BETTY WEBB'S 2020 EVENTS & SIGNINGS

                       MARCH 3, 2020 – THE PANDA OF DEATH WILL BE RELEASED!

BETTY WEBB'S 2020 EVENTS & SIGNINGS

January 22, 2 p.m. -- Betty gives a talk about the woes and glories of writing mysteries, at The Springs, 3212 N. Miller Rd., Scottsdale AZ

January 31 & February 7, 1 to 3:30 p.m. Betty teaches "Writing the Story Memoir" at the Kuentz Recreation Center, Sun City West.

March 3, 2020 – the premier of THE PANDA OF DEATH! Keep checking back to see Betty's signings.

March 12-15, 2020, Betty attends Left Coast Crime in San Diego. Check back to see which panels she will be on.

March 26, 10 a.m. Betty speaks about writing "The Panda of Death," and other books, at the Fountain Hills Library, 12901 N. La Montana Dr., Fountain Hills AZ.

March 29, 2020, 2 p.m. Betty discusses putting together a book proposal at the Arizona Author's Association meeting, Tempe Library, SW corner of Rural & Southern, Tempe AZ.

April 13, 2020. Betty speaks about writing at the Ahwatukee Women's Club, Ahwatukee AZ. Time and place TBD.

May-July, 2020. Betty will be Writer in Residence at Foothills Public Library, Glendale AZ. Twice a week she will be giving classes in writing and helping emerging writers with their manuscripts. Check back in April for her exact schedule of class times and to make one-on-one appointments.

MORE EVENTS TO COME, SO KEEP CHECKING BACK!

BETTY WEBB'S 2020 EVENTS & SIGNINGS

January 22, 2 p.m. -- Betty gives a talk about the woes and glories of writing mysteries, at The Springs, 3212 N. Miller Rd., Scottsdale AZ

January 31 & February 7, 1 to 3:30 p.m. Betty teaches "Writing the Story Memoir" at the Kuentz Recreation Center, Sun City West.

March 3, 2020 – the premier of THE PANDA OF DEATH! Keep checking back to see Betty's signings.

March 12-15, 2020, Betty attends Left Coast Crime in San Diego. Check back to see which panels she will be on.

March 26, 10 a.m. Betty speaks about writing "The Panda of Death," and other books, at the Fountain Hills Library, 12901 N. La Montana Dr., Fountain Hills AZ.

March 29, 2020, 2 p.m. Betty discusses putting together a book proposal at the Arizona Author's Association meeting, Tempe Library, SW corner of Rural & Southern, Tempe AZ.

April 13, 2020. Betty speaks about writing at the Ahwatukee Women's Club, Ahwatukee AZ. Time and place TBD.

May-July, 2020. Betty will be Writer in Residence at Foothills Public Library, Glendale AZ. Twice a week she will be giving classes in writing and helping emerging writers with their manuscripts. Check back in April for her exact schedule of class times and to make one-on-one appointments.

MORE EVENTS TO COME, SO KEEP CHECKING BACK!

Unexpected Journals

We all have THAT drawer, the drawer we dump things until we can find the proper place for them. But since we seldom find the proper place for those things, the drawer eventually fills up and we have to take a week or two off work to clean it out.

Like everyone else, I have a drawer like that. Several actually. But the drawer I finally got around to cleaning out yesterday was my pen drawer. Yes, I have a drawer devoted to pens only, and it had gotten to the point where I couldn’t close it any more. So yesterday afternoon I settled myself in front of the TV and began sorting through them.

That’s when I found something I didn’t expect.

For years I’ve been telling people I don’t journals, but my “pen and pencil” drawer turned out to be a journal of sorts, a pen-by-pen record of some of the places I’ve traveled to and the people I’ve met. Among them were the pens from various banks and credit unions, probably picked up when I was making withdrawals. (Deposits? In this economy, you have to be kidding.) But I also found numerous purple pens from Diamondback Drugs, where I pick up meds for whichever of my fur babies happens to be ailing. Other pens included one from the Moosehead Saloon, in Palmer, Alaska (more about that, later); one from Perry Lodge, in Kanab, Arizona (also more about that, later), and one from Bevara, which I’d picked up in Reykjavik, Iceland (more about… ditto).

I found dozens of pens from various hotel chains across the U.S., such as the Radisson, Sheraton, Hilton, Marriott, Holiday Inn, Doubletree, La Quinta, Best Western, and Ramada. Since none of those pens gave any hint of which particular city or state they originated in, I can only guess that they came from Washington, Oregon, California, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Washington DC, Maryland, Missouri, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, and several cities and towns in Arizona. I do get around.

Those pens took me on a trip down Memory Lane.

The beat-up pen from the Moosehead Saloon reminded me of my trip to the University of Anchorage, around ten years ago, where the generous university president and his wife let me stay with them while I lectured at the school on the polygamy cults described in “Desert Wives.” While in Alaska, I visited the Moosehead Saloon (it has a stuffed moose head hanging on the wall, thus the name), where the friendly bartender gave me a keychain made by a “skin-sewer,” and I carried it until the hair finally wore off. (No, I’m not a vegetarian, although I feel guilty about not being one). I remember looking out the window of my room one morning and seeing a moose – a live one -- wander by. I found that exciting, since moose seldom pass my window here in Scottsdale.

Another stand-out was my memory of Kanab, Arizona, and the lovely, frozen-in-time motel where John Wayne himself once stayed. I’d picked up the pen while doing research for “Desert Wind,” tracking the footsteps of the various places Wayne stayed while filming “The Conqueror.” I remember the life-sized cut-out of Wayne in the hotel lobby. My husband took a picture of me with my arm around the Duke. That was about eight years back.

The most recent memory those old pens evoked was of Iceland, where I’d been doing research on “The Puffin of Death.”  The woman who rented me an apartment handed me the pen so I could fill out the residency form. She was from France, she explained, and had married an Icelander. Now she and her husband ran a hostel for travelers, as well as a couple of apartments in Reykjavik, Iceland’s capitol city. How best to describe those two weeks in the country formerly known as Ultima Thule? Enchanting. Awe-inspiring. Unforgettable. I hiked by glaciers, volcanoes, Icelandic horses, fjords, lava-strewn pastures… Words are simply inadequate to describe the beauties of Iceland.
    
But while sorting out the hoard in my pen drawer what I didn’t discover – and this surprised me – was that during my travels I’d only picked up one pen handed out by another writer, and that was the “Gumbo Justice” pen, given to me by Holli Castillo, who I think I met years ago at Left Coast Crime. Or maybe it was Bouchercon. And don’t ask me in what city, because I haven’t the foggiest. I attend so many conferences…

Still, from clearing out my hoard, here’s what I’ve learned about myself.

First: I’m a pen thief. Sadly, I’m a pen thief of cheap pens only, so your Mont Blanc and Cross pens are safe from me.

Second: I belong to a LOT of writers organizations, among them Mystery Writers of America, the Writers Guild, Sisters in Crime, the Society of Southwestern Authors, Scottsdale Society of Women Writers… the list goes on.

Third: I’m obviously pretty healthy, since I’ve lifted only two pens from doctors’ offices.

Fourth: I spend a lot on pet care.

Fifth: I travel more than I thought I did, although my pen drawer lacked proof of my sojourns in France, England, and Scotland. This leads me to believe that Europeans guard their writing instruments more carefully than do Americans.

Sixth: Judging from the number of pens from “inexpensive” hotel chains as opposed to the high-rent hotels, I’m really, really cheap.

Researching Puffins

If you want to write about puffins in a book titled THE PUFFIN OF DEATH, you go where the most puffins go -- Iceland.

I'll admit that the thought of going to Iceland didn't thrill me at first. I've lived in Arizona long enough to dread mushing through waist-deep snow, and the very idea of sub-zero nights almost kept me off my early-morning flight on Icelandic Air. But now, safely home in the 115-degree Sonoran Desert, I'm glad I conquered my misgivings and boarded that flight anyway.

Imagine my surprise when several hours later, I was strolling down the street in Reykjavik, Iceland, in a balmy 70 degrees, shedding coats and sweaters as I walked. It was August, after all, and apparently I -- like many people -- had confused Iceland with Greenland (which really IS cold!).

Trepidations aside, as a former journalist I've always believed in hard-core research, and as a mystery writer you can't get much more hard-core than travelling to every spot where the murder take place. Well, actually, murders, plural. If you've read my earlier Gunn Zoo mysteries, you know that murders are like potato chips; you can't have just one. But this meant that I had to travel from one end of Iceland to the other.

