Christmas, Greenhouses and Life

by Janis Patterson

Am I the only one losing it this Christmas? We’re doing less, but everything takes more time - and a lot more money. Of course, The Husband’s Physical Therapy for his injured shoulder takes a lot of my time, since he isn’t supposed to drive, so I have to take him and wait. There is truth to the old saw that every cloud has a silver lining. His sessions aren’t long enough to justify taking my travel computer and working (besides it would be terribly inconvenient, as the waiting room is small and not well equipped) so I take my phone and read, something I never have time to do. I’ve read more in the last eight weeks than I have the entire rest of the year.

We still have no refrigerator - 100+ days from ordering and nothing. I still can’t get over the fact a simple white refrigerator is a special order, especially when they seem determined that you should be happy with a stainless or black one! You’ll forgive my glee when I heard a couple of days ago that style maven Martha Stewart has declared both stainless and black kitchen appliances to be horribly dated and no stylish kitchen will have them. It probably shows the smallness of my soul that in my secret I heartily wish both Lowes and GE be stuck with hundreds of them!

We have a small greenhouse-type thing I constructed in sheer desperation one freezing night years ago from PVC pipe, sheet plastic, spring clamps and a heat lamp, and it has kept plants alive through the winter for years. However, this summer The Husband has started raising hot pepper plants in big pots and now that the cold weather is on the way our little greenhouse is woefully inadequate. So we simply got more pipe, more plastic, and have been trying to adapt the design. It’s almost finished (REALLY cold weather is coming in tomorrow) and I think it’s going to work. I hope so... I’m also hoping the plants keep producing, because I’m accustomed to having a continual supply of yummy fresh hot peppers!

Now I know this blog is to be about things writerly, but let’s face it - life is writerly. Life is where we get our ideas. Life is where we do our research. Life is everything... especially this wonderful, crazy, overstressed time of year! 

And life is what gets in the way of us writing. I’m not proud of it, as I’m a hard-working professional writer, but I’ll admit I haven’t written a word for three weeks. Life - and the holidays - just got in the way. So - I’m just going to do what I have to, and enjoy my family and the season, and get back to writing after the first of the new year. 

I hope that each and every one of you has the happiest holiday season and the best of New Years... and I’ll see you in January, with a talk about something writerly!

Blame It On Santa

by Janis Patterson

Or maybe not. The old gent has enough to worry about this time of year.

No, the blame is totally on me. I have been so swamped with Christmas, a dear family member moving across the country, some other family issues, including some health issues, and the everlasting crush of approaching hard deadlines that I just plain pushed this blog to the back of my mind and there it stayed until my second mug of coffee this morning. Ooops.

All I can say is that I’m sorry and apologize profusely. Usually I love sharing things with all of you, but this month life just got away with me and I apologize. And make an early New Years resolution to be better.

I also promise the announcement of something wonderful in January. It’s taken a lot to keep my mouth shut about this, but I’ll tell all as soon as the news is officially released!

Still, I want to take this opportunity to wish you the Merriest of Christmases, the Happiest of Hanukkahs, the best of whatever you celebrate in this wonderful season, and the loveliest and most creative of New Years! Bless you all -

On Getting Older

I supposed most people would just say I'm already there--old, I mean.

And yes, I do have the symptoms, hair turning white, lots of wrinkles, slow walker, takes some effort to get up out of chairs, and not being able to do all that I once could.

That last is probably the most frustrating.

I've always been used to making a list of what I planned to accomplish in a day, but not so much anymore. Oh, I still make the lists, but I don't always get everything done that I planned.

Of course I always have a lot to do--and the have-tos, I do finish, but they are also the jobs I'm least interested in doing--laundry, cooking, etc.

What I really want to get with is the writing on my next book, and more promoting of the latest.

Unfortunately, there is only so much time.

And now we've moved into the holidays. I no longer buy all the gifts that I once did, can't afford it and my family just grew to large. For those who come to our house on Christmas Eve, we drew names--so I only have two to buy for, and my kids (I give money) as I'm not longer good at figuring out what they might like.

That might sound like I don't really care for Christmas anymore, but that's not true. I love the true meaning of Christmas. We;ll celebrate on Christmas Eve with some of our family.

