Miss Demeanors

If you write mysteries then you’ve killed a few people (on the page). When I plan a book I know before I begin writing who died and how, and who did it. I can picture the scene of the death – where it happened, the time of day, really all of the details. Then I think of how. Was it a knife, a gun, poison? Is there a convenient cliff nearby? Did the victim die before they fell off?  On the surface it sounds gruesome, but ‘the death’ is the inciting event in a book and sets the tone for everything that comes after. Would a sweet grandmother strangle a man with her hands to protect her grandchildren? Unless she had a career as a professional wrestler and had kept up her weightlifting routine, probably not. Same with suffocation. So bring out the kitchen knife! On the other hand, she probably knows how to wield the sharp-tipped vacuum cleaner attachment she’s had for 40 years and could quickly slip it in the dishwasher to eliminate trace evidence. Or perhaps she hauls her grandfather’s commemorative Army sword off the wall above the mantle? On the other hand, wouldn’t the sword point directly to her? On the other other hand, she could explain away her fingerprints since she’s legitimately handled it before.  The method has to fit the crime and the criminal (read Roger Johns’ debut novel, Dark River Rising. He has a great murder with a twist, one that sums up the mind-set of the killer. Not a person you’d want to get on the wrong side of! But more about that tomorrow when Roger joins us to talk about his book.) For now, does anyone have a method for murder that they found particularly inventive or interesting? 

I am delighted to host Roger Johns today at Miss Demeanors. Roger’s debut novel, Dark River Rising, launches on August 29th and I had the good fortune to read an advance copy. All I can say is get your copy now and prepare to enjoy! By way of introduction I’ll share that Roger is a former corporate lawyer and college professor with law degrees from Louisiana State University and Boston University. Born and raised in Louisiana – where his novel is set – he and his wife now life in Georgia. Before we get started, don’t forget to post a comment to REGISTER TO WIN a copy. We’ll pick randomly from all comments. Now let’s hear from Roger.  TdeH: Roger, welcome! I’ve read Dark River Rising and I’m brimming with questions. First off, like me, you had a very different career prior to publication. How did you get your start writing? RJ: The urge to write creatively, has I think, always been with me. As a kid, I was the neighborhood nerd who organized the ‘plays’ we put on. I was the editor of my high school literary magazine my senior year. As a law student, I was the director and principle writer of the faculty roast––the Assault and Flattery Show––at the end of my third year. I also had ambitions, a long time ago, to write for television. From there, the path to being a published writer (other than the ultra-exciting academic articles I’ve published) has been the most interesting path I’ve ever been down. The manuscript that eventually became Dark River Rising went in and out of the drawer several times. Along the way, I took a very effective writing class from David Fulmer––an excellent writer and writing teacher in Atlanta. That gave me the confidence to believe I could produce a novel length manuscript. Finally, once I retired from teaching, I got serious about finishing the book. And, after two intense years of writing and rewriting, with the help of critique partners and critique groups, I got the manuscript into good shape. Then, at an Atlanta Writers Conference, it attracted the attention of April Osborn, the editor at St. Martin’s Press who acquired the book. TdeH: What led you to crime fiction? Is there something sinister about corporate law that we don’t know? RJ: I’ve been an avid mystery, thriller, and crime fiction reader since childhood, so I decided to write what I enjoy reading. And yes, there’s plenty sinister about corporate law, and no, you don’t want to know. TdeH: Setting is very important to me when I write. I think of it as almost a character and can’t imagine transplanting the story elsewhere. Is Dark River Rising deeply based on your life in Louisiana? RJ: Dark River Rising set itself in Baton Rouge. The city had such a profound effect on me during my college, law school and early career years that I feel I know it better than the town I grew up in. Plus, there’s something very atmospheric about Baton Rouge. It’s an interesting place, with a lot of history and a lot of mystery, and the character and the setting suit each other quite well. There’s really no place else I could imagine putting it––no other place with which I have such a deep, enduring emotional connection. I’ll be appearing at the Louisiana Book Festival in the fall, which I’m really excited about. It will be my first time back in Baton Rouge in about twenty years, so I’ll have a chance to find out if I got things right. TdeH: Detective Wallace Hartman is a strong female protagonist. What led to her creation? RJ: This was not an easy thing for me. In my earliest attempts at writing the book, Wallace was male––same name, different gender––but for some