A Look Behind the Names

Well, only a little bit is by me today.  Instead, it's my pleasure to welcome friend, colleague, and fellow Canuck Judy Penz Sheluk to these pages.  Judy hits on a topic particularly dear to my heart. I'll tell you why after her post.

— Melodie

A Look Behind the Names

by Judy Penz Sheluk

If you follow me on social media, you'll know I'm the owner of  Golden Retriever named Gibbs (after Leroy Jethro Gibbs of the long-running TV show NCIS). Gibbs, who will turn seven on October 15, is a good dog who lives up to the stubborn streak of his namesake and the Semper Fi (always faithful) motto of the marine corp.

Now, you might be asking what any of this has to do with Before There Were Skeletons, the latest book in my Marketville Mystery series, and I'm getting to that. You see, I've long been a supporter of Golden Rescue, a wonderful Canadian non-profit that connects Golden Retrievers of all ages in need of a home with folks hoping to adopt one. And like so many charitable organizations during the height of Covid, Golden Rescue's primary annual picnic and auction fundraiser was cancelled.

Enter Wanetta Doucette-Goodman, a tireless behind-the-scenes worker who organized more than one Facebook silent auction to raise those much-needed funds.  When I saw the one in the Fall of 2020, I thought, I could donate a book copy or two, maybe even a "name the character" in my next book."

I floated the idea of a "name the character" by Wanetta and she loved it.  In fact, she loved the idea so much that she became the winning bidder.  But Wanetta is the giving sort.  She didn't ask for a character to be named after her, but rather, her daughter-in-law, Kathleen "Kate" Goodman, nee Lindsay.  She also sent me photos of Kate, and told me she had two older sisters, Kelly and Kristine.

I could have stuck to the original bargain - a character named kate Goodman--but what fun would that be? Besides, it's not as easy to come up with character names as you might think.  And so, Before There Were Skeletons has several nods to Wanetta's winning bid:

Kathleen “Kate” Goodman: a twenty-eight-year-old woman who hires Callie to find her mother, who disappeared on Valentine’s Day 1995, following her shift at a local bar in Miakoda Falls. Veronica Celeste Goodman was 18 at the time, and by all reports, a devoted single mom who’d just signed a one-year lease.

 Lindsay Doucette: Veronica’s older sister and Kate’s aunt. Lindsay raised Kate after Veronica disappeared, and, having been duped in the past, is not entirely on board with Callie’s investigation.

  Wanetta Georgina Bulmer: Last seen in Miakoda Falls on January 17, 1995, Wanetta was twenty years old and new to town.

 Kelly Anne Acquolina: Last seen in Miakoda Falls on January 31, 1995, Kelly Anne was twenty at the time.

Kristine Paris: An important character with a secret past.

Of course, Callie’s first instinct upon reading the missing persons profiles of Veronica, Wanetta and Kelly Anne is that they are linked, though the police have never formerly reported that connection. Is she right? Ahh… you’ll have to read the book to find out. But at least now you know what’s behind the names.

Melodie here again: After I read this post, I talked to Judy and we both got a kick out of the fact that I had done something similar — that is, five years ago, donated a character name to a charity auction.

The charity was the Burlington Humane Society, and the winner was a pug called Wolfgang!  (Yes, his good buddy/owner may have put him forward.)  If you look on the cover of Crime Club, you will see Wolfgang in all his glory.  He plays an important part in the investigation as well.

 

 

Check out Judy's latest mystery!

About Before There Were Skeletons

The last time anyone saw Veronica Goodman was the night of February 14, 1995, the only clue to her disappearance a silver heart-shaped pendant, found in the parking lot behind the bar where she worked. Twenty-seven years later, Veronica’s daughter, Kate, just a year old when her mother vanished, hires Past & Present Investigations to find out what happened that fateful night. 

Calamity (Callie) Barnstable is drawn to the case, the similarities to her own mother’s disappearance on Valentine’s Day 1986 hauntingly familiar. A disappearance she thought she’d come to terms with. Until Veronica’s case, and five high school yearbooks, take her back in time…a time before there were skeletons. 

·       Universal Book Link: https://books2read.com/u/mqXVze

·      About the Author:

A former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk is the bestselling author of two mystery series: The Glass Dolphin Mysteries and the Marketville Mysteries. Her short crime fiction appears in several collections, including the Superior Shores Anthologies, which she also edited

Judy is a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and Crime Writers of Canada, where she served as Chair on the Board of Directors. She lives in Northern Ontario on the shores of Lake Superior. Find her at judypenzsheluk.com.

