Stay tuned for a virtual trip through La Alpujarra and Ceuta, the places in Spain that inspired me to write Zahara and the Lost Books of Light.

LAUNCHING ‘RIVERS RUN BACK’ IN INDIA

Climbing the wide stairs to the American Center Library in New Delhi, I had no idea what to expect. Most libraries have relatively small common spaces and a few meeting rooms. So I was surprised and pleased to see the huge open space packed with library patrons and guests, all awaiting the book launch of RIVERS RUN BACK.

Located in Connaught Place, one of the largest commercial and business centers in New Delhi, the American Center is dedicated to supporting the U.S. Embassy's mission to promote mutual understanding between the people of India and the United States.

Since RIVERS RUN BACK is a work of fiction co-authored by an Indian writer (Arindam Roy) and myself, we were invited to discuss our collaborative process at the American Center Library. Kala Dutt, the Library Director, warmly welcomed us, as did Emily B. White, Program Director of the American Center, Ramesh Jain from the US Embassy,  and Aditi Mody from the Chicago Center in Delhi (a co-sponsor of the event).

 

Our publisher, Renu Kaul Verma of Vitasta, was present, as was our editor, Veena Batra. It was wonderful to hear how Veena got so involved in reading our book that she frequently forgot her role as editor!

We discussed the Indo-American connections in RIVERS RUN BACK and Arindam explained the origin of our title – how in India the yearning of rivers to run back signifies the deep introspection experienced by all of us—male or female, Eastern or Western—during the different stages in our lives.

I described how one of our American characters, Marilyn – who marries an Indian from Allahabad -  decides to discover India for herself and finds meaning and comfort in the story of Durga, the powerful goddess who defeats demons both personal and universal. Arindam discussed how his background as a journalist covering the ‘criminal beat’ gave him insights into the ferocious nature of our antagonist, Narsimha.

 

Arindam and I originally met and began our book-writing project on Facebook, so it was fitting that many of our longtime Facebook friends were present. It was thrilling to meet some of them for the first time.

Landing in Seattle after 23 hours of travel, these wonderful happenings in Delhi seemed like a dream. Except that inside my suitcase, 3 shrink-wrapped books and a slew of promotional pamphlets were nestled, waiting to remind me that after three years of toil, ‘creative tension,’ and laughter with my writing partner, RIVERS RUN BACK has finally been launched.

 

Traveling “In Character” to Russia

When Jo Epstein’s émigré stepfather, Nikolai, is suspected of murder and flees to Moscow, Jo jumps on a plane to follow him. For an intrepid private investigator like her, this was another high-speed chase set far from New York’s West Side Highway. For the author, it was a chance to accompany my protagonist onto foreign soil in order to see Russia through her eyes. It resulted in a whirlwind research tour, with Jo and me relying on our instincts to ferret out what mattered most.

Fresh off the train from Moscow, we were escorted through the prison yard at Vladimir Central Prison and up the stairs to a museum proudly exhibiting the works of formerly incarcerated Russian writers. The sense of Russian irony was compounded by the fact that, directly across the hall from a display of 19^th century instruments of torture, we found an art therapy class in progress. Our guide proudly related how today’s guards and prisoners are encouraged to express themselves through painting. While she spoke, my imagination ran wild. What if Jo were incarcerated in a dank cell with graffiti-covered walls in an attempt to prevent her from finding Nikolai?

 

The thing about traveling alongside a fictitious character is that everything you experience is potentially part of her story. In Suzdal, we visited a monastery with an underground cell where heretics both religious and political were once tried in secret—and yes, this history-packed locale eventually served as a setting for a pivotal scene in the book.

Jo and I then toured a Matryoshka Factory, with spinning lathes and woodchips flying. Little did the skilled workmen and talented women painters know that their nesting dolls would one day hold clues to a mystery spanning two continents.

