A peg for every hat...

That peg arrived serendipitously (as such things often do), courtesy of a little back ‘n forth chit-chat on Facebook with the Colorado History Directory (a site I like like like). You can find the corresponding website here. On Facebook, the mysterious person behind CHD commented that the best way he/she had found to inspire excitement in history in young people was by using actual artifacts. I added a comment, agreeing, and saying that, in my experience, physical objects also spark interest in adults. From there, I began musing about my passionate love affair with objects, particularly objects from 1879 to 1882 or so (which, in a way, ties to my techno-lust post last year as well as my post about gifts from the past).

I have many such objects, as a result of late night forays onto eBay, and numerous visits to antique stores such as Western Hardware in Leadville, Colorado. Objects. Artifacts. These will be the peg that I’ll hang my PPP blog posts on for a while, until I tire of it or run out of objects, or get distracted by something else, or…

First object: A book. And not just any book, but New Colorado and the Santa Fe Trail, by A.A. Hayes, Jr., copyright 1880.

Sure, it's searchable, but still...

You can find a free digital copy of this book on Google books, but I’ll tell you, it’s not the same as the real McCoy (although it is searchable, which is a big plus for researching, say, Garden of the Gods, or stagecoach routes, and so on). However, it doesn’t have the story of the actual physical book that is in my possession.

The story:

I received an email quite some time ago (several years) from a fellow who had read Iron Ties (the second book in the series), and had some nice things to say about it. We went back and  forth a bit, and he offered that perhaps we could do a book trade for a copy of Leaden Skies (the third in the series). Thinking that he might be an author of nonfiction or westerns or some such, I said sure, what did he have in mind? Well, he was a collector of Western Americana, and he was whittling down his book collection, and he had this book he thought might possibly be useful to me in my research…

There was no way I was going to turn down the offer. I do believe I got the better end of the bargain, and thanked the gentleman profusely in the Acknowledgments section of Mercury’s Rise.

The book itself has weathered the years with grace. The cover design, the gilt letters of the title, all are little touches you don’t see in the digital copy. Nor can you feel the texture of the brown cover, identify the places where the book naturally falls open from use (but I can tell you for the copy I have: it’s at the chapter titled “Grub-stakes and Millions.”) Nor do you really get the details of the wonderful engravings in a digital file.

You don't see this cover in the digital file...

... And you don't see the details in the etchings or the binding, as you do in the real book.

Holding a book that someone held more than a century ago raises all sorts of questions in my mind. What did they think as they read this volume? Were they traveling to Colorado? Were they hoping to make millions on a dream? Or was it all just wishful thinking?

It’s all a mystery, of course. There are no answers to these questions. The person who first bought, carried, and read this copy of  New Colorado is long gone. What remains for us is the object. The book.

Next month: a different object and a different story.

It doesn’t get better as the children grow into adolescence and adulthood. It gets worse. Take Carrie’s mother, Margaret, in Stephen King’s best-best seller, and Jeannette’s mother in Oranges Aren’t The Only Fruit. Imagine being one of Addie Bundren’s offspring in As I Lay Dying.

For my money, the most ghastly fictional mother is Philip Roth’s Sophie Portnoy, who makes the infamous Tiger Mom look like a declawed pussycat. When Sophie made the scene in 1969, she was a cause celebre in my ethnic circles. Rabbis and laymen heaped endless abuse on Roth for treating his mother in such a terrible manner. Never mind how many times the author tried to explain, in print and behind a microphone, that Portnoy’s Complaint was a work of fiction, that the characters were made up, that he loved his mother dearly, and that in fact, she was nothing like Sophie Portnoy.

“Don’t you ever do to me what Philip Roth did to his mother,” my own mother used to bark, index finger wagging a couple of inches in front of my eyes.

I never consciously use any real people as characters in my books, but I’ve come to wonder how much sneaks past my attention. In my first three mysteries, The Music Box Series, amateur detective Thomas Purdue’s father, Will, was widowed. My mother’s reaction to my sister: “Larry killed me off.”

Next, in First, Do No Harm, Martin Firestone’s mother’s role was too small to show much in the way of character traits, and in the first two books of the ragtime trilogy, there were no significant mothers. Maybe absence makes the heart rest easier.

