I LIED ON NANOWRIMO

Wendall-- every other Thursday

I cannot tell a lie. Actually, it turns out, I can.

 

I first attempted National Novel Writing Month—i.e. NaNoWriMo—years and years ago for three reasons. One, I heard a piece about it on NPR, two I had wanted to try to write a novel for thirty years and hadn’t had the nerve to do it, and three, my husband was going to be in England for the first two weeks of November.

 

Also, I always loved the logo...

 

Even though the idea of writing 50,000 words in a month, or even 10,000 words in a month, seemed absolutely impossible to someone who second-guessed themselves as much as I did, I decided to try.

 

And I astounded myself by actually writing more than the required 1667 words a day for the first few days. There was something about entering my word count and watching what it did to the graph they provided that was inspiring and invigorating. I wanted to get ahead of the curve. So the words piled up, I made progress. Actual progress. On a novel.

 

First title page of my first NaNoWriMo draft

 

It only happened because I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t revise. I couldn’t change my mind. And I definitely couldn’t delete anything—that would cost words. I could only go forward. I’d been a screenwriter for twenty years and I’d never done that before. It was a revelation. I kept thinking, if I can just write another hundred words, if I can just write another two hundred words, I’ll be ahead for tomorrow. It involved, of course, plenty of coffee, working in restaurants, and more than a little wine. But it worked. 

 

Sometimes the coffee worked. Sometimes the wine.

 

So, by the time my husband came home I’d already surpassed my 50,000 words, and by the end of that 30 days, I had 300 pages of my first novel, Lost Luggage. Back in those days, you actually had to submit your novel on the NaNoWriMo site, so that meant, for copyright protection, you had to “scramble” it to verify the word count. It looked like this:

 

Lost Luggage, scrambled.

 

Lost Luggage, published.

 

Granted, it was a hot mess, and it would take another year and a half to get it even close to something other people could see, but it existed. And I was hooked. It had been the thing I needed to, for once, get through a first draft without getting in my own way.

 

I have done the November challenge every year since, as well as an occasional “Camp NaNoWriMo” in April or July. I’ve used it to do first drafts of all my novels, as well as their rewrites. 

 

The beginnings of Cheap Trills.

 

To date, I’ve earned nine “completion” certificates, bought a variety of coffee vessels, gotten half price on Scrivener, and lots of other perks of “winning.”

 

The very first coffee cup I bought on my very first try.

A newer incarnation

As the years have gone by, of course, it’s transformed itself into something that’s much bigger—and hipper—than it was when my first time. I remember mentioning it at a Sisters in Crime LA meeting when I first started and no one had any idea what I was talking about. Now, almost every mystery writer I know participates. The National Chapter of Sisters in Crime does daily “write-ins,” writers post their word counts on Twitter, and it feels almost uncool not to participate.

 

See what I mean???

 

So, this year, I signed up, registered my book, and took a deep breath, waiting for the November 1 start date.

 

Since Cheap Trills came out on October 30th, I was still in the midst of writing guest blog posts and trying to create very amateur graphics, so the first few days were a struggle. 

 

 

Marketing was never my strong suit.

Still, I managed to do the daily words. Barely. Then, the fourth day, I fell behind—only 500 words. And the next day, I got nothing done at all. And the next day, nothing again. And the next day, 200 words. The equivalent of nothing.

 

Suddenly, the graph was no longer my friend. How was I ever going to catch up, especially since I seemed to have no energy for writing? At all. My status page just sat there shaming me. The guilt! The embarrassment! After so many years of succeeding at the 50,000 word challenge, the idea of failing was devastating. How could this happen? How could I live with myself? Plus, all my “buddies” could see my word count. Did I just look like a lazy jerk?

 

On the sixth day, in a moment of weakness, I just added to my word count with words that didn’t exist. That I hadn’t written. For the graph. For my what I mistakenly thought was my self-respect. Flat-out lied. On NaNoWriMo.

 

The graphic illustration of an epic fail.

For the love of God!

 

The irony was not lost on me. It was horrible. I took the words off the next day, but the fact that I did it at all made me take a real look at myself, at my writing, and at what the hell I thought I was doing, anyway.