During my two weeks in Iceland, I spent nights in Reykjavik, the country's sophisticated capitol; the beautiful fishing port of Stykkisholmur, on the Snaefellsnes Peninsula; the quaint seaside village of Vik, known for its famous black sand beach; Gullfoss, where no protective fence keep you away from the double waterfall; the slopes of Eyjafjallajokull, the active volcano that disrupted European air traffic for weeks; and the spooky Thingvellir, where the great continental rift is slowly separating the European shelf from the North American. In Thingvellir you can almost hear the continents grind as they pull farther and farther from each other.

My adventures were many, and some of them made their way into THE PUFFIN OF DEATH. For instance, there was my scary-beautiful ride on one of the famed Icelandic horses, where I learned that no matter how much you've ridden in the States, you're not quite prepared for the somewhat alien gaits of that noble breed. Accordingly, I put my zookeeper sleuth up on an Icelandic horse named Einnar, who took her for a ride she'll never forget.

Probably the biggest surprise of all, though, came from the wonderful Icelandic people themselves. These descendants of fierce Vikings warriors turned out to be some of the most pleasant and well-educated folks I've yet run into during my travels. Iceland enjoys a literacy rate of 99%, which means Icelandic bookstores are invariably packed with standing-room-only crowds. And my worries about not being able to speak Icelandic -- a language almost unchanged since Viking days -- turned out to be as fact-based as my worries about waist-deep snowdrifts in August. Because not only does every Icelander speak fluent English, they speak it much more correctly than do most Americans. No "ain't"s, and certainly no "I done seen it."

Now back to those puffins. The sight -- and sound -- of a million puffins winging their away across the slopes of an ancient volcano just outside Vik is something I'll never forget. I was so awe-struck by the goofy-looking little birds that I changed the site of PUFFIN's first murder to Vik. I'd originally planned to kill the gazillionaire Simon Parr outside a bar in Reykjavik, and to bring in the puffin colony much later. But in the finished book, Parr -- a birdwatcher, besides being stinking rich -- is found shot in the head and stretched across a puffin burrow, his nose chewed on by a furious puffin mama protecting her chick.

Yes, puffins nest and lay their eggs underground. That's something else I learned in Iceland.

And this brings me to probably the most important thing I learned during my trip. Yes, do your research -- but stay flexible. If a better idea occurs to you once you're on site, go with it. Or as Mama Puffin would tell her chick if she could speak, "Let your imagination fly, Sweetie."
     

 

 

The Trouble with Sub-Plots

 

Sometimes the sub-plot causes more trouble than the main plot.

As most of my fans know, the seven Lena Jones mysteries were all based on real cases, and the eighth, DESERT RAGE – due out mid-October – is no exception. While the book’s main plot concerns IVF, (in vitro fertilization, a specific version of “test tube babies”), the subplot delves into Arizona’s troublesome death penalty.

The only state in the U.S. that executes more convicts than Arizona is Texas, which makes Arizona the second-ranked legal killer in the U.S. Startling, yes, but you’ll notice that I described our death penalty as “troublesome,” which seems a rather insufficient word considering the fact that we legally kill people in this state. Yet “troublesome” is the correct word when writing a novel. Because, as I found out in my research, it’s really, really hard to kill someone. Legally, that is.

Back in what people like to call The Good Old Days, Arizona hanged its Death Row inmates. The method worked perfectly until 1930, when convicted killer Eva Dugan was accidentally decapitated during her hanging. The hangman had miscalculated Eva’s weight and the height of the “drop,” so when he hit the lever to lower the trap door, Eva’s body dropped -- but not her head.

In 1934, when Arizona recovered from its collective shock and started executing people again, it joined the ranks of states using the gas chamber, although some critics of the new method grumbled that cyanide pellets were too merciful for convicted murderers. Proponents of the death penalty grumbled even louder in 1992 when – after a brief flirtation with the electric chair -- Arizona decided to implement lethal injection. No decapitations, no gasping, no frying inmates, just a quick and merciful drift into eternal sleep.

That was the theory, anyway.  

Theories don’t always work out. Since 2010 the lethal drugs used in Arizona executions included midazolam, hydromorphone, thiopental, propofol (remember Michael Jackson?), and pentobarbital. Any combination of those drugs, when handled correctly, should have been strong enough to kill an elephant. But a snag developed when drug manufacturers, one by one, began refusing to sell their drugs to the state if they were going to be used for executions. So Arizona began hopscotching from drug to drug. Each time the drugs had to be switched, I had to rewrite the execution scene in DESERT RAGE. In all, there were four rewrites. For a one-page sub-plot scene.

Then, in June of this year, came the botched execution of convicted murderer Joseph Rudolph Wood. It took almost two hours for Wood to die, and horrified witnesses said he appeared to have suffered considerable pain.

By then, my book was at the publisher’s, so I called it back. But the long, troublesome task of rewrite after rewrite had finally taught me something. Instead of naming the new compound used by the state, I rewrote the execution scene a fifth time, dropping any mention of a specific drug.

Comparatively, DESERT RAGE’s main plot – in vitro fertilization – was relatively easy to write. After a donated egg and donated sperm got cozy with each other in a Petrie dish, the then-fertilized egg was implanted into the uterus of a soon-to-be birth mother. Nine months later, a beautiful baby girl named Alison was born.

In DESERT RAGE, the beginning of life turned out to be much easier to write about than the end of life.

_____________________________________________

 

P.S. to read more about DESERT RAGE, see post below.

 

 

You never know when or where an idea for a book will strike. In the case of DESERT RAGE, the 8^th Lena Jones Mystery, due out October 7, 2014, that happened as I was walking down the hall at Paradise Valley Community College.

Just a few months earlier I’d quit my job as a full-time journalist at the Tribune (Arizona) Newspapers, but had become bored with so much time on my hands. When a friend told me PVCC needed a part-time writer in its PR department, I thought that might be right up my alley, so I placed a call, and within the week, was working a (supposedly) four-hour-a-day, three-day workweek. By the end of the year, my hours had blossomed to 35 hours a week, but that’s another story.

Anyway, one afternoon I decided to go down to the school cafeteria for a cup of coffee, and while I was walking down the hall, I noticed a new flyer had gone up on the large HELP WANTED bulletin board across from the ladies’ room. The headline went something like this.

WANTED – YOUNG, ATHELETIC COLLEGE WOMEN IN GOOD HEALTH.

The body copy of the flyer went on to explain what the company needed “young, athletic women” for (it was neither illegal nor immoral, yet paid good money), and I found myself fascinated, thinking this would be a great idea for a book. However, since I was in the midst of writing DESERT CUT, I filed the idea away in the back of my mind for later use.

That was nine years and four more books ago.

But last year, the time finally came to write that book. So I did. When I finished it and turned it over to my editor at Poisoned Pen Press, she became every bit as fascinated as I was when I first read that flyer. Of course, I’d added a lot to that skeleton of an idea – a family slaughter confessed to by two young teens, a U.S. senatorial candidate with something to hide, a nasty arson case…

Well, I don’t want to give too much away, but here’s the description that will appear on the inside of the dust jacket. 

Ferociously ambitious U.S. Senatorial candidate Juliana Thorsson has been keeping a secret.

The horrific slaughter of a prominent doctor, his wife, and their ten-year-old son inside their Scottsdale home brings Thorsson to Private Investigator Lena Jones. The slain family’s 14-year old, Alison, and her boyfriend, Kyle, have confessed to the murders. Thorsson wants to hire Lena to discover if Alison is telling the truth, but before accepting the job, Lena demands to know why a rising political star wants to involve herself with the fate of a girl she’s never met. Desperate for Lena’s help, Thorsson reveals her explosive secret – that Alison is the candidate’s biological daughter, a fact she’s kept hidden for years. But that’s not all. Thorsson then confides something even more unusual than a mere hidden pregnancy, something that could ruin her political plans forever.

Suspecting that Alison’s parents had secrets of their own that could have led to the murders, Lena finally accepts Thorsson's assignment. But interviewing those who knew the family well soon puts Lena -- now a strong defender of the two teens -- in danger of her life.

Fast paced, probing, and filled with the trademark twists of the Lena Jones series, Betty Webb is unsparing of her characters yet writes their stories with wit and compassion.  

