Back to where it all began, in several ways

I've organised 125+ library events in New Zealand; recently I got
to attend my second-ever, in person, at 'Miscreants in Motueka'

Craig on some Tuesdays

Kia ora and gidday everyone,

I hope that you’ve all enjoyed a lovely Easter holidays - for those that got them - and are having a good start to Spring, for those in the northern hemisphere, or Autumn, for those in the Southern Hemisphere. For me, I'm kinda getting to experience both, as I've spent the past two and a half weeks 'back home' in Aotearoa New Zealand, visiting with family and friends and packing in as much as possible on several fronts, during a long-overdue visit. 

Flying back to London tonight, all too soon. But very grateful for the time here. 

I don't know about you, but I've often found there's something pleasantly grounding or resetting about visiting my hometown and surrounding region, even though I haven't lived there full-time for decades. Life can seem so hectic and in flux, going from project to project (many of them fun and challenging in good ways, don't get me wrong) alongside various life events good and tough - not to mention all the added global uncertainties and upheavals - that its really wonderful to reconnect with something that has deeper roots in my own life story, and people who've known me for decades (or places I've known/experienced decades ago), often across and through various things, rather than solely because of a single shared activity, passion, or workplace, etc. 

I realise not everyone had a good or great childhood, so revisiting old haunts and long-term friends won't be the same largely positive (while at times jarring) thing for some others as it is for me, but for me it's always been a bit of a 'battery recharger' on several fronts, especially when I've been based abroad. 

It's all too rare that I'm in New Zealand to nab print copies of the papers
and magazines I contribute to, so it was lovely to yesterday get a copy
of the latest NZ Listener, completed with my April thrillers roundup

We've been visiting national parks, wildlife preserves, and scenic areas, gone wading and swimming at local beaches even though it's autumn (some nice sunny days and mild weather, the recent tropical cyclone aside), had lots of catch-ups with family and some old friends, eaten lots of steak and cheese pies and boysenberry ice cream, visited local artisans (from Höglund Art Glass to the makers of the Lord of the Rings ring), and had all sorts of of fun. 

Plus a few bookish things thrown in for good measure. 

To kickstart April, I even got to participate in an author panel at the Motueka Library, as part of the nationwide Mystery in the Library series of free/koha library events. I helped kickstart that series in 2015, and have been organising it from afar in London the past decade plus. We've now held 125+ events at 50 libraries across Aotearoa New Zealand, featuring 200+ different Kiwi storytellers, over the past decade or so. Crazy how wee ideas can grow into rather big things when people care and give their time. Thanks to amazing librarians, authors, chairs, and thousands of local readers, Mystery in the Library has become a fixture in the New Zealand literary calendar. 

With science teacher and film/TV actor
Doug Brooks, a high school pal - we used to
do Shakespeare competitions as teenagers

It has been a bit of a strange thing, if I'm honest, organising so many events that I never get to attend myself, but I have enjoyed the ongoing connection to my home country and the local books community there, and my parents raised me to serve and give back, so I've felt good about that too. At a distance. But there was something a wee bit special getting to attend 'Miscreants in Motueka' on 1 April - with my mother, daughter, and old schoolteacher and a couple of other mates in the audience, along with plenty of people I didn't know or hadn't met yet. It was the first time too that I've had a New Zealand event where some of my own books (the Dark Deeds Down Under anthologies) were onsale. I got to sign some copies for readers who bought them, plus some old friends. Which was cool. 

It was a nice, rather tangible reminder of what we've built with the Ngaio Marsh Awards and Mystery in the Library, but also where it all started, with my parents and schoolteachers cultivating and encouraging my love of reading, and how local libraries were a cool part of my Nelson-Tasman childhood, alongside local sports fields, outdoors areas, and friends houses. 

While there have been plenty of bumps, and some tough twists and turns, overall I think I've been a fairly lucky guy, in terms of some pretty cool chapters I've had in my life, and the great people I've got to meet and spend time with - a little or a lot - along the way. 

Given this was a very family-focused trip, I didn't get to catch up with as many Kiwi authors as I often do when I'm back home, but on top of the Miscreants in Motueka event and going for a dawn walk around the Auckland harbour with Maori filmmaker and award-winning crime writer Michael Bennett (Better the Blood, etc) this morning - a very nice way to kickstart my final day in Aotearoa for this trip - I've popped into a few bookshops and libraries while here, and been very pleased to see some good stocking and spotlighting of an array of cool Kiwi crime novels and true crime books. in most places We've come a long way since we started the Ngaio Marsh Awards in 2010. 

