January 12, 2012

Damn it! Wait your turn!

Posted by Valerie Bonham under Reading | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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The title of this entry comes from one of my favorite cartoons.  If you don’t want to click, it’s a drawing of a man lying in a hammock holding a flyswatter and smacking away at books flying up at him like pesky insects.  The caption is this entry’s title.

When I was a kid, I remember finishing our Air Force base library’s stock of Nancy Drew books and wanting more.  A year later I whipped through outer space with all the Robert Heinlein books our school library owned and mourned being earthbound again when I’d read them all.  Dad snapped this picture when I discovered Judge Dee.  Later I passed the hours overseas with the collections of Agatha Christie from various Army libraries.  I was always on a search for new titles and would read slowly to make the books last longer because once I finished a collection at the library, that was it.

Nowadays, I can’t keep up.  Goodreads notifies me about good reads by email, as does Bas Bleu.  The DorothyL list is a virtual avalanche of titles.  I Love A Mystery just called to say that Jo Nesbø’s latest book is in the store, and the library emailed me that my online requests have arrived and are waiting to be picked up.  I haven’t yet clicked “buy” on my latest cartful at Amazon.   Then there are the books on the shelves here at home that cry at me about how they are neglected.

I have to wonder if Johnnie Gutenberg had any idea about what he was unleashing.

 

January 9, 2012

First Crime Novel contests

Posted by Valerie Bonham under Mysterious business, Publishing, Sisters In Crime: Border Crimes Chapter
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Linda Rodriguez, a winner of the St. Martin’s/Malice Domestic writing contest with her novel Every Last Secret, shared with the blogosphere a link to various St. Martin’s writing contests.

 

December 27, 2011

I hate it when applications screw around with formatting when you’re not looking

Posted by Valerie Bonham under Grousing
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I realized that WordPress had done some program-tweaking in the time since I last posted — needing to search around the screen for what I was looking for was a giveaway.  However, changing the function of something as basic as adding a new entry without incorporating a warning advisory that, HEY, WE CHANGED SOMETHING REALLY BASIC, is just careless.

Apparently in this new and improved program, after one adds a new post, and manages to get back to the “add new post” screen, if one doesn’t click “Add New” in the left-hand navigation bar, one merely replaces what one has already uploaded, in this case the link to How to Write a Cozy Mystery at Get It Write.  Luckily, no cats or children were harmed in the replacing of the blog post, but I can assure you you’re not reading the words of a cheerful Charlie right now.

 

December 27, 2011

Belated NaNoWriMo post

Posted by Valerie Bonham under Mysterious business, On writing
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As I go through the mystery-list, I see more entries I’d have liked to have responded to in real time, such as this recommendation from my friend MaryG:

 

November 1, 2011

Not dead yet, just … distracted

Posted by Valerie Bonham under On writing | Tags: , , , |
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Hat tip to K.d. McCrite:

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As for the ‘writing,’ (I’m supposing that’s what you’d call it, although Researcher Who Won’t Stop is more like it), I discovered I put my people in the wrong place by about five kilometers (for me, the 5K make a difference).  Since I first settled on the location, I thought I’d got the borderline-in-question correct, but in looking at Google maps, I see I was off.    If I wasn’t writing slowly enough already (1/4 of  the first story and 2 short stories), finding out the people were on the wrong side of the ‘tracks’ was like a tree in the road — I could get around it, but it would take work.  Luckily, the Google map exercise reminded me of Google Earth, and I’m pretty sure my people are now in an appropriate place.

So, now to be like a brick, and stay on task, not get discouraged*, not be perfect but be OK with it, and stop wasting time.

* In Duchess of Death, I learned that Agatha Christie wrote a play in 6 weeks.

 

October 6, 2011

Law & Order: UK

Posted by Valerie Bonham under Mysterious business | Tags: , , , , , , , |
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I don’t have anything deep or profound to note about the program Law & Order: UK, but each time I watch it, I see Harriet Walter as Harriet Vane of the Lord Peter Wimsey adaptations (and more recently as Honoria Bulstrode in Christie’s Poirot story of Cat Among the Pigeons) , and now Peter Davison as Tristan Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small.  I missed Davison’s stint as Dr. Who, so I don’t have that memory.

These connections just point up for me the narrowness of the number of actors at the top.

 

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Update:  And now, watching Person of Interest, I see Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Capt. Roy Montgomery) late of Castle.  It makes my head spin.

 

September 16, 2011

Bouchercon 2011

Posted by Valerie Bonham under Mysterious business | Tags: , |
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For decades in Germany, while reading Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, I would read about Bouchercon, a mystery convention first held in 1970.  Being able to attend such a convention was one reason I’d have preferred living in the U.S., but on Army pay with varying numbers of kids, I doubt that would have been in the cards at the time.

