Murderati

where grace lives

by Toni McGee Causey

[This piece was written during Hurricane Katrina. We had no electricity, but had a generator and, weirdly, DSL, but not a phone. I blogged--I have been online in one journal form or another since about 1998--and I wanted to try to capture the experience of going through a hurricane. My kids had been in elementary school when Hurricane Andrew came through and tore up the place, and I'd written nothing about it. I thought, and it's hard to believe this was my point of view then, that Katrina would be mostly wind, a lot of downed trees, and maybe a few days without electricity, but I wanted to record it.

Little did I realize that I was going to have a blog that ended up getting picked up by several national news sources because I was one of the few blogs getting the truth out there before the national media figured out what was going on.

I post this today as both an urge to awareness--what's going on in the Midwest with the flooding and in Northern California with the fires--but also as a thank you. I think, if you read the piece, you'll see what a difference you made in our lives. Because you did.]

WHERE GRACE LIVES

 

I passed a man at a shelter the other day. He was tall and lanky and sunburned, dressed in cut-offs and a soaked blue t-shirt with a grubby baseball cap shoved on top of muddy curls. There was something about his lean, sinewy body that made me think of the shrimpers I've seen down in Cocodrie southwest of New Orleans--it's a hard life and it makes for no-nonsense, self-sufficient men.

He was sitting in a metal folding chair, slumped forward, his elbows on his knees. The exhaustion in his shoulders made me ache. Between his feet was a medium sized box and he was staring down into it. The box held some basic necessities: toiletries, canned goods, a pair of socks, and a pair of underwear. I realized, then, that he was barefoot -- the grime around his ankles marked him as having abandoned his shoes somewhere along the way. His large feet were probably too big for any of the donated shoes stacked up at a one of the nearby tables.

When I looked back at that box, I wondered what he must be thinking. My first guess, without seeing his face, was that these few items weren’t much to give a man after he'd lost everything. This box wasn't much to hold onto for a man like that, a man who’d clearly worked hard for a living. Maybe he was angry at having lost his home, or frustrated that this was what he'd been reduced to. I had no words that would be of use, no words which could do any good, and I began to turn away when he suddenly looked up and caught my eye.

He had tears on his cheeks.

When I stood there, not sure what to say, he shrugged and said, "I can't believe how generous people are. I can't believe total strangers would go out of their way to help so much."

I mumbled something about it being the least we could do, as neighbors, and I moved off into the crowd, feeling wholly inadequate and humbled in the face of such grace.

It would be one among many things I could not wrap my mind around.

On Tuesday morning, just a few days earlier, we’d been without electricity since Hurricane Katrina had blown through in the early hours of Monday. While there were many trees down in Baton Rouge, the damage wasn't as horrific as it had been during hurricane Andrew, and we thought the worst was over.

It was only the beginning.

We managed to get our TV hooked to the generator and found one local station airing news and video from New Orleans. There was no way to know what images the national media were getting, but on Tuesday morning, I saw some of the first footage of one of the breaks in the levee system. Water was pouring into the Ninth Ward, and I felt all my senses hit hyper alert, felt my fingers tingle from the adrenaline, felt my lungs constrict.

          New Orleans was filling up.

At first, it appeared that no one nationally realized what was happening. After plugging the computer into the generator as well and discovering I still had DSL, I caught bits and pieces on national websites saying things like “New Orleans dodged the bullet."

There was a steady thrum of “no no no no no” in my head, an awful, gut-kick ache, a sense of the world gone topsy. With the water pouring in, the levees were going to keep deteriorating. The pressure from the flow of water was simply going to be too great. The pumps were already down in areas, and more were failing. Saying “New Orleans had dodged a bullet" was the clearest sign that the outside media didn’t grasp what was happening. It was a bit like telling a terminal cancer patient that they “only” had a broken arm (i.e., wind damage, some minor flooding); it doesn’t matter, the cancer’s going to kill them anyway before the arm can heal. New Orleans was already suffering from the worst kind of cancer – years of inadequate repairs to the levees (or no repairs at all), years of talking about a plan to evacuate, years of warnings that a plan was going to be needed, years of awareness that New Orleans was a bowl and if it filled up, it could be devastating. I remember being on the phone with a friend in L.A.  as fresh images of the ever increasing deluge from the levees hit the local news. The chill I felt, I cannot explain. I remember saying, “Ohmygod, we’re going to lose New Orleans."

And we did.

There are images which will crush me and haunt me forever. Moments seared into my heart. Entire neighborhoods underwater, many with just the topmost part of the roofs visible. People clinging to the peak of what had been their homes in desperation, some for days on end, with no water, no food, no help, and little hope. An elderly woman trying to talk her mentally handicapped son into climbing on board the basket being lowered by the Coast Guard Rescue Team, and him refusing unless she came, too. Only, there was no room but for one. He wouldn’t go, and she couldn’t leave him behind. There was the image of a mother trapped on a rooftop, handing over her small toddler to the Coast Guard, and the news helicopter showing her breaking down as the Coast Guard helicopter flew away; they’d only had room for one more, and she wanted her child saved. People stood on their roofs, waving to the helicopters, desperate to be rescued, only to see the helicopters leave since they were full. I remember the image of two men standing in shock on their own roof, watching a home near them burn, knowing the fire department could do nothing to stop it from spreading.

         There are images and moments which scarred us all, embedded deep somewhere in our souls, a slash that will not heal. The sights and sounds of people abandoned, dying, here on our soil. There’s the crystal image for me of the late night DJ for a New Orleans radio station breaking down as he reported on air on a Baton Rouge TV station how he’d been up all night, broadcasting in New Orleans. He told of how his station still had a signal locally, though no one could explain it when so many others had been knocked off the air, and how he realized that the police didn’t have any communication system at all. People were calling in to him, a few cell phones still working. They were begging for help because they were trapped in their homes, trapped in their attics. When he realized neither they nor he had a way to call the police, he’d broadcast the addresses and hope the police heard him so the trapped people would get help.

The DJ told of one call: a young woman, who was holding her infant. She had a two-year-old with her, and her elderly grandmother. They had not evacuated because they had no car to enable them to leave and no place to stay. They were standing chest deep in water, in her attic, and no way to break through the roof, no way to alert police where they were. Her cell phone died before the DJ could get her address to broadcast her location. He never knew if they were rescued.

