Dana's Notebook

Wrap-up: an American werewolf in Olympia

2009-06-16T06:10:00.001-07:00

Ancient Olympia was a significant religious site in Greece; it was also the location of the first Olympic games.

Although remains of the Temple of Zeus still exist (above), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the statue of Zeus, does not.

We have an idea of what it might have looked like, though.

With so many ruins, it's easy here to get an idea of how things once looked...

Especially when people try to run the length of the stadium.

You know, the root of the word "stadium" is a Greek word.

The last day of the cruise was smooth sailing. You can see we took safety precautions.

And although there were a few startling surprises,

there was nothing we couldn't deal with.

And there was time on the way home to stop in Germany for ein bier.

An American werewolf in Delos (and Mykonos)

2009-06-09T11:16:00.001-07:00

Delos is a small island in the Cyclades. In Greek mythology, it is the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. It is one of the most important archaeological sites in the world.

A center of politics and trade as well as religion, Delos has spectacular remains, including the Terrace of Lions, dedicated about 2600 years ago.

The island itself is really gorgeous, and the light is incredible.

And even if there were sherds lying all over the ground, we would never DREAM of taking them. Even if they were probably not in their original context.

Mykonos is about a mile away by boat. The water was pretty rough, but it made for great scenery at lunch time. The mussels were good but the octopus was meh.

Yes, it is that white and blue.

Yes, the wildflowers and sites on Delos were really that cool.

An American werewolf in Corfu and Athens

2009-06-03T06:17:00.000-07:00

We weren't in Corfu long, just long enough for a lovely wedding and splendid Greek lunch.

And since *someone* left his dinner jacket at home, he ditched the party and pondered the "wine-dark sea."

The next day was a brief stop in Athens. The highlight was the Acropolis and the Parthenon.

We saw the Caryatids of the Erechtheion Temple, which is part of the Acropolis complex.

Seeing buildings and sculptures that you've only known from books and television is brilliant. Overwhelming. The details alone are works of art.

And it is always neat to see people crowding a place that people have crowded for thousands of years.

Graffiti has been around as long as humans have. This is a more recent example.

After visiting ancient sites, viewing the modern port of Piraeus, and thinking deep thoughts about how there are a lot of things that haven't changed so much over time...

...sometimes a refreshing snack with a friend is in order to put it all into perspective.

An American werewolf in Split

2009-05-29T12:00:00.001-07:00

Split, Croatia, is part of the Dalmatian Coast. Its beauty has made it a destination for travelers for thousands of years.

The city is built in and around the spectacular remains of Diocletian's Palace. (Diocletian = Roman emperor. The palace was built for his retirement in 305. Nice work if you can get it.)

Around every corner is a piece of sculpted antiquity.

And it's always nice to see the locals enjoying a warm Sunday morning, complete with church bells and strolling.

But it is very warm for a werewolf, even in May, and jet lag does take a while to get over, so a siesta is always a good idea.

An American werewolf in Venice

2009-05-29T11:36:00.001-07:00

Venice is a very congenial place for an American werewolf.

It is really, really hard to take a bad picture of Venice. If it's dark, it's atmospheric. If it's broken down, it's Gothy.
Better than that, you get the idea of neighborhoods, of people living here for centuries, that it's sometimes hard to get elsewhere.Even amid all the splendid and cliche images. So much the better if you can view a famously sea-going city from the water.And there's always a place for a young werewolf-about-town to get a drink.

An Anthony nomination for “The Night Things Changed!”

2009-05-27T13:40:00.000-07:00

This has been such an amazing spring. While I was on vacation, the nominees for the Anthony Awards were announced. I’m delighted to report “The Night Things Changed” was nominated for an Anthony for Best Short Story!

