare, and he has drawn some of the most intriguing villains I've ever read – take MacBeth, Don Giovanni and Claudius, for instance. Each committed heinous crimes to further their own agenda. Even Don John wasn't such a swell guy, though his 'crime' was more of a cruel prank – maybe there has to be a lighthearted element to the evil that men do in comedy?

All people – real or fictional – are made up of different ingredients that make us palatable (or not, in some cases). Our world – both literally and literarily – is full of fascinating characters. I hope you have a plentiful supply to keep you entertained. So what kind of lasagna do you like – who are your favorite literary villains and heroes, and what makes them so?

It's good to be back, and I'm glad you've come round to see me again. Pull up a chair and relax for a few minutes – the iced tea is cold, and today's special is ... what else? Lasagna.

Read a book. It's good for you.

=) JB

"And thus I clothe my naked villainy With old odd ends, stol'n forth of holy writ; And seem a saint, when most I play the devil."
-- William Shakespeare (King Richard III)

Let's Do Lunch! Interview with Timothy Hallinan

I'm just a little excited - our guest author today is the terrific Timothy Hallinan! Tim has stopped by the Lunch Room today to talk about his new series featuring travel writer Poke Rafferty, and to give away copies of the second book in the series, The Fourth Watcher!

About Tim: Timothy Hallinan has lived, on and off, in Southeast Asia for more than 25 years. He wrote songs and sang in a rock band while in college, and many of his songs were recorded by well-known artists who included the platinum-selling group Bread. He began writing books while enjoying a successful career in the television industry. Over the past fourteen years he has been responsible for a number of well-reviewed novels and a nonfiction book on Charles Dickens. For years he has taught a course on "Finishing the Novel" with remarkable results – more than half his students complete their first novel and go on to a second, and several have been, or are about to be, published. Tim currently maintains a house in Santa Monica, California, and apartments in Bangkok, Thailand; and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He is lucky enough (as he puts it) to be married to Munyin Choy-Hallinan.

About the series: A Nail Through the Heart introduces Poke Rafferty, a "rough-travel" writer who has settled in Bangkok with a former go-go dancer named Rose, whom he's trying to marry, and an eight-year-old street child named Miaow, whom he wants to adopt. His Looking for Trouble books (Looking for Trouble in Indonesia, Looking for Trouble in the Philippines, and Looking for Trouble in Thailand) are designed for travelers who want to go beyond the temples and tourist traps and experience life at street level – including the streets no travel guide ever mentions. Writing these books requires skills that come in handy when life in Bangkok gets rough for Poke, as it frequently does.

The Fourth Watcher: Travel writer Poke Rafferty is ready to let go of his "Looking for Trouble" series of travel books and settle down in Bangkok with his fiancee, Rose, and his newly adopted daughter, Miaow. But trouble isn't ready to let go of Poke. Enter the one person Poke least wants to see in the entire world -- a person whose emotional hold over Poke is absolute. And with him comes a box of rubies, a wad of fraudulent identity papers and -- in pursuit of those things -- one of the most dangerous gangsters in China. Add to that Rose's innocent involvement in a North Korean counterfeiting operation and an off-the-tracks agent of the American Secret Service who's dying to put Poke behind bars, and Poke and his family find themselves in a complicated and potentially deadly situation. Getting them all out alive will take every skill Poke has.

JB: First of all, congratulations on the great press for The Fourth Watcher - a nice Kirkus review, a starred review in Publishers Weekly, and it's just been chosen as Mystery of the Month by Bookpage. It really is a terrific book. Of course, now I have to go back and read A Nail Through the Heart so I'll be caught up! So, tell me, Tim - who is Poke Rafferty? Where did he come from, and what makes him tick?

TIM: Poke first came to me on New Year's Eve, 1998. I was in Bangkok, and I essentially walked the city from about ten PM until it was time for coffee, maybe 9 AM. I walked through both the tourist areas and the little back-street villages that make up Bangkok, or used to, and it came to me that I might enjoy writing a character, a travel writer who specializes in the back streets, where the bright lights aren't, and writes about life as it's lived off the tourist itineraries. I sort of parked that in the back of my mind for a few years, and he developed into someone who had made a career of bouncing from culture to culture, sort of in a detached, wise-ass way, who suddenly falls in love with an entire country, as I did when I first went to Thailand. From there it was a small step to his trying to create a Thai family, and the story of that family runs through all the books. For a variety of reasons, the family is brought into especially sharp relief in The Fourth Watcher.

JB: Okay, let's get something cleared up right off the bat - for those of us floundering in ignorance (i.e., me), how do you pronounce Miaow's name? Is it mee-ow like a cat or my-ow (my-oh?) like I hurt my toe?

TIM: Miaow is my spelling of a common Thai nickname for girls that's usually spelled in English translation as Meaw. But it's pronounced exactly like the sound a cat makes. And you're the first person ever to ask that question.

And by the way, for those who haven't read the books, Miaow is the street orphan Poke and his fiancée-and-later-wife, Rose, adopt. She's eight, going on thirty (as one reviewer said) in the first book, nine in the second, and a perilously insecure ten in the third. I love to write her – I never have the slightest doubt what she'd say, feel, or do in any conceivable situation.

JB: Your previous series (featuring LA private eye Simeon Grist) consisted of six novels (with such fabulous titles as Everything but the Squeal and Incinerator) published each year from 1989 to 1994. After you put Simeon to rest, what brought you back to novel writing and the creation of Poke Rafferty 10 years later?