The Marvelously Inventive Mr. Hicks

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the books of a children’s book author named Clifford B. Hicks. Among other books, he wrote a series of books about a kid named Alvin Fernald, who was sort of the MacGyver of the kid world. With a toothpick, a piece of string, and leftover jelly sandwich, Alvin could build a contraption to save the world.

Each book was constructed around a central mystery that took place in Alvin’s small town in the American midwest. Alvin tackled issues that seem grown-up in retrospect, but Hicks somehow managed to make them seem “safe” and accessible to kids: corruption in city hall, kidnapping and extortion, stolen industrial plans, and water pollution. Always, in the end, Alvin managed to save the day with the help of his pal Shoie, his kid sister Daphne (aka the Pest), and an arsenal of kooky inventions.

These books enchanted me. More than anything, they seemed to radiate a gentler, more affectionate tone than many of the other books I was reading at the time. The Alvin stories were longer and more sustained than the Encyclopedia Brown mysteries.

Alvin’s world of the ‘60s and ‘70s seemed more modern and realistic than the world of the Hardy Boys. Unlike the Hardy and Nancy Drew books, the Alvin series was written by a single, real-life author, not a committee of ghostwriters. Hicks seemed to care deeply about the little town of Riverton, Indiana, he’d created, and even cared about the quite serious issues he was writing about. The Wonderful World of Disney, the old Sunday night TV series, adapted one of the books and brought Alvin to a wider audience.

These were the first books I ever asked a local bookstore to special-order for me. After locating the first book in the series, The Marvelous Inventions of Alvin Fernald (1960), I set about creating my own inventions just the way Alvin did, using items from my carefully assembled “inventing box.” You’ll be relieved to know that nothing I created ever made it to the U.S. Patent Office. There’s a reason I’m a writer and not an engineer.

Once, in the mid-1970s, I wrote to the author in care of his publisher. “Can you send me the plans for a Sure-Shot Paper Slinger?” I inquired. I told him that my brothers and I had a newspaper route, just like Alvin, and that we would love to be able to shoot rolled-up newspapers from the rear of our bicycles onto a customer’s lawn.

“You’re crazy,” my father said when he heard about my note. “If you can shoot something, you might kill somebody!”

Yes, Dad, with a rolled-up newspaper.

To my delight, Hicks wrote back from his home outside Chicago:

“Gosh, Joe, I’m sorry I can’t tell you how to build one… When I was a kid, my friends and I made up almost all the other inventions, but I just dreamed up the Paper Slinger without ever building one. If Alvin is clever enough to build it, I’ll bet you are too, Joe! Let me know when you make it work. CBH”

I know it sounds like a carefully crafted brush-off, but I was over-the-moon-amazed to receive a response from Hicks. It was the first time I’d ever gotten a letter from an author. I have carefully preserved it all these years.

Years later, when I myself was working as an editor at Scholastic, I tried to locate fresh copies of the books and was surprised to find that they were out of print. That bowled me over. If kids were flipping over Harry Potter, why wouldn’t a publisher like my own employer reissue books that followed in a similar vein, about plucky kids with unusual talents who saved the day?

A little digging revealed that the Alvin series ended abruptly in the mid-eighties with the publication of Alvin Fernald, Master of a Thousand Disguises. Sales of used books proliferated on the Internet, with diehard fans rhapsodizing in reviews about how much they enjoyed them. Clearly, I was not alone in my affection. Here are some of the tributes I located online:

“I am 45 years old... my 44-year old-brother came over and talked about how this book changed his life. He read it as a kid and became an inventor of sorts himself... a perpetual tinkerer.”

“The Alvin books were my favorites as a kid. I checked them out from the library repeatedly and devoured them. As a 10 year old, I wanted to hang out with Alvin and Shoie. The books are full of laughs, adventure, and great storytelling. They take us back to small-town America, before kids had to deal with grownup problems. If you have a kid, buy this book for him. Buy it used, buy it on eBay, buy it at a used bookstore!”

“When I was about 11 years old, I read many of Alvin’s adventure stories. This book in particular inspired my imagination. I have vivid memories of trying to copy Alvin’s inventions! One summer while staying at my grandparents’ camp, I rigged a security device similar to the one in the book so that no one could enter my bedroom. I have been looking for this book for a very long time, as I seem to have lost my copy. It thrills me that these books are listed [online]. This book is without a doubt my favourite and I would love to share it with my daughter.”

Some years later, I read that two small publishers were beginning to bring out the old books. I found a website put up by the author’s son and discovered that Clifford Hicks, a former science journalist turned author, was not only alive and well—now in his late eighties—but living not far from where I’d had briefly lived in the mountains of North Carolina!