reason that I still can’t quite put my finger on, it didn’t work. Mechanically, the plot worked fine, but the character never came to life for me. As I look back on this aspect of the experience, I think this must have been one of the reasons the manuscript went into and came out of the proverbial drawer so many times. Eventually, I learned to listen to the little voice in my head, which urged me to change the character from male to female. Once I started writing the character as female, things began to move quickly. I got a lot of help from my incredibly wise and creative critique partners on how to craft a female lead. TdeH: You have a male character who assists in the investigation. Was he in the original version and was he originally a woman? RJ: To the best of my recollection, Mason, the secondary lead, was always male. The most important changes in the Mason character (and these occurred before the manuscript was picked up by St. Martin’s) were an increase in his relative importance to the plot, and an increase in his on-screen time. This came about because I found it easier to expose Wallace’s inner workings by having her react to another person, rather than just have her react to situations. Both ways work, and a book certainly needs both, but person-versus-person offers a richer more revealing palette to work with. And, I paired her with Mason, someone she didn’t already know, rather than with a member of her own department, because the idea of having her react to a stranger was more interesting. There’s always a bit of negotiation, internal and external, when we find ourselves coming to terms with a stranger. It’s more uncomfortable for the characters, but more interesting to write, and hopefully, more interesting to read. TdeH: What was the starting point for Dark River Rising? And without giving anything away…. Let me just say ‘snake’. You know what I mean! Was that in your mind from the outset or did it come later? RJ: The genesis of the story was a question that just popped into my head, one day, about why the cocaine cartels operate the way they do. The ‘snake’ came after that, but not too much later. From the beginning, I knew there would be a fair amount of violence in the story, because it takes place against the backdrop of the unbelievably violent drug cartels. So I knew I would need a visceral image to make the reader sense, immediately, this is very serious, this story is going to involve a persistent, heightened level of danger. And while it’s true that the snake is technically an important element of the plot, to me it’s an even more important element of the setting. It sets the stage and it primes the reader’s emotional pump, from the very first paragraph. That said, I think it’s important to mention here, that while there are some dark parts, there are also some funny and light-hearted aspects, as well. And while it is a plot-driven book, it is still a story about Wallace Hartman, a woman on the cusp of middle age who happens to be a homicide detective working hard to solve a rather startling crime. I don’t see it as just a crime story that happens to involve a female police detective. For me, Wallace is the main attraction and she is my primary motivation for writing. It didn’t start out this way, but I’m quite happy that it has ended up this way. TdeH: What got left out of the final draft? Or added? RJ: Two of the most important additions were the resurrection of one of the characters that I had originally killed off, and the addition of a scene at the end so that Wallace is not so untethered from the aftermath of the events in the story. We get a chance to see more clearly how she, personally and professionally, will be shaped by what she has just been through. April, who has the most incredible instincts about what makes a story work and work best (and I know this, not just because of her impact on Dark River Rising, but because I’ve read other novels she has edited) led me to these changes. Gently but firmly, she pried me loose from my inclination to ‘kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out’. Without question, these changes significantly elevated the quality of the narrative and most certainly broadened its appeal. TdeH: Dark River Rising releases on Tuesday, August 29th, barely a week away. How will you be celebrating?  RJ: What a day, that’s going to be. It’ll be so wonderful to be able to thank all the people who were so helpful with the writing and who provided such amazing emotional support. TdeH: Can you say something about where we might see Detective Hartman next? RJ: Wallace will be faced with solving a murder that appears to involve race and politics.  TdeH: Roger, it’s been such a pleasure to chat. And thanks for offering to stay on line with us today to answer any questions your future readers might have! I’m certainly looking forward to appearing with you at Fox Tale Book Shoppe in Woodstock, GA (in the Atlanta metro area) on September 16th. For details and for other appearances please look Roger up on line at rogerjohnsbooks.com or on Twitter @rogerjohns10 and on Facebook. And don’t forget to POST A COMMENT by midnight tomorrow (August 25th) to REGISTER TO WIN a copy of Dark River Rising.

