Dana Stabenow, right, interviews Sue Grafton
The Agony Panel at work voting on Ian Rankin. Left to right: Daniel Stashower, Val McDermid (impersonating Max Allan Collins), Parnell Hall, Dorothy Cannell, Sharan Newman and Joan Hess.
Val McDermid writes the last chapter in the Puzzle Lady series with a dose of poison.
Agony Panel Members with a newly resurrected Hall. Left to right, Stashower, Coben, Hess, Newman, Hall, Rankin.
Peter Lovesey interview, with novelist Natasha Cooper asking the questions.
Late-night confab in the lobby, with Snyder, left, Teresa Loftin and Lauri Hart, right. Apologies to Meg Chittenden and others in attendence; the other photos came out in terrible shape.
Saturday
The last big day, but it didn't feel like that. There were the Anthony Awards banquet that night, some good sessions, and a lot of walking, shopping and signing in between.
10 a.m. Interview With Sue Grafton
Before the questioning began, Grafton gave us a three-part monologue. The titles are here's.
Part One: Writing for a Living as a Form of Mental Illness
"I'm sort of like Sybil without the heavy medication."
She told the story of when she went on the Today show in the early 1990s. Afterwards, someone asked her how it went.
"I don't know."
"Well, what did you say?"
"I don't remember."
Back then, her husband used to tape her appearances, and when she sat down to watch, "there sat this person, wearing my clothes, and just taking over." That's when she decided that she had different personalities that came out in certain moments. There's She Who Speaks, who loves to go out on tour and pontificate; She Who Writes, who is very introspective and recessive; the Warrior, who is like the figure in the movie, "The Fisher King" on horseback and bristling with weapons. When Grafton gets angry, she doesn't shout. Her voice drops an octive and becomes capable of flattening trees. There is also The Rebel, which is why she's never joined Sister In Crime or any other organization. There's Little Sue, who is about 4 years old and who will never grow up.
"When I sit down at my desk in the morning, I'm hoping that the right personality will show up, because there's six or seven people in me, and only one who knows how to write."
Part Two: Me and My Shadow: You and Carl Jung
It started with "J is for Justice." She had received a letter from a reader who objected to Kinsey's language. Generally, Grafton tends to ignore these people, but this time something happened. Eight chapters into "J," she found that the story had become very flat.
The phone rang, and it was a film producer. Some months back, for reasons unknown, Grafton had asked him to let her know if he ever came across a therapist who is effective. She didn't remember asking for help, but she set up an appointment, saw this therapist, and thereafter began in intensive three months of phone therapy. And this was her introduction to Jungian therapy, which was very different from the "boo-hoo therapy" she anticipated. "It's very academic and very abstract."
She went into detail about the two halves of the self: the Ego, which is the public persona and what we want people to think of about us; and the Shadow, which is the part we dispise and reject. (She also observed that if we want to learn what our faults are, to think of other people we reject, and ask ourselves why we do. The theory being that the distancing allows us to hate those things in others, that we really do see in ourselves.
The Shadow is also the source of our creativity, so "I had become a good Scout. I had become so good that Kinsey Milhone had started to pout. Because she is part of my Shadow. The Shadow contains all of our really good energy. Shadow represents our wants, needs and intuition. You have to trust Shadow, because that is where your power lays."
Part Three: How Presbyterian Theology Can Liberate You as a Writer
There are, Grafton says, two parts of Presbyterianism that cannot be reconciled: free will and predestination. The reason Presbyterians believe in predestination theory is that there is no beginning, middle, nor end. It is all one in God's mind. While in my home, free will exists from day to day, God knows how it will all turn out. What is important to know is that, in the mind of God, my books have already been written. So I don't have to write them; I just have to remember correctly how I did it.
From there, Grafton responded to the moderator's questions. She talked about Rosie, a recurring character, and how she is based on a woman who lived in her apartment building about 1973-74. She was one of those people who had a considerable impact on her life.
She also joked about her mortality, how she plans to keep on living until she finishes the series, so her readers should as well.
"I'm going to do a final tour in a pink ambulence. (laughter) I'm going to pull up to the bookstore, (laughter) and my bony army will come out. (laughter) I'll sign your books, and the ambulence door will close. You'll be asking for lengthy inscriptions. (laughter and applause).
She discussed her workday, which varies depending on whether she is in California or Kentucky. In California, she is more disciplined, getting up early and walking three to five miles on the beach with a friend. "We talk about the classics, about books we love. That takes three minutes and we spend the rest of the time trashing people we know." (laughter) "In Kentucky, the weather is never good. In some ways, I'm happier in California."
She prefers long stretches of writing when her calendar is blank, and doesn't need stimulating company around her. On a good day, she writes two pages, and in an average of 30 days, she feels she writes well on only one of them. "The rest of the time, I'm hacking it out." As she's writing, she's also rewriting the earlier chapters -- "I rewrite every sentence a million times" -- and says she keeps rewriting until she can read a chapter and not feel the need to change anything.