TIM: Well, I didn't actually put Simeon to rest. My publishers did. The books got great reviews, stars, lots of hyperbolic adjectives, predictions of breakthrough, and everything else a writer could want, except for sales. After book six, the people at William Morrow looked at the numbers and pulled the plug. I would have done the same – the series had been given six books to find its audience, and it hadn't. So poor old Simeon went wherever it is that the heroes of discontinued series hang out, probably carping all day long about the injustice of it all. Maybe someday I'll write a book in which three or four of them resolve to team up for a comeback and take over the consciousness of some poor writer. It could be pretty funny.

After the Simeon series went down in flames, I looked at my life and decided that I was devoting too much energy to making money and not enough to writing. So I spent about five years setting things up so I could write full-time, and then I sat down and wrote the first Poke book. And I put it into a drawer and left it there, and went on to write the second. When I wrote the Simeon books, I was given a three-book contract within about six weeks of finishing the first book, and there were aspects of his character and his relationships that I would have changed if I'd written another book about him before the first one was published. So this time I decided to write a book that I wouldn't even try to publish and then move on to one I'd give to an agent. As it happened, I wrote one and a half books before sending the third one to an agent, the one that was eventually titled A Nail Through the Heart. So there are one and a half Poke Rafferty stories that will never see the light of day, although I have to admit that I've cannibalized them pretty extensively.

JB: Bill Cameron recently did a piece on you for the ITW online feature THE BIG THRILL, in which he said you "[look] forward to writing about Poke, Rose and Miaow for the rest of [your] life." Do you have any ideas at this point where Poke, Rose and Miaow might end up in the years to come?

TIM: None whatsoever. In the book I'm writing right now, which is tentatively titled Misdirection, I actually kill a continuing character. I think that in this series, everything should be on the table, just as it is in life. I'd like to think that they'll be celebrating silver anniversaries and going to Miaow's wedding, but I have no idea. There's always the potential for disaster to knock on the door.

And I never have any idea where a story is going as I write it, so it would be extremely out of character for me to know where the series is going. I've always seen plot as what characters do, and I let my characters reveal the story to me one book at a time. I'm sure they'll do the same with the series, if we're lucky enough to go into six and seven books.

JB: I sincerely hope it does. Poke has a sharp wit and a very dry sense of humor. (I've noticed in our correspondence that you do too!) Personality wise, is Poke a lot like you?

TIM: You know how, when you're in front of a mirror, and the light's just right, there's a certain way you can turn your head that makes you look, well, almost okay? I think all thriller writers are writing that guy in the mirror. It's them, edited down to the best bits, with a few admirable traits Photoshopped in. I'm not as brave as Poke or as witty in conversation, although I could be if the people I talked to would let me say, "Wait. Ask that question again," and then I could hit them with a better answer. Unlike Poke, I come from a highly functional family. But he shares my wanderlust and my fascination with different ways of looking at the world, whether it's the material world, the world of human relationships, or the world of spirit. And he's endlessly curious, which I am, too.

JB: The Fourth Watcher implies shades of violence, but it's really very subtle and toned back, which I think adds a lot to the suspense - there's not a lot we actually 'see' on-screen, and you leave a lot to the reader's imagination, which leaves us wondering what's going to happen when we turn the page. I've read others who seem to think the bloodier, the better. Was it an intentional tactic on your part to pull back the on-screen violence and concentrate more on the intrigue (which, by the by, I happen to prefer)?

TIM: It's very important in a thriller that the reader (a) likes the protagonist and (b) hates the villain. Violence is often one way to make the villain more despicable: the sort of boil-the-rabbit scene you come across once in a while. I like to write action but I don't particularly like to write violence. And I reserve a special loathing for the glib, giggling kind of sadism one gets in some serial killer books, especially since most real serial killers would be hard-pressed to hold up their end in a conversation with a toadstool. What I prefer is a kind of generalized dread that's caused by knowing that the protagonist and/or other characters we like are up against people who have absolutely no reservations about using any level of force. I think it's possible to write a villain who's capable of driving a spike through someone's tongue without actually writing the scene in which he or she does it. Colonel Chu, the primary villain in The Fourth Watcher, commits an act of unspeakable psychological violence in the book, and I think we can intuit on our own that anyone who could do what he does in that scene – without ever touching his victim – is capable of doing absolutely anything to anyone at any time. In general, with both heroes and villains, I'm more drawn to those who show me they're capable of violent or explosive behavior, than I am to those who demonstrate it at every opportunity.

JB: You spend half the year in the US and the other half in Southeast Asia, working on your novels. Does your wife travel with you? And how much get-out-and-go research do you actually do when you’re working on a book?

TIM: My wife is Chinese, and Asia doesn't hold a lot of interest for her. Also, since I literally write all day, I'm no fun to travel with on those trips. By and large, I've done my research before I leave, although I did some Cambodian research for one of the backstories in A Nail Through the Heart. Asia is not only the setting of the Poke novels, it's sort of a character, too. I want to write the books where, when I look up from the keyboard, I'm actually there. I can look around and borrow a face, a gesture, body language, the name of a business. (There's a shop in Phnom Penh called The Lovely Hours that sells clocks. How cool is that?) I'm in the climate, I'm dripping from the humidity, I'm eating the chilies in the food. I'm there, and that frees my imagination to work on characters and story instead of frittering away a bunch of energy on making the setting convincing.

