Bailing Today

Kate has computer issues today of a severity that can scarcely be believed by anyone other than another computer user. Next week she will unload her complaints on you, or not; until then you may imagine the worst day you ever had trying to work your will on the internet with the feeble tools at hand, and assume that you know what the trouble is. It's like that.

Kate Gallison

What I Learned from Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks

Meet Linda Rodriguez.  She and I share an editor.  Linda’s second Skeet Bannion novel, Every Broken Trust (St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books), just hit the stores with one reviewer (Lesa Holstine) calling it “one of the best traditional mysteries I’ve read this year.” Her first Skeet novel, Every Last Secret, won the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition, was selected by Las Comadres National Book Club, was a Barnes & Noble mystery pick, and is a finalist for the International Latino Book Award. For her books of poetry, Skin Hunger (Scapegoat Press) and Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press), Rodriguez received numerous awards and fellowships. She is president of the Borders Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, a founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, Kansas City Cherokee Community, and International Thriller Writers. She spends too much time on Twitter as @rodriguez_linda and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LindaRodriguezWrites.  She blogs about writers, writing, and the absurdities of everyday life at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com

Annamaria Alfieri

 In 2009, my sister gave me Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks for a Christmas present. My sister and I had always shared our love of mysteries, and we were both huge fans of Dame Agatha.

The book was fascinating. John Curran, who compiled the notebooks and wrote the book about them, helps the reader to see how Christie’s mind worked when she was developing characters and a plot. I found it fascinating to see the notes she had made, written evidence of a writer’s mind at work in the difficult planning and plotting stages of a novel (though some of the notes deal with revision also).

I read them and watch as Christie changes her mind about who is the hero or heroine and about who is the killer. One character may audition as hero before landing in the killer spot. Another may spend a while as killer before being elevated to the protagonist’s position. Settings, titles, and murder methods can and do play musical chairs also. Christie is always seeking the combination of title, setting, killer, and hero that will meld with the perfect method of murder to make a great book.

This book is a great source of inspiration to me when I’m planning and plotting, as I am now. Not that I can use any of her ideas in my own work. They’re very much of her time—each period of time in which she wrote a book over the length of her long life. However, watching her fertile mind work, seeing all the alternates considered and rejected, watching the fantastically successful mysteries come to life always kicks my own brain into high gear.

More than inspiration, though, reading through the notebooks and glimpsing Christie’s mind in the midst of her work confirms for me that it was work. She didn’t come to any of her great, clever books by anything else. Nothing was predetermined. Christie played with combinations of the elements of a good mystery novel until she ended up with something so taut she could carry water in it, and she worked hard to make each book so watertight and startling. 

After following the course of her mind for a few of her books, I’m ready to roll up my own sleeves and go to work without expecting to hit the right characters or plot on the first try without effort. I believe it was Albert Einstein who said, “Genius is the capacity for taking infinite pains.” Christie’s notebooks illustrate this perfectly. So, now, I’m off to juggle setting, characters, motives, and murder methods myself, following in her footsteps.

What helps you in the planning stages of your books, if you’re a writer? If you’re not, how do you feel about seeing all of Dame Agatha’s sleight-of-hand revealed this way? Would you rather remain blissfully ignorant of how she managed her magic?

Linda Rodriguez 

Maybe There's a Lesson Here

I’m going to miss Smash. In spite of itself.

Writers need a break from the reality of their writing lives. As most any writer will tell you, when you commit to writing, you don’t get many diversions. Deadlines (self- and publisher-imposed), your family, the chores, and the other career (the one with the 401k and health insurance) don’t leave much room for other activities. You don't get to read for pleasure or see friends as much as you’d like. You go out less; you entertain less. Sometimes, it feels like you don’t do much except work and the laundry.

At times like that, I need a reboot. I need to shut down the creative part of my brain for an hour. When I start it up again, whatever froze my imagination and enthusiasm has usually disappeared. In addition, my eyes spend so much time going back and forth across my computer screen or printout that, if the reboot diversion also gives me a chance to roll my eyes for a while, so much the better.

And Smash was a worthy diversion on both counts. In the beginning I watched in sofa-lolling relaxation an undemanding melodrama with excellent singing, and then I watched – my eyes circling my sockets – plot twists so contorted that I just had to see what the next bizarre pretzel-turn would be. Which isn't necessarily all that easy with your eyes rolling around in your head.

Smash was (actually still is, for the rest of the month) about getting a musical to Broadway. Maybe I should have been warned when a series has enough, dare I say, hubris to give itself a title like Smash. And to think there was much left to be said about Marilyn Monroe.

But hey, I wasn't looking for art. And as a bonus, I got to hear some terrific Broadway voices, performers who know how to interpret a song, and don’t think that as-loud-as-I-can-belt and as-long-as-I-can-hold-this-note are the hallmarks of singing. And I got to see some pretty fair dancing for a TV series (at least in the first season).

I was charmed by Christian Borle. In awe of Megan Hilty. Eager to see what Jack Davenport would get up to next. And I was certain Anjelica Huston’s facial muscles would eventually move.

