Libby Fischer Hellmann and Jake Foreman

Have you ever heard a writer say “when my character gets on the page, they write themselves?” I always thought that was hyperbole….until I met Jake Foreman.

I’ve written eleven novels  and twenty short stories, but my favorite supporting character appeared in the first short story I ever wrote.

(More about that later)

Jake Foreman is Ellie Foreman’s father. Ellie, a video producer and single mother in Chicago, is the protagonist of my amateur sleuth series. Ellie has a teen-age daughter, an ex-husband who, unfortunately, shows up in every book, and Jake, her senior citizen father. For some reason, Jake is the only character about whom I never have to worry. Whenever he appears in a scene, the scene literarily writes itself, and, of course, he steals it.

 

After fifteen years I’m still not sure where he comes from.  I can say he’s nothing like my own father, who was a businessman and banker. Jake is a lawyer. He’s retired, lives in an assisted-living facility although he’s in reasonably good health, and always has a good line or comeback. He looks a little like Ben Kingsley; he’s prone to wisecracks, and he snaps his fingers to Benny Goodman and Frank Sinatra. (Okay, in that way he IS like my father). He loves Ellie desperately, even protectively, but he has his own secrets. Some of them are revealed in the series.  In one book Jake tells his daughter a story from his youth where he brushed up against the Outfit. In another he tells her the story of his true love, who wasn’t Ellie’s mother. In yet another he has a girlfriend of his own. In AN EYE FOR MURDER, the first Ellie Foreman mystery, it’s Jake’s youth in Lawndale that sets up the premise of the novel.

But Jake is critical to the series in other ways, too. He is an integral part of Ellie’s support system. He reflects back her insatiable curiosity, puts up with her neuroses, becomes exasperated at the dangers she takes, and adores his granddaughter Rachel. Btw, the feeling is mutual, much to Ellie’s chagrin when she accuses both generations of ganging up on her, the generation in the middle. Moreover, Ellie’s sense of humor is directly attributable to Jake. Her tenderness, too. In fact, I can not imagine writing an Elie book without Jake in it. He may get a little older and frailer in each novel, but aside from some scrapes and his unyielding arthritis, nothing serious is going to happen to him for a long time.

I mentioned above that Jake first appeared in a short story as a teenager. “The Day Miriam Hirsch Disappeared” was the first short story I wrote. It takes place in 1938 in the formerly Jewish neighborhood of Chicago’s Lawndale. Jake develops a crush on an actress with the Yiddish theater. But Miriam only has eyes for a guy named Skull who may or may not be a gangster. It sounds like a story about unrequited love—until you remember the year in which it was set. The story won a couple of contests and the brief burst of confidence it gave me inspired me to keep writing.

 

At the time, of course, I had no idea that story would be prequel to my Ellie Foreman series, or that the Georgia Davis series would spin off Ellie’s. Funny about that.

Anyway, that story is now free and you can download it from my website so you can meet Jake at the same time I first did.

 Btw, AN IMAGE OF DEATH, the third Ellie Foreman mystery, featuring Jake as one the supporting characters, is also free through June 13 at Amazon.

Thanks, Neil, for letting me go on about Jake.

Libby Fischer Hellmann is the award-winning author of 10 crime thrillers, including A BITTER VEIL, SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE, and the Ellie Foreman and Georgia Davis series. She also writes short stories and novellas. Her next thriller, HAVANA LOST, will be out in September. She’s lived in Chicago 35 years. Find out more here.

Favorite Supporting Character - Angus Green

FBI Special Agent Angus Green made his first appearance in my M/M romance novel Mi Amor. Adam Beller is the book’s hero, a twenty-something party planner whose primary client, the owner of Vladi Vodka, is in trouble with the law. Here’s where Angus makes his first appearance:



I woke Monday morning to a banging on my door. I hadn’t quite recovered from Jason’s bar mitzvah; the shots of Vladi Vodka the night before, coupled with an awful lot of dancing, hadn’t helped. My head was pounding as I pulled on a pair of boxers and stumbled to the door.

There was a cute red-headed guy in a business suit standing there. “Adam Beller?” he asked.

“That’s me.”

“FBI agent Angus Green. We have a warrant to search the premises and confiscate any materials relating to your business with Vladislav Solonenko.”

At first, I thought it was a hoax. That [my best friend] Jean-Jacques had hired a stripper to come to my door in the guise of an FBI agent. At any moment I expected the guy to peel his clothes off and start dancing.

Angus comes back later in the book to tell Adam what happened to his client. And this is the time when he really came alive to me. Here are a couple of the pictures I used for inspiration.

Love the hair!

So sexy!

    

It was Agent Green. He looked disheveled, as if he’d been up all night. His white shirt was wrinkled, his tie askew, and there were dark circles under his eyes. “What can I do for you?” I asked.

“May I come in?”

I shrugged. “Sure.” I walked toward the kitchen, and over my shoulder I said, “Can I get you anything to drink? Orange juice, water, coffee?”

“I’d kill for some caffeine.”

“I won’t ask you to do that, though I’m sure you’re armed. Have a seat. I’ll get something going.”

My cappuccino maker was earning its keep. I ground some beans, started the brewing, frothed the milk. I didn’t know what had brought Agent Green to my door, but I had a feeling it wasn’t a social call. The longer I could delay whatever it was he wanted, the better.

When I came out of the kitchen with two mugs of cappuccino, I saw him reading an Advocate magazine I’d left on the coffee table. Well, well, I thought. I wondered if Jean-Jacques was right.