Ngaio Marsh Award winning authors Michael Bennett and Claire Baylis
on a spotlight shelf at the Papatoetoe Library in South Auckland

Over the weekend I even popped into the Papatoetoe Library, just up the road from where we've been staying in Auckland for the final days of our visit. As some people know, that's a key location in terms of modern New Zealand crime writing and the Ngaio Marsh Awards, even though we've never held a Mystery in the Library event there. 

In October 2008 - nearly 18 years ago! - I stopped by the Papatoetoe Library in South Auckland, having just returned to New Zealand from a yearlong OE backpacking through Latin America, North America, and Europe.

I'd loved mystery books my whole life - though had slowed down reading them while at law school and as a young lawyer at a large corporate law firm - but while travelling on that OE trip I'd read lots of crime/thrillers during 24 hr bus roads across Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina, and even spontaneously attended a Crime Writers of Canada event at Vancouver Public Library in April 2008, chatting to Canadian crime writers like legendary lawyer and award-winning author William Deverell, along with Mark Zuehlke and the late, great Lou Allin (a Vice-President of Crime Writers Canada who'd later become one of our inaugural Ngaio Marsh Awards judges in 2010). 

While sorting old boxes at my Mum's house
on this trip, I came across lots of old articles
I wrote 15+ years ago, including this
feature on Neil Cross in early 2009

On a post event stroll to the bus stop, Bill Deverell had asked me about New Zealand crime writing, but outside of Ngaio Marsh, Paul Thomas, and a few one-off books from the 2000s from the likes of Simon Snow, Michael Laws, and Nigel Latta, I sadly couldn't really tell him that much in terms of recommendations. 

Later that year, browsing the Papatoetoe Library shelves in October 2008, I stumbled across CEMETERY LAKE by Paul Cleave and THE RINGMASTER by Vanda Symon not just Kiwi crime novels, but the third and second books from each author!

By chance - a lawyer not getting a book review in on time for the legal magazine I started working at, so my editor needed me to quickly fill the pages before we went to the printers - I ended up reviewing Paul and Vanda's books for NZLawyer magazine. Further reviews then author interviews followed of other Kiwi mystery writers, and international ones... fast forward to late 2010, and the first-ever Ngaio Marsh Award was won - delayed after the earthquakes cancelled the Christchurch Writers Festival that year by 'Alix Bosco' for CUT & RUN. 

And that was just the beginning. 17 years of the Ngaio Marsh Awards. More than a decade of Mystery in the Library. Rotorua Noir in 2019, the first-ever New Zealand crime and thriller festival. Kiwi crime and thriller authors appearing semi-regularly nowadays at international festivals. Would it have happened without spontaneous visits to libraries in Vancouver and Papatoetoe in 2008? Months apart, more than 7,000 miles apart... both planting seeds.

Life eh? What can you do but be grateful? 

Until next time. Ka kite anō.

Whakataukī of the fortnight: 

Inspired by Zoe and her 'word of the week', I'll be ending my fortnightly posts by sharing a whakataukī (Māori proverb), a pithy and poetic thought to mull on as we go through life.

Nāu te rourou, nāku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi

(With your food basket and my food basket the people will thrive, ie everybody has something to offer, and by working together we can all flourish.)

Dozens of crime writers from New Zealand, Australia, and internationally coming
together at a local marae to celebrate storytelling at Rotorua Noir in 2019. 

Au Revoir

Wendall ~ TBD

I have been immeasurably lucky to have been part of Murder is Everywhere for the last two and a half years.

 

It’s hard to imagine a group more supportive and kind than my compatriots here – all writers I admire for their imagination, range of knowledge and expertise, curiosity, conviction, and humor.

 

Most of us at Bouchercon 2023 in San Diego.

 

Through their blogs and their books, I’ve traveled from South Africa to Italy, from Greece to Scotland, from India to Singapore, seen art and architecture from all over the world, learned so much about international history and politics, and gathered new insights into ways the creative process can work.

 

Jeff, Sujata, Annamaria, and me at LCC in Tucson.

I’ve also had the privilege of sharing comments with many of you who’ve been kind enough to read my pieces.

 

So, it is with a heavy heart that I have to step away from the blog, at least for a while.