I wrote a second fan letter—thirty years after the first one. I told Hicks that I’d lived for a short time in his neck of the woods, but had moved away, and was now thinking of moving back. A few weeks later I received an email in my inbox. The voice was the same as I remembered from childhood: warm, avuncular, friendly.

Hi, Joe:

What a lift your letter gave me! I’m delighted, and proud, that you liked my Alvin books so much that you were inspired to become Alvin Fernald. 

When I was about 12 years old I became enamored of the Tarzan books, and quite definitely made up my mind to run away from home, go to Africa, and learn to swing from the trees. My three sons have known of this dream for years, and a few days ago one of them gave me a copy of Tarzan of the Apes that he located on the Internet. With some regret I turned the last page of that book this afternoon, just before writing this note to you. The book was just as exciting as it was the first time I read it. A magnificent story—but badly written!

...

In any case it’s incredible that you kept my letter all these years, dragged it to college with you, and still have it.

…

In a way, I’m flattered that you went into journalism, Joe. You can’t keep me hanging like this... Here we are, our paths crossing at least twice in our lives, yet separated by only 20 miles.

…

Come back to Hendersonville, Joe, so we can actually meet…I’ll never answer another reader’s letter without thinking of you!

I finally did move back. Hicks and I exchanged a few emails but kept postponing our meeting. He was ill for a little while, then entered rehab. He phoned one day to apologize for not being able to meet. And then, before I knew it, he passed away in September of 2010. I was deeply saddened to hear of his passing. He was 90 years old.

Clifford B. Hicks

I see that you can still link to his old website via the Wayback Machine. I bought a couple of the newly reissued books for one of my nephews, who loved them. The Alvin books marked a turning point in my life as a reader. They were among the last kids’ books I read before making the switch to predominantly books written for adults. In a sense they were the literary dividing line between the adult and the kid world. Hicks’s stories whetted my appetite for mysteries in general. And you could say that when I was through reading his books, I was well prepared for the larger world of adult mystery fiction.

But, as it turned out, I was not through with Alvin Fernald. The year before he left us, Hicks published a brand-new Alvin Fernald book, entitled Alvin Fernald’s Incredible Buried Treasure. That title rounded out the Fernald books to a perfect 10. I thought of it as a parting gift from the magical Mr. Hicks.

* * * 

Note: Frankly, the books are still a challenge to find. Amazon and other retailers carry four or five of the new reissues, but you need to dig for used copies to read the others.

Bibliography

Wired magazine: The Geekly Reader: Danny Dunn and Alvin Fernald

Mystery Scene: The Magnificent Brain of Alvin Fernald, Clifford B. Hicks' Charming Kid Crime-Solver

An Era Ends…

I sent this a couple of weeks ago to everyone I work for/with at the pen, and also some friends, so I thought I would update my SleuthSayers family as well:

"Dear Friends,

"This is a difficult letter to write. Due to my increasing arthritis* and the physical therapy that requires, as well as Allan’s multiple health issues, I’ve decided that I can no longer perform my volunteer activities at the penitentiary. My last date with the Lifers’ Group will be Saturday, November 5th.

"Barring a miracle of recovery, I will no longer be doing AVP. Nor can I continue with the Lifers’ Group. Both of these have been fantastic, nurturing, vital experiences for me for 12 years, and I will miss them. I will continue to be on the AVP Board and, given better health come warm weather, would be interested in helping to expand AVP into the community."

*I'm having a major flare-up in my neck which is, of course, influencing the rest of my spine. Damn it.  But let's hear it for acupuncture, cortisone shots, physical therapy, and massage!

What I didn't mention in the email is that there have been a host of significant changes to what volunteers can and can't do at the prison, and more are coming. We can no longer visit inmates at an inmate's workplace, to either drop something off, or tell him something important. No more. Not allowed. It used to be fairly normal to stop by the cell hall, especially if an inmate had been sick or returned from hospital, and visit with them. No more. Not allowed. Not even for pastors. And that's just the surface.

Basically, all volunteers are questioning what the changes in policies and rules – which are by no means complete - will mean to their ability to actually do what they're volunteering to do. Or if they'll be able to come in at all.

So, now what?

Well, I had to retire from teaching 12 years ago because of a major arthritis flare-up. It was my first, truly hideous and painful, and I was in fear that I would be incapacitated for life. Since then, I've learned the hard way that physical therapy really does work if you actually do the exercises, along with patience, hope, perseverance, and a significant amount of pain-killers. (Still waiting on that medical marijuana that's legal in this state to actually get out to the masses…) So, with this new major arthritis flare-up, I'm getting on with my physical therapy and trying out all sorts of new ways to do things from sleep position to typing these words. I'm good at grim determination once I've been convinced that whatever I'm grimly determined about has a chance of working.