JB: What are the biggest cultural differences you have to deal with in living on two continents (e.g., talk a bit about the food, the people, the general ambience, etc.)?

TIM: The things I love best about Southeast Asia are the relative lack of irony and the absence of "cool." I wrote a blog on my website a while back called "Irony-Free Zone" that focuses precisely on that. I hate a cultural attitude that puts air-quotes around emotions. I hate cool because it's based on an assumption of superiority to all that is not-cool. By and large, Southeast Asians say what they believe and do what they say they'll do. I suppose you can credit Buddhism with some of that, but I also think it's because they haven't grown up surrounded by all the greasy bounty of the West; they don't feel entitled yet. This is changing as the place grows more Westernized, but once you get past the moneyed elite and get to know actual people, most of them are – by contrast with some of the people in New York and California, at any rate – real rays of light.

JB: For writers who might be interested, there's a fabulous section on Tim's website called "Writers' Resources", with some very helpful information on finishing your novel. Tim, how did you get started teaching other writers, and where can we get more information on your course?

TIM: I started to teach because it occurred to me one day that I knew something most people didn't – how to finish a book. Anybody can start a book, but not many people ever actually finish one, which is probably good for those of us who attempt to make a living by writing. But finishing a novel is a transformational experience, and I wanted to help people get there. The class was eight three-hour sessions, or twenty-four hours in all, and it was absolutely jammed with information – how to get started, how to test-drive an idea, how to develop a character, how to learn to listen to the characters you've developed (or who have been nice enough to present themselves to you), how to shape a story, how to create a setting, how to rewrite, and, most important of all, HOW NOT TO QUIT. And that means, among other things, how to beat writer's block, how to get out of the corners you paint yourself into, how to revive a book that seems to have lapsed into a coma, and how to deal with the internal critics, the malign imps that tell you you haven't got it, you never had it, you never will have it, you probably wouldn't know it if it bit you on the calf, and all the rest of that.

The information on the site is all practical. The writing experience is woo-woo enough all by itself not to build some sort of metaphysical scaffold of creativity every time you sit down to check your punctuation. Virtually all the material I developed for the class is presented on the site in different form. But if you want to boil the whole thing down, it comes to: Write daily, or at least five days a week; write for a minimum of three hours or 500-1000 words each time (more if you can), trust your characters and don't expect the book you ultimately write to be the book you thought you were going to write. And don't quit, no matter what.

JB: What happened to the Dickens Challenge?

TIM: Ah, well, mea culpa. For those who don't know, the Dickens Challenge came about when I got caught in an online crossfire between planners – writers who work to an outline – and "pantsers," or those who write by the seat of their pants. Some people in the planner camp felt I was dismissive of their approach because I said something like, "Plot is what characters do, not a box you cram them into." I pointed out that Charles Dickens, when he died, was halfway through The Mystery of Edwin Drood and that there wasn't a single sentence or sentence fragment to suggest that he'd plotted out the rest of it. So he was pantsing – and, what's more, he was publishing as he went along. In other words, he had to live with whatever he wrote – there was no going back and tidying it up as we pantsers generally do. So I challenged people to write a novel online, a chapter a week, and to live with whatever came out. A bunch of fine writers accepted – in the States, Pakistan, South Africa, New Zealand, you name it. And I dropped the ball. First, a new novel, not a Poke book, presented itself to me and took over my life for six weeks, at which point I had 95,000 words and the beginning of a new series. Second, I went to Cambodia, where online speeds are slower than the rock cycle, and it became virtually impossible for me to read everybody's story. Third, I got into trouble on Misdirection, and it ate me alive for six weeks. So my Dickens Challenge book, which was called Counterclockwise, went out the window. The Challenge is still ongoing, but with a smaller number of writers, and they're doing it more privately, on a closed site where they can post their new chapters and critique them. They're writing great, and if they'll have me, I'll be starting Counterclockwise again sometime in the next month, once I finish Misdirection.

JB: Thanks so much for stopping by the Lunch Room, Tim. It's been a pleasure having you, and we'll see you in Nashville in September!

Now, as I've mentioned about oh, a thousand times (okay, maybe more like six), Tim has been gracious enough to offer up autographed copies of The Fourth Watcher for 7 lucky winners. So enter today! Just click on the link below to send me an email, and be sure to include your full name in the body text of your message. Deadline to enter is midnight Monday next (June 30, 2008), and we'll draw the 7 winners at random first thing Tuesday morning. I'll contact you for a mailing address if you've won, and we'll post the winners names here.

Keep in mind, even if you've entered one of the drawings here at the Lunch Room before (and even if you won!), that doesn't disqualify you from entering this one - but only one entry per person for each giveaway, please! Good luck!

Click to register: I want to win The Fourth Watcher!

You can learn more about Tim and his books at www.timothyhallinan.com.

Let's Do Lunch! Interview with Sheila Lowe

I've been more than a bit fascinated with all things British since I discovered the Beatles when I was in about the 3rd grade - I have very little recall from that point in time, but I do remember a few years later being able to mimic a British accent pretty well by the time I hit 6th grade, thanks to John, Paul, George and Ringo, and a Monkee named Davy Jones.

Not that that has anything to do with anything, but my Lunch Room guest today is a native Brit - a transplant to the States some years ago, she still has that token British charm, and I know you'll enjoy getting to know her as much as I have. She's a delightful lady and a pretty darn good writer to boot.