         There were the talk-radio stories from the frustrated and grief-stricken men who’d responded to the call for boats, any boats, and they’d gone to the designated areas, fully prepared to take on the responsibility for any damage they received – they didn’t care, they just wanted to save lives. They weren’t allowed into the water for a full day due to a series of miscommunications between various government agencies. There were the harrowing stories of having to pass people up because their boats were already full, of the boat operators promising to go back, and then doing so, only for the person to have died or vanished. There were the voices in the dark, a night so deep where no light penetrated, where streetlights and businesses and every imaginable source was out and the voices cried from the rooftops, pleading for help.

         There are the now-infamous images of the way people were abandoned at the Superdome and the Convention Center; people forced to go days without food, water, basic human needs. People sick and dying. No help in sight. No organization, no FEMA, no Red Cross in many places. There were the images of the looting and the crime. People reduced to the base animal instincts, some for survival, some to prey on others.

         Nothing but dying and suffering in the Big Easy.

         The world changed, then. Shelters went up in every available space: churches, synagogues, and in the River Center, an entertainment complex in downtown Baton Rouge.  Other states took in many thousands, and yet, thousands more were here. Everything was different. Even places as old and forever as LSU.

        When you drive up Nicholson onto the southern end of the LSU campus, rising to your right is the enormous stadium (under even more expansion), with its parking lot a construction lay-down yard. To the left, Alex Box Stadium, with all of the national championships proclaimed proudly on the exterior walls.

If you looked a little past the stadium on the right, you'd see the Pete Maravich Center, or P-MAC for short. It's what many of us old LSU grads still refer to simply as the "Assembly" Center.

Its white dome and curved concrete ramps will always hold a special place in my heart -- it's where I officially became an LSU student, years ago. Back before there was computer registration, we all "walked through,” battling and jockeying in lines on the floor of the Center to claim a "punch card" for the class we wanted -- a slender 3 x 7 card with "chads" punched out, indicating the class for which we'd just enrolled. We'd take the cards and climb to the second level and walk around the mezzanine’s corridor, stopping at the various tables set up for each task required and then finally, on to pay our fee bill.

It was exciting to be a part of that crowd. It was fresh, it was hope, it was a beginning into all potential. It was a promise of something bigger to come.

After the hurricane, we drove onto campus and parked in the Alex Box parking lot, took the crosswalk and headed back toward the P-Mac. There was the white dome gleaming in spite of being overshadowed by the behemoth stadium. There was the newly renovated Mike-the-Tiger cage, a luxurious enclosure complete with rocks to climb, a waterfall, a very large pool and plenty of space to run and play. Next came the concrete ramps which had long ago made me feel like I had been racing up up up toward a future.

Then there was the fence.

A fence.

There had never been a hurricane fence preventing access to the ramps. Or military standing outside said fence. So around the P-MAC we went, getting to the LSU campus side, making a sharp left turn to walk up the street. There was a large white poster-board sign on the guard's gate in hastily written print which said, "Ambulances" and had an arrow.

The P-MAC was still on our left, and as I looked across the fence and beneath the mezzanine, there were tables set up. This time, though, it was not like before, when I registered there, when the tables were about hope and future and innocent dreams. These tables were about loss and devastation and pain. There were volunteers behind the tables and many evacuees in front, having just gotten in from New Orleans.

There was a table set up with laptops so the people could send a message. There were tables of clothes and shoes (which ran out just as soon as the volunteers could get some in), tables of water and food to eat right then, as well as canned goods and other supplies for the evacuees to take with them... for many of them hoped to bunk with family for the night, and that family probably didn’t even know they were coming.

As we continued around the P-MAC, I could tell we were reaching the serious part of this operation, where there were nurses and techs taking medical information, where higher priority (read: in grave danger) patients were taken in immediately to the triage center and where those in dire need but less life-threatening were interviewed by nurses and their stats recorded on brand new files. Nurses and doctors and all sorts of techs ebbed and flowed through this space. There were Guards with guns (wholly over-kill, but they were there). There were volunteers of all shape and sizes -- from LSU and Southern students to firemen to police to little grey-haired church ladies.

We signed in at the non-medical volunteer station and went in to see what their needs were. We were there to volunteer our home to medical staff. We'd heard the staff were working twenty-hour shifts and some of them had no place nearby to just crash and relax.

When you walked inside the entrance, you walked down a slight slope until you reached the wide, round base of the P-MAC. Purple seating had been pushed up against the walls. The last time I stood at floor level like that, I was seventeen, and I remember I stood for a moment in awe of the swarm of people, the organized chaos, the feeling of a small city set to work on one task. It was, in many ways, the same. But this time, that small city was made of dozens of white temporary screens to give the patients some privacy, and many rows of I.V. bags.

There was a M*A*S*H unit in my campus. A field unit triage on the floor of our basketball arena. There were helicopters beating overhead bringing in evacuees from New Orleans, and a row of ambulances, sirens blaring, on their way to the P-MAC.

There was a M*A*S*H unit. In  Louisiana.

In my university.

In the  USA.

It simply didn’t seem possible, that there would be this necessity. That we had so many people wounded in a major catastrophe, that we lost an entire city, that we were still finding and rescuing people, six days later – so many people that our hospitals and clinics were swamped, and a major triage unit was not only critical, but it barely handled the vast quantity of people flowing in.

So many unbelievable things were suddenly true. Families couldn’t find loved ones. People without their medicines, without any identification, tried to remember what they needed so the nurses could help them. A mom cried with gratitude because she found someone's cast-off clothes to fit her children. Others, tears streaming, were just grateful to have their own bar of soap, or a bottle of water.

In the USA.

          It was at the LSU Triage where I met the man without the shoes, the shrimper who was grateful for a small box of goods. He was sitting beneath the mezzanine, just next to the ramps where I’d walked, up up up into the hope of a better future all those years ago. I turned away, knowing his future was going to be difficult and painful, and maybe so much worse.

          Everything had changed.

          We lost New Orleans, and many many homes surrounding it. How can we understand that?

          The business of surviving, or more accurately, of trying to help a huge number of other people survive, took over for many of us who live here. We exchanged information about where there were needs, we gathered what we could, we brought it wherever we could. We met families all staying in one home, forty-five people in a thousand square foot house, sleeping in borrowed tents in the yard, wearing nothing but the clothes they’d escaped with. We heard so many stories of people who lost everything, who had no clue if there was going to be a New Orleans to go back to, if their job would still exist, if there would be a school for their children. In the midst of the pain, they would often get a faraway expression in their gaze, like they were looking off to some memory of New Orleans,  and then they’d look at one another and say, “But we got out. We’re all okay. At least we’re alive.”

          We lost New Orleans.

          My family and I walked into places where there were so many trees and utilities down on the ground, you couldn’t tell a street from a yard. Sign posts were missing, homes were destroyed, one after another. We stepped over power-lines, and visited homes of friends’ families, looking for survivors.