To say that I’m gobsmacked, delighted, and honored would be an understatement. Multiply it by ten, twirl around until you’re dizzy, and throw in some jet lag, and you’ll get the idea: wheeee! And when you see the complete list of nominees for Best Short Story, you’ll really get the “honored” part:

“The Night Things Changed” by Dana Cameron from Wolfsbane and Mistletoe [Ace]
“A Sleep Not Unlike Death” by Sean Chercover from Hardcore Hardboiled [Kensington]
“Killing Time” by Jane K. Cleland from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (November)
“Skull and Cross Examination” by Toni L. P. Kelner from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (February)
“Scratch a Woman” by Laura Lippman from Hardly Knew Her [William Morrow]
“The Secret Lives of Cats” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (July)

(Note: some of the stories have been made temporarily available online. Support the writers, check out the stories, buy the books!)

My deepest thanks to my readers, who’ve been so supportive my work. “The Night Things Changed” was a brand-new world for me in many ways, and it was a heap of fun to write. I truly appreciate your encouragement and enthusiasm.

And you'll notice, folks, that means an Anthony nomination for friend Toni Kelner for one story and a Macavity for another. Three nominations, two stories = some crazy-good writing! She’s co-editor, with NYT #1 author (yay!) Charlaine Harris, of Wolfsbane and Mistletoe. She’s having a pretty wonderful year!

And more Anthony Nominations*:

Best Novel
Trigger City by Sean Chercover [William Morrow]
The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly [Little, Brown and Company]
Red Knife by William Kent Krueger [Atria]
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson [Knopf]
The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny [Minotaur]

Best First Novel
Pushing Up Daisies by Rosemary Harris [Minotaur]
Stalking Susan by Julie Kramer [Doubleday]
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson [Knopf]
Death of a Cozy Writer by G. M. Malliet [Midnight Ink]
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith [Grand Central]

Best Paperback Original
The First Quarry by Max Allan Collins [Hard Case Crime]
Money Shot by Christa Faust [Hard Case Crime]
State of the Onion by Julie Hyzy [Berkley]
In a Dark Season by Vicki Lane [Dell]
South of Hell by P. J. Parrish [Pocket Star]

Best Critical Nonfiction Work
African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study by Frankie Y. Bailey [McFarland]
How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries by Kathy Lynn Emerson [Perseverance Press]
Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography by Jeffrey Marks [McFarland]
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale [Walker & Company]

Best Children’s/Young Adult Novel
The Crossroads by Chris Grabenstein [Random House]
Paper Towns by John Green [Dutton Juvenile]
Kiss Me, Kill Me by Lauren Henderson [Delacorte]
The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart [Little, Brown]
Sammy Keyes and the Cold Hard Cash by Wendelin Van Draanen [Knopf]

Best Cover Art
Death Was the Other Woman designed by David Rotstein and written by Linda L. Richards [Minotaur]
Death Will Get You Sober designed by David Rotstein and written by Elizabeth Zelvin [Minotaur]
The Fault Tree designed by David Rotstein and written by Louise Ure [Minotaur]
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo designed by Peter Mendelsund and written by Stieg Larsson [Knopf]
Money Shot designed by Steve Cooley and written by Christa Faust [Hard Case Crime]

Special Service Award
Jon and Ruth Jordan
Ali Karim
David Montgomery
Gary Warren Niebuhr
Sarah Weinman

Congratulations to all the nominees! See you at Bouchercon!

*Voting will take place on site at the Indianapolis Bouchercon, the World Mystery Conference. The winners will be announced during a gala awards ceremony on Saturday, October 17, 2009.

“The Night Things Changed” wins an Agatha—and is nominated for a Macavity!

2009-05-07T10:28:00.000-07:00

I’m still sorting myself out from Malice Domestic—what a wild time that was! In case you didn’t hear me yodeling from the rooftops, my short story, “The Night Things Changed,” won the 2008 Agatha for Best Short Story! I’m honored—and delighted—beyond belief: the nominees for short story included GoH Nancy Pickard, Toni Kelner (l), Carla Coupe (r), and Jane Cleland.

The Agatha winners in all categories:

Best Novel: The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
Best First Novel: Death of a Cozy Writer by G.M. Malliet (Midnight Ink)
Best Non-fiction: How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries by Kathy Lynn Emerson (Perseverance Press)
Best Short Story: "The Night Things Changed" by Dana Cameron, Wolfsbane & Mistletoe (Penguin Group)
Best Children's/Young Adult: The Crossroads by Chris Grabenstein (Random House Children's Books)

There were so many good friends there to celebrate with—so we did! Thank you, everyone! And my thanks to the organizers of Malice Domestic for putting on a wonderful time!

