Thursday's Thugs: Victorian Villains

Like most mystery writers, I came to the genre as a mystery reader. I particularly have a fascination for Victorian Era mysteries. Loveday Brooke, Sherlock Holmes, and Auguste Dupin held fascinating insights into the human character. In particular, they held knowledge of the criminal classes that made me look sideways at my junior-high classmates. Which of them held villainy in their heart?

So, aside from telling you that I was a weird child, what does this have to do with Victorian Villains?

The Victorians not only gave us the detective genre, they passed down their fears in the form of villains. It is not Holmes that gives us insight into what his society feared, it is the bad guys that show us the shape of evil in the minds of readers in his time. Today I thought I would talk a little about what the Victorians feared most in their society and the six basic types of villains I gleaned from reading them.

1. The Visual Villain - character showed in this villain's appearance. You could tell by looking at the physical deformities, the nervous twitches or speech problems, harsh features or scarred flesh gave this bad boy away. The Victorians not only feared deformity, they carried it to the extreme of studying bumps on the head and facial construction as a way of determining criminal behavior.

2. The Working Class Villain - yes the butler did it, or the coachman, even the upstairs maid might harbor reasons to take the master's possessions away from him. If they killed the master, so much the more affirming of the black-hearted working class mindset. If they were good people, they would be rich too.

3. The Upper Class Other - this guy is dark, foreign, elusive, and often mysterious in origin. He may be of the upper class, but he's NOT one of us. The British were particularly good at this typecasting of other races and cultures.

4. The Mysterious Woman - sometimes this is portrayed as the fallen woman. She is exotic, mysterious, and/or erotic. A woman on her own is suspect. An attractive woman of independent means is exponentially more suspect. If she shows signs of being well read, educated, and able to hold her own in a conversation... watch out.

5. The Supernatural Villain - one of the most feared. The Victorians consulted the mediums, created Hellfire Clubs, brought mystery objects from Egypt, drugs from the orient, and picked up superstitions from dozens of conquered cultures. Detectives might explain the phenomenon as a fraud, but the bad guys frequently resorted to supernatural threats to prey on the upper crust.

6. The Domestic Villain - this is the friendly villain that can hide in plain sight. He blends in: a college chum you would never suspect of holding a grudge, the professor in gold-rimmed glasses you met on the train to London. He blends in, he is one of us, but behind the smile, evil lurks.

That's my take on Victorian Villainy. What do you think? Are there more ways the nineteenth century writers shaped their bad guys? The more interesting thoughts to me is how often these types of villains show up in our today and how often our own fears color our writing.

Oldest Mental Hospital West of the Alleghenies

Eastern State Hospital is moving. The old buildings will be torn down. In their place, the Bluegrass Community College and Technical School will build a larger campus. I have nothing against the Community College expansion, or against modern, state of the art, facilities for Eastern State. But I find the move an incredibly sad event because the hospital is a living part of Lexington's rich history.

Eastern State Hospital was started by private citizens, mostly from Lexington, through a fund raising campaign announced in the Lexington Register. Many gave anonymously. Some of Fayette County's most famous citizens were involved in the efforts to raise money for the hospital. John Hunt, Andrew McCalla, George and Samuel Trotter, Alexander Parker, Thomas January, John Bradford, JD Young, William Morton, Thomas Pendell, J. Postlethwaite, John Pope, Lewis Sanford, John Bradford, Robert McNair and Samuel Ayers were among the contributors. A ten acre tract of land at Sinking Spring was purchased for construction of the Fayette Hospital, as it was originally named. Henry Clay not only supported the effort financially, he delivered the oration when the cornerstone for the first building was placed.

Fayette Hospital was intended to treat "lunatics" and the "sick poor." But the Panic of 1819 halted construction. Lexington was devastated by the panic. Thomas January, one of the largest contributors to the project, had to close his factory after 24 years of operation. Governor Adair was able to keep interest in the project alive in the legislature. He pressed the state to take over and finish the hospital. After studying the advisability of the project, the state decided to purchase the property and complete the hospital, but wished to use it exclusively as a mental hospital.

Eastern State is the oldest hospital in the United States built for the express purpose of treating the mentally ill. The hospital opened on May 1, 1824 with a single brick building 66 feet square and three stories tall. As news of the work done there spread, the hospital became more and more involved in the care of mental patients from all over Kentucky with diseases of the mind were sent to Eastern State. Later, additional property was purchased to provide a park and farm to the hospital. Eastern State was a village within a growing city. Within the walls of the hospital grounds there were medical facilities, a farm, houses for employees, stores, parks, trails a cemetery and a private lake. Events like the "Lunatic Ball" allowed local citizens to visit with residents of the hospital community, but there was little interaction beyond these special events.

Today there is archeological research going on at the site of the cemetery and volunteers are trying to build a database of information about the patients buried there. Some of the graves discovered contain as many as four bodies. Geological studies have indicated there could be more than 10,000 people buried on the grounds. Many will never be identified. I truly wish there were some way to preserve what remains of this historical site.

Weekend Writer: Follow-up to Authorfest

Discussing Writing Historical Fiction at the Schaumburg Township Public Library

It isn't often that I have the chance to talk about two of my favorite topics, history and writing, at the same time. This past weekend I had a wonderful opportunity to do a presentation titled "The Devil is in the Details: Incorporating History into Your Novel." I couldn't resist.

On Thursday evening, armed with a PowerPoint presentation and a handful of novels from some of my favorite historical mystery writers, Sarah and I headed out to Illinois. It is good that we both write mysteries. Our deductive powers got their first workout when "Greta", our rented Garmin, quit working. It wasn't Greta's fault that the rental company neglected to recharge her and gave us a charger that was broken, but just when we had to detour from our planned route, she died. We had to rely on our powers of deductive reasoning to find our hotel. 

The next morning, we drove about twenty miles out of our way to the Indianapolis Airport to get a replacement charger for Greta (we named her for the great Greta Garbo). Confident that once we got out of the airport parking garage there would be no further complaints from the Garmin, Sarah and I set off again for Schaumburg. It didn't take long to realize that we were right about getting no complaints... Greta was still dead.

We got a map. For the next fifty miles, we discussed the fact that in another generation knowing how to read a map will be as foreign to children as understanding the difference between clockwise and counter clockwise.

Despite resorting to archaic navigational techniques, the rest of the trip went as smoothly as it could in eight to twelve lanes of traffic on unfamiliar roads. We arrived safely in Schaumburg and headed to the mall. Yes, the mall. Schaumburg once hosted the largest mall in the United States until the title was stolen by the Mall of America. It is still the largest shopping mall in a five state area. Besides, we had some time to kill before checking into our hotel.

On Saturday, we were up early. The car rental company opened at 7:30 AM and we were finally able to get the Garmin a working charger.

By 10 AM we were at the library. I was amazed to discover that there was a line of people waiting for the doors to open. It was awesome. For a moment, I thought everyone was there to attend Authorfest. Then the first people I spoke to didn't even know there was an author's event. The crowd waiting was there for the library. My ego might have been wounded if the nice couple hadn't wanted to hear all about my book. It is impossible to feel bad when a little old lady is really interested in what you write and thinks your wife is beautiful. I think I could live in Schaumburg, if it weren't for those Chicago winters.

The second surprise of the day was learning that the library has funding to run a lot of programs. Having a dozen authors come in and speak on a Saturday was just a normal business day for them. At the same time we were talking, there were photography classes, children's reading times, and a host of other events. When I think of the little libraries in Kentucky and the struggle they have just to keep the doors open, I can't help wondering what those librarians would think if they had funds for even one of the programs going on regularly in Schaumburg. Even here in Lexington, where we have some of the best libraries in the state, there are no lines outside waiting for the doors to open. 

This isn't a complaint. I love our libraries; I just got a look at how much more is possible.

Book Review: Fish Tales: The GUPPY Anthology

Fish Tales: The Guppy Anthology by Ramona DeFelice Long

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The Sisters in Crime GUPPY Chapter has come up with a winning recipe for mystery and intrigue. The twenty-two stories that make up Fish Tales are a tasty blend of flavors and writing styles. The anthology is well-written and has enough variety to suit any mystery reader. I look forward to seeing more from these new voices in mystery fiction.

