Cabin Fever or a Wintry Mix?

Cabin fever? Hah! I am suffering from the much more debilitating 'wintry mix'. A dash of cabin fever, a soupcon of winter blahs, a modicum of arthritic knee pain, and a hefty dollop of writer's block. That's me.

Illustration: Chris Clover

I walk from room to room and gaze hopefully out the windows looking for anything green, any sign of spring. I did see a robin, but he just looked cold, sad and depressed, about like me.

I go from project to project. A line written here, a load of laundry there. I clean out one cupboard, only to find that I've dumped all of the stuff I took out into another cupboard. My to-do list is growing, but have-done list is not.

My arms don't touch my sides for all of the layers I'm wearing. I've lost sixteen pounds sticking to my Weight Watchers, but who could tell?

And please don't tell me to be thankful I'm not in Massachusetts or Rhode Island. If I were I wouldn't have to worry about my wintry mix because I'd be in the state home for people WHO HAVE HAD ENOUGH AND FINALLY LOST IT!

To add insult to injury, or perhaps the other way around, I watched the news the other night and found that I, along with my sister and sister-in-law, might be featured players on a video made by a local pervert who runs a very nice restaurant near here.

Yes, I'm talking about cameras in the ladies room. I have been a patron of that very ladies room several times in the last few years and I have two questions about this. Who in this world gets his jollies, as my mother used to say, watching women use these facilities? And when am I getting paid for my performance?

Since there seem to be no answers to these questions, I will go now and feed the robin outside my window. He's been looking in, probably hoping to see something green.

I just don't understand!

My father used to say quite often that he was just too old. He didn’t understand this world any more. Well, I’m beginning to know how he felt.           

When we’re young I think not understanding things is a good thing. We question and dissect and search for meaningful answers. And we are sure that at some point we will figure out all that life has to offer.

But as we age and those answers aren’t forthcoming and more and more things go on that seem to us ‘odd’, we start shaking our heads and saying, “I don’t get it!” with an alarming amount of regularity.

Of course, there are a myriad number of things that I have never understood and never thought that I would; i.e.: the theory of relativity, why avocados have such large pits, why nature in its infinite wisdom made mosquitoes, and who first looked at a blue crab and said, “Boy, I’ll bet that’s tasty!”  These don’t bother me.

And I am not speaking of the overwhelming questions that have plagued us since time began. Terrorism, child abuse, plagues, man’s inhumanity to man, slavery and the like. If man ever finds the answer to these maybe they’ll stop, but I don’t see it happening any time soon.

No. I’m referring to the little things that seem to have changed in my lifetime, which don’t really make a difference in my life and, in many cases, may be a change for the better for all I know, but they are like little pebbles in my shoe anyway.

Here are just few things off the top of my head that have become commonplace that I simply do not get, for your enjoyment and in no particular order.

Tattoos. This is in no way a moral judgment. I know some very lovely people who are well-tattooed. I just don’t understand why.

Using ‘I’ when you should use ‘me’.

Why so many people find wrestling fun to watch.

Beautiful women who have extreme plastic surgery.

People who live together with no intention of marrying calling referring to each other as ‘my fiancé’.  Again, not a judgment of any moral kind. Just a question of proper word usage.

People wearing shorts when it’s 30 degrees out.

Waiters who ask, “Are you still working on that?”, as if the food they serve is so bad that it requires work to eat it.

Saying jewlery, instead of jewelry.

Playing electronic games for hours and hours. Also, surfing the web (if it’s still called that) for hours and hours.

Not teaching cursive writing and the times tables in grade school.

I could go on, but I’m old and crotchety and my computer-time tolerance has worn out.

Exactly What's in a Name?

It's January again and I feel I must make a few resolutions - well, maybe one. I'm not sure why. It would seem that the first day of spring is a more apt time to be thinking of renewal and change. But January first is the tradition, so I'll stick to it.  

My resolution is to finish my book by May first and to write at least one blog post a month. Since ideas are scarce, I gave up on weekly. So to begin 2015 -

What’s in a name?

A lot is written about plot development, character development, where ideas come from, etc. But lately I've been pondering character names. Where do they come from? Do most authors sit down and deliberately decide character names? Do they start with a name that they've always loved? Are they paying homage to someone or making puns on purpose?

I hadn't given this much thought before. I just sat down a picked names at random that seemed to work. Then my son, and, when asked, my sister, both thought that my policeman - tall, handsome, Bill Greene - was loosely based on my ex-brother-in-law. This never occurred to me. But when they brought this up I realized that my sister’s ex is very tall, very handsome, and is named Bill. Go figure!

My main characters are Daisy, Rose and Angela. It seems that these names just came to me. But I lately have remembered that my confirmation name is Rose. Not that I had forgotten my confirmation name. I just didn't realize that I named a character after myself.

