Sisters in Crime Birthday Party

Thirty years ago, a great organization formed to help women writers of mystery achieve parity in contracts, reviews, support, and recognition, both within the industry and for society at large.
The Sisters in Crime has done tremendous work in promoting mysteries and women mystery writers.
And yes, they do allow my gender to become members as well.
After 30 years of hard work, it's time to celebrate- and so there are numerous events all over the country to mark this historic group.
The New England chapter held an informative workshop led by Nancy Martin, followed by lunch, and then some memories and recognition of some of the people who gave their time and energy to make good things happen over the years.
For writers who pen stories about horrible crimes, we had a jocular time with fun folks.
Thanks to all who made this event happen, as well as the many others held at all levels.

This stellar lineup consists of past officers at the national and regional level, who received tiaras to show how special they are.
L to R- Sheila Connolly, Edith Maxwell, Julie Hennrikus, Sharon Daynard, Linda Barnes, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Ruth McCarty, Hallie Ephron

And each had to give a short speech about her experience with Sisters in Crime.

To show their creativity, even the desserts have a message...

Here's Lisa Jackson and Edith guarding the goodies before the time of devouring
To see an interview with Edith, click here.

Other notable authors Connie Johnson Hambley, Leslie Wheeler, and Lisa Lieberman
To see an interview with Connie, click here

 Here's Nancy Martin (R) leading an exercise at the workshop

And the crowd

Sharon gets thanked by new President Edith for her service

 

An artifact of an early promotional tool

And a modern promotional tool, a board showing book cover images from the members. 

Thanks to Hans Copek, who puts this together every year.

If you look closely at the board on the left, you'll see my cover on the right, middle, for the upcoming Zack Taylor series novel, A Sharp Medicine, due out this May.

Crime and Death in Concord

Though it sounds bad from the title, last Saturday was a terrific Sisters in Crime event in Concord, MA.

First up was a marvelous tour of the Concord Cemetery of Sleepy Hollow (which causes lots of confusion to tourists who are bad at geography/history/literature). Leading our tour were guides Alida and Richard. Richard does historical portrayals of Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond, but he was himself that day.

Being a bit of a historian, and more well-read than the average bear, I'm a tough customer when it comes to historical tours. We've actually had to correct some guides at famous spots who were unknowingly giving out false information. But these two not only knew their material thoroughly (and Thoreau-ly), they made it entertaining and instructional. When you get the chance to go to Concord, I highly recommend Gatepost Tours for a wonderful afternoon in a graveyard. It's a fun time learning about our country and those who were major voices in our history.

And if you're a writer, you're going to get ideas for so much material! Stories abound, and mysteries, and lost lore aplenty.

The graveyard is the final resting place of many famous people- check out below for a few of the ones we visited.

 

Henry David Thoreau

 

 

As you can see, many people leave mementoes to these world-famous authors: pens and pencils, notes, letters, inscribed pumpkins, and much more. As authors, it's heartwarming to visit and see that writing and great work still matters to people more than a century after death.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

Louisa May Alcott

 

Daniel Chester French (Sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial and many other famous pieces)

After the tour, we repaired to the Colonial Inn for a hearty lunch, and then were treated to a panel talking about historical mysteries.

A great day seeing fellow authors and learning a lot. Here's Ray Daniel, Julie Hennrikus, and Sheila Connolly:

Barb Ross with Cheryl

 Edith Maxwell

Thanks to those who set it up, notably Sharon Daynard, VP of the SinC/NE chapter.

R.I.P. Richard Matheson

Damn. Another fine classic writer has passed from this world.

Richard Matheson gave us some of the best stories, which were made into great television shows and movies.

Check out his works, if you're not familiar with what he wrote. You'll likely be astonished to find a couple of your favorites in there. I would love to have stories as good and long-lasting as his.

He was Legend.
Ask Vincent Price, Charlton Heston, and Wil Smith about just one of his works.

Moonwalk

Neil Armstrong has passed away, the first known human to set foot on the Moon.

Let's just take a second to appreciate the extraordinary effort it took to send a trio of humans almost a quarter million miles into space, have a person walk on the (unknown composition) lunar surface, and return them safe and sound to Earth.