While the collection as a whole is very good, there are some stories that were so delightful or delightfully evil that they merit individual recognition. My personal favorite story was Betsy Bitner's Amazing Grace. Her murder method is ingenious and her writing style made the story a fun read. I haven't seen Betsy's work before, but will be looking for more. SASE by Karen Pullen was an excellent read. Her dark humor and tongue-in-cheek look at the publishing industry made the story stand out from the crowd. Sarah E. Glenn puts an interesting spin an old fashioned PI story in a new age setting in New Age Old Story. Her characters are well drawn and I would like to see her detective again in a longer work.
With twenty-two authors in the anthology, I don't have space to talk about every story I liked or to mention every author, so I will end with a shout-out to Nancy Adams for her historical mystery story, The Secret of the Red Mullet. Her young protagonist came alive on the page. Her bio states that she is working on novels with an older version of the girl, but she should consider doing some young adult stories with the character.

Now that I have given you a small sampling of what is in store for you in Fish Tales, I hope you'll consider diving into the book and sampling these stories for yourself.

<View all my reviews

Thursday's Thugs: Guest Blog by Marilyn Meredith

This week I have invited F.M. Meredith, also known as Marilyn Meredith, to talk about her bad guys. She is the author of nearly thirty published novels. Her latest in the Rocky Bluff P.D. crime series, from Oak Tree Press, is Angel Lost. Marilyn is a member of EPIC, Four chapters of Sisters in Crime, including the Internet chapter , Mystery Writers of America, and on the board of the Public Safety Writers of America. Visit  her at http://fictionforyou.com and read her blog at http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com .

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The third book in my Rocky Bluff P.D. series, Fringe Benefits, was all about a bad cop who took advantage of his badge. Other books in the series have had an abundance of bad guys, murderers and other unsavory characters, but in my latest, Angel Lost, the bad guy is sort of in the shadows. He doesn’t make an appearance until near the end of the book though he’s hinted at much earlier.

Even then, though what he does is the pivotal point of the plot, he still isn’t a central figure in the book. Having said that, I guess I should explain that in all of the Rocky Bluff novels, the focus is on how the job affects the police officers’ families and how what is happening in the family affects the job.

No, the police officers in my fictional department aren’t perfect, but in this particular book the villain is not a major player. Officer Stacey Wilbur is so focused on her upcoming wedding to Detective Doug Milligan she doesn’t put enough attention onto what is going on around her. Sergeant Navarro is worried about his mother who is displaying Alzheimer’s symptoms and he misses something important at work. Officer Felix Zachary is excited about becoming a father in the near future, and though he knows something may be amiss with a new-hire he doesn’t pursue his feelings. Detective Milligan is as anxious to get married as Stacey, but not much interested in the wedding, he just wants to be sure his renter, Officer Gordon Butler, finds a new place to live.

Of course, nothing goes quite as planned and the appearance of an angel in a furniture store window causes a stir in the town and puts Officer Zachary and the new guy, Vaughn Aragon, together policing the crowd.

Angel Lost is the seventh in the series, written under the name F.M. Meredith. It’s available as an e-book and trade paperback from the usual places. If anyone would like an autographed copy, they can go to my website: http://fictionforyou.com

Advance praise for Angel Lost:

In ANGEL LOST, author Marilyn Meredith has created a thrilling adventure that weaves together the lives of several point-of-view police officers, with Officer Stacy Wilbur and Detective Doug Milligan in starring roles. I truly, truly, TRULY loved every minute of this terrific story!  So there!  Read it yourself and find out why.

Radine Trees Nehring
Author of the Carrie McCrite and Henry King "To Die For" mystery series.  

F.M. Meredith has another hit on her hands with her latest installment of the Rocky Bluff P.D. series.  A fast-moving mystery full of suspense, well-developed characters and realistic interpersonal relationships, Angel Lost wants for nothing.  Meredith weaves a compelling story that keeps you guessing with a satisfying ending guaranteed to please even the most discerning mystery lover.  Impossible to put down, Angel Lost is the first must-read of 2011.  

Holli Castillo

Author of Gumbo Justice

Reading a F.M. Meredith Rocky Bluff novel is like having a wonderful family visit—without having to travel farther than your favorite chair. Once again, Marilyn delivers a story you want to get into, a mystery you want to unravel (several actually), and characters you like and want to root for. In “Angel Lost,” F.M.’s Rocky Bluff  Police Department “family” must really come together to save one of their own--with a little help from an angel. A most enjoyable read. Thank you Marilyn!"

Madeline (M.M.) Gornell, the author of “Uncle Si’s Secret,” “Death of a Perfect Man,” and “Reticence of Ravens.” http://www.mmgornell.com

Weekend Writer: Preparing for Authorfest

I am doing a talk next weekend on incorporating history into your fiction. I'm calling it "The Devil is in the Details." I chose that title because the details are critically important to readers of historical mysteries.  Before I write I research, research, research more, then pray that I did not miss one of those devilish details that plague writers everywhere.

Long before I ever tried my hand at writing, I was one of those evil and unforgiving readers. I never read another book by the author that put General John Hunt Morgan's statue in a story more than a dozen years before the statue was cast. Of course, I have never forgiven the sculptor either.  Everyone in Kentucky knows Morgan's horse was a mare named Black Bess. Pompeo Coppini, the sculptor, thought no hero should ride a mare and had the audacity to put Morgan on a stallion.

You might think talking about the statue is a digression, but it isn't. I am simply pointing out that if you change an important part of history you will not be forgiven. In the case of Black Bess, students at the University of Kentucky have responded to this insult by composing a ballad to her proclaiming respect for "a lady's balls" and frequently sneak onto the old courthouse lawn to paint them either blue and white (the school colors) or some florescent shade. I am sure that Black Bess is kicking up her heels in some horsey heaven and having an old-fashioned horse laugh every time those balls get a new coat of paint.

As I place the finishing touches on my talk for next weekend, I hope that readers of my book are more forgiving than I am. I am sure that under close examination, errors could be found. No matter how much time a writer spends researching a historical novel, it is impossible to find everything on a subject. There are also details that are widely misreported. In my research, I discovered that Belle Brezing is believed to have moved to Jenny Hill's on December 24, 1879, but her diary clearly gives the date as 1878. Her obituary in Time Magazine incorrectly reported the date, and everyone else took their information from them. Her biographer and the University of Kentucky website both use the misinformation, and I have already heard from one reader that I have the date wrong. Such is life.

Thursday's Thugs: The Paranormal Bad Guy

Vampires, witches, werewolves, ghost, and zombies are all popular as characters in today's fiction. Not just as villains, the sparkly vampires of Twilight are romantic leads. But enough about Twilight. Today I wanted to talk about an unusual paranormal bad guy that I had the good fortune to review this month. The book was titled A Mystery / Suspense Collection Anthology: Sweet, but the paranormal villain that I want to talk about was a villain from a story by Gerald Costlow titled The Call.

I am not going to give a great story away by telling you too many details of the plot. Let me just say that the "the call" was not from a human, nor did it originate from a particularly malevolent being. Those two facts are part of what make this particular villain interesting and unique. This is a villain who cannot move, and whose only power is the abillity to...well...call out to those who can hear. Yet, the power of the call strikes fear into the locals. It causes grown men to stay home and lock their doors.

The call began so long ago that nobody remembers when or knows why it started. If there is evil, that evil is rooted in the very human need to recover past joy. The call conjures to the mind of a victim those happy dreams of the past. In dreams of goodness the hero is pulled toward madness and death. Costlow has managed to turn good and evil on their ear with "The Call." I loved the story, particularly the ending. I loved the way his minister fell victim to the call and a mountain witch fought to save him from dreaming to death. Most of all, I loved his villain. He was a paranormal bad guy to remember.

Guest Blogging at Suzanne Adair's Blog

Kentucky in the Decades of Discord

Today I am guest blogging about Kentucky during the Decades of Discord on Suzanne Adair's Blog. If you love Kentucky's turbulent history following the Civil War, I think you will find the post well worth reading. If that doesn't capture your interest, I am giving away a copy of my novel, Circle of Dishonor to someone who comments on my post.

Stop by and read a little history, leave a comment, and you could find a copy of my book in your mailbox. While you are there look over some of Suzanne's books and you might just find a new favorite author.

Kentucky in the Decades of Discord

Thursday's Thugs: Guest Blog by Howard Sherman

Howard loves reading books as much as writing them. When he's not wiling away his day with words he also enjoy fine food and wine, rousing conversation, travel, golf, gambling and gourmet cooking that he both executes and eats with his wife and daughter.

http://www.malinche.net/suspensefiction.html

Howard Sherman is an 'implementer of interactive fiction'.  All of his books can be considered ebooks that you play or games that you read, thanks to the fact they are all 100% text based and yet require a computer, a smart phone or other tech gadget to enjoy.

