Being a bestseller is *sick*

The good news: Stockholm Syndrome hit the bestseller list on Kobo less than two weeks after its debut.

The bad news: I was willing to grind myself to powder to get there.

Most people hit the brakes before they get to either point. They’re smarter than me.

Me? TL; DR: I got the flu, then pneumonia, then side effects from medications that landed me in the ER as a patient for two nights with palpitations while raving on dexamethasone. My colleagues were worried about me. And I’m still heading back to the hospital for another work-up today.

Meanwhile, I was still trying to do it all. So far this year, I hit Utah, Oregon, New York (twice), Los Angeles, Boston, Kingston, Ottawa, and Montreal. Drive to Boston solo with my kids? Sure. Make a two-layer homemade birthday cake for my daughter’s fifth birthday party? Of course. Stay at an acting class in Montreal despite getting assaulted with the flu? No problem.

Us wrapped in Rush Couture

Max in Kingston

<–I bought this dress when I was pregnant with Anastasia, and now she can get inside it with me because it has peek-a-book cutouts on the sides. It’s from Rush Couture. This dress is popular on Facebook.
It looked weird on me when I was pregnant. Here it looks normal. 
BTW, at one of my Stockholm Syndrome book launches, one woman told me I had love handles. “Or maybe it’s your shirt.” As an author, I tell you, NEVER say mean things to a writer at a book launch.
Natalie Goldberg always brings someone who tells her she’s beautiful. Doesn’t matter if she messed up. Tell her she rocked it hard. As a fashionista and a physician, I present this dress as evidence that I did not detect love handles. If I had love handles, I would not choose to wear a peek-a-boo dress. QED.

I was doing it “all.” Except I ended up so sick, I couldn’t work the ER any more. I had to ask for help. And one of my colleagues started lecturing me how much I was burdening the group, and I’d better not take more than a week off.

I started yelling at that doctor. Which made him worry about my mental health. Which is a whole other worm-can.

In truth, I am not the best doctor right now. Not only on December 7-8th, when I was high on dexamethasone and short of breath with palpitations of up to 200 (my husband was upset that I couldn’t figure out how to dial the phone. In my defence, it was a new phone, and I was more interested in getting my clothes together for my scheduled appearance on Rogers TV the next morning). That night, the doctor kept telling me I shouldn’t go on TV. I was like, “I’m supposed to be on TV! That’s why I took the dex at night, to heal my vocal cords enough to sing! I’ll take the train if you really want, but geez. I also have a recording for CBC’s White Coat Black Art scheduled for the afternoon.” I was all set, even though I couldn’t find the Imovane they’d just given me to sleep, but RN Rebecca stopped me. She said, “You look pale. And sick.”

Suddenly, I was shocked into cancelling. I can’t be ugly on TV. That would be bad. It was like, if you want to get young women to quit smoking, you can try and reason with them about how it’s expensive, and selling out to the man, and giving you lung cancer and emphysema, but the real money is in telling them they’ll get wrinkles. No way!

I knew I needed to sleep. My husband was mad at me for getting up in the middle of the night and working. I knew, logically, I’d never get better that way. And yet I couldn’t stop.

I tried to work with the flu until I was seeing double and forgetting to order chest X-rays, and the other doctor sent me home. Then I made myself pick up my Stockholm Syndrome books and ended up dehydrated and nearly delirious when they detained me at the border for 1.5 hours (hint: if the government sends you the wrong business number, you’re screwed. If the border guards are chasing after illegal cigarettes and the remaining guard has no clue what to do with you, you’re screwed). Even yesterday, when my friends and colleagues are like, “Are you much better now?”, I’d have to say that not only did it seem like my pneumonia came back with a vengeance after we stopped all antibiotics for a few days, but I’m not completely compos mentis–at the children’s Christmas party, I answered a page from the neurologist and forgot my purse on a bench in the hallway. RN Annie was too tactful to say anything, but I knew she’d noticed I wasn’t right.

The good news is, I managed to get to Ottawa to record an interview with Fresh Air’s Mary Ito, and it was pretty cool. You can listen to it here: https://soundcloud.com/cbc-fresh-air/final-melissa-yuan-innes-6287325-2015-12-12t04-21-11000. They’ll keep it up for two weeks.

I was able to put a good game face on for the 3 h drive and the recording, although I did lose my parking pass immediately.

I was taking selfies in the booth. Scared the heck out of the next group coming in to record.

I hadn’t checked Kobo recently–too nervous that I sucked, especially since they hadn’t mentioned the free code during the interview–but I nerved up and did it. And guess what I saw?

#8 in mystery overall. Not just #4 in thrillers. All of mystery and suspense, people. Maybe you’ve heard of Tom Clancy or Lisa Jackson? Or James Patterson?

But, greedy Gus that I am, I wondered how I was doing overall. I was euphoric when Mark Leslie Lefebvre told me Terminally Ill (Hope Sze #3) had broken Kobos’ Top 50 after my interview with Wei Chen on CBC’s Ontario Morning. Terminally Ill ended up hitting as high as #27 for all of Kobo’s books. Not segmented by genre. Every. Single. Book. On. Kobo.

Could Stockholm Syndrome repeat the magic? Even if Fresh Air hadn’t given out the time-limited magic Kobo code of STOCKHOLM100 during the interview, only on Facebook and Twitter?

NUMBER TWELVE, PEOPLE. That’s better than Terminally Ill.

I was freaking out, didn’t sleep (again), high-fiving Max.

OMG. Look at it. Fifteen Dogs just won the Giller Prize. Mary Ito interviewed Andre Alexis, too. NFW.

Should I not tell you about the bad stuff? Probably. But for those of you who already know my protagonist, Dr. Hope Sze, we’re pathologically honest. I could pretend to be perfect, but I’m no good at lying. So here you go.

In other words, it’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times. And I’m my own worst enemy. But mostly the best, because my husband, my friends, and my colleagues are rallying around me. And because I feel like telling near-strangers, I love you.

Because I do. Because we’re alive. Including me, despite myself.

Take care of yourselves. I care about you.

Love,

Melissa

“Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.”

― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.”

― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“The loner who looks fabulous is one of the most vulnerable loners of all.”

― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners’ Manifesto

“The need for change bulldozed a road down the centre of my mind.” —Maya Angelou

“I can paint a barn with someone else’s blood. I just can’t stand to see my own.”―Colonel Henry Blake, a surgeon on M*A*S*H Episode Guide Team, M*A*S*H EPISODE GUIDE: Details All 251 Episodes with Plot Summaries. Searchable. Companion to DVDs Blu Ray and Box Set.

“Some people should not be allowed to see beyond your surface. Seeing your vulnerability is a privilege, not meant for everyone.” ― Yasmin Mogahed

“Being an open and vulnerable doesn’t mean you are weak..” ― Jayesh Varma

“A heart that can break is better than no heart at all.” ―Marty Rubin

“There is more hope in honest brokenness than in the pretense of false wholeness.”