Sheila Lowe is a court-qualified handwriting expert who testifies in forensic cases. She has more than thirty years experience in the field of handwriting analysis and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology. The author of Handwriting of the Famous & Infamous and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Handwriting Analysis, her analyses of celebrity handwritings have appeared in Time, Teen People, and Mademoiselle. Her articles on "Personality Profiling and Handwriting Analysis for the Attorney" have been published in several bar association magazines.

Sheila's clientele includes a wide spectrum of corporate clients, mental health professionals, attorneys, private investigators and staffing agencies, among others. Her award-winning Handwriting Analyzer software is used around the world, and her profiles help uncover important information in background checks and pre-employment screening. She enjoys analyzing handwriting for individuals, too, helping them understand themselves and others better.

I invited Sheila to the Lunch Room to talk about her foray into fiction with the first book in her Claudia Rose series, Poison Pen, and its follow-up, Written in Blood, due out in September, as well as her fascinating career as a handwriting analyst, and as we got to chatting I discovered a lot more about this very entertaining and interesting lady ...

JB: You have something like 40 years experience in handwriting analysis. How did you get started?

SL: Back in the Dark Ages, when I was in high school, my then-boyfriend's mother analyzed my handwriting — she'd read a book about it. I was astonished by what she told me about my personality, so when I saw a 25-cent Dell pocket book on handwriting analysis at the supermarket, I bought it and immediately immersed myself in my studies. Okay, so there wasn't much immersion to be had in those few pages, but it did get me started checking out library books on the subject. Suddenly, I was sought after at parties — all the girls wanted their boyfriends' handwritings analyzed.

JB: You've had the opportunity to analyze over 10,000 handwriting samples over the years. Can you explain to our readers what role your analysis plays in the different spheres in which you work (i.e., legal, medical, mental health)?

SL: The biggest part of my practice is my work with employers who are hiring. They send me their top applicants' handwriting, along with a job description, and I focus the report on how the applicant stacks up personality-wise with their requirements. I don't have to recommend whether or not to hire the person (thank heavens!), but just provide an objective personality profile. On the legal side, I analyze handwriting for authenticity. In other words, did Mr. X sign this will, or was it really the bimbo stepmother who wanted her kids to get all his money and cut his kids out? I also analyze couples for compatibility, to help them understand what motivates them and how they might head off potential problems. Stuff like that.

JB: You mentioned to me that you often speak in interviews about your daughter - would you mind sharing your story with us?

SL: No, I don't mind at all. Jennifer was 26 in 1999 when she met and fell madly in love with Tom. He worked as a special agent for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, teaching border patrol agents hand-to-hand combat, etc. He wanted me to analyze his handwriting, which I found contained some alarming red flags. I saw in the handwriting a controlling person with the potential for explosive behavior. There were also indications of possible head trauma. When I asked if he'd had a head injury, Tom said that he had suffered a blow to the head on the job, which resulted in violent headaches. We discussed the problems the two of them might encounter in a relationship — Jen was headstrong and would not allow him to control her. I hoped she would pay attention. Okay, she'd never listened to me before, so why would I expect her to now? Tom moved in with her shortly after they met. Less than a year later, Jen was dead, the victim in a murder/suicide. So, while I was able to see the potential for problems, I was unable to prevent a tragic end to her story.

JB: I really admire how you've accepted what happened and are so willing to talk about it. Did that experience have any impact on your decision to write your series? Does it continue to influence your writing?

SL: I had begun writing Poison Pen long before Jennifer's death, but until then, just meandered along. It seemed as if what happened to her impelled me to get it finished and start sending it out. Maybe I needed something to concentrate on that would take the focus off the waking nightmare of her death. As far as the experience influencing my writing, the character of fourteen-year-old Annabelle in my second Claudia Rose story, Written in Blood, is in some ways a lot like Jen, to whom I've dedicated the book.

JB: That's so touching. Now, you also have two sons, right?

SL: Yes. Erik is 33, a tattoo artist, and Ben is 30. He was a Chippendale's-type dancer, but he's just changed jobs and is now a bartender at Universal Studios. They're both 6'3" with shaved heads. I'm 5'6" and feel dwarfed between them.

JB: I have that same problem with my kids. Let's talk about Claudia - she's a great character, not too flawed, not too perfect, and very easy to like. Other than your profession, what do you and she have in common?

SL: Um ... lessee ... we're both handwriting analysts, both bull-headed, independent women who often do things that are probably not in their best interests. But on the other hand, Claudia is far braver than I am, and she likes coffee. I'm glad you find her easy to like.

JB: Do you often get the same kinds of skeptical reactions in your line of work that Claudia does in Poison Pen?

SL: Skeptical reactions are less common now than when I started analyzing handwriting in 1967, but occasionally people ask do me to read their palms, or they'll ask if I'm going to give them their horoscope, which is really annoying! An example: I worked at a San Francisco medical convention, analyzing the handwritings of hundreds of doctors (no, it's not true that all doctors have bad handwriting). [She's right - I used to work for doctors, and one of them had the most beautiful writing I've ever seen!] Most were stunned at what their analysis revealed, but one doctor made a comment about it being "quasi science." I guess I gave him an earful, as he said, "I think I've offended you." I suggested he download the Annotated Bibliography of peer-reviewed handwriting research from my web site, after which he apologized. Okay, so it was defensive of me, but most people don't have to explain why their career is not part of the occult sciences (she said, leading with her chin).