Howard has graciously stopped by today to talk about writing villains in interactive fiction. I hope you will give him a warm welcome. If you would like to know more, you can visit his blog at: http://howardsherman.net/

Interactive Fiction Villains

Like any writer, I take great care and give much consideration to the villain in my novels.  It's a tricky balance writing a character who's evil machinations are simultaneously plausible yet unpredictable. 

Plausible in the sense the villain's decisions and actions make (relatively) perfect sense when fully unveiled and unpredictable in the sense that the reader should have only the vaguest of notions as to who the nemesis may be.

This becomes a whole lot more complicated in my arena as an Implementer of interactive fiction.  I have all of the same challenges any author of fiction has plus a couple of more to really keep things interesting:

1) Interactive fiction is non-linear, which means that the normal understanding of "beginning, middle and ending" doesn't apply.  Since you can investigate a crime scene one moment, go buy a bagel the next minute, then head over to police headquarters the next minute, and then decide to retrace your steps - the story is a vast area of unpredictable possibilities all driven by the reader.

2) Since the story is dynamic in the sense that the other characters in the story are also walking around of their own accord, performing actions in keeping with their own timetable and at times reacting to what you, the reader who has assumed the persona of the main character,  those characters (including the bad guys) can become capable of almost anything.

How do you write a villain that can just as easily keep tabs on you (as the good guy) as you (the main character good guy) can keep tabs on them?

I tend to keep my villains hiding in plain sight.  That means they can be anybody you'll meet in the story.  Then, to keep the reader guessing, I pepper in enough red herrings to make at least three characters prime suspects. But which one is the villain?

This is exactly what I did in my forthcoming interactive murder mystery Four Badges.  I wrote the entire novel around who did it, what they did and why they did it.  The only thing the reader knows starting out is that a sleepy little town in New Jersey way past the 'burbs wakes up to discover two prominent members of the local community were slaughtered in the safety of their own hones.

But that's it. Who did this? Why would they do this? Where are they now? What are they up to? From there I leave the reader guessing as they explore town, examine crime scenes, question witnesses and local townspeople in the quest to find the killer.

Along the way, I throw a few more curve balls to really keep things interested and mix it up for the reader.  I'm a big fan of the art of misdirection and consider it the most cherished tool in my author's toolbox.

At the end of the day, the villain's been discovered only after the reader discovers crucial details yielded only through keen observation while also, employing superior deductive reasoning to come up with the killer -- whose actions are perfectly plausible, yet far from predictable when all is said and done.

Book Review: A Mystery / Suspense Collection: Sweet

A Mystery/Suspense Collection Anthology: Sweet by Miss Mae

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A Mystery / Suspense Collection Anthology: Sweet would not be my first choice as a title for this anthology. The title is long, cumbersome, and lacks the real flavor of the book. The anthology was an interesting, well written, and diverse group of romantic suspense stories. Victory Tales Press is a Christian press, therefore, the four novellas are free of profanity, gratuitous violence, and graphic sex. I wouldn’t hesitate to give my mother a copy of this book. On the whole, the anthology holds up and is well worth reading.

Miss Penelope's Letters by Miss Mae opens the anthology. The only opening scene is unnecessarily italicized. Otherwise, it is an excellent story. Miss Penelope, a London doctor’s daughter, is filling in for Lord Wellington’s ill housekeeper and begins receiving unsigned letters. The writer demands that Penelope meet him in one of London’s most ill-reputed sections of town. When she dares to keep the assignation, she encounters trouble and a mystery man in a black mask. She must decide if the man behind the mask is truly a man of honor as he claims. It doesn’t help that his stolen kiss leaves her breathless and his presence makes her heart pound.

A Distant Call by Gerald Costlow takes readers deep into the mysterious wilds of the Appalachian Mountains and holds them spellbound by “the Call.” Jessy Corman, a young minister who has answered the call to preach, finds a church and a home in the mountains. He also finds Anna May Sherritt, a beautiful young mountain woman that locals believe to be a witch. Jessy doesn’t understand the dangers of his new home or the fear locals have of  the full moon. Anna May and her granny, know the mysteries of the mountain too well. Can they save Jessy from being the next victim of the call? To succeed, Anna May must solve the mystery of “the call” and save Jessy from being the next to disappear. If she succeeds what will happen to the new preacher if he falls under the spell of the local witch?

The Last of Her Kind by Cheryl Pierson is the story of an old Victrola and its place in the family. The Victrola is the cherished possession of Cassie's dying grandmother. Her father and new stepmother are fighting over the antique phonograph, which her stepmother is determine to get out of the house. During the fight Cassie discovers a frightening secret about the Victrola and its place in the family. Will this secret bring her broken family back together or destroy it? Cassie takes the Victrola into her grandmother’s room and together they play the music of love lost and found.

Dangerous Deception by Anne Patrick: Gwen Jacobs is the story of an investigative reporter who thrived on dangerous assignments, until the massacre of an African village. At first glance this story didn’t seem to fit with the others. The massacre is in the recent past, the magical elements of the previous two stories are absent, and the language of the story is very different. The story is of love and redemption. Gwen is offered a chance to become the kind of person she wants to be by accompanying Jack Peterson and his small group of humanitarians to report on the atrocities taking place amidst a civil war. Her chance is tainted by the past and her relationship with the owner of the newspaper that has given her this assignment. When her secrets are revealed, will she be able to overcome her past and build a future with Jack?

View all my reviews

Thursday's Thugs: Guest Blog by Mary Reed

Today I would like to welcome Mary Reed, one member of a dynamic husband and wife historical mystery writing team. Mary Reed and her husband, Eric Mayer, published several short Lord Chamberlain detections in mystery anthologies and in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine prior to 1999. One For Sorrow, the first full length novel about their protagonist, was published in 1999. They are currently working on the as yet untitled ninth entry in the series.

Their current book is titled Eight For Eternity. It is set in January 532, when mobs ruled Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire. Against a murderous backdrop lit by raging fires, John, Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Justinian, must find those seeking to use the Nika Riots to dethrone the emperor, untangling a web of intrigue in a city where death holds court at every corner and before escalating violence in the streets removes all hope of finding those he seeks.

Mary has graciously accepted my invitation to talk about one of her villains on Thursday's Thugs, Theodotus of Constantinople. Enjoy:

Four For A Boy, the prequel to John's adventures, relates how John regained his freedom and began his rise to great office. Theodotus, a major villain in the novel, was based upon an historical City Prefect of Constantinople.

According to Procopius' Secret History, Theodotus was much feared for his ruthlessness, particularly in putting down riots. It was also claimed he practiced magick. Theodotus was nicknamed the Pumpkin but Procopius gives no reason, leaving it open for authorial speculation.

We took Procopius' mini-portrait of a powerful and hated man who exhibited what my mother would call a nasty manner, changed his name to The Gourd, and described him thus:

Though he dressed like a peasant in leather breeches and a rough wool shirt, no one could have mistaken the broad-chested figure, shambling along as if weighed down by his enormous and asymmetrical head, set between wide shoulders without apparent benefit of a neck.

Some whispered he'd been kicked in the head by a horse as a youngster. Others said the misshapen head was a result of his mother easing her pregnancy with demonic potions. No one, however, said anything at all about the matter when within earshot of the man nicknamed the "Gourd".

Early in the book, the Gourd gives a banquet at which he insults his high-born guests by giving them cooked gourds to eat before performing an apparently magickal feat. Having freed a caged dove he proposed dropping into a scalding pitch, he plunges his hand into the bubbling mixture.

His hand emerges unscathed -- an explanation is provided later in the novel -- and the Gourd declares:

"This is the indestructible hand that reaches into the darkest alleys to choke the life from the murderous bastards who lurk there! Why do you think they whisper my name with such dread? They know my powers. They fear me. And rightly so!"

At that point news arrives of a riot breaking out in the city, an event allowing him to display his vicious nature and confirming his boastful statement was not mere words. We do not often feature violence on stage, but in this instance the Gourd illuminates the scene by burning a captured rioter alive:

Upending the pot he doused the [rioter] with lamp oil. The man began to struggle frantically as the viscous liquid soaked into his clothing and trickled down, forming a puddle.

Theodotus stepped away and casually kicked one of the lamps illuminating the scene towards the obelisk. The lamp skittered on its side, rolling in a tiny wheel of flames to come to rest against the man's oil sodden cloak. A thin line of red snaked slowly along it and began climbing up the man's chest.

Then the oil exploded into a ball of flame, inside which a dark figure writhed and screamed.

While the Gourd is only briefly mentioned in the Secret History, he made such an impression it was inevitable he would show up in our series.