And then, and then, and then...in the airport waiting to go home, I got a message congratulating me on being nominated for a 2009 Macavity Award, also for “The Night Things Changed.” Needless to say, I was glad the airplane had safety belts! The Macavity Awards are nominated and voted on by the readers of Mystery Readers International and will be presented at Bouchercon Indianapolis. All of the nominees:

Best Mystery Novel:

* Sean Chercover: Trigger City (Wm. Morrow)
* Deborah Crombie: Where Memories Lie (Wm. Morrow)
* Declan Hughes: The Dying Breed (UK) / The Price of Blood (US) (John Murray/ Wm. Morrow)
* Arnaldur Indridason: The Draining Lake (Minotaur)
* Lisa Lutz: Curse of the Spellmans (Simon & Schuster)
* Louise Penny: The Cruelest Month (Minotaur)
* Louise Ure: The Fault Tree (Minotaur)

Best First Mystery:

* Zoe Ferraris: Finding Nouf (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
* Stieg Larsson: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Knopf)
* G.M. Malliet: Death of a Cozy Writer (Midnight Ink)
* Charlie Newton: Calumet City (Simon & Schuster)
* Scott Pratt: An Innocent Client (Onyx)
* Michael Stanley: A Carrion Death (Harper; Headline)
* Dan Waddell: The Blood Detective (Minotaur)

Best Nonfiction/Critical:

* Frankie Y. Bailey: African American Mystery Writers: A Historical & Thematic Study (McFarland)
* Leonard Cassuto: Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories (Columbia Univ.)
* Kathy Lynn Emerson: How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries (Perseverance Press)
* David Geherin: Scene of the Crime: The Importance of Place in Crime and Mystery Fiction (McFarland)
* Harry Lee Poe: Edgar Allan Poe : An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories (Metro)
* Kate Summerscale: The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective (Walker)

Best Mystery Short Story:

* Dana Cameron: "The Night Things Changed" (Wolfsbane & Mistletoe, ed. by Harris & Kelner, Penguin)
* Sean Chercover: "A Sleep Not Unlike Death" (Hardcore Hardboiled, ed. by Todd Robinson, Kensington)
* Toni L.P. Kelner: "Keeping Watch Over His Flock" (Wolfsbane & Mistletoe, ed. by Harris & Kelner, Penguin)
* Laura Lippman: "Scratch a Woman" (Hardly Knew Her, Wm. Morrow)
* Tom Piccirilli: "Between the Dark and the Daylight" (EQMM, Sep/Oct 2008)

Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery:

* Rhys Bowen: A Royal Pain (Berkley)
* Ward Larsen: Stealing Trinity (Oceanview)
* David Liss: The Whiskey Rebels (Thorndike/ Random House UK)
* Jeri Westerson: Veil of Lies (Minotaur)
* Karen Maitland: Company of Liars (Michael Joseph/ Delacorte)
* Kelli Stanley: Nox Dormienda (Five Star)

Please note: Toni Kelner and I are both nominated for our contributions to Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, the volume she and Charlaine Harris edited! I think this is just…ducky!

Congratulations to all the nominees! And thanks to the members of MRI!

I hope to post more pictures as I get more organized, but for now, all I can say is wow. And thank you.

Fangborn army!

2009-04-28T14:12:00.000-07:00

Some of the werewolves and I will be heading for Malice Domestic on Friday. Say hey, and as long as I have one left, you can bring one home with you. See you soon!

(p.s. And don't forget: if you're thinking of bidding on breakfast with the Fangborn Fanclub (that is, ace literary agent Janet Reid) as part of the Malice Live Auction, don't forget to bring ten pages of manuscript. In addition to breakfast with Janet (and yours truly), she'll read pages for the winning bidder. Check out the details below or at Janet's blog.)

Going to Malice Domestic? Want to have breakfast with an agent?