          The heartbreak kept me from sleeping, and I’m not entirely sure I ate anything remotely resembling a proper meal for days. It was grief, I know, so I did the only real thing I knew how to do: I wrote. I poured it into a blog, and many people would post notes about missing loved ones, and others were begging for any information at all about their neighborhoods. These notes chased me in my dreams, always just below the surface. The helplessness etched into every waking moment, acid into the pores, and rendered the grief unbelievably deep.

          We lost New Orleans.

A few days into the disaster, many more boxes showed up here with supplies. More and more people wrote to ask what we needed. More and more people were as outraged and frustrated as we were here, and they wanted to help. I know many donated to charities, but these boxes -- they kept showing up, filled to the brim with things people needed, with supplies damned near impossible to find in some of these areas. We got to bring them to the shelters and to the people who needed them, and the recipients treated me like a hero, but it was not me. It was you. It was every single one of you who sent a box or a prayer or letters of support.

I don't know how to explain the affect these supplies had. There was the immediate help, of course. So many things were needed by so many people.

Baton Rouge doubled in size from evacuees, and for those who could get to the stores, they were crowded and often stripped of goods. I saw clerks stocking shelves only to have items plucked out of their hands before they could even set them down. I had to go to four or five stores sometimes to find things that were needed. And while it was helpful and useful and much required, all of these supplies, it was more than that.

It was the message that we're not alone.

The rage I felt watching New Orleans drown is still palpable. I cannot understand the fact that we live in a country which can put men on the moon, which can help build an international space station, which can create phenomenal structures or explore the deepest oceans, but we could not get water to people trapped on an overpass for days. I cannot wrap my mind around why they were trapped in the first place, since there were trucks passing them by. FEMA trucks, which wouldn't stop. I don't understand that. I absolutely cannot fathom that these people were trapped because sheriff’s at the foot of that bridge prevented the people from crossing into their city of Gretna just because they didn’t want people from New Orleans in their city. And I can’t believe I live in a country which could show this on TV, for days in a row, and no one did anything about it.

         New Orleans was dying. People were dying. It was just one scene of so many, and it made no sense. People died on that overpass, when help just drove right by them.

I cannot understand how media crews could show the devastating events down at the Convention Center and the Superdome, and FEMA or our Federal Government not "know" the people were there. How do we live in a country which can drop aid to everyone else in the world, and no one could drop water and food to the people trapped there? How can we handle going into war-torn areas and get aid to people there, but a few thugs prevented us from helping Americans? How?

How is it that more than two weeks later when we were still going to shelters bringing in supplies, I received reports from the outlying areas that FEMA still hadn't shown up?

Still. Hadn't. Shown. Up.

I don't understand these things. I know I live in America.

Well, last time I checked, Louisiana was still in America.

New Orleans was still a major American city. Maybe something happened somewhere that someone forgot to mention to us, but yeah, pretty sure we're still in America.

          And the magnitude of the inept response (including local government) was staggering. It was like watching someone I love get gutted and lie there bleeding and knowing that help was standing a few feet away, talking about golf scores.

          So when I say to you that you've made a difference, I don't mean it lightly or in any sort of frivolous way. When it suddenly became clear that we were the ugly, unwanted step-child of the government, or worse, the beaten, neglected child of the local officials who were hastily trying to cover up their long-term abuse with loud excuses, you made us feel human again. So many of you -- giving, calling, writing, trying. Feeling the outrage on our behalf. Knowing it belonged to you, because you were us, we were a part of this country, and you cared.

We lost New Orleans.

We needed you, and you were there, and the outpouring of that grace and hope helped to get us through the worst of the days when we were watching in horror as our own people died, as our friends and family were left, as people were treated worse than we'd ever ever treat an animal.

You made a difference. A big difference. And we thank you.

 

 

~*~

This essay first appeared online, over several weeks. I was asked (almost at the time of online appearance) to contribute to a little book I have become very proud of: Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans. Publishers Bruce Rutledge and his brother, New Orleans Professor David Rutledge did a fine job capturing the city over a span of time, even the dark, gritty corners of it.

Have you ever been through a natural (if the breaking of the levees could be called 'natural') disaster? How prepared are you?

 

 

Binge reading

by Alex

I’m at that indescribably delicious time – just having turned in a novel AND a novella and not having gotten revision notes yet – in which theoretically I could read anything I wanted right now. Anything. Not for research, not for plot problems, not to make sure that my new project hasn’t been co-opted by a recent bestseller (although maybe that’s more of a screenwriting paranoia than a real author concern).

No, I can read anything I want to right now. In fact I better start reading something pretty soon or all those “shoulds” are going to start whispering at me. “You really should do your taxes while you can, or you’ll be scrambling in September.” “You really should update your mailing list before the anthology comes out.” “You really should organize your office so you can at least walk in the damn door.” You know – the “shoulds”.

Or what might happen – as did yesterday, a national holiday, I might point out – is that Michael will get caught up in something, which in this case delayed our river outing for a couple of hours, and I could have been reading and instead that OCD voice started whispering and I ended up writing four pages on the new book before he came home and dragged me out.

Not that that’s a BAD thing – but I’m one of those people who doesn’t relax well so enforced relaxation is important for continued mental health (recklessly assuming that health has anything at all to do with my mental state).

And it’s not like – heh – I don’t have enough books around the house to choose from. In fact, just having come from ALA, I have a brand new stack of ARCs, and there’s that TBR shelf of my friends’ books which in the last two years has morphed past “shelf” through “bookcase” into “bookcases” and on into “room”. I overheard Michael talking on the phone to the architect of our new old house that he’s renovating, and he said, “Look, basically, would you just put a bookcase anywhere there’s space?”

(So when you hear people joking about building a house for their books – IT’S NOT A JOKE).

But I’m having a hard time settling on a book. Now, I admit I often read a dozen books at a time – which is maybe why I can’t relate to the authors who say they can’t read books in their genre while they’re writing because they’ll start picking up on someone else’s style. Not a concern when you’re reading a dozen styles in an hour. But while I have this (relatively) guilt-free time that I could be reading, I’d really like to just sink into a book, one book, and lose myself in that way… you know, that way that made us all become authors to begin with.

I guess you could call them guilty-pleasure reads. Or comfort reads. Or binge-reads. Or maybe that’s the entire definition of “beach read”.