JB: Good for you! There's a darker element at the heart of this otherwise seemingly cozy mystery. Was that your intention when you started writing it?

SL: Actually, I never intended to write something cozy, so I'm glad the darkness shone through ... in a manner of speaking. But I did want the story to have a meaningful theme, and what emerged dealt with childhood sexual abuse and Claudia's evolving view of a woman she had strongly disliked. As she uncovers some of the experiences that molded this woman into who she became, the message hits home for Claudia that behind every handwriting is a human being.

JB: Talk a little about Written in Blood. What do we see Claudia up to next? Are we going to see more of the sexy Detective Jovanic?

SL: Jovanic is definitely back in Written in Blood. He and Claudia butt heads again (and other parts) when she becomes involved in the life of Annabelle Giordano, who is a student at a girls' school run by Claudia's client, Paige Sorensen. Annabelle comes on scene already having been in trouble with the law. She's lost her mother at a young age and has a distant father, and has recently attempted suicide. Claudia, who is unable to have children of her own, reaches out to Annabelle and loses her heart to this prickly kid. Written in Blood really is Annabelle's story, but it also centers around Paige, the trophy wife of a much older man who has died. His children have accused her of forging their father's name on his will, giving most of his estate to Paige, and that's how Claudia enters the story.

JB: Okay, let's switch gears a bit. How long have you lived in the States, and how difficult was it for you to adjust after moving here from England? How often are you able to visit your hometown of London?

SL: I was fourteen when my family came to the U.S. to stay. At that age it was a tough adjustment, leaving my grandparents, school friends, and everything familiar. But I got by with a little help from the Beatles, who showed up on the Ed Sullivan Show shortly after we arrived in Los Angeles. We all know what happened next — anything British was "in." It just so happened I'd brought the first two Beatles albums over from England, so I was now in big demand at Fremont Junior High. My fishnet tights were a big hit, too. In the more than forty years (Yikes! can it be that long?) since then, I've gone home only three times, most recently in May of this year, when I was invited to lecture to handwriting analysts in London. While we were there, I visited the ancient church in Somerset where my ancestors got married about 250 years ago — fab!

JB: Fab, indeed. What's your favorite thing to eat when you go home that you can't get here?

SL: Scones with clotted cream and jam. They're just not the same here. On this last trip, we ate our way across England, so I got to taste all my favorites — bangers and mash, steak pie, and my old favorite sweets, Smarties (which are like M&M's, but not quite). The sticky toffee pudding with Bird's Custard was also memorable, and spotted dick, and ... I think I'd better stop here, I'm getting carried away.

JB: By all means, carry away! After all, this is an eatery. You're making me hungry, and I've had to get clarification on what half the stuff is you're talking about - certainly not anything you could get in the Lunch Room without special ordering it! ;) For those of you not familiar, here's a rundown of what all these delightful dishes she's talking about are, straight from the source:

SL: Clotted cream is like a cross between cream and butter. It has an indescribably wonderful flavor, and when you put it on a scone with raspberry jam - okay, I'm drooling. I don't think there is an equivalent here. It's also called Devon cream. I guess that's where it comes from.
Bangers and mash - bangers are large pork sausage links that have a lot of breadcrumbs in them. Mash is mashed potatoes. You have them with onion gravy or Bisto (a gravy brand that everyone uses there) and peas.
Smarties look just like M&Ms, but the shell is a bit more delicate and the chocolate has a different taste.
Sticky toffee pudding - Dessert in general is referred to as pudding. Sticky toffee pudding is a pie-like dessert. Also, steamed pudding could be any number of things. A steak and kidney pudding, for instance, is like a stew with a steamed pudding on top - like spotted dick, only savory instead of sweet. It's always made with suet, which is probably equivalent to Crisco or could be beef suet (suet being fat). Yes, kidney really means the organ - ugh! Spotted dick is a [sweet] steamed pudding. The way my nanny (grandmother) made it was a steamed very moist suet cake with raisins (that's the spots). The batter is put into a heavy mixing bowl with muslin tied over the top, and that's put on a double boiler until it's cooked - if I remember correctly, that could be a couple of hours. It's then served with a creamy pudding called custard. It's also known as spotted dog.

JB: Yummmmm ... argh! Where is that no-account kitchen help?? Ahem. Okay, moving on. I love Flare, Claudia's neighbor's German Shepherd, and the part she plays in Poison Pen. Are you a pet person?

SL: Flare was a real dog belonging to my first husband's family (the husband who gave me the "Lowe" name). She was a fierce guard dog, but she tolerated me, even though I'm really a cat person. As for my own pets, one day, I came home to find two tiny kittens playing on the stairs in my apartment. One had a light brown back and pure white tummy, with blue, blue eyes. The other was grey all over. Jen had brought them home knowing there was no way I would make her take them back. Sugar, the brown and white one, who was as sweet as her name, lived for fifteen years. Fritz will turn 18 in July and is still going strong.

JB: How sweet! Thank you so much, Sheila, for dropping by the Lunch Room - it's been a pleasure having you!

SL: Thank you, JB, I love an excuse to go out to lunch, and the chance to combine it with such good company makes it a true pleasure.

JB: Aw, thanks.

