Donna Andrews

The eve of Bouchercon

I'm making my final preparations for Bouchercon tonight--tomorrow, weather permitting, I head for Chicago.  I usually spend the night before a trip in frantic motion, trying to do three times as many last minute chores as I could possibly do in a week.  But for the last three days, I've been doing my packing and household chores with the televison tuned to the Weather Channel, first waiting out Katrina's landfall and then trying to absorb the magnitude of the damage.  Hard to get frantic over some small missing object you meant to pack when you're watching people hack escape hatches through the roofs of their houses.

And this may be a somewhat muted Bouchercon.  It's a strange feeling, being at a convention when there's something huge going on in world outside.  Normally, once you're at a convention, you're in another world.  On con time. Sometimes, when I get home, I ask my friends if anything big happened while I was gone.

But sometimes the outside world comes crashing in.  The Romantic Times convention in November 2000.  I flew down to Houston for it the morning after the presidential election, not knowing the outcome, but assuming I could probably find out from someone when I landed.  Every day that passed without knowing added to the surreal feeling of being in a time warp--attending panels and banquets, and coming up for air to ask, "Have you heard anything?"  Everyone knew what you meant when you asked that, and of course no one had heard anything.  Late one evening, some of us found we had been sharing the same slightly paranoid notion--that perhaps the rest of the world knew and were conspiring to play a practical joke on us. 

No Crime Unpublished.  I couldn't remember the year, so I looked up the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, which began during the conference--October 2001.  I remember Jerrilyn Farmer, who was also speaking at the conference, coming into the book room and telling several of us that the bombing had begun.  Again, a surreal feeling, trying to do our best on our panels, to give the aspiring writers attending the convention the kind of solid information about writing and the publishing industry that they'd come to learn, and all the while feeling a numb sense of dread, because we were talking about a sane, ordered world that didn't quite seem real any more.

Bouchercon could be like that this year.  Some people were already feeling a pall, due to the recent deaths of two giants of the mystery field, Ed McBain in July, and Dennis Lynds (aka Michael Collins) on August 19.   Strangely, while looking for something I needed to pack for Bouchercon, I ran across a message Dennis Lynds had posted to an MWA list debate on the issue of profanity and gore in mystery writing--one I'd printed out as a keeper:

Re Profanity, or gore,
Do not falsify the reality of the people and the situations you are writing about. Not ever.  That, to me, is the only rule.
Dennis-Michael

Those were his last words to the group, that I can find.  Not a bad exit line. 

There's a memorial scheduled for him at Bouchercon. And maybe we'll have a lot more somber moments than usual at a convention.  And a lot more people clustered around the television in the bar, shaking their heads in bewilderment.

I see from the Weather Channel that even storm-chaser Jim Cantore is slightly in awe of Katrina.  Glad it's not just me.

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Standing watch

I've been keeping a hurricane watch tonight.  I hate to confess this, because I'm not quite certain my motives will stand up to close scrutiny.  How much am I feeling genuine concern over the danger to so many human beings and to a beautiful, historic city, and how much am I just seized by morbid curiosity?  I can't tell myself.

But there's a fascination in watching the Weather Channel tonight.  I don't know what they do with Jim Cantore between hurricanes.  Keep him out of sight at headquarters, perhaps, so the sight of his face produces the desired result: ratcheting up the tension level.  Whoa, Jim Cantore reporting from someplace where pretty soon we'll see the ribbons of rain and debris stretching out horizontally.  They must think it's gonna be a big one', sending Jim in.

And watching the giant red-and-orange spiral representing the storm, dwarfing the outlines of the states, taking up more and more space until it almost fills the Gulf of Mexico, and spinning toward New Orleans like some malign, toxic insect.

I tell myself that this is an historic occasion--probably the second largest hurricane ever to hit the country.    And suppressing the little voice that whines "Only the second largest?  Dang."