 Yes, the eclipse is there….. very tiny in the photograph through the glasses. My parents happen to live at an epicenter point of totality and it was my birthday…. so I drove to see them. (Plus I’m on my way to KillerNashville which is nearby. An amazing triple confluence of events.) Because I was really traveling to see my parents I confess to a near blasé attitude to the actual viewing of the eclipse. We had our glasses and I’d checked out the NASA website and learned a bit about watching and what to look for, but it wasn’t really caught up in the excitement. That changed once it happened. Twilight came, the cicadas (and crickets? what are those nighttime insects?) went wild, noisier than on most evenings, although that was possibly because our group had caught eclipse fever by this point. It was only twilight and we were excited. Total eclipse lasted for under two minutes and it was worth every moment of my 10 hour drive.  I suspect mosts of us have seen a vast landscape, or seascape, or the stars at night or SOMETHING that we later saw in a photograph and said, that doesn’t do it justice. It is an aid to memory but doesn’t capture the presence, the awe inspiring nature of vastness, of something larger than the human race. The minutes of total eclipse were like that. Now, here’s my confession. I do believe that on the NASA video they said that during totality you could glance at the moon without glasses, so I did. I was spell bound. Literally. I’m sure it was a second or two that I looked. Because of this, I spent the entire night worrying that I will now go blind. (I’m not kidding here….) I figure I’ll worry about this for about two more weeks, so bear with me.  My parents’ dog experienced the eclipse with us. He was more interested in the humans than the sun until the explosion. Yes, a solar explosion. Or that’s what it seemed like in the moment. Max ran for his life, as if the hounds of hell were on him and we hustled him inside to security.  Of course it wasn’t a solar explosion, but a mega display of fireworks by the neighbors (fortunately behind us so we were distracted by the lights). Loud doesn’t describe it. Max the dog was terrorized. Golden doodles will forever carry a genetic marker that equates eclipse with incredibly loud frightening noise.     We ended with Eclipse Birthday cake (two of us had eclipse birthdays, what are the odds!) and it was a fine close to an unexpectedly amazing day.  What was your experience of the day?

We are thrilled to host Ashley Weaver, author of the Amory Ames mysteries. When she’s not writing, Ashley is the Technical Services Coordinator for the Allen Parish Libraries in Louisiana. The Miss Demeanors have written several posts about our love of libraries and Ashley has worked in one since she was 14; first as a page and then a clerk before finally obtaining her MLIS from Louisiana State University.  Now, I’ll turn it over to Ashley to talk about her latest book!   What inspired your book? It’s a question authors often get asked, but I find it’s not always an easy one to answer. For me, story ideas sometimes come out of the blue, with no recognizable links to any one influence. Other times, they come together in little pieces as I write, like a puzzle being slowly assembled. However, my newest book, The Essence of Malice, combines two specific inspirations, both with roots in things I have loved since childhood: Paris and perfume.    I have always been enamored with Paris. Growing up, I had a giant poster of the Eiffel Tower hanging above my bed, and I dreamed of one day taking a trip to the City of Lights. I would check out audiocassette tapes from the library on learning French and would practice at home. I read books on the history of France and perused travel guides, plotting future adventures. My dream of visiting Paris finally came true a few years ago when I went with a group of friends for Christmas. We rented a little apartment two blocks from the Louvre and had the time of our lives exploring the city, eating delicious food, and trying out a few phrases in the French language. (I never did become fluent, for all those audiocassettes, but I’m still working on it!)  The trip was just as magical as I had always imagined it would be, and, when I began plotting my fourth Amory Ames mystery, I knew that it was time for Amory and her husband Milo to take a trip to Paris as well. Paris in the 1930s was a bit different than the Paris of today, of course, and Amory and Milo don’t visit the tourist hotspots that my friends and I did. But the glamour and sophistication of the city stands eternal and was a source of great inspiration.   