― Jamie Arpin-Ricci, Vulnerable Faith: Missional Living in the Radical Way of St. Patrick

People who cannot find time for recreation are obliged sooner or later to find time for illness.

People that go through serious illness – you can either go one way or the other. You can either become despondent about it all. Or it kind of rejuvenates you, makes you focus on what’s important.~Jack Layton

See You In The Funny Papers

by Jim Doherty and David Dean

There’s an old saying that goes, “See you in the funny papers,” which, I have to admit, I never quite got. I mean, how are you going to see me in the funny papers? I’m a real, live, three-dimensional sort of guy. I must also be a literal kind of guy because now I find that the impossible has happened—I’m in the funny papers! That’s right. I find that I’ve been reduced (some might say enhanced) to two dimensions and basking in the reflected glory of none other than that venerable crime fighter, Dick Tracy! Lest you doubt, I’ve attached proof of my brief appearance.

There, see me? I’m the thin dude in the Hall Of Fame box. It appears that amongst Dick’s many skills and talents at detection, he has also honed an appreciation of fine crime writing—mine… amongst others it seems. Can you believe he also honored some dude named Wambaugh in a previous issue? What kind of name is that for a writer? Get a clue, Wambaugh.

When I got the news it was via a forwarded email from Janet Hutchings at Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. It being a weekday, I was hard at work hammering out my next story when, during a brief lull in my creativity I checked all my social and communication media. Half an hour later, I’m reading a very kind note from a police sergeant named Jim Doherty telling me of my inclusion in Dick Tracy’s Hall of Fame. He had also attached the comic strip. Jim, as I learned, is the police technical advisor to the comic strip’s creative team.

To say that I was blown away would be putting it mildly. Having spent a big part of my adulthood as both a cop and a writer, this inclusion rang all the bells and blew all the whistles for me. I loved it. And it’s great fun to boot.

But that’s enough about me. Though you probably couldn’t tell, I intended my little victory dance to serve as an introduction to my new friend and colleague, Sgt. Jim Doherty, the person most responsible for my induction into the Hall of Fame. On my honor (which is now unquestionable), Jim and I have never met, and he only knew of me through my writing. It was he that submitted my name and bio to the editors, and it was on his recommendation that I was accepted. May his name be sung in the mead halls of Valhalla forevermore.

Jim, as mentioned earlier, is both a police sergeant and technical advisor, but he is also a writer of crime fiction himself. So, I thought it might be interesting if he shared with us a bit about his own background, as well as his relationship with the square-jawed Detective Tracy and his crime-busting comic strip. I think you’ll find it interesting.

---

Thank you for the introduction, David.

It might seem odd to be discussing a comic strip character on a blog devoted to the mystery genre, until one considers that Dick Tracy’s as important a figure to crime fiction as he is to the comics medium.

Leave aside the obvious fact that, with the exception of Sherlock Holmes himself, Tracy’s the most famous detective in any fictional medium. Leave aside that, like Holmes, he’s a multi-media star, successful in movies, novels, TV and radio, stage productions, and just about any other story-telling medium you can imagine.

Forget about all that and look at him:

The rugged features. The snap brim fedora. The trench coat. Comics are a visual medium, after all, and that being the case, it’s clear that our whole idea of what a hard-boiled sleuth is supposed to look like comes to us direct from Tracy. Every time we think of how cool Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Alan Ladd, Jack Webb, or Dick Powell look in that particular ensemble, we’re admiring a look that Tracy’s creator, Chester Gould, invented, or at least connected to crime fiction, as indelibly as Sidney Paget connected the deerstalker cap and the Inverness cape in the pages of The Strand Magazine.

And imagine about how many people must have been introduced to crime fiction through Tracy. Most mystery fans, at least in the US, will probably mention the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew when asked how they first got started, but, how many of them, even before they knew how to read, thrilled to the four-color adventures of the most famous of all fictional cops. I know one of my fondest memories is of my dad reading Dick Tracy to me years before I even knew how to read. Aside from turning my into a mystery fan, and eventually a mystery writer, Tracy also clearly had an influence on my choice of day job (though, being Irish, and having a lot of law enforcement types in my family Tracy was, perhaps, not the only influence).

I was fortunate enough to get involved in with Tracy professionally, or at least semi-professionally, when two guys I knew through the Internet, both of them well-known comics professionals, decided to start a web page called Plainclothes as a tribute to the famed law enforcement icon. (When Chester Gould first conceived the strip, he called it Plainclothes Tracy).

Mike Curtis, who had briefly been in law enforcement himself (he once served as a deputy in the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office), started in the business writing scripts for Harvey Comics about character like Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, and Wendy the Good Little Witch. Later he would form his own company, Shandafa Comics. Though an admirer of Dick Tracy, Mike’s first love is really Superman, and he owns one of the biggest collections of memorabilia devoted to the Man of Steel in the country.

He’d formed a friendship with legendary comics artist Joe Staton, who, since he got his first professional job in 1971, has been so active in the business it’s easier to list the characters he hasn’t drawn, than those he has. From Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern for DC to the Hulk, Captain America, Phoenix, and the Silver Surfer for Marvel, to say nothing of work for just about every other comic book company in the US, including Charlton, Western, Comico, First, etc., etc. etc.

The one character Joe always longed to draw, but never got a chance to, was Dick Tracy. Or make that rarely got a chance to. He’d done a comic book story for Disney in the early ‘90’s to tie in with the Warren Beatty film, but it never got published due to the rights being clouded. And he’d done some covers for books collecting reprints of the old strips. But he’d never gotten a chance to do the strip, or even a regular comic book series.

Mike had heard that Dick Locher, the Pulitzer-winning artist/writer who had been drawing the strip since 1983, and writing it since 2005, might be retiring.

He suggested that he and Joe do the website, not only as a tribute to the character, but as a sort of high-tech audition, in case Tribune Content Agency, the syndicate that distributed the strip, really was looking for someone to replace Locher. The main attraction on the Plainclothes website was an original Tracy comics story, done in daily newspaper strip format. This was accompanied by articles, original artwork, and prose stories about the character.

Knowing that I was a cop, a Tracy admirer, and a mystery writer, Mike invited me to contribute two prose stories featuring Tracy. I was at the point where I was actually getting paid to write stuff. I’d had two books published, a collection of true-crime articles, Just the Facts, which included a piece called “Blood for Oil,” about the Osage Indian Murders of the 1920’s which won a Spur from the Western Writers of America, and a study of the creator of iconic private eye Phil Marlowe, Raymond Chandler – Master of American Noir. Writing for free seemed, on the surface, like a step back.

On the other hand, my only novel, An Obscure Grave, though a finalist for a British Crime Writers Debut Dagger Award, was still unpublished, and how many chances would I ever get to write about my favorite detective?