 

First, who was it I was writing for? Who cared about my word count? Anyone? Did anyone even care that I was writing a novel at all? I had always seen myself as a non-competitive person, so where had this ludicrous ego come from all of a sudden? Had it morphed with my crippling sense of responsibility, to rationalize such bad behavior? Was I horrified at myself, or just not willing to deal with the fact that, this year, I wasn’t up to it.

 

 

In the end, I realized the only person I needed to write for was myself. I was the only one I'd let down. Which meant I was the only person who could let me off the hook. So, in the end, I did. The new book is still burbling in my subconscious, where, right now, it belongs. And that’s okay. Novel writing is a long game. And it’s not all about the word count.

 

I still love you, NaNoWriMo, I just think we need some time apart.

 

---Wendall

 

You can hear Wendall talk about writing, movies, music, songbirds, and all things Cheap Trills on Baron R. Birtcher's THE WRITERS BAR here:

https://youtu.be/S32L679n08k

 

 

 

 

 

 

Women in Mystery

 Annamaria on Monday

This discussion is inspired by an unpublished essay by my dear departed friend, Dr. Barbara Fass Leavy.  A little background: When she was a newly minted PhD on a tenure track at Queens University in NYC in the 1970s, her department head was concerned about a sharp decline in the number of students signing up for lit electives - bad for the size of the department's budget.  He announced they would offer a course on crime fiction and that Barbara would teach it.  She refused.  "'I am a scholar' I told him," she reported to me shortly after we met, decades later.  "I am not going to treat that trash as if it were literature."  As you can imagine, she lost that argument.

Once she delved into the genre, reading the best novels she could find, she completely reversed that thinking.  She even published on the subject, most notably a critical assessment of the works of Ruth Rendell.

 

By her definition, mystery novels were "works of literature in which a crime is committed and an investigation ensues."  I told her that by her description "Hamlet" and Crime and Punishment are crime fiction."

"Exactly," she said.

One of Barbara's interests was the position of women in society, and that topic often intersected with her interest in mysteries.  After--far far too soon--we lost Barbara, I was privileged to receive some of her unpublished papers. One of them begins:

"Women have always been important in the world of the mystery novel. Nancy Drew, girl detective, is celebrating her 60th anniversary and has been the subject of an entire conference at the University of Iowa."

This tells me that Barbara's essay dates back to 1990. It goes on, "...recently, the female private eye has commanded increasing attention, and woman's role in the police procedural genre was highlighted in a TV series on Public Broadcasting. Whether this feminist strain has produced something, genuinely "female," or whether a hard boiled female private eye is anything more then the flip side of a hard boiled male one is a matter of debate."

At that very same time that Barbara was analyzing the contribution of women to the genre and how they were portrayed in the stories, women crime writers were fed up with being treated as second class citizens.  They founded the organization Sisters in Crime.  Here is what their website says about their founding and progress.

"In 1986, twenty-six women crime writers, frustrated with the obstacles they faced in publishing, met at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in Baltimore to plot a path toward being treated as the equals of male writers. They gathered again in May 1987 during the Edgar Awards Week in New York to formally establish the organization, Sisters in Crime (SinC). The group formed a steering committee and held the first membership meeting at Bouchercon in 1987, establishing a tradition that continues."

Data from the Edgar award website supports their contention.  In 1986, of the sixty-nine authors nominated for Edgars, only eleven were women, four of them in the Juvenile category.  One of those four nominees was the only woman to win an Edgar that year.  (By the way, Barbara's favorite subject - Ruth Rendell was nominated twice for Best Novel, but neither of her books won the prize.)

The data from this year's Edgar awards show that women are doing better nowadays, especially when it comes to nominations.  Twenty eight of the fifty-one nominees were women, and they won in five of the eleven categories.

These statistics seem to show real progress.  What do you think?

A Journey with Anne Perry

 SUJATA MASSEY

I’ve been thinking about the mystery author Anne Perry, who recently died in Los Angeles at age eighty-four from declining health. Anne wrote roughly 102 books and many short stories and essays over her forty-five-year career. The Times of London named her as one of their 100 Masters of Crime of the Twentieth Century. She was the winner of the Edgar award, and multiple Agatha awards including one for lifetime achievement. She was also named the Distinguished Guest of Honor at the 2020 Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. 