One lingering remnant of that trip is my affection for the perfume J’Adore by Dior. My parents had bought me a bottle that Christmas, and I brought it with me, spraying it on before days spent wandering Parisian streets. Now, whenever I smell the scent, it reminds me of that trip. But Paris was not the beginning of my love of perfume. I was fascinated with fragrance from a young age. I remember, as a small child, loving to look at the perfume bottles on my grandmother’s dresser when we would go to visit her. There was one shaped like an elegant lady that always captured my imagination, and it was fun to open the bottles and dab on the different scents. I loved my mother’s perfume, too, and the whiff of it will bring back happy childhood memories to this day.   I even took my own foray into the world of perfumery. When I was about six or seven, my cousin and I decided that we would make homemade perfume for our mothers. We found some little bottles and filled them with water and rose petals, sure that this was precisely the way real perfume was made. Of course, we had missed a few essential ingredients. In no time at all, the waterlogged rose petals decomposed and our “perfume” began to smell horrible. My mom kept it and pretended to love it, but that was the last time I tried to make perfume – at least until I wrote The Essence of Malice.  In the book, Amory and Milo investigate the suspicious death of a famous parfumier. To form a connection with the family, Amory commissions them to make a custom perfume. I greatly enjoyed researching the art of perfumery and concocting Amory’s new fragrance, and I couldn’t resist including a slightly altered version of my failed childhood attempt at creating perfume, the first time I have adapted a personal story into one of my mysteries! Its origins in my longtime love for the magic of Paris and perfume made The Essence of Malice an especially fun book to write. The story allowed me to travel back to Paris, this time with an additional dash of intrigue and danger. It also gave me the opportunity, at least in words, to try my hand at creating a perfume once more – this time one that doesn’t smell like rotten rose petals! https://www.ashley-weaver.comFacebook at AuthorAshleyWeaverTwitter @AshleyCWeaver

It’s summer which is traditionally vacation season. This got me thinking about road trips. Steinbeck chose to travel with a dog. While I see the appeal of road tripping with a good listener, I think I’d rather have someone in the passenger seat who could carry on a conversation. I’m a student of pop culture thus drawn to literary & art history. Zora Neale Hurston is one of my favorites – I’ve read her novels, several of her short stories and the anthology edited by Alice Walker (“I Love Myself When I Am Laughing And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean & Impressive”). Given what I’ve read by and about her she seems like she’d have been a lively travel companion. What about you, my fellow Miss Demeanors? If you could have anyone join you, living or not, who would you want in your car on a road trip across the country? Susan: What a fun question. I suspect I’d enjoy someone gossipy and funny. Dorothy Parker and Grace Paley come to mind. Or Truman Capote. David Sedaris. Clearly, I’m looking for entertainment in my driving. Cate: Totally agree with David Sedaris. I also would love to go road tripping with Gillian Flynn and Karin Slaughter. Not only are both women brilliant writers, they are super funny–judging from hearing them speak at Thrillerfest. Michele: Lately, I’ve been admiring writers who dare to speak out in troubled times. For my road trip, I’d put J.K. Rowling in the passenger seat because, in addition to her commentary, I’m guessing she’s good at directions. Then I’d seat Stephen King with Anne Lamott in the backseat. I love Lamott’s wit, but I figure if she started getting too religious for me, King would shut her up, and then probably Rowling would have to intercede. You can guess what the name of the car would be. I’d just drive and listen. Tracee: I want to go in Michele’s car. I’ll sit very very quietly and you won’t know I’m there. JK Rowling would likely be an amazing long distance traveling companion. If I am able to use her resurrection stone I am tempted to borrow Truman Capote from Susan, however, I suspect he might get on my nerves part way through…all depending on his mood. I am tempted to ask Leo Tolstoy to join me. I doubt he’s any good at directions – but I’ll have a handle on that – however I suspect he will have an opinion about everything. I’d like to have him join me at the mid point of his career before he started to think about leaving society for a life of monastic solitude. The 60 hours of audio War and Peace kept me entranced, I’m sure the author can do as well…or better. Paula: What a fun question! Having just survived a road trip to northern Italy, France, and Switzerland with my kids and grandkids — Grandmama in the middle of the two car seats in the back — listening to Katy Perry and playing the geography game, the idea of hanging out with grown-ups in the car sounds cool. (Which is not to say that a road trip with my kids and