Back in Moscow, we dined at a Georgian restaurant with a Commander in the Moscow Criminal Police.  He waxed nostalgic for the vory v zacone – thieves-in-law— famed for their strict code of conduct. To my surprise, he expressed regret that the brutal yet consistent rules of the vory were not followed by the modern Russian Mafia. I consulted with the Commander about my antagonist’s background and planned course of action. That he chose to bless my storyline was definitely a high point of the trip.

 

With only 20 words of Russian between us, Jo and I were hard pressed to decipher the Cyrillic signs in the impressive Moscow subway. We worked out a deciphering system worthy of a spy novel—perhaps to be used in her next adventure.

I’ve always been a believer in recycling and repurposing and this inclination got a workout in Russia. Even the apartment we stayed in, which was once a Soviet-style, communal residence, became a setting for a scene in RUSSIAN RECKONING.

My 'Made it' Moment

I wrote this short piece for Jenny Milchman's "Made It Moments" series (http://www.jennymilchman.com/blog/) and she published it last year -  thank you Jenny!

It's time I shared these words here:

Made. adj. Assured of success. The year was 1965, the place New York City, where a young lady of seventeen lives with her boyfriend in an apartment with an airshaft instead of a window and discovers she loves playing with words, letting them tumble on the page and jostle each other in strange juxtapositions, the weirder the better. Having emigrated to the Lower East Side from the Southeast Bronx she speaks a smattering of Puerto Rican Spanish and knows how to stare down a potential mugger in an empty subway car. Late at night, after a long day spent repairing damaged books in the New School library, she sips Chianti from a coffee mug and edits the poems she wrote on the Houston Street bus.

Six months later she comes home to her lover’s announcement that he prefers someone else, the lease is in his name, she gets the picture. “Oh there’s a letter for you,” he remembers and she snatches it out of his betraying hands on her way out the door, leaving it unopened for a week or so while she learns to breathe again and trust the air will not murder her.

The letter says we read your Bus Poems, want to publish all eleven of them in our new magazine named after a tragic nymph. How apt. She meets the editors who are delighted with her tender age. One offers to introduce her to Alan Ginsberg. When the magazine comes out it is beautifully bound, Niobe inscribed on the cover in large green letters, her poems interspersed with photographs of graffiti-spattered walls in the city she will eventually desert as abruptly as her boyfriend dumped her. She is destined to give up poetry to write mystery novels, but for the moment, she has ‘made it.’

Trust Your Instincts

This little piece was originally published on the Venture Galleries Blog - http://venturegalleries.com/blog/when-writing-trust-your-instincts/

Beginning a book is like taking a wrong turn on the way home from the airport. You may end up in a bad neighborhood, and run out of gas before you find your way out, or you may decide this is the place for you and settle in to get your work done. In that case, everything you need is right there… a church or temple as the case may be, a bodega or bordello depending on your mood, and enough shady characters to balance the host of heroes mandated by the current vogue in publishing.

Your family will miss you, but they’re used to it. Whether you check into a flea-bitten SRO or a gilded mansion on the edge of town is entirely up to you. But do not fail to write yourself a note saying something like: My surroundings are entirely illusory and I can return to reality at any time. Post it on the fridge, just in case.

 

As for the actual writing, for me it is a process of unlearning, each and every time. Like a kitten refusing to move when attached to a leash, whatever has worked for me in the past declines to take the first step on the new journey. I’m on my own and the sooner I accept this the better. I wrote Ask the Dead in the first person, present tense, a technique that shot the story forward at bullet speed. I tried the same thing with The Last Matryoshka (aka Code of Thieves) and ended up tossing the first 30,000 words and switching to past tense. My new book, co-written with Indian journalist Arindam Roy, is set in India, the US and Canada, and is a saga told from multiple points of view.

 

The company of an independent-minded cat can also be a great help.