We share out home with 3 little girls, so we'll be in on the Christmas morning surprises.

And some time soon, I'll put up a few Christmas decorations.

What about you? Do you still do all the holiday things you used to do?

Marilyn, who still manages to accomplish a lot.

My latest, Tangled Webs.

And Real Life Returns

by Janis Patterson

If you’re like me, this past month or two has been a fairly dizzying round of parties and dinner parties and cooking and quick meals snatched while shopping and wrapping. Calories have been whizzing around (and sticking more than we would like, darn it) like mosquitoes on a hot, humid day.

Well, it’s all over, and I say thank goodness! Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are over, the parties are finished and we are stuffed to surfeit. All that lies ahead of us in the near future is Valentine’s Day, which is usually awash with chocolate and, if you’re lucky, a nice dinner out.

Real life is back. Now we clean up the drifts of tissue paper and wrapping paper scraps, put away the holiday china for another year, take down the tree and pack away the ornaments. If you had a real tree, you have the joy of vacuuming up the dried needles that seem to be able to hide in your carpet until July.

Oh, and work. I’ll admit my work tends to suffer during this intense holiday season. It’s hard to sit at the computer making up tales and trying to get all my clues in line when a big chunk of my mind is trying to remember how far along I am on gift buying and worrying if we’ve forgotten someone and trying to decide on what dish to take to the family potluck on Christmas Day and… well, you know. So I pretty much quit writing. It is, I delude myself, better not to spend the time screwing up my story with a bunch of stuff that will probably have to be pulled out later in favor of something more rational.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!

But now the holiday season is over. New Year’s is never a big deal in our house. We don’t like to go out and celebrate on that night – too many irresponsible revelers out after drinking too much making the streets dangerous. Like last year, like almost every year, we went to eat Mexican food at our favorite neighborhood café in the early evening, then went home and watched television while we split a bottle of champagne at midnight - or earlier. The quiet times with The Husband are the best.

As the cold days of winter set in, though, and the holidays are just a memory, it is time to concentrate on work again. I have two standalones to finish and several completed books to get into the publishing pipeline. The most exciting thing, however, is I have a new series to write. I personally dislike series, or at least most of the series I have read. Just how many times can an amateur sleuth fall over a dead body in a small town, after all? Plus, I’m very tired of the current trend of cutesy and relentlessly perky amateur sleuths (female) who obsess over shoes, who either cook or do some sort of craft, who brainlessly charge into danger and who always manage to avoid being arrested for impeding a police investigation.

My sleuth is Dr. Rachel Petrie (no relation to the famed Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, a fact that is a running gag) a contract archaeologist who works all over the world, giving her a chance to stumble over a body in a different place each time. Hey, if she didn’t find a body it wouldn’t be a mystery series, would it? There does have to be a certain amount of suspension of disbelief.

Currently I’m working on the first book, A KILLING AT TARA TWO, which is set in Alabama on a dig excavating a plantation house burned during the War of Northern Aggression. It’s great fun.

Now I must get to work writing on it. I hope all of you had a very happy holiday season, and wish you a happy and prosperous New Year.

Do Crooks Take a Break Around the Holidays?

Clever crooks don't take a break around the holidays. They know people are distracted, not only getting ready before, but during the holidays.

On TV, I saw footage of robbers leaping over fences to access packages dropped off by the UPS. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, Fourth of July, and other celebration times provide excellent opportunities for robbers to invade empty homes.

A while back, our church lost it's Christmas collection to crooks. Since then, that important collection has been diligently safeguarded. 

Why not consider centering a mystery around a holiday? From your own experiences, you'll have a head start in the setting department, so why let that go to waste?

In Two Wrongs, my now perma-free mystery, I described the Christmas windows at what was then Marshall Field's, and is now called Macy's. I also included descriptions of their Walnut Room, where through the years many have visited the Big Tree and partaken in such goodies as ice cream snowmen. The hero's visit there figures greatly in the plot.

Can you think of other books where a holiday is part of a plot? If so, please share.