Although it does not occur in Four For A Boy, the fate of the Gourd is known. According to the Secret History he was accused of causing a near fatal illness to Emperor Justinian, and of being a magician and a poisoner. While the charges are probably untrue, evidence against the Gourd was obtained by torturing his friends. However, one courageous high-ranking official spoke out, declaring the Gourd innocent, and as a result the Gourd was exiled rather than executed. When he later learned men were being sent to assassinate him, he fled to a church, took sanctuary, and spent the rest of his life there.

Weekend Writer: Butt in Chair -- Brain Missing

Has anyone missed me? Since very few people leave comments on my blog, I'm never sure it would be noticed if I'm gone. That has been put to the test. Last weekend, this weekend writer turned into a hibernating bear. I slept until coughing woke me, then went foraging for drugs, followed by more sleep. Which means there was no post on my writing weekend, because that would have required me to write.

I must have looked as bad as I sounded. As I hacked and coughed my way through a workweek that could not be missed, Sarah took over the blog and did an excellent guest post on villains from the Darkover series. If you haven't read that post, please do. Her insight into these bad boys is first rate.

Now that it seems I am not going to die from this miserable illness, I got my butt back in the desk chair and went back to work. Today, for the first time in a week, I have been working on my novel. Well, I've been attempting to work on my novel. Once the cough syrup, antihistamines, decongestants, steroids, and headache medicines wear off, we will see if anything I've written stands up to edits.

It really doesn't matter if what I have been writing is garbage or not. What matters is the effort to get back to writing. Contrary to popular belief, books do not spring magically onto the shelf. Every single one of them had to be written. There are times when the writing flows easily. Most of the time, the words are plucked from overworked brains, squeezed in between other jobs, and, more often than not, have to go through several revisions before they are fit to be read by an editor.

So here I am, folks, banging away at the keyboard in a drug induced state while hoping that the words on the page make sense when the drugs are no longer needed. I know that somewhere in my foggy head there is a brain. If only I can find it and make it crank out another page or two... Wish me luck.

Thursday's Thugs: a Double Standard

Hello, I'm Sarah Glenn, guest posting on Gwen's blog today. We're going to take a little departure from mystery for today's discussion of fictional villains.

When it comes to books, movies, television shows, etc., there are villains we hate, villains we love to hate... and villains we just love. Marion Zimmer Bradley created two of the most polarizing characters in SF/fantasy fiction with her Darkover series: Dyan Ardais and Bard di Asturien.

Don't know what Darkover is? Oversimplification: Darkover is a planet inhabited by a lost human colony. Through interbreeding with a local humanoid species, some descendants of the colony were born with psychic abilities. Those descendants gave rise to family dynasties, the Comyn, who rule the inhabitable part of the planet.

Dyan Ardais is usually presented as a villain or at least a dangerous man in a group of the novels, but dies heroically. He uses his psychic powers to try coercing teenage boys into sleeping with him. He had an unpleasant childhood, overshadowed by an insane father.

Bard di Asturien is the hero of a standalone novel in the series. He makes several missteps, but does 'the right thing' by the end of the book. He uses his psychic powers to coerce women into sleeping with him. He had a marginally pleasant childhood, overshadowed by his illegitimate status and ambitious relatives.

Dyan stops his depredations once they are publicly revealed. He makes public reparations.

Bard di Asturien stops his depredations after raping the woman he wanted to marry. She psychically shows him, in detail, how awful his acts are and how his blindness to others has screwed up not only his relationships with women, but with everyone else in his life. Bard is guilt-ridden and resolves to make up for everything he can.

The majority of Darkover fans are female. They love Dyan Ardais. Many fanfic stories have been written about women who convince Dyan to sleep with their Mary Sue character. They also despise Bard di Asturien, who developed a much greater desire to right his wrongs and become a better person than Dyan every did. Meanwhile, Bard di Asturien's story is one of the few Darkover novels I have heard straight men say they like.

What's the difference? Female fans of Dyan talk about his painful past, his doomed love for Kennard Alton, his sense of honor (except where young toothsome men are concerned), the aura of dark power about him that made Darth Vader sexy, too. The same women often view Bard as pond scum, craven, evil. They ignore Bard's sense of honor, mostly in waging war. His reform at the end is a plot device by the author, wanting to end the book with the hero's redemption. I think they underestimate MZB at that point, who in her prime was very good at creating complex and compelling characters.

I think it comes down to whose ox is getting gored. Bard's story is one of the few Darkover novels I don't read over and over again, because it pisses me off. I think if he wanted to really show his regret about forcing himself on those women, he would have castrated himself like the priests of Cybele. This is probably because I, like other female readers, pictured myself as one of his victims.

Dyan does have a certain amount of Darth Vader coolness, but is he really so much better? Or does he provoke less hostility from me because I'm 'safe' from him? How would I feel about Dyan if I were a teenage boy reading The Heritage of Hastur, whether straight or gay?

What if we turned the concept upside down? What if the villain were a woman who forced men to sleep with her? We might picture a kinky dominatrix, which would probably sell well... but what if we're talking about an ugly woman? Worse, one with herpes or something worse? How about the woman being a member of an alien species that has vagina dentata, and the sexual coercion is how she gets her meals?

Oh, wait. It's been done. OMFG.

--

Thursday's Thugs: The Manipulator

The manipulator as a villain is one of the more interesting types of criminal, because the nature of a manipulator's evil is revealed through the actions of others. The manipulator is a puppet master, pulling strings that make his hapless victims dance. He or she would never soil a hand by actually committing a crime, but beware that you are not persuaded to do his dirty work. Horror uses manipulators very well. Stephen King's Needful Things is a prime example. Mystery is not without its manipulators, though.

When I consider manipulators, none impresses me more than X in Agatha Christie's Curtain. In many ways Curtain is a very sad book. Poirot and Hastings have returned to Styles. Styles is not the stately country estate it once was. Poirot is very old. Considering that he was a retired Belgian detective at the beginning of the series, 'ancient' would probably be a more accurate description. He is confined to a wheelchair and suffering with a failing heart. Hastings is mourning the death of his wife and worried over the romantic entanglements of his daughter. Into this, Christie introduces X.

Poirot knows the identity of X and tells Hastings that a murder is about to occur, but not the identity of the victim. He gives Hastings newspaper clippings of five murder cases, each with a different person convicted for the crime. X is connected to every case, but is not the actual killer. Poirot steadfastly refuses to confide the identity of X to Hastings, because Hastings' face would reveal the truth.

The book makes us question whether X is the master puppeteer Poirot believes, or if, at last, the great detective has lost the deductive powers of his "little gray cells." Christie's final twist is a surprising bit of manipulation that saddens us as it restores our faith in her storytelling ability. Few writers today have the skill to craft such an excellent example of the inner workings of a manipulator's mind.

Lincoln’s Jump into the National Spotlight - KMPH Fox 26 Central San Joaquin Valley News Source in Fresno, California Entertainment, News, Sports and Weather |

Lincoln’s Jump into the National Spotlight - KMPH Fox 26 Central San Joaquin Valley News Source in Fresno, California Entertainment, News, Sports and Weather |

Lincoln may have represented Illinois in the US Senate, but his roots run deep in Kentucky's Bluegrass. Since I am always interested in historical articles about famous Kentuckians of the 19th Century, I thought I would share this story with my readers.

Enjoy Lincoln's famous leap.

By: Bill Coate

Abraham Lincoln's first success in the world of politics came when he won a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives. He learned the craft quickly and by 1840, he was in a life and death struggle with the Democrats over the Illinois State Bank in Springfield. This set the stage for one of the most bizarre episodes in the career of Abraham Lincoln.

Now it just so happened that Illinois was in deep financial trouble in 1840. Its bank had given out more paper money than it had gold and silver in reserve. That's when the Democrats saw their chance to destroy the despised institution. They agreed to allow it to suspend its obligation to exchange its paper money for specie, but only for the remainder of the legislative session.

That's when Lincoln determined to keep the legislature in session in order to buy precious time for the bank to find a way to survive, and that's how he jumped into the national limelight on December 5, 1840. On that date, the Democrats proposed an early adjournment, knowing this would bring a speedy end to the State Bank. The Whigs tried to counter by leaving the capitol building before the vote, but the doors were locked. That's when Lincoln made his move. He headed for the second story, opened a window and jumped to the ground!

For a while Lincoln's escape denied the House its quorum, but it didn't last long. He was returned to the chambers and the House voted to adjourn.