“So what brings you here in the middle of a Friday morning?” I asked, sitting down on my desk chair. I leaned across and handed him his coffee.

He sniffed deeply and sighed, then took a sip of the hot brew. “I have some bad news.”

“You’re arresting me?”

He shook his head. “We found Vladislav Solonenko. Yesterday evening. Next to the sewer plant on Virginia Key.”

“What was he doing there?”

“The current must have washed him over there.”

Suddenly I realized what he was saying. Vlad hadn’t been hiding out on Virginia Key, the little island on the way to Key Biscayne. He was dead.

I put my coffee down on the desk. “My God.” I saw Vlad in my mind, lying on his back on the sand, tendrils of seaweed covering him, his dark, dead eyes staring at the sky. I shivered and pushed the vision away.

“I wanted to come and tell you in person. Even though you said your relationship was all business.”

I nodded. “Thank you.” I picked up my coffee and took a deep drink. “I didn’t love him, you know. It was just about the sex, and the business deal. But I did care for him, in a funny way.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” I asked. “Agent Green, are you gay?”

“I don’t see…” he began. But then he stopped. “Yes, if it matters to you.”

That moment is when I started thinking that maybe Angus Green deserved his own book. I didn’t know what that book was going to be for a long time, but Angus hung around in my subconscious, showing up for another cameo appearance in my YA novel, Soul Kiss.


There will be more about Angus the next time I don't have a guest!

Supporting Characters and Why We Love Them

I first “met” Sarah Byrne through the e-list for mystery fans, DorothyL. She’s know there as “Sarah from Canberra,” her home city in Australia. We met for the first time in person at a Bouchercon, when I went up to her after a panel and introduced myself. And then, we met again at Bouchercon in Indianapolis, where we hung out in the food court, and she mentioned that she’d love to be a character in one of my books.

Though she’s an attorney in real life, she became a paralegal in my book Mahu Blood. I quizzed her a bit about her life in Australia, and discovered that she was also a jazz singer, and often sang songs by Dave Frishberg. Not only did that detail turn out to be important to her character, she taught me something about Ray Donne, Kimo’s detective partner.

Here’s a quote from that book:

As she typed her name and password into the database, she began to sing a little under her breath. I didn’t recognize the song, but then, most of what I listen to comes with slack key guitar accompaniment. Ray did, though.

“Is that ‘My Attorney Bernie?’ I love that song,” he said.

She blushed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was doing that.”

“No, you have a good voice,” Ray said. “I’m a big Dave Frishberg fan. ‘Bernie is a purist, not your polyester tourist,’ he sang. His voice was surprisingly good.

“I sing with a jazz group,” Sarah said, hitting a couple of keys. “We do a lot of his songs. You should come by some time. You and your wife.”

She was sharp, Sarah. I liked her.

Until I wrote that scene, I didn’t know that Ray could sing!

Here's the real Sarah singing.

Sarah was such a great character that I knew I wanted her to come back at the end of the book. It’s about ohana, after all – the Hawaiian word for family – and she had become part of Kimo’s extended family, at least in my mind. Here’s the very last bit of the book, where Sarah sings again.

The CDs had all ended by then, and no one had gotten up to put new ones on. “I think we need a little live music,” Peggy said. “To cap off a great luau. Sarah, you want to sing something for us?”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” Sarah said. “Not without a band behind me.”

“You have a great voice,” Ray said. “You know Frishberg’s song I’m Home? The one Al Jarreau sings? It’s a great song for a housewarming.”

After a little more persuading, Sarah stood up, and we shushed the crowd. When she sang, “I knew that I'd found what's at the end of the rainbow... There's no place on earth I'd rather be than stayin' right here with you," I looked around for Mike.

He was standing at the back door, where two steps led up into the house. He looked so handsome, in his Honolulu Fire Department t-shirt and geometric print board shorts. A smile curled out from beneath his mustache. I had this powerful desire to be with him—the kind of magnetic attraction I’d seen between Haoa and Tatiana, where neither of them looked complete without the other. I’d always envied that about them, and now I knew what it felt like from the inside.

I climbed up there with him, and we listened the music and looked at everyone enjoying themselves, celebrating a union that neither of us had ever dreamed we could enjoy.

Sarah finished the song, and everyone applauded. Then, holding hands, Mike and I stepped down to take our places in our ohana.

Sarah returns in Natural Predators, my 2013 release. So there's still more to tell about her!

Win a free copy of The Russian Boy

I'm giving away a free copy of my M/M romance, The Russian Boy, in the Sizzling Summer Reads contest at The Romance Reads. My question will be up on June 30, from 12:00am EST to 11:59pm EST.



A famous, erotically charged painting called The Russian Boy depicts a nude Russian noble named Alexei Dubernin, younger lover of painter Fyodor Luschenko. Their affair takes place in the elegance of a lost world, the Russian enclave on the Cote d’Azur in the years just before the revolution of 1917.

The painting, owned by the New York Museum of Fine Arts, is stolen from a restorer’s studio in Paris, bringing together three very different men, each of whom must risk his life to return this precious work of art and earn the love he deserves.

Fifty-year-old Rowan McNair was a college art history professor until he lost his marriage, his family and his job after an affair with a young male former student. Now he struggles to make a new life in New York as a journalist and art theft consultant.

Taylor Griffin is finishing his first year on a painting fellowship at the Institute des Artistes in Montmartre, sharing a tiny studio apartment with his Russian émigré boyfriend, Dmitri Baranov, a fellow student. When Dmitri steals The Russian Boy, he plunges himself, Taylor, and eventually Rowan into a dangerous world of drugs, sex and intrigue.