2009-04-24T13:09:00.000-07:00

Malice Domestic is just around the corner--in fact, it's in just a week!

As part of the effort to raise money to support literacy programs for the John L. Gildner Regional Institute for Children and Adolescents in Rockville, Maryland, Malice will be holding a live auction. The auctioneers will be Hank Phillippi Ryan and Pari Noskin Taichert, so you know things will be lively!

My wonderful agent, Janet Reid, offered the following as an auction item:

~v v~ Breakfast with the Fangborn Fan Club! ~v v~

Have you been fang-bitten by the urban fantasy bug?
Got questions for an ace agent?
Then how about “Breakfast with the Fangborn Fan Club?”

This item includes breakfast for two (the winning bidder and a friend) with Agatha-nominated writer Dana Cameron ("The Night Things Changed") and the president of the Fangborn Fan Club, her fabulous literary agent Janet Reid (FinePrint Literary Management).

In addition to breakfast 8 a.m. Sunday, May 3 at the Malice hotel restaurant, Janet will also read up to ten pages from each of the two breakfast guests before the 10:30 panels Sunday, if they would like the opportunity. Dana and Janet will answer questions, or talk about whatever topic the winners care to discuss, including writing, reading, getting published, and the world of Dana’s Fangborn characters.

So if you're interested in meeting Janet, if you want to hang out and talk werewolves and vampires over waffles, make a bid on the item--and don't forget to bring pages! You'll be supporting a great cause!

Kate

2009-04-24T07:26:00.000-07:00

I had to say goodbye to my "benevolent feline overlord" Kate last week. I'm just gutted; she was my constant companion in writing for almost nineteen years. A stroppy little beastie with a crook in her tail, she had all the swagger and attitude of tortoiseshell cats. If she wasn't as outgoing and friendly as some, she was loyal to those she included in her pride. She'd been failing for a while, getting increasingly creaky, blind, a little deaf, a little mental, but she was still playing with her catnip mousie, demanding her evening treat, and nudging me when it was time to go to work, stop work, turn on the fireplace, scratch her chin. Until last Tuesday, and when we got her tests back on Wednesday, we knew it was time. So we spent the day by the fire, I gave her her pain medicine and bits of Cheetos (she loved them and, even at 18+, would bowl me over trying to get at them). The next morning, we took her to the vet, (with whom she had a rocky relationship, to put it politely), who was great.

Some of you met Kate as she added to my typing in IM chats; Toni Kelner's daughters created a series of action-packed manga-style adventures about "Col. Kate." I love that she made it into "Mystery Scene" before I did: Elaine Viets wrote a great article about writers and their cats in 2005 (see below). Kate was there through all my research, books, stories, lectures, and articles, so I guess in a sense she's perched on the bookshelf still.

Thanks to you all who sent notes of condolence. We really appreciate it.

Things that aren't real, but should be

2009-04-02T08:13:00.000-07:00

I've had a couple of good laughs recently, as I've labored under a mountain of work. I can share a couple of them with you.

The first is this. It's not real, but it should be. It makes more sense if you're familiar with old-school Star Wars (and anyone else catch Jon Stewart speaking Huttese a couple of weeks ago?).

The second is this. It makes more sense if you're familiar with The Watchmen, but it's pretty funny, in any case.

The other laughs, well, I haven't got links for them. If I could explain why I find the Pillsbury Doughboy hysterically funny, I would. But I think you just have to be there and pause it when he scrunches his face and he's bouncing around on his little not-feet.

Thanks to Mr. G for the first and Toni for the second.

And so back to the word mines.

The Agatha nominees for Best Short Story...

2009-03-04T08:59:00.000-08:00

…are here, for a short time only!

This is going to be a tough one, folks. Read, consider, and vote at Malice Domestic—I’ll see you there!

“The Night Things Changed,” Dana Cameron

“Killing Time,” Jane K. Cleland

“Dangerous Crossing,” Carla Coupe

“Skull and Cross Examinations,” Toni L. P. Kelner

"A Nice Old Guy," Nancy Pickard

For your Agatha consideration

2009-02-28T11:58:00.000-08:00

My nominated short story, "The Night Things Changed," is here.