It turned out that the Tribune folks were aware of us. And, though our use of the character could be construed as a copyright violation, they were inclined to look at it as an audition, just as we hoped. It turned out that Mr. Locher really was retiring. On the basis of the work displayed in Plainclothes, Mike was hired to write the actual strip, Joe to illustrate it. Mike invited me to be the police technical advisor, since I’m still an active cop, and I live in Chicago (the unstated, but obvious, setting for the strip).

The first person to have that job was a fellow named Al Valanis, a respected detective in the Chicago Police who has the distinction of being one of the first forensic sketch artists in the history of law enforcement. He created a new feature in Tracy that’s become almost as familiar to fans as Tracy’s two-way wrist communication device. “Crimestoppers’ Textbook,” a panel at the beginning of every Sunday strip that gave safety tips for cops, crime prevention tips for citizens, and the occasional pithy editorial comment. As the new technical advisor, I was also to write the copy for “Crimestoppers.”

A few months into the gig, I had an idea for a new feature that would occasionally replace “Crimestoppers.” A feature that would profile a noteworthy real-life police officer, to be called “Dick Tracy’s Hall of Fame,” appearing roughly once a month. Over the years, we’ve honored such famed law officers as Eliot Ness, Frank Serpico, Robert Fabian of the Yard, Mary Sullivan (the first-ever female homicide detective), Eugene Vidocq (the founder of the Sûreté), and Bill Tilghman (the greatest of all frontier lawmen).

During this last year, being a policeman who writes crime stories, I had the notion of building the “Hall of Fame” entries for 2015 around a particular theme, cops who also write cop fiction. A few of the more obvious choices have been Joseph Wambugh, William Caunitz, Maurice Procter, and A.C. Baantjer.

But police work isn’t carried out exclusively on big city streets. And crime fiction doesn’t exist only in novels. And so, when I conceived the notion of devoting a year’s worth of Hall of Fame inductees to cops who were also fictioneers, small-town police chief and short story ace David Dean was one of the first persons I thought of.

I’ve admired David’s stories for years, and was pleased to learn that, upon retiring from the Avalon Police in New Jersey, he intended to start writing novels. His first book-length fiction, The Thirteenth Child, was a first-rate genre-crossover, effectively blending the elements of a realistic police procedural thriller with a supernatural horror novel. I couldn’t put it down.

I was also struck by the fact that, when I saw a picture of David, tall, lean, ruggedly handsome, square-jawed, he seemed to remind me of someone.

Maybe if his hair was dark instead of sandy, or if he changed out of the uniform and into a business suit, trenchcoat, and snap-brim fedora, I’d be able to put my finger on just who it is he puts me in mind of.

Sherlock Holmes meets O Henry, 2

If you thought last week’s story featuring O Henry’s Shamrock Jolnes was dull, er, droll, wait until you read this week’s clunker.

I admire O Henry’s stories, I really do, but his heavy drinking shows, drinking that led to an early death by liver failure. But that’s just my opinion. These turkeys managed to get published posthumously.

The ‘O’ in William Sydney Porter’s O Henry pseudonym originally stood for Olivier. He used that pen name only once and changed it to simply ‘O’ to disguise the fact he was writing while in federal prison for bank embezzlement. A friend forwarded manuscripts to publishers to further obscure Porter’s whereabouts.

Without doubt, he loved his wife, Athol. Porter married her knowing she suffered from consumption, the disease tuberculosis that would eventually take her life.

Athol encouraged her husband to write, which he began while working in Austin and Houston. After a boy who died in childbirth, Athol bore a daughter, Margaret.

After Porter’s indictment for bank fraud, he fled the country, arriving in Trujillo, Honduras. Porter planned for his wife and daughter to join him, but upon learning she was dying of tuberculosis, Porter returned and gave himself up. While serving three years of a five-year sentence in an Ohio federal prison, he wrote short stories to help support his young daughter, Margaret.

After prison, Porter moved to New York where he commenced his literary career in earnest. These Shamrock Jolnes stories were written shortly before his 1910 death at age 47.

The Sleuths

by O Henry
(© 1911)

In the Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and completeness of the flame of a candle that is blown out. All the agencies of inquisition – the hounds of the trail, the sleuths of the city’s labyrinths, the closet detectives of theory and induction – will be invoked to the search. Most often the man’s face will be seen no more. Sometimes he will re-appear in Sheboygan or in the wilds of Terre Haute, calling himself one of the synonyms of ‘Smith’, and without memory of events up to a certain time, including his grocer’s bill. Sometimes it will be found, after dragging the rivers, and polling the restaurants to see if he may be waitng for a well-done sirloin, that he has moved next door.

This snuffing out of a human being like the erasure of a chalk man from a blackboard is one of the most impressive themes in dramaturgy

The case of Mary Snyder, in point, should not be without interest.

A man of middle age, of the name of Meeks, came from the West to New York to find his sister, Mrs. Mary Snyder, a widow, aged fifty-two who had been living for a year in a tenement house in a crowded neighborhood.

At her address he was told that Mary Snyder had moved away longer than a month before. No one could tell him the new address.

On coming out Mr. Meeks addressed a policeman who was standing on the corner, and explained his dilemma.

“My sister is very poor,” he said, “and I am anxious to find her. I have recently made quite a lot of money in a lead mine, and I want her to share my prosperity. There is no use in advertising her, because she cannot read.”

The policeman pulled his mustache and looked so thoughtful and mighty that Meeks could almost feel the joyful tears of his sister Mary drooping upon his bright blue tie.

“You go down in the Canal Street neighborhood,” said the policeman, “and get a job drivin’ the biggest dray you can find. There’s old women always getting’ knocked over by drays down there. You might see ‘er among ‘em. If you don’t want to do that you better go ‘round to headquarters and get ‘em to put a fly cop onto the dame.”

At police headquarters, Meeks received ready assistance. A general alarm was sent out and copies of a photograph of Mary Snyder that her brother had were distributed among the stations. In Mulberry Street the chief assigned Detective Mullins to the case.

The detective took Meeks aside and said:

“This is not a very difficult case to unravel. Shave off your whiskers, fill your pockets with good cigars, and meet me in the café of the Waldorf at three o’clock this afternoon.”

Meeks obeyed. He found Mullins there. They had a bottle of wine, while the detective asked questions concerning the missing woman.

“Now,” said Mullins, “New York is a big city, but we’ve got the detective business systematized. There are two ways we can go about finding your sister. We will try one of ‘em first. You say she’s fifty-two?”

“A little past,” said Meeks.

The detective conducted the Westerner to a branch advertising office of one of the largest dailies. There he wrote the following “ad” and submitted it to Meeks.

“Wanted, at once – one hundred attractive chorus girls for a new musical comedy. Apply all day at No.–- Broadway.”

Meeks was indignant.

“My sister,” said he, “is a poor, hard-working, elderly woman. I do not see what aid an advertisement of this kind would be toward finding her.”

“All right,” said the detective. “I guess you don’t know New York. But if you’ve got a grouch against this scheme we’ll try the other one. It’s a sure thing. But it’ll cost you more.”