The Russian Boy is a sexy, romantic story about older men involved with younger men, about art and love and the risks we take when we fall in love.



Sizzling Summer Reads contest at The Romance Reviews

Sneak Peek Sunday - Olives for the Stranger

As demonstrators and police spar in the streets of Tunis, bodyguards Aidan and Liam must protect Leila, a young girl whose mother has been taken into police custody. While the threats against her and her activist parents grow, hunky ex-SEAL Liam is stuck in the Tunisian countryside while teacher and novice bodyguard Aidan travels to France on his own with Leila.

Liam must deal with his emotions once separated from his partner, while Aidan struggles to protect Leila and her father from a deadly villian as Liam has taught him. Both men must examine the depths of their love for each other and satisfy themselves that more than just sexual desire keeps them together.

Here are the first six paragraphs of Olives for the Stranger, fourth in my Have Body, Will Guard series:

There were two of them, and they came at Liam McCullough fast and low, both of them screaming as they did.

The one on the right went for his leg, while the other tried to climb up his chair and get to his head.

“Children! Please!” their mother called. “Leave the nice bodyguard alone.” Her English was heavily accented, and she switched into her native Brazilian Portuguese, following with a string of speech that did nothing to pull the boy or the girl off him.

He smiled grimly and grabbed them both under his arms and stood up. The little girl kicked at the back of a gilt chair, which fell to the plush carpet with a thud. “Why don’t I take the kids outside so they can run around?”

The middle-aged saleswoman who had been showing Zoraida Figueroa hand-embroidered shawls looked relieved. She had been twisting the pearls around her neck with long, elegant fingers as the children rampaged through the narrow store.

Liam and Aidan, his partner in love and business, had been watching Zoraida and her two children for three days by then, while her husband concluded a deal to sell Brazilian rubber to the Tunisian government. Zoraida, twenty-eight, had bonded immediately with Aidan, the two of them chattering away and shopping like best girlfriends.

http://www.loose-id.com/authors/l-p/neil-plakcy/have-body-will-guard-4-olives-for-the-stranger.html

Is Height Sexy?

I admit to finding height sexy in a man. At my tallest (I seem to be shrinking a bit with old age) I was six-foot and a half-inch. Of course, I represented myself as six-one, and I found myself attracted to men who were taller than I was. My first serious boyfriend was six-four, and so is my partner. I like that feeling of being with someone bigger than I am.

That has carried over to my characters. Kimo Kanapa’aka, the police detective hero of my Mahu Investigations series, is six-one, and his partner, fire investigator Mike Riccardi, is six-four. I think Kimo feels that being with Mike gives him a bit of personal protection, and relief from always being the one to protect others.

The same is true in the Have Body, Will Guard series. Aidan Greene is six-one, and his partner, ex-SEAL Liam McCullough, is six-four. Seeing a pattern here?

I began to question whether it’s just height that I find sexy after seeing The Hobbit. There were some seriously sexy dwarves in that movie. Kili hits the top spot on my hotness scale, followed in close order by Fili, Thorin Oakenshield, and Bombur (because he has a great smile, even though he wears a goofy hat.)

But those guys are dwarves – not tall at all. How could I find that sexy? Well, the filmmakers were pretty shrewd, aided by Tolkien’s original book. In The Lord of the Rings, Gimli the dwarf shares screen time with men, elves and all kinds of other creatures, so it’s pretty clear that he’s short. But in The Hobbit, most of the time the dwarves are alone with Bilbo and Gandalf, so it’s easy to forget that, with the exception of the wizard, they’re height-challenged.

I digress to say that I’ve had a soft spot for Kili and Fili since I read Dove by Robin Lee Graham as an impressionable teenager. In this round-the-world adventure, Graham adopts two kittens, which he names after these two dwarves. I don’t remember if he had a reason—but I glommed onto those two in particular.

I think the filmmakers were sharp in giving us some man candy on the screen. We never get to see Kili or Fili shirtless, or even skinny-dipping in some mountain glade (are you listening, Peter Jackson? There’s another movie we’re looking forward to. I’m picturing Kili and Fili romping under one of those New Zealand waterfalls, sporting some Maori-style tattoos and nothing else.) But even fully clothed, these four guys bring a real hotness factor to the movie.

Checking the Internet Movie Database, I discovered that Aidan Turner, the Irish actor who plays Kili, is actually six feet tall. British actor Richard Armitrage, who plays Thorin, is six-two. So maybe I’m not far off in my desires. And as long as they never get filmed directly next to some tall elf, I’ll continue to think they’re hella sexy dwarves!

My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada

One of the very clever bits from the Broadway show Avenue Q is a song called “My Girlfriend who Lives in Canada.” The Urban Dictionary defines this term as “a lie invented by hundreds if not thousands of geeky high school boys who can't get any dates and don't want to appear pathetic.”

In Avenue Q, the closeted character Rod pretends to have a girlfriend in Canada to cover up his homosexuality. When I heard about the fact that Notre Dame football player Manti Te’o had an imaginary girlfriend, I immediately thought of this song.

Maybe things have changed in college since I was a student—but way back then, it was pretty easy for football players to score live, human girlfriends. Yeah, a few had hometown honeys, but mostly they could just swagger into any classroom, dorm or campus hangout and girls would flock around.

So what caused this guy to settle for some phone calls, emails and text messages? Did whoever perpetrated the hoax do such a great job that Te’o was willing to forego F2F contact? Or maybe this girlfriend who lived (and died) in California was the same kind of cover Rod in Avenue Q was looking for?