I think for me a binge-read is something that has nothing whatsoever to do with what I write (even though, of course, great writing is always an inspiration for writing). In the past (and I have to admit, still) it’s been Ayn Rand – THE FOUNTAINHEAD followed by ATLAS SHRUGGED and WE THE LIVING (if I’m really on a binge). Sometimes I’ll sit down and reread the entire LITTLE HOUSE series, or Jane Austen. I’ve had more binges than I can count on a YA series from the 50’s by Leonora Mattingly Weber – the Beany Malone series, and going to Denver for Left Coast Crime made me want to reread that all over again. It’s been a while, but I used to binge on Louisa May Alcott, and maybe that’s just what I need right now – in fact, I could throw in that biography that I’ve been hearing so much about as well. Madeleine L’Engle – at least once a year. Anne Rice’s THE WITCHING HOUR (maybe because I don’t think I’ve ever read the whole thing – so I keep finding interesting new things about it.). It might be time again for a Bronte binge.

Now, those are binge reads I’ve had for years and years and years. More recently, Ann Patchett and Lionel Shriver and Barbara Kingsolver have been satisfying binges for me.

But you know who really, really does it for me when I need a binge? Anne Rivers Siddons. Not in my genre at all, except for her classic ghost story THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR, but I discovered that one after I’d worked my way through nearly all of her beach read Southern women’s fiction (which is I think what she writes, but it’s so out of my own genre I don’t even know what to call it.). Siddons writes about the South from the 1920’s to the present, sometimes in family epics, sometimes in women’s lit (wife finding her husband in bed with a younger woman, and consequently finding herself), sometimes in historical stories about the vast social changes of the 1960’s. No matter what she’s writing about she had a certain languid – maybe I should say Southern – eroticism, and a keen sense of history and social and emotional dynamics and she’s a smashingly good writer – you just lose yourself in whatever she writes. I’m particularly hankering after a book called COLONY, in which the Charleston heroine marries a Boston banker and becomes the unwelcome fish-out-of-water in a colony of Boston Brahmins on the Maine coast. When I write that synopsis I just want to laugh because it is SO not my kind of thing on the surface, but somehow Siddons’ writing just hits all my pleasure centers.

(I don't think I'll even get into the fact that I'm now the fish-out-of-water living with a Southern man from a summer beach colony and with a whopping family saga of his own...)

So even though in this precious down time I’d love to find a book that I haven’t read before that would completely take me away from all this, I think I might just mosey over to my Siddons shelf today.

But I’m also up for suggestions for something new to take me away. What are YOUR binge reads?

Happy holiday to everyone…

Independence Day

by J.T. Ellison

For the two hundred and thirty-second time, we celebrate our independence today. Independence from tyranny, from oppression, from religious persecution. We celebrate our rights to free speech, revel in the joys of living in a nation that encourages diversity of thought, faith and action. We are the United States of America, and we are mighty because of our tolerance.

So can we get real for a second?

I had two events this week that left me infuriated, frustrated, and ultimately pumped full of righteous indignation. Once I was done seeing red, the strong feelings trickled down into actual courage. Please forgive my rant, but as a writer, it would be disingenuous not to talk about it.

I read a spectacular book this week called THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE, by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi. Many of you recall the situation two years ago, when Spezi was arrested in Italy and Doug launched a campaign in the press to get him released. The book details not just the botched investigation into the sixteen murders in the hills surrounding Florence, but goes into detail about how close Doug came to being imprisoned along with Spezi. Doug was taken into custody, interrogated and indicted (under Italian law the term is indagato, which means you have been formally named as an official suspect of the crime.) He was damn lucky to get out of the situation without being thrown in prison, and he was forced to leave Italy.

His writing partner, Mario Spezi, wasn't so lucky. Spezi was the lead journalist who covered the Monster of Florence for twenty years for La Nazione, an Italian newspaper. When the official investigation got mired in ridiculousness, he did what any good journalist does -- he questioned the heads of the investigation and their single-minded pursuit of anything but the real truth. What happened next was the most specious display of judicial malfeasance I've ever seen. He was charged with the murders, accused of being Il Mostro. For a journalist and a thriller writer to be indicted and jailed because they question the actions of the government is beyond frightening.

I won't ruin the book for you by revealing more, but I highly, highly recommend this incredible story. The Monster of Florence has been on my radar for quite some time, and I was fascinated by the behind the scenes story Doug presents in this book.

The second incident that upset me this week was finding out another fellow thriller writer, Brad Thor, has received death threats from the Muslim community because of his new book, THE LAST PATRIOT. It smacks of the fatwa placed on the head of Sir Salman Rushdie by the Ayatolla Khomeini in 1988. Brad has been on television this week talking about the book and the measures he's had to go to to protect himself and his family. It's absolutely unreal to think that you could write a book and people would want to kill you.

Forgive my strong language, but this is utter bullshit. As Brad so eloquently put it, there are no laws that cover being offended. These are fiction writers, thriller writers, being threatened because they MADE UP A STORY. We've moved well past censorship, my friends. This is called fascism. And it has no place in our modern society.

So today, this beautiful, fine day where we Americans celebrate our independence from fascism and tyranny, I urge you to buy both of these books and send a statement to the very people who think that they are within their rights to call for the death of a writer. To imprison journalists. To infringe on our very freedom because of their fears. No more. We need to stand up as a community and shout these people down.

Buy Doug Preston's THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE here.

Buy Brad Thor's THE LAST PATRIOT here.

God Bless America.

Wine of the Week: An American wine with an Italian name: 2005 Francis Ford Coppola Rosso

Don't Stop Me Now

By Brett Battles

I heard somewhere that it takes 10 years and writing 4 novels on average before someone becomes published. Don’t know if this is true at all…in fact, not even sure it’s something that can be accurately measured. Because in there you’d need to consider those who’ve written for years, have produced a dozen novels or more, and yet are still not published.

But for argument sake, let’s pretend it’s true. In a way, it’s almost right on for me. That is if we consider the 10 years to mean 10 years of solidly working at developing your writing career. My 10 years was split up over 17 or so. But the novels are right on. While my first published novel, THE CLEANER, was the third book I had written, I actually finished a fourth before THE CLEANER was sold. So there…for me 10 years, 4 novels. According to the 10/4 rule, I’m the average.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what the total is for the years and novels. It could be 5 years and 2 novels, or 12 and 5, or even 9 and 6. The point isn’t the numbers themselves, it’s what they represent. And what they represent is the desire and the dedication to the craft of writing. What it means is that if you want it – want to be published – you can’t give up. Persistence.

So if you believe in this rule does that mean you’ll get published? No. But you’re chances are much better than if you give up after you finish your first manuscript. The thing is – and there are exceptions, of course – that first novel is your tester novel. It’s the one that proves you can actually do it. Looking back on my first manuscript, I cringe at the stilted dialogue, the forced scenes, and the stitched together plot. At the time I thought it was pretty damn good. Good enough even to send out to agents. Thankfully no one bit. That novel now sits buried in the storage area under my parents’ house, never to be retrieved again. In fact, if I do find it, I just might burn it. (It sucks. Take my word for it.)