Thanks for your consideration!

"The Night Things Changed" nominated for an Agatha!

2009-02-24T13:28:00.000-08:00

The Malice Domestic Agatha nominations were announced today, and I’m proud, shocked, humbled, delighted—did I say shocked?—to tell you that “The Night Things Changed,” in Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, was nominated for Best Short Story.

I'm honored to find myself in such company. The other nominees are:

"Killing Time" by Jane Cleland, Alfred Hitchock Mystery Magazine - November 2008
"Dangerous Crossing" by Carla Coupe, Chesapeake Crimes 3 (Wildside Press)
"Skull & Cross Examination" by Toni Kelner, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - February 2008
"A Nice Old Guy" by Nancy Pickard, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - August 2008

And in the other categories:

Best Novel:
Six Geese A-Slaying by Donna Andrews (St. Martin's Minotaur)
A Royal Pain by Rhys Bowen (Penguin Group)
The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny (St. Martin's Press)
Buckingham Palace Gardens by Anne Perry (Random House)
I Shall Not Want by Julia Spencer-Fleming (St. Martin's Minotaur)

Best First Novel:
Through a Glass, Deadly by Sarah Atwell (Berkley Trade)
The Diva Runs Out of Thyme by Krista Davis (Penguin Group)
Pushing Up Daisies by Rosemary Harris (St. Martin's Press)
Death of a Cozy Writer by G.M. Malliet (Midnight Ink)
Paper, Scissors, Death by Joanna Campbell Slan (Midnight Ink)

Best Non-fiction:
African American Mystery Writers: A Historical & Thematic Study by Frankie Y. Bailey (McFarland & Co.)
How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries by Kathy Lynn Emerson (Perseverance Press)
Anthony Boucher, A Bibliography by Jeff Marks (McFarland & Co.)
Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories by Dr. Harry Lee Poe (Metro Books)
The Suspicions of Mr. Whitcher by Kate Summerscale (Walker & Co.)

Best Children's/Young Adult:
Into the Dark by Peter Abrahams (Harper Collins)
A Thief in the Theater (A Kit Mystery) by Sarah Masters Buckey (American Girl Publishers)
The Crossroads by Chris Grabenstein (Random House Children's Books)
The Great Circus Train Robbery by Nancy Means Wright (Hilliard & Harris)

Thanks to everyone for your support!

(And I thought it was going to be a good day because I had apple-cinnamon pancakes for breakfast!)

Sorry, TSE: February is the cruelest month

2009-02-23T09:07:00.000-08:00

It’s been too long since I swung by here. I blame the groundhogs. They must be writers, because they’re all saying “put me down, put me down, turn those cameras off and let me retreat to my burrow so I can work!” Or perhaps I’m projecting. It’s been a busy winter.

I’ve been working on a first draft of my first Fangborn novel (which my faithful first readers are critiquing, even as we speak). This is based on the characters and situations from my short story, “The Night Things Changed,” which appeared in Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, edited by the wonderful Charlaine Harris and Toni Kelner. That was a lot of fun—and a lot of work. With nonfiction, you are constrained by the data (but there are data there to get you started). With fiction, you have no constraints (but you have to create your characters whole cloth, even if you are writing something very close to RL). With fantastic or speculative fiction, you may not even have the constraints of biology or physics, so there’s a lot of marble to create, before you can start sculpting it (as one of my writing teachers once said).

Since the holidays, I’ve been doing a lot writing. And a lot of shoveling and I had the nasty cold that was going around here. Traditional New England winter fare. On the happier side, I recently had a great visit with the amazing SJ Rozan, while she was up thisaway promoting Shanghai Moon. I’ve been reading some books about Greek archaeology and touring. But mostly writing.