“Never mind the expense,” said Meeks; “we’ll try it.”

The sleuth led him back to the Waldorf. “Engage a couple of bedrooms and a parlor,” he advised, “and let’s go up.”

This was done, and the two were shown to a superb suite on the fourth floor. Meeks looked puzzled. The detective sank into a velvet armchair, and pulled out his cigar case.

“I forgot to suggest, old man,” he said, “that you should have taken the rooms by the month. They wouldn’t have stuck you so much for em.”

“By the month!” exclaimed Meeks. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, it’ll take time to work the game this way. I told you it would cost you more. We’ll have to wait till spring. There’ll be a new city directory out then. Very likely your sister’s name and address will be in it.”

Meeks rid himself of the city detective at once. On the next day some one advised him to consult Shamrock Jolnes, New York’s famous private detective, who demanded fabulous fees, but performed miracles in the way of solving mysteries and crimes.

After waiting for two hours in the anteroom of the great detective’s apartment, Meeks was shown into his presence. Jolnes sat in a purple dressing gown at an inlaid ivory chess table, with a magazine before him, trying to solve the mystery of “They.” The famous sleuth’s thin, intellectual face, piercing eyes, and rate per word are too well known to need description.

Meeks set forth his errand. “My fee, if successful, will be $500,” said Shamrock Jolnes.

Meeks bowed his agreement to the price.

“I will undertake your case, Mr. Meeks,” said Jones, finally. “The disappearance of people in this city has always been an interesting problem to me. I remember a case that I brought to a successful outcome a year ago. A family bearing the name of Clark disappeared suddenly from a small flat in which they were living I watched the flat building for two months for a clue. One day it struck me that a certain milkman and a grocer’s boy always walked backward when they carried their wares upstairs. Following out by induction the idea that this observation gave me, I at once located the missing family. They had moved into the flat across the hall and changed their name to Kralc.”

Shamrock Jolnes and his client went to the tenement house where Mary Snyder had lived, and the detective demanded to be shown the room in which she had lived. It had been occupied by no tenant since her disappearance.

The room was small, dingy, and poorly furnished. Meeks seated himself dejectedly on a broken chair, while the great detective searched the walls and floors and the few sticks of old, rickety furniture for a clue.

At the end of half an hour Jolnes had collected a few seemingly umintelligible articles – a cheap black hatpin, a piece torn off a theatre programme, and the end of a small torn card on which was the word “Left” and the characters “C 12.”

Shamrock Jolnes leaned against the mantel for ten minutes, with his head resting upon his hand, and an absorbed look upon his intellectual face. At the end of that time he exclaimed, with animation:

“Come, Mr. Meeks; the problem is solved. I can take you directly to the house where your sister is living. And you may have no fears concerning her welfare, for she is amply provided with funds – for the present at least.”

Meeks felt joy and wonder in equal proportions.

“How did you manage it?” he asked, with admiration in his tones.

Perhaps Jolnes’s only weakness was a professional pride in his wonderful achievements in induction. He was ever ready to astound and charm his listeners by describing his methods.

“By elimination,” said Jolnes, spreading his clues upon a little table, “I got rid of certain parts of the city to which Mrs. Snyder might have removed. You see this hatpin? That eliminates Brooklyn. No woman attempts to board a car at the Brooklyn Bridge without being sure that she carries a hatpin with which to fight her way into a seat. And now I will demonstrate to you that she could not have gone to Harlem. Behind this door are two hooks in the wall. Upon one of these Mrs. Snyder has hung her bonnet, and upon the other her shawl. You will observe that the bottom the hanging shawl has gradually made a soiled streak against the plastered wall. The mark is clean-out, proving that there is no fringe on the shawl. Now, was there ever a case where a middle-aged woman, wearing a shawl, boarded a Harlem train without there being a fringe on the shawl to catch in the gate and delay the passengers behind her? So we eliminate Harlem.

“Therefore I conclude that Mrs. Snyder has not moved very far away. On this torn piece of card you see the word ‘Left, the letter ‘C,’ and the number ‘12.’ Now, I happen to know that No. 12 Avenue C is a first-class boarding house, far beyond your sister’s means – as we suppose. But then I find this piece of a theatre programme, crumpled into an odd shape. What meaning does it convey? None to you, very likely, Mr. Meeks; but it is eloquent to one whose habits and training take cognizance of the smallest things.

“You have told me that your sister was a scrub woman. She scrubbed the floors of offices and hallways. Let us assume that she procured such work to perform in a theatre. Where is valuable jewellery lost the oftenest, Mr. Meeks? In the theatres, of course. Look at that piece of programme, Mr. Meeks. Observe the round impression in it. It has been wrapped around a ring – perhaps a ring of great value. Mrs. Snyder found the ring while at work in the theatre. She hastily tore off a piece of a programme, wrapped the ring carefully, and thrust it into her bosom. The next day she disposed of it, and with her increased means, looked about her for a more comfortable place in which to live. When I reach thus far in the chain I see nothing impossible about No. 12 Avenue C. It is there we will find your sister, Mr. Meeks.”

Shamrock Jolnes concluded his convincing speech with the smile of a successful artist. Meeks’s admiration was too great for words. Together they went to No. 12 Avenue C. It was an old-fashioned brownstone house in a prosperous and respectable neighborhood.

They rang the bell, and on inquiry were told that no Mrs. Snyder was known there, and that not within six months had a new occupant come to the house.

When they reached the sidewalk again, Meeks examined the clues which he had brought away from his sister’s old room.

“I am no detective,” he remarked to Jolnes as he raised the piece of theatre programme to his nose, “but it seems to me that instead of a ring having been wrapped in this paper it was one of those round peppermint drops. And this piece with the address on it looks to me like the end of a seat coupon – No. 12, row C, left aisle.”

Shamrock Jolnes had a far-away look in his eyes.

“I think you would do well to consult Juggins,” said he.

“Who is Juggins?” asked Meeks.

“He is the leader,” said Jolnes, “of a new modern school of detectives. Their methods are different from ours, but it is said that Juggins has solved some extremely puzzling cases. I will take you to him.”

They found the greater Juggins in his office. He was a small man with light hair, deeply absorbed in reading one of the bourgeois works of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The two great detectives of different schools shook hands with ceremony, and Meeks was introduced.

“State the facts,” said Juggins, going on with his reading.

When Meeks ceased, the greater one closed his book and said:

“Do I understand that your sister is fifty-two years of age, with a large mole on the side of her nose, and that she is a very poor widow, making a scanty living by scrubbing, and with a very homely face and figure?”

“That describes her exactly,” admitted Meeks. Juggins rose and put on his hat.

“In fifteen minutes,” he said, “I will return, bringing you her present address.”

Shamrock Jolnes turned pale, but forced a smile.

Within the specified time Juggins returned and consulted a little slip of paper held in his hand.