That’s just a teaser. As I said, the book debuts October 7, and I hope you like it.

Oh, and by the way, there’s a writing lesson to be had here. Writers must always, always pay attention to everything the world – right down to bulletin boards on college campuses – because the world is where our ideas come from.

Method Acting for Writers

  

Something strange happened yesterday while I was writing – or, rather, attempting to write – a scene in a new Lena Jones mystery. The scene didn’t work; it just lay there, stagnant and stinky as a four-day-old cod fillet.

Here was the original set-up. P.I. Lena Jones is interviewing the next-door neighbor of a murdered family. The Scottsdale, Arizona, neighborhood is pricy and the homes accordingly elegant. The neighbor – who was out of town during the slaughter, and can prove it -- is not a suspect, but Lena thinks he might be able to give an overview of the family’s activities in the months leading up to the murders. I had originally planned to write the neighbor as one-half of a married gay couple, an affluent, educated, art-collecting nice guy who had nothing but good things to say about the dead family. Because I believe in setting the “scenic” part of a scene, I went into great detail about the interior of the neighbor’s house: white leather furniture, a wall-sized painting by de Kooning, a sculpture by Giacometti, etc. As the interview continued, the man’s partner came into the room. He, too, was an affluent, educated, art-collecting nice guy who contributed more warm-hearted stories about the deceased family.

The scene didn’t work. It was dull as dirt. All that niceness -- ick! Where was the conflict? Where was the tension?

As I sat there staring at the computer screen, an idea popped into my head. Why not take the same house and the same elegant furnishings, but turn this neighbor into someone you would not ordinarily associate with such tasteful, high-art surroundings?

The minute the idea popped into my head, so did a new character. For the few hours, I pounded out a scene that was surprising, unsettling, and even a bit scary. My fingers flew over the keyboard, typing in this new character’s startling dialogue and some very creepy body language. There was incredible tension in the scene because an ethical and personal conflict now existed between my P.I. and the new character. Lena was repelled by him – and also a bit frightened. Yet she needed to stay in that elegant house alone with him in order to get information about the murdered family.

The weird thing about all this is that I don’t remember writing a word of it. I was so lost inside that creepy new character’s head that I, as an individual, ceased to exist.

When Hubby (it should be noted here that he’s a psychologist) came home from work, I told him what had happened.

“You had an out-of-body experience,” Hubby explained. “It's the same type of experience that method actors use to create their characters. You forgot about yourself and what you originally wanted to do, you forgot about your own ideas and expectations for the scene. Instead, you got deep down and dirty into the mind, heart, and soul – or lack thereof – of this new character. When you disappeared, he emerged. That’s why the new scene works so well, because it wasn’t something you, as you, created. You were channeling him, and he created the scene – not you.”

Creepy.

This morning over coffee, we continued to talk about yesterday’s odd experience.

“You’ve often wondered why you can write two separate series that are so different in tone, from the first-person point of view by two protagonists who have nothing in common,” Hubby said. “But the answer’s easy. You’re using the same method -- method acting, if you will -- that you did in writing yesterday’s scene. When you’re writing Lena, for instance, you become her. Lena, because of her difficult childhood in all those abusive foster homes, trusts no one. She has compassion for crime victims, but her compassion doesn’t extend to allowing anyone to get close to her. Because of her global mistrust of the human race, Lean’s personal relationships – the few that she has – are a mess. She lives in a perpetual state of anger, is always close to the breaking point, and she has an itchy trigger finger. This is a dangerous combination, and that’s why readers either love Lena or are repelled by her. But regardless of all her mental and emotional issues, Lena has a strong, unwavering mission in life – to bring justice to the dead.

“Teddy, the zookeeper in your Gunn Zoo books, is just the opposite. Because she was given so much love as a child, she likes just about everyone. She trusts people – at least until they prove themselves untrustworthy – and she loves both her fiancé and the animals she cares for at the zoo. Her personal circumstances are a little unusual: a houseboat for a home; a self-centered, multi-married, clotheshorse of a mother; and an embezzling father on the run from the FBI who is always turns up just in time to wreak havoc in her life. But for all this, Teddy remains an uncomplicated woman with only one major tic: her mission – besides protecting the animals at the zoo -- is to not become her mother.” 

 And yes, Hubby continued, when I write these highly divergent characters, I totally immerse myself in them the same way a method actor immerses himself in a role. I put myself and my own personality aside, and instead, I live, breath, move, and speak like that character. For all intents and purposes, I am that character.

Which is what happened yesterday. I was so busy being my new character that I put aside all my previous plans and simply “channeled” the new guy. I didn’t force my ideas about character on him. Instead, I slipped into an altered state of consciousness and let him tell his own story, thus surprising the holy living hell out of myself.

Stephen King once said, “If the writer can’t surprise himself, how can he surprise the reader?”

King was right. But there’s an irony here. And it is…

Only by losing yourself can you find your story – and your most intriguing characters.

Weepy Female Characters

Besides being the author of several mystery novels, I also review books for Mystery Scene Magazine and teach creative writing, so you could say that books comprise a large section of my life. When a character trend emerges – or disappears – I notice. Yet in my thirty years of professional writing, teaching, and critiquing, I am continually plagued by one character stereotype that just won’t go away.

The weepy female.

The novel’s genre doesn’t seem to  matter: literary, mainstream, mystery, thriller, sci-fi, Western, or (of course) romance. Regardless of the book’s genre, the cast list usually includes at least one female character who bursts into tears on a regular basis, whether from joy, sadness, fear, shock, or frustration at missing the last pair of Tommy Choo knock-offs at Macy’s Spring Shoe Sale.

Why, for God’s sake?

In an age where women have been cleared for combat, and are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan minus arms and/or legs, why this continuing insistence on weepy female characters?

When one of my students recently turned in a suspense novel where the female protagonist fainted twice and cried eight times (I counted), I took her to task for creating such a stereotypical character.

“But everybody knows women cry a lot,” my student answered.

Intrigued, I asked her when was the last time she’d cried, but after several moments, she said she couldn’t remember. She wasn’t much of a “crier,” she admitted.

“I’m not, either,” I said. “Nor are any of the other women I know. Maybe we tear up while watching a sad movie, but we don’t have time do that in real life. When a real life problem come along, we deal with the situation, we don't cry about it.”

I told her to rewrite each crying scene so that her protagonist never shed a single tear, regardless of what was going on in the scene. And to take out the fainting. While not happy about this, she finally agreed to do it. A few weeks later, she handed in the rewrite.

Guess what?

When all the facile blubbering had been removed, my student had been forced to write more deeply, to delve more completely into her character’s psyche -- to actually deal with her heroine’s emotional and intellectual complications instead of avoiding them. Gone were the dull, knee-jerk tears, gone was the cheap and easy sexist stereotyping. The result was a complex, many-layered heroine who dealt much more realistically with her internal demons while grappling with the book’s already complex, many-layered male villain.

The heroine had transitioned from a shallow, cardboard character into someone memorable. Someone real.

The world has changed and our female characters must change with it. We are no longer living in the Victorian age, where -- because of too-tight corsets -- women actually did weep and faint, although I’m sure it happened much less often than writers of the time would have us believe. We are now living in the 21^st century, where real-life women shoulder their assault rifles and head off into combat.

And they’re not crying about it.  

The True Story Behind THE LLAMA OF DEATH

People are always asking writers where they get their ideas, a question so hard to answer that a few wiseacres just give up and say, “I buy them at Wal-Mart.”

I’m never that snarky, probably because I don’t have to be. Where my Lena Jones mysteries are concerned, I take my ideas straight from the newspaper. Human rights abuses in Kenya? Hey, they’re happening right here in Arizona, too – enough of them that I could write a hundred novels and not cover even half the world’s (and Arizona’s) crimes against humanity.

But it’s a different case with my Gunn Zoo mysteries. For those books, I lean heavily on my volunteer work at the Phoenix Zoo. Lucy the Giant Anteater lives there (her real name is Jezebel), and so, at one time, did Wanchu the Koala, who was on loan from the San Diego Zoo. But every now and then...

I actually have a photograph of the moment the idea of The Llama of Death came to me. My husband Paul and I were attending the Renaissance Faire, held each year in Apache Junction, Arizona, and as I passed the Queen’s Royal Privies, I made a pit stop. When I emerged, my husband was across the way, grinning at the screen display on his digital camera. He called to me, “Hey, Betty, come see this!”