 

As I go, I’ll leave you with a few thoughts.

 

First, libraries and librarians are the bedrock of our culture and our profession.  They are responsible for my lifetime love of both reading and research. From my first “reading challenge” in second grade, which included Harriet the Spy, The Phantom Tollbooth, and The Yearling,  to the hours and hours I spent over the years in research libraries, like the Graduate Library at UNC, the (late) Colindale Newspaper Library, and my forever favorite, the Humanities Reading Room in the British Library.

 

One of my early faves.

I love the British Library so much that I set a hunk of Fogged Off there and included a totally fictional, and hysterical, research librarian. 

 

Approaching the BL.

 

And inside the Reading Room.

We must do everything we can to protect and support them.

 

Second, even though many of us sell the majority of our books on Amazon, it’s up to us and all our readers to make sure the independent bookstore continues as a source of stories and community. I’m pretty sure that almost every crime writer in Southern California has been helped by Anne Saller at Book Carnival and Debbie Mitsch at Mystery Ink and I owe an eternal debt to Pete Mock and Keebe Fitch at McIntyre’s in Pittsboro, North Carolina, for amazing support of my Cyd Redondo series. 

 

Anne Saller catches an action shot! Me, Jennifer Chow, Naomi Hirahara, and Ellen Byron had a blast in 2021.

 

What would we do without Book Carnival???

 

Pete Mock, Tim Maleeny, and me at McIntyre's in my hometown.

Me getting ready to write in the window of the wonderful Book Soup on the Sunset Strip.

Face in a Book is beloved by my Northern California friends, and there are so many of these amazing spaces still going. So, wherever you are, if you have a favorite, put it in the comments. Of course support your favorite authors and friends, but I for one am making a commitment to go to at least one reading/signing this fall for a writer I’m unfamiliar with.

 

Third, don’t let the bastards get you down/take no prisoners!

 

I will always be grateful for those of you who read widely, who want to travel to other times and places, and who are kind enough to read our books. 

 

Have a great time, all of you who are going to Bouchercon. I won't be there, but I do have a new story, "Actor Sex," in the anthology Hollywood Kills, which will have a signing there with many of the other wonderful writers. 

 

All of my short stories are set in 90s LA (hence the chiffon gloves). In this one, a cynical casting assistant chases down a "headshot" killer.

 

You can still find me on my website at https://wendallthomas.com at my author page on FB: https://www.facebook.com/CydRedondoMysteries/ and on my Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/ewendallthomas/

 

Fondest to you all, near and far,

 

 Goodbye, farewell. . .

 

 

~ Wendall

 

 

The Book Challengers

Sujata Massey

I was messing with my books today and turned them so that the spines were hidden. No titles, no idea of content. They seem like a visual representation of how powerless books are if we don't see what they're about. 

 

Blank books remind me of silenced voices. The volumes make me think of the growing movement inside the United States to ban books from schools and public libraries. In 2021, almost 2000 titles were challenged by citizens, according to this recent New York Times article. Much of the banning action is in states like Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. 

 

The book challenges bring back memories of my own relationship with libraries. Back in my 1970s and ‘80s childhood, we were regulars at the public library. My mother usually drove me and my two sisters to the Ramsey County public library once a week, sometimes twice during summer vacation. I walked to the beautiful little Carnegie Library in neighboring St. Anthony Park myself, and of course, I always got books from the school library when my class had visiting time. My father always gave us books specially chosen for our particular interests at Christmas and birthdays. He still does; and I do the same for him.

 

I recall vanishing into the faraway, much more charming worlds of these library books. I adored a series about a Jewish family in turn-of-the century Brooklyn (All of a Kind Family). I marveled at the hardships of pioneer children in the Midwest (the Little House books), and the fantasy landscapes in The Dark is Rising Sequence. My sisters and I also read close to one hundred Amar Chitra Katha children’s comic books that my father got for us in India. This Indian publishing house, founded in 1967, specialized in the pictorial depiction of religious stories, epics, folktales and South Asian history. The comics felt special because they told me something about the country of my heritage, when the libraries had no books about it except for those by British Colonials. As my sisters and I matured, we were attracted to reading darker themes, especially books set during World War II that detailed the Holocaust. With the other half of my personal identity rooted in Germany, I felt a dissonance between my own experiences in the country and the history emerging for me in literature. 

