Donna Andrews

My banned books

I'm not sure whether to brag or apologize about the fact that there's not a whole lot to get offended about in my Meg Langslow books. Sex and violence exist in Meg's world, of course, but they happen offstage, and any discussion thereof is usually tasteful and free of the more picturesque Anglo-Saxon terms that pock the dialogue of harder-boiled tomes. You know, the f-word and the s-word and all their cousins.

So nothing surprises me more than having my books banned or censored. But it happens.

The first time I learned about it was when I was doing an online chat about my first book. It went something like this.

HOST: So, welcome to our guest, Donna Andrews! Donna, can you tell us about your book?
ME: Yes, it's called Murder with Peacocks. My heroine's named Meg Langslow, and in the book she's organizing three family weddings
ME: Including one for a bride who wants Meg to find some peacocks to stroll about on the lawn during her reception--hence the title.
[pause]
READER: So, Donna, what's the name of the book?
ME: (thinking, didn't I just answer that? but oh, well) Murder with Peacocks.
[long pause]
HOST: Donna? Are you there?
ME: Yes!
HOST: Can you tell us the title of your first book?
ME: Murder with Peacocks
[long pause]
HOST: Donna?

After some confusion we discovered that the chat hosting software was censoring remark in which I used the word "peacock." You can guess why. And it wasn't tell me. So while I saw the above sequence, everyone else say:

HOST: So, welcome to our guest, Donna Andrews! Donna, can you tell us about your book? \
[pause]
READER: So, Donna, what's the name of the book?
[long pause]
HOST: Donna? Are you there?
ME: Yes!
HOST: Can you tell us the title of your first book?
[long pause]
HOST: Donna?

It took a while to figure out what was happening. After we did, there was much hilarity. The software didn't censor references to my upcoming book, Murder with Puffins. So I started again, referring to my book as Murder with Peathingies, and after that, all went well. We joked about the many other subjects that would also be censored by the chat sottware, including Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock, the Tom Cruise movie Cocktail, cocking pistols, Cockney rhyming slang, Declaration of Independence signer John Hancock, and of course Alfred Hitchcock. (I wonder if Alfred Hitchthingie's Mystery Magazine has heard about this.)

Of course, that was in 1999 or maybe 2000, and the software of the day was very primitive. It wouldn't happen today.

Or would it?

Sally Fellows contacted me to apologize for the fact that she'd been unable to post to the DorothyL mystery list a review of my latest book. We think it's the title--Cockatiels at Seven. It’s not Sally--she can post other reviews. And a friend who tried to post the review also failed. Sally even tried to post without the title, but apparently the list software is now wise to her and wouldn't let that through, either.

So with Sally's permission, here's the review that DL will never see, of the work now called Thingietails at Seven

I moderated a panel at Malice -- "Domesticity and Murder" -- and one of the questions I posed to the panelists was "How do you justify an amateur getting involved in investigating a crime over and over again?" Very few of us, if we do see a crime, are going to leap in and help (or hinder) the police in investigating it.

Donna Andrews has found a wonderful solution for this in her book coming out in July, Cockatiels at Seven. Here is Meg Langslow, minding her own business trying to produce enough for the next show she has entered (she is a blacksmith), and in comes a friend, perhaps more of an acquaintance, with her two-year-old toddler. Desperately the friend thrusts the child at Meg and begs her to take care of him for a couple of hours while she attends to urgent business. Meg, good-hearted person that she is, agrees. And the woman disappears and does not return.

Who would not set out to try to find her and get her baby back to her? (Especially if the toddler is a "terrible two.") Meg ropes in her family, any friends she can find, passing motorists if she could only stop them, to help her care for this child. And sleuthing with a child in arms (or in a car seat) severely limits what she can do. With increasing desperation she follows up leads and enlists Michael to try to control her father and grandfather as they set out on their own escapade.

This is another wonderful laugh-out-loud funny adventure of Meg and her family. Met seems like the calm eye of a maelstrom with a sardonic but kindly voice, but in this book she understandably panics a little also. What a wonderful book to include in your summer plans!

Gardening perils

I was at a garden show a few weeks back, and succumbed to the temptation to buy a new gardening toy.  Um, tool.  Anyway, I got a pair of Lawn Aerator Shoes.  Wicked looking things--the idea is to strap them onto your feet and then march around the lawn, poking little holes in it so air, water, and nutrients can reach the roots of your grass.  Sounded particularly useful, given that I have heavy clay soil that all too easily becomes packed into a pottery-like surface unwelcoming to grass.

Assembling the shoes was tedious, but easy--though I had to be careful, because the spikes were pretty sharp.  And there were thirteen in each shoe, and all twenty-six had to be screwed into the sole of the shoe and tightened with a small wrench (included in the package--nice touch!)

Then I stepped out to begin the aeration of my lawn--and almost fell flat on my face.  I'd stepped out of the shoes.  My clay soil really pulls on the spikes, and the straps wouldn't stay tight.  They had that kind of buckle where you weave the strap in and out and it's supposed to hold tight with tension--which I never think works as well as the old fashioned kind of buckle with a prong that fits into little holes in the strap.  Or maybe I just hadn't threaded the strap through right.  Annoying.  I adjourned my aeration session.

Last night I felt inspired to try again, and after some experimentation, arrived on what seemed to be the optimal/approved method of fastening the straps.  Took a while--I decided clogs were not the platform for aeration, and was operating barefoot, though planning to get my Reeboks for the actual stomping about--but I was happy that I seemed to have gotten the hang of the strapping and had fastened one shoe on firmly enough that it withstood a few test stomps.  Then I picked up the other shoe to work on it, and managed to nick the side of the foot wearing the aerator, and blood was running out along the spikes.  I adjourned the project again and limped upstairs with a paper towel staunching the blood flow, to wash off all the gardening mud and bind my wounds. 

The spike wound is still a little sore this morning, so perhaps aeration will have to wait a day or two. 

In the meantime, maybe I should take up a nice safe hobby, like bungee jumping.