 

I write both literary fiction and mysteries and have found them remarkably similar in structure. Why not, since life is the ultimate mystery. As long as my protagonist has something at stake, something to believe in, something challenging her belief in herself and a compelling reason to put herself at risk, the story will move forward. When I feel blocked, I seek out the noisiest coffee house, park bench, or subway car I can find, and use the white noise to focus my mind.

 

A few consistent rules that work for me are:

• Outline only when events begin to contradict each other and continuity is in danger.
• Develop your characters fully and they will reward you by revealing your plot and bringing life to every moment on the page
• When a story is not climbing toward a peak of some kind there had better be a deep ravine up ahead.
• Never write in a vacuum. Even the most insular love story takes place somewhere. Rub the lantern fervently and often, and with the help of your imagination the world you create will reveal and challenge your characters and enchant your readers. My own genie has whisked me off to Russia and India on life-changing, so called ‘book research’ trips for which I will be ever grateful.

Above all, trust your instincts and don’t think too much.

Mysterious Musings

Today I am being interviewed by the astute, inquiring mind of Julia Buckley. Please stop by - she has entitled the interview New York Streets, Russian Gulags, and Indian Poetry.

Bringing Moscow to Allahabad

I wrote this post as a guest on Timothy Hallinan's blog and thought I'd share it here too, since this experience in Allahabad was so amazing:

Co-Authors

Arindam Roy—with whom I am writing a novel-in-progress set on two continents—loves concocting surprises. So when I checked into the Hotel Yatrik on a Friday and he told me I’d be giving a talk to students at Allahabad University that Sunday, I managed a grin and a thank you for the opportunity. Then I rushed across the street—risking life and limb amidst the madly rushing rickshaws, wildly over-burdened scooters, and incessantly honking cars—to see if I could get my Mini laptop fixed in time to retrieve my slideshow on my book-research trip to Russia.

On Sunday afternoon, Professor Sanjoy Saksena came to fetch me in a taxi. I was duly grateful, knowing that if I braved the intense humidity and walked the quarter mile to the University, I’d arrive looking more bedraggled than a shipwrecked cat.

The University’s English Department is one of the oldest in India, situated in a grand Edwardian Mughal structure. The Head, Professor Dubey, greeted me warmly, with an offer of tea and many expressions of appreciation. “Your visit will be recorded as was that of Mark Twain, who visited us many years ago,” he said. I was flabbergasted and tried not to show it. Instead I told the students who joined us around the table how remarkable it was that in both Russia and India people could be counted on to treat authors with great respect, regardless of the size of their book sales or reputations. “There is a special appreciation for the act of writing itself that is imbued in both cultures,” I said. I don’t remember if I shared my opinion that this would never happen in celebrity-crazed America.

My presentation, titled The Place of Place in Mystery Writing, always opens with a discussion of how Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosley, and Elizabeth George use the settings of their stories to reveal character—so much so, that in Chandler’s case, Los Angeles became a character in its own right. I then segued into how I got the idea for writing The Last Matryoshka while visiting my mother’s downstairs neighbors, two lovely Russians who held house concerts in their apartment. It was when I reached the slide showing a group of émigré men playing chess on the Brighton Beach boardwalk that it hit me. Here I was, describing a book largely set in Moscow while showing pictures taken in Brooklyn to a group of graduate students in India!

As if to jar me out of my dream, one of the faculty members spoke up. “Do you think that mysteries are really a form of literature?” he asked. Fighting words—more like what I was used to. “Yes, as a matter of fact I do,” I replied. “Just because publishers find it convenient to classify books into genres in order to market them doesn’t mean that some are better than others. It depends on the writer.” I looked around the room and found a young woman I could tell was just dying to raise her hand. I looked directly at her and asked, “What do you think.”  There was an eerie silence…perhaps I had defied some classroom etiquette of which I was unaware. Then she smiled. “I like reading Agatha Christie and I think her books are every bit as good as Charles Dickens,” she said. A girl after my own heart. We were off and running then—even the quiet students leaned forward in their seats to listen.

