I'm always highly skeptical about these endeavors wherein a writer attempts to take over another's characters and play in his/her sandbox.

Full disclosure: I have, though, been reading the new "Lord Peter Wimsey" mysteries by Jill Paton Walsh. No, they are not Dorothy L. Sayers, because Walsh is too busy being respectful of Sayers' legacy to really do the swashbuckling, experimental kind of writing that Sayers felt free to perform with her own characters.

But Walsh knows the Wimseys in and out, and she's clearly read the short story "Talboys" often enough to have a clear idea how Wimsey's/Vane's home lives would evolve. And her Lord Peter/Harriet Vane books are fun.

Walsh is the glaring exception that proves the rule.

I have to go now: I'm working on a suspense novel about a serial killer whose victims all worked for Disney: in fact, they all (oddly enough) were involved in publishing "Winnie the Pooh" books that turned A.A. Milne's style and wit into mindless, unreadable, ponderous, preachy, children's-lit excrement. With the name "A.A. Milne" on the fucking cover of 'em. As "editor."

Treat the dead with respect; they cannot defend themselves.

Via Lair, who remarks:

Considering that every product of the Guide Milieu since the original radio series was incrementally worse, this one's going to be a rock-bottom ultrastinker.

And, like a sucker, I'll probably buy it.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 237 words, total size 2 kb.

[Around 12:43, if you were wondering. I'm getting tired of annotating these entries. Maybe next time I'll just retroactively post them at times that correlate to their actual composition. Alternately, I'll begin to limit myself to blogging about interesting things, rather than my rich interior life.

Just kidding.]

"I just got a few things," I tell my husband. "And they were cheap. Like, I got this pen that will fit in my pocket, and a sudoku book so I can start doing sudoko and my mind won't ever really age."

"Don't give me that look," I warn him. "I'm right about this; I'm always right about things like this."

This particular character [ahem] happens to be right about most things. I know, because I made her that way.

There is, to be honest, a sort of rush in playing God this way. The downside is that my characters all rebel against me, sooner or later. I hear I'm not the only one.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:04 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 123 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . about truth, fidelity, and betrayal, by a friend of mine. If you leave a commet, please keep it clean—and respectful.

It's quite a story.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:34 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 37 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . in two months; Jeff VanderMeer tells all.

Via Tom Nissley and Insty, who both point out that VanderMeer continued to blog during that high-productivity crunch. Personally, I find blogging to be so different from "real writing" that I rarely experience a conflict between the two.

Of course, I can also read after a day of writing, which my husband cannot: he's more likely to watch television. (Now he will tell you that I never spend the entire day writing, but that isn't true. I'm always writing. I'm just not necessarily getting it all down on paper. There's a distinction to be drawn there. Fruthermore, I can read to unwind after a day of proofreading, even while my eyes and my upper back ache from hunching over the same copy all day long, scouring eight-point type for boo-boos. I suspect this makes me a reprobate written-word-junkie, but I don't want to discuss it.)

What I cannot do when I'm infected with a piece of fiction is read much fiction, unless it's a short story here or there, or a quick re-read of something I've already read. If I'm fully immersed in my own world I have little desire to enter someone else's, so it has to be politics, pop culture, historical nonsense, theology, or philosophical whatnot. Something without a narrative arc, if you please.

Anyway, it's pretty fascinating stuff. It almost makes me want to print my work out and . . . send it around. Almost. But next thing you know, I'd be getting paid for it. That would make me feel dirty.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 05:45 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 276 words, total size 2 kb.

Crab Orchard Review is accepting work through the end of the month that focuses on the experience of adolescence. There's a piece I should submit, if I can remember for sure that they haven't already rejected it. I know they turned one of my stories/essays down, but I can't recall which it was, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I went all ADD and mis-filed the rejection letter.

Of course, if I re-submit the one they rejected, they'll know I'm persistent. That I care. That I'm a space cadette.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:12 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 92 words, total size 1 kb.

I am alive and well. It just so happens that I got waylaid by the following projects: 1) catching up on sleep; 2) fulfilling family obligations; 3) dealing with business overhead; 4) catching up on sleep, again; 5) reading an Ellery Queen mystery about a serial killer loose in New York City during a heat wave in the late 1940s.

The point to remember is that detective fiction is strangely analogous to humor: just as the comic must deal in material that is as funny and uncomfortable and painful as possible—without actually drawing metaphorical or literal blood—so the crime writer must come up with a solution to the puzzle that, upon reflection, must appear to have been staring the reader in the face the whole time. In both instances, one must play footsie with a very fine line.

That is why one man's wit is another man's hostility; there is an element of the subjective to the whole enterprise.