The only truly nice guy in the Daisy&Rose series is named Tom Willis. He’s handsome, intelligent, and plays by the rules. A good guy all around. It happens that my husband is also named Tom. He’s handsome, intelligent and an all-around good guy. I know that no one will believe this, but I did not choose his name intentionally.

I have a restaurant called the Clover Tavern. The family who owns it is named Clover. This was intentional. My Dad built such a tavern in Fredericksburg, Virginia back in the day and ran it with his mother. However, until I saw it in print, I totally blanked on the fact that Penny Clover Petersen is written in big letters on the front of the book.  And then it just seemed a really odd choice.

At this point I feel that some, probably most, of you are now concerned about my mental health. You needn't worry. I've always been somewhat concerned about my mental health, but, as I am not dangerous, I just ignore it. However, I do find it fascinating that my sub-conscious mind is naming my characters without my knowledge or consent. The question now is do I continue to let the recesses of my mind do the work or do I take charge and go to the obits and the phone book?

I’d love to hear from other authors about how they name their characters.

The problem with cozy mysteries

Writing cozies can be tricky. The rules are pretty well defined, even if you choose to write, as I do, a 'modern cozy'. There are three. 1)Cozy writers do not depict grizzly murders and autopsies are avoided. We don't have psychotic killers torturing hapless victims in gruesome detail. 2)Sex is glossed over with only the incidental reference to 'incredibly tall, slim men with well-cut graying hair and eyes the color of smoky quartz under wire-rimmed glasses'. Perhaps adding 'kind of bookish and sexy - quite the studly muffin'.  3)And, of course, we don't use foul language.

Of these restrictions I find I have no trouble at all avoiding explicit violence in my books. I am not a fan of this sort of thing. I turn my head when a doctor needs to give an injection on a medical show. I certainly am not going to write about some nut dismembering bodies or the joy he gets as he watches the last life's blood flow from a beautiful young woman's body. My victims tend to be obnoxious people that no one much likes who are conked on the head and found by the side of the road.

Next there is sex. - always an interesting subject and I'm not averse to the idea. But I was raised in the 50's and 60's when we didn't talk about it. I went to a Catholic girls' high school and to hear any of the conversations taking place at lunch no one in that entire school so much as kissed a boy. This, of course, was amazingly far from the truth. We were as fooling around at the drive-in as any healthy teenager, but we just did not discuss it. So not writing about it is pretty natural to me.

Foul language, on the other hand, can be a problem. I actually grew up in a home where I never heard my parents utter anything more profane than damn and hell. When my father needed to fix the plumbing or some other odious task, my mother would shoo us all out of the house for fear something stronger might slip from between his lips.

Of course, this did not prevent me from learning this language elsewhere and using it. My everyday speech is not chock full of colorful invective, I do occasionally throw out a word or two my mother would not approve of.

So what is acceptable in a cozy written in 2014? Can we use (this is silly I know) the S-word? Can we reference God? Can a leading lady say, "Oh Christ!"? And of course there is the big one - the F-bomb. Now I don't advocate throwing it around like confetti, but I do feel there are appropriate times that it might be used. As my children could tell you, if they heard me scream f..... out loud, they would most certainly know that I am really, really mad or have gone completely around the bend. And I feel the same holds true in a cozy. A crazed killer saying, "Oh gosh, you are an idiot" does not have the dramatic effect as something much more strongly worded. And so the question is, just how much is too much - and is it still a cozy?

I'd love to hear your thoughts. And by the way, I will be a guest on We B Swangin webcast this upcoming Wednesday, November 19th at 4 pm. Tune in at WLVS Radio Live www.listenvisionlive.com for what I'm sure will be an amusing hour.

The real Angela Forrest - Jean, Regina, and Mary

  

Of the characters I've created Angela Delphinium Forrest is my favorite. A woman of a certain age, she is charming, unpredictable, attractive, intelligent and whimsical. She's a wonderful hostess, be it a planned dinner or a surprise midnight invasion of nosy neighbors. She can whip up cookies for one hundred or a Thanksgiving dinner for twelve at a moment's notice. She owns the appropriate clothes for any event. On Thanksgiving Day she might be the perfect Pilgrim. In the dead of night, a sleek black cat burglar - with a splash of red at the neck, of course. She may be eccentric, verging on sheer lunacy, but she loves her family, is fiercely protective, and is always up for anything that sounds like trouble.

This lovely lady is, of course, an invention, but she has her roots in three wonderful women I have been fortunate to have in my life; Jean Petersen, Regina Clover, Mary Garrison.

Jean Petersen, my dear mother-in-law, is as lovely today as she was when I first met her almost fifty years ago. She is the perfect mother-in-law – never intrusive, always helpful. Family always comes first for Jean and we rely on her wisdom and support. She is a great cook and the ideal hostess. And she is an intelligent lady who isn’t afraid to speak her mind.