 

After a prolific mystery author dies, eulogies discussing the value of their work typically flood newspapers and social media. Yet there’s been scarcely a ripple about Anne’s death, despite her importance as one of the founding authors of the socially relevant historical mystery genre. Perhaps this is because people still can’t come to terms with Anne Perry the novelist, and Anne Perry the person.

 

Anne Perry is a pen name. The author was born with the name Juliet Hulme. In 1954, when she was fifteen, she and her best friend Pauline Parker, 16, committed a violent murder in Christ Church, New Zealand. Both admitted to the crime and served five-year sentences in different jails. Only their youth saved them from the death penalty.

 

The tragic bludgeoning death of Honora Parker has been recounted in great detail by journalists, and in a 1994 book by Joanne Drayton, The Search For Anne Perry: The Hidden Life of a Bestselling Crime Writer. The Hulmes were divorcing and moving away from New Zealand to England and South Africa, which would have broken up the girls. Pauline and Juliet envisioned Honora’s death as providing a path for the girls to stay together. 

 

After completing her prison sentence, Juliet was released at age 20 under the condition that she never see Pauline again. Juliet legally changed her surname to Perry, that of her new stepfather, and she chose Anne as a new first name. After moving to England, she first worked at various jobs including flight attendant, limousine dispatcher, and insurance underwriter. She longed to write, and lived for some time in California, where she tried to break into screenwriting without success. In 1969 California, she met disciples of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, and she became a Mormon, an action that was to influence the rest of her life, giving her hope for personal redemption and a driving theme for the books she’d eventually write.

 

In 1994, New Zealand filmmakers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh cowrote and produced the film Heavenly Creatures, a fictionalization retelling of the relationship between Juliet and Pauline, culminating with Honora’s death. The  high schoolers were portrayed as lovers, something that Anne vehemently denied, although she acknowledged responsibility for her role in the crime and has said that going to prison was the proper outcome. After the film’s release, journalists tracked the whereabouts of the long-lost Juliet Hulme, and a quiet writer, now in her mid-fifties, was exposed.

Talley, Massey, Hirahara and Perry in Los Angeles, 2006

 

I met Anne Perry in November 2006 in Los Angeles. Along with a number of other Sisters in Crime members, we’d traveled to take part in “Sisters in Crime Goes To The Movies”, a conference that gave writers a chance to learn about transforming books to film. Anne’s first book, The Cater Street Hangman, had been made into a film in 1998 which won an Edgar nomination for screenwriting. She was interested in having more of her work reach a cinema audience. While no more films of her books were made prior to her death, in 2012, she created a short film, Put Your Heart On The Page.

 

As it turned out, Anne, Marcia Talley, and I were all staying in the Beverly Laurel Hotel. The three of us visited many of the spots on the conference agenda and spoke on a mystery panel, along with Naomi Hirahara, at the Mystery Bookstore in Los Angeles.

Talley, Robin Purcell, Rhys Bowen and Perry in Hollywood

 

I recall Anne’s friendliness, formality, and gratitude for the companionship and driving help. I liked her and was awed to meet someone who managed to be prolific while writing to high literary standards. During one conversation in the car about everyone’s writing habits, Anne estimated her typical writing schedule as twelve hours a day. This was not a boast; it was an admission of how solitary her life was in an old castle in the remote Scottish fishing village of Portmahomack.

 

I recently saw what Anne Perry’s private life was like when I streamed Interiors, a 2009 documentary made by Dana Linkiewicz with the cooperation of Anne. The writer speaks frankly to the camera bout her life, and the film includes interview with her best friend, her driver, her secretary, and her younger brother, retired from a medical career and now helping Anne with historical research. Anne went to church on Sundays, but aside from that, her life was devoted to writing.

Perry and Talley, in the 1990s

 

Marcia Talley, who is grieving Anne’s loss, said their friendship began in 1995 at a St. Hilda’s Crime and Mystery weekend in England. Marcia, who was not yet published and visiting from Maryland, walked into the conference’s opening reception without knowing many people. A tall red-haired woman sipping orange juice caught her eye. Because the woman was also alone, Marcia decided to approach her. 