Friday and Saturday email brought reassuring messages from friends in Florida that they were okay.  Elaine Viets lost power for a while, but is back online and getting ready for Bouchercon.  My friend Suzanne, a reformed Floridian, is once more celebrating her decision to move to New York, and trying not to say "I told you so" to the aunt with whom she's scheduled to take a vacation in three weeks or so....to New Orleans, despite Suzanne's suggestion that they wait till after the hurricane season. 

And then the news took me by surprise--that instead of falling apart after traveling over Florida, Katrina had strengthened.

I find myself thinking back to my one trip to New Orleans, to attend Crescent City Con on August 1-3, 1997.  I came close to running away to New Orleans after that trip.   I was going through a tough time at the office, with a very demanding boss and a schedule that didn't leave me much time for writing.  I was working on the book that eventually became Murder with Peacocks, but hadn't managed to finish it in time to submit it to the St Martin's contest in October 1996.  In May 1997, I'd watched Robin Hathaway receive her certificate as that year's winner of the Malice Domestic/St. Martin's Press Best First Traditional Mystery contest, and found myself wondering, if I'd been able to spend more time on the book and finish it, could it have been me standing there at the front of the banquet room, being introduced by Ruth Cavin. 

I did a lot of brooding that weekend, and decided that something had to give.  If I stayed at my job, the way things were going, I might never finish the book.  I made some promises to myself. the most important being that if I couldn't find a way to change the way my job was going, or get another job at the same company, that I'd resign after New Year's Day 1998.  And I spent the rest of the summer, when I wasn't writing,  sending out resumes to a few places and studying the in-house possibilities and most of all, gathering my courage to go ahead and keep my promise.

And I spent my time wandering around New Orleans in the August heat--which is not the city's best time,  believe me--fantasizing about running away to New Orleans.  Going back to my job and telling my boss that I was handing in my resignation; I'd fallen in love with New Orleans and had to go down there to write.

Which wasn't exactly true.  I liked New Orleans; maybe I was even infatuated with it, but what I was really in love with was the idea of leaving my job and my old life behind.   As I toured New Orleans with my friends--walking through the French quarter, having beignets, eating beans and red rice, taking a ghost tour, exploring the cemeteries, visiting the Anne Rice gift shop and shrine--all of those places overlaid with baggage from dozens of books and movies and television shows; everything from A Streetcar Named Desire to The Big Easy by way of Interview with the Vampire--I layered on my own private, utterly invented future mythology.   Maybe this will be the place I come to eat my beignets when I run away from home to live in New Orleans.  Maybe this will be where I stop in to have beans and rice when I finish the day's (or night's) writing.  Maybe this neighborhood will be where I find a cheap sublet.  Maybe this will be the trolley car I take to my writer's group, once I find one.  Maybe these people who have organized the convention will become some of my friends once I live here and can volunteer at next year's event.

And then, Friday night, when I checked my email at the end of the first day of the convention, I heard that the company where I worked had undergone a major reorganization.  Somehow, I knew it would be okay.  Maybe they'd fire my tough boss.  Or fire me.  Or both of us.  Or reorganize me into a less crazy department.  Somehow, I knew it would be all right.

It was.  Things got a little easier.  And I got a little better at saying "No, I've already put in a full day; I'm going home to write."  I finished Peacocks and sent it to the St. Martins contest in October 1997.  In May 1998, I was the one standing beside Ruth Cavin receiving the winner's certificate.  And I managed to stick it out at the day job until June 2001, when I finally realized it was time.  Past time, maybe.

But I associate New Orleans, in August, with that difficult summer of sorting out where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.  With realizing that I couldn't do it all; there weren't enough hours in the day.  That if I ever wanted to get published, I had to change something.  Like changing the way I thought about my job.  Calling it the day job; because it wasn't my career; writing was. 