I am, as a mystery reader, pretty cooperative: I try not to actively solve the puzzle unless I feel I've got no choice. (Some books practically beg one to get out a piece of paper and start listing clues, but these are normally of the poorest quality, and barely worth finishing at all.)

I want to be fooled. Yet if at all possible, I want to be fooled only slightly. If it's the least bit feasible, I'd like to guess the final mystery one page before it's revealed in the text, yet before such knowledge would spoil the surprise. It is just as one pulls off that wrapping paper that The Truth should knock one over: "of course!"

"Hide it in plain sight." It's easy to say, but almost impossible to do.

I finished reading the mystery by the Queen cousins, and resolved to close the gaps on the L.A. and Phoenix puzzles I'm creating, once and for all.

I decide to get all "twelve step" on my husband, regarding the creative process. "I don't have to create the perfect psycho for this particular book," I explain to him, rather earnestly. "I just have to create the best psycho I can today."

The mystery writer is, at the very same time, the most moral and the most amoral of creatures. There is no resolving this one; we can only craft the best books possible, and keep them scrupulously free of talking pets. At that point, our missions are fulfilled, and the editors, critics and readers take over.

Keep in mind, though, that more readers one acquires, the less one has to care what the critics and editors say. At a certain point, one can even bring back the talking pets, and all is well. What are the critics going to do, after all?—argue with one's bank balance? "It's slop, that financial security," they will say.

"I don't care for the dreck that she put in her IRA," they will complain.

"The quality of her beach home? Strictly second rate," they'll sniff.

I, of course, won't care at all. I'll just install a swimming pool for my husband, and buy another car.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:50 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 534 words, total size 3 kb.

. . . is letting others see his fiction! Very cool.

I really dug his faux reviews.

It reminds me of a story about David Linden, from when we were in high school: he used to draw these cool cartoons he called "mugwumps," and eventually (was he in college by then?) sent them off to several publishing houses. He got no takers (which is a shame, especially since he stopped drawing mugwumps soon thereafter), but his cover letter was apparently so witty that one publisher asked if he'd be interested in writing a collection of funny cover letters for (non-existent) literary submissions.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 106 words, total size 1 kb.

"No, this section is fine," Bridget tells me. "But we need to know more about these people before we find the body."

"I can do that," I reply.

"Um, what do these people do for a living?" Maria pipes up. "I mean, they seem to spend a lot of time drinking coffee and finding corpses."

"Well," I answer, slowly, "I could give them jobs, of course. But that might cut into the time they have for solving crimes."

"If you want them to be independently wealthy, there are ways to accomplish that," Fred points out.

"Hell, no. I don't want them to sustain that kind of damage," I respond. "Fine. I'll get 'em jobs."

These stupid people in writer's group and their un-fucking-reasonable demands . . .

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:36 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 141 words, total size 1 kb.

I announce that I'm working on a new mystery, and I've given myself two months to complete the initial manuscript, so I can spend most of June polishing it.

Everyone is thrilled—and even more so when the hear the first scene, in which our intrepid hero and heroine (sort of) discover the body of the victim.

"Wow. This one really moves along," remarks one of the other writers. "And the people are must less sarcastic with each other than in your other book."

"Well, they're less sarcastic because they are married to each other," I explain. "It isn't in their best interests to draw blood every time they speak. And the story is actually moving along because I decided that there was no time to go for literary merit."

Someone else chimes in: "is there any way that this time you could give them some sort of excuse for solving mysteries? I mean, could they have specialized knowledge of medicine, or be private investigators, or something like that?"

"No," I reply. "They solve murders for the same reason Nora and Nick did it. The same reason Tommy and Tuppence did it. They just do it because it's fun. Either the reader buys in, or he/she doesn't.

"That said, I promise you'll like them. They are very likeable people."

"Great," says our teacher. "Now go home, put these copies away, and don't read our notes just yet. Just keep typing out that first draft."

I suppose I ought to shut down my blog for the next six weeks, but let's see if I can get by without taking that sort of extreme measure.

Naturally, Marvelous Mike starts a list for me of golden-age mysteries set in the non-Los Angeles southwest. He tells me he's going to email it to me later in the week.

"Take your time," I respond. "I'm on a diet right now, anyway, for obvious reasons."

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:24 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 326 words, total size 2 kb.

1 "Well, they're less sarcastic because they are married to each other," I explain. "It isn't in their best interests to draw blood every time they speak..." You didn't tell us your new novel was set in an alternate universe. Besides Phoenix, I mean.