“Your sister, Mary Snyder,” he announced calmly, “will be found at No. 162 Chilton Street. She is living in the back hall bedroom, five flights up. The house is only four blocks from here,” he continued addressing Meeks. Suppose you go and verify the statement and then return here. Mr Jolnes will await you, I dare say.”

Meeks hurried away. In twenty minutes he was back again, with a beaming face.

“She is there and well!” he cried. “Name your fee!”

“Two dollars,” said Juggins.

When Meeks had settled his bill and departed, Shamrock Jolnes stood with his hat in his hand before Juggins.

“If it would not be asking too much,” he stammered , “if you would favor me so far – would you object to ––”

“Certainly not,” said Juggins, pleasantly. “I will tell you how I did it. You remember the description of Mrs. Snyder? Did you ever know a woman like that who wasn’t paying weekly instalments on an enlarged crayon portrait of herself? The biggest factory of that kind in the country is just around the corner. I went there and got her address off the books. That’s all.”

---

Trivia: Kids of yesteryear might remember The Cisco Kid, a popular movie and western television series. The name, although not the plot, was taken from a short story by… O Henry.

A Hanukkah Mystery: The Case of the Female Maccabee

When they arrive at the Assyrian camp, Judith demands to see Holofernes. She's realized the city is doomed, she says, and has come to him for protection. Struck by her beauty, Holofernes invites her into his tent, where she regales him with the supplies she's brought. The salty cheese makes him thirsty, so he drinks too much wine. Soon, he falls into a deep sleep. Judith prays to God for strength, takes Holofernes' sword, and decapitates him. Then she wraps his head in a cloth, and she and her maid sneak out of the camp and return to Bethulia.

The story of Judith doesn't fit most traditional definitions of "mystery." It does contain elements suitable for a thriller--a brutal and lustful villain, a beautiful woman with a daring scheme, the fates of nations at stake. And someone gets killed--almost always a plus, in either a mystery or a thriller. There's no doubt about whodunit, though, or how she done it, or why she done it. Even so, mystery surrounds the story. What are its origins? Is it history or fiction? In what ways, if any, is it linked to Hanukkah--and even to Hanukkah foods? We'll get to all that. But let's start with the story itself. It's a good one.


It goes back over two thousand years. There are several versions, some long and elaborate--the one in the Catholic bible, for example, is divided into sixteen chapters packed with details. I'll stick to basics, emphasizing elements that could connect the story to Hanukkah.

In ancient Israel, evil Assyrian general Holofernes attacks the city of Bethulia. The inhabitants fight back and manage to keep him from taking the city, but they're too badly outnumbered to defeat him outright. Frustrated by the stalemate, Holofernes decides to starve the Jews into submission. He lays siege to the city.

As supplies of food and water dwindle, Bethulia's elders and military leaders begin to talk of surrender. Judith, a beautiful and virtuous young widow, steps forward to rebuke them. God will save the city, she says. Further, He will deliver Holofernes into the hands of a woman. She puts on the fine clothes she hasn't worn since her husband's death, packs a bag with cheese and old wine, and leaves the city, accompanied only by her maid.

Judith with the Head of Holophernes,

by Cristofano Allori, 1613

(Royal Collection, London)

When Holofernes' soldiers find his headless body, they panic and decide to flee. Judith shows the head to the Jews and urges them to attack the enemy camp. They do, scattering the last of the soldiers. Bethulia is saved. Judith is too devoted to her husband's memory to remarry, but she lives a long life, revered as a heroine by the people of her city.

That's the story. Now comes the mystery. Is the story of Judith based on a real event that took place during the Maccabee revolt? Opinions vary. The oldest existing text of the story is written in Greek. People who know much more about such things than I do think it's probably a translation of an earlier, lost Hebrew text written around 150 B.C.E.--not long after the Maccabee revolt against Assyrian/Greek oppression. But the Greek text makes no reference to the Maccabee revolt, and it has some odd, confusing features. For example, it says Holofernes served Nebuchadnezzar, not the evil King Antiochus of the Hanukkah story. To muddy the waters further, it identifies Nebuchadnezzar as "a king of Assyria," not of Babylon. And there's little historical evidence to confirm the existence of a city called Bethulia. In Hebrew, Bethulia means "a virgin." Some see it as a poetic way of referring to Jerusalem, and some think it's a symbolic reference to Judith's chastity. Some, on the other hand, say it's an indication that the Book of Judith is a work of fiction.

In some ways, the book does seem like a fanciful reweaving of the stories of several heroic women in the Jewish bible (or the Tanakh--a Hebrew acronym for Torah, Prophets, and Writings, essentially the same as the Protestant Old Testament except that we put the books in a different order). First there's Deborah, the judge and prophet, who urges a general, Barak, to resist the oppression of the king of Canaan and his general, Sisera. Barak falters, saying he won't lead the army into battle unless Deborah accompanies him. Deborah agrees but says the glory of victory will therefore belong to a woman. Inspired by Deborah, the Jews defeat Sisera, who flees the battle. That's when another heroic woman, Yael (or Jael)--a Kenite, not a Jew--takes over. Seeking refuge, Sisera comes to Yael's tent and asks for water. She gives him milk, he falls asleep, and she kills him by driving a tent stake through his head. Finally, there's Esther. a Jewish girl who becomes queen of Persia. She's the heroine of the biblical book of Esther and also of the Jewish holiday of Purim. When wicked Haman schemes to kill all the Jews of Persia, Esther steps forward and risks her life to stop him, and the Jews of Persia are saved. It's hard to miss the parallels between these three stories and the story of Judith.

But while Deborah, Yael, and Esther all made it into the Jewish and Protestant bibles, Judith did not. The Catholic bible includes the Book of Judith, but the Protestant bible relegates it to the apocrypha, and the Jewish bible doesn't grant it any canonical status at all, maybe because its basis in fact seems so shaky. Jews loved Judith's story, however, and a number of prominent Jewish rabbis and commentators mention it in their writings, saying Judith deserves everlasting praise. Jewish retellings of the story often emphasize (or invent) links with Hanukkah. Some versions of the story say Judith was the sister of Judah Maccabee, the hero of the Hanukkah revolt against the Greek/Assyrian empire.  (Judith and Judah--they could be twins.) And medieval Jewish retellings add the detail about Judith feeding Holofernes cheese in order to make him thirsty, drunk, and vulnerable. Many authorities say that's the origin of the tradition of eating cheese on Hanukkah.

In fact, the first latkes were probably cheese pancakes, not potato pancakes. After all, the potato wasn't introduced to Europe until a mere four hundred or so years ago. Long before that, Sephardic Jews evidently celebrated Hanukkah with latkes made of ricotta and other cheeses--always fried in oil, to commemorate the Hanukkah miracle that took place when the temple in Jerusalem was recaptured and rededicated by the triumphant Maccabees. They found only a tiny bit of pure oil, enough to keep the Eternal Light burning for just one day--but it lasted for eight days, until more pure oil could be prepared. (The other day, I came across a Food Network recipe for latkes fried not in oil but in clarified butter. Oy vey. What's the point?)