Finally, I’m here, and it is wonderful.  In the panel discussions, I know some of the in-jokes about older mysteries (for me, an in-joke consists of an established author saying the name of an older author/detective, the audience giving a small gasp of recognition, and then everyone giggling), and I know many, but not all, of the newer authors/detectives.  I’ll have to read more.

The hotel here in St. Louis is marvelous — I feel like Eloise in the Plaza when we order our room service breakfast — and the lobby is gorgeous.

The crowd is friendly, if a little distant because I don’t know anyone.  I have seen a few DorothyL listmembers with their pins, but usually only in passing because they’re on the up-escalator while I’m riding down.  I did stop to talk with a couple from Iowa, whose names I didn’t get because I was wearing the wrong bifocals and their name tags were just out of focus for either my upper lens or lower lens.  Still, we chatted like old friends.  I hope we pass each other again.

I know some members of the Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime are here, but we don’t have pins, or shirts, or hats, so finding them will be a trick.

The crowd in the hallway — please forgive the less-than-wonderful pasted-panorama which I’m still figuring out the ‘background’ for.

Bookseller area — much more impressive, and busier-looking, than this paste-together image.

I’m so enjoying my first mystery convention, and I have my fingers crossed it isn’t my only one.  Thanks to the mystery community for putting on such a get-together.

 

August 26, 2011

The importance of setting

Posted by Valerie Bonham under Authors, On writing | Tags: , |
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Marja McGraw guest-writes at the blog, Buried Under Books.  Maria’s topic is setting in novels, and how popular authors use this to their advantage.

  • Listen To Your Reader

    Interestingly, I’d just been on a panel at a conference where we discussed settings. The general consensus of the authors on the panel was that setting is paramount to the story in most cases. Readers want to feel like they’re the fly on the wall while they read, and that’s difficult to do if the setting isn’t described in the story.

Read more at the blog

In my writing, the situations of the characters I’ve come up with are all dependent on place.  The characters’ situations aren’t generic troubles that could happen anywhere, but are woven into the scenes of the crimes.  For me, setting is almost a character itself.

With luck (practice and patience), someday you’ll be able to see what I feel.

 

August 22, 2011

Attention American editors who have acquired books for translation

Posted by Valerie Bonham under Reviews | Tags: , , |
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When you are editing the translation of a foreign language novel, do not allow Swedish people in Sweden in a Swedish story to snack on Cokes, Heath bars and Snickers.  I’d much prefer to read the names I’m assuming were in the original, with a short clause about the items being snacks.

If I were reading a German book in translation, I’d expect to see Afri Cola or Sinalco; Hanuta and Duplo.  I imagine the Swedes have their own candies as well.  Reading “Coke, a Heath bar and a king-size Snickers” took me straight out of the story and sent me here.

Don’t do it again.

Otherwise, I’m finding Camilla Läckberg’s The Stonecutter engrossing.

 

August 3, 2011

Word counts by genre

Posted by Valerie Bonham under On writing | Tags: , , , , |
[3] Comments 

I finished the ‘nonfiction project’ (see previous entry), the month-plus typing work that reignited the weird feelings in my wrists that the doctor informed me is not carpal tunnel syndrome.  OK, it’s not a carpal tunnel problem, she’s the doctor and I’m not, but I’d like to know what I can do to minimize the problem, given my compulsion to type.

Buzzy wrists, aside, and with that real-life typing task finished, I’m looking forward to re-immersing myself in my fictional world.  It’s a journey for me to leave one world, enter another, and then go back.  Making these shifts isn’t immediate and I feel as if I’m moving from one country to another, sorting and packing the paraphernalia of the world I’m leaving, then reacquainting myself with the people, language, and culture of the world I’m reentering.  Making a blog entry here is one of the steps in making the change.

I’m stashing the link here so that I’ll know where to find it later.  It’s easier for me to click a category link and scroll through my online notetaking than it is for me to read through lists of “favorites” in my bookmarks.  Those link titles seem to run together.

  • Word count by genre, Jacqui Murray’s WordDreams…
    — cozy mysteries = 65k to 90k
    — mysteries, thrillers and crime fiction = A newer category of light paranormal mysteries and hobby mysteries clock in at about 75k to 90k. Historical mysteries and noir can be a bit shorter, at 80k to 100k. Most other mystery/thriller/crime fiction falls right around the 90k to 100k mark.

Those numbers are the ones that interest me most, but even if your number-concern is the same, click over to the link.  Jacqui Murray has information about other genres, as well as word counts of well-known and influential works.

 

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