Regina Clover, my mother, died 1986. I still miss her. She had a wicked sense of humor and a keen intelligence. She loved to tease people, my father especially. She accepted what life dealt out with patience and faith and there was rarely a situation where she couldn’t find something to laugh about. And although my father and brother were the writers in the family, my mother is the person who instilled in me my love of books, especially mysteries.

While Angela became a distillation of all these women, Mary Garrison, my best friend’s mother and something of a second mother to me, was the original inspiration for the character. Mary was a complex mixture of naiveté, gullibility, common sense, intelligence and business savvy. She loved life and people and her family most of all. She was a lady who rolled with the punches and usually found something good somewhere in the chaos. And Mary did indeed dress for every occasion – be it a sweater, skirt and knee socks for going back to school at sixty-something or a complete country western ensemble when visiting New Mexico.

Mary left us in September. She is missed by so many people. And I’ve been feeling like my muse left with her. I have been having a very hard time writing Angela. But I suddenly realized that Angela, like Mary, Jean and Regina, knows that the secret when encountering stumbling blocks in life is simply to do the next right thing. So starting today, Angela is back in business - wearing a black wool sheath by St. John covered in white dog hair and a Red Sox baseball cap.

The Locket "see Angela at her best"- free this month at http://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=penny+clover+petersen

  

Inspiring or not - September SinC-Up

I recently became a member of ‘Sisters in Crime’, a service organization dedicated to promote the ongoing advancement, recognition and professional development of women crime writers. And wouldn’t you know it, I had no sooner sent in a check, than I got a writing assignment - an invitation to participate in September’s SinC-up for bloggers. (www.sistersincrime.org/bloghop)  So this week’s little missive actually will be about writing!

I would imagine that all writers are inspired by someone or something they have read - be it a childhood story that so stimulated the imagination that they embarked on wild adventures that they would later write about - or, perhaps, reading a gritty page-turner and realizing that that neighbor down the street who peers out the window with wild eyes through a crack in the curtain is a villain who needs a story.

And I am no exception. There are two authors to whom I’m grateful. The first is Harper Lee who wrote with such poetry that every time I read To Kill a Mockingbird I am once again totally immersed in her beautiful words. The sounds, the smells, the ‘feel’ of Maycomb become so real that I can’t put it down, even at the twentieth reading! I will never write such a book. I spent years trying to find a story in my heart that equaled it when I finally dawned on me that I didn't need to. It’s been done - perfectly.

But, I also realized what was most important to me about To Kill a Mockingbird.  Harper Lee made me want to write. It took a while, but at the ripe old age of fifty-nine, I finally found stories that I can tell in my own voice – cozy little mysteries. They’re not great American novels, but they are fun, little books that can take you out of yourself for a few hours. And with the stressful lives we all live, I think they serve a valuable purpose.

The second author who inspired me greatly was the one who actually gave me a kick start to write Roses and Daisies and Death, Oh My. Her name shall remain unrevealed for two reasons. The first reason is that I've forgotten it.

The second reason (and the reason I've forgotten it) is that the book she had written was so bad that I couldn't bring myself to finish it. I complained loudly that “apparently anyone could get published and I wonder who she slept with to do so” or words to that effect. My charming husband, Tom, then said, “Well, why don’t you write one yourself?” And a book was born.

So thank you Miss Lee and Miss Unmemorable for the inspiration to craft words and the incentive to begin the process.

Check out mystery writer, Patricia Gligor, at http://pat-writersforum.blosgpot.com.

www.sistersincrime.org/bloghop 

Medicare and the brand new me

Saturday I officially became a really old person. My brand new Medicare card is in my wallet, my knees hurt when I go up stairs, I have a pair of reading glasses in every room, and I don’t know what photo bombing is. I knew I’d arrived when my six year old granddaughter was explaining that she went real bowling, not Wii bowling, and condescendingly explained that Wii was a game.

I’m writing this as I wait  twenty-five minutes for my Clairol’s Age Defy hair coloring to work. It is busy correcting the seven signs of aging hair. Who knew? I thought getting gray was my only problem.  But now I know that I must also worry that my once youthful tresses are apparently lackluster, coarse, frizzy, unruly, dry, and breakable.

Cosmetics manufacturers certainly know what they’re doing. They are acutely aware that baby boomers do not want to age gracefully. And so most of the various creams and lotions – and there are quite a few in my bathroom cabinet - have ‘age defying’ somewhere on the label. And if it’s not ‘age defying’, it’s ‘lifting’ or 'firming'. If I had just thought to pickle myself in my twenties, maybe I wouldn't have to use all this stuff.

Where did I go wrong? My mother used Pond’s cold cream and a smidge of lanolin for moisturizer and her skin was absolutely beautiful.

Oops! Time to see just how much age I have defied using this special coloring. Well, would you look at that? I appear to be ten years younger. Oh wait, let me put my glasses on. Oh dear. As Emily Litella would say, “Nevermind.”

*For you youngsters out there, Emily Litella was a brilliant, if often mistaken, spokeswoman for many SNL causes.