 

I recall a handful of children’s books with Black characters. However, when I recently researched the books’ authors, I discovered they were all White. In my late teens, the first African-American author I read was Maya Angelou, followed by Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. As a teenager, I finally got a peek behind the curtain shielding the mysterious and alluring world of sex. My favorites were Rosemary Rodgers' Sweet Savage Love, and an erotic essay collection by Nancy Friday, and the ultimate mind-blower, Rita Mae Brown’s tour-de-force novel about lesbianism, Rubyfruit Jungle. Not that these particular titles were carried in any of my libraries: I remember buying My Secret Garden using my weekly allowance, and getting a battered second-hand copy of Rubyfruit Jungle handed to me by one of my sisters. 

Prior to 1999, most books removed from school libraries were done so due to profanity and sexual or political content. Think George Orwell’s 1984 and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 

The next area where books were attacked was in a perceived threat against Christianity. I remember back in the early 2000s, some conservative parents had success banning J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books using the argument it encouraged witchcraft. 

 

One of the strangest recent bans is against mathematics textbooks in Florida. Its Governor, Ron DeSantis, has not named the titles of the books involved, nor the instances, but the state dept of education has rejected 70 percent of math materials for K-5 students, 20 percent of math material for Grade 6-8, and 35 percent of the math materials for grades 9-12. With the hiding of book titles and any excerpts deemed offensive, it seems absolutely crazy that this recall could succeed. He's also requiring all schools to provide a searchable list of all books in their libraries for parents, and to continue updating parents with details of every book that the school acquires.

 

After looking at the lists of the most banned books in the United States, I’ve come away with the impression that the challenged books are mostly be by LGBTQ authors and writers of color. 

 

Here is a tiny sampling of some of the most often-contested books that some people are trying to keep out of libraries.

 

Nonfiction

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

The End of Policing by Alex Vitale

 

Fiction 

The Autobiography of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X Kendi

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

.

Are you wondering exactly who the people are who are fearful of books about social issues?

 

Often, they’re parents who complain to a teacher or principal. Or library volunteers quietly snapping pictures of books that they are shelving. They could be church or political party members taking their issue with a book to a lawmaker who wants their support.

In Virginia, just south of my home state of Maryland, Glenn Youngkin ran for governor promising to prohibit teaching of course material that addresses the history of racism (in his words, critical race theory). He won the election.

 

Texas State Representative Matt Krause is running for re-election in a tightly contested primary. He created a list of 850 children’s and young adult titles he believes could make youth feel uneasy or uncomfortable or guilty. He sent it to the state’s school boards and asked them to let him know whether they had any of these books in the school libraries.

 

Censorship activism has been nicknamed by some as the Ed Scare as a reference to the 1950’s “Red Scare.” Seventy years ago, people were so afraid of losing their jobs that they signed oaths professing no connection to the Communist Party. Today, librarians might keep a book behind a counter, or teachers would think carefully about what they can share during read-aloud time. Some of the proposed bills could criminalize the teaching of a book that someone judges to be obscene.

 

Last week, I received an email from one of my past publishers. Jonathan Karp, the CEO of Simon and Schuster, wrote to its authors about the publisher’s intention to stand firm and keep publishing books without fear of censorship. It also included resources for readers and writers to fight book challenges.  

 

The New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library are allowing people across the country who aren’t NYPL cardholders to borrow banned books as digital downloads. It’s a generous move made to support access, but it also reveals the tragedy of how different library culture is from state-to-state. After all, the people in Texas and Florida pay taxes to support these libraries, so they can have access to what they want to read. 

 

Love in the Library, Part I

Sujata Massey

The Magic Hour by Dirk Joseph in the Pratt window

Back in Grade One--about the time I stopped having to use my finger to read word by word-- I fell in love with stories. I could not get enough of reading, and thank goodness there were libraries to sate my appetite. 

Libraries were the place I, as an elementary school student, could make my own choices about what I wanted to take home. It wasn’t like going to a department store, where my mom ultimately decided if she would pay for the sweater I wanted. I didn't have to get permission; and it didn't cost any more for me to take out nine books or one. It was all free.

Baltimore's Pratt Street Central Library today

Entrance to the business and science section 

This aged etching on second floor celebrates poet Lizette Woodworth Reese

Baltimore's Poe-inspired football team, the Ravens, inspired the color for the renovated Poe Room

I read so fast in those days I rarely was served with an overdue fine. My library in childhood was the Roseville Library in the Ramsey County, Minnesota, public library system. I still half-remember the kind librarian who thought I was lost because I was a ten-year-old walking very slowly the shelves teen section. I was glad she let me stay, because I really wanted to get my hands on every Rosamond Du Jardin romance on the shelf.