To learn more about Sheila and her books, visit her professional website at www.sheilalowe.com and her Claudia Rose series website at www.claudiaroseseries.com. Written in Blood will be released in September, and Poison Pen is now available in paperback from your favorite bookseller.

Ode to the WMVR

My friend is moving.

I remember when I was a kid - a very, very long time ago - when it would come time to move to a new base and have to say good-bye to my friends, I found it wasn't really all that difficult, because most of us had known each other less than a year, anyway. That's the way it was with military life. We moved 13 times in 10 years. (I went to three different schools for the 2nd grade alone.) We were tough. We adapted. When my first book came out and we were working on my biography, the GP dubbed me the 'quintessential Air Force brat' because she knew my personality well enough to know that I was 'that kid' - the one who made friends easily and parted with them just as easily because we knew that's the way it was. We were self-sufficient, maybe a little aloof, because we knew that close personal attachments and our particular way of life didn't often go hand-in-hand. That having been said, however, with lines of communication being as open as they were even then (and still are today), a few of us did keep in touch over the years - my parents still visit with their old friends, and for a while I even kept up with some of the friends I used to hang with on base. As a matter of fact, a couple years ago I drove to St. Louis to attend the wedding of a gal I've known since we were six.

When I was 10, and we made that final move to what I now refer to as my hometown, a relatively small town just outside Indianapolis, I learned what it was like to form friendships that last. That's when I met the BF (who arrives today for her weekend visit!). We've been friends for over 30 years now. She was maid of honor at my wedding. She was here to visit within no more than 2 months after the births of all three kids. I skipped out on Homecoming one year to see her when she got married. We keep in touch by email, and try to get together at least once a year if we can.

Fast forward to 1996. I had been working for the physicians' group for 7 years when the WMVR was hired to replace one of the secretaries who was leaving - by then we had our own department for transcription, and she was hired as a transcriptionist to work alongside me. Within a week we knew everything about each other, discovered we had more in common than it was probably quite normal to have, and as a natural progression of things became fast friends.

If you've been a Lunch Room visitor for any length of time, you've heard me talk about the WMVR on a personal level before. She's an amazing person, has been through more in her life than you can imagine and still manages to carry on with a smile, and yeah, she's moved before (several times in the last 5 years, as a matter of fact). But none of those moves has been as permanent as this one is going to be.

We are at the age where we are starting to be concerned about the ages of our parents. So she's going to Florida, where she'll be closer to her folks in their golden years, and neither of us anticipates that she'll be coming back to Nashville (except to visit, of course).

This is what's making it hard for me. We've been friends for 12 years now (this month, as a matter of fact), and there are lots of memories in those 12 years, especially as it concerns my writing career. She's the one who first said, "You're writing a book? Oh, please bring it in so I can read it!" And with that statement she became my first independent reader. She's read all six of my manuscripts and has offered more than her fair share of constructive comments and helpful suggestions. One plot element in my first book even came from a dream she had. (Closed circuit: What map?)

Because we've both carried on in the same profession, albeit for different companies, we still talk on pretty much a daily basis, getting help with work things (sometimes) and chatting about life in general (a lot). We say we'll still talk quite a bit, but it's my feeling that our communications are going to be more along the lines of the email touching base messages that the BF and I now share.

She will, of course, continue to be my independent reader for as long as I keep writing. JT is my critique partner, but as such she, of course, looks at the manuscript differently from how the WMVR does. From the WMVR I get an honest opinion about how the story reads, from a reader's perspective. And I trust her judgment, because she's read - well, everything. She's one of those gregarious people who will go to a book signing of an author she likes, even if she's only read one of his/her books, and instantly become a loyal fan. She told me the other day how excited she was that she's had the opportunity to meet so many authors over the past few years (I like to think I might have had a little bit to do with that, having introduced her to several I know on a personal basis).

I'll miss hanging out with her. I'll miss what we used to call our flop-across-the-bed sessions, where we had a notepad and lots of ideas, and flopped across the bed on our stomachs to discuss things and hash those ideas out to see if they would fly for the story. I suppose there will be more opportunities for those in the future, but it will involve a plane ticket and a rental car, and lots and lots of planning.

So because I'm not allowed to say a formal 'good-bye', here's to you, WMVR, with many thanks for being my reader, my encourager, my cheerleader, my publicist, and most of all, my friend. May the move go well, may you get settled quickly, and may you enjoy many more years with your parents.

And I forbid you to cry when you read this. ;)

=) JB

Because I am a quotable quotes nut, here are a few on friendship, dedicated especially to the WMVR:

"We are advertis'd by our loving friends."
-- William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) English dramatist & poet

"Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment."
-- Seneca (5 BC - 65 AD) Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician

"A friend is one before whom I may think aloud."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882) US essayist & poet

And the nominees are ...

Yeah, I know, I don't usually post on Sundays (no post on Sundays), but with the advent of the Anthony and Barry Award nominations coming out and my buddies, comrades in arms and Wonder Twin on the lists, I just had to shout out my congrats to all of them ...

Sean Chercover and Marcus Sakey, two of my pals from the Killer Year bunch, are both up for Best First Novel for the Barry Awards and the Anthonys ... I know they both have a bunch of other award nominations for BIG CITY, BAD BLOOD (Sean) and THE BLADE ITSELF (Marcus), but these are the most recent in what I'm sure is going to be a long list.

Jason Pinter and Literary Triplet brother Brett Battles, two more of the Killer Year crew, are both nominated on the Barrys list - Jason for Best Paperback Original for THE MARK and Brett for Best Thriller for THE CLEANER. Way to go, guys!