With 1960's technology.

In the middle of the Vietnam War.

So why did we stop? Been there, done that? Checked it off our humanity bucket list and moved on?

It was probably the last time humanity was united on anything.

It was a tremendous achievement, and one we should be proud of. So why aren't we doing more Great Things?

Oh, yeah, we'd rather kill each other and fight amongst ourselves.

In our own country, we savagely argue over which group of disaffected rich people will work for our destruction over the next few years. Instead of enacting public funding for elections, we allow monied interests to bribe their way in the lawmaking process, and all but a handful of us suffer as a result.

A great many people in this country profess to using the Bible as a guideline for life. Here's a quote all of us should start living by:
Mark 3:25
And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.

Our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, used this idea in an address given in 1858, in Springfield, Illinois, upon accepting his party nomination as that state's United States senator. This became one of the best-known speeches of his career (one that included the magnificent Gettysburg Address and his inaugural addresses).

But he lost that election. Didn't stop him, though, because he had a country to save, one that he felt so important that it was worth a bloody (un)civil war against itself to keep whole.

And now look at us. Instead of building a great nation and bettering life for its citizens (and all the people of the world), we waste our resources and moral outrage to needlessly butcher people (including many innocents) and blow up piles of sand in places few Americans can even find on a map.

What the Hell is wrong with us? Do we no longer deserve to last?

If we remain divided, we will not survive. Pretty pathetic ending for a people that managed to get to the Moon and back.

Make a Better World

There was a recent terrible tragedy, where one person perpetrated an act of absolute brutality, ending some lives and destroying others.

This senseless act of violence is so deplorable, and leaves us questioning life and the randomness of the universe.

How do we respond? One of the best ways I saw was on the blog of Chuck Wendig, who challenged his readers to post something *nice.* I'm going to quote from the site, because it matters:

"We balance out the horrors of a day like this by willfully doing good for others.

So, hug your kids, give to a charity, rescue a puppy, something, anything.

Evil can’t be undone, but good can outshine it.

So, if you feel like it, post something below in the comments that’s good and nice in this world. Don’t talk about the shooting or other bad shit. Don’t politicize anything (today is not a real good day to defend the second amendment, or talk about naughty pop culture or liberal-conservative fol-de-rol). Just post something nice. A story. Charity. Something your kid said or did. Anything at all.

This not in service of forgetting tragedy or ignoring it, but rather, to remind ourselves that people aren’t all bad and that one aberration a species does not make."

One of the posters responded to this with a personal story:
"A week ago, I was picking up odds and ends at Walmart on the way home from work. There was a family ahead of me in the checkout line that was having issues paying. The dad’s credit card was being rejected for the n-th time, so he decided to give up and started giving back the bags they had loaded into their cart. After taking a quick peek at their loot (mostly frozen dinners, rice and beans), noting that they weren’t buying any alcohol or tobacco, I offered to pay for it. It was about 60 bucks worth of stuff. Not much, but the mom teared up, making me almost tear up, and so on.
After helping get their bags back in the cart, I turn to the cashier to pay for my items. Only, the guy behind me, sporting a big, shit-eating grin, had paid for my items. At that point, the lady behind him, insisted to pay for his, and so it went in a line of about 8 people. It was a great moment of good will, and I’m glad to have kicked it off."

It's that kind of act we should remember, and celebrate.

So-- go forth and celebrate at least one human act of kindness, of connection, of just pure goodness. Evil deeds are done by the weak and stupid. It takes real strength to build something good.

R.I.P. Ray Bradbury

We've lost one of the truly great, all-time masters. Ray Bradbury has left this world to travel to the other reaches.

This note about his work has been on my Writing Masters page.

He's one of the world icons of literature, whose work is enduring and powerful. One of the earliest short stories I remember is an excerpt from Dandelion Wine, about a teenage boy getting new sneakers at the start of Summer. The description of the feeling, of the endless possibilities, of the dreams of freedom and yearning was amazing, and made me see things in a whole new light.