 

“Anne was a wonderful conversationalist,” Marcia recounted recently. “She always listened to what I had to say with obvious interest, and later in our friendship—we attended many St. Hilda’s conferences over the subsequent years—as she grew comfortable in my company, she gradually revealed more about herself.”

 

A few years after that first conference meeting, Anne celebrated the publication of Marcia’s first mystery novel, Sing It To Her Bones.  When Marcia’s first publisher dropped her amateur sleuth series after two books, Anne gave her advice to keep producing work for the reading public. Marcia created two serial novels, Naked Came the Phoenix and I’d Kill For That, with all the chapters written by bestselling novelists; Anne wrote a chapter in each book. In turn, Anne invited Marcia to write stories for four different mystery anthologies that she was editing.  

 

Anne also gave Marcia advice that runs contrary to the standard advice for a writer facing cancellation. 

 

“Anne read my Hannah Ives novels—she bought one every year at the conference bookstore, bless her! She was a great fan of the character and was confident that Hannah would live again. ‘Don’t give up on her,’ she said. So, I didn’t, and the next three novels were picked up by Morrow-Avon, and the fourteen after that by Severn House.”

 

Outside of conferences and speaking engagements, Anne’s life was all about writing. Out of the 102 books, none were about her personal experience with crime. Perhaps this was because Anne’s memories of the crime were blocked, as Marcia said. She also may have considered it immoral to profit by writing about someone she’d killed. Ironically, many prisons have programs where writers volunteer as teachers of creative writing. When former inmates occasionally have their writing published, they are often lauded for it. But we anticipate ex-convicts' writing to be revealing of self. Their writing is supposed to be for healing; it's not supposed to become a well-paying career.  

Anne chose to set her writing in Victorian and Edwardian England. She made plenty of money writing gentle mysteries with exquisite sensory detail and nuanced characters. The recurring themes of kindness and a longing for redemption run through her work.

“I always felt there was a lot of Anne in her character William Monk, who suffered from amnesia,” Marcia says. “Anne told me on more than one occasion that she had no memory of the murder of her friend’s mother, but she knew that she had done it.”

 

I’ve read and enjoyed a few Anne’s full-length novels about Charlotte and Thomas Pitt, and I have yet to get started on her books about Hester and William Monk, those narrated by their son Daniel, and other series, including one following a family during World War I, and another that takes a heroine, Elena Standish, into pre-World War II intrigue. 

 

I especially enjoy Anne Perry’s Christmas novellas. These tales usually start with a scenario wherein a central character is pulled away from the anticipation of holiday merriment at home with an unwelcome order to help someone far away. Strong winter weather—perhaps a blizzard, or a very rough storm—inevitably arises. The mystery unfolds, and inevitably, the wrongdoer’s reason for the crime is explained with compassion. The final scene is always about family, and the redemption of Christmas. 

 

I find the audiobook versions, especially those read by Terrence Hardiman, exceptionally calming. If there’s a night that I feel too restless to sleep, I will play the audio version of Anne Perry’s A Christmas Journey or something similarly named. As long as it's got 'Christmas' in the title and Perry on the spine, I will be off to sleep within twenty minutes.

 

Rest in peace, Anne. 

The Right Kind of Malice

Sujata Massey

When I began writing fiction, I didn't know conventions for writers even existed. (I think the Murder is Everywhere gang might excommunicate me for the confession). Before I was published, I joined   the wonderful international program Sisters in Crime. Experienced women writers in that group told me that I would learn a lot to help myself at mystery conventions. For example, I could hear famous mystery novelists talk about how they wrestled with plots; make friends of readers who knew everything and everyone, and maybe even catch up with a literary agent.

Signature collector Risa hits up novelist Vivien Chien

The first mystery convention I visited was Malice Domestic, a fabulous convention that advertises it is "not everyone's cup of tea." Malice does not usually have pleasant connotations, but if you meet a Malice reader, chances are she will hug you before the conversation is over.

Photographer Iden Ford, Welsh author Cathy Ace, and author Donna Andrews

Mystery authors drawn here are primarily (but not exclusively women and the style of mystery storytelling is "traditional" (no gratuitous sex or violence). Yes, the favored mysteries are chock full of suspense and bad things happen--usually a murder that must be solved--but the reader will not feel like vomiting at language and painful images in a Malice book. Also, the mysteries of choice tend to be series books, rather than stand-alones.