I did. Thus The Llama of Death was born.

Paul had taken a photograph of a sour-looking young woman, dressed in Renaissance trollop garb, leading around a llama with a toddler on its back. The toddler was thrilled, and so, apparently, was the llama. The llama’s ears were up, and he had a big, smirking grin on his face.

“As I live and breathe,” I said, giggling at the picture. “It’s the Llama of Death!”

When my husband began to laugh, I realized I had just come up with the title of my next Gunn Zoo mystery, a book I couldn’t wait to write. You see, I had a history with llamas.

A couple of years before Paul took that wonderful photograph, I was still a reporter with the Scottsdale Tribune, where every fall, my editor “volunteered” my services at the Arizona State Fair. Usually this meant becoming one of the media contestants in the goat-milking contest, but after submitting to such a humiliating exercise for four years straight, I rebelled. “I’m not milking another goat!” I told him.

“No problem,” my editor replied, almost amiably. “I’ve put you down for the llama race. Wear your running shoes, ‘cause you’re gonna be running an obstacle race while leading a llama.”

I don’t run, and my most strenuous daily exercise is making coffee in the morning, but I know determination when I hear it, and my editor was determined to make me take part in some sort of animal activity at that bloody fair. From what I’d heard about llamas, they were genial creatures (goats aren’t as genial), so when race day arrived, I laced up my new running shoes and headed over to the llama track.

Turns out, some of those llamas were pretty big. I’m not (I have to stretch upwards to make five feet). Intimidated by the giant, hairy quadrupeds, I chose a small brown and white llama as my running partner. The llama wrangler told me the little guy’s name was Lil’ Al, and that he had a sweet, placid temperament.

Deciding it might be wise to make Lil’ Al’s acquaintance before we headed to the track, I walked up to him, held out my hand for him to sniff, and said, “Hi, Sweetie.”

Lil’ Al and I got along like a house afire. After spending a few minutes talking to him and assuring him that we were going to be BFF, he nuzzled my neck said something that sounded like, “Maaaaa!”

Then he tried to eat my hair.

Hair-eating propensity notwithstanding, Lil’ Al ran well. And so did I, surprisingly, mainly because I had a llama hot on my heels, and that little llama had decided to show the big llamas who was who on the llama-racing circuit. Lil’ Al and I jumped over hay bales, waded through a kiddie pool full of water, rushed past a squealing pig, faced down an angry-looking goat (probably the one I’d tried to milk the year before), and we ran and we ran and we ran.

We ran so fast that even on our collection of six short stubby legs we finished second out of a field of twelve. When the “winner” was disqualified for spitting on a competitor, Lil’ Al and I were bumped up to first place.

We were the champions! (Cue Queen song here)

I hadn’t seen Lil’ Al since that day, but as I gazed at the photograph my husband had just taken at the Renaissance Faire, I realized that it was time to immortalize my furry friend.

I started writing The Llama of Death that evening, and six months later, I typed “The End.” In the book, zookeeper Teddy Bentley takes Alejandro, the Gun Zoo llama, to a Renaissance Faire, where the child-loving llama spends a blissful day giving children llama-back rides. All appears to be going well until the local wedding chapel owner playing the part of Henry VIII is found dead in the llama pen, and…

Oops. Better not give away too much. I am in the business of selling books, you know.

I wish I knew where the real life Lil’ Al is now. If I could find him, I’d tell him the critics are as beguiled by him as was I. Publishers Weekly said, “Animal lore and human foibles spiced with a hint of evil test Teddy’s patience and crime solving in this appealing cozy.” Library Journal wrote, “Webb’s third zoo series entry (after the Koala of Death) winningly melds a strong animal story with an engaging cozy amateur sleuth tale. Set at a relaxed pace with abundant zoo filler, the title never strays into too-cute territory, instead presenting the real deal.” The Llama of Death was a hit.

So wherever you are, Lil’ Al…

Thanks, Sweetie.

That Pesky First Chapter

Writing Chapter One can be hell. When beginning the first draft of a novel, Chapter One is almost always clumsy, confusing, vague, and written with all the expertise of a college freshman whose brain is fried on a combination of ganja and energy drinks. In fact, these first chapters are such miserable messes that most newbie writers feel compelled to fix them before they move on to Chapter Two.

Then Chapter Three, then Chapter Four, then…

“Oh, the hell with the thing!” the newbies wind up screaming before storming away from their manuscript, possibly forever. “This book just doesn’t work.”

To which I say, “Of course your book doesn’t work, because you didn’t write it. Instead, you wrote and rewrote and re-rewrote your first chapter until it died in your own hands. You were so obsessed with getting Chapter One ‘just right’ that you ignored your novel.”

And that’s a shame, because in the end, that first chapter will probably be cut anyway. It’s worth rephrasing. First chapters are usually cut from the finished manuscript.

Why? Because by the time the newbie writer has finished his manuscript, his book has taken on a shape and maturity he didn’t have when he was slaving away on Chapter One. The final chapters of his book are more universal in scope, deeper in tone, and more assured in craft than anything he could possibly have accomplished when he began his manuscript. Somewhere along the way, between page 50 and page 410, the writer grew up.

Am I speaking from experience? I sure am. My critique group has been operating for two decades now, and during all those years, I’ve watched attacks of Chapter One-itis kill many a newbie writer’s dreams. I’ve seen the same thing while teaching creative writing at various workshops across the country. Too many newbie novelists with truly great ideas just can’t move past Chapter One.

But it’s not only the newbies who fall victim to Chapter One-itis. It can happen to seasoned pros. In fact, it’s almost happened to me.

My 13th book -- The Llama of Death -- will be released on January 6, and I am here to tell you that all my first chapters were eventually cut from my final manuscript, including Llama. In my first chapter, I’m always flailing around, trying to find the novel’s “voice,” trying to clarify my ideas while at the same time introducing various characters. And my poor protagonist? In my first draft of Chapter One I find myself explaining over and over how my protagonist got to where she is, what her life was like before the book started, and why she feels compelled to solve crimes.

This clumsy flailing around is par for the course at the beginning of a first draft. At that point, I’m so insecure about my story that I tend to explain things to death. Therefore, Chapter One comes out overcrowded, over-described, stagnant, and dull. Nothing much happens in those pages – instead, it’s all cerebral in-the-head stuff, muddled and fatally passive. In short, Chapter One reeks.

No problem. I never try to “fix” Chapter One while writing the first draft of a novel. I leave the ugly thing to stew in its own juice while I move on to the first draft of Chapter Two. Then I write the first draft of Chapter Three. Then… You get the idea. I never look back. I don't “fix” the mess I left behind in Chapter One until I type THE END on the very last page of my manuscript’s first draft.

Once the first draft is completed, then, and only then, do I go back and address the problems in Chapter One. And what a surprise I find waiting for me! As it turns out, Chapter One no longer fits into my book. You see, once my story caught fire, it headed off in a different direction than I’d originally intended -- a better, more creative direction. Chapter One now looks like a donkey’s head stuck on a Thoroughbred.

So I just dump the nasty thing.

Then I write a brand new Chapter One. But while doing so, I often receive another surprise. I discover that what had originally been Chapter Two works even better as Chapter One, because Chapter Two has more action and less in-the-head stuff. I also learn that my later chapters handled most of the necessary explanations, so they weren’t necessary in Chapter One anyway. Therefore, my old Chapter Two – now evolved into Chapter One -- sizzles. All it needs is a light rewrite to start the book off with a bang, instead of the dull thud that my clunky old Chapter One delivered.

My point here is that you never know where your story will go, so why bother torturing yourself trying to perfect a chapter that will wind up in the trash anyway? Don’t let yourself succumb to Chapter One-itis. Write the darned thing fast and dirty, then move on to the rest of your book, because that’s where the magic is going to happen.

To reiterate: don’t try to fix that subpar Chapter One until you’ve finished the entire first draft of your manuscript. Then go back and write the wonderful Chapter One your book deserves.

X X X

P.S. If you found this helpful, continue on to the article about the Shadow Self.

Me and My Shadow

As a mystery writer, I firmly believe that each one of us is capable of murder. I know I am. If someone ever tried to hurt my husband, my children, or my grandchildren, I’d cheerfully blow their heads off with a shotgun. Maybe it would be wrong, but I’d do it anyway. You see, I’m in touch with my “Shadow Self” and know how nasty I’m capable of being.