Afterwards the professor who had challenged me came up to apologize. “Are you kidding?” I asked. “You made it happen.”

Before I left, they draped a beautiful, orange shawl around my shoulders, as is the tradition with honored guests. By that time the classroom was close to inferno temperature and sweltering under the hot wool scarf I did my best not to pass out. Then came the flowers.  I could get used to this.

Here's my interview with Fun Sherpa: Interrogating the Interesting, just posted today:

Stop by and join the fun...

http://blog.funsherpa.com/author/admin/

I'm very excited about the next stop on my blog tour - Tim Hallinan's "Blog Cabin!"

Tim is an exceptional writer of mysteries and thrillers set in exotic locales. He was recently nominated for two major awards, the Edgar and the Macavity. I'm honored to be his guest.

http://www.timothyhallinan.com/blog/

Come on over to the Blog Cabin anytime on Wednesday and Thursday, April 18 and 19th to read about my extraordinary experience "Bringing Moscow to Allahabad."

You will also find a link there to FREE copies of THE LAST MATRYOSHKA on Amazon.

Blog Tour

The next stop on the blog tour arranged by Istoria Books for The Last
Matryoshka is SIA MCKYE OVER COFFEE - on Friday, March 23rd

http://siamckye.blogspot.com/

My topic is "Back in the USSR" - the merits of packing one's suitcase when researching international settings.

Please stop by on Friday and enjoy the great fiddle music that plays as you read.

GET YOUR FREE COPY of  THE LAST MATRYOSHKA

On March 14 and 15, The Last Matryoshka will be available on Amazon FOR FREE, courtesy of Istoria Books.
http://tiny.cc/dje5aw

If you do not own a Kindle you can download the free reader from: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=sv_kstore_1?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771

I am also guest blogging at Thoughts in Progress - http://masoncanyon.blogspot.com/
Please stop by and join the discussion about Writing the Female PI.

See you there,
Joyce

The Last Matryoshka Comes to a "Theatre" New You

Am thrilled with the atmospheric book trailer that Istoria Books produced for the upcoming e-release of The Last Matryoshka. This also raises a question  -- how do readers react to these videos - are they seen as mere marketing tools or is there real entertainment value perceived?

Comment and reviews welcome :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5PWZ00Jh74&feature=youtube_gdata

Travels with an Identity Thief – Part Three – Seeing Through Marilyn’s Eyes

As a writer assuming the identity of a visual artist, I am faced with a special set of challenges. Marilyn thinks in pictures, whilst I process life through words. To be true to my ‘character’s character,’ I must learn to experience the world as she does, to open myself to her emotions as triggered by the colors and textures around us, to let my eyes experience the world before my intellect.

On the other hand, to be true to myself as a wordsmith, I am committed to finding the language that will convey Marilyn’s experiences as vividly as possible. No wonder I am totally exhausted at the end of each day!

It was not until I reached Aurangabad, two weeks after my arrival in India, that my shift into the visual mode gained noticeable momentum.  Who can visit the rock-cut caves of Ajanta—discovered in 1819 by a band of British officers hunting a tiger—without being transfixed by images masterfully created by the great sculptors and painters of 2^nd Century India?

Marilyn had pored through books of photographs and listened with fascination to her husband Shankar telling Jataka tales of Buddha’s reincarnations and the Bodhisattvas. No way had this prepared her for a face-to-face encounter with the ancient world.

Later that same day I visited a market in Aurangabad, along with hundreds of shoppers caught up in the Diwali festivities. From the grey stones and ancient murals of the caves out into a modern riot of color… what a transition! I could hardly snap pictures fast enough. This one will definitely inspire Marilyn to paint as she never has before.

Travels with an Identity Thief - Part Two

So here I am in Varanasi, searching out experiences that will reveal Marilyn’s character and provide settings for scenes in the new book. I have assumed her identity yet in many ways she is a total mystery. She is an artist who lives through her eyes, while I’m a writer who lives through words. And how can I think straight, with my senses transfixed by the chaotic sights and sounds around me?