Reading and Listening

One of the pieces of advice I often give my writing students is to read what they’ve written out loud. It helps them catch errors such as missing words or improper punctuation—things you just don’t see when you read off the screen or a piece of paper. If you can’t read a sentence out loud clearly, I tell them, then there’s probably something wrong with the punctuation.

I experienced this myself, in a slightly different sense, as I listened to the individual chapters of In Dog We Trust as they were being recorded for an audio book version.

I put a lot of work into that book, the first in my golden retriever series. It was my first attempt at writing an amateur sleuth, after years of using police procedures to structure the Mahu Investigations. I rewrote the beginning a half-dozen times as I struggled to figure out where the story really started, and how to work in the character’s back story.

Steve Levitan is forty-two, returning to his hometown in scenic, semi-rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania with his tail figuratively between his legs. His wife suffered two miscarriages, which led to their divorce and his brief incarceration for computer hacking. Released on parole, he’s lost his marriage, his home, his career, and the freedom to do whatever he wants.

The architect of Steve’s restoration is a golden retriever owned by his next-door neighbor, Caroline Kelly. The story requires Steve to meet and dislike Rochester, and then for Caroline to be murdered. The book’s opening was bumpy, jumping through nearly a year in the space of a chapter or two. It took a lot of rewriting to make the timetable work well.

Then there was the problem of Steve’s character. I based him too closely on myself, and frankly, he came off like a fuddy-duddy. He drank tea and spent too much time comparing his situation to characters in books. It took the advice of a savvy editor, the estimable Joe Pittman, to make Steve a character readers could have some fun with.

So I thought that by the time I self-published the book in e-book and paperback format, it was in great shape. Early reviews, and strong sales, justified that opinion, and I went on to write three more books in the series—The Kingdom of Dog (2011), Dog Helps Those (2012), and Friar Lake, which should be polished and published in 2013.

During the fall, I listened to the individual MP3 files uploaded by the book’s narrator. I’ve never been much of a fan of audio books. I know many people who enjoy them, but I don’t work out (I know I should) and my commute is too short to get into anything longer than a short story, though I love the Selected Shorts put out by Symphony Space.

I needed something else to do while I was listening, so I played computer mahjongg as Kelly read his way through the chapters. It took me a few chapters to get into the book, but now I understand why people like this format, and I also gained a new appreciation for my own work. It was almost like I was listening to a book I hadn't written!

Buy the audio book at Amazon

Kringle -- not Kris, but the pastry

Kringle Blog I love to cook and bake, to read about food, and to write about it. I’m always interested in how other authors use food in their books, and often discover delicacies I want to try. That was the case with “Kringle, the single greatest pastry the world has ever created,” which I discovered through Mark Zubro’s Another Dead Republican.

Since Christmas is approaching, I was thinking about Kringle again. The first time I heard about Kringle, it was being eaten by Tom and Scott, Zubro’s heroes. “Scott handed out napkins and small slices of Kringle to Enid and me and took one for himself. It was pecan, the best kind. I swallowed it in two bites. Mom had remembered to pick up the Kringle from Racine. Count on mom to get the best pastry ever invented at a time like this.”

I was intrigued, but when I read, “As we talked I offered more Kringle around. Enid declined. Scott and I took more. You had to scarf down Kringle when you got the chance. You never knew when you might be facing your last chance at Kringle,” I thought this was a pastry I had to find out more about.

Fortunately, Cook’s Country just came out with a simplified recipe for Kringle, which in its complicated form required three days of preparation, including folding the dough over and over again. I’ve done that when making pain au chocolate, chocolate croissants, and it’s very tedious.

http://www.cookscountry.com/recipes/Pecan-Kringle/21165?Extcode=L2MN5AA00

I admit that several of my problems with this recipe came from not following the instructions. I started out using the blender instead of the food processor. Not a disaster, but it did make something else to clean up. Then I dumped all the ingredients for the dough into the processor—not realizing I was supposed to wait to add the sour cream until after the dough had become pebbly. Oops. And I put the egg I was supposed to use for a wash over the dough into the dough. Second oops.

The Kringle turned out pretty well, though. It’s not as flaky as it could have been, but it tastes good. Maybe I’ll figure out a way to get Kringle into one of my own books!

Have we already had a gay president?

A gay man has been in the White House. And not as a visitor—as president!

The news is explosive, particularly for the man who makes this revelation, Jeff Berman, a history professor at a small college in Pennsylvania. Jeff’s book, The Petitjohn Letters, investigates correspondence between James Buchanan, our 15th president, and his aide Roland Petitjohn, which indicates that the relationship between them was a sexual as well as emotional one.

The Buchanan Letters develops what happens after Jeff’s book is published. Suddenly, he’s at the focus of a firestorm of publicity. From interviews in the local paper to appearances on national TV news programs, Jeff’s in the spotlight, being grilled about his scholarship and ultimately his personal life.

At its heart, The Buchanan Letters is about a man who has built his life around a goal which he ultimately realizes to be the wrong one for him. During the book he’s used and abused, loved and hated, befriended and betrayed. Pascal Montrouge, a handsome, sexy newspaper reporter who’s clawing his way back up after a deadly slide uses Jeff’s book as a stepping stone to a new career. But does Pascal really love him?

Interspersed with copies of the letters Jeff finds, The Buchanan Letters is a timely novel with a timeless heart: one man’s search for love and meaning in his life.

Buy The Buchanan Letters now from the MLR website

Writing from the villain's point of view

Lately I'm finding I don't have the patience or interest to read crime fiction that includes or relies on the villain's point of view.