Although Abraham Lincoln wasn't able to prevent the vote on adjournment that day, his determined antics put him in the media spotlight for the first time. The newspapers couldn't resist telling their readers of "Mr. Lincoln's celebrated leap" from the 2nd story and how it "caused him no harm because his legs reached nearly from the window to the ground."

They knew they had not heard the last of Abraham Lincoln. Any politician who was willing to jump out of a window on principle was bound to amount to something some day.

Weekend Writer: Procrastinating or Promoting

This Saturday, instead of writing we had a photo shoot for Sarah's author photo: that all important picture that will appear in her book. You might think that it doesn't take a lot of time to get a picture made, but you'd be mistaken. Sarah had a visit with her hair dresser Saturday morning, and a former Miss West Virginia was brought in as a beauty consultant for make-up and wardrobe. The shoot lasted about two hours and involved several locations around Lexington.

Sunday, Sarah worked on updating my website while I worked on chapbooks for the Emerald Coast Writers Conference goodie bags. I can't attend the Emerald Coast Conference this year, but the chapbooks will be there representing me.

My chapbooks are hand-made, quarter-page books that contain a short Nessa Donnelly mystery story. Quarter-page chapbooks are just the right size to stick in a pocket, which made them very popular with travelers during the 1800's. For me they are a small piece of history that I can share with readers. It is a little something extra that I give to fans when I attend conferences, and sometimes send to conferences that I cannot attend in person. I love doing them, but they take time.

This was my writing weekend. I didn't get a single paragraph finished on my novel. There was probably a little procrastination involved. I am not above goofing off a little after a long week at the office. Still, there was a lot of promotional work accomplished this weekend. I don't feel too guilty about taking a weekend off to promote my book and help Sarah get her own book ready.

Thursday's Thugs: The Femme Fatale

What's not to love about the femme fatale? Therein lies the trap. These sexy, seductive, irresistible bad girls ensnare the lovers into invisible bondage. The hapless fools that fall for their charms will do anything for love. We readers can do nothing to help as good men are led into compromising, dangerous, even deadly situations by the beautiful face of evil.

The femme fatale is the anti-girl next door. There is nothing clean cut about this babe. She is beautiful, well endowed, seductive in every way. Often the femme fatale is foreign, and more exotic than that wholesome beauty down the street. She is a woman of mystery. A guy just can't help falling for her charms. When he does, she will pull him into a life of the most exquisite torture.

A lot of noir mystery novels use the femme fatale as a double-crossing seductress who leads the hero into trouble. Heroes take a lot of beatings and the occasional bullet wound on her behalf. It isn't surprising that Raymond Chandler loved to use these bad girls in his novels. I don't blame him. Done right a femme fatale makes the story. I must admit though, my personal favorite is the satire of the femme fatale, Jessica Rabbit. She wasn't a bad girl, just drawn that way.

Making Kentucky Southern

Before the Civil War, Kentucky was more Western than Southern. When the North and South collided over slavery, the heart was ripped from Kentucky. The state quickly declared neutrality, but neutrality in principle was much easier than neutrality in practice. By autumn, it was clear that the state would have to choose one side or the other. Uncertain of the vote, Union troops surrounded the capitol and refused to allow the legislature to meet until pro-Union forces had strong-armed enough legislators to win the vote. In one case, Pinkerton agents kidnapped a pro-Confederacy legislator and placed him between Union and Confederate lines in the hopes he would become a casualty of the war.

Voting to remain loyal didn’t end Kentucky’s deep divide. Union sympathizers organized Home Guards, Confederate sympathizers organized into State Guard militia units. Both groups poured money and supplies into their causes. Among the casualties of the conflict was the racing industry. Problems for racing interest arose when horse hungry armies began confiscating Kentucky’s beloved thoroughbreds. General Morgan, a native of Kentucky’s Bluegrass Region, was particularly good at finding and stealing the state’s prized racehorses. Racing stables had little redress for their losses.

The government was impotent at preventing the flow of horses and goods to the armies. The state house in Frankfort was surrounded by federal troops, and the legislature was prevented from meeting until President Lincoln was sure the state would not vote for secession. Meanwhile, President Davis and Confederate supporters set up a shadow government in Bowling Green and sent delegates to the southern legislature. Eventually the Union Army moved in to take charge, but dividing lines had already been drawn in each family. Through the long bloody war, Kentucky citizens bled through uniforms of both blue and gray.

Lee’s surrender may have marked the end of the war, but Kentucky’s troubles were destined to erupt in an array of new ways. The state government was in tatters, and readjustment (a word invented for Kentucky to justify martial law in a state that had remained in the Union) devastated the farming industry. Harsh fines and taxes imposed by the federal troops escalated to the point of bankruptcy for many Kentuckians. Washington compounded the problem by treating the state as a conquered territory.

The excesses of the federal government following the Civil War helped transform Kentucky into a solid Southern state. Within ten years of the war, travelers would be hard pressed to find any Kentuckian who admitted fighting for the North.

Weekend Writer: The Agatha's

Malice Domestic, the mystery writer's convention  that celebrates the traditional mystery, is coming up in April. This week the nominees for the Agatha Awards were announced. I have been sending congratulatory messages to several of my Sisters in Crime who have been nominated for Agatha Awards. Getting nominated is a big deal for a mystery writer. One day I would love to make this list, but alas, this is not my year. Considering the quality of the work on this list, I don't envy the job ahead for those choosing the winner. There are some truly outstanding books on the list below:

Best Novel:
Stork Raving Mad by Donna Andrews
Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard
Drive Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan
Truly, Madly by Heather Webber

Best First Novel:
The Long Quiche Goodbye by Avery Aames
Murder at the PTA by Laura Alden
Maid of Murder by Amanda Flower
Full Mortality by Sasscer Hill
Diamonds for the Dead by Alan Orloff

Best Non-fiction:
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum
Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: 50 Years of Mysteries in the Making by John Curran
Sherlock Holmes for Dummies by Stephen Doyle & David A. Crowder
Have Faith in Your Kitchen by Katherine Hall Page
Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang

Best Short Story:
"Swing Shift" by Dana Cameron, Crimes by Moonlight
"Size Matters" by Sheila Connolly, Thin Ice
"Volunteer of the Year" by Barb Goffman, Chesapeake Crimes: They Had it Comin'
"So Much in Common" by Mary Jane Maffini, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - Sept./Oct. 2010
"The Green Cross" by Liz Zelvin, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - August 2010

Best Children's/Young Adult:
Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer by John Grisham
Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus by R. L. LaFevers
The Agency: A Spy in the House by Y. S. Lee
Virals by Kathy Reichs
The Other Side of Dark by Sarah Smith

Good luck to all of you, particularly to my fellow GUPPYS who made the list this year. Have a great time in Washington. 

Thursday's Thugs: The Dark Side of 80's Excess

Not long ago I talked about the sociopath next door. This week in Thursday's Thugs I would like to take that a step further and talk about a fictional sociopath that represented a generation.

The "Me Generation" that came to power in the 1980's wallowed in excess. Yuppie sensibility was at its height. American culture was about style, glitter, flash, power and pizazz. In my opinion nobody captured the dark side of the self-indulgence of the generation better than Bret Easton Ellis in American Psycho. Ellis's Patrick Bateman has all the outward trimmings of a yuppie hero; young, handsome, athletic, and filthy rich. He has climbed to the top of his wall street firm. His life is filled with parties, powerful deals, and all the trappings of success. He was just the sort of man the culture idealized.

Patrick just has one little quirk. For him, the rape, torture, and murder of prostitutes and homeless people is his hobby. He will occasionally expand his hobby to include a cop or even a child, but mostly he sticks to people who won't be missed. If you haven't figured it out by now, Patrick is a raving lunatic. He is very good at keeping up appearances and does a fantastic job of epitomizing manhood in the 1980's.

Taking a close look at Patrick Bateman forces readers to take a look at the dark places inside their own souls. Outwardly he has everything. Inside, though, the American psycho is tormented by his own hollow existence. His life, his success, everything the world admires about him leaves him numb. For him, murder is the only release from the banality of his empty life. It is the quest for something, anything, that will allow him to feel.

Money can't by Bateman happiness, but for a long time it allows him to get away with murder.

Weekend Writer: Writers Group Participation

I usually post this on Sunday evening, but this weekend I was out of town until Sunday evening and decided to catch up on the chores instead of blogging. Real life does get in the way of writing.

My trip out of town was partly for work. On the second Saturday of the month I participate in a wonderful writer's group that is part of our Sisters in Crime chapter. This past Saturday the group was critiquing a few chapters of my work in progress. I left the meeting with lots of positive comments on the work, but also lots of opinions on how to make my story stronger. The opinions are important. It is equally important to me to remember that they are "opinions." In the end, I must look at each comment and decide if I agree or not.