The annual Hindu festival of Durga Puja is in full swing. The streets of Veranasi are packed with worshipers of the goddess, who have come to offer food and flowers at her feet and visit the pandals (temporary temples) where they celebrate the goddess who saved the entire cosmos from destruction! Trucks packed with young men commandeer the narrow alleyways, blasting earsplitting chants and music in honor of the holiday. The best I can do is to keep my eyes open and “give” Marilyn my camera, setting her loose to follow her instincts...

It’s dawn, and Marilyn and I watch a golden streak of sunlight paint the dark waters of the river as we listen to the happy chatter of bathers near the ghat steps. Maa Ganga envelops us inher peaceful embrace. India may be crowded, noisy and hectic, but carved into the chaos, like a Buddhist cave hollowed out in a rock, moments of boundless serenity await.   I know Marilyn will stay in Veranasi for at least a year –far longer than the three days I will be here – and that I too will be back.

Travels with an Identity Thief - Part One

It's been a while since I've posted but I have a good excuse - traveled to India, where I assumed the identity of Marilyn, a character in a new book I'm co-writing with Arindam Roy. I covered a lot of ground on the Subcontinent and will start with my marvelous experience in Varanasi, where I stayed at Nirman School and met many talented teachers and artists.  On my very first day I was privileged to hear the classical vocalist and Bhajan singer, Ganesth Mishra, accompanied by Nawal Singh on tabla. Since one of the characters in the new book is also a talented singer, this was a good sign that my travels were already bearing fruit.

Marilyn is an artist, so my second day in Varansi I interviewed a remarkable mural painter from Kerala, Suresh Nair. He works with traditional materials, which means it takes him a full month to prepare the surface of a brick wall with layers of lime, sand, and coconut milk before painting. Visit his Facebook page to learn more!

Photo courtesy of
Balakrishnan Kavungal Anat
Stay tuned for more pictures and some discussion of my travels as an Identity Thief.

Timothy Hallinan talks about settings

I'm thrilled to welcome author Timothy Hallinan to Travels with the Muse! 

Timothy Hallinan was just nominated for the 2010 Best Novel Edgar for THE QUEEN OF PATPONG, the fourth book in his series of Bangkok thrillers featuring expatriate travel writer Poke Rafferty.  With ten conventionally published books to his credit, Tim has decided to alternate in the future between “tree books” and e-books and his first e-book original, CRASHED, is now available for $2.99 on Amazon.  CRASHED is the first in a series of “thrillers with a laugh track” about Junior Bender, a Los Angeles burglar who moonlights as a private eye – for crooks.  Coming soon is Junior's second adventure, LITTLE ELVISES.  He lives in Los Angeles and Bangkok.

Here's what Mr. Hallinan has to say about the settings for his novels, along with some terrific photos he has provided for your enjoyment.

-----------------------------------------

A setting is usually defined as the place in which a story unfolds.

But what's a place?

I believe it's an experience, and it's different for almost everyone. My Seattle, my Bangkok, is different than yours. I see different things, smell different things, experience the climate and the light differently. What we see or remember is only partly a function of where we go. It's also what we look for and what's important to us.

That's why I think the best-written books don't have a setting. They have settings. Every major character will – and should – experience the book's geographic setting differently.

If they do, then I thing two things will happen. First, the setting will be in three dimensions, because at least two perspectives are necessary for 3D. Second, the writer will find literally dozens of ways that reactions to the setting can differentiate his or her characters.

I write a series set in Bangkok, so let's look at one of my Bangkok books, The Fourth Watcher. I'm using my own books as examples because (a) I know them better than I know anyone else's, and (b) it's a sneaky way to plug them.

In The Fourth Watcher, my central male character, travel writer Poke Rafferty, comes up against the person he wants least to see in the world, whom we'll call Mr. X, and also a member of the U.S. Secret Service named Richard Elson. And he's married to a Thai woman named Rose and the adoptive father of a little girl, a former street child named Miaow (pronounced like the sound a cat makes.)

