A Crafty Killing

Here's the first book I've finished reading during my recuperation:

A Crafty Killing is Lorraine Bartlett's first in her new Victoria Square Mystery series. It's in the cozy mystery genre - amateur protagonist, no violence on the page - and works wonderfully. Katie Bonner finds herself manager of Artisans Alley in Victoria Square, a fictional village in New York State, after her husband dies and his business partner shows up dead. She ends up figuring out the murder and improving the business prospects for Artisans Alley at the same time. The book is published by Berkley Prime Crime. As usual, Lorraine paints colorful, fleshed-out characters, places us in a delightful and sometimes spooky setting, and tells a great story. This promises to be series that leaves you eager for the next installment.

Lorraine also writes as Lorna Barrett. She has a very successful series -- that is, NYT Bestseller-kind of success -- the Booktown Mysteries, also published by Berkley. I've read all the currently published volumes and can't wait to read the next. And she has her Jeff Resnick series under the name LL Bartlett, which I haven't gotten to yet.

Lorraine's a busy woman - did I also mention she blogs daily at Dazed and Confused? I recommend anything she's written.

Reading While Healing

In my regular life, I don't make enough time to read unless I'm on vacation. What, how can you not read, you might ask. Oh sure, I read, in between commuting, working, exercising, cooking, and spending a little time with my dearly beloved. I read the daily Boston Globe, the weekly Ipswich Chronicle, and the New Yorker, especially when I get to the gym and prop it up on the elliptical strider.

Books? I'm lucky if I finish one novel per week.

Now that I'm home full time with a back healing from major surgery, severe warnings that I'm not to lift, bend, or twist, and energy only for slow strolls up and down my street, I finally have time to read as much as I want to. My stack of To-Be-Read books from mystery writer friends is gradually shrinking. I have books on request from the library. I even have the time and space to read a non-fiction book. I usually read non-fiction essays only in the New Yorker. And when a friend asked if I'd read the draft of her family history, I could freely say, "I'd love to," instead of worrying that I'd never find the time.

This is a gift! I'm going to share the gift with you by chronicling here what I'm reading, and plan include a short review of each book. It's still hard to sit at the computer for very long, so I'll try to do one book per day.

Stay tuned for the following:

• A Crafty Killing by Lorraine Barlett
• Come and Find Me by Hallie Ephron
• The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard
• The Girl I left Behind by Judith Nies
• Who Wrote the Book of Death? by Steve Liskow
• A Single Deadly Truth by John Urban
  

If you've read any of these, please leave a comment and let me know what you thought.

A Time of Recuperation

My posts have become less frequent lately. I've been dealing with back-pain issues and am coming up to spinal fusion surgery next week. It's a carefully considered decision and a weighty one. But posts will likely remain infrequent for a few more weeks.

On the other hand, I'll have several days in the hospital during which I can take notes for a future story or scene. The pad of paper and pen are already packed.

During the following weeks of home rest, I have serious plans to catch up on my To Be Read stack of mysteries, and to catch up movies I have missed, too. My son explored the Ipswich library's stash of DVDs yesterday and found some good ones. The doctor recommends walking, so a little stroll to the library will be on my agenda as soon as I can. Luckily, it's just up the hill. Our new Ipswich bookstore, the Book Nook, has its grand opening on April 2. I should be able to stroll downtown for that, too.

Who knows, I might be able to work on my ice-fishing story for the Guppies anthology or write some more scenes on the second Lauren Rousseau mystery, this one a fictional account of murderous local politics set partially at our local Crane Beach and the Castle Hill mansion that overlooks the beach.

Having been blessed with a Glass-is-Almost-Always-More-Than-Half-Full personality, I believe that maintaining a positive attitude is good for health, both mental and physical. So I'm determined to make the best of my six weeks away from paid work. I'll post news here when I'm able.

Whew. Email account got hijacked last week. Spam mail went out to every person I had ever sent mail to or received mail from, apparently. Twice. Both times the message had no subject line and included a link to a hoax medical/prescription site. Fake cheap Canadian drugs, anyone?

I hope nobody clicked that link. I tried to apologize to all, near and far.

I felt dirty, like when my apartment was burglarized many years ago. Somebody was in there in my personal stuff. Icky. At least I didn't have my facebook account also hacked, as happened to many friends just a few weeks ago.

I changed my password and set up a double login system for my mail. Now when I type the password, my cell phone rings with a verification number that I type in on the spot. Only then does it let me see my Inbox. Let's hope this is successful at keeping the spammer away.