Almost all of us have public library branches in our towns, but this concept wasn’t an automatic right granted by city governments in the way that streets and schools and fire stations were.

Setting up a library was an expensive process, and in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gentlemen of means put in money to build libraries and stock them—and the borrowers were people of means who paid a subscription fee. 

One of the most successful businessmen in 19^thcentury Baltimore, Enoch Pratt, believed the city needed a “free, circulating library open to all, regardless of property or color.” His massive donation established a grand library that opened in 1886 with 32,000 volumes and an endowment of more than a million dollars. 

The first batch of librarians at the Pratt

I got my library card here after I finished college and began writing for the Evening Sun newspaper, which was only four blocks away. I spent countless hours here on research in the Maryland Room, or browsing old books for sale at the annual benefit, and often losing myself in the fiction section.

Did I ever imagine I’d have my own book in the Pratt?

No way. I thought I would always be a reader, not a reader-writer.

For the last twenty-two years, I've had the honor of being in the Pratt Library's fiction section, in the M's. I was there today and discovered the Pratt library has a book by me I didn't know existed. No, it's not pirated. The unusual edition of The Satapur Moonstone with  striking blue hardcover is the LARGE PRINT EDITION.

Over the last forty years or so, the library’s grandeur slowly wore down. By that I mean the brass on all the doors dulled, the painted frieze going around the grand hall faded, and antique wooden furniture on the second and third floor became scuffed and dull. Due to increasingly limited funds from the state and city, such restoration was not in the cards for a library system struggling to stay open six days a week with enough money to pay workers and computer stations for users. Not to mention, the increasing costs of paper books, ebooks, and audiobooks.

A massive campaign to fund the library's physician revitalization began under the visionary hand of the Pratt's former CEO Carla Hayden (our current Librarian of Congress!. Heidi Daniel assumed the CEO role and is here to preside over the grand-reopening. I haven't met Heidi yet, but I sense through her actions a commitment to making the Pratt Library a place where everyone feels welcome. We have another first--the Pratt is now one of the country's first "fine free" libraries.

It is gratifying to see that in this restoration, the Pratt Central Library has not become a mausoleum or museum, but has revisioned some of the gracious spaces as special areas for people working on projects together. I saw doorways leading to large, open areas  for teen-only activities and for fine arts creation

 A major focus of today's library is assisting people in bettering their lives, primarily through finding work. There are daily workshops around the Pratt's 22 branches to help Baltimoreans with job hunting, resume writing and issues of justice. 

Recently, Baltimore Style Magazine asked me some questions about my work. They wanted a suggestion of where to take my photo, and the Pratt Central Library sprang to mind right away. The picture that appeared in the magazine has me virtually dancing through stacks. If you follow the link to Baltimore Style, look for the digital magazine and start flipping: I'm on page 54.

Here is how this fashionable escapade unfolded on the mezzanine level of a large city library. The Pratt's PR, Meghan McCorkell, did a very professional job with these two photos she snapped.

What an unnatural pose! 

Modeling is as exhausting as writing!

I was back at the Pratt again today to renew my library card. The windows were full of gorgeous paper art commissioned for the opening. I hope these works are up for a long time, they are so gorgeous.

Sarah Jung's Open Door shows a beautiful, bustling Pratt

Papercut art by Annie Howe celebrates the Pratt's stance in the city 

Up to the mezzanine and more novels

Street door detail in brass

Once my card was in hand, I tooled around the building looking at an old world made new. I also needed a book for my writing, so I asked a  social sciences librarian to bring up a particular book on police history that I've borrowed a few times. it's not on the regular shelves, but in an underground (I think) archive.

There are some libraries that offer browsers access to the archive stacks--the Pratt is not one of them. I harbor fantasies of being allowed to wallow in these secret stacks, to see what other volumes on India I might fall in love with. 

Do you have a library love story?

This Saturday, Sept. 14, 2019, from 1:30-3 p.m., Sujata will be in conversation with mystery novelist and dear friend Laura Lippman at the Pratt Central Library's Grand Re-Opening Block Party. Admission is free and there are many events for all ages, all day long.