I used to enjoy books like this. James W. Hall writes great villains-- I loved the creepy bad guys he created in the early Thorn books in particular. Ditto some of James Patterson's early books.



I even tried this myself. Mahu Fire included big chunks written from the point of view of my brother/sister team of villians, in which I worked to understand their motives and humanize them. It was important work for me; I wanted to understand what made someone tick who worked so hard to take rights away from others. In a larger sense, what could cause a person to kill someone else?



When I submitted the book to my editor, it came back with a note that there wasn't enough of Kimo in it, and I had to fix that. I realized that I had short-changed Kimo in the investigation. Because I was showing so much of the action through the villains' point of view, I wasn't showing Kimo figuring things out. I ended up throwing out all the third person stuff and making Kimo do all the work.

But I didn't learn my lesson. When I wrote the first draft of Three Wrong Turns in the Desert, once again I wrote big sections from the point of view of the young man who is one of the two guys chasing after Aidan and Liam because of the information they have.



In this case I wasn't holding back information, though, I was duplicating it-- showing the same action through both parties. I thought I was adding continuity. But instead, when I submitted that first version to Loose Id, my very perceptive editor returned it with a rejection, noting that the action was very slow, and there wasn't enough emphasis on the romance.

Once again, I went back and stripped out a whole point of view. By focusing on Aidan and Liam (still in third person, mostly from Aidan's point of view, but occasionally from Liam's) the action moved more quickly, and I was able to stay focused on the romance.

Maybe these two are connected-- my inability to write convincingly and clearly from the villain's point of view, and my lack of interest in reading that way any more. Or maybe not. What do you think? Can you read that way? Write that way?

Coming Tuesday June 12 from Loose Id: Olives for the Stranger, the fourth Aidan & Liam romance adventure!

I'm participating (as my alter ego Scarlett Jacobs) in the Sizzling Summer Reads event at The Romance Reviews. Click here to see the authors and publishers who are participating in this event, which runs from July 1, to July 31, with fun, games and prizes!

Linked In for Writers

There are 119 million people on linked in—and many of them read! During the winter my friend Mike Jastrzebski and I heard public speaker and Linked In guru Jeff Zelaya give a presentation on how to maximize your efficiency on Linked In. His first recommendation was that you complete your profile.

You may already be using Linked In for your day job—but there’s no reason why you can’t add an additional current job. Assign yourself a job title—“Author” at your website. Mine reads “Neil Plakcy, author at Mahu Books” and includes a link to my website.

SEO stands for “search engine optimization,” and in this case refers to using terms that people regularly use to search on Google and other search engines. Google values Linked In, and often includes Linked In profiles in its results. So be sure to use terms that relate to your writing, like “mystery author” and “police procedural,” as they relate to you.

Have you ever gone to an event and collected business cards? Perhaps they are from other writers who you might want to get in contact with in the future, or subject experts who express a willingness to answer questions when you have them. If you simply put those cards in your drawer, or even your contact file on your computer, you’ll quickly lose touch with them. You’ll forget about them, and they’ll forget about you.

Instead, as soon as you get home, log into Linked In. See if those people you just met are registered, and send them a friend request. Be sure to personalize it—“It was a pleasure meeting you today and I hope we can stay in touch.” Then when they update their profile or make a post, you’ll know about it. When that attorney who offered you help changes firms, you’ll know. And the same goes for you—every time you change your profile (for example, adding a new book to your publications list) that information will be sent to all your contacts. So your name will stay fresh with them. (And maybe they’ll even buy a book!)

You can sync Facebook and Twitter to Linked In, so that when you post to one of those sites, your message is automatically added to your status updates on Linked In. But be careful not to overwhelm these people, who are essentially your business contacts (for your writing business) with lots of messages primarily intended for friends and family. You can add a feed link for your blog as well.

Under the “More” tab on Linked In, you’ll find questions people have asked. You can answer those questions yourself, using your expertise. That helps your ranking on Linked In, and it’s a way to share your expertise. For example, I write murder mysteries set in Hawaii, which means I've learned a lot about the aloha state during my research. I can answer an awful lot of questions about places to go in Honolulu, about the time difference, and so on. I also write about golden retrievers so I can answer questions about grooming, training, and treats.

You can also ask questions there, either ones about writing and publishing, or other questions that come up while doing your writing research, and get answers from other members whose credentials you can verify.

Jeff suggests that you have at least three recommendations on your profile from others on linked in. Do you know people who have reviewed your books? Ask them to post those reviews on Linked In. Do you have connections who have read your books? Ask them to write a brief recommendation. The more content you have in your bio, and the more recommendations you have, the higher you will rank on Linked In searches.

Don’t be afraid to ask people to connect with you. Remember, networking is a two-way street. Those people are on Linked In because they want to network with others—perhaps to get business, perhaps to keep up with current trends, perhaps to share the information they have. If you find someone on Linked In you want to connect with, see if you have any background in common—education, past work experience, and so on. If so, you’ll be able to send that person a connection request directly.

What if you don’t, though? The next way is to look through their connections and see if you have any connections in common. Then you can send an “introduction request” to your common contact. It’s just like meeting someone at a party and being introduced by a mutual acquaintance. You are more likely to value that new person (or be valued by him or her) because of your common connection.

Finally, if you don’t have anything in common, and you don’t have any mutual acquaintances, you can see what kind of groups that person belongs to, and join one of them. Hopefully it will be a group that relates to whatever it is you’re interested in this person for. Then participate in the group for a few days, introducing yourself and beginning to interact. Then when you want to connect with your target, you have that group membership in common, and Linked In will facilitate the connection.