To Rafferty, Bangkok is his new environment. After a few years there, he loves it, he doesn't yet completely understand how it works, and he tends to accept what he sees on the surface, although he's gradually learning that in some situations, that might get him killed.

Rose came to Bangkok as a teenager and has had a very rough time there. She regards it with a kind of wary understanding and worries about the way her husband accepts things at face value. Miaow has in her head a complete map of the city's unlighted areas – its alleys and empty buildings, shuttered hotels and all the places where it's especially dangerous to be a child.

Elson, the Secret Service guy, has just arrived, and he hates every square foot of it. He hates the traffic, the noise, the heat; the food gives him the squits; but at the same time, he's secretly distracted by the city's Byzantine sex scene. And for Mr. X, Bangkok is a great place to hide from some extremely dangerous people.

We see the city from all these people's perspectives, even if it's only in the way they talk about it, and I think that helps the reader see Bangkok as something more than a picture postcard or a stage setting in front of which the story is acted out. When reviewers like my books, they almost always talk about how real the setting is. I think the reason is that they've experienced several different Bangkoks, through the eyes of very different characters.

Dreams as a source of writing inspiration

I’m no Carl Jung but I do occasionally have flashes of insight that goes directly from my subconscious into my writing. These usually come in the form of images that float to the forefront of my mind upon waking from a dream.

Sometimes the characters in my books have a parallel experience – in THE LAST MATRYOSHKA, when Jo Epstein falls asleep in her Vladimir hotel room to the pulsing of bass and drums from the disco below, she dreams of dancing bears—a sign that she is coming closer to the heart of the mystery she has come to Russia to solve.

In ASK THE DEAD, Jo falls asleep on an airplane and dreams about a calypso singer serenading a Wall Street crowd from a hot air balloon. He hits a high note, transmutes into an ancient Egyptian priest spouting proverbs, and I wake up in time to gulp a cup of coffee before we begin our descent into San Juan Airport. These are all elements in the case that her subconscious is working on.

These sculptures outside a museum in Moscow seem like characters in a dream

For me, culling material from dreams is like snorkeling in clear water in search of elusive tropical fish. I may catch a glimpse of the extraordinary early on but soon the day fills with distractions and the water becomes cloudy—unless I act quickly, many of the best ideas recede into the depths. Sometimes I can bring them back with meditation or exercise – or even by taking a nap!

So tell me –  do you mine your subconscious when you write? Do the characters you write about have a rich "dream life"? How do you “stay in touch” with the depths of your psyche?

Please share your thoughts!

How Matryoshka Dolls Inspired a “Nested” Mystery

• Note: This article on my trip to a matryoshka factor outside Moscow appears in this month's issue of Mystery Reader's Journal. You can check out this excellent publication at http://www.mysteryreaders.org/

Walking into the Souvenir Factory in Sergiev Posad, (45 miles from Moscow) my 16-year-old son, Ian, and I were greeted by the earthy smell of wood chips laced with the pungent odor of lacquer. Souvenir was a landmark stop on our whirlwind trip to Moscow and the Golden Ring to research settings for my new mystery novel, THE LAST MATRYOSHKA. Guided by the factory director, Elena, we stopped first at the lathe operator’s workshop, where we watched a master craftsman create the bottom half of a doll by hollowing out a round piece of linden wood spinning on his lathe. He fashioned the top half in the same way and then started on the next, smaller version of the doll. All this accomplished with no patterns or templates in sight.

In the painting room, a half-dozen highly skilled women employed the tiniest of brushes to paint intricate designs and faces on the matryoshki. Ian was given a blank doll and he surprised everyone by painting a Brazilian soccer player, all greens and yellows to match their flag. His creation now sits atop his computer at home.