I've also learned, give yourself time to mourn. When something you loved with all your heart is gone, you're going to miss it. I missed teaching, and the students. Never missed the administration - especially the bean counters - for one minute. I already know it will be the same with the pen. I'll miss the inmates very much.

I've also learned to not go looking for the next project, job, whatever. Every time I've ever done that - and I did it a lot back in 2009-2010 - it didn't work. The real deal will find you, as long as you stay open to what comes. That's how I ended up at the pen in the first place. Allan and I were doing Quaker meditation once a week, and one of the leaders asked me if I'd like to do an Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) in prison one weekend. So I said "Sure," not having any idea that it would lead to 12 years of volunteering in prison.

The main thing is to always remember that what you're doing today may not be what you will be doing or be able to do tomorrow. The mind changes (hopefully), the body certainly changes, and God knows life changes. (Heads up, everyone who back in 2019 had a world-wide pandemic on their next year's probability card! Yeah, me neither.) 

Meanwhile, we could all do worse than loll like a seal for a while: 

Shamelessly stolen from Heather Cox Richardson's blogpost © 2022

And then get writing. I've got a lot of stories to tell. 

Also, BSP:

Happy to say my story, "The Closing of the Lodge" is in this issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine! Along with fellow SleuthSayers, Janice Law, O'Neil De Noux, Leigh Lundin,  and Mark Thielman, whose stories are in it, too. Can't wait to get my copy and read them all!

Stepping Up to the Plate

 You might say our adventure begins with A.C. Gunter visiting San Francisco in the summer of 1888.  You have probably never heard of Gunter, which would surprise the people of his time for he was one of America's most successful novelists.  Today he has only one, very tangential, claim to literary fame.

On June 8 he picked up a copy of the San Francisco Examiner and read a poem.  He enjoyed it so much that he tore it  out and took it with him when he returned to New York.  There, he handed it to his friend John A. McCaull, a theatrical producer.  McCaull was impressed enough that he gave the poem to his chief comedian, DeWolf Hopper, and told him to memorize it and recite it that night in the middle of a play which, interestingly enough, had nothing to do with the subject of the poem.  Theatre was more casual in those days.

Hopper did so and thus began a new career.  For the next forty years he recited that poem countless times on stage, on records, and even in new-fangled talkie cinema.  In old age he commented dryly that when summoned out of his grave at the resurrection he would probably, automatically, announce "The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day."

As you have probably figured out the poem Gunter rescued from obscurity was "Casey at the Bat."  It was published anonymously but the author was Ernest L. Thayer, a recent Harvard graduate, who had taken a job at the Examiner.  (Inevitably, other people claimed to have written it, but there is no reasonable doubt.)  Thayer, like Gunter, left no other memorable work behind.  But his little masterpiece shows no sign of fading away.

I learned all this in an entertaining little book by John Evangelist Walsh called The Night Casey Was Born.  Because of the way my brain works, reading the book made me wonder: Can I get a crime story out of this?

And I did.  The October issue of Mystery Magazine features "Murder in Mudville," in which that town's unfortunate chief of police is trying to solve the murder (by baseball bat) of the very pitcher who struck out the hometown hero.  

It was great fun to write.  

But here's the thing that haunts me: Think about Gunter stumbling on that poem.  How many little masterpieces are rotting away, undiscovered, in old papers and magazines?

 

I'm in the mood for stories that open with the weather

Elmore Leonard had ten famous rules for writing. The first one: "Never open a book with the weather." I've long agreed with this advice, with an exception: If the weather is pertinent to what's happening at the start--if it's part of the plot--use it. Still, even with that caveat, the times you'll need to use the weather at the start of a book or story are probably few.

If you're sitting there thinking, Barb, you've written about using the weather in stories, even starting with the weather, before. Come up with something new. Yeah, yeah. The column you're thinking about ran in 2016. I just reread it, and I think my advice is solid. You can read that post here: https://www.sleuthsayers.org/2016/06/warning-theres-storm-coming.html.

Today, I'm going to come at this topic from a different angle. I belong to a Facebook group whose members post each Monday the first lines of books and stories they read the prior week. The intent is to showcase good or great first lines. Sometimes people share more than the first sentence of a story. Sometimes they share the first paragraph. (I've been guilty of this myself.) I enjoy reading more than a sentence because the additional words can help me to get a much better feel for the work at hand. And reading first lines and first paragraphs that don't grab me is also helpful. It helps me understand what works and what doesn't and why.