Find all of Morgan Mandel's mysteries

and romances at her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/author/morganmandel

Easy access to excerpts at:

http://morgansbooklinks.blogspot.com 

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/morgan.mandel

Twitter: @MorganMandel

Love and Death and Hope

by Janis Patterson

It seems we live our lives by holiday seasons – Christmas, New Years, Valentines, Easter, Memorial Day… you see what I mean. And it seems that each holiday season crimes go up. Murders increase. Family member turns on family member. What is it about a time that should be all about joy and celebration that turns people murderous?

Perhaps we have too many expectations. Christmas especially for most of us doesn’t live up to the perfect holiday implied by saccharine TV shows and too-perfect-to-be-real Christmas cards. Unfortunately, most families don’t wear their Sunday best to stand around a huge, professionally decorated tree and sing carols, but in spite of this a lot of us wonder why our family isn’t like this.

Valentine’s is no different, though on the whole less emotionally charged. Some people don’t care about the romantic side of life. Some have given up on it. Some have their patterns set with their loved one, and don’t need the traditional frills and furbelows of Traditional Romance. Some of us do, though. We want the candy and the cards and the heartfelt sighs of Everlasting Love – at least for the moment. Jewelry and trips and all the rest would be nice, too, but it’s the emotions that really count. The romantics who can celebrate it and the lonely ones who have no one to celebrate it with (and I have been both) have expectations, expectations reality can never really live up to.

And that’s where the death part comes in. Humans are governed by primal drives. Yes, we have created a veneer of civilization that keeps us from running amok like a two-year-old denied a treat when we are disappointed or fail to get something we want, but that veneer is sometimes terrifyingly thin and fragile. Who hasn’t heard of a spurned lover wreaking vengeance for being rejected? This unhappy circumstance isn’t endemic only to Valentine’s Day, of course – it happens all year round, yet so many instances of sad and/or vicious repercussions of love-deprivation do occur close to the holiday. And yes, to all holidays.

Holidays build up our expectations to an expanded degree, which makes the fact lots of our dreams don’t come true that much more difficult to bear. It’s hard to keep an even keel when everyone but you seems to be wrapped in perfection.

And for that we must be held partially responsible. We as writers are the myth-makers. It is from our pens that the archetypes flow. Should we change our stories so that our characters have no hope, that their lives are as glum and free from redemption as the most tortured of real life persons? I most sincerely hope not. As writers we owe the public good stories, but I think that we also owe our readers at least a glimmering of hope – hope, not necessarily expectations. Not everyone in life gets a happy ending, and not every character gets a happy ending, but I think they should at least have the hope of a happy ending – whatever that happens to mean to them. Yes, for a love-deprived serial killer that hope might be the extermination of his next victim – something that should not happen, especially in real life – but to be a well-rounded character he needs hope, however twisted his vision of that might be.

Do I believe every character deserves a hearts-and-flowers-rainbows-and-unicorns happy ending? No. That kind of universal joy neatly tied with a string belongs in fairy tales. But neither do I believe in total doom and gloom and no ray of sunshine ever. Perhaps our characters don’t get what they want, but like humans, they deserve at least the hope of it. In other words, a story shouldn’t end when the pages run out. We go on spurred by hope, and our characters should too, even if the book is finished. Hope is what makes us – and our characters – truly live.

The Party’s Over

Over the holidays, I did something I haven’t done since I started my latest series. I took five days off in a row from writing. That is, I didn’t sit at the computer and put words into the file for Fat Cat #3 (which doesn’t have a title yet). However, it wasn’t completely gone from my mind, except for short stretches of fun with the family.

Things kept popping up in my head and I noted them down. As soon as I could, I would perch on the edge of my office chair and type them into my notes. If that wasn’t possible, I’d stick the paper I had scribbled upon on the stack to the left of my keyboard. That’s my stack for whatever I’m currently working on, for the most part.

I dreaded getting back into the story, but, you know what? It wasn’t that bad. I’m so glad I did take the trouble to jot those ideas down because I used every single one, or will within a day or two.

Friday I did some gift returns, but did manage to get 880 words written. I’ll wait until Monday to do the rest of the gift stuff, I think. Saturday will be a zoo! Besides, I need a whole day to luxuriate in the freedom to write without thinking about the one gift left, the cards to mail, the peanut brittle (which I never did make), and the meal planning.