And I could pair the show with a wonderful blog by Broadway actress/dancer Sharon Wheatley called SMASH: Fact or Fiction, a valentine to Broadway, full of fascinating tidbits and insight about what it’s really like to create a show on the Great White Way. And, unlike so many entertainment bloggers, Sharon doesn't seem to have a snarky bone in her body. But eventually, the parade of implausible plot points and absurd motivations forced even Ms. Wheatley to give up on Smash. 

Sigh.

Maybe Smash never really had a chance. Ultimately, its premise was deeply flawed: that there could be a believable competition for the role of Marilyn between the characters of Karen and Ivy. It says something about network-TV desperation, the lure of cross-marketing and the demands of “media-ready” casting that American Idol runner-up Katherine McPhee (as Karen) was thrown mercilessly into the ring with Broadway vet Hilty (as Ivy). Yikes, what alternative universe have I wandered into that this fight could be fair?!

Even if one accepted the premise that a woman with no Broadway experience who looked and sounded nothing like Marilyn could be a contender, the show swung off the rails a few times in season one. Then the swinging turned to careening in season two. Karen quit the lead (the lead!) in the Broadway show Bombshell – a role in which she was called “brilliant” by other characters though the TV audience was never granted the privilege of seeing these on-stage moments – for a role in a black-box theater downtown because…  Oh, it doesn’t matter, it made no sense. The renowned Broadway director Derek (Davenport) leaves Bombshell, too, in a huff, then agrees to direct the downtown show, which isn't really finished and was created by a couple of guys who've never had a thing produced before. And Bombshell’s composer (Borle) is suddenly, with no experience, Bombshell’s director. Whaa??

And although I could have gone on rebooting my brain with Smash, NBC has pulled the plug.

What can I salvage? As with any failed relationship, one asks: Is there at least a lesson to be learned here? Can I find any bits of wisdom to pass on to, say, a reader of this blog who’s an aspiring writer? One working on a mystery novel and not, say, a network TV show?

No square pegs in round holes. In mystery novels, you don’t get cut much slack for these. Your characters aren't allowed to go off and do something that makes no sense because, you know, you need them to. Your protag can’t just decide to investigate a crime because, well, she found a body and you need her to be an amateur sleuth; and she can't do dumb things because you need her in peril. She can't go into the house when she finds the front door open; continue into the deserted parking garage even though she thinks she’s being followed; or agree to meet a mysterious informant in a place not flooded with light and witnesses. When your writing starts to feel like hammering, it’s time to stop, rail at the wall for an hour, then admit your needs aren't really important here. What does your character need? A better motive.

Obnoxious does not equal a character readers love to hate. Smash didn't learn its lesson in season one with the character of Ellis Boyd, the uber-obnoxious assistant. They doubled down in season two by making uber-obnoxious a main character, Jimmy Collins (played by Jerome Jordan exactly as the writers/producers/directors must have wanted him to play it, because he’s capable of nuance and charm). They chose to make Jimmy not only a ^%#*, but a callow ^%#*. And callow and ^%#* are pretty much impossible to make compelling. They made poor Karen his doormat, so maybe we were supposed to hate him while at the same time intuit that there was a good man underneath all that because, uh, Karen fell for him and he's cute. Doesn't that count? Not in mystery novels. Not unless you want the reader to throw your book across the room. Readers see people who are uninspiring, unintriguing and unbearable every day. They probably work for one. They don’t want to read about them when they get home.

And so Smash will be gone soon. What will I do for a reboot? Where can I find another show that will render me alternatively brain flat-lined and yelping at the TV?

I mean, other than Castle. (My devotion to Nathan Fillion is not unmotivated. Since Firefly, a woman is justified in following him practically anywhere.)

Other suggestions for reboot candidates are welcome.

Sheila York

Rikers Island Bar

In eighteen years as a criminal defense lawyer in the Courts of NYC, I represented hundreds of clients like my fictional 'Enrique'. The character is made up but the dilemma is real. Rikers Island is our Penal Colony, right out of Kafka.

Robert Knightly

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I’m driving over the Francis R. Buono Memorial Bridge for the nine hundredth time (figuring once a week, four times a month, times twelve months, times eighteen years). The bridge connects the Queens mainland to Rikers Island, which is floating in the East River and a mere hundred yards off the runways of LaGuardia Airport. Rikers Island is the main New York City jail, housing 12,000 or more inmates at any given time, depending on how tough on crime the NYPD chooses to be. Rikers Island is America’s largest penal colony, a city of rolling razor wire far as the eye can see. I’m en route there because I’m a lawyer assigned by the Criminal Courts to defend a fellow who claims to be “indigent” (no dough to hire a lawyer), so he gets me, whom the inmates call “an 18-B” (short for the section of the County Law), as distinguished from “a real, paid lawyer,” whom they’d hire if they could. I pay no mind; I’ve heard it all before.

