Donna Andrews

Yes, I've been AWOL a lot

Blame deadlines. But I'm blogging all this week over at my publisher's blog, Moments in Crime.

Contest! and willing suspension of disbelief

So we're having a contest over at the Femmes Fatales blog.  All the answers can be found in recent Femmes blogs or prominently displayed on our websites.  So mosey on over to the blog . . . submit your answer . . . and win cool stuff!

And on willing suspension of disbelief: I've been watching Ratatouille.  Trying to watch it.  And I'm having trouble.  Maybe it's because I've had to interrupt my watching a couple of times for phone calls.  Maybe I'm in the wrong mood for it. But every time I start losing myself in the movie, one thought keeps coming back to me: he's a rat.  There's a rat running through this restaurant.  They're serving people food that a rat has been walking on.  He's got a rat on his head.  Yuck!

Maybe I'll bag watching Ratatouille for now and start over when I'm in a different mood.  But I'm wondering: am I the only one to have this reaction to what's generally considered a popular and charming movie?  Are there movies--or books--you can't watch or read because of something like my ratophobia?

Life with munchkins, part . . . whatever

We took the twin four-year-olds to a Milwaukee Frozen Custard place the other day.  They were happily slurping up their frozen treat, and Mama and Grandma were watching, and Auntie Donna was snapping photos  (because I AM the paparazzi of their world) when one of the twins noticed another, older boy nearby who had gummy worms on his ice cream.

You could almost see my nephew's ears perk up, and he immediately shifted into a mode that most parents and aunts of toddlers learn to recognize immediately: the dawning suspicion that someone has something he doesn't.

"Can I have some worms for my ice cream?" he asked.  Several times.  In fact, enough times that Auntie Donna, eager to keep the outing with Grandma on a positive note, went up to the counter.

"Excuse me," I said, pulling out my wallet.  "When my nephews got their ice cream, they didn't realize that gummy bears were available as a topping.  May I buy a topping of gummy worms to split between the two of them?"

Unsurprised--after all, the toddler calling for worms was the one with the voice that carries to Pittsburgh when he really gets going--the young woman behind the counter smiled, and gave me a small bowl of gummy worms on the house.   I split them between the two nephews--solving the problem that there was an odd number by eating it myself.  And we finished our dessert in peace and quiet.

Until we began to leave the store.

"Can I have some more worms?"  my nephew asked. 

"You've finished your ice cream," my sister-in-law said.  "You can have gummy worms next time."

"But I want to eat more worms NOW," the nephew wailed.

And that is how I came to be walking down the sidewalk, dragging a toddler who was wailing, in his impressively loud, future opera superstar voice,

"I want to eat more worms!  I want to eat more worms!  More worms!  More worms!"

My fledgling career as a contract killer

I returned just now from my latest assignment--my mission: to terminate with extreme prejudice.  Don't worry--my targets deserved it.  And in case you're worried, we're talking about a nest of wasps.

Normally I'm a live-and-let-live kind of person.  I've been known to escort spiders and snakes off the premises.  Only this afternoon, I bought a humane trap for the chipmunk that is having trouble finding his way out of my garage.  I've tried leaving the garage door open for a while, in the hope that he'll run back out--even making a racket at the back of the garage to encourage him--but so far that hasn't worked, and I'm worried that he'll invite some friends to join him.  That won't do.  We're looking for a net outflow of chipmunks.

Anyway, normally I'd just detour around the wasps.  But these particular wasps had crossed the line.   They built a nest in my brother and sister-in-law's paper box, at the new house they're moving into.  And one of them stung my four-year-old nephew.

My first assault on the enemy proved unsuccessful largely due to poor planning.  I found a can of wasp and hornet spray in the garage.  Seemed to have enough juice inside.  So one afternoon, after we finished our day's quota of unpacking and were heading back to my house, I told my sister-in-law to let me out by the paperbox and drive a ways down the road to wait for me.  With the windows rolled up, to keep the nephews safe.  I shook the can vigorously, made my stealthy approach to the paper box, and pressed the trigger. . . releasing only a thin trickle of liquid that couldn't have harmed a baby ant.  Though it did annoy the wasps considerably.  They swarmed out of the paper box, madder than their cousins the hornets, and I made a swift and decisive alteration in my plans, determining that a strategic retreat was in order.  Okay, I turned and ran.

And tripped over the toes of my own Crocs.

My sister-in-law, who had been watching my mission in her rearview mirror, was startled when I turned and ran, and terrified when I suddenly vanished from her field of vision--she assumed the wasps had felled me.  She was trying figure out whether to flee or call for help when I popped into the passenger side door remarking, if memory serves, "Well, that didn't go at all the way I planned."

Luckily, the wasps didn't manage to catch me in spite of my mistakes--attacking the enemy while it was still daylight, with inadequate ammo, and without properly securing my retreat.  I armed myself with a new can of wasp and hornet spray, donned a pair of old but serviceable Reeboks, and went back tonight just after 21:00 hours (that's 9 p.m. for you peaceful civilian types).   From the get-go, I could tell this attempt was going better--instead of the thin trickle, the can erupted into foam, so after just a second or two the paper box began to resemble a rabid dog. 

If the damned wasps survive this, I'm calling in an exterminator.  And tomorrow, I have some wasps to tackle in my own yard.  This batch is building their nest inside my grill.  If they think they're getting barbecue, they're in for a surprise.

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.

So if you're going to Malice . . .