But it also served its purpose. It was my training novel, the start of my personal college degree in writing. And looking back, that’s exactly what I needed it to be.

Even the best baseball players don’t start playing in the major leagues without ever having played a game before. The analogy can be carried to almost any profession. Those that are good, worked at it. Even those with a natural talent need experience and practice.

Take acting for example. George Clooney, one of today’s top actors and a pretty good one by my account (see BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? Or GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK or SYRIANA for starters), didn’t come out of the gate in Oscar nomination form. According to imdb.com his first role was as an uncredited village extra in the 1978 TV mini-series CENTENNIAL. He followed that up with some other television work including stints on FACTS OF LIFE, HUNTER, MURDER SHE WROTE, and GOLDEN GIRLS. Sure he was working, but he was also not yet at the top of his form. And I can guarantee you that when he wasn’t doing these bit parts, he was probably taking classes, doing scenes with other actors, and maybe even appearing in some small theater plays to build experience. He worked at his craft. He worked like we all have to if we want to achieve success we desire.

So what does that mean for the aspiring novelist? If you don’t sell your first, write your second. If you don’t sell your second, write your third. If you don’t sell your third, or your fourth, or your fifth, you keep writing, and you keep writing.

Each step of the way you should be examining what you did before, and then working to improve on that. Did you have a tendency to over describe? Or under describe? Have you killed all your darlings? Meaning have you gotten rid of all those cute phrase that you loved, but are ultimately getting in the way of your prose? Is your dialogue believable? Or does it sound tinny, and unnatural? And while we’re on dialogue…are you using your dialogue to tell your reader things that would be better shown? Do you have scenes that you like, but are unnecessary to the plot of your story? I could go on and on.

The point is write, and write again, and write again, each time using the opportunity to improve. Don’t get dejected when a book doesn’t sell…sure, give yourself a day or two to be bummed, but then move on. That book becomes training and experience, and you should do everything in your power to make your next manuscript better because of it. (And once you get published…this shouldn’t end. Each book should build upon the last.)

Hope this all made sense…I’m not trying to preach. It’s just this is the method I used to finally reach my goal, and to keep myself focused on the way.

Remember, we’re all going to be different. Some will take longer and some shorter. And, let’s be honest, some will may never get there. The best advice I can give is to write a good book. And – sorry if I’m repeating a theme here – write another, and another, and never giving up.

So tell me what you think of the 10/4 rule. And those of you who are published what did it take you? And those of you who aren’t yet, where are you at in relations to this? And remember, there’s no bad answer. We each take our own road.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today's Song: DON'T STOP ME NOW • Queen • Off of JAZZ from 1978

For Crying Out Loud

by Robert Gregory Browne

I'm going to admit something here that few men are willing to cop to.  At least publicly.

I cry sometimes.

Yes, I know.  You look at that handsome, macho photo of me on the left of your screen -- the one that says, he's all man (come on, keep looking, you'll find it), and you'll have a hard time believing that that particular hunk of granite ever cried a day in his life. 

But it's true.  I cry sometimes.

In fact, not only do I cry -- I outright blubber. 

If you happened to be anywhere near me in the theater as I watched The Joy Luck Club or Awakenings or Sophie's Choice, you undoubtedly had to dig through your (or your wife's) handbag and pull out an umbrella.  I'm talking deep, wracking sobs.  The kind you try so hard to keep in because you're embarrassing the hell out of yourself.  But you can't.  Because the movie is just so damn sad.

A woman writer friend once said to me, "Rob, what I've noticed about your books is that they're chock full of emotion.  A lot of thrillers written by men are more about events than feelings."

I think it was a compliment.  At least, I certainly hope it was.  And her words stuck with me because, to my mind, the best books, the best stories, the best movies, the best songs -- are all about feelings.  Love.  Fear.  Sadness.  Joy.  And the more we know about how a character is feeling, the more we can identify with that character.  The more we become invested in his or her story.

There's no better way to get to know the people around us than to find out what makes them laugh or cry or gets them angry or sends them dancing in the streets or forces them to scream in terror.  These moments usually hit without warning -- an unrehearsed reaction triggered by the unexpected -- and when we experience them, we are revealing our naked, unvarnished selves to the world.

The ability -- or inability -- to turn on the water works at the appropriate (or inappropriate) time, tells us a lot about our friends and family.  And the same goes for the characters we create. 

And because emotion is so universally understood, crossing all cultural and religious boundaries, utilizing it in our stories is a good way to draw readers in.  To make them care about and believe in our creations.

So when he's caught in a firefight, I'm less concerned about what type of gun my hero is shooting than I am about what he's feeling when he shoots it.  About the adrenaline pumping through him, about his concern for the woman or child or friend that he's protecting or trying to save.  And if he's faced with a devastating loss, I confess that I feel that loss as much as he does -- and will often find myself crying at the keyboard as I write the scene.

Yes, it's true.  And I'm sure I'm not the only writer in this crazy crowd who experiences this.

So you readers and writers out there, tell me what makes you cry.  What song, what movie, what book brings on tears so strong you find yourself sobbing.  We all have at least one.

I have several.  And I'm not ashamed to admit it.

----------------
HOUSE CLEANING:

A couple of weeks back I played a video created by Tess and me for Thrillefest Arizona.  A couple of you had guesses to the solution of the mystery and one of you actually got it right.  Here's the entire video now, from start to finish, with the solution intact.

The winner, who will know who he is, can email me at rob at robertgregorybrowne.com, or simply click on my name above, hit "email me" on my website and fill in the blanks.

Here it is:

I wouldn't want to be married to me

Tess Gerritsen

Let us sing in praise of the author’s spouse.

Mine has certainly had a rough time of it lately while I struggled to meet my deadline. For the past few months I didn’t take a single day off. Several times a night, I’d awaken sweating and sick with dread, certain that my manuscript was doomed and my talent was spent. I holed up sixteen hours a day in my office, emerging only for dinner, and then I’d make only half-hearted attempts at conversation because my mind was still on my characters. I turned down concerts, party invitations, sailing trips, and walks in the woods, forcing my spouse to do everything solo. The book was sucking the life out of me. Exhausted by sleepless nights, I made slow progress on the book. And slow progress on the book gave me sleepless nights. 

But last week, everything changed. I finally turned in the manuscript and my editor loved it.