Today, potato latkes are definitely the latkes of choice for most Jews, though there are plenty of variations on the basic recipe, some using sweet potatoes, some incorporating other vegetables such as carrots or zucchini. My favorite latke recipe was included in "Death on the List," a Hanukkah whodunit published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine back in 1999. The recipe's available on my website-http://www.bkstevensmysteries.com/recipes-from-the-stories/-     

But, like many Jews, my family always eats cheese on Hanukkah, too--cheese blintzes, cheese pie, even grilled cheese sandwiches. This year, for the first night of Hanukkah, my husband and I had, as usual, potato latkes and a Sephardic cheese frittata. The recipe for the fritatta follows. It's simple, it's delicious, and it's baked in oil. And if the cheese makes you thirsty and you have an extra glass of wine, so what? As long as you're among friends, you should be fine. If you decide to give the recipe a try, think of Judith when you sit down to dinner. Maybe she was an actual person, and maybe she wasn't. Maybe she had something to do with Hanukkah, and maybe she didn't. Her story will probably always be wrapped in mystery. Even so, like other mystery heroines, she can inspire us with her cleverness, and with her courage.

Bernice's Cheese Frittata

(Sephardic Style Cheese Souffle)  

2 eggs
2 cups milk
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
grated cheese--about 2 cups
spices such as pepper, tarragon, and nutmeg (optional)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

• Mix all ingredients, except oil and Parmesan, until slightly frothy.
• Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spread oil evenly in 9 x 13" baking pan; heat in oven.
• When oil is frying hot, approximately 2--3 minutes, pour batter into pan. If desired, sprinkle with Parmesan. 
• Bake approximately half an hour at 400 degrees, until a butter knife inserted in the fritatta comes out nearly clean.
• Any type of cooking cheese should work. Bernice's favorite combination is grated Muenster and Romano. We also like using 1 cup cheddar, 1/2 cup fontina, and 1/2 cup Gruyere.
• Serves four to six (depending on how hungry they are, and how many latkes they're having as a side dish) 
  

  

  First night of Hanukkah, 2015: Three unusually adorable grandchildren, many menorahs in the window

  
  

  
  

  
  

Reading Fiction Vs. Nonfiction

By Art Taylor

This week marked the end of classes at George Mason University where I teach—at least class meetings, though finals and lots (lots!) of grading still loom ahead.

Winnie Ruth Judd

The last book we studied in my course "Five Killer Crime Novels" was Megan Abbott's Bury Me Deep, a 2009 novel inspired and informed by a real-life murder and murder trial from 1931: the case of Winnie Ruth Judd, known as the Trunk Murderess, the Blond Butcher and the Tiger Woman. Judd was convicted of killing two of her friends, dismembering one of them and stuffing both bodies into trunks which she then shipped from Phoenix to Los Angeles. It was only when she went to pick up her cargo that she found herself in trouble: The trunks were beginning to smell...and to leak.

In advance of reading Bury Me Deep, the students and I dig through through the original coverage of the case in the Los Angeles Times—the manhunt ("Greatest Police Hunt in History of West") and capture; the background on Judd's childhood ("Preacher Backs Daughter") and her marriage to an older doctor ("Doctor Wants to Hunt Wife"); her friendship with the two victims and their own background ("Gay Revels Revealed, Narcotics Hinted at in Killing"); a confession that was discovered ("Found in Store Wash Room; Authenticity Denied"); a trial that included hints about the involvements of a Phoenix businessman whom Judd said "knows all about it" (but who skirted past being charged with the crime); and ultimately a conviction for Judd ("Death-Penalty Verdict Returns in Less Than Three Hours")—though I should stress that the story hardly ends there.

Building on some of those same documents and on later books about the case, Megan Abbott "began to reimagine Winnie Ruth Judd's story, with a different final act," as she tells readers in the Author's Note at the end of Bury Me Deep. Accordingly, part of what we study in class are the places where fact and fiction overlap, the points where the author has taken characters and plot in fresh directions, and in the process the ways that the novel opens up perspectives on both the character in the book (Marion Seeley) and the real-life Winnie Ruth Judd, on the place and predicaments of women in the early 1930s, and on the nature of storytelling in general—the struggle for control of a story, where truth resides and where it can be shifted, subverted.

I won't go into too much detail here about all those overlaps and intersections and divergences—though it's provoked some fascinating conversation in class. Instead, I want to focus on a more abstract discussion that's kept threading through that examination of text—namely, the differences in how we read fiction versus nonfiction.

For many people—and I don't mean just my students here, but also readers of my own age and older—the idea of reading fiction seems lesser somehow than reading nonfiction. "Fiction isn't about real things"—that's the kinds of thing I've heard from both students and friends. "I'd rather read about people who really lived, events that actually happened." Even in a case like this, where real events have informed a fictional treatment, students have fallen back on the novelist's ability to just make it up, to shift and transform in ways that diminish rather than inform a broader understanding of those real events. Once you diverge from the facts, they might argue, you also sacrifice something about the truth of a person or a situation.

As you might imagine, I'd argue against that idea—as a fiction writer myself, as a scholar of fiction, and even simply as a reader. To defend my thoughts, I could easily point to the ways in which readers can learn about another era or another culture though novels and stories about other times, people, and places. And even in terms of emotional engagement and investment, it's easy to explore the many ways that fiction becomes real to us. How many of us haven't at some point been caught up in the plight and the demise of a favorite character? How many people haven't cried at some scene in a book or a movie about characters who have no flesh and blood beyond those pages? I can usually bring up Harry Potter to the students in my class and offer up a scene or two for them to consider—none of it "factual," of course, but much of it becoming "real" in other ways to the readers, real enough that they have celebrated triumphs or mourned losses that never, any of them, actually happened.

But despite those examples, some divide frequently persists—and it's also easy enough to find support for the other side of the argument. Even I have read nonfiction books or watched documentaries or encountered books and films based on true events and caught myself thinking, with delight mixed into the incredulity, "Wow, can you believe this actually happened?" Just recently, I would point to Dean Jobb's Empire of Deception about master con artist Leo Koretz, and Clint Eastwood's film Changeling comes to mind too.  It's not just that these texts prove how fact can be stranger than fiction—surely it can. Instead, what strikes me is how we read/experience these differently knowing they're factual. What might be entertaining or thrilling or harrowing as fiction becomes something more; we have to process our incredulity as part of the reading/watching experience. These things really happened—we understand those texts in a different way because of that knowledge.

I don't know that I have anything definitive to say about this topic. In terms of Bury Me Deep, many of my students seemed to divide their experience of the book between those sections where Abbott diverged from the true story and those sections which hewed more closely to the "evidence" they had gained from the original  newspaper articles or from excerpts from journalist Jana Bommersbach's 1992 book The Trunk Murderess. Those sections based on fact seemed to give them insights into what might have really happened. Those sections that were clearly fiction (that "different final act," as Abbott herself called it) were at least to some degree relegated to fantasy, entertainment.

