I just got back from the New England Chapters of the Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime joint conference, the New England Crime Bake, two days of fun and frolic, all about the art and science of murder and detection. Murder and Mayhem for fun and profit.

Day one was mystery author panels. First panel was called Soap Operas and Sleep Stealers: Series vs Stand-alones.

Next came Breaking and Entering: New Kids on the Block Tell How They Did It. "It," as the title implies, was how they broke into the book biz, how they got an agent, found a publisher, worked with an editor, etc. This was quite interesting to me, as I'm working on my own first mystery novel.

Of course when I hear that one of the panelists, I won't say who, got their agent, who is also Nelson DeMille's agent, by the way, on the only ten pages of her novel she had already written because *HE LIKED HER SMILE,* I start to wonder if perhaps I should abandon my computer in favor of my dentist!

Seriously, wouldn't Brite Smile and Invisilign be faster and cheaper than slaving away for hour after lonely hour in front of a word processor, in the long run?

Ah yes, you might say, but you wouldn't have the pleasure of seeing your book on the New York Times bestseller list, and hearing one reviewer call your book the best she's read the entire year. *sigh* Nothing like a little positive aura around something to help it gather some weight.

Anyway, the next panel, one which I was, to put it mildly, quite 'eager' to hear about was called Talking Dirty and Writing Gore: The challenges of handling sex and violence. Well, I don't know about you, but I certainly don't find it a challenge to handle sex...oops, I mean, write about sex, but the violence part might be a little harder. How does one make the violence so necessary to mystery novels gritty, but not gratuitous? That was what the panel tried to answer, but I don't think they quite hit it.

I did quite enjoy this panel, however, and I found one new interesting novelist I'll probably read in the future, Lynne Heitman. She writes a female sleuth who is the general manager of an airline, and all the mysteries occur around airports and airlines. She's evolving into some kind of P.I., and others have said that Lynne writes her to be grittier than most female sleuths.

This is a big problem, in my opinion. It appears that, based on the evidence of Sue Grafton and Janet Evanovich, one has to write a female private eye/sleuth/detective/bounty hunter/whatever, who is funny, VERY interested in men, has a somewhat foul mouth, or friends who do (I have NO problem with this, by the way, just noting the formula), and who has some sort of seriously cantankerous or weird mother, cousin, or relative, and a slutty sidekick if the sidekick's a she, and a hunky sidekick if the sidekick's a he.

This is just not my cup of tea, but it's TREMENDOUSLY successful. You can see where it comes from and why it's so successful when you realize they both started out in romance novels. Again, not for me, but one has to stop and think it over, when you consider their success.

Hence, in my opinion, there's a huge, gaping space there for gritty, interesting, outsider-type of female private eyes. Lynne may have written one, we'll see.

I had it in mind to write that sort of character, myself, but then just last week, when I was home, visiting my parents in Houston and out for a run, my character came to me and told me she was really a he, and that I should change my entire way of thinking. By the end of six miles that flew by without me even noticing, I had an entirely new protagonist, and a rethinking of the book.

We'll have to stick my girl on the backburner for now, but I'll keep her in my hip pocket (to trot out and mix some horrible cliches), so that when I finish this one, I can go back to work on her. She really interests me, but obviously he, whoever he is (no name yet) needed to be in this book.

Back to the conference after that monster aside. This sex and violence panel was right before the keynote speaker, Janet Evanovich, was due to speak, and the conference was running late because of an early morning traffic jam, so they cut off the sex and violence panel without allowing questions from the audience!?!?!!! Can you imagine how interesting those would have been??

At least Janet was interesting and entertaining, though, poor thing, she had a nose as red as Rudolph's due to a BAD COLD, with a capital "C," She did her best to be funny, and she really is funny in person, almost as funny as her heroine, Stephanie Plum, but I do think her energy flagged halfway, probably because of the cold. It was an interesting talk, and somewhat inspirational. Her website gets five million hits a month, and her very first book, "One For the Money," was optioned by Hollywood for one million dollars when it was still in galleys, AND she got an agent on the basis of only 50 pages of that same book.

Now I like Janet Evanovich books as much as the next frazzled female, but I have to question that 50-pages thing. On the other hand, that story, along with the 10-pages-and-a-smile story I heard earlier, certainly gives one hope in a perverse way. Maybe I should just talk/write dirty, get my teeth super-whitened, and sashay my ass in front of Nelson DeMille's agent, just to see if he likes mine, as well. ;-) (Hey, it's MY dream, I can do it anyway I want!);-)

Then we had a yummy, did I say yummy? bag lunch, and afterwards, panel four, The All Seeing Eye: Point of view in the mystery novel. This is an issue for me, as I struggle with the difference in meaning between distant 3rd person, kinda close 3rd person, pretty darn close 3rd person, and so on.

Can someone please tell me, with illustrations, preferably, what the damn difference is? I think I want kinda close 3rd, but I'm not sure. My favorite mystery author is Michael Connelly, so whatever he's using for Harry Bosch is the one for me.

There's always this argument that readers can more closely identify with a hero written in the 1st person, but not me. I find that very distracting, almost as if someone else has tried, but failed, to tell me what I'm doing or saying, where to look, and what to see. It limits my vision, and I want the whole picture. Maybe it's a control issue, but that' s just me. I find I identify much more with heroes written in the third person something-or-other, than any other voice. Now I just have to work out how to write that voice for my book's hero.

Last panel of the day was Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down: Mystery reviewers dicuss their choices and challenges. This was quite interesting and revealing. The reviewer for the Boston Globe says he gets approximately 20 books per week in the mail, and can only review three a month in his once-a-month column. He says he tries to ignore what everyone else is reading and to form his own opinions based entirely on the work. Admirable.

The reviewer from the Boston Herald is also the editor of all book reviews for the paper, not just the mysteries, so she said that in three weeks, she can get over 1500 books! Amazing. She has X number of assistants just to help sort them out and look them over, and she assigns out several of the reviews. Both reviewers make a point to make sure they look at New England authors, so that's a little plus, at least.

At the end of the day, they had this little cocktail party, where I chatted for a moment with Lynne and a few other authors, but did not drink.

I'm glad I didn't. I was super tired from sitting all day with no exercise, I hadn't slept well the night before, and it was dark-thirty by the time we got out. On the way home, traffic was backed up on 128 north for several miles. When I got to the point where I could see what was going on, it was a terrible accident, with one car spun around the wrong way, and another with a body being taken away under a sheet. I hope it wasn't anyone from the conference, and I was certainly glad I hadn't been drinking.

Seeing a body on a stretcher, covered with a sheet, brings home the cognitive dissonance I sometimes feel about writing about murder. Sure, far as I know, this person wasn't murdered, but they were still dead. When one writes about murder and death, isn't it just possible to be taking death a little less seriously than one should, and making it a game, particularly in cozies and some of the humorous books? Of course I don't write cozies, and I do love Carl Hiaasen, so who am I to talk?

More later about day two, today, which was even better, from a fledgling crime writer's point of view.
---------------------
© 2003 m. lucas