For the first time in months, I’m sleeping all night. Suddenly I’m hot to party, to shop, to dine out, to travel. It’s as if a mood switch has been flipped. Or I’ve just swallowed a handful of the world's best uppers. I’m a whole new glorious me.

My husband takes it in stride.

A writer’s year is punctuated by these wild manic-depressive mood swings. I know my own pattern so well that, a year ahead of time, I can mark out on the calendar when I’ll be my happy self, and when I’ll begin the annual and perfectly predictable descent into insanity. I’ve learned not to schedule anything at all during the three months prior to a deadline. I’ve learned that the best part of the year is right after my manuscript has been accepted, but before the first (sometimes painful) reviews start dribbling in. 

Which adds up to maybe three or four really good months out of the year. 

But once the reviews come in, once the book goes on sale and the promotional cycle begins, life around the Gerritsen household starts to get tense again.

And once again, my husband takes it in stride.

He and I have gone through this cycle so many times that he knows what to expect. But it doesn’t make it any easier to take. Recently, we had dinner with another writer and her non-writing spouse, and her husband admitted that in their household, too, things get really hairy around deadline time. These stresses affect every writer, and every writer’s spouse.

Yet so many writers I know have solid, enduring marriages. That surprises me, because I can’t imagine we writers are easy to live with. Maybe we just chose our spouses well. Maybe we got lucky. 

Or maybe we’re just incredibly exciting, sexy, creative beings...

For four months out of the year.

Why Comedy is Important

by Jeffrey Cohen

My thanks to all at Murderati for allowing me to visit my blogging alma mater, as I moved out and took up residence at Hey, There's A Dead Guy In The Living Room about a year and a half ago. But I still check in here, and I'm still awed by all that happens in this space. It's very special.

By now, you might be sick and tired of hearing about George Carlin, who died suddenly last week and was subsequently eulogized by everyone except members of the FCC, who were probably annoyed that everyone started remembering The Seven Words You Can't Say On Television again.

You might be so tired of Carlin at this point that you're glad he's dead. Well, too bad for you.

Add my voice to those who thought George Carlin was brilliant and brave. Well, until he got so angry the past few years that he came out and told the audience that it would be better if we all died and let the planet regenerate itself. He might have been right, but I'm not willing to test the theory.

Carlin's death was a shock to those of us who follow comedy seriously. He was 71 years old, not exactly ancient but not at an age where he'll be classified as "Gone too soon" in ads featuring T-shirts with pictures of Elvis, Marilyn, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and others who didn't wait for Death to come along and find them, but helped the process along a good deal. His was merely a matter of bad health; Carlin had already suffered more than one heart attack, dating back decades.

But it's relevant to note that like another great comedian, Groucho Marx, Carlin thought of himself more as a writer than a performer. He adored words, played with them, found the hypocrisies in the way we use them, and pointed them out. Carlin wrote three books (the third is scheduled for publication).

His riffs on the concept of "jumbo shrimp" and "military intelligence" just skimmed the surface. In his later years, he could go on long, perfectly precise tears that explored every aspect of a word or added words to thoughts where they'd never belonged before. And as in all forms of genius, he made you think that his idea was a perfectly sensible one that you'd never considered before.

Why is comedy important? Because it is the escape hatch, the steam valve of life. We are attracted to great comedy because it includes not only the obvious, but also the truthful that we never considered before. When Groucho Marx turns to his brother in Horse Feathers and admonishes him that "you can't burn the candle at both ends." Harpo merely reaches into that voluminous trench coat of his and pulls out a candle burning at both ends. And we say to ourselves, "You know, I guess you can, after all."

People make the mistake of thinking that because comedy is performed quickly and casually, that it is effortless. It's anything but. I appreciated it when Publishers Weekly used the word ("effortless") in a review of my last book, SOME LIKE IT HOT-BUTTERED (the new one, IT HAPPENED ONE KNIFE, comes out tomorrow), because that meant I'd done my job right, and the jokes seemed like they flowed naturally. They didn't -- in some cases, I was pacing the floor in my office for hours trying to come up with the right comeback for Elliot Freed to use the second after someone insulted him.

I began worshipping comedy at a very young age, probably starting with Bugs Bunny (before I got all the jokes, and thought these were serious fims about a man trying to shoot a rabbit) and Rocky and Bullwinkle (see previous comment, but substitute "moose and squirrel" for "rabbit.") But I quickly graduated to Bill Cosby, Get Smart (the beginning of a lifelong affection for Mel Brooks), then Woody Allen, the Marx Brothers (especially the Marx Brothers!), W.C. Fields, Larry Gelbart, Dick Van Dyke (which led to Carl Reiner), Robert Klein, David Brenner, John Belushi, Dan Ayckroyd, and . . . well, suffice it to say I could go on.

It gets us through the tough times. The problem is that now, there's no George Carlin to get us through the death of George Carlin. But there is Jon Stewart, and there is Craig Ferguson, and Lewis Black, and Stephen Wright, and Tina Fey and many, many others.

In my own writing, I'm going for the laugh first. I'll admit that. I feel like I write comedies that have a mystery in them, and not the other way around. If you send me an email that says, "You know, the plot really doesn't hold water, but I laughed all the way through." I'm a happy man. Comedy is essential to our collective sanity, and that commodity appears to be in short supply htese days.

Respect those who provide it.

Rest in peace, George. Or better, rest cranky. Your work here is far from done, but it was advanced enormously because of your tireless work. We will miss you a good deal more than you'll miss us.

Jeffrey Cohen is the author of IT HAPPENED ONE KNIFE: A DOUBLE FEATURE MYSTERY, which you might have heard will be published tomorrow. He is also the author of the Aaron Tucker series, unproduced screenplays, newspaper and magazine articles, nonfiction books about raising a child with autism-spectrum disorder, and a grocery list that is attracting a good deal of attention in Hollywood. 

(Thanks, Jeff, for visiting today. We're glad to have you.
Pari)

I stand as witness

by Toni McGee Causey

Sometimes, there are moments that redefine a life.

And sometimes those moments are when someone else is the star of the show, when you're in the audience, third row, fourth seat from the left.

I stand as witness.

I stand as witness for a sixteen-year-old boy I never met. He changed our lives.

I understand he had an easy smile, dark mop of hair, about-to-grow-into his looks. That gangly stage of boyhood, steaming, bubbling, nearly ready to change the world.

I never saw it.

He was inclusive. Whether by nature or taught at home, it's unclear, but he was the rare kind of kid who would look at someone new at school, and say, "Come on, join us."  He was, from what I heard, warm and friendly. Flawed, sure. Normal. He liked sports and computers and had a new girlfriend.

I never knew him.