The Shadow Self is the darkest part of our nature, and it encompasses what are called the Seven Deadly Sins: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. How many of these do I have? To one extent or another, all of them. As a writer, that’s a good thing. Writers who aren’t in touch with the negative side of themselves are incapable of writing believable characters, because you can’t believably describe something you’re not intimately familiar with. Imagination can take you only so far; after that, you must rely upon your own experience of the human condition, which means yourself.

In my latest mystery, DESERT WIND I used elements of my own shadow self for each of its characters, both female and male. P.I. Lena Jones is enriched by my rage over social injustice. Journalist Olivia illustrates my own journalistic desire to get to the truth, no matter the cost to myself or others. My unease with strong emotion is seen in cold-hearted Nancy, who refuses to grieve over her murdered husband. My frequent inability to let go of the past gives texture to the character of Gabe, the aging wrangler who substitutes conversations with the ghost of John Wayne instead of forging new relationships.

As a writer, I can’t afford to ignore my Shadow Self. Neither can you.

Besides being a mystery novelist, I’m also a book reviewer for Mystery Scene Magazine, and before that I was the book critic for a nationwide newspaper syndicate. At the newspaper (I retired seven years ago), I received up to 100 books per week. Years and years of reading my way through bushel baskets of lousy to wonderful books taught me how to separate a fully-formed writer’s sensibility from the wannabe. The best writers – whether novelists, self-helpers, or memoirists – were always deeply in touch with their Shadow Selves. The mere wannabes were afraid to go there, so they didn’t. As a result, their books came across as shallow and weak.

Humans are fallible animals. We know we should love our brothers as we love ourselves, but we don’t. We know we should honor our parents, but we frequently don’t. We know we should always behave ethically, but we don’t. Instead, we are walking, talking, ill-behaving creatures who fumble our way through life, leaving wreckage and hurt feelings in our wake.

Fortunately, that’s just on our bad days. We usually behave pretty darn well.

What does all this philosophical soul-searching have to do with writing? Think back on the books that made a lasting impact in your life. The mystery novels. The romances. The literary novels. The memoirs. The histories. The spiritual books. The political tomes. How many of them failed to address the Shadow Self? I venture to say that every single book of consequence addressed the Shadow Self. The writers knew that nothing was more phony and off-putting to serious readers than rah-rah books about flawless people who behave with flawless virtue every flawless day of their long, flawless lives. Heck, even Mother Teresa had a temper. And as for Jesus? Remember the money-tossing, table-wrecking snit fit he threw in the Temple? Oy veh.

Serious readers want to read about characters who remind them of themselves, warts and all. Yes, we do want our heroes and heroines to be stalwart and brave, but not so much that we can’t relate to them. We want to see our characters struggle and win against their inner demons, just like we do. The best writers among us look deeply inside and pick from their own Shadow Selves the particular sins that meets their characters’ needs in order to develop them fully. In other words, the very best writers have the courage to allow their book’s characters to mirror themselves at their very worst.

Uncomfortable, yes, but so is life. One good thing (among many good things) about getting in touch with our Shadow Selves is that in doing so, we not only make our writing better, but we are given the chance to become better human beings. When we identify and name our Shadow Selves, we can finally begin to do battle against them.

After all, you can’t fight something until you admit it’s there.

A Sure-Fire Best Seller!

When I asked my Facebook friends last week to send me the elements that would guarantee a book become a best seller, I was amazed at the response. Here are some of the "must haves." Young adult genre. Zombies. Vampires. Romance. The Ming Dynasty. Small Georgia town. Key West Cemetery. Mutant dogs and cats. Evil clowns. The Shroud of Turin. Knights Templar. Nuns. Amoral jerk scientist. Sassy female protagonist. A hi-tech Russian submarine defecting to the U.S. that falls into a time warp. Lots of sex and guns. A space alien who attacks Earth out of revenge for his brother whose UFO was shot down by the U.S. in Roswell. Poisoned cereal. African gray parrots. A mysterious manuscript that reveals an age-old conspiracy. A crooked U.S. senator who pretends to be a Christian but who is really an atheist who was taken over by an alien species. A ghost that cooks. Recipes. An alcoholic down-on-his-luck detective whose one true love was killed by a psychopath. Adorable-acting triples who are actually evil. 10 drunk men who have sex with 10 drunk women who all get pregnant, and the men draw straws to see who marries whom. Parachutes. An over-imaginative little girl who sees all this insanity as an adventure.

So there you have it -- a bubbling cauldron of random ideas. Since I don't have time to actually produce the entire book (hey, I'm knee-deep in "The Llama of Death"), you'll have to be content with a five-part synopsis of "Love, Death and Zombies in Waycross, Georgia" You get the first part today (Chapters One through Three), and the rest will be parcelled out over the next two weeks. Enjoy the madness.

INSTALLMENT I of LOVE, DEATH, AND ZOMBIES IN WAYCROSS, GEORGIA


Nanjing China, 1382 ADIn 1382 AD, the emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming Dynasty, is building his tomb at the same time he receives a visit from Ali Afaq, an Arab trader, who shows him an ancient jeweled chalice for sale. The chalice, Afaq tells him, is reputed to be the cup used more than a thousand years ago by a Jewish rabbi named Yeshua who was crucified by the Romans. The legend also claimed that three days after dying, Yeshua rose from the dead, but if the chalice is ever drunk from again by anyone other than Yeshua – who still lives – a terrible curse will befall the world. “Truly this cup possesses magical powers!” Emperor Yuangzhan exclaims. Yuangzhan, who is terrified of death, signals his money handlers to pay Afaq a king’s ransom, and takes possession of the chalice. Years later, Yuangzhan dies, the chalice in his hands, believing that its powers will raise him from the dead, too. After his body begins to compose, his faithful priests finally realize that their beloved Emperor must go underground, so they bear him to an innermost room of his large tomb. They leave him with the chalice still clutched in his hands.

Moscow, 1917 --The chalice disappears for centuries, until in 1702, a team of grave-robbers, working by night, uncover the chalice. All die miserably by the end of the year, and the chalice disappears again. It reemerges in 1917 in the hands of a Russian Orthodox priest, who makes a pilgrimage to the Imperial Palace, where he gives it to Tsar Nicholas II, who is trying desperately to hold on to his besieged throne. The priest convinces the Tsar that the chalice is the Holy Grail, and will grant the Ruler of All Russia eternal life – as long as he doesn’t drink from it. But when the Tsar is forced to abdicate, his shattered nerves make him forget the priest’s warning, and he fills the chalice with vodka and drinks deeply. Within a year, the Tsar and his entire family have been slaughtered by the Bolsheviks in Ykaterinburg, and the Grail – which now carries a curse as well as a promise – is stolen by escaping palace guards.

Turin, Italy – 2013 -- Having “liberated” the Holy Grail from a Russian gangster, descendants of the Order of Knights Templar turn their attentions to the Shroud of Turin, which prophecy says must be reunited with the Holy Grail and the Holy Lance (which their order found centuries earlier in Palestine). After shooting tear gas into Turin Cathedral and securing the Shroud, they take refuge in Castello del Piagnaro, in Tuscany, where their treasures – including an ancient scroll supposedly written by Jesus himself -- are reunited for the first time in 2000 years. But before they can lock away the Shroud, the Lance, and the Grail, the castle is stormed by the Pagliacci Assassini, a vicious band of art thieves wearing clown masks. The Assassini kill all the Templars. Sir Reginald Montgomery, the lead Templar, is still clutching the Chalice when he is run through by the Holy Lance. While Sire Reginald’s body is still twitching, the Assassini celebrate their successful operation by drinking a rare 1978 Montrachet from the Chalice. They, too, are dead within the year.