Posted by: Darrell at April 16, 2007 08:36 AM (oLdKY)

2 Less sarcastic doesn't mean they aren't sarcastic at all. Just means I've toned it down from my last book.

Posted by: Attila Girl at April 16, 2007 10:09 AM (f3SX3)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

. . . I'm making my page quota on the "Mystery in Arizona" manuscript.

On the other hand, I'm running around the house in my bathrobe all day and taking lots of naps.

I need to catch up on laundry, answer a few phone calls, and get out to the grocery store. You know: life stuff.

The thing about this project is, it can only help me, even if the ms. is returned unread by the Hillerman Competition. If I've got two manuscripts on hand, I can shop them around more effectively: it'll give me some detachment about the fate of any one given story.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 06:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 113 words, total size 1 kb.

When in doubt, blame it on the White Mountain Apaches.

My story is shaping up nicely. I'm letting you know because I assume you're almost as obsessed with me as I am.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 06:11 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 34 words, total size 1 kb.

One page of outline. One page of typed text. Three pages of handwritten notes.

And so I'm going to bed. There will be more creepy things to write about in the morning.

But I know who was killed. And why. I just haven't decided how.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:15 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 55 words, total size 1 kb.

If there isn't any salt in it, why do they call it the "Salt River"? It sounds like it's fresh water, and related to the canals in the area. I like that, but I want two different types of water bodies (with different effects on decaying human flesh, of course—sorry to be gross, and all that).

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:22 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 60 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Interesting. I'm actually thinking of chopping my body up, and having different parts decay at different rates. Reader Bob just pointed me to Wickenberg, which has a river that flows underground: I like that. I might put part of the body into the Salt River, and part into this underground river in the mountains.

Posted by: Attila Girl at April 03, 2007 12:25 PM (1tv3E)

2 Well, they call it Salt River because there is salt in it. More accurately dissolved minerals-calcium, magnesium, sodium, sulfate, chloride, and bicarbonate--about 480 mg/L. At tha level you cold taste the "salt". I bet that's the origin of the name! Anything less than 500 mg/L is onsidered safe for most uses--that's about a quarter teaspoon per gallon of water. Your Pacific Ocean, by contrast, is about 35,000 mg/L, If I remember correctly. Know what your mailbox had since Monday?

Posted by: Darrell at April 03, 2007 08:25 PM (U0POy)

3 Ooooh, how annoying! I stopped by, and said I had two packages--he said there was only one there, so I assumed they put two "oversize" notes in there by mistake! I was curious because I had the impression that the Salt River forked off of a freshwater river--wasn't it the mighty Colorado, from which we Californians steal all our H2O? I'll double-check on that. Anyway, I've got my protagonists; just need my method/motive, and it'll be nearly finished

Posted by: Attila Girl at April 03, 2007 09:24 PM (cJnPC)

4 The Colorado flows over the same sort of terrain, under the same brutal sun, so it, too, is "salty". The 480 mg/L for the Salt R. is something I looked up, btw. I can't remember everything! Not even to proofread even though my keyboard is failing and skipping letters occasionally. Unless I give the keys the finger of death. The USPS said noon Monday. If they give you only one, it should be mine! At least in my world. . .

Posted by: Darrell at April 04, 2007 08:47 AM (9iZ9f)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

I'd need to produce 3-5 pages a day.

A the H informs me that he'd be happy to switch our anniversary vacation destination from La Jolla to Arizona. (Sorry, Desert Cat: the timeline doesn't permit me to set the story in Tucson. I have to draw on my existing knowledge base of the Phoenix area in order to get this one done on time. So the main location will be one of the Fenix suburbs. I still want to introduce some small-town color, though, and I'm taking nominations for that. I want an excuse to really get some bitchin' landscape into the plot.

BTW, feel free to tell me what you know about the hydrology of Scottsdale/Phoenix: which bodies of water are natural, and which are man-made? Isn't one of them a salt-water river? Why?)

I think I know who my protagonists are. I just have to whip up a crime, and I'll be practically done.

Gotta go: time for a nap. (Seriously: I need to get my unconscious mind to work, here.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:22 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 187 words, total size 1 kb.

1 http://www.arizonan.com/Wickenburg/ There used to be a picture of an antique trailer home with *small* picket-fenced rock garden on this page. -B

Posted by: Bob at April 03, 2007 11:01 AM (CP6tB)

2 I seem to have to much time on my hands today. Okay it wasn't a rock garden, there're actually two trees in the pic. The Way-Back machine isn't always our friend, but today it is, even if your spam filter doesn't like it. http://[way-back-url]/web/20060508082225/http://www.arizonan.com/Wickenburg/ -Bob

Posted by: Bob at April 03, 2007 11:11 AM (CP6tB)

3 You have to have a character complain about the traffic, and the illegal immigrants, and the crystal meth. Uh, don't forget mentioning the pawn shops on every other block.