When Trilogy Book Three, The Ragtime Fool, came out, my mother was no longer reading. Part of the story is set in a fictionalized version of the New Jersey town I grew up in, and the mother of the 17-year-old piano-playing fool is a prissy, acid-tongued narcissist who wants her son to play only classical music, not that awful ragtime stuff, so that one day, she’ll be able to sit in the first row at Carnegie Hall and tell the people next to her that the pianist is her son. And the mother of the young musician’s girl friend is a vain, self-absorbed woman who prattles silly remarks in an affected tone of voice, and sings popular songs off-key and with the wrong words. After my sister read the book, she wrote me, “Both of them were our mother.”

By last September, when A Perilous Conception came out, my mother no longer was. One of my sister’s longterm friends, in speaking of the mother in APC who mourned the death of her genius first-born son, but neglected and disparaged her second child, said to my sister, “I had no trouble recognizing your evil mother in that book.”

Most things ain’t what they used to be, with the implication having something to do with hell and a handbasket. But some things really do get better. My wife has been a terrific mother to our two kids, our daughter is a stupendous mother to our grandson, and Mothers’ Day is no longer a tribulation of waiting for the inevitable event that will “ruin the whole day.” It’s now a joyful celebration. I hope it is for all of you as well.

The transition from writing as a hobby to earning my living as a writer was a tricky proposition. Like most aspiring authors, I went through a gradual process that involved a great deal of soul searching as well as attention to the nitty-gritty financial details. The head changes came first. I had to let go of my identity as a medical practitioner–not an easy matter after years of school, residency, and practice. I knew I was ready when there was not one speck of joy left in my work, when I felt that most of what I did on a daily basis was useless.

Given the time constraints, I wrote as much as I could. A notebook was always in my bag. If I had ten minutes for lunch, I journaled with one hand and ate a sandwich with the other. I began to observe the world in a different way. I wrote my observations down. I read mysteries with a pen and marker at the ready and made notes on interesting plots and characters.

I began to call myself a writer. Writing was what I did.

I was surprised by the amount of criticism I received. How could I waste my training? Why would I risk my future? How dare I deprive my family of my futures earnings? Why would I turn my back on my colleagues who were laboring in the trenches of the state mental health system? What would my patients do without me? It came down to this: How DARE I work at what I found satisfying and fulfilling?

For a while, I kept my hand in, thinking I could work at a clinic part-time and write on the side. I started several novels, but couldn’t make much headway. I discovered that I’m a writer who needs larges swathes of time to sink into the world I’m creating. It became obvious that I needed to fully commit to my new career if it was to be a success. The transition didn’t place over night. Many family conferences ensued. My husband and I re-evaluated our philosophy about the important things in life, our relationship with money and possessions, our duties to future generations. In a nutshell, we decided that family time and job satisfaction trumped the rat race. Over a four-year period, we prepared to downsize.

I quit my job at the clinic, and, somehow, they shouldered on without me.

Our home went through a lot of organizational changes. I set up a home office. It was just a dormer in our attic, but it was my personal space. I scheduled time to write and kept to it, ignoring laundry and other chores calling out to be done. I wrote and wrote, using favorite mystery novels as my guide. I have several books by P.D. James and others that are held together with rubber bands because I went through them so many times, analyzing this and that. Then I tested the waters. I submitted my work. And submitted and submitted. I learned to take editors’ rejections without letting it paralyze my writing. I learned as much as I could through those rejections.

I discovered that my basic writing skills were better than average, but because I’d generated a lot more academic and professional articles than fiction, I needed to learn those skills in an organized way. I attended a three-day writers’ conference sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America. Most of the material was new to me, and I soaked it in like a sponge. I also joined Sister in Crime. Besides a lot of friendly support, my chapter offered a writers’ critique group. Their feedback was invaluable in progressing towards the professional level.

My first sale was a short story about a ghost who haunted a Venetian opera house–shades of things to come! I was on my way and have never looked back. I can honestly say I haven’t regretted my career change for a second.