Let’s say you’ve built up your connections and now you want to contact them via email-- for example, to send them a notice about your new book. There is an export function—but be careful not to use it to spam people.

I have a background in video games, and let’s say I write a novel in which video games play a significant part. I could tailor a special email to my connections in the industry, writing something like, “Because we share an interest in video games and a connection through Linked In, I thought you might be interested in my new novel….”

Finally, Jeff recommended looking into Google Presentation or Slide Share. Both of those allow you to embed video content into presentations you upload to Linked In. Want to show off your great new book trailer? That’s the way. What a great channel to showcase something you're proud of!

Here’s another good article about Linked In, from Poets and Writers: Now get linking!

8 Cognitive Characteristics of Career Criminals

          Professor Thomas Fagan of Nova Southeastern University gave a fascinating presentation to our chapter of Mystery Writers of America at lunch on Saturday.

He presented eight cognitive characteristics of career criminals—eight thinking errors that direct their behavior. In general career criminals are irresponsible, impulsive, self-centered, pleasure-seeking and free of negative controlling emotions like fear and guilt. They have poor interpersonal relationships—as soon as the other person stops meeting the criminal’s needs, the criminal leaves the relationship. Their drug of choice is usually a stimulant (because they are bored and need distraction) or enough alcohol to enable them to overcome their inhibitions.

1.       Mollification: a tendency to rationalize, to deny harm to others and divert blame by questioning the motives of others. “The security guard knew his job was dangerous and he shouldn’t have drawn his gun. I wouldn’t have shot him if he hadn’t.”

2.       Cutoff:  the career criminal quickly stops evaluating the outcome of his behavior. “What the hell, I’m already here at the bank, I might as well go through with the robbery.”

3.       Entitlement: They have the right to do what they want because it’s all about them. He told a story about a criminal whose mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and who asked for a phone call to her. But instead of anything sympathetic, he asked “Where’s the check you usually send me?”

4.       Power Orientation: the tendency to only look at others and situations as the strong versus the weak. If you are perceived as weak, the criminal will seek to exploit you—even if you are trying to be helpful.

5.       Sentimentality:  They see themselves in a positive light because they feel sentimental about some things, like children and small animals. “I’m a good person because I donate to charity, or take care of a dog.” This is also why pedophiles are the lowest in the pecking order in prison, because the other inmates are sentimental about children.

6.       Super Optimism: The belief that they are invincible. They have a fantasy belief that they won’t get caught. It’s the Achilles heel of career criminals, because they operate within patterns that have worked before, even though there is always a threat that they won’t work this time.

7.       Cognitive indolence or laziness: Their thinking style takes the path of least resistance. They are lazy and easily bored, and will go outside society’s rules just to do something different. They’re always pushing the limits, and making that one step over the line. This habit begins in childhood, where they are the first to smoke, drink, do drugs or have sex. However, this need to break the rules often declines after age 40, as they settle into a routine.

8.       Discontinuity: They are easily distracted by their environment and lose sight of their objectives. Even a criminal who manages to turn his life around during or after prison is still vulnerable to falling into old patterns.

The Russian Boy

When I was fourteen, I was lucky enough to be sent on a summer study program to France. My first taste of freedom from home came when we landed in Nice, on the French Riviera, in late June of 1972. I was intoxicated by the glamourous beaches, the gorgeous landscape and the ever-present sun. Right then and there I fell in love with Nice.

I went back some years later, for the summer between my junior and senior years in college. I rented a cheap apartment a few blocks from the beach (toilet down the hall, no shower anywhere, French doors that looked out to a busy street) and sat down to write a novel. When I wasn't writing I was wandering the city on my mobilette (moped), going out into the countryside or traveling along the coast road.

I was fascinated by the huge Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Nice, on the Boulevard du Tsarevich, and to learn that there was a sizable community of Russian nobles in Nice in the years before the Russian Revolution. I kept wanting to write something set there, but it wasn't until I came up with the idea for The Russian Boy that I was able to.

It was great fun to research the period. What did they eat? What kind of underwear did the men wear? How did they celebrate the holidays?

I also had to research current-day Nice, which is a lot different from the city I remember. But as the story took shape-- a painting created in 1912 that is stolen in the current day from a restorer's studio in Paris-- I fell in love with Nice all over again-- as well as with Rowan, Taylor, Dmitri and Alexei, the four point of view characters who tell the story.

To see more about the book, and read the first chapter, go to http://www.tinyurl.com/therussianboy

Have Body, Will Guard

The Have Body, Will Guard series am began with a daydream about running away to an exotic location, meeting a handsome guy and having an adventure. In the first book in the series, Three Wrong Turns in the Desert, Aidan Greene is dumped by his boyfriend of ten years, and on a whim he takes a job teaching English as a second language in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia.

He meets handsome bodyguard Liam McCullough and gets roped into helped him chase a Tuareg tribe through the desert. By the end of the book, they’re in love and Aidan decides to stay with Liam and become a bodyguard himself.

Dancing with the Tide picks up a few months later, after Aidan has attended a bodyguard training course and begun learning the business of personal protection. They are asked to protect a young Arabic pop star who has received death threats after coming out of the closet.

I wrote the first book hoping to reach a mainstream audience, so I drew the curtain on sex. But after signing with Loose Id, I knew I’d have to open those bedroom doors and show how Aidan and Liam connected. For the second book, though, I started with a bang-- literally. This new book is hot by design, and it was great fun to write.