So maybe that's one reason I'm watching Katrina with such fascination.  Even though I've only been to New Orleans once--so far--it's inextricably tied to my writing life, to that awful/wonderful summer when I was finishing Peacocks and coming to some tough decisions about my future.  In a strange way, New Orleans is a more important part of my own personal mythology than places where I've spent far more time.

Or maybe it's just the sheer awful fascination of it all.  Even Jim Cantore just admitted that he's never been in the field reporting a storm this bad.  I'll keep telling myself it's not morbid curiosity; it's watching history happen.

Back from Richmond, and life with dogs

I went down to Richmond Thursday to do a signing at the Fountain Bookstore.  I'd first been there in the fall, when Berkley had its 10th anniversary party there, and I remembered why I'd liked it so much when I walked in and saw books by Neil Gaiman and Charlaine Harris prominently displayed in the staff picks section.   

I think the highlight of the signing was that Twyla, my college roommate, showed up--between my family stuff last year and her job switch, we'd gotten out of touch.  Apparently she'd left some messages at my old phone number, and if I'd tried to reach her it would have been at her old work email. Not enough time to catch up completely, but at least we know how to find each other again!   She arrived with two friends, one of whom I'd met at the James River Writers ' Festival while the other attended a session on revisions I did at the Chesterfield Library.  (And wrote me a lovely email about how much she'd liked the session--an  email that I blush to confess is still lurking in my "need to write a nice answer" file.  Not that that's a formal folder in my email inbox, but it's a mental category;  and I owe all too many emails to people in that category.  Trying to reform.)

After the signing, I wandered over to Creatures 'n' Crooks, where I met up with Rosemary Martin.  (Actually, I only met up with her thanks to Andrew at the store, who found her number and called Rosemary to tell her I was there.  Not my most organized departure ever; she made sure to put her phone number in her email to me confirming the plan, and I left the printout at home on my desk. Arg.)  We had a late lunch at the nearby Galaxy Diner--actually, I had a very, very late breakfast--not a meal I get many chances to eat, so I like occasionally visiting places that feature 24-hour breakfast service. 

I learned that Lelia Taylor won't be at Malice in 2006, alas--but the reason is a good one: she'll be doing bookselling at RavenCon, a new science fiction and fantasy convention that will be happening in Richmond on the same weekend.  Sounds like a fun event, with Guest of Honor Terry Brooks, Artist Guest of Honor Tom Kidd,  and fan guests of honor Lee and Alexis Gilliland.  And they even specifically state that they'll be mystery friendly.  Hoping Malice and Ravencon won't happen on the same weekend in future years--maybe I should send them the Malice schedule for 2007 and 2008.

I got home rather late, which meant my preparations for dogsitting on Saturday had to be postponed until Friday, along with a boatload of other pre-Bouchercon errands.  Summer can be a difficult time to arrange dogsitting, with everyone's vacations coinciding or overlapping, so I was taking Toby for one day when no one else would be around.  He's a much more sedate dog than the previous elkhound, Moose, who escaped on an almost daily basis.  Moose should have been called Houdini--Dave described Toby as more like an elkhound with a desk job.  Not surprising--he's nine, which means he's in late middle age in elkhound years.

He's not sedate, though, by any means.  Nice dog, but he's a counter-cruiser.  He ranged the yard while I was running my errands, but once I got home, I let him in so he (and I) could have some company.  Some company: he spent most of the evening in the kitchen.  He's tall enough to reach the kitchen counters by getting up on his hind legs and bracing his front paws on the countertop, so it's a good thing I'd done a reasonably good job of cleaning up before he came.  He licked my George Foreman grill cleaner than it's been since it was brand new.  Ate part of a sponge that must have been used to wipe up something tasty.  Dragged various bits of tasty stuff out of the garbage can and had to be discouraged from gnawing on them on the living room rug. 