Posted by: Sean Hackbarth at April 03, 2007 08:14 PM (QJ5cf)

4 Funny--I've been going out there for 15 years or so, and I've never noticed any traffic whatsoever . . . nor any illegal immigrants to speak of. Hm.

Posted by: Attila Girl at April 03, 2007 09:26 PM (cJnPC)

5 Well here's a fun fact: Scottsdale recycles its purified poop-water back into the aquifer and then draws it up to serve its residents as drinking water again.

Posted by: Desert Cat at April 04, 2007 08:57 PM (xdX36)

6 Won't my characters be delighted to discover that? Thanks! Does the water from the CO river and the Salt Water River go through any desalination?

Posted by: Attila Girl at April 04, 2007 09:47 PM (6C0F9)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

I think it's important to point out that Southern California is in the Southwestern United States. Would someone please send a map to the people at St. Martin's Press? (And what do you mean, L.A. isn't underrepresented in the genre?)

Hm. I wonder if I could quickly re-write Ye Olde Mystery so it takes place in Tempe, Arizona rather than Santa Monica, California.

So: "She could feel the sea air over her skin" becomes "she could smell the scent of the cactus as she drifted off to sleep." The problem being that cacti don't have much of a smell.

Or: "She checked for slugs in the grass as she walked across the yard" becomes "she saw a lizard dart over the gravel ahead of her."

Or: "the air got misty" becomes "it rained hard and was freezing cold and why is the weather so extreme in the freaking desert, anyway?"

Easy shmeasy.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:06 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 162 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Whel, you could always take up residence here for a year and a day. Get a more genuine sense of place and all. But it would have to be Tucson, because Phoenix is just LA East.

Posted by: Desert Cat at April 03, 2007 09:04 PM (xdX36)

2 Hm. If my subplot is in Bisbee, my main plot would have to be in Tucson. Once I win the Hillerman prize, I'll talk A the H into getting us a vacation property somewhere in southern AZ, and that will solve all the problems.

Posted by: Attila Girl at April 03, 2007 09:28 PM (cJnPC)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

I have finally encountered someone over the internet who is so malevolent, so vile and so reprehensible that I simply must make this person into an antagonist.

And not in a book, either: I'm too eager to symbolically crush this person under my size fives.

No one else is wicked enough for me. Those who perpetrate genocide bore me. Serial killers are passe. Child molesters? Whatever. Everyone's doing them.

I've found heart's one true my villain, and I intend to be faithful to him. For at least two weeks, or about 20 double-spaced pages.

If I could physically find him, I'd send him a locket or something.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:42 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 115 words, total size 1 kb.

Um. Make that Queen Boyz: the cousins who wrote the original Ellery Queen series.

As I work through the list Marvelous Mike sent my of their best puzzles, the engineering side of my brain is, indeed, beginning to kick into high gear.

I realize that on my own project I may be overdoing the Real Clues: I'm only required to give the pertinent information on the real killer once or twice. After that, it's up to the reader to figure it out. If they're like me, they won't want to. (I'm reminded of what my former roommate, the mathematician, used to say: "she's too smart to figure things out that she doesn't want to know." That's a blessing/curse of human nature.)

Of course, the best puzzles are the ones in which the Main Reveal leaves the reader smacking herself on the head, exclaiming, "it was in front of me all along; why didn't I see it?"

That's what I'm aiming for. I'm terrified, however, that the maze will be too easy—that the solution will appear obvious all along, rather than in retrospect. One always runs that risk, of course, if one is playing by the rules. The main rule is the reader gets a shot at solving the puzzle himself/herself.

My mother informs me helpfully that she doesn't really mind if she's reading a mystery and she figures it out. That isn't the level I want to play at, though.

The workshop meets again this coming Thursday night: I need to flesh out my final conflict and take it in. Enough of the procrastination. I have to send the ship out—my draft—and see if it can stay afloat. If not, I'm sure I have a great career ahead of my as a Starbucks barista or something. Or I can stick with my glamorous proofreading endeavors.

There is a moment in any high-wire act wherein one has to take a deep breath, let go of the handle, and reach out for something that may or may not be there.

I am at that point.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:05 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 355 words, total size 2 kb.

Yes, yes: finishing the novel. Really, I am. But there's a reading party later on this month, and I hate reading chapter snippets at those events.

Please provide me with a subject around which I can fashion a mini-short story. Optimum page count would be five pages, double-spaced, so I need a fast little story arc.