One of the stories in the Surfer Boys anthology I edited was set in Djerba, a resort island off the coast of Tunisia, and I thought that would be a fun place to take Aidan and Liam and their client.

The guys go kite-surfing off the coast in this book as a way to work off some tension. Djerba has featured in Greek mythology and in Homer’s Odyssey, and it’s a gorgeous island of palm trees and resort hotels. Aidan and Liam explore the island while protecting their client, and the villa where they’re staying provides time for sexy encounters as well.

I was inspired by a lot of the photographs I found on line, like this one, of a turreted ruin somewhere in the Tunisian desert.



I love the bright, sun-washed look of these buildings. They remind me about the strong contrast between dark and light in these hot, sunny climates. There’s always going to be some danger in a Liam and Aidan book-- someone’s trying to kill the client, and there’s a mystery man who romances the client and then moves in. The book was a lot of fun to write, and I hope readers will enjoy it too.

In the third book in the series, Teach Me Tonight, they've been hired to protect Maks Bazarov, a spoiled teenager attending an English-language institute in Bizerte, on Tunisia's north coast, and sparks really start to fly (literally!) once they're in place. Someone really wants to kidnap Maks, and will go to great lengths to do so, even trying to set the monastery where the institute is taking place on fire.

Liam faces an opponent who represents his own dark side -- a soldier of fortune who is smart, strong and ruthless. Liam needs Joey’s help -- but will his attraction to his hunky pal damage his relationship with Aidan? Will Aidan turn his back on his burgeoning career as a bodyguard to return to his first love, teaching?
In his past life, teaching in Philadelphia and living with his ex-partner, Aidan had taken courses in massage, gourmet cooking, flower arranging, and a host of other skills, most of which proved useless in Tunis. The massage lessons, however, had been invaluable.

You can find all my Loose Id books here: http://www.loose-id.com/Our-Authors/Neil-Plakcy/

The Writer Wore Socks: Notes from Left Coast Crime

Left Coast Crime is a mystery fan convention which moves around the western part of the US every year. This year's was in Santa Fe, New Mexico and it was an excellent event.

The Santa Fe airport

The La Fonda,where the conference was set, is a charming hotel but sometimes you feel like Alice down the rabbit hole trying to find your way to the rooms. I didn't get my reservation in early enough so I stayed at the Inn and Spa at Loretto, around the corner, which was quite lovely.

The La Fonda Hotel, where the convention took place

My panel on Climate & Crime was up first and we had fun.  Vicki Delany began by insisting that there is no severe weather in Canada, but eventually capitulated because she realized Canadians take in stride a lot of bad weather that the rest of us find intimidating. Victoria Heckman and I talked about Hawaii, and Lance Zarimba added some Mexican color (his book, Vacation Therapy is set there).

View from my hotel window

Inn at Loretto

The short story panel was also very interesting-- I really think that having lots of stories available in e-format will energize the form. On Friday I participated in a panel on diversity in the mystery. We had African-American, gay, Native American and First Nations protagonists represented, but I believe the point that we all write about all types of characters was an important one to remember.
Some of the panels were great, others so-so. I enjoyed hearing Craig Johnson tell stories on the Old West - New West panel. And it was interesting to hear St. Martins' editor Keith Kahla and Barbara Peters, owner of Poisoned Pen press & bookstore, with their views on the future of publishing.
The native dancers from a local pueblo were great; the boys looked like refugees from Where the Wild Things Are, and the floor of the ballroom shook with their rhythm.

One of the dancers

Aside from some pollen & oxygen problems (and having to wear socks every day due to the cold) I enjoyed the conference. Hanging out with writers and readers is always a great time!

Dennis Lehane's 10 Questions

Dennis Lehane gave a terrific keynote speech at Sleuthfest on Saturday, in which he listed ten questions to ask about your mystery manuscript.
1. Does your story start on page one? Stories should begin at the first action.
2. Does the main character act soon enough? Stasis early in a novel is death.
3. Does the main character have a recognizable want? A clear want leads to action, which leads to the revelation of character.
4. Does the main character have a recognizable need? A need is theme, a want is plot.
5. Do the actions of the main character seem believable and authentic?
6. Does the protagonist go on a journey which leads to an epiphany? The story is the journey-- the plot is the car you drive on the journey.
7. Do the events in the story have dramatic inevitability?
8. Is something at stake-- for example, a piece of the main character's soul?
9. Have you written the book you want to read? A book of mortal event, with big dire action that leads to big dire consequences?
10. When in doubt, just telling the f---ing story.

Key West Literary Seminar

I wrote this report up for the food website eGullet.org, but never heard back from the editor in charge of the site, so I have given up on them and decided to post here.

Now in its 29th year, the Key West Literary Seminar focuses in 2011 on “The Hungry Muse: An exploration of Food in Literature.” Many participants will be familiar to dedicated foodies, including Ruth Reichl, Judith Jones, Frank Bruni and Molly O’Neill. The seminar has been broken into two halves; the program repeats, in slightly different format, two weekends a row in Key West.

Ruth Reichl began the conference with a talk in which she attempted to explain the reasons behind the explosion in food writing over the past twenty years or so. Her thesis was that as we have become disengaged from the production and preparation of food, we seek that connection through reading about it. Throughout the seminar she was an energetic and enthusiastic participant, with masses of dark curly hair and very skinny legs.

The rain disappeared and the first reception, at the Audubon House, went off as planned, with platters of moist turkey, an elaborate cheese table, and appetizers of grilled grouper wrapped in bacon, shrimp ceviche on toast, and lamb lollipops. The occasional raindrop filtering down through the high treetops was balanced out by liberal wine pourings.