I can’t read OPF (other people’s fiction) while I’m writing. I get worried that I’ll be intimidated and that will keep me from work. So I read a lot of nonfiction, and save the fiction for vacations, travel time, and the brief moments in between projects. But what I do indulge in is marathons sessions of watching serialized dramas. I don’t know why watching amazing TV writing doesn’t derail me the same way as the printed forms, and since I still require distraction and amusement, preferably in the form of a fictional narrative, I turn to my DVDs and On Demand. So we’ve been consuming the whole of Deadwood, NYPD Blue, Rome, Firefly, and reviewing True Blood. May even turn to I, Claudius, once we finish Rome (Rome ends, quite sensibly, where I, Claudius begins), but that will take me well into spring. I hope to be out and about before then. Stupid ground hog.

Tell me, please: how do you get through the long, evil tail-end of winter, when there are not even hints of lilacs?

Hallie Ephron visits the Femmes Fatales

2009-02-02T15:28:00.000-08:00

Swing on over to the Femmes Fatales' blog to check out Hallie Ephron's guest post. It's all about her fabulous new book, Never Tell A Lie.

Not dead...

2009-01-22T06:27:00.000-08:00

...not yet, anyway. I've had fun blog posts planned since the holidays, but then it was the holidays, and then deadlines loomed and all that seemed important was writing, writing, writing. And then...the dreaded lurgy. It's just a cold, but it's a nasty one, compounded with sinus infections. I think, I hope, I dream, I wish, I am seeing the end of it now, but jeez. I just don't know. It's me and the couch and stupid TV. Brainless. Useless.

But wasn't the TV on Tuesday splendid? It did my heart good to see so many people celebrating democracy together. It did everyone's heart good.

More enlightened and enlightening posts to follow shortly, I hope. In the meantime: lots of vitamins, water, and sleep. And to the urchin who sneezed all over me at the supermarket about a week ago: COVER! I'm not as nimble at dodging such outbursts as I used to be. I'm just saying.

Win a book at the Femmes Fatales

2009-01-08T13:36:00.000-08:00

Got serendipity?

If so, click on over to the Femmes Fatales' blog where Shirley Damsgaard is our guest blogger today. Check out her post and find out how to win a signed copy of The Witch's Grave.

Greek reads

2008-12-23T09:21:00.001-08:00

I promised when I blogged for The Lipstick Chronicles that I would post the list of books I'm reading before my trip. Most of these were recommended to me by the wonderful Gillian Roberts, but I've added a few of my own. I'm also open to other suggestions...

Homer: Iliad, The Odyssey (Fagels translations--this guy is one of my literary heroes)
Sophocles: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonnus, Antigone
Plato, Republic, Bks I, II, VII, IX; Apology; Crito; Symposium
Aristophanes: Clouds; Lysistrata
Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics, Bks I-III, VIII
Aeschylus: Agamemmnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides
Euripedes: Electra
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Bks. II, III, V (ch 17) VI, VII
Frank Miller: 300

The "Eyewitness" guides by DK: Greece (Athens and the Mainland), The Greek Islands

There will probably be more, and there are luscious, luscious maps to pore over (me loves me some maps!), but for now...hey, it's keeping me off the streets.

I'll be guest blogging at The Lipstick Chronicles

2008-12-19T11:53:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, I'll be posting my blog, "My own private Odyssey," at TLC. Why not stop by and tell me about some of your favorite travel reading, hints, and adventures?

The BR Pile: Euripides and Aristophanes

2008-12-19T11:38:00.000-08:00

I have a sporadic but increasing capacity for silly humor: I will admit it here and now, that there are days when I find “South Park” dumb or offensive, but there are also days when I think it’s hysterical (can you say “Lemmiwinks?”). I’ll also admit to a ridiculous fondness for “Jackass,” so it’s not like I’m not in touch with my inner 11-year old boy. I couldn’t understand why I didn’t find The Clouds and Lysistrata by Aristophanes funny; I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that in these plays are some of the foundations of Western humor. Written by Aristophanes in 411BC, Lysistrata (“she who disbands armies”) concocts a plan to end the war between Athens and Sparta by convincing all the women of Greece to withhold sex until their husbands come to a peace agreement. The Clouds (also written in the late 5th century) takes potshots at philosophers; when a man can’t convince his gambler son to attend school to think of a way to get them both out of debt, the man attends himself and is exposed to the silliness of current philosophical teachings.