Originally known as the Zagorsk Artistic-Production Workshop, the factory was built in 1944, during what Russians still call the Great Patriotic War. The Soviets considered Matryoshka dolls to be powerful representatives of Russian culture and soldiers were even called back from the front to manufacture them. Under Soviet rule, the artists were forced to paint one image only on the required yellow background—the noble peasant woman, wearing a bright red scarf. But of course it hadn’t always been this way. During the early 20th century, an astounding variety of nested dolls were created and decorated with everything from fairy tale scenes to the faces of famous generals and the life of Christ. Many nested dolls contained as many as 30 pieces! Today these early masterpieces are avidly sought by collectors.

The core idea for THE LAST MATRYOSHKA came to me while visiting my mother in Brooklyn. As I listened to her neighbors chattering in Russian, admired the Russian fashionistas shopping in high heels on Kings Highway and gazed at the newly minted Matryoshka dolls in the shop windows, the mystery writer in me got to wondering: what if a Russian émigré had a lurid past in Russia that followed him to Brooklyn and created havoc in his new life? I imagined him receiving a series of packages, each containing a nesting doll with a threatening message inside. The smallest doll would be opened in Russia and reveal a devastating fact that would turn the tale on its head.

The storyline of my book soon began to resemble the way a nesting doll is constructed, with the antagonist hiding his true identity inside layers of deceit and challenging poet and private investigator Jo Epstein to unmask him. By the time I reached the part of the novel that was to be set in Russia, I realized that I could read a stack of books and click through endless pages on the Internet and still fail to find the telling details I needed to lend credibility to my Russian characters. So I booked a flight to Moscow and learned some basic Russian phrases—please, thank you, where is the Metro?—from a CD that I played in my car while driving around Seattle.

In addition to touring the Matryoshka factory, Ian and I visited Vladimir Central Prison and were told that we were the first American tourists to do so. It was chilling to see all the books on exhibit in the prison museum that had been written by authors imprisoned there.

Ian was my “official photographer,” and we were always on the lookout for unusual settings to document. Since I love “writing to picture,” almost every setting we photographed appears somewhere in THE LAST MATRYOSHKA: the Monastery of St. Euthymius at Suzdal, the iconic telegraph office on Tverskaya Ulitsa, the apartment where was stayed (which during Soviet times housed three families), and of course the famous Petrovka 38, headquarters of the Moscow Criminal Police.

Everywhere we went, Ian and I saw Matryoshka dolls. The widely accepted story is that a Russian merchant transported the first nesting doll from Japan to Russia in 1899. Russian lathe operators had been making nested Easter eggs for years, so it was no surprise that they were quick to adapt the dolls—whose many “babies” made them potent symbols of fertility—to their own culture.

But much like the country in which they are made, these dolls have broken free from their past while remaining distinctly Russian. It was inspiring to see how post-Soviet artists have ushered in a Matryoshka Renaissance. There are Bill Clinton dolls inside of which Hillary and Monika reside; dolls painted with scenes from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are; reproductions of masterpieces from the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow; even dolls portraying the family members of the last Russian Tsar.

One of my favorite matryoshkas is the Famous Russian Poets and Authors doll. Who knows, maybe Famous Mystery Writers will be next…

How many times do I have to tell you to feed the dog?

I'm delighted to welcome author Susan Schreyer today as a guest blogger! Susan lives in Monroe, Washington with her husband, two teenage children, an untrustworthy rabbit and a demanding old cat. Her horse lives within easy driving distance. When not working diligently writing her blogs "Writing Horses" and "Things I Learned From My Horse," articles for worthy publications, or about people in the next town being murdered, Susan trains horses and teaches people how to ride them. She serves on the steering committee of the Guppies Chapter of Sisters in Crime and is co-president of the Puget Sound Chapter of SinC. Death By A Dark Horse, is Susan's debut mystery and the first of a series. Her website is http://www.susanschreyer.com/

In the conceiving of a new story, the creation of unique characters can be difficult. We don't want them to be just like all the others, but with different names, so we build complex biographies. We explore the family trees and significant events in their time that shape each character and the way they respond to the world around them. It's all good, and all useful. Occasionally, a character will spring fully formed into our minds. We see them, hear them speak, feel we know them like a brother or sister. Lucky us! Or is it really lucky? We may know them well, but how are we going to bring that knowledge to the reader? We still face the same struggle we had with characters we had to build from the ground up.