Please provide me with a theme, an image, or a premise. And, yes: there are sometimes children at these events. "Dark" is okay, but it should be transmutable into PG-13 material.

Thank you.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:23 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 101 words, total size 1 kb.

1 OK. I was going to pitch this one to the TV networks myself, thinking made-for-TV movie, but who can resist a damsel in distress? Premise: Debris from the Chinese satellite-killer test is heading for the International Space Station. The European Space Agency launches a rescue mission, but in-fighting between German engineers and French trade unions leads to a space craft where the computer cables are 14 cm too short. No matter the crew presses on until they hit he debris field while the various nationalities aboard are in a heated argument over whether smoking on-board should be allowed. NASA "brass" decide another rescue attempt would be a "suicide" mission. Enter a Tommy-Lee-Jones type "maverick" mission specialist who says it could be done. Too risky for regular astronauts, he visits the Houston penitentiary were they have an astronaut training program for convicts--all hard core. Here is where you get to assemble a stereotypical collection of misfits that would make TV network executives' hearts skip two beats! Include obligatory weight-lifting scene and an advanced calculus "throwdown" between two rival groups of inmates. Think "Stomp The Yard". With calculus. Who has the experience to handle such a mission? Lisa Nowak. of course. Doing her time at the Houston Pen., she agrees to head up the mission in exchange for a full Presidential pardon. To add more "suspense," have Angelina Jolie visiting the ISS on a morale-boosting mission, or something to do with "spotting" Global Warming. Add Nancy Pelosi's daughter, too(no need to check if she has one). That will add additional "political edge" and explain why Bush can't risk saying "no!" Outcome? What do you think? Hope this helps! If you don't like that one, how about the "Stomp The Yard" gang going up against Iran's best in a winner-take-all "stepping contest" in order to prevent all-out war???? I smell a classic!

Posted by: Darrell at March 10, 2007 09:07 PM (X52Zv)

2 Yeah; that'll all fit in five pages.

Posted by: Attila Girl at March 10, 2007 10:54 PM (0CbUL)

3 I bet it would! How about a modern tale of love? For their anniversary, a wife decides to have a sex-change operation because of an off-hand remark by a right-wing commentator thrown her husband's way. Independently, her husband decides the same. He wants to beat that commentator at her own game, only left-of-center style. He's also harbors a secret wish to see his wife with another woman, only he is too possessive and controlling to let any other human being be with his wife.They both go to Thailand to get things done quick and cheap. Imagine the surprise when the anniversary rolls around. Set it in Ojai, California, and it could be "The Gift of the Ojai". . .

Posted by: Darrell at March 11, 2007 06:53 AM (o1Bos)

4 Cute, Darrell.

Posted by: Attila Girl at March 11, 2007 08:49 AM (0CbUL)

5 Note to "Law and Order" writers: If you're going to steal that plot line and add James Carville details "coincidentally," have the wife win the Presidential race afterward. This will speak to our sexist society, even though Jeane Kirkpatrick could have won it twenty years ago. I'll sue otherwise. Oh, and make a few references about the husband looking like a 6"2" penis before(show a silhouette on the wall). . .and the same, only wearing a "French tickler" afterward. Last try for your contest(really!). Jane has two pairs of socks--hot pink and blue. She is meeting friends for a late lunch at 1:30. Her iPod is pink. What is she to do?

Posted by: Darrell at March 11, 2007 01:29 PM (P/l60)

6 This one is painfully easy; she wears one pink sock, and one blue sock, carries the iPod, and wears one blue dangly earring--set off by a silver stud on the other ear. I would, of course, make sure that both pairs of socks are high-quality cashmere. Easy schmeasy!

Posted by: Attila Girl at March 11, 2007 02:39 PM (7H00g)

7 A couple drive down the road. They seen a man carrying a chainsaw and a case of Bud Light. The man wants to give him a ride, the woman doesn't because she has better taste and hates Bud Light. Continue... If it was (sort of) good enough for a Super Bowl commercial it's good enough for your party.

Posted by: Sean Hackbarth at March 11, 2007 07:28 PM (/qEp0)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

I want to send a short story in to an electronic magazine, but I'm not sure I want to let it go yet. I'm not sure it's "finished."

And, of course, I'm afraid I'll fall afoul of the rules against selling babies or body organs or freshly killed game or one's writing or one's body.

I do not want to do the wrong thing, you know.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 04:36 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 74 words, total size 1 kb.

I should read the rest of his books; they're very witty.

Maybe too witty.

The dimwits in my writers' groups would say that I have a competitive vibe going with "Mr. Repartee-Bloodbath."

But they'd be flattering me.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:22 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 41 words, total size 1 kb.