INSTALLMENT II of LOVE, DEATH, AND ZOMBIES IN WAYCROSS, GEORGIA

Key West Cemetery, Florida. November, 2014 -- Miami homicide detective Benjamin Nash wakes up in a cemetery surrounded by nine men and ten women, all of whom are as naked as he. Waking up with strangers hasn’t been unusual for Nash, or anyone else this past year, but as he studies his companions, he realizes his behavior has reached a new low. Judging from the clothing spread around the area, several of the women were nuns – or at least had been playing the parts of nuns in the local dinner theater production of “Sister Act.” Nash, born Catholic, hopes it was the latter, because the thought of attending an orgy with nuns horrifies him almost as when the news broke that a slow-spreading virus was turning the world’s inhabitants into hollow-eyed, shuffling zombies. Studying the sleeping forms near him, he sees the tell-tale signs of the infection on at least half of them: black buboes under their arms, darkened lips, an unnatural gauntness in the face. “My, God, have I caught it now?” he thinks. Just as he is about to pick up his clothing and flee, one of the uninfected women wakes up, looks around, and says, “Talk about not being in Kansas anymore.” Spying Nash, she demands, “Who the hell are you?” When Nash introduces himself, she smiles. “Nice to meet you, Detective Nash. I’m Sister Mary Catherine.”

Waycross, Georgia. February, 2030 -- Fifteen-year-old Aimee Lee Nash wishes her father would shut up already about the Before Time. She was tired of hearing how good things were and how rotten they are now. So what was the problem with picking up the weekly food supplement drop from the Capitol? There was no problem, that’s what. Well, other than the weird stuff going on with the Gro-Glo Cereal, of course. “It sure beats having to fight off all those zombies who overran The First Settlement last year, doesn’t it, Cody?” Aimee’s best friend, sixteen-year-old Cody Branson, always accompanied her through the thick rain forest to the food drop site, and only partially because he enjoyed getting out of The New Settlement. He was in love with the pretty little redhead, and just being near her made his day. He’d decided to tell her about his feelings as soon as they tested the cereal packages. Aimee, who he had to admit was smarter than him, had long suspected Gro-Glo had been laced with something other than vitamins, something that kept the villagers oddly tranquil even in face of the End Times. Not that he believed all that religious rot. Amiee, who paid more attention to politics than he did, said that hyper-religious Ulysses Graham Marshall, the 48th President of the United States, was a fraud. “He ran on the God First ticket only because he knew it would get him elected,” she’d said. “Just before my mother was murdered by that crazy man last year, she told me she’d once met him at an orgy in Key West, and he was a flat-out atheist then, and judging from some of the things he said later, he still is.” Cody raised his eyebrows. “Your mom attended an orgy?” Aimee shrugged. “Who didn’t in those days? What with the virus and all, everyone thought they were going to die any second so it was, like, gather ye-rosebuds-while-ye-may time.” Cody thought about that for a moment. “Do you think Marshall may be your father?” Aimee shrugged again. “He has red hair, but that doesn’t mean anything. Dad told me his mother had red hair, so even though he’s a blond, he could still be my biological father. He thinks he is, anyway.” Cody laughed aloud, scaring a flock of African gray parrots out of the trees. Along with other tropical animals, the parrots had migrated north once Global Warming had turned much of the U.S. into a tropic zone. Cody paid them no mind because he’d just realized something startling. “Wow, to think I might be hanging out with the daughter of the President of the United States!” Aimee responded with a string of expletives. Cody felt himself blushing, but he loved it when Aimee talked dirty.

Waycross, Georgia – June, 2030 -- Watching the inhabitants of The New Settlement slip into blissed-out stupors after eating their ration of Gro-Glo, Aimee’s suspicions about the cereal were confirmed, but she and her father still had to eat, so she picked up her bow, slung her quiver of arrows over her shoulder, and set back out into the forest. Let the others pursue their druggie Nirvana, she and her father would live on what she could kill. On the way to the area where deer were known to graze, she passed Dog Town, where a Golden Retriever exited his hut and ran out to meet her. “Whatcha doin’, Aimee, whereya goin’, can I go with, oh please oh please oh please?” the retriever begged in his doggy patois, jumping up and down with excitement. The virus that had created so many mindless human zombies had had the opposite effect on dogs and cats, raising their I.Q.s enough that they could not only build crude huts, but talk, too. Dogs, being pack animals, glommed together in ramshackle villages; not so the cats, who had always been loners. Cats emerged from their individual lairs only to hunt or torment the dogs. “I’m looking for deer, Yellowfur,” Aimee answered the eager retriever, “but I’d rather do it alone. Every time you spot a herd, you start barking and scare them off.” Yellowfur’s doggy face looked stricken “I won’t I won’t I won’t I promise, Aimee, please please please let me go with and I have this tick on my back and can’t get it could you could you could you get it please please please?” Aimee dutifully removed the tick and threw it to the ground, whereupon Yellowfur pounced and ate it. “Yummy, Aimee, yummy, sorry I didn’t’ leave any for you I’m so sorry I’m a bad dog but maybe there’s another one and if there is you can have it if you find it, so yummy, Aimee! See how unselfish I am, I am, so can I go with please please please?” Knowing Yellowfur well, Aimee turned down his offer and continued on her way. In the background, she could hear Yellowfur dog howling his disappointment. Almost drowning out his howls was the satisfied hisses of a flame point Siamese, who as Aimee walked away, stopped hissing long enough to remark, “Me loves the sound of unhappy dogs in the morning!”


INSTALLMENT III of LOVE, DEATH, AND ZOMBIES IN WAYCROSS, GEORGIA

Waycross, Georgia – June 2030 -- An hour after Aimee distributed the Gro-Glo Cereal, former homicide detective Benjamin Nash noticed the villagers of The New Settlement falling into a near-stupor. And as they always did when in such a state, they began to scrapbook. Scissors snipped and hand-made paste stuck salvaged photographs, news articles, and even leaves into hand-bound books. As soon as the Gro-Glo wore off, they’d look at their creations as if they’d never seen them before, but for now, scrapbooking was the obsession. Nash wondered what it meant. “They’re fools, aren’t they?” he said to Mary Catherine, his dead wife. Her frowning ghost hovered near the stove, anxious for Aimee to return with the meat from the day’s hunt. Her vocal chords not being what they once were -- the decay of death does take it's toll -- she used her hands to signal disapproval of her husband’s judgmental tone. “Sorry, sorry," he said. "I know you think I’m being rough on my neighbors, but I’m getting pretty tired of me and Aimee – well, and maybe Cody – being the only people who work around here. You’d think the rest of them would have figured out by now that the Government is poisoning them into submission. They used to say that religion is the opiate of the masses, but now we know it's scrapbooking.” Mary Catherine’s expression changed to one of sadness. Relieved that she was no longer angry, Nash continued, “A runner from North Encampment came by yesterday, delivering news. Did you know that? I mean, you weren’t here at the time. Where were you?” Mary Catherine pointed skyward. “Why are you able to come back?" he asked. "Are you the only ghost around? Or are there others?” The ghost shrugged. They’d had this conversation many times before, and all she ever did was shrug, leaving the workings of God or whomever was up there these days as mysterious as ever. “Anyway, dear, the runner from North Encampment said there’s a rumor going around that the Holy Relics have finally arrived from what’s left of Rome after the zombies sacked it, and that the relics were moved to the Smithsonian. They’re under lock and key, the runner said, and the President is the only one who’s allowed to see them. Which kind of makes me wonder. The runner also told me that the Jesus Letter has finally been translated into English from Aramaic but that the President won’t tell anyone what it says. Why does he…?” Nash was interrupted by the loud wail of a dog, “Oh, gimme pelt, Aimee, gimmie pelt please oh please, me loves to chew pig, pig tastes so good with all the bristly hairs and runny luscious red and white stuff, oh please oh please, Aimee!” It was Nash’s turn to scowl. “It’s that damned Yellowfur again. I don’t know why she puts up with him. It’s not like the lazy thing ever does anything other than eat us out of house and home. Why doesn't he hunt with the rest of his pack?" Aimee staggered in, dragging a dead wild boar. “Dad! I've got something to tell you. I heard…” Nash looked over to the kitchen where his wife’s ghost still hovered near the stove. “I laid out the barbeque sauce recipe for you again, Mary Catherine,” he called. “I know your memory isn’t what it used to be.” The ghost blew him a kiss. She couldn’t talk and her memory was fading, but at least she could still cook up a storm.

SISTER MARY CATHERINE’S BLOW–THE-TOP-OF-YOUR-HEAD-OFF BARBEQUE SAUCE

One bottle Heinz catsup
1/2 cup white wine vinegar
¼ cup brown sugar (more if you like a sweet sauce)
1/3 cup soy sauce
2 minced cloves garlic
1 tablespoon ground pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon mustard
3 tablespoons Tabasco sauce (more if your mouth can handle it)
3 minced Ancho chili peppers (culinary weaklings can cut it back to one)

Mix ingredients in a saucepan, bring to boil, then cover and simmer for 2 hours. Serve on pork or chicken cooked almost to charcoal in an open pit barbeque or smoker. Have plenty of white bread and water on hand to absorb the heat.