My sweet and dear pal Robert Fate's BABY SHARK'S BEAUMONT BLUES, second in the series, is up for an Anthony for Best Paperback Original. As they say in Oklahoma, yee-haw!

And finally, last but by no stretch of the imagination least, my Wonder Twin and her esteemed colleagues over at Murderati are up for an Anthony for Best Web Site! Woooooot, said I!

So here we are, doing happy dances all over the study, rejoicing in the well deserved success of my friends. There but for the grace of a pen go I - and someday, perhaps, I shall. For now, let's join together in raising the Lunch Room roof with a great big ol' ...

Congratulations!!

=) JB

I just love giving things away ...

I am pleased to announce the winners of our BLOOD HARVEST drawing!

Since Little Bit is out of town on a school trip, I enlisted The Tall One to conduct our random drawing this morning - and it was truly random, because she was pretty much still asleep when she grabbed the names out of the bowl! Here are our 10 winners:

Virginia Conn
Kaye Barley
William Devin
Carol Mintz
Penny Tuttle
Sandra Kisner
Terry Canfield
Noel Troike
Greg Bruss
Karen Dyer

Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to everyone who entered the drawing. We'll be sending the winners' autographed copies of BLOOD HARVEST soon. If you didn't win this time, you'll have another chance when author Timothy Hallinan drops by next month with a copy of his second Bangkok novel, THE FOURTH WATCHER. Stay tuned!

Today's catch-up day has been rescheduled for tomorrow. While Little Bit is away, The Tall One and I are going to take advantage of the opportunity to go see the new Indiana Jones flick. I feel like I've been waiting 20 years for this. Big fan here. Huge.

For your reading pleasure, Wonder Twin has just returned from Mayhem in the Midlands in Omaha and has posted an author-girl-gets-excited kind of love-fest over at Murderati. I get such a kick out of her getting a kick out of doing what we love to do. Right on, Sister!

Enjoy your Friday. And read a book!

=) JB

"Finding the right work is like discovering your own soul in the world."
-- Thomas Moore (1779-1852) Irish writer

A Box Full of Memories

I hope you were able to take some time yesterday to honor or at least think about those who have given their lives for the freedoms we enjoy in this country. You all know by now that my dad is a Viet Nam veteran, USAF retired fighter pilot, and that I'm very proud of that fact. The folks were here yesterday, and I embarked on a successful Internet search on Dad's behalf to locate the service route of the 12th Indiana Infantry regiment - from the Civil War. Turns out his father's maternal grandfather (i.e., my great-great-grandfather) was a private in Company G of the 12th Indiana, and from 1862 to 1865 they traveled from Indianapolis to Memphis to Chattanooga and then to Washington D.C. by way of Vicksburg, Atlanta and Richmond. And our ancestor lived to tell the tale. Fascinating stuff, though I have to be careful about bragging on my Yankee ancestry considering I am now firmly ensconced in a state quite proud of its Rebel heritage. (Down here, they still call it the War of Northern Aggression.)

I love my Southern friends, and you all (ahem, y'all) know who you are.

Another thing I found recently ... sort of related but sort of not ... was a box full of notecards, stationery and stickers that I used for correspondence back when I was in [cough]high school[cough]. Talk about opening up a box full of memories. I can't begin to describe everything that I found, but each new piece I picked up brought back a flood like I haven't had in a long, long time. Ah, nostalgia.

I'm off to spend part of my afternoon with my pal Will ... Shakespeare, that is ... and a bit of As You Like It. And after that, of course, I'm diving back into the TBR pile. I'm reading a book called Poison Pen by the lovely Sheila Lowe, another Capital Crime Press writer in league with Robert Fate and Bruce Cook. Sheila will be dropping by the Lunch Room for an interview here in the very near future, so be sure to schedule your lunch dates accordingly. I'll let you know closer to time what date that'll be so you can get it on your calendar - you won't want to miss her.

And don't forget to register for our current drawing for an autographed copy of Blood Harvest. This is an incredible book, and well worth the afternoon it will take you to read it. Trust me.

=) JB

"Life is too short for a long story."
-- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) English writer

Let's Do Lunch! Interview with Bruce Cook (aka Brant Randall)

Welcome to another Lunch Room chat session. We're delighted you're here! Pull up a seat and we'll get you some iced tea, and please be sure to throw your name in the hat for the drawing before you leave - details below.

My guest today is author Bruce Cook, whose first novel, Philippine Fever, is the story of an ATF agent trying to track down a missing cargo container full of terrorist weapons in Manila, smuggling capital of the world, after his main suspect is murdered.

Bruce has adopted the pseudonym Brant Randall and penned an amazing story called Blood Harvest, which we're talking about (and giving away) today. Thanks for stopping by, Bruce.

Bruce: Thanks for inviting me to lunch, JB. I love diners. One of my favorite restaurant books is Diving Out in LA.

JB: A guide to great dives, I get it. Wait, does this qualify as a dive? Okay, never mind. Before we get to the main course, let's talk a little about what else you have on your plate. Will there be more Sam Haine in our futures or are you working on other projects?

Bruce: Sam Haine will return in a story about gun smuggling by the contemporary IRA in Ireland, using treasure recovered from a payroll ship of the Spanish Armada that sank off the coast of Ireland. It was an idea I invented, then researched and now believe to be true. It is probably not the next book.