My friend Patsy Asher in the hospitality lounge. Writers have filled a table with promo items!

And Malice Domestic is itself a long-running series, if you talk about location. Unlike many conventions, this one does not move around: it has been in the Washington DC suburbs for all of its 31 years, save a couple of years in downtown Washington, when something mysterious happened in an elevator that made the convention shoot back to the suburbs. Currently it's housed over a three-day weekend at a Marriott Hotel in North Bethesda.

Because of the recurring DC area location, many of the fans are from DC, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio. It takes me about an hour to get to the con by car or train. What could be easier?

Kathy Harig with her assistant Dorothy from Mystery Loves Company Books in Oxford, MD.  are the primary sellers of new mysteries.

However--writers come here from Canada, England, and all over the country--and they also tend to be repeat offenders. Male mystery folk are welcomed like brothers come home from college, but to my unscientific eye they make up less than ten percent. Bloggers are a new crowd that came in over the last fifteen years or so...these hardworking, usually unpaid book reviewers are great company.

Hanging with Blogger Dru Ann Love of Dru's Musings

I began my association with this crew when I won a Malice Domestic Unpublished Writers Grant. In 1996, I submitted a partial manuscript of my first mystery novel into a contest that was overseen by longtime serious mystery readers on the Malice board including Bill F. Deeck, a marvelous mystery man who sadly passed away too young--and as a result, the award is now named in his honor. There are other awards, too: the Agathas, named in homage to the mother of the traditional series mystery, Agatha Christie. Malice attendees nominate their favorite novels, stories and true crime books that relate to writing mystery and the traditional mystery genre from the previous year. These are extremely coveted awards because they come in the shape of a teapot. Yes, an actual working teapot that is custom made to the convention's specifications, with a lovely new design revealed each season.

Beth Schmelzer, retired children's librarian, has been influential in bringing children's mystery authors to  Malice

I returned to Malice Domestic last weekend. Over the 23 years that have passed, I think I only missed six conventions because I'd moved to Minnesota. I always wind up having long, happy conversations with the friends I've met over the years--and I make new ones each time. In a way, Malice is like the high school you should have gone to, where everyone is welcoming, and everyone wants to read (as opposed to playing sports).

At my banquet table, you'll see mystery writers Maya Corrigan and James Ziskin from left.

This year, I was on quite a high because The Widows of Malabar Hill was one of five nominees in the Best Historical Mystery category. This first novel in my Perveen Mistry series brought me very good luck at the Left Coast Crime convention and the Edgar Awards, so I figured my luck had run out. And just look at these fabulous fellow writers who were nominated.

My fellow best historical nominee LA Chandler, left, and writer Lea Wait on right

I nearly passed out when I heard that I won...I managed to float through the ballroom up to the stage but proceeded on the exit stairway rather than the entry stairway, so I had to go down again to get my beautiful teapot before making my acceptance speech.

The teapot is just right for tea with my agent Vicky Bijur

Several days later, I am still reeling from the shock of this recognition for Perveen Mistry. I am so happy that a book set in India, telling a tale of strong women facing adverse circumstances and ending on an upbeat note, made it into the hearts of so many readers.

I am about to launch the second Perveen Mistry, The Satapur Moonstone. I don't expect lightning to strike twice, but the joyful celebration at the Malice convention will buoy me through whatever comes next.

My forthcoming tour has May dates listed below. More to come with my next posting in two weeks.

Wednesday, May 15: Ivy Bookshop, Baltimore, MD
Thursday, May 16: Astoria Bookshop, Queens, NY
Monday, May 20: Murder by the Book, Houston, TX
Tuesday, May 21: Boswell's, Milwaukee, WI
Wednesday, May 22: Once Upon a Crime, Minneapolis, MN
Thursday, May 23: Mystery to Me, Madison, WI
Friday, May 24: The Raven, Lawrence, Kansas
Saturday, May 25: Poisoned Pen, Scottsdale, AZ
Monday, May 27: Facebook Live Book Discussion For All Readers Worldwide (at Facebook's Sujata Massey Author Page)