At regular intervals, I'd hear noises that indicated Toby had gotten into something again.  I'd go out to interfere, and kick him outdoors to consider his shortcomings.  After a while, I'd let him in and he'd behave for a while.  But sooner or later, the appeal of playing faithful hound and sleeping at my feet palled, and he'd be drawn inexorably to the kitchen.

It was a bit of a relief when his ride came.  Though he did do a good job of licking the floor under and around my desk clean. 

Back from Boston

I took advantage of my new (perhaps temporary) freedom from any immediate deadlines to dash up to Boston.  Main reason for the trip was to play a couple of games of Extreme Croquet with the members of the Connecticut eXtreme Croquet Society, who had been very helpful by email in my research for No Nest for the Wicket.  Sadly, my skills at Extreme Croquet were barely enough to save me from the invidious fate of tying the society's all time low-scoring record, but I returned with more local color for tweaking the book, and a renewed interest in devising my own backyard Extreme Croquet course.  Many thanks to Bob, Tom, Mitch, Jon, Bruce, Rich, and Bob's wife Diana for the hospitality. 

I'd give a blow-by-blow description of the game, but that would be hard, especially since the longer each game went on, the farther behind I fell.  I finished out two of the three games still bogged down at the far end of the field from the other players.  But I do seem to have escaped poison ivy, which infested the fringes of the course.  And I made some progress in learning to loft the ball over protruding roots and bank it against tree-trunks and stumps. 

I also got together for dinner with my fellow Femme Fatale, Dana Cameron, and her husband James.  I'd just finished Dana's excellent fifth book, More Bitter Than Death--I'd been saving it to read on the plane during this trip.  (One of my projects--whenever I travel, I try to take along a friend's book to read on the plane, and wave it about as ostentatiously as possible.)  Of course this means I have to wait until the next book comes out to hear more about the adventures of Emma Fielding, the archaeologist who has been the protagonist of her books so far.  And she's only just turning the next one in, dammit. 

Free at last!

Make that free for at least twenty-four hours.

Yesterday, I sent off the draft manuscript of No Nest for the Wicket to St. Martin's.  And the galleys of Delete All Suspects to Berkley.  So now I'm officially in the grace period, celebrating the completion of a project (two, if you count both the draft and the galleys).  The blissful, ever-so-fragile bubble of space in which I'm allowed to believe that I'm right with most of the world and need only a few non-strenuous afternoons of work to be right with the whole world.  Caught up, completely organized, relaxed and regrouped for the next project.

Yeah, right.  Reality should come creashing down by this evening, if not sooner.

Actually, reality already stuck a large, hairy paw through the door over the weekend, when I learned that my bank had committed an error so monumentally stupid that I'm still shaking my head over it.   An error arising not from an individual act of human stupidity but from the fundamental stupidity of its procedures, its IT systems, and its financial controls.  I had to spend time Sunday and Monday morning putting out the immediate fire, and the first thing I did after entrusting my manuscripts to the UPS store was pay a personal visit to nearest branch to express my concern a little more face to face and find out if they'd made any progress fixing things.  Followed by a visit to the Other Bank, a bank where I have had a small account that I was thinking of closing.  Though now, I'm thinking of making Other Bank my main bank.  Whether Stupid Bank becomes my secondary bank or my former bank depends on how they handle the situation.  So far, I'm not impressed.

(And no, the photos have nothing to do with banks or deadlines, but I like them. )

And it was my fault that the fast printer ran out of toner Sunday night.  Well, maybe I can shove a little of the blame on the innate perverseness of inanimate objects--amazing how the printer knew, almost to the minute, when all the local office supply stores close.  I brought home a fresh box of paper, to make sure I didn't run out of that, but I thought I had toner.  Ah, well.  The slow printer was working fine, and I had plenty of toner for it, and I'm a nightowl anyway.  And as some of my writer friends have discussed, some part of your computer system will inevitably act up during the writing of nearly every book, usually toward the frantic end of the time alloted. One reported that the automatic paper feed on her printer broke the night before a deadline, forcing her to stay up all night feeding each sheet in by hand (and she doesn't write short books!).   Susan McBride is currently struggling to finish a book on a computer that won't, for some reason, run Microsoft Word and can just barely run WordPerfect without crashing repeatedly, so I feel fortunate by comparison. 