Currently I am working on two novels. The first is Feral Frankie, a story about the orphaned child of a meth cooker in northern California. At 13 he takes his daddy's car and heads for Los Angeles, where he believes he still has a living grandmother. Sort of like a young Mad Max takes a trip on Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

The second novel is titled Snapshots from Hell, and is a darkly comic look at the moral bloodbath that is Hollywood. Having worked in the film biz for 39 years I have a few crime tales to tell, some skeletons to unearth, gossip to relate, and a few heads to crack.

You may be wondering why I have adopted a pseudonym, having begun a series under the name Bruce Cook. After Philippine Fever was published I discovered four other authors named Bruce Cook, including two who write/wrote mystery series. I have been asked to sign some of those other author's books at signings, which is a little embarrassing for the customer. Since Blood Harvest was meant to be a very different kind of novel from Philippine Fever I decided to devise a pen name - Brant Randall.

However, response has been so positive to Brant's first book I have decided that he is going to collaborate with Bruce on the next book.

JB: Now there's an idea. Let's talk about Blood Harvest - a highly unique story told from the first-person point of view of a number of different characters, with the narratives overlapping each other with respect to time and location. Did you set out from the get-go to write it that way, or was that something that sort of fell into place as you were writing it?

Bruce: Blood Harvest began as a first person short story, the chapter that opens the book, as told by Marshal Lawe. Once it was complete, I realized that I wanted to continue to explore the historical reality of lynchings in New England, and that I wanted to tell the story from multiple points of view.

I decided each chapter would be told by a new first person narrator, sharing his/her version of the events surrounding the lynching of the Italian immigrant, Nick DeCosta. I am a screenwriter and film director, so I was familiar with the Kurasawa classic Rashomon. I knew that each voice needed to have a unique perspective on what life in the town was like, but that it must also add new information about the events for the reader, so it wouldn’t just be a tiresome rehash.

In other words, no character telling his piece of the story actually understands the full extent of what has happened. Only the reader, with knowledge gleaned from all the narrators, knows the full truth.

The challenge was to create voices that were so individual or idiosyncratic that the reader would instantly know that a new character was speaking. I had first seen this done well in Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible. After I had finished a draft of the novel I happened to read Wilkie Collins' Woman in White, written in 1859, which also used the same approach. This only goes to show that no writer can invent anything truly new, either in content or technique.

JB: Talk a bit about the research that went into this book. Did you have prior knowledge of the history and activities of the KKK in that period of time, or did you learn way more than you ever wanted to know from doing your research?

Bruce: I knew next to nothing about the history of the KKK before writing this book, other than having seen the 1915 movie Birth of a Nation when I was in film school.

This novel grew from an incident related to me by my grandmother when she was in her nineties. She was a Scotch-Irish girl from rural New England, one of twelve children, though two died in infancy.

I knew she had married young, perhaps at sixteen, though she sometimes claimed she had been eighteen. She said that after her wedding day she had never returned to her home town. I had assumed that she eloped or otherwise angered her parents. At one point I asked if her parents had disliked my grandfather, who I remembered as personable and charming.

She claimed that they liked him very much. He was a perfect example of the immigrant success story. Came to America from Greece at sixteen, without any English. Started working the next day. Within five years he owned his own restaurant, within ten a chain of candy shops and drug stores.

"So why didn't you ever return to your home town?" I asked her.

"It was those dumb clucks." She used this expression only when quite angry. "My brother-in-law didn't think it right for a white girl to marry a non-white European."

This was new territory to me, but when I read my grandfather's immigration papers I found that southern Europeans — the Greeks, Spanish, Italians, and Turks — were classified thus until 1912. But it was her next revelation that stunned me.

It wasn't dumb "clucks." It was dumb "klux." The KKK had driven my grandparents from the town. This wasn't consistent with what I had learned in my history classes, and so I began to research.

The KKK had been moribund for thirty years when it was revived in 1915 as an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic movement, though with plenty of racism left over for blacks. It came to be centered not in the South but in the Northeast, with a large contingent in the Midwest.

Since I still have family alive who recall these incidents and live in the area, I changed the location of my story and the names.

I spent about six months researching the klan's activities during the 1920s, finding great primary sources in local newspapers, photographs, and court records. I found a collection of souvenir postcards of lynchings that is the most troubling thing I have seen in the last decade.

And then I found the present day klan. I discovered that my daughter-in-law's sister cannot visit her husband's home town because his family is still in the KKK and they disapprove of her religion. The family is in Ohio.

At the peak of membership in the mid-1920s the klan had between six and eight million members in 45 states. They swung elections in the mid-West. They controlled several state legislatures. They stalemated the nomination of a presidential slate at the 1924 Democratic convention for 103 ballots, because they opposed the nomination of Al Smith, a Catholic.

If there were that many members in that many states, the odds are that someone in your family was a member ... or a target.

I could go on, but I think you get my drift.

Besides, my salad is wilting.

JB: Yeah, it's the humidity around here. What an incredible story. And an incredible book. Thanks so much for sharing your time with us today!

Bruce (or Brant, if you prefer) has been gracious enough to offer autographed copies of Blood Harvest to 10 lucky Lunch Room visitors. We'll draw the winners at random next Friday, May 30, 2008 - click here to enter, and be sure to include your full name in the body of your email. Winners will be notified for address confirmation.

In the meantime, happy reading!

=) JB