And then, of course, my thoughts turned to how I could use this in a story. Who would be the spammer? They could target just the person they wanted to harm. If anyone clicked the link, it could lead to some nefarious location or contact. How could I hook up email hacking with murder? Hmmm. Much smiling and rubbing of hands.

Can you tell I'm a silver-lining type? How would you put mail spam in a murder story?

Questing for an Agent

So I think I'm done revising the book. Well, I suppose I'll never be done. I wrote The End on the first draft exactly a year ago. Four writer friends have read the entire book and critiqued it. I incorporated their comments, which involved some struggling. I've worked through about two-thirds of it, scene by scene, with my writer's group. I have worked through a printout, red pen in hand, copyeditor hat on. I have spellchecked it.

What's next? Try to find an agent. One of my online writer-support groups is called AgentQuest. Everybody on there is looking for an agent, and they share information about rejections and successes. Good agents and nasty ones. How to write a query letter and a synopsis. And they supportively critique same.

Here's the pitch I developed at Crime Bake last fall, which comprises the content paragraph of my query letter (note that it's convention to put the book title in all-caps so that you don't have to worry about formatting like italic or underline translating in email):

In SPEAKING OF MURDER, loner Linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau, a Quaker, uses her ear for accents to reveal secrets after her sexy star student's murder on campus. Confusing the case are an abusive department chairwoman, Lauren's friend's kidnapping, and a French heroin supplier in small-town Massachusetts. When Lauren puts aside conflicted feelings for her boyfriend, his expertise in video forensics helps her solve the mystery. The story is complete at 76,000 words.

I'm not sure that's my final paragraph, but it's a start. I also have the required one-page synopsis, and the first three chapters ready to go. Agent requirements vary, but many seem to want this triad of elements. People also say not to give up until you have 100 agent rejections under your belt.

And then? One can turn to querying small presses and try to get published, in paper, by that route. Another friend has self-published in online book format only. He's selling on Amazon and elsewhere. And since even with a publisher, big or small, authors have to do most of their own promotion anyway, that's an option. You can make more money per book if you sell online.

Ah, well. These are options for the future. Right now I'm going to focus on agents. Wish me luck!

Story Ideas

Short story ideas rattling around:

• Ice fishing. Suppose a couple was arguing in their ice-fishing shack. What if one stuffs the other down the fishing hole. Is it big enough? Would the body migrate away from the site?
• Polyamory. The Boston Globe had an article about followers of this practice: having intimate relationships with more than one person. Suppose a couple had married with the agreement to follow this, then one became dissatisfied with it. What if she kills him (how?) and leaves the body in a snowstorm so it isn't discovered until spring?
• The body in the server room. Oh -- that one I finished and submitted to a contest. Stand by!
• The high-powered female corporate titan and her three greedy sons. This one brainstormed by Allan on our way home from Montreal last weekend. On the model of King Lear but modernized and gender reversed.
• Snowmobile patrol finds a body. Possibly involving a border crossing. Another family brainstorm. Can you tell we were driving through snowy winter scenes? We even filled up with gas Friday after dark at a tiny gas station near the border where all other pumps were being utilized by snowmobiles. Two cats sat in the lit windows of the mini-mart. Intriguing scene almost pleading to be written about.

Other ideas out there you'd like to contribute? Bring them on!

Machine Translation: Potential for Crime?

My friend Karin posts on Facebook in Swedish. This makes sense. She's Swedish. I amuse myself by reading her posts out loud and trying to figure out what she's saying. I've studied German, which is, if not a sister language, then certainly a kissin' cousin of Swedish.

For example, she recently wrote: "Det blir ju inget varmvatten när man har luftvärmepump! Antingen får jag elda lite för att kunna ta en dusch, eller helt enkelt gå o träna för då ingår dusch. Kan man duscha på gymet utan att ha tränat först? Kan man se matinköp som träning?"

I read it. Hmm. Something about 'wind warm pump'. 'Dusch' sounds a little like 'douche,' 'shower' in French. 'Kan man' sounds like 'Kann man...' in German: 'Can one...? Then my friend Tim M ran it through Google Translate, getting the following results:

"It'll no hot water when you have a heat pump! Either I get burned a bit in order to take a shower, or simply go o work out for the shower included.
Can you take a shower at the gym without having practiced first? Can you see food shopping as exercise?"

This is fun. I was right about the "Can one...?" and "shower." But look at the grammar and fractured English in the automatic translation. Swedish and English are pretty closely related. Can't Google the Great do any better than that?

Then imagine the potential for international criminals sending messages with machine translation, and what a forensic linguist could do with that. Ahh, says the writer, rubbing her hands together in anticipation. So much material, so little time...

Do you have experience with automatic translation gone bad, or even human-produced results misunderstood?