I got some of the cranky out of my system composing an email to a company called iBill, which just sent me an email of something it calls "G-spot News."  The top of the newsletter informed me that " This is iBill's new newsletter, 'G Spot News' offering silly adult news, pictures, jokes, cartoons, erotic stories, etc.  The newsletter is free to you as a valued iBill customer.  Who knows, even your spouse or friends may enjoy it too."  I'm not that easily offended if a friend sends me a risque joke, but the idea of a business sending adult news and erotica to its customers put me off.  Especially since as far as I know, my only connnection with iBill was that I have, at some time, used it to make an online payment at a site that only accepted iBill.

iBill notes, at the end of the message  "You are receiving  this monthly message because you provided us permission by agreeing to our  privacy policy when you signed up for an Internet service/product that is   billed by our company."  If so, it's a damned offensive policy and it will be a cold day in hell before I do buy any Internet service or product that uses iBill for billing.  I tried to go in and see if I could delete my "account" with them, but logging into their customer service feature requires entering your credit card number.  They don't make days that cold anywhere in hell.   

And when I checked their website, to see what I could learn from it, I read that "Third-party processor iBill and its parent company, Interactive Brand Development, entered the blogsphere this week with the unveiling of G Spot News, a blog aimed at increasing traffic for adult webmaster clients." 

Adult webmaster clients?  I am not now and have never been an adult webmaster.  I actually know one--nice guy; helped me with some of the research for Delete All Suspects. But me, running adult websites?  Not happening.  So iBill is not only a spammer, it's a stupid spammer.

Or is "stupid spammer" an oxymoron?  I've started a collection of spam, partly because I really love the odd way spammers mangle the English language.  (Have we no well-educated, articulate native-born spammers?  There's a market niche waiting to be filled.  If I didn't so good the English speak, I not would my time waste of the sending spam.)

One of the most charmingly mangled spams I've received was a missive from Felipe Polley with the subject, "stay Healthy. if not, we nurses you with our worth buying remedy."  And I've grown fond of what I call the Implausibles--phony sender names that bear no apparent resemblance to real people's names but still have a certain bizarre charm.  Some of the following I've received, others came from my friend Chris Cowan, who also collects amusing spam.  And I thought it was a unique hobby:

Jainism B. Tenderfoot
Faithfulness F.  Soughing
Impediment P. Enjoy
Farther N. Monet
Interceptor A.  Synched
Invariably D. Recombine
Adornment H. Schoolmistress
Circulation K. Aida
Coolness C. Deviousness
Brunting V. Shearer
Balloonists L. Cloakroom
Wagon K. Designate
Lambasting H. Catechise
Dealing R. Stonehenge
Grimiest C. Apse
Pertly D. Barracuda
 Rasputin C. Trample

I've grown tired of Johns, Jennifers and Bills.  My next book will be about Adornment H. Schoolmistress, an innocent young girl who grows up in a ghastly orphanage run by the abusive Grimiest C. Apse.  At the earliest possible age she leaves to assume a post as a governess.  Her employer, the dashing, wealthy, but mysterious--even slightly sinister--Coolnes C. Deviousness....

Okay, it's Jane Eyre with different names.  But I think Lambasting H. Catechise will make a wonderful stuffy minister, and Pertly D. Barracuda the sinister barrister, and Rasputin C. Trample has to be a particularly colorful villain.  Haven't fathomed Dealing R. Stonehenge yet, and Balloonists L. Cloakroom wil probably have to be the comic relief.

Hurray!