I’ve been very lucky, and I have a lot of people to thank. My mother, who took me to the library at an early age and instilled a love of books. The teachers who taught me how to diagram a sentence (why don’t they do that anymore?). My supportive husband and family. The generous fellow writers who educated me in the field of mystery. The editor who fell in love with my work. My readers, who complete my journey as a storyteller.

Thanks to all these, and a hefty dose of good fortune, I’m writing my dreams and living them too.

Which naturally got me thinking about writing fiction for orangutans. What kind of e-book story would they like to read on those iPads? The answer: a YA (young adult) graphic novel. Moreover, a mystery story.

I’m on the cutting edge here—still with me?

YA is for a predictable reason—the oldsters aren’t interested in e-communication, per the news story. They’ve done fine without this sort of gizmo all their lives and it’s too much effort to tackle all that weird novelty. Fine. We’ll focus on the youngsters.

A graphic novel because, let’s be realistic, teaching an orang to read will take too long and slow down the whole process. In the future, we can start the babies off with iPads and Kindles and smart phones and have them reading by the time they are six. Then, of course, the creative ones will write their own stories. But I’m getting ahead of myself. For now, best to start out easy. Pictures it is.

And, of course, it needs to be a mystery. Orangs love puzzles. Lots of animals enjoy them, mostly because the solution to a puzzle feeder is something tasty. But orangs have other motives as well. Here’s a classic chestnut that zoo people tell, comparing three species of great ape:

A maintenance worker repairs an ape cage. (The apes are shut away.) The guy leaves a screwdriver behind, forgotten in the hay bedding. The work is finished, the locks are locked, and the apes are let back into their enclosure.

Chimpanzees: No matter who spots the screwdriver first, the dominate male confiscates it and waves it around in a fierce dominance display, terrorizing his companions.

Gorillas: Every animal notices the screwdriver, sniffs at it, and ignores it thereafter.

Orangutans: None of them notice the screwdriver. One of them stumbles and knocks hay over it. That night, they use it to take the enclosure apart and break out.

The point is… orangs are clever and sneaky. So a mystery is sure to appeal. The characters would be orangs, maybe some humans. The Case of the Battered Banana, The Missing Monkey Chow, The Tire Swing of Death… I’m on a roll here. Now to find someone who can draw…

I'd rather have a video game, if it's all the same to you.

Ann Littlewood’s third zoo mystery, Endangered, is due out this July.

At first, I wasn’t sure what was happening. Flickering in and out of consciousness is like staccato dreamtime — flashes of motion and brightness, then darkness and thick confusion. I remembered that I was flying from Sacramento to Atlanta, that I’d been feeling unwell, that I’d headed for the restroom . . . and then suddenly I was flat on my back outside the cockpit door, no clue how I’d gotten there.

I now know that I lost consciousness, that the flight attendants had to wrestle my ragdoll body to the floor, all the while struggling to keep my head from banging anything hard and metal. The first clear memory I have is blinking into overhead lights and hearing the call go out on the PA system, “Is there a doctor on the plane?”

I was lucky — there were two. Which is why the second clear memory I have is of a pair of handsome doctors examining me, one checking my blood pressure, the other adjusting an oxygen mask. It was like I was waking up in an episode of Gray’s Anatomy, or maybe 24.

“You fainted,” one said. And then together we figured out why — a perfect storm of cold medicine, inner ear disturbance, low blood sugar and the inability to get horizontal in an economy cabin seat.

I tried to lie still, watching the nice doctors and flight attendants tend to me, listening to the hiss of oxygen and the whooshing roar of the jet engines. I could see the rows of first class passengers — the woman on the front row was glaring at me with her blanket pulled up over her nose, like I had Ebola. But I was so grateful and happy at that moment — to be getting better, to be safe, to be cared for by concerned people.

The doctors asked me the usual questions — Where was I going? Was I alone? What had I been doing? The conversation went something like this:

Me: I’m a writer.

Doctor: Really? My brother is a writer. He writes legal thrillers and lives in Seattle.

Me: Really? I know a writer of legal thrillers living in Seattle — Robert Dugoni. I met him a few weeks ago. He hosted my book signing at The Poisoned Pen.

Doctor (smiling): That’s my brother.