There are countless ways to tell the same story. In each, the essential elements will be the same, but the way they are presented is very different. For instance, a change in whose point of view is used to tell the story changes what is revealed and when. I could hand my plot to each writer in the group, and their stories would be very different from mine.

This is not to say that I am going to ignore everything my SiC writing friends had to say. I am going to make some significant changes based on their feedback. I have lots of work to do between Saturday and the next time I give them chapters. Not all that work is simple stuff like moving a line or rewriting a sentence for clarity. I have a subplot that wants to take over the story--that's no easy fix. There is also a pesky problem of second bookitis (those places where I know the character so well that I don't explain it clearly enough for the first time reader). I need to go in and reintroduce those characters in a way that doesn't repeat what I did in the first book of my series, but still gives someone who hasn't read Circle of Dishonor a feel for who those characters are. Like I said, I have lots of work to do, but in the end the book will be better. That is what this process is all about. I want every book to be the very best story I can write.

Now for the confession: part of what got in the way of writing this weekend was the need for a break. My spouse and I stayed over in Louisville for a nice dinner, a soak in a hot tub, and a little pampering by the hotel staff. I highly recommend getting away from the computer now and then. It does wonders for my outlook on making those revisions.

Thursday's Thugs: The Criminal Mastermind

Anyone who watches the news or reads a newspaper knows that most criminals are not masterminds. In fact, criminals are usually less intelligent than the average person. But don't you just love fiction with a great criminal mastermind?

My personal favorite is Dortmunder. There are others, of course, but none can compare to John Dortmunder in giving his all for a plan that is bound to go wrong. Donald Westlake came up with a wonderful criminal mastermind, then surrounded him with idiots. The Dortmunder capers are fresh and funny. Even though I know that his plans are ingenious, I read each Dortmunder story waiting to see which of his accomplices will screw up the perfect crime, when the other shoe will drop, and how how he will come out of it.

It is no wonder that Westlake won the Edgar for "Too Many Crooks." It is one of the funniest and best plotted short stories I have ever discovered. I deeply regret that Donald Westlake is no longer with us. I could use another fifty years of new adventures for a criminal mastermind doomed to have his brilliant capers go awry.

Weekend Writer: Fighting the Hard Fight

I joined Sisters in Crime several years before my novel was written because their efforts to promote the work of women mystery writers are important. The tendency of the literary world to look down on genre fiction, and women writers in particular, is not new. Part of that is snobbery. There are many genre books that are better written and more literary than reviewers realize. Part of it is sexism. Blind studies have proven that when the gender of the writer isn't known, women rank much higher than when the readers know they are reading a woman's manuscript. Knowing the thinking behind ignoring excellent books by talented women writers doesn't change the fact that no reviews, and bad reviews, hurt.

It is a difficult, often thankless job, to write. Many of us are struggling to get reviews, to have our work noticed, and to carve out a place for ourselves in the writing world. Most of us are working a day job, and juggling our writing and promoting with hectic lives.

For all my hard working Sisters in Crime, I am posting the following review. I found it comforting to know  that long before Sisters in Crime, there were women working to make mystery fiction one of the best selling forms of fiction on the market. They suffered through the bad reviews and continued to work. Thirteen books into her writing career, mystery writing foremother Anna Katherine Green was still fighting the hard fight.
In February of 1895 the following blistering review of Anna Katherine Green's novel "The Doctor, his Wife, and the Clock" appeared in Yale Literary Magazine.  I am including it in my writing blog as a reminder of the need for writers, particularly women writers, to develop a thick skin and keep turning out great books.

The works of Anna Katherine Green are always sought by a large number of readers who care little about how their literary dishes are served up as long as the dishes themselves are good. Anna Katherine Green is perhaps the best story teller in her line--a line which is almost unnecessary to say is neither literary nor intellectual. To make a long railroad journey seem shorter, or to while away a few stray half hours, her books do very well. If one does not get wildly excited over them, one does not at least throw them aside unfinished.

Her latest soar into the realms of literature is called "The Doctor, his Wife, and the Clock." The title is decidedly the most interesting portion of the book, and it certainly stimulates curiosity. The story is vastly inferior to "The Leavenworth Case" and is not equal in continuity or interest to the thirteen other books which have come from her pen. Its redeeming quality is its brevity, for, while one can see into the mystery and beyond very early in the story one is tempted to finish it because it is not long.

Anna Katherine Green never draws characters; she merely introduces a host of people in order that her readers may guess who is the murderer. (Of course there is invariably a murder in her stories.) To anyone who has contracted the very bad habit of persistently perusing her works it must be a constant source of wonder that he himself is alive, for murders must seem an every day and perfectly natural occurrence to him. Of the people in "The Doctor, his Wife and the Clock," the clock has more to do with the story than any of the human beings, and is decidedly more entertaining than the majority of them. The doctor is tiresome, his wife is possible still more tiresome, and the detective was evidently born a fool and apparently never got over it.

The denouement of the story is clever and is well related: it is an oasis in a desert. It is not, strictly speaking a denouement, for the rest of the book was without doubt written around this incident. It goes without staying that the story is wildly absurdly improbable, and this is the reason why it fails of its object, which was presumably to be pathetic. The volume is one of the "Autonym Library Series," heretofore so excellent.

Thursday's Thugs: Bad to the Bone

I have read very few books with bad guys that were utterly without any redeeming qualities. As a writer, it is hard for me to write such a villain without leaving him one dimensional. A classic villain of that stripe, the kind we really want to see get what's coming to them, is rare. Most of the time we see this type of bad guy show up as a nemesis of comic book heroes. But if you look at the book "The Sociopath Next Door," you can get a better picture of how this could be done in a novel.

To be fair, I haven't attempted to write my villains this way yet, but I am considering it as an option. I have done this on occasion with murder victims. In my work in progress, the murder victim is the kind of man that brings out the urge to kill in everyone he meets. It is easier to make such a man the victim, because all his evil is past. Our contempt for him is blunted by the fact he already got what was coming to him. We are free to turn our attention and our emotional responses to the characters that have reason to want him dead. Making such a man the villain gives us a completely different sort of book.

Unfairness and bullying are part of what makes this villain tick. It's easy to have a sneaking sympathy for an underdog, even if he's evil; but when someone starts with all the advantages and uses them to crush his opponents ruthlessly, we delight in seeing him get his comeuppance. That kind of bad guy must be humorless, friendless, and void of both empathy and the ability to love. I think that is the key to villain who is "bad to the bone." He must be someone who has a driving need, nothing exists outside of his personal wants. He will go to any lengths to win.

Why would I write such a villain? Because somewhere in the back of my mind is the nagging question of whether or not I have the ability to do it well. I keep thinking that there must be a way to write someone so clinical, corrupt and utterly ruthless that we have to like him just a little, because he is having so much fun making everyone else suffer.

Voices In Mystery - Through the Eyes of Authors

During 2010's Magna cum Murder, Ball State professor Nancy Carlson interviewed Gwen Mayo about her novel, Circle of Dishonor.


See more of Professor Carlson's author interviews on her YouTube page.

Thursday's Thugs: Bad by Circumstance

We often hear about "victim mentality," which is blamed for keeping people in bad situations/relationships/circumstances. As a writer, I have used this kind of thinking in characters. In my current work in progress, the wife of the murder victim has been abused for years. Growing up in Eastern Kentucky, it wasn't uncommon to see women like her. I have known several women who remained in abusive relationships because they either accepted the abuse as being their fault or because they couldn't see a way out. I have even known a few who reached the breaking point and struck back against the abuser. Under ordinary circumstances, these people would not kill: they truly believed they had to do something.

I am sure anyone reading this blog could give me examples of good people who turned to violence because they saw no other way out. My favorite fictional account is in Susan Glaspell's classic mystery story "A Jury of Her Peers." I love the way that all through the story the menfolk are stumbling over clues the women piece together while talking about quilts, preserves, and other womanly occupations. The solution to what happened and the decision of the women not to reveal the circumstances that led to murder shocked readers at the time.

Perhaps Glaspell's conclusion was so shocking to Victorian sensibilities because the story is loosely based on the real life murder of John Hossack. The sad saga played out in court, where interestingly enough the prosecution raised the issue of abuse in the home as motive rather than a mitigating factor in the crime. We may never know if Hossack's wife actually killed him. Sentiment at the time was that if she didn't commit the murder she knew who did. She was convicted of first degree murder, a year later the Iowa Supreme Court overturned her conviction, a second trial led to a hung jury.