I was bored by them, and it took a while to figure out why: I forgot was I was reading satire. For one thing, satire doesn’t work unless you understand what is being satirized, and what I really enjoyed were the historical footnotes that explained the actual events that surrounded the production of these plays—this quick history lesson was the best part, for me. The other thing is that I suspect that, like most poetry needs to be read, most comedic plays need actors to really come to life.

I was a little taken aback that I enjoyed the tragedies as much as I did: being unable to escape your fate is horrible, and it’s not often that I’ll choose to cuddle up with it. But the Euripides dramas (written in the last third of the 5th century) surprised me: the emphasis was on the dreadful choices the protagonists are forced to make (or have forced on them). There is a humanity and individuality to the characters that felt familiar and immediate. Medea, married to Jason and mother of his children, is put aside when he is offered a royal Greek princess. In order to take her vengeance against Jason, she contrives to poison the new bride and her father, and then stabs her own children, killing them. The Trojan Women takes place after the defeat of Troy, when Hecuba and her ladies discover the fates that await them as Greek slaves, concubines, or sacrifices.

I'll probably go tearing through Electra and The Bacchants before I check out The Frogs. It’s not that I found the comedies lesser works than the tragedies, or less believable, any more than I believe hard boiled mysteries are more realistic than those with amateur sleuths or that comedy is less an art than drama. These weren't to my taste; maybe I wasn't in the mood for bawdy humor when I was reading them. What they gave me, and why I’m glad I pushed through them, was a great, quick lesson in the history of the Golden Age Greek politics, culture, religion, and thought.

Got lycanthropes?

2008-12-12T11:03:00.000-08:00

Toni L.P. Kelner and I will be discussing our stories and signing copies of Wolfsbane and Mistletoe (co-edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni). Like mysteries? Like urban fantasy? Got lycanthropes? A little holiday shopping left to do? Then the place to be is the Peabody Borders, tonight, 7:00pm sharp.

Sharp as in "fang."

Something you CAN do

2008-12-08T12:57:00.000-08:00

As the economic bad news piles higher and higher, people feel like there's very little they can do to make things better, that the problems are too big to conquer. It's a crummy feeling. The problems we face are gigantic, if you take them as a whole, but the one thing I've learned over the years is that you can conquer big problems if you break them down, starting with what you know and moving out from there.

So I'd like to turn you on to what I think is a pretty cool idea. Gathering Change is a grassroots non-profit charitable organization that collects spare change from communities for distribution back into their neighborhood food pantries and social programs. The idea is that everyone has a penny jar or a pile of change collecting somewhere, and that when lots of these small collections are all pooled together, lots of money can be raised--painlessly--to help others. You can participate at any level, from making a donation to volunteering to host a collection party to starting a chapter.

Little things add up. Light that single candle, folks.

Holiday party at Kate's!

2008-12-05T08:44:00.000-08:00

Tonight is the annual holiday party at Kate’s Mystery Books in Cambridge.

It would be an AWESOME time to buy some Christmas presents, meet your favorite local authors, and wallow in holiday cheer! (I personally think that a copy of Wolfsbane and Mistletoe , signed by co-editor and contributor Toni Kelner and yours truly is what every reader is looking for this holiday season. So why not get a jump on it?)

See you there!

Full-moon fever

2008-11-20T14:23:00.001-08:00

Although I wasn’t able to attend The New England Crime Bake this year (I had a wonderful family wedding to attend), Toni Kelner and I organized a party to celebrate Wolfsbane and Mistletoe. Alan Gordon, a fellow contributor, was also there, to sign books and join in the fun. A few photos:

The gang’s all here.

Crime Baker Gin Mackey was one of the winners of a copy of WaM, signed by several of the contributors.

The prizes are safely out of reach. Alan Gordon, on the right.

Toni and I set up.

Valerie, Steve, and Maggie Kelner handle the prize drawings. That’s Luci “The Poison Lady” Zahray on the right.

Mob scene! We had a great turnout and loads of fun. Thanks to Toni for having such an inspired notion!