See? It really is a small world, even at 35,000 feet.

All of my non-writer friends think I should to use the entire episode as a plot twist in a book. But my writer friends all know better. They know that truth really is stranger than fiction, that serendipity is the province of real life, not mystery novels. Which makes it even sweeter, I think.

Photo Courtesy Alegri Photo

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Tina Whittle is a mystery writer living and working in the Georgia Lowcountry. Her current novel, Darker Than Any Shadow, is the follow-up to last year’s The Dangerous Edge of Things. Set in contemporary Atlanta, the series features gun-shop owner Tai Randolph and corporate security agent Trey Seaver. Visit www.tinawhittle.com to learn more.

Holly has been in my imagination for a long time, and although I’ve changed her name, her appearance and her family, she is still the sweet, kindhearted girl I created years before she made it into a published book.

She began her existence as a red-haired, freckle-faced teenager who lived in a West Virginia hollow and bore the unlikely name of Lana Turner. She was a secondary character in a novel called Outside Agitators, which occupied me on and off for ten years. I had the grandly ambitious notion that I could capture in a novel all the drama, excitement, and danger of the anti-poverty movement in Appalachia during the mid- to late 1960s. Idealistic young people from middle class backgrounds swooping in to challenge the status quo in one of America’s poorest regions – that sort of message-heavy thing. Lana represented hope for the future: a bright young girl who dared to dream beyond the prison of her circumstances.

The story sprawled every which way, the pages multiplied alarmingly, and the more I wrote, the farther I seemed to be from The End. My characters preached, ranted, cried, despaired, and generally got kicked around by the fictional power structure in my fictional county. Critiquers, faced with the daunting task of helping me shape this mess into something coherent, agreed on only one point: Lana was the best character in the book. Some readers were brutally honest: Lana, not my protagonist, was the only character who came alive and made them care.

The book eventually defeated me. I would never complete it. I put it aside, sad that I hadn’t rescued Lana from that wretched hollow and an awful future. I couldn’t forget her. In time, I wrote a mystery about an investigative reporter (original, huh?) who believed her brother’s accidental death was really murder (and you thought the reporter sleuth was original!). Her investigation took her to West Virginia, where she met… a red-haired, freckle-faced teenager named Lana Turner, who lived in a hollow and yearned to break free. If some editor would publish the book, Lana could go on to a better life. Alas, it didn’t happen that way, for Lana or for me.

Still, I couldn’t let Lana die. More time passed, and I wrote Disturbing the Dead, a mystery set not in West Virginia but in the mountains of southwestern Virginia. Lana appeared again, living not in a dreary hollow but in a dreary-enough little house in the poorest section of fictional Mason County. She had morphed into a Melungeon. The Melungeons are a mixed-race people of mysterious origin, commonly believed to be descendants of shipwrecked Portuguese sailors who intermarried with Native Americans and, in some cases, escaped slaves. Throughout their 400-year history in Appalachia, Melungeons have suffered legal discrimination and social prejudice. Deputy Tom Bridger is Melungeon, and so was the woman whose death he investigates in Disturbing the Dead. Lana became the murdered woman’s niece. This time her champion is Rachel, my veterinarian protagonist, whose help finally allows the girl to have a better life.

Changing Lana’s race meant the red hair and freckles had to go. She acquired gorgeous black hair, olive skin, and the bright blue eyes for which many beautiful Melungeon women have been noted. She became a knockout, but remained the same immensely likable, rather shy girl. Along the way, she lost her first name. Someone I trusted advised me not to name a character after a celebrity, for a variety of reasons. The advice made sense, and I changed Lana’s name to Holly Turner. I think it suits her.

At the end of Disturbing the Dead, Holly’s life changes forever. In the third book, Broken Places, she is maturing as a friend to Rachel and is in love with young Deputy Brandon Connolly. In the fourth book, Under the Dog Star, she continues to work at Rachel’s animal hospital while she creates a sanctuary for abandoned and abused dogs. Although Holly doesn’t have a large role in the fifth book, Bleeding Through (coming out in September), she and I have plans for her future. Whatever path she takes, she will always be one of my favorite characters, and I’m glad I was able to get her out of that awful hollow!