We try to avoid a laundry list of personality traits in much the same way we try to avoid a laundry list of physical traits. For example, if a character is overweight we can show his size by making him unable to squeeze through a small restroom window and escape his pursuers. That solution is pretty easy, and obvious. And it's fun for a writer. More complex and frustrating is how to communicate the nuances of character and emotion.
We can show the character's body language, and write dialog between that character and another. We can show how he responds under pressure. We can have other characters talk about him. All of these tried and true methods have potential for conflict -- and conflict is excellent for driving the reader to turn the page.


Yay!

But…can't we add more depth, be more subtle, do something else to pull the reader into the story and build understanding of our character?

Of course. Add a pet.

We can explain much about a character by showing his interactions with animals -- and without screaming the information at the reader. This is one of my favorite tools. People can act very differently around animals than humans. Much pretense is dropped and we catch glimpses of their psychology that would normally be hidden in human interaction. Animals also respond differently to individuals. What's more, the writer can use a character's relationship with an animal to mirror and add a depth of understanding to another plot line. There's a lot of creative potential in this approach.

So, consider getting your character a pet. And instead of using it as live furniture, exploit the opportunities they can provide. Your readers may thank you for it.

What are some of your favorite character-revealing moments involving animals?

How to avoid the “sag” in the middle

We’re talking about strengthening a writer’s storyline here, not his or her tummy—although that dangerous “sag in the middle” may require some vigorous exercise to fix.


How many times have you reached page 200 in a book that got off to a great start and wondered why you feel compelled to describe the passengers on a bus in excruciating detail or flash back to childhood memories so distant that their relationship to the main events of the plot are totally obscure? Maybe you don’t have this problem. Maybe you’re one of those writers who doesn’t experience the doldrums in Act Two. In that case, unless you’re fooling yourself (I’m just sayin’) I extend my congratulations.

For the rest of us, how do we bust out of the mid-book stalemate? Let’s say you’ve got an excellent outline, complete with solid motivations and growing conflict, with the crises and resolutions laid out on a graph, peaks and valleys in all the right places, no surprises. Did I say no surprises? Oops.

You may know exactly where you are going and still run out of gas before you get there. It happens to driver on the highway all the time, why not to writers?

What to do? Here are a few ideas:

Ask yourself – “did the plot come easily to me and if so, will the reader find it as predictable as I do?” The answer may be “yes,” but don’t despair. You can use this predictability to your advantage—for example, if you are writing a thriller or a mystery, consider reincarnating your run-of-the-mill villain as a red herring. This will leave you free to create a new, more complex antagonist whose machinations will spiral the story up to a whole new level.

Let’s say your story is a quest and you think you have successfully mined your protagonist’s insecurities and challenged her to face her greatest fear. Or have you? Dig deeper.

In her excellent book, “Write Away,” Elizabeth George quotes author T. Jefferson Parker as saying “When my story stalls out on me, I’ve played my hand too soon.” Take another look at the journey – have you taken shortcuts around obstacles that you need your protagonist to face directly in order to build suspense? Does she have an Achilles heel, a weakness that trips her up just when she is about to prevail? In ASK THE DEAD, Jo Epstein’s biggest fear was that she would die by drowning and this was foreshadowed in the beginning, intensified in the middle and resolved at the end. I didn’t plan it this way, but as her character developed and her core needs and emotions surfaced, the story gained traction.

I hope I’ve provided enough examples to get the discussion going. Now it’s time to hear what YOU have to say.