Aimee stood over the slain boar and frowned at her father as Yellowfur danced around her legs, begging for a piece of hide. “Dad, will you listen to…” Nash smiled and said, “I’ll butcher the boar and start the fire. Dinner should be ready in a couple of hours.” He started to go outside to the open pit they’d built out of cement blocks and wire, but Aimee blocked his way. “I said listen to me!” his daughter yelled. “Aimee, I have to…” “Dad! A runner from East Encampment just brought the news that a Russian submarine washed up on Marlin Rocks! And he says it’s from 1954!”

THE LAST INSTALLMENT OF "LOVE, DEATH, AND ZOMBIES IN WAYCROSS, GEORGIA"

Gentle Reader, this is the last installment of the book. Unlike previous installments, where actual dialogue is used, the remainder of the book is only a brief synopsis of the action. Why? Because this project, begun mainly as a joke, has entertained me so much I’ve decided to actually write the book – zombies, talking dogs, contemptuous cats, Knights Templar, UFOs, mad scientists, Ming Dynasty kung fu concubines and all.

And here we go...

When Aimee, her father, and Cody reach the Russian sub, they learn from the English-speaking mad scientist on board that the sub fell into a time warp and wound up in the Ming Dynasty, where they met Peony Sun, a former concubine who had become a martial arts master. Peony told them about the Emperor’s terrible illness, and warned them not to go anywhere near the bejeweled chalice he’d bought from an Arab trader. It carried a curse, and anyone who touched it dies within a year. However, its fellow treasure, the Sacred Scroll, was written by Jesus himself, and was reputed to contain the formula for eradicating the zombie curse. The Holy Grail, the Holy Lance, and the Sacred Scroll have been hidden at Castello del Piagnaro, in Italy, and are guarded by descendants of the Knights Templar, who have sworn to fight unto death to keep their treasures out of the hands of Infidels.

Getting to Italy is no problem, Aimee, Cody, and her father decide, because the Russian sub – named Krasnyi Mest (Red Vengeance) – is in good shape, although much slower than before due to the depletion of nuclear fuel. It’s getting the Scroll away from the Templars that they fear could be problematical. Yes, lives will certainly be lost in the battle, but the Russians, Americans, and the kung fu princess all decide to chance it. They will somehow steal the Sacred Scroll, decipher the formula, and manufacture the life-saving cure. During the trip across the Atlantic, Peony and Aimee become close friends. The Russians, using a method developed by the mad scientist, learn excellent English. The Americans learn Russian, and everyone learns Mandarin Chinese. During their language lessons, they discover they have a stowaway on board. It’s Yellowfur, who wants to do his part to save the world. Yellowfur is discovered to have a lovely singing voice and gives nightly concerts as they travel slowly across the Atlantic.

But before the Krasnyi Mest finally makes landfall, it is attacked by an American submarine captained by U.S. President Ulysses Graham Marshall, who, it is revealed, is Aimee’s true father. Marshall wants the castle treasures for himself; he who rules the Grail rules the world! Unlike the crew of the Krasnyi Mest, he’s convinced that he’s immune to the Grail’s curse – after all, isn’t he a God-fearing man? The Krasnyi Mest wins the ensuing sea battle, and as the sticken renegade sub sinks to the bottom of the ocean, Yellowfur – who bears no animosity towards anyone – sings a soulful rendition of “Amazing Grace.”

Upon their landing near Genoa, the crew marches inland to Castello del Piagnaro, where they engage in a fierce battle with the remaining diseased Templars. Aimee, Cody, Peony and Nash fight bravely. Yellowfur bites much Templar ass. As the leader of the Templars lies dying, he reveals the secret of the curse. According to legend, a UFO crashed somewhere in China during the Ming Dynasty, and a wounded alien staggered out. An Arab trader happened to be passing by and attempted to render aid to the alien by giving him a drink from the jeweled chalice he was carrying. Unfortunately, water was poisonous to this particular alien and he died on the spot – after vomiting into the chalice; the chalice has remained poisoned ever since. Having delivered his story of the origin of the zombie curse, the Templar, covered with black boils, dies.

During the vicious battle, all the treasures, including the hopefully life-saving Holy Scroll, are recovered, but Yellowfur has been badly wounded. The mad scientist – who’d never liked Yellowfur’s singing anyway – wants him left behind, but after an enraged Peony kung fu’s the crap out of him, the mad scientist has a change of heart and says he’ll do whatever he can to save the dog. A weeping Aimee carries the courageous Yellowfur back to the Krasnyi Mest. The crew, now reduced to a quarter of its original size, begins the trip back to America with their Holy treasures.

The mad scientist, having been kung fu’d back into sanity, saves Yellowfur’s life after applying mouth-to-snout resuscitation, then rubbing the Holy Lance across his wounds. Having been schooled in ancient Aramaic, he is able to translate the Holy Scroll and discovers the formula. He says that it will either kill everyone on Earth or eradicate the zombie plague forever. Everyone on board agrees that it’s a chance they must take.

Back at Waycross Georgia’s New Settlement, the now-sane scientist sets up shop. It’s a race against time, because during the trip back across the Atlantic, everyone on board the Krasnyi Mest – including himself – developed black boils. They all know that within weeks, they’ll turn into zombies. But books like these always end happily, so the scientist succeeds, the New Settlement’s ham radio operator sends out the formula for the cure, and everyone once infected with zombie-ism is soon cured. Out of gratitude for his life-saving efforts, Peony marries the formerly-mad scientist. Aimee marries Cody. Yellowfur marries a German shepherd named Lily Marlene. And after her ghost is exposed to the now-cleansed Holy Grail, Nash’s dead wife, the former Sister Mary Catherine, is brought back to life. In the book’s final scene, Nash and Mary Catherine renew their vows under a flowering apple tree. The wedding is attended by every person (and talking animal) mentioned in the book. At the reception, Yellowfur delivers a stirring rendition of “Feelings.”

The world is saved and everyone lives happily ever after.

The Mystery of Snow Canyon

...

Finishing a book is like finishing a marathon.

Make that several marathons.

The idea for DESERT WIND came to me while I was watching an old John Wayne movie, an awful mess titled “The Conqueror.” In 1954, John Wayne played Genghis Khan (imagine!) with redheaded Susan Hayward as his unwilling Mongol bride. The on-film sparring between the two almost matched the heads Genghis lopped off in his pursuit of world domination.

Basically, I was watching the thing on a dare. I’d said to my husband that Wayne was a better actor than his usual cowboy or G.I. roles allowed him to be, and hubby – who could never pass up a sure thing – bet me twenty-five cents I'd change my mind after watching “The Conqueror.” We were going to order it from Netflix, but in the mysterious way of Fate, it popped up on Turner Classic Movies that very week. Five minutes into the thing, I knew I’d lost my twenty-five cents, but I’m no quitter so I stuck with it.

Good thing, too.

Halfway through the film, the host – I can’t remember who it was – began talking about the mysterious illness that plagued the cast and film crew, the same illness that was felling so many of the Paiute Indians who’d served as extras.

When the movie started again (and I'd handed over a quarter to my husband, who'd so obviously won the bet), I watched with an entirely viewpoint. Like a born mystery novelist, I was looking for clues. But there were none. Snow Canyon, Utah, the location of the movie set, was almost as beautiful as the Grand Canyon, which lay only a few miles south. The landscape looked pure and serene. Small wonder that Howard Hughes, the film’s producer, had chosen it.

Appearances are deceiving. A few years later, almost half the cast and crew who worked on “The Conqueror” were dead. Those responsible argued that the Hollywood people's heavy drinking, heavy smoking lifestyles had contributed to their deaths. But then death began to stalk the residents of the ranches and farms that lay near Snow Canyon. Deeply religious men who never smoked nor drank. Children. Babies. Women who raised fresh vegetables for the dinner table so that their families would have healthy diets.

I spent more than a year doing research on DESERT WIND, research that took me into the far northwest corner of Arizona, and the southwest corner of Utah. I visited libraries, museums, interviewed people who remembered those events --people who had at one time believed the official reason for the high death count, as well as people who doubted the official story from the very beginning.