I love Christmas and love kids and grandkids being here. I also love the relaxation when everything’s over!

Have any of you taken a chunk of time off from writing during the winter holidays? Do you have any tricks for getting back into it?

Celebrate February

Let's celebrate February!

It's the shortest month of the year. It occurs in the dead of winter. Except for the Superbowl, the only sporting event of consequence is the publication of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue.

February has perhaps the weirdest collection of holidays of any month.

• On February 2, we have Ground Hog Day, where we honor a reclusive little burrowing mammal, which, on this day, takes on the status of oracle.  
• February 14, Valentine's Day, is the one day of the year that creates more anxiety for men than a group prostate exam. What's so hard about Valentine's Day? Finding the right gift. The right gift is one that gets you, the guy, what you want, which is to get laid. But can the gift say that? No. The gift must say the opposite. It must profess undying love and commitment. A gift that screams, "I want to jump your bones," will get you an evening alone. 
• Mardi Gras this year falls in February. What do we do on Mardi Gras? We engage in all sorts of excesses and debauchery in preparation for six weeks of atonement for excesses and debauchery. 
• Finally, there is President's Day, which is, in my opinion, an equal to July Fourth in importance because we celebrate all US presidents, and especially George Washington, the founder of our country, and Abraham Lincoln, the preserver of our country.

February birthdays are awesome. I don't think there is another month with an all-star birthday line-up to match February's.

Let's take just two dates.

• February 12 is the birthday of my granddaughter, Morgan, who is the cutest, smartest dancer in the world. It is also the birthday of two of the greatest thinkers of the world, two men of genius whose accomplishments are still being felt--Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln.
• February 22 is my birthday. Okay, maybe that's not much, but look who else was born on this day. George Washington, Edward M. Kennedy, Robert Baden Powell, Drew Barrymore and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Pulitzer Prize winner Edna St. Vincent Millay penned what might be the best paean to excess and debauchery.

First Fig
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!

A list of other notable February birthdays can be found here.


To celebrate February, I am giving away FREE electronic copies of my short story collection, Game Face. This offer expires at the end of the month, but, because this is a leap year, February has an extra day for you to take advantage of it.


To get your copy, click on your preferred ebook format:
mobi (for Kindle)
epub (for all other e-readers)

Mark Troy
Hawaiian-eye Blog
http://www.marktroy.net

Happy Holidays!

Why are you reading this?

'Tis the season to be jolly. Go outside and look at all the lights on the houses or cuddle in front of the fire with someone special.

Here are my wishes for you.

For writers: May your labor of love find that publisher who loves it as much as you do.

For readers: May your nights be filled with great books from new authors.

For everybody: Peace and Joy!

Mele Kalikimaka from the Troy Family, Mark, Mary Fran, Ted, Michael, Laura, Morgan and Matthew.

Merry Christmas

I'm the lucky writer who gets to post for Christmas and I mean that sincerely. As a regular reader of this blog, as well as one of the writers I've been thinking about Chester Campbell's post "'Tis the Friday before Christmas," and Libby McKinnons' post entitled "The Time of Year." Like Chester, my writing could use some regularity. It's not that I am disorganized. It's not even that I don't want to write. I am just plain too busy. And as for reading being guilt free because I'm a writer, as Libby said? Oh, I only wish.

I think Christmas is just about the only day of the year anymore where I feel able to sit back and just not do anything. Oh yes, there are the family rituals and the feast but what other day of the year is it permissible to sit back and watch snow drift lazily down? On what other day of the year do I tell myself I SHOULD read this book, since it was a Christmas present or go see a movie with the kids?

And that is a shame.

I have just realized that I am always late for something and always feeling as though I should be somewhere else. And it's not a comfortable feeling.

While I'm sipping eggnog today and reading a bit--maybe finding a new mystery to read with that gift certificate I'm hoping for ( Fictionwise for my Ipaq or maybe one to my local indy bookshop Murder by the Book)I'm going to take a second to reflect on all the hurry and bustle we all just got through and ask myself how that is working for me. I think I may already know the answer. But at least I'm finally asking the question.

Have a Merry Christmas, everyone.