There were rounds of meetings in L.A., producers who'd read my latest script. I was on top of the world, in one sense, this was my "show" and yet, I was wondering how to make this work, how to pull up my family and move them a couple of thousand miles away from their home. I remember the evening as clearly as yesterday: I was in a friend's home--he'd had a party so I could see everyone at one time. He'd cooked three kinds of soup and I was astounded at how very good they all were, that he really ought to be a chef somewhere.

His bungalow was not far from Paramount's entrance, and I saw the Hollywood sign on my way there and the night felt light and innocent and full of hope. Laughter erupted every few seconds at the gathering, people mingled, and I had just heard the voices of long-known friends come through the front door when my cell phone rang.

It was my son.

"Mom. Ryan was killed tonight."

I stand as witness.

In the previous months, my son had gone from alone-at-a-new-school to having a circle of friends, and Ryan had been the ringleader. Our lives went from being unsure and wary and tense to being happy because of the actions of this kid. He changed everything.

I never heard him laugh. I had been traveling and had deadlines and teenage boys are not exactly wont to hang out with mom.

I'd heard about him, though. Nearly every day. He brought a light into our home with my son's tales of their latest antics.

I stood in the line to greet his parents at the funeral. They managed to have a grace I could not have mustered, had a drunk driver killed my son.

All of the kids in his class would go on to graduate and some have families. My son now has a daughter. His life changed twice--once when he met Ryan, and again when he lost him.

Because of Ryan, he had made friends, some who will last a lifetime.

I realized that night I did not want to be 2000 miles away if there were ever another call. I did not want to uproot our lives, because there are some things that matter so much more than the latest round of meetings. There are some things we have to do, and some things we choose to do, and for me, while writing was the dream, I realized I already held the other: my family.

My life changed. I decided to pursue fiction and wrote something funny, because I needed something in the face of tragedy, and it's comedy I turned to. I realized that if my life were cut short the next day, I'd have at least been working on something I loved, something I wanted to do, to please my own instincts instead of doing whatever misguided thing I thought I was "supposed" to do as a writer.

At sixteen, Ryan may not have had a chance to change the world, but he changed my part of it.

He was here. He mattered. He affected so many.

The power of one word, one welcoming gesture, can ripple out, affecting those around them for the rest of their lives. In fiction, the power of one act of cruelty or bravery can drive a story. Zoë's post Thursday reminded me of this. I try to remember that the minor characters are witness to the events around them. Writing isn't just about the protagonist and hero--we're all protagonists and heroes in our own stories. Writing is capturing the ripple, from the point of impact.

At Ryan's funeral, six years ago, I was sitting third row, fourth seat from the left.

But I stand as witness.

-toni

How about you? What do you stand as witness?

Time for a Quickie?

by Alex

I must begin this blog by saying – and I’d never thought I’d say this – that Michael now officially has the patience of a saint. I wasn’t supposed to do ANYTHING even vaguely writing-related for at least two weeks after I turned in THE POLTERGEIST EFFECT, but as so often happens, stuff happened, and suddenly I had to jump right into an novella for an anthology…

Insanity.

But if I can make it so that the timing on the next one isn't so crazy, this might just be a good pattern I’m discovering for myself: finish a novel, TAKE A BREAK, then do a quickie short before jumping into the next novel.

Because once I got past that “I never want to write again” feeling, I had a great time writing this thing, just as I had a great time writing “The Edge of Seventeen”, the short story I did last year right after finishing THE PRICE, for THE DARKER MASK anthology that comes out from Tor next month (and which our own Naomi Hirahara and I will be promoting at the American Library Association conference this weekend).

Now, I seem to be coming at this short story thing backwards – I never wrote one until I’d turned in my second novel. The thing is I’m not much into short stories, really – I don’t read many of them, and am not a particularly “short” writer in general. I mean, by the time you have enough story for a short story, you might as well write a screenplay, as far as I’m concerned. Since so far the only way I seem to be able to do shorts is if someone is threatening my life, I don’t think I’ll be doing too many of them.
'
But (always with the caveat that I keep all the rights to do a full-length novel/script/graphic novel/play/short film based on the story) – I’ve found these two shorts I’ve done very creatively refreshing.

For one thing I have found myself writing about Southern California in a way I have rarely done in scripts – and never so far in a novel, not even in the next four projected books. I don’t know why that is, since I’ve spent almost my entire life in California and you’d think that I’d find it kind of natural to write about.
But so far, no, only in these shorts – I guess because in both cases I’ve had to do them so fast that I needed to be able to throw down images without any research or any conscious thought whatsoever.

This novella (it’s called “D-Girl on Doomsday” and it’s about Hollywood and the Apocalypse) was particularly fun because I got to be just blistering about the whole experience of working in Hollywood – so much delicious hostility there to tap into, and it gave this piece a nice bite. I’m not sure I could maintain that level of savagery for 400 pages, but for 80 pages? It’s not only doable but amazingly cathartic. And you get that ecstatic “FINISHED!!!!” feeling so much faster… I can see the appeal of that, for sure.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to crank out the shorts, but once a year? Yeah, I like the feel of that. So I think I’ll be scheduling a short story a year into the ideal calendar that is finally taking shape in my head. That is, going into the second half of my second year as a professional author I am seeing how all of this new author chaos and madness eventually starts to sort itself into a manageable and maybe even enjoyable routine.

By the time you turn in the third book you’ve kind of figured out how much time it really takes you to write a book from scratch while juggling the marketing side of the job (plus, as we’ve been discussing here these last two weeks, you finally realize that you CAN pull off pretty much any book you start). With that information in mind, you can decide how many books a year or every two years that adds up to without, you know, incurring a divorce.

You figure out the conferences you absolutely have to go to, and you start getting good money for workshops, which become your other must-dos, and you start planning your other signings and events around those and – this is important – you start saying “no” to the impractical requests. You add in the particular promotional things that have worked best for you (for me, doing the bookstore drive-bys in the cities where I do other events).

And I think scheduling in a short story after each book might be just the thing to add depth to the growing body of work.

So what’s your relationship with short stories? Do you read them? Write them? Do you find yourself writing things in a short story that you wouldn’t do in a novel?

And if you’re at ALA in Anaheim this weekend, please stop by the Sisters in Crime Booth, staffed by the awesome SinC Library Liaison Mary Boone and Patron Saint of Mystery Authors Doris Ann Norris (the 2000 year old librarian).