Former poet laureate Billy Collins kicked off the Friday morning session with what was billed as “A Gravy Boatload of Poems” -- his own and others. His first choice was Mark Strand’s “Eating Poetry,” which begins with an arresting image of ink running from the corners of the poet’s mouth as he devours poetry.

Other Friday programs included a panel discussion between Jason Epstein, Darra Goldstein, Molly O’Neill and Calvin Trillin on the topic of “Transubstantiation: Madeleines, Anyone?” Sadly, as with many of the panel discussions, panelists hadn’t prepared in advance, made little attempt to stick to the topic, and rambled as they pleased. Did you know, for example, that Molly O’Neill couldn’t wait to get out of her hometown of Columbus, Ohio? I know that now-- since she mentioned it at least four or five times, pretty much during every panel where she spoke. I have to say I know an awful lot about her (I’d never heard of her before) because she pretty much repeated her biography as part of every panel she participated in.

The panelists were usually charming, with the exception of the elderly Mr. Epstein, who mumbled and fumbled and sometimes seemed confused as to where he was. But he was balanced out by the charming Judith Jones, who brought a wealth of knowledge and expertise to every panel she participated in. She mentioned that she felt we have bought into the idea that cooking is work, forgetting the pleasure involved in preparing food. She noted that the generation after World War II wanted to be liberated from the kitchen, and that packaged foods facilitated that liberation.

She also told the “true story” behind the scene in the movie Julie and Julia where she cancelled her dinner at Julie’s. Julia Child was horrified at the language Julie used in her blog and asked Jones not to have anything to do with Julie, even though Jones had been planning to make her visit about protecting the publisher’s rights rather than validating Julie’s project.

In cookbooks, Jones looks for works that use words precisely and explain what’s being done. The joy of Julia Child, she said, was that Child taught you techniques which you could then use in preparing your own recipes. She is also interested in books that focus on the pleasure of eating.

The program organizers worked with a number of different Key West restaurants to set up special menus for seminar participants. I ended up at the Banana Café, a French restaurant which served us an awesome seven-course meal, from appetizers of lukewarm spring potato filled with a goat-cheese-crème fraiche mousse topped with ossetra caviar and a marinated cherry tomato filled with a crab remoulade all the way through fish, duck and cheese courses, finishing with a chocolate truffle served on a tiny spoon. Each course was accompanied by French wines, and a representative of the wine distributor came to our table to explain each wine and how it matched the food.

One of Saturday’s highlights was a presentation by Julia Reed entitled “Drinking and Other Southern Pursuits.” She had the audience laughing to stories of after parties at her parents’ home in Mississippi, and the food and drink served then. In a hit-or-miss program, she was a hit, while a twenty-minute reading of a recipe for a stuffed leg of lamb was a definite miss. Molly O’Neill, who followed that speaker, even asked the audience, “Anyone out there awake after that?”

Roy Blount Jr. and Calvin Trillin shared the stage for the concluding event of Saturday night, entitled “What ever happened to chicken a la king?” They spent a couple of minutes wondering about lost foods-- then went on to joke about a dozen topics, some of them actually related to food. But their delivery was worth the price of admission.

The concluding reception was held at the Custom House museum, featuring cocktails and passed hors d’oeuvres, but with a focus on desserts including key lime pie, chocolate mousse, bananas foster and bread pudding.

The most provocative panel was one of the last, late on Sunday morning. Jason Epstein, Judith Jones, Molly O’Neill and Ruth Reichl addressed the catchall topic of “Food in America.” Epstein insisted that all you needed to learn how to cook was a cookbook and a good set of Japanese knives, though he did admit that he learned everything he knew about cooking while working in restaurants. Molly O’Neill differed with him, saying that she felt the Internet could deliver an immersive experience in demonstrating cooking techniques that a book couldn’t match.

Thinking About Grammar

I’m working on copy edits for MAHU BLOOD, and a couple of things keep coming up that are challenging some of my own ideas.

The first concerns mixing past and present tense. As an English teacher, I try to hammer into my students the need to stay in one tense, usually the past tense, in their writing. I try to do that myself. But my copy editors don’t seem to agree.

I understand their point of view. If something is still true, regardless of the time of the book, they think it should be in present tense. A lot of times that comes up in my definition of Hawaiian words. For example, as the first person narrator, I might write “I knew that ohana meant family.”

The copy editor changes that to “I knew that ohana means family.”

That just sounds wrong—mixing past and present in one sentence. Easy fix; remove the words “I knew that.” New sentence reads “Ohana means family.” But it’s still a present-tense sentence in the middle of a book written primarily in the past tense.

Rather than argue, I usually just go along with the copy editor’s changes. But every time it do, it rings a little bell in the back of my head.

My hero, Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa’aka, has an undergraduate degree in English. I gave him that background deliberately, so that his voice would be articulate and sound educated. He can drop in an occasional reference to English literature-- in MAHU BLOOD he sees an older woman surrounded by knitting, and calls her Madame Defarge. His partner, Ray Donne, is a Philly cop who has a college degree, though not in English. He asks Kimo how he knows the woman and Kimo says, “It’s a long story. Called A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens.” Ray just shakes his head and says, “English major.”

So Kimo knows his grammar, but I don’t expect him to be pedantic. Will he always use “whom” properly? Will he say, “I spoke to this guy who I was able to get hold of?” Or would he say “Whom I was able to get hold of?”

He’d certainly say “A guy like me,” rather than “A guy like I am.” But where do you draw the line?

This is why English teachers (and writers) go prematurely gray.