Here's where the weather comes in. To my surprise, the openings that catch my attention the most each week, the ones that make me eager to read a book or story, use the weather. I find this is especially true if I have the opportunity to read a first paragraph rather than just a first sentence. Those extra words can enable an author to truly set the scene--or more to the point, to set the mood. Mood, more than anything, is what pulls me into a story, and few things can truly set mood better than the weather.

Raymond Chandler famously made this point about weather and mood in the opening to his story "Red Wind":

"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge."

Maybe you'd want to read Chandler's story because of his exquisite way with words. Maybe he could have been talking about dog grooming and still draw you in. But he was talking about the weather--in this case, the wind--and how it affects people. And that's the point: the weather can affect people. Characters are people, but so are readers.

Here's another great example from Julia Spencer-Fleming, from her first book, In the Bleak Midwinter. (I also think this is one of the best first sentences ever.):

"It was one hell of a night to throw away a baby. The cold pinched at Russ Van Alstyne's nose and made him jam his hands deep into his coat pockets, grateful that the Washington County hospital had a police parking spot just a few years from the ER doors."

Spencer-Fleming is another author who knows how to lure the reader in. Is it a coincidence that she used the weather to do it in her first book, which won a string of awards? I don't think so.

So, maybe Leonard's advice about openings and weather deserves a second caveat: 

Never open a book with the weather--except (1) if the weather is pertinent to the plot in that opening scene or (2) if you want to use the weather to set the mood. If either exception applies, shine that opening until it glistens like a desert highway on a brutal summer day and you're praying the sea of melted tar you're approaching is but a mirage.

A Room of One's Own

City desk

Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One’s Own, declared that, “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” We all know that this is an ideal. That’s why writers’ retreats exist. We’ve all heard and told anecdotes about successes and failures keeping the family at bay while we write.

The ultimate room of one’s own belonged to Woolf’s friend and sometime lover, novelist and poet Vita Sackville-West, who with her husband, author and diplomat Harold Nicholson (oh, that Bloomsbury Group!), created the most beautiful gardens in England at their home — a castle, what else? — at Sissinghurst in Kent. Nestled among flowers in Sissinghurst Gardens is not a room of Vita’s own, but a whole house.

South Cottage is a fairytale cottage and a dream house for a writer. And yes, Virginia, you would need lots of money to own such a perfect refuge. I first saw Sissinghurst in 1969. I was visiting friends who lived right down the road in a 16th century half-timbered farmhouse, memorable for the roses climbing all over the outside and the low oak beams within, on which visitors invariably bumped their heads when passing from room to room. But that cottage and that garden — the cottage garden, as the English term a small garden stuffed with flowers in a riot of colors, embracing South Cottage, not the whole breathtaking expanse of Sissinghurst Castle Gardens — became my vision of the perfect garden and the perfect writer’s room of her own.

Country desk

I am a lucky woman and a lucky writer. My writing, unlike Shakespeare’s, won’t be remembered four hundred years after my death, but neither will I die unsung and, more important, unheard, and “buried at some cross-roads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and Castle,” the fate Virginia Woolf envisions for her imaginary Judith, Shakespeare’s equally gifted sister.

In the city, I have a workspace that is mine in an apartment that’s all mine when my husband is at his full time job. When he’s home, he hangs out in other rooms. He may pass through, occasionally addressing a remark to me. His remarks range from what happened in Ukraine that day to what Maria Theresa said to Frederick the Great to “Do we need milk?” He also frequently talks to himself. Even more annoying, he breathes. But I have only to bark, “Writing!” and he moves on. It’s not ideal, but Jane Austen wrote under far worse conditions.

In the country, where I have a very small house, I have a modest version of my ideal. I spend the summer there on my own.

Yes, my husband has to work. But the real key to my precious solitude is that he hates the country. Sirens are music to his ears, but the chirping of birds is the howling of the hounds of hell to him. And the beach! Yes, he inspired the character in Death Will Extend Your Vacation who turns as red as a lobster in about the same time it takes the lobster. So all summer I have my little house to myself. And my cottage garden, a riot of flowers, sits on the deck in pots right outside the door. It’s heaven.

Vita's

Do I write better when I’m uninterrupted 24/7, or as we used to say, around the clock? Absolutely. My train of thought was never interrupted, not even by a breath.

If my characters started talking in my head or a line of narrative bubbled up as I lay in bed, I got up and went to the keyboard, whether it was time to get up or two in the morning. I wrote and wrote until what Jo March (and presumably Louisa May Alcott) called “the vortex” passed. I wrote four short stories in a little more than four weeks, including revisions, and they were good.

Mine

Yes, Virginia, a room of my own is writer’s paradise. To write surrounded by flowers is lagniappe.

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