To learn what happened and why those deaths are still argued about sixty years later (even though those responsible eventually admitted culpability), read DESERT WIND. As novelists so frequently do, I used real life as a jumping-off place for a book that examines guilt, innocence, and the concept of "plausible deniability."

John Wayne -- and everyone affected -- deserved better.

* * *

To read an excerpt from DESERT WIND, log onto www.bettywebb-mystery.com

* * *

Why Writing a Book is More Work than Shoveling Horse Poop

...

Another year, another book.

At 7 p.m., Tuesday, January 31, I’ll be at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore Scottsdale AZ, talking about my new Lena Jones mystery, DESERT WIND (to read an excerpt, log onto www.bettywebb-mystery.com). It’s much more fun to talk than it is to write so I’m sure I’ll enjoy myself.

Oops. Did I just give away the fact that writing isn’t easy? I guess I did. Thanks to good health and good luck, I’ve led a long and busy life, often working two jobs at a time. No, I’m not counting my role as a parent, because that would be the third job, the unpaid job that never ends.

Here are some of the you-get-paid-for-doing-it jobs I’ve held down over the years: go-go dancer, bartender, chicken farmer, commercial artist, car hop, job counselor, teacher, advertising copywriter, cotton picker, waitress, music critic, horse breeder, customer service representative, sales clerk, book reviewer, zoo worker, etc. But of all my various jobs, the most grueling by far is the job I’ve held for the last 12 years: mystery novelist.

Non-writers are always surprised when I tell them writing is harder than many jobs, including shoveling horse poop, which I’ll use as my example. In most jobs, you know what’s expected of you. Horse stall overflowing with poop? Turn Seabiscuit loose in the corral, get a shovel, shovel until all the poop’s gone. Put in fresh hay, lead Seabiscuit back into his stall, walk away. You’re done, and the horse is happy.

Writing isn’t like that. You get up at 4 a.m. every day for a year, write until it’s time to go to your paycheck-generating job, then 10 hours later return home and write some more. Tired? Too bad. Oh, and another thing: while you’re still working on Book One, you need to start doing research for Book Two. Research takes time, too, and sometimes you even have to hop a plane to do it. Afraid of flying? Too bad.

But finally, a year after you began Book One, it’s finished. That night you send it to your publisher and at 4 a.m. the next day, you begin writing Book Two.

Remember my saying that when the poop-shoveling is done, the horse is happy? Well, editors aren’t that easy to please. Around the time you’re grunting through Chapter Ten of Book Two, you get an email from your editor saying that Book One needs some fixin’. So you file Book Two away, return to Book One, and make the requested changes. When you send the revised manuscript back and return to Book Two, guess what? You’ve forgotten who the heck all those characters are. This means that you spend the next couple of weeks reading through the manuscript, making notes, making changes. And chances are, you’ll begin all over again – from the first word of Chapter One.

You’ll notice that I haven’t even begun to describe the complexities of the writing craft itself. For the sake of brevity, I’ll list only a few that plagued me during the writing of DESERT WIND. Keeping characters’ names straight, so that the wrangler known as Gabe on page one doesn’t become Jake on page 235. Remembering that John Wayne died in 1979, rather than 1974, which I’d originally thought. Discovering that uranium mining continues at the Grand Canyon, although most people think it was shut down years ago. Keeping the arc of action rising ever upwards, a common problem with novelists (although we mystery writers have an easy solution; we just kill someone else whenever the action threatens to slow). Stop using the same words so often (my favorites are apparently “probably,” “seemed,” “just” -- and “apparently.” And getting rid of a dozen other writer’s hoodoos.

But in the end, it’s all worth it. Two years after you began writing the first page, Book One – your perfect, perfect creation, the reflection of your very soul -- hits the streets. And there you are, wearing new clothes, scented with the finest French perfume, sitting proudly in the bookstore as your fans line up to get their first edition copies of Book One autographed.

Then the first fan arrives at your table, gives you a big smile and says, “Did you know there’s a typo on page two?”

...

What Is a Real Writer?

What is a real writer? After reading a very dull memoir, I pondered this question for what had to be the hundredth time. On page after page, the memoirist kept lamenting that she had written 14 novels without having any publisher offer her a contract, and she just didn’t understand why. Her parents said she was a born writer, her college teachers said she was a born writer, her husband said she was a born writer, her friends said she was a born writer, and most importantly – she herself knew she was a born writer. But after reading her emotionally flat memoir, I’m not so sure.

A real writer is interested in the natural world, even when writing her own memoir. She is interested in the way the sun moves around the earth, she is interested in the fantastical formations clouds make, she is interested in the musty smell of wet concrete after a rain, she is interested in the sting of pine boughs slapping her face on a windy day, she is interested in the sound of insects buzzing around offal, she is interested in the cowlick in a bus passenger’s hair, she is interested in the odd scar on a man’s otherwise pristine briefcase, she is interested in a child’s intake of breath just before it begins to cry… In other words, a writer’s interests stretch beyond her own flesh. She is continually fascinated with the world and all the wondrous and horrible things in it – even when she believes they don’t personally impact her. Otherwise she’s not truly writing, she’s just typing love letters to herself.

Chances are that if you’ve never been accused of being “nosy,” you’re going to have a hard time becoming a writer. Real writers are so enamored of, so obsessed with, so appalled by the human condition that even with a broken leg they’ll hobble out the door to eavesdrop on a conversation down the street. Real writers are nosy people. If something’s happening to anyone anywhere at any time, they want to know about it. And first hand, whenever possible. They want to know every sloppy detail of a friend’s messed-up love affair and how she felt when she finished the Boston Marathon. That’s why so many novelists start out as journalists (you can’t beat being paid not to mind your own business). That’s why when tragedy strikes, the first question a journalist asks is, “How do you feel?”

Real writers are interested in emotions other than their own. They want to know how you felt when your house was foreclosed on, how you felt when your son first nursed at your breast, how you felt several years later when he shipped off to Afghanistan, they want to know why you can’t stand the sight of blood, they want to know why you prefer country life to the city, they want to know how you felt when the man who raped you was found not guilty.

Real writers are emotional vampires. Allow them access and they’ll suck the emotion right out of you. Not out of malice -- far from it -- but because they need to write it down so that others can feel the way you feel, and thus develop the most precious attribute of true humanity: empathy. When real writers write their books, their stories, their poems, and their articles, they want to convey to people they will probably never meet the feelings of a complete stranger. They want you to feel that stranger’s humanity and to recognize it in yourself.

That's because real writers recognize one great truth: we are all related. Each of us has a common ancestor – the paleontologists have named her “Mitochondria Eve” -- and our many-times-great-grandmother was born around 3.2 million years ago in Africa’s Olduvai Gorge. Like it or not, we are all long-lost sisters and brothers. In opening up our distant kin's heart to us, real writers remind us of our shared humanity. Real writers will always do that -- it’s their job -- and they will continue to do it in darkness and in light, whether surrounded by laughter or by ashes.

Warren Jeffs' conviction isn't the end

While it’s nice that child rapist Warren Jeffs has been sentenced to life plus twenty years, many of his followers and enablers are still busy ruining children’s lives in Utah, El Dorado, Texas, and my home state of Arizona. While I was a reporter for the Tribune Newspapers, I began covering Colorado City, which was being ruled by Jeffs’ iron hand. Horrified at what I found, I wrote the book, “Desert Wives: Polygamy Can Be Murder.” Because my claims seemed so preposterous at the time – religion-sanctioned child rape and rampant Welfare fraud – my publisher turned the manuscript over to Janet Napolitano, the then Arizona Attorney General. Napolitano found no inaccuracies in the manuscript, which was then published.

That was in 2002, folks, a full 9 years ago. During those 9 years, Neither Utah nor Arizona could make a prosecution stick against Jeffs or his followers, so thank God for Texas. During those nine years, local officials argued that that there had been no complaints about child abuse in the compound, an argument which was ironic since Child Protective Services never went into Colorado City to investigate the complaints that were being made by women who’d escaped. Why didn’t CPS go in? According to reports, Jeffs’ men – many of them armed police officers – stationed themselves at the entrance to the compound and refused CPS entrance to the homes where the abuse was alleged to be taking place.

During those 9 years, Janet Napolitano looked the other way, her successor Terry Goddard looked the other way, and now Tom Horne, Napolitano’s and Goddard’s successor is looking the other way. Horne is, however, very, very busy