What are other people's thoughts about this? Do you read fiction and nonfiction with different expectations? How about fiction based on real-life events? I'm curious to know!

Fables in Crime

by Robert Lopresti

I wonder if you have ever heard of George Ade?  Probably not, for most of you.

He was a nineteenth century Indiana humorist and Chicago newspaperman from Indiana.  While he wrote all kinds of stuff his longest-lasting material seems to be his Fables in Slang.  He capitalized all the slang words to show that he knew they didn't belong in proper English.

I learned about the man from the radio show of Jean shepherd, another Indiana humorist, the one whose tales led to the classic movie A Christmas Story.  The following Fable seems to have enough criminal element to belong on our blog.  Ade had a dry sense of humor and a rather grim view of "modern" society, as you will see.

THE FABLE OF THE INVETERATE JOKER

WHO REMAINED IN MONTANA

The Subject of this Fable started out in Life as a Town Cut Up. He had a keen Appreciation of Fun, and was always playing Jokes. If he wanted a few Gum-Drops he would go into the Candy Store and get them, and then ask the Man if he was willing to take Stamps. If the Man said he was, then the Boy would stamp a couple of times, which meant that the Laugh was on the Man. It was considered a Great Sell in Those Parts.

Or else he would go into a Grocery with another tricky Tad and get some Article of Value, and they would pretend to Quarrel as to which should Pay for it. One would ask the Proprietor if he cared who paid for it, and if he said he did not, they would up and tell him to Pay for it Himself. This one was so Cute that they had a little piece in the Paper about it.

Or they would go and Purchase a Watermelon to be paid for as soon as a Bet was decided, and afterwords it would Develop that the Bet was whether the Saw-Mill would fall to the East or the West, in case the Wind blew it over.

It was Common Talk that the Boy was Sharp as a Tack and Keen as Brier and a Natural-Born Humorist.

Once he sold a Calf to the Butcher, several Hours after the Calf had been struck by Lightning. As for ordering Goods and having them charged to his Father, that was one of the Slickest Things he ever did.

About the time the Joker was old enough to leave Home, he traveled out through the Country selling Bulgarian Oats to the Farmers. When the Contract for the Seed Oats got around to the Bank, it proved to be an iron-clad and double-riveted Promissory Note. The Farmer always tried to get out of Paying it, but when the Case came to Trial and the Jurors heard how the Agent palavered the Hay-Seed they had to Snicker right out in Court. They always gave Judgment for the Practical Joker, who would take them out and buy Cigars for them, and they would hit him on the Back and tell him he was a Case.

One Day the Joker had an Inspiration, and he had to tell it to a Friend, who also was something of a Wag.

MANUFACTURING SUBURB

They bought a Cat-Tail Swamp remote from Civilization and divided into Building Lots. The Marsh was Advertised as a Manufacturing Suburb, and they had side-splitting Circulars showing the Opera House, the Drill Factory, Public Library, and the Congregational Church. Lots were sold on the Installment Plan to Widows, Cash-Boys, and Shirt-Factory Girls who wanted to get Rich in from fifteen to twenty Minutes.

The Joker had a Lump of Bills in every Pocket. If asked how he made his Roll, he would start to Tell, and then he would Choke Up, he was so full of Laugh. He certainly had a Sunny Disposition.

Finally he went to the State of Montana. He believe he would have a Season of Merriment by depositing some Valuable Ore in a Deserted Mine, and then selling the Mine to Eastern Speculators. While he was Salting the Mine, pausing once in a while to Control his Mirth, a few Natives came along, and were Interested. They were a slow and uncouth Lot, with an atrophied Sense of Humor, and the Prank did not Appeal to them. They asked the Joker to Explain, and before he could make it Clear to them or consult his Attorney they had him Suspended from a Derrick. He did not Hang straight enough to suit, so they brought a Keg of Nails and tied it to his Feet, and then stood off and Shot at the Buttons on the Back of his Coat.

Moral: Don't Carry a Joke too Far, and never Carry it into Montana.

Gone, No Forwarding

Having put THE BONE HARVEST up on Amazon, I added the following note. 

"You don't necessarily have any specific object in mind when you start a book, but I knew going in that THE BONE HARVEST would be about the nuts and bolts – the gear, the manpower, the physical resources – what it takes to mount an actual spy operation. My model was a now-abandoned listening post on the outskirts of Berlin, in Marienfelde, near the sentry wire where the East German guard posts once stood. There was a time when the world seemed divided into two armed camps, static and unyielding, written in stone, but these days that's become the fossil record."

I could go on, although this is fine, for the here and now. Or more to the point, the there and then.

None of this is my invention, or reinvention. The Cold War was real. And there were times when it just missed getting hot.

I'm not nostalgic for the climate of fear. I'm talking about revisiting a physical place in memory, because the place itself is physically lost. Gone, no forwarding.

We might see the footprints, but that's an act of imagination. The archeological evidence is thin on the ground.

Back in the day, the Army Security Agency and the USAF Security Service each had operational sites in Berlin. Teufelsberg, the ASA facility, began monitoring Soviet and Warsaw Pact communications in 1961, and the Air Force commissioned Marienfelde in 1967. Both listening stations, as it happens, were built on landfill, rubble from the ruins of Berlin. It gave them artificial height, the better to intercept signals.

I remember going out to Marienfelde at the beginning, when the move was just starting, the equipment being transferred from Tempelhof to the site. All the ELINT gear first, the Voice stuff last. It was spooky, tell you the truth, the perimeter fence lit up, and secure access, but the building almost empty. I was assigned to a ghost ship. Over the next couple of weeks, the whole business ramped up, and pretty soon we were 24/7. It's instructive to look back on the logistics, the heavy lifting, how it was purposed. I don't think we got a lot of outside help, I think it was all more or less in-house. Some of it must have been

flat-out improvisation. Then again, we had experienced Operations people on board. They'd set up in remote places, without immediate or close support, and even hostile environments. The best part, you really want to know, is how quickly and effectively we got it going. There must have been wasted motion. I mean, seriously – it's the military. But there wasn't any loss of coverage. The mission never went dark. We didn't even brake for the turn. That's the most amazing thing. That it came out right. Somebody should take a bow.

There's nothing left of it. T-berg's a ruin, Marienfelde's overgrown.

Berlin Brigade, along with the other occupation forces, the British, French, and Russian, were decommissioned twenty years ago, and they had a parade. All in marching order. History turns the page.

I guess the lesson is not so much things slipping out of our grasp, or whether memory is reliable or not, but what we might like to think we hold in trust. Maybe it didn't actually happen quite that way, and the facts were messier. That's usually the case. We clean things up. We allow as how there's a moral to the story. Or we settle old scores. It's always going to be something. You leave part of it out, or you adjust the seasoning, or you come up with a better punchline, twenty years too late. But this is one of those instances where I didn't have anything to lose. I wanted to make outfitting Camp Hector as accurate as I could, and I had the example of the installation at Marienfelde to keep me honest. Credit where credit is due.