grandkids through Europe is not heaven on earth, because it is for this grandmother!)I think I have to go with a very eclectic group in a vehicle that would seat at least eight: Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Georges Simenon, Mark Nepo, Alice Hoffman, Louise Penny, Lee Child, and moi. I’d let Lee drive, directing our route if not our conversation. That way we’d explore the back roads of America while our discourse runs from philosophy and poetry to clues and character and magical realism. Not to mention a lot of bawdy jokes! Susan: It sounds like you drive a big car! Tracee: Wait a minute…how did Paula get a minivan? I wonder if her trip might turn into a movie….. where 8 start and only one survives. Those are some personalities….all crammed in together….keep your phone pre-programmed to 911 and we’ll come bail you out. Paula: I used to have a minivan, back in my carpooling days. But for a trip like this, I’d spring for an eight-seater SUV rental. Maybe a Cadillac Escalade, pimpmobile for writers! Tracee: Fully wired for video and sound recording I hope. Robin: One well-placed phone would do it 🙂 I like how dark Tracee went on Paula’s car. We could call it 8 Little Writers.D.A.: I vacillated between wanting to spend time with a serious thinker or someone who was fun. In the end, I based my decision on the car: a forest green convertible Karmann Ghia. I can’t quite imagine George Orwell or Hermann Hesse appreciating such an automobile. The person who would relish a drive down the Italian coast in this car–provided I was the designated driver and there were plenty of stops for martinis–would be Dorothy Parker. I mean, really, how can you not want to spend time with the woman who said, “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy”? Robin: Ooh, good choice. Both the car and the companion. Dorothy Parker is another of my favorites. I make pilgrimages to the Algonquin Hotel as an homage the Round Table. Alexia: I want to go on a road trip in Alison’s green Karmann Ghia with John Steinbeck’s dog, Charley.I freely confess to preferring the absence of other people on road trips. I’ve made trips solo (and with an animal companion) and with other people. By the end of the trip, I liked the other people a little bit less than I did before the trio began. On the other hand, the open road with my own thoughts, a (fairly) well-behaved dog, and some tunes on the radio was pretty close to perfect. Ditto for solo travel by train–except on the train, the dog and music were replaced by books. Tracee: My first car was a British racing green TR-6. Easy to spell and a joy to drive (when you are 16)… I’ve driven one recently and I could use better shock absorbers, power everything and a clutch that doesn’t double as a thigh master. How about you, dear readers? Who would be in your car on a cross-country road trip? 

The Miss Demeanors have previously blogged about whether or not each of us listens to music or other sounds while writing. I’m on the put-your-records-on side. Why? Because it helps me combat distraction. Sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? For most of my life, I’ve made my living by dividing my attention. I started out as a paralegal working on 150-200 cases at any given time. Once I mastered that balancing act, I got bored. I gravitated to a career where the landscape shifts constantly, where I’m challenged to keep learning. As a cyber crime investigator I’m required to pay attention to subtle nuances to identify anomalous dew drops in firehoses of information. It’s held my interest for nearly 20 years, a good chunk of which I’ve spent bombarded by distractions. That’s where music comes in. When I’m overwhelmed, frustrated, or having trouble focusing, I put on headphones and fire up my iTunes. At first I thought music helped because it relaxed me. Then someone asked me about my playlists. A lot of the songs are filled with driving beats and heavy guitars. I’ve been known to dance while I work. Fun but definitely not relaxing. So then I thought, aha, it must be a rhythm thing. Makes sense, right? But that seemed wrong, too. I usually shuffle songs. While I’ve noticed algorithmic patterns based on title and genre in iTunes’ shuffling, the beats tend to change from song to song. Because I’m the curious sort (i.e., easily distracted), I recently set out to understand why listening to music helps me focus. That’s when I learned about spatial intelligence. It’s how our brains transform and relate observations that are superficially or overtly unrelated. A growing body of research has found listening to music stimulates the creative parts of our spacial intelligence that help us solve complex problems and heighten situational awareness. Handy skills for my day job. Equally useful when working in reverse, like, say, crafting a mystery. If you’ll excuse, I have a first draft to finish. Now, where did I put my headphones?  