I typed "The End" tonight on the last page of draft of No Nest for the Wicket, the seventh Meg Langslow book.  Still have a bit of polishing and tweaking to do--not that I don't do a lot of that all along.  But as any writer knows, "The End" is one of the big milestones.

Also received the galleys for Delete All Suspects, the fourth Turing Hopper book.  So it's not as if I'm about to become fabulously idle.  But still....

Time to celebrate!

Chocolate for the inner beast...I mean, artiste

In answer to Frances (who asked "Have you tried mellowing your inner Artiste with chocolate?")  Yes.   With chocolate, both in candy bar form and in the guise of Pepperidge Farm Geneva cookies.  Also with Utz potato chips  (it's a regional brand that many of us discerning chip noshers consider far superior to any other--more info here); kung pao chicken; lunches at Pepper's, the Iranian Texas barbecue (a small local hole-in-the-wall); enchiladas; tacos; Angel Fluffs; rice cakes; homemade milk shakes; string beans (don't laugh, it's the Andrews family favorite veggie), and, well, just about any edible substance the inner artiste's current whim desires.  This close to the end of the book, a balanced diet goes out the window.  Dietary reform begins after I've mailed the friggin' manuscript in. 

Then there's the whole Grapenuts thing.  I love Grapenuts--not for breakfast, a meal I usually eat only at conventions and when my mother fixes it for me, but as a snack while writing or playing computer games.  Unfortunately, Grapenuts and keyboards just don't coexist well.  Can't tell you how many times I've noticed a sticky key, turned the keyboard upside down, and shaken out a few Grapenuts.

Maybe I should feel guilty about that.  I'll worry about it after I finish the book.

 

Care and feeding of the artiste

I was not cut out to do this.  I'm a sane, sensible individual; I can't stand people who are prone to fits of moodiness and surly stubbornness.  I like life to be serene, logical, pleasant, harmonious.  I was not cut out to cater to the sudden whims and random mood shifts of a tempermental so-called artiste; someone who whines when the least little thing goes wrong, demands that everything and everyone cater to "the work" and generally makes Picasso on a bad day look like a pussycat and J.D. Salinger like a social butterfly.  I hate putting up with the crankiness, the selfishness, the total lack of proportion.  Sharing space with The Artiste is, frankly, unbearable.

It's particularly unbearable when the space we share is a body. 

The closer I get to the end of a book, the more I long to get away from myself; forget I even know myself,  and go someplace where I won't have to put up with myself.  Of course, the minute I finish the book, I won't be impossible to have around, so I'll forget all about it until the next time I'm this close to the end of a book.

And, on the positive side, I am really close. The killer has been identified and hauled away in disgrace, and all I need to do is draw a few other loose plot ends together as quickly and smoothly as I can.  Probably going to type "The End" tonight.

Or maybe tomorrow.  I could really use a break from myself right now. 

So I figured out what the raccoons were up to

I was sure, when I went out, that I'd find all my cherry tomatoes eaten.  Not one had been touched.  But the container of water sitting on the table had been knocked over.

Not sure whether they knocked it over while drinking it or out of disgust when they tried.  It was the container of slightly soapy water I use to drown the beetles.  And quite a few beetles had been steeping in it, some of them since late morning, which can't have improved the flavor of the water or the beetles.  (Normally I dispose of the evidence at the end of each day's beetle slayage, but occasionally I forget.)  I'm curious to find out if the racoons actually enjoy beetle soup--will see if they come back for more any time soon.

And in case you were wondering...

The helicopter had either stopped searching or moved out of range by 5:05, when the two raccoons began gamboling on my deck.  When they began peering through the sliding glass doors to the office--curious, perhaps, about the glow of the computer monitor--I went down to check.  (What if I'd left the sliding glass door ajar?)  The hawk's cry at 6 a.m. only woke me briefly, thank goodness.

Still, I'll be a  little later than usual starting the productive part of my day.  I was a little later than usual just dragging myself out of bed.