The booth is number 290, & easy to find, right by the Internet Room, and here’s the author signing schedule:

Saturday, June 28:
9 – 11, Hannah Dennison
11 –1. Sue Ann Jaffarian and Denise Hamilton
1 –3, Jeff Sherratt and Aileen Baron
and
3 –5, Darrel James

Sunday, June 29:
9 –11, Melissa Garcia
10 - noon, Linda O Johnston
11-1, GB Poole
noon –2, Cara Black
1 – 3, Liz Jasper
and
3 –5, Alexandra Sokoloff

Monday, June 30:
9 - 11, Pat Ricks
11 – 1, Sheila Lowe and Debbie Mitsch
1 – 3, Elizabeth Zelvin
and
2:30 – 4:30, Naomi Hirahara

Tuesday, July 1:
8 – 10, open (Mary Boone and Doris Ann Norris)
9 – 11:30, Bonnie Cardone

I'm Dropping A Body In Your Lake...

by J.T. Ellison

There's just nothing like being a mystery writer. We see things in a completely different perspective. Our rose-colored glasses are tinted with shadows. The nightly news is a source of grist for the mill. An argument between strangers takes on a sinister cast. Dusty's post on Wednesday illustrated just how devious our minds can be when it comes to twisting straightforward events into pretzels of mystery.

I forget that others don't see the attraction.

I had a somewhat humorous (for me) and horrifying (for her) situation this week. Let me state, for the record, that I am sometimes a bit excited when I find I need to do a spot of research. I love research. Research is a blast. It can be scary, upsetting, or just plain interesting, but regardless, I tend to plunge into it wholeheartedly. And when I get excited, I talk fast, and sometimes don't give as much information as I need to. In MY head, it's all perfectly logical and my motives are pure. On the other end... well, suffice it to say, sometimes people aren't as thrilled by my ideas as I am.

I was writing a scene that concerns a lake in my area, and I needed to know if they had security cameras. So I looked up the number and called. A very nice woman answered, I told her I'm a local mystery author, went through my spiel, and told her what I needed. She paused a bit, then said I should probably talk to the head guy. Fine, no worries. Then she took my info and referred back to the questions. "Why do you need to know about security?" (Cue stupid move on my part...) I answered, rather gleefully, "Oh, well, unfortunately, I'm dropping a body in your lake!"

The moment that ensued gave new meaning to dead silence. Then she said, "Literally?"

I started laughing. She didn't. She didn't find it all that funny. And I realized that not everyone is as excited about mischief and mayhem as I am.

Research involves many facets, from Internet combing to old-fashioned library work to physical, get dirty, experience it first-hand kind of research. I prefer the hands on, am always willing to take that ride along or make that phone call. First-hand is the best way to go.

But there's always a chance that you might mislead someone about your intentions, albeit on accident. I know people who've done research on bomb-making materials, on terrorism, on all kinds of things that might make the powers that be sit up and take notice. There are some kinds of research questions no one can afford to take lightly. Especially in this post-9/11 world, when we need to be careful just who we give out security information to.

At every conference, panel and signing event, I'm asked how I do my research. What I mentioned above is pretty much my MO -- I have a question, I check the Internet, get as much information as possible, then contact the appropriate person and ask if I have it right. A solid ninety percent of the time, they are more than happy to talk to me, to give me what I need. I've found that especially in law enforcement, they WANT you to get it right. I've always been of the mind that the more fiction "fictionalizes" law enforcement, the less the real world understands what they sacrifice every day to keep us safe. I try to avoid that if at all possible.

Every once in a while, I get turned down. My local medical examiner's office can't talk to laypeople anymore -- they were sued after an unfortunate event during the filming of a television reality series. That creates a serious issue for me, since one of my main secondary characters is the Medical Examiner for the state of Tennessee. Happily, (or unhappily) forensic pathology is a relatively standard field. So now I have a brilliant, wonderful doctor in the Manhattan Medical Examiner's Office who has truly made all the difference in my work.

I needed to know about forensic odontology (identifying people through the unique characteristics in their teeth through dental x-rays) for my first book, and a local dentist, Michael Tabor, is the forensic odontologist for the state of Tennessee. Dr. Tabor is esteemed in his field, was actually called in during 9/11 to help. Dr. Tabor sat down with me over lunch and answered a million questions, then invited me to meet with him and the forensic anthropologist attached to our M.E.'s office to do an examination of a skull found in a local field. It was a fascinating evening, and I learned so much. My homicide detective was in on that one too.

Note I said MY homicide detective. He's mine. No one else can have him. : ) Seriously, Detective David Achord of Metro Nashville homicide is the only reason Taylor has any credibility as a cop, period. From ten codes to guns to homicide investigation to the bingo lingo, David has been there from the beginning. I couldn't be more grateful. (All mistakes are mine!)

I needed to talk to the FBI about this newest book, and they graciously granted me an interview with the Unit Chief of the Behavioral Analysis Unit. He's Baldwin, and he's amazing. Now, I didn't just call the FBI and say hey, I need to speak to your head profiler. I went through the proper channels, submitted a written request to their Public Relations Department. And it took a good four months to get the appropriate clearances and get everyone's schedules aligned. So think about your source before you start contacting them. It can take a while to get to the right person.

Other writers are a great resource -- Lee Lofland writes an exceptional blog (and congrats on that Macavity nom, Lee). Robin Burcell used to be a cop, Jim Born still is. Christine Kling is a sailor, and thank goodness for her! I also use a site called PoliceOne, which really gets in-depth about everything from ammunition to negotiations with gang leaders. (And thanks to everyone above...)

I just looked at my bookmark folder for the research on this new book. There's everything from the Peerage of England to MI-5 and Scotland Yard to federal prisons to twins studies to the Vatican to the history of Renaissance art to selecting a handgun to the Globe and Laurel to fishing line to the carabinieri to the music from 'Jaws' to eye movement when lying to paper manufacturers to DNA fingerprinting to Taschen Books to Medline to Picasso and Millais. I've used all of it.

It's crazy, actually, how many little itty bitty details go into writing a book. I might read forty articles to assimilate one detail. Every item listed above (and this is only a representative sample, the folder for EDGE OF BLACK alone has hundreds of entries) has been printed, gleaned and categorized into the major areas I need for the research on this book. My research portfolio is overstuffed.

The trick is for me to synthesize all of the random information into a cohesive narrative. And sometimes, that isn't so easy.

But what is easy is thanking everyone who physically helps with my research. You'll see my acknowledgment pages run on and on and on....

So have you ever freaked someone out with your questions? What's your favorite resource for research? And readers, do you like more or less details with your stories?

Wine of the Week: 2004 Juan Gill Jumilla Red

P.S. I did an interview for the latest issue of NVF Magazine, alongside some exceptionally cool writers, including 'Rati alum Simon Wood. Stop by and take a look!