We’ve all heard this tidbit of advice from Peter De Vries. It’s often misattributed to Hemingway. If you want to read about that, here’s a good explanation: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/09/21/write-drunk/ This post isn’t about who said it first. It’s about the spirit of the quote, no pun intended.  The advice is meaningful to me right now as I’m writing a first draft of a new novel. That quote says to me to release the shackles of inhibition. Just write. No one is going to see the first draft but me. So do whatever it takes to write with reckless abandon. Don’t worry about tropes, cliches, the amount of profanity, the number of times I use the word “was.” None of that matters in this round. What matters is the second version. And the third. And every revision after that. It’s impossible to edit a manuscript that doesn’t exist. So, while I’m not exactly writing drunk, what I am doing is constantly reminding myself to muzzle the doubts and ignore my internal critic. Instead, I’m writing like no one is reading. I’m reveling in the first-draftness of just getting the story out. Because I love revising. That’s where the magic happens. And I can’t wait to get started. What about you? When you’ve read/heard “write drunk, edit sober,” what does it mean to you?  

Black Hat and DEF CON, the annual back-to-back information security conferences, happened a few weeks ago in Las Vegas. The week is also known as Hacker Summer Camp. I skipped it this year. About a month earlier I’d been craving a change of scenery by way of a writing retreat. Formal, organized retreats weren’t working with my schedule so I decided to create my own. Big kudos go to my partner who found the perfect spot, a little out-of-the-way boutique hotel on Vancouver Island’s west coast. I think each of the Miss Demeanors have mentioned the valuable correlation between playing outside and creativity. My getaway was perfect in this regard. Days started with biking, hiking, kayaking, and even a couple of hours of zip-lining followed by hours of reading and writing with spectacular views of the ocean. An added bonus I didn’t count on was terrible Internet connectivity. For the first time in months I couldn’t get sidetracked by Twitter and email. The hotel had wifi but it was slower than what I’m used to and failed completely unless I was in one particular spot. It was in that spot I communicated with my lovely and fabulous agent (Paula) about current subs and new ideas. Maybe it was the view, the peace of a quiet so profound I could hear the fwap-fwap of a seagull’s footfall as it walked along the rocky shoreline, the lack of hyperdistraction, or, most likely, a combination of all the above. All I know is my imagination went into overdrive. At the end of the week I had an outline and 2 chapters of a new novel. The experience was such a success that I’ve already booked the same spot for next year. I can’t wait to go back to summer camp.  

A major life event occurred last week, one that I can’t ignore. My mother passed away after a battle with Alzheimer’s. My mom wasn’t the bake-cookies-for-PTA-meetings type of person. She was a journalist and performer, in some form or fashion, for her entire life. She was also my biggest cheerleader who taught me to follow my passions. When I was 8 years old, I discovered the power of storytelling. I wrote stories for class assignments that I later learned were circulated around the teachers’ lounge. Thinking about those stories today, I see nothing special until I recalled what my peers wrote for those same assignments. My classmates wrote about horses and what they wanted to be when they grew up. I wrote ghost stories and melodramatic mysteriesamong groups of friends (third-grade style). I credit my mother with that. She encouraged me to read well above my grade level, took me to get my first library card, and never said no when I wanted more books. That summer she thought it was a great idea when I asked to use her typewriter to start a weekly neighborhood newspaper. In addition to reporting on who got a new dog or how the Oakland A’s were doing, I included (at my mom’s suggestion) a “fiction corner” where I wrote short stories. My mom helped me sell subscriptions and took me on my Saturday morning delivery rounds. Sometimes those rounds concluded with a stop at the local stationery store to buy fresh spools of typewriting ribbon when I wore the old ones out. I kept that paper going until midway through the 4th grade. As childhood attention spans go, that’s probably some kind of record. One of the greatest gifts my mom gave me was teaching me, through her actions and advice, to live fearlessly and with no regrets. As I continue my journey as an author – and a human being – that’s the best way I know how to honor her. Thank you, Mom. I miss you.