Does the "bad by circumstance" story still work today?

I believe it does. A few years ago I used this type of plot from a male perspective. I had a construction worker lose his job because a busybody accused him of indecent exposure. His wife died because he could not afford her medical care without insurance. He murdered the woman who cost him his wife. These circumstances won't be repeated. I ended the story when his boss figured it out, but decided not to tell the police.

Weekend Writer: Writing with a Partner

This weekend I began working on a story with my spouse on a new short story. For those of you worrying about when my next novel is coming out, don't. I didn't take any of my usually writing time to work on the short story. I was just working extra hard (grin). You do believe me, don't you?

Sarah and I teamed up to do one other short story a couple of years ago. Working together tested our egos, but the result was a story we really like. So, here we go again.

I don't know how other people approach writing with a partner, but for us it works best for us when Sarah takes the lead. We pick a story that has two lead characters with different backgrounds. Before we start working we toss around ideas until we hit upon one that both of us would be comfortable with writing. Then we work out plot details and character backgrounds together. After that Sarah, who has a stronger grasp of the mechanics of writing, takes over for a while. When she is ready, I come in and write my character, tweaking hers when necessary. After that, there's a lot of tweaking each other's work until it becomes hard to tell who wrote a particular line.

Does that sound confusing? Sometimes it is confusing. There are also times when we disagree about how something should be written. The key to doing a collaboration successfully is to keep the disagreements from becoming fights. Writing together means leaving your ego at the door. It comes down to remembering that the overall story is more important than the line a writing partner thinks should be cut. We did this successfully once. I think we can do it again.

Thursday's Thugs: When Good Guys Turn out Bad

How do you feel when the people you expect to heroic turn out to be the thugs? We've all seen it done in real life and fiction. It isn't hard for me to believe in rogue cops. After all, I live in Lexington, home of the Bluegrass Conspiracy. Freewheeling practices with undercover police in the 1970's drug trade did a lot of damage to the reputation of the Lexington-Fayette County Police. In the era when I write, the Lexington Police were up to their eyeballs in graft and corruption. Many officers and city officials were members of the Klan. Still, there are times when I just hate what a writer does with their heroes.

One of the most disappointing turns in a story involved Thomas Harris' character Clarice stopped chasing Hannibal and joined him in cannibalism. Really? After all she had done to stop Hannibal, Harris has them join forces? What was he thinking?

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against the tarnished badge as a plot line. Some of the best thugs have been wearing a uniform. L.A. Confidential did a wonderful job with bad cops as the villains. What I hate is when the good guys turn bad. For me, taking someone who has done years of fighting crime and turning them to the "dark side" is a disappointment I won't forgive. Write your plot that way if you must, but as a reader, you've lost me.

Weekend Writer: Two Minds are Better than One

My spouse's birthday was this weekend, so writing time took a back seat. This doesn't mean that I spent the weekend ignoring my book. Two more chapters went through the editing process, and since this is a holiday weekend, writing is on the agenda for tomorrow. Birthdays and holidays don't change the fact that there's lots of work to do and never enough time to complete every task on my list.

Even when we take a break from our respective computer screens, we aren't quite taking a break from writing. Over lunch, we discussed her work in progress and mine.

These discussions are important. The writing process is often a solitary effort, but too much alone time can lead to tunnel vision. Having someone to bounce ideas off of is a tremendous asset to me in developing my project. Putting ideas of how a character should feel or act into words forces me to clarify what I have in mind. Questions make me flesh out the character, adding depth and richness to my original idea.

My skills character building, world building, and plot building have all been helped by having Sarah here to listen and question my ideas. I would like to think that she finds my suggestions, comments, and questions equally helpful. 

Thursday's Thugs: What makes a "good" bad guy?

There are a lot of mystery readers who think that a mystery is only as good as the villain. With that in mind, what makes a good bad guy? For me, the villains that stand out are the ones that come alive on the page, they are unique in their skulduggery.  In comic books you can get away with the evil genius, but mysteries require something a bit closer to real life. Give me a villain that is a hero in his own mind. I want someone who has lost something of value, someone smart and capable. Give me a villain who gave in to a moment of weakness, and now is trying to keep others from finding out at any cost.

Heroes are important. In the end, I want the hero to win, but victory should come at a price. Heap trouble on the hero.

A good villain will find the smallest openings, drive the knife deep, and twist it hard. A writer worth their salt can give me a scoundrel that is one step ahead of the hero and the reader right up to the very end.Why? Because the best villains not only vex the hero to the limits of endurance they surprise and misdirect the reader with unexpected turns and twists of the plot.

In a good mystery the bad guy makes the story. It is on the shoulders of villainy to carry us into darkness so the hero can bring us light. So give a round of applause to those hard working scoundrels. Where would mystery be without them?

Weekend Writer: Popcorn and PJ's

Weekend writers don't have the luxury of sitting at their computers for hours on end. Our day jobs eat up the weekdays. Writing has to be worked into a schedule that includes household chores, errands that can't be accomplished during the workweek, and a never ending list of commitments outside of  the house. I am hoping one day to be a full time writer, but for now I battle through days at the office and leave the writing to an occasional hour in the evening and every chunk of the weekend I can grab.

This weekend has been an exception to the normal craziness of trying to make everything else in my life work in a way that leaves me time to write. The snow outside keeps would-be visitors at home. Hobbling around on crutches with a locked brace on my left leg prevents much housework. This weekend, I get to devote most of my time to writing.

My spouse kindly read a couple chapters aloud for me this morning. I love it when I can just sit there and listen to the flow of words, pausing only when something strikes my ear wrong. Together, we marked corrections and talked about possible changes.

It is wonderful when I get to sit around in my PJ's with my feet up and plot, write, edit, or attack any of those other tasks that make ideas into books. Today, a bowl of popcorn, a mug of hot chocolate, and a stack of chapters to edit will soon be waiting by my recliner. This is a day to remember.

I wish every weekend could be this relaxed and this productive, though I could do without the injured leg. Unfortunately, in the life of a weekend writer this is the exception to the rule. There are a dozen other demands on my time lurking in the background: promotional events for my current book are on the calendar, as are important family obligations. The chores I'm putting off until I recover from my little surfing accident will catch up with me. It isn't all working in my PJ's, but I am going to make the most out of today.

Thursday's Thugs: Knights of the Golden Circle

A group of five men met in Lexington, Kentucky on Independence Day of 1854 and took the first steps toward organizing the Knights of the Golden Circle. They placed a compass on a map of the Americas, with its center point being Havana, Cuba and drew a circle that encompassed the entire Southern United States, portions of Mexico, Central and South America. These men claimed they would unite in a Golden Circle and take over the production of cotton, coffee, sugar, chocolate, rice and tobacco. Through controlling these New World crops they believed they could control the world.

Dr. George Washington Lafayette Bickley was the moving force behind organizing the Knights of the Golden Circle. He and his friends supported the reopening  and expanding of the slave trade, buying up huge tracts of land in the countries he wished to control, and most of all, building a Southern-controlled empire around the plantation model.

A lot of Southerners would take exception to the Knights of the Golden Circle being called thugs, but the bad guys in Circle of Dishonor deserve the name. The KGC was behind a rash of payroll robberies in Kentucky and Ohio. These robberies probably led to the rumors of a secret stash of Confederate gold that the KGC was charged with protecting. They were also behind the reported 5th column of the Confederacy. John Hunt Morgan believed that the KGC would rise up and take arms when he led his command into Kentucky and Indiana.

Counting on thieves, profiteers, and assassins to form an army was a mistake that cost Morgan dearly. The KGC plot to burn New York City was closer to their type of rebellion. The one Castle that did take action, by stealing a train and attempting to invade Mexico, gave up without firing a shot before their train got out of Kansas.

The KGC appeared on the scene with a plot to assassinate Lincoln before his inaugural train could reach Washington. Nobody knows if the story is accurate or if it was the invention of Alan Pinkerton to establish himself as the newly elected president's bodyguard. Certainly there were members of the KGC in Maryland, but how effective they were at that stage of their growth is impossible to know.

By the end of the Civil War, the KGC had established Castles (local chapters of the Knights) in every Southern state. At their peak, there were 20 Castles in Texas alone. Kentucky is estimated to have produced 400,000 members of the KGC. The population of the state and the pro-Union factions active in Kentucky make me believe that the actual number of members was far lower.