Of course there are the classics, and quite an array of them. The story "A Sound of Thunder," where one time-travelling misstep has major consequences, and which sets the bar for time travel stories. Fahrenheit 451, a chilling comment on one potential (and ever-more likely) future. Something Wicked This Way Comes, the ultimate Halloween classic. The Martian Chronicles and what hapens when we venture there, for he assumed it was inevitable, as it should have been. Now it looks like we'll stay on this planet until we're gone. Sad, somehow, when we could have had the stars.

Ray Bradbury was always a dreamer of what could be, good and bad. His stories are pure magic, tales that delight, instruct, and entertain. If you haven't read him for awhile, seek out some of his work.

Stand, Work Together

In the late 1700's, a collection of people from different regions and economic interests came together to form a new government. They bet everything on the fact that they could create a coalition to govern that would be of greater benefit to their people than the current powers in charge, the British Empire.

And so the plan for the United States of America came to be. Different regions, all acting for a common good, for the benefit of all. And in defiance of a crushing monolith of power who ruled with military force.

Each person in the new design bet his life that together they could change the balance of power. And they managed to do it, miraculously, tenaciously.

After they had been victorious in the military struggle, the hard work of governance still needed to be done. They set up a system where there was no longer a single person or small group that would rule by whim, but one where power would be split and require the obediance of all to set laws. A system where no person was above the law.

Less than a hundred years after this successful coalition became our United States, factional interests drove a wedge between different groups. One group decided that their own interests were more important than the coalition, and so tried to form a separate government, one that would have forever destroyed the unity of what had been built.

And so our people went to war with each other, slaughtering ourselves by the thousands, tearing us apart, in the name of protecting our union.

Somehow, we survived that. The coalition, the union, survived that. We remained as a unified nation, struggling through our differences, believing that together we were stronger than if we were apart. And it worked again.

Now we are in the twenty-first century of our modern era, and the union is struggling to remain a coalition once more. We are at war with the world, and with each other. Many are angry, afraid, bitter, and in despair. Some are turning their rage against people of other lands, some against their neighbors.

Instead of building schools, hospitals, communities, and better lives, we are creating more armies, weapons, prisons, and separate, competing power centers.

Even though our expanding, perpetual culture of war and military empire is bankrupting us, we continue to think that more bullets and bombs is our way to safety.

We seem to have no leaders, no common cause. Those in charge ignore our laws, and blatantly act as criminals. Squabbling demagogues and groups compete for what power and privilege they can seize, as the lot of the common citizen worsens by the day.

Our house is on fire, and we stand in place in the flames, shaking our fist in impotent rage and arguing with each other about whose fault it is. If we continue down this path, we shall all be found lifeless in the ashes.

Let us remember what made this nation great. Laws were made to keep order and define the codes by which we live. Let us not abandon them so easily. Let us demand that our leaders be accountable to those laws-- all of them, all the time.

Let us do common work for the common good. Let us remember our past, and work together to build a better future.

Obit for Lynn Redgrave

The current news is that Lynn Redgrave passed away. I'm writing this because I met her, back in the 70's, when I was an apprentice, working as an unpaid volunteer at a Summer theater. The people headlining there seemed famous to me, because they'd been in movies, plays, and television. They seemed glamourous from afar, less so the closer one got. A fair number of them were bitter, unhappy neurotics.

I didn't know her well, only that she was nervous around lightning. As I recall, a co-star of hers was an absolute dick, some old has-been British (or British wannabe) actor, who would get drunk every night and abuse the people around him. How'd you like to be yoked to someone like that for the Summer?

To a 19-year old, these people were Olympians, but now I read that Ms. Redgrave was a mere 14 years older than me, which made her only 33 at the time. Yet to me she had made it. Then you read the modern obits, and they make it sound like she had somehow failed at something-- as if a couple of Academy Award nominations were nothing. Or television, and plays, and a number of other things. Ah, but look at her sister and father and niece, the journalists say. Geez, can't anybody me modestly successful in their own right? I guess if you're from a famous family, you always get compared to the most successful ones. That's gotta suck.

Well, she makes it here because she also did some writing, telling about her life and her struggles with it, so we salute and remember the passing of a writer.

I'm very often surprised when successful people turn out to be unhappy, with a lot of troubles. That Summer was the first revelation of that kind: that money and success were no guarantees of happiness.