(And some of it, yeah, I made up.)

DavidEdgerleyGates.com

Public-Speaking Tips for Authors

Every autumn the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime runs two programs we label Mystery Author Extravaganzas. Chapter authors who've had something new published that year can stand up and tell the audience about their new works, and a local bookseller (usually Mystery Loves Company from Oxford, Maryland) is on hand to sell the authors' works. The first Saturday of each November, we appear at a library in Columbia, Maryland. The first Saturday of each December, we appear at a library in Reston, Virginia. In our promotion, we remind people that this is a good time to do your holiday book shopping, and it's also a way to support local mystery authors and a local indie bookstore.
Our events are open to the public, and the libraries promote the heck out of them. We usually get fifty people at our Columbia event. At our event this past Saturday in Reston, more than ninety people showed up--standing room only--including the twenty authors who spoke. We started having these events annually when I was chapter president nearly ten years ago. And I've had the pleasure of organizing them nearly every year since. My experience has taught me a few things about how to succeed as a speaker, and I thought I'd share them here:

• Keep it snappy, i.e., don't feel the need to use all the time allotted to you. Short story writers have long known to get in and out of a story as fast as you can. Don't meander and go into unnecessary detail. This is good advice for public speaking, too. The authors who keep the

  

  A different kind of high point

  audience's attention best are the ones who don't describe all their characters and drill down into a lot of the plot. They hit the high points, the exciting stuff, the information you'd find on the back of a book, and they leave the audience wanting more. If you're a person prone to meandering, consider bringing a cheat sheet with you with bullet points so you can occasionally look down and see the high points you want to address. (More on bullet points below.)
• Consider if you have something particularly interesting to share--not just about your story, but perhaps an interesting research tidbit or what prompted you to write the story. A good tale can entice an audience. For instance, on Saturday, when speaking about my story "The Wrong Girl," I shared how my fifth-grade teacher tried to get me to stop speaking quickly, and how that humiliating experience finally became useful when I wrote this story about a girl who went through the same thing I did, but unlike me, my character doesn't plan to let her teacher get away with it. I heard from audience members who enjoyed learning the story behind the story.
• Don't write a speech and read it. I know public speaking can be scary, and writing down

  

  My story made the cover!

  what you want to say can help you feel more comfortable. But I've seen too many authors read their speeches with their heads down, barely making eye contact. Don't do that. You want to connect with the audience. So practice at home. Get a feel for what you want to say. And if you'd still feel more confident with notes, bring them, but have them address only the high points, so when you look down, you'll be reminded of what to talk about, and then you can look up and do it. For instance, if I were talking about my short story "A Year Without Santa Claus?" my bullet-point notes might say:
• Title and publication
• Main character
• What's her problem?
• What's her solution?
• If you're considering reading aloud from your book or story, practice first. And have someone you trust--someone not afraid to tell you the truth--listen to you read so they can tell you if you are a good reader or a bad one. If you read in an animated fashion, looking up regularly and making eye contact with the audience (see the prior bullet point), great. If you read in a monotone voice without looking up at all, then don't read. The last thing you want to do is put your potential readers to sleep.
• Briefly (for a few seconds) hold up a copy of your book as a focal point. But don't leave it
  
  propped up there while you talk. That's distracting, and it might block someone's view of your face. (This applies to panels at conventions, too.)
• If you're a funny person, don't be afraid to be funny while you're speaking. But if you're not funny, don't force it. There's nothing worse than someone bombing because he felt the need to come up with a joke. You're there to sell your books and yourself. Do it in the way best suited to your personality.
• Keep in mind how much time you have. If you think you'll fill your entire allotted time, practice at home so you can be ready to wrap up when the timer dings. You don't want to hear that ding and know you never got to talk about the third story you had published this year because you meandered talking about story number one.

And since I have your attention, I'll tell you briefly about my new stories from this year. There's "The Wrong Girl" mentioned above. It's in the anthology Flash and Bang, which is the first anthology featuring stories from the Short Mystery Fiction Society. It's available in trade paperback, large print, and e-book format from Untreed Reads Publishing. In "The Wrong Girl," a fifth-grader humiliated by her teacher plans revenge.

My second story is the aforementioned "A Year Without Santa Claus?" from the January/February 2015 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. In this story, my main character is the head of everything magical that happens in New Jersey. It's two weeks until Christmas, and Santa says he's skipping Jersey this year because a murderer is on the loose. So my main character sets out to find the murderer and save Christmas. Can she do it? You can find out by reading the story--it's available on my website: http://www.barbgoffman.com/A_Year_Without_Santa_.html

Do you have any public-speaking tips for authors? Feel free to share in the comments.

Christmas Spirit

Some days around this time of year I have zero spirit for Christmas. Husband passed away ten years ago. Grand kids are all grown up. it quickly feels like just another day. Last night I was watching some re-run on TV when my doorbell rang. It was about 8:20 or so, a little late for unexpected company. Even a bit late for a sales call.
I turned on my front porch light. I could see a well-dressed man holding the hand of a little boy.  The little boy was also well dressed including a rakish French cap. Probably wanting a donation for the holidays, I though,t as I cautiously opened the door.

The man smiled, he was holding a small paper sack. "We're from a local Church and we want to invite you to our presentation of  "A Christmas Carol." Next Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We're going around singing Christmas songs as we invite people.

I could hear a bit of noise out on the street, looked and saw a pick-up pulling a flat-bed truck behind. The flat-bed was decorated with Christmas lights and a lot of people were sitting in it. They started singing "Jingle Bells."

It was apparent these were mostly children and you could hear joy and laughter in their voices. The duo at my door handed me the paper bag and wished me a "Merry Christmas." I stood in my doorway as the truck drove slowly by. I waved and the carolers all waved back. I kept standing there until they were all the way past, all of us waving back and forth at each other.

Of course they were almost all the way past before I thought of taking a photo. I grabbed my phone, but they were too far away. I enlarged the screen hoping to still get something. It was too dark and the flash flashed twice and the picture was nothing except a bright white spot. Frustration, but I have a great mental photo which will last.

I closed the door and looked inside the paper sack they had given me. There were two pieces of peppermint candy and one piece of lemon drop candy and a Christmas tree ornament. The ornament was a clear ball with shiny red paper stars inside.

A little personal size advertisement card was also inside which told the times of the presentation of the "Christmas Carol" event they were inviting people to attend and that there was no admission charge. Another card attached to the sack had the name of the church.

I couldn't help having a smile on my face for the rest of the evening bcaue it brought back memories of caroling. Both going caroling and having carolers come by my house. Both had happened many years ago.

I posted a short note on Facebook and several people commented about nice memories that caroling had been for them. School children used to go caroling like this. We walked about our neighborhood. Everyone enjoyed the caroling. The people singing and the people listening.

It did give me a nice feeling of the spirit of the holidays and I wanted to share this with all of you.