One of the problems I have run into when researching the KGC is the "Golden Ticket." A group of New York con men managed to travel through most of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois selling gold/yellow tickets that could be presented to General Morgan and his men to would keep them from stealing horses and other livestock from Confederate sympathizers. But as one parses through fact and fiction, the pieces clearly form a picture of men intent upon ruling the world at any cost.

What Makes us the Writers We Are?

It was a combination of things that led to my storytelling. There weren't many books available in our house. There was no library or bookstore in town, except the small school libraries that were available once every other week for about thirty minutes. I read through the section of our school library within the first month of my school year, about three times by Christmas break, and had nothing left for the spring session. My family was too poor for magazines or outside entertainments. The best I could manage to feed my imagination after the holidays was to spend my evenings with an old set of the World Book Encyclopedia. All these obstacles and others came together to make me look inside for an escape from the ordinary.

I suppose I owe a debt to World Book for the flights of imagination it inspired. Far away places, historic events, and interesting people populated those pages. From those books, and the stories I read, I created adventures in my head. Long before I ever started writing, I told stories to my sister. A little boy who lived in a coconut shell entertained my little sister as she fell asleep at night. Princesses and spaceships, generals and giants wandered through our bedroom until she fell asleep and I crawled under the covers with a flashlight and the next volume.

A lot of things have changed since I moved away from that small town in Eastern Kentucky. I've traveled half-way around the world, and seen most of the places I read about. The stars above Tobago inspired poetry as did the school children of Nicaragua who studied in an open field while we built them a new school. I don't know if those nights of reading the encyclopedia by flashlight sparked my interest in poetry, or history, or the wanderlust that took me far from home. I do know that poetry inspired other writing.

Flash stories were my first love. They are lean, full of imagery, and as close to poetry as stories can be. Later I tried short stories, and then a novel. I don't know if I would have been a different sort of writer if I had come from another background. Maybe... but maybe the blend of history and mystery would have called to me from whatever path I followed.

We mystery writers are a strange group. We eavesdrop on other people's conversations. We visit places with an eye toward hiding a body or committing a murder there. I'm not sure what makes us who we are, but I would love to hear your opinion.

Writers on Vacation

Sarah and I left our house in the care of a friend and are on vacation in Tarpon Springs, Florida until January 5. The trouble with writers on vacation is that there isn't really a vacation from writing. Ideas crop up when they crop up. Our Sisters in Crime chapter is putting together an anthology of stories about the bourbon industry in Kentucky. After each of us had finished a story on our own, the group suggested we try writing together. Now here we are discussing setting a novel in Florida that involves the characters we came up with for our short story.

No, the characters are not vampires. What we write is very different. For us to write together, she had to step back in time and do an historical mystery. The characters fit with my historical mystery writing, but were far enough removed from the time I usually set stories in to be comfortable for her to contribute equally to the research. The story was discussed for some time before we came up with writing a short story involving a couple of World War I nurses. She had a great aunt who was a World War I nurse, and we drew from her experiences in France to develop the idea. It worked so well that we are planning to visit the North Carolina archives, where here great-aunt's papers are kept, to do more research on what it was like to be a nurse at that time.

Does this mean either of us are giving up the characters we write?

No. Each of us will continue to work on the novels we have in progress. We each have short story ideas, on of which is an idea we may work together on.

Fortunately we work with the same publisher. We are hoping that when the book we are planning together is finished, Pill Hill Press will consider publishing it. If not, we will look for someone who is interested.

What matters is that ideas come from all sorts of places. Vacation or not, we are writers. Our minds are always asking: what if this happened. and this person got involved because...

All This and Family Too

For those readers who don't know, ALL THIS AND FAMILY TOO is the title of my wife's first novel. It will be coming out next year from Pill Hill Press. It is a very funny story of what can happen to a nice lesbian vampire who has to uproot her family from their home in North Carolina and move into a gated community in California to escape a vampire hunter.

Life after death isn't easy for a vampire with a heroic streak, but Cynthia wouldn't have been a vampire if she had been able to resist the urge to rescue women in trouble. Undeath hasn't taught her much. On the way west she impulsively rescues a teen and ends up saddled with taking care of the lovelorn baby dyke through the rest of the novel.

By now you are probably asking yourself why I am writing about this book in my blog. It is not my story, it is not a mystery and it is not historical. Aside from the fact my spouse wrote it, there is not much about ALL THIS AND FAMILY TOO that connects it to me.

Well, that's not exactly true. Professor Leach started out as a character I invented for a vampire role playing game my wife and I played with several other friends. The game ended years ago, but Sarah found the idea of a vampire uptight enough to have a stick up her butt outrageously funny. So, I turned Cynthia over to her. The result is an over-the-top romp through Irvine, CA mixed with the terror of bureaucrats protecting their turf.

What would a vampire story be without a little horror? Professor Cynthia Leach, the vampire, discovers the true meaning of horror when she has to deal with the president of the neighborhood association,  maneuver through the university bureaucracy, and manage to survive her unlife in a world where she no longer belongs. It isn't easy being an undead hero, but Cynthia does it with her own special style.

Historical Holiday Dishes for the 1879 Table

Through Circle of Dishonor, beaten biscuits, maple fudge, stack cakes, and country ham are just a few of the dishes consumed by Nessa and her friends. We are coming into the holiday season and I thought it would be fun  to talk about the differences in today's holiday menus and those popular in Nessa's time. The popular choices for opening dishes were oysters on the half shell or fried oysters. This was followed by the soup: green turtle, burgoo, gumbo, or rabbit stew were popular choices.

Next up was the Christmas bird. Chicken was a little too ordinary to be selected for Christmas feasting, but there would be some sort of fowl on the menu. Roasted wild turkey with cranberry sauce might show up on Nessa's table, but it is just as likely the holiday bird would be duck, goose, quail, dove or pheasant. Oysters, giblets, sausages, and sometimes all of the above made their way into the dressing. Serve it up with mashed potatoes and gravy and you are not so far removed from our time.

Of course, the holiday table cannot just have one kind of meat. Bring on the bear? Yes, a nice roasted leg of bear with sauce poivrade or, if that doesn't strike your fancy, Beulah could serve up a saddle of venison with red currant jelly.  Either would go nicely with a roasted blend of squash, carrots, beets, parsnips, potatoes, and onions. Does that make you hungry? How about a nice coon with devil's sauce? A side of sweet potatoes baked with butter and brown sugar would set it off nicely. In Nessa's house, a tablespoon of bourbon might find its way into the baking dish with those sweet potatoes along with a sprinkle of orange zest. Yum!

I hope you've left room for dessert: there's molasses stack cake with dried apple filling, pumpkin and apple pie, bread pudding with bourbon sauce, and homemade fudge on the sideboard.

Not Winning Nanowrimo

I'm not sure it is possible to lose Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month), but I'm not one of the thousands of people who managed to write 50,000 words in the month of November. I started doing Nanowrimo in 2005. I have never won the event. My best effort was slightly over 27,000 words. This time, I started out the month behind the pack and struggled with each day. By the end of the first week things looked bleak. My word count hardly made a tiny little blue speck at the tip of the long empty bar marking my progress. I had to fight the urge to give the pep talks the finger (I was reading them at the office and it doesn't look good to flip off the computer there.)

Time was still on my side. I wasn't going to let a little thing like being further behind than I had ever been stop me. No excuses. Never mind that my month began at Magna Cum Murder where I was promoting my novel. That wasn't an excuse. I could catch up, really. It was early November and I could write on the weekend...who needs clean laundry, groceries, or clean dishes. We ordered take-out and kept working. That blue bar didn't budge much, but it budged. I was feeling better about myself when I went back to work on Monday.

Then came the weekend of the 12th and 13th and the Kentucky Book Fair. I'm not a good multitasker. I've never come up with a way to talk to large numbers of people about my book and work on the next one at the same time. Never mind that my phone sat on the table beside the stack of books as I waited for the call telling me my dear friend Dr. Haydon was gone. Never mind that I was at the hospital every evening in those final days. In this situation, what did it matter that it was the middle of the month and I was about 20,000 words behind? The long Thanksgiving weekend was ahead, and I would write.

Now it is December. Nanowrimo for 2010 is a memory. Mixed with that memory is the loss of a dear friend. His funeral was the day before Thanksgiving. I didn't write a lot the last two weeks of November. There were days when I didn't write at all, and others where I managed to eke out 200-400 words. Through it all I continued to write. I gave it my best shot, and kept writing right up to 11:59 PM on November 30th. I didn't win Nanowrimo, but day by day I will win the battle to finish this book. In the end it doesn't matter if I finish it next month or the one after. It matters that I keep writing, editing, and working to make it better than the last book.