I'm afraid you're on your own when it comes to finding copies of all the book that are nominated for the Agatha Award.  But the short stories--which can be harder to find--are all available from the authors' or publishers' websites.   And the nominees are:

Donna Andrews, "A Rat's Tale"

 

Rhys Bowen, "Please Watch Your Step"

 

Nan Higginson, "Casino Gamble"

 

Elizabeth Zelvin, "Death Will Clean Your Closet"

 

Spring, maybe, at long last

The hellebores are in bloom--profuse, riotous, extravagant bloom. 

Those are not adjectives I would previously have associated with hellebores.  I'd have called them subtle--the soft, shaded matte colors do not photograph as well as they show in real life, and the blooms often peek shyly out from the middle of the foliage.  I love them not because they're showy but because they're odd-looking; because they bloom early in the spring when there's not much else out, and because the deer seem to ignore them. 

Of course, "the deer don't eat 'em" has become the core strategy of my gardening efforts these days.  But that's another story.

Maybe my hellebores have finally settled in and this year is normal hellebore behavior.  Maybe this year was perfect hellebore weather.  Not sure what it is, but the hellebores have never been happier.  I am used to having people stop and comment on my daffodils. You put somewhere upward of a thousand daffodil bulbs in the ground and you're going to get something that's at least a LITTLE impressive.

But this spring was the first time anyone ever stopped while walking by my yard not just to say how much they loved the daffodils but to ask, "What is THAT?"  Pointing to one of the most exuberant hellebores.  Heck, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted one of the hellebores and thought, "Gee . . . I don't remember planting an azalea there."  I actually wondered for a moment if one of my friends had done a drive-by azalea planting as an Easter present.

Along with "the deer don't like it," the other core tenet of my gardening philosophy is pragmatism.  As in "Hey, that's doing well.  Let's plant some more of that."  I planted a dozen more hellebores over the last week or so.

. . . and more to come.

Intruder alert! And general update

I just chased an intruder out of my house.  Before anyone begins worrying about my safety or congratulating me on my bravery, I should add that the intruder didn't weigh more than a few ounces. 

It was a small brown bird--I have no idea what kind.  To my father's dismay, my birdwatching skills never progressed much beyond identifying the really obvious birds--cardinals, blue jays, titmice, chickadees, and such.  He was very fond of all the small brown birds--wrens and sparrows mostly--and took pride in being able to identify them. Me--I just know it was a small brown bird.  Possibly a house wren or house sparrow trying to live up to its name.

I'm hoping it flew into the house when I took out the trash a little while ago.  The only other logical possibility would be that I've got a hole in my house that's big enough to let in birds, and that's an unappealing idea.  But also an unlikely one.  The woodpecker has been pecking another hole in my siding, but I think I'd have noticed if he'd broken through to the inside, opening a highway for every wren, sparrow, and squirrel in the yard.

I managed to trap the intruder in the bathroom with an open window, and went away for ten or fifteen minutes to allow him to fly out.  When I peeked in again, I saw that he was ignoring the temptingly open window and settling in for the night on the top of the glass shower enclosure.  He seemed more interested in getting back out into the bedroom than in vacating the house, so I shut the door and went looking for tools.  The yardstick was too short, but the extensible ceiling duster could reach to the far wall of the bathroom, and I didn't figure there was much danger of hurting him with the fluffy end of it, so I stuck it in and waved it around until he got the hint.  Exit one bird.

Was it just my imagination, or did he look more cross than frightened?  Why am I imagining several hundred small brown forms who have established squatters' rights in someone's little used media room, and are rewatching the last half of The Birds to work up their collective courage to retake my living quarters?

It's the drugs.  Over-the-counter drugs, I hasten to add; Sudafed and Benedryl and all the helpful pills and potions modern medicine has invented to cope with the common cold.  If I've been silent lately, that might be a good thing, because when I have a cold, I get just a wee bit grouchy.  Okay, I turn into Scrooge, especially this time of year.

But my spirits took a turn for the better this morning when I got some good news--The Penguin Who Knew Too Much has been nominated for the Lefty Award!  Of course, as one would expect, it's up against some excellent books by friends, so we're hoping for a  multiple tie.  (For a full list of the Lefty nominees, along with the Arties and the Rockies, see the Awards Page of the Left Coast Crime 2008 site.)

And for anyone who thinks I've been too silent of late . . . check out my recent blog on the Femmes Fatales blog -- all about "Trying on Other People's Lives."  I've also done not one but three interviews on other sites or blogs recently.  Luckily the three interviewers didn't ask many of the same questions, so it was pretty easy to make sure all three were quite different.

First G.M. Malliet interviewed me for the Inkspot, a blog for authors published by Midnight Ink.  (Her first book, Death of a Cozy Writer, is due out in July.)  Part one was published on November 21, and part 2 on December 26. . . and I won't tell you which part contains my thoughts on who should play Meg in the movie version, if someone ever decides to make a movie version.

On December 29, Tayler Bloom posted her interview, in which she coaxes out of me a partial list of stuff that makes me laugh.

And Betty Webb posted her interview on January 3, and made me 'fess up about, among other things, my sad addiction to punning titles.

See, not quite idle after all. 

An update on those translated titles

Julie Dalyrimple emailed me with a comment on the German titles.  She says:

"Alle vogel sind schon tot" I think is a play on a line from a spring song I learned in German class in high school, "Alle Vogel sind schon da" (All the birds are already there). I hope the book turns out as  funny in German as it is in English.

In other words, the German title is a pun!  Okay, I can get that.  I suspect Falscher Vogel fängt den Tod will turn out to be another pun.

And in answer to Liz Clifford--yes, I collect the foreign editions of my books.  In fact, I have a shelf in one corner of my office where I keep all the editions I can get my paws on--hardback, paperback, large type, foreign, and audio.  The photo at the top of the blog shows what it looks like at the moment--including the armed action figures I keep around to guard it.