She also keeps a journal for each of her books, on the computer. A daily diary that she uses to vent her frustrations. She also goes back and reads her earlier journals to gain insight into the creative process, or just to be reassured that she's been stuck before, and she'll find a way out this time as well.
She is currently 16 chapters into "Q is for Quarry."
Dorothy Cannell (moderator)
Val McDermid
Parnell Hall
Joan Hess
Sharan Newman
Guest stars:
Daniel Stashower
Ian Rankin
Heckler:
Harlan Coben
My morning headaches grew worse as the day wore on, bad enough that I ducked in and out of the "Gaslight Detectives" panel and fled to my hotel room for a lie-down. I awoke and realized that I had minutes to spare if I wanted to meet the 1:30 p.m. panel, so I grabbed everything I needed, only to discover there that I had forgotten my pens.
It turned out to not be very necessary. The panelists (led, I believe, by Joan Hess) had scripted a parody of "Weakest Link," with Dorothy Cannell playing the part of the tart-tongued moderator, and Val McDermid filling in for a missing Max Allen Collins. Daniel Stashower and Ian Rankin were dragged in for comic relief. Part scripted and part improvised -- especially when Cannell misplaced the script -- the show was filled with funny questions and insults ("Parnell Hall! Was Rex Stout?"; "Which writer is a chapter short of a novel?") and in-jokes, and ended with Hall being declared the winner until "poisoned" by McDermid.
3 p.m. session: Interview with Peter Lovesey
The session consisted of Lovesey describing how he became a writer, his experiences as a young child in World War II-era Britain, the writing of his first mystery, "Wobble to Death, featuring Sgt. Cribb, the filming of the books, and his writing -- with the help of his wife, Jax -- of six more episodes in the series. He also read from the opening of one of his favorite novels, "Hard Cider," a gruesome little piece about the finding of a skull in a pub's cider barrel.
Lovesey said that early on he had shown a keen interest in running and other athletic events. This led him into "a little bit of journalism," out of which came his first book, "The King's Distance," which was on long-distance running.
Then he read that the London Times was holding a contest for the best crime novel. At the time, Lovesey was teaching, and not earning much money. With the encouragement of Jax (and, yes, she has been a major influence on his life and career) he sent off for particulars. "I still kept it (the flyer they sent back), and there was something about it that appealed to me." (He unfolded the flyer and, in tall black letters that made up one-third of the page, could be seen L1000).
Lovesey said that he had read the Sherlock Holmes stories growing up and a few Agatha Christies, but Jax was a regular crime reader, and encouraged him to write something. During his research for "The King's Distance," he had discovered that the Victorians were mad about foot races. They would hold six-day races on enclosed indoor tracks, and there would be a lot of betting in the stands, and on the field as much chicanery as well: including the use of stimulants and nobbling the other runners by putting nut shells into their shoes. "When I found that one of the stimulants they used was strychnine -- a tiny amount of it makes you run faster; too much and you end up writhing on the floor -- I felt I had my story. And I was lucky enough to win it."
Lovesey wrote eight books in the series, which were turned into shows of one-hour length each. He had written one of the shows, "Detective With Silk Drawers." They wanted a second series, Lovesey said, "So over lunch, I was given a great deal of wine, and (the producer) said, ‘We'd really like to see a second series. Can you do six more shows?' It was later that she told me how soon she wanted them. Now remember, it took me almost a year to write each book. She wanted six scripts in eight months. As a very slow book writer, this was a horror."
He talked to Jax about it, "and she said, ‘I read these things. Maybe we can divided it. You can do three and I'll do three. So we worked out the basic stories, and she took what she was interested in, and we worked quite separately and only came together near the end. I don't think we argued much at all; we didn't have time."
And that's it. Oh, there were other bits as well. Lots more of the Lovesey interview, and there were a few panels that I saw and did not report on. There were the chats with Priscilla Ridgeway and John Gilstrap, Rosemary Stevens and Jeffrey Deaver, with Kristy Montee and Kelly Nichols (a.k.a. P.J. Parrish) and the resident posters at rec.arts.mystery. My wife went through the books, tossed aside Sue Grafton after reading the first and last chapters, but is engrossed in "Them Bones," by Carolyn Haines, while I'm racing in spare moments through "The Falls" by Ian Rankin, with Snyder's "The Night Crew" waiting in the wings, its first two chapters read, and Parrish's "Paint It Black" tapping its footing, waiting its turn.
Bouchercon is a memory, now; its stories told. The kids are happy to see me, as is my wife. The cats have nearly forgiven me for leaving them. One is sleeping on my notebook under the desk lamp and the other is covering the scanner. There was only one problem: the Fornits didn't add a single darn word to my new novel while I was gone. Did they think the peanut butter in the keyboard was a form of welfare?
Back to work.