I get to drive onto the Island in my own car with a lawyer’s pass from the guard booth. Civilians have to bus it onto the Island after taking trains from every corner of the City to catch the Q100 at Queensboro Plaza, last stop “the Rock” (as the inmates call home). I get my visitor pass at the reception center, go through electronic surveillance, and head for the bus depot outside. Ancient yellow school buses queue up in their stalls: five separate lines go to ten jails spaced out over 415 acres of mostly landfill. As I wait to board my bus, this Kirk Douglas western, The Big Sky, is playing in my head—green movie valleys filled with fat cattle versus my electrified fences topped with barbed wire near and far.

Bus #3 delivers me to my destination, the Otis Bantum Correctional Center, where my client is housed. Funny thing about the jails, they’re all named after people: the Rose M. Singer Center (women’s jail); the George R. Vierno Center; the Anna M. Kross Center; the George Motchan Detention Center. You get the picture? All dead. I can’t help wondering if Otis Bantum would approve of ‘the Bing’—solitary for the incorrigibly violent—being housed in his jail. Nobody will admit knowing how the Bing got its name; I suspect it’s onomatopoeia for the sound a nightstick makes when banging off the head of an inmate.

Today I’ll see my new client, Enrique. He resided in Washington Heights among a legion of illegal Dominicans, of which he is one. He was arrested a week ago for selling a couple of “20s” of cocaine to an undercover cop. I interviewed him in the feeder pens behind Manhattan Night Court, but it did not go well. Enrique doesn’t know English. Unfortunately, the court interpreter was a Cuban who abbreviated Enrique’s fulsome responses to my questions into either “yeses” or “nos.” (You had to watch the Spanish interpreters: they had fierce prejudices against defendants from countries other than their own.)

Yesterday, by phone, Enrique informed me through his English-speaking jailhouse buddy that he won’t take a plea—he wants a trial. This pernicious idea is endemic to the Rock. Inmates always phrase it as “wanting their day in court.” It is the product of the Rikers Island Bar, a hardcore cadre of inmates who, during long stretches in Upstate prisons, have honed jailhouse lawyering to an art. Daily they counsel innocents on their cases, bad-mouthing the advice of 18-Bs like me, filling heads with legal fantasies. Their fees are assessed in the prevailing currency: cigarettes, sex, whatever. There’s a law library in every jail on Rikers, each staffed by a civilian librarian. The Rikers Bar is as old and as active as any of the County Bar Associations.
Plea bargains are the local currency of the justice system. No way can the courts give every defendant a jury trial. As a reward for not being difficult, defendants plead guilty and get far fewer years in prison. But insist on your day in court and you get hammered upon conviction. Contrary to the opinion of the Rikers Bar, Enrique will be convicted at trial because the District Attorney has physical evidence and witnesses— which I don’t, and seldom do.

I must steel myself for the coming battle. I must erase the word “trial” from Enrique’s mental slate.

A Rose for Miss Bonnie

My mother has lived with us since her death in 2006.

My mother hated staying overnight in unfamiliar surroundings. She was happy to go anywhere you might want to take her as long as she could sleep in her own bed the same night. It made sense to me to keep her ashes among family.

Her urn is topped by a jaunty hat that she loved wearing. She is surrounded by a Furby (She had several who talked to each another and there was sometimes a disquieting twitter—in the old sense—behind her when I called home), a frog (she collected them), a stuffed dog that taps its foot and moves an umbrella as “Singin‘ the Rain” plays, an old VHS of Johnny Carson shows and a book about “Guiding Light,” her favorite soap opera. The symbol of her devotion to Bill Clinton, a hand puppet of the former president given to her by my cousin, Alison, did not wear well and will need to be replaced. What is not so well represented in this collection is my mother’s love of books.

My obsession with books came entirely from my mother. I was the first grandchild on my mother’s side and my grandmother loved bringing me gifts. My mother didn’t like this. Her family had little money and she didn’t want me to expect a present every time my grandparents visited.

“If you have to get her something, get her a book,” mom said.

I became the owner of countless Little Golden Books and a whole series of Louisa May Alcott novels. I had many Little House books and a lot of Doctor Seuss. During my childhood and adolescence the Scholastic Book Service sold books in schools and the day the shipment came was always an exciting one for me.

As I got older, my mother still emphasized the importance of books and doing well in school. I was the only child I knew who didn’t have fights with her parents over cleaning her room. It was perfectly acceptable to befriend the dust bunnies, curl up on the unmade bed and read.

I was never told I wasn’t allowed to read a particular book. My mother assured me I might read whatever I liked. She told me she didn’t worry about my being tainted by dirty books. She worried that I would be bored. When, at about 14 I tried reading Lolita, mom’s fears were realized.

During her later years, Mom got her stories from T. V. and movies. The last book I remember her reading was Sue Grafton’s P is for Peril. Shortly before she died, she said to me, “Stephanie, I don’t know anyone who feels about books the way you do.”

“And whose fault is that?” I asked.

My mother, who was not always particularly happy during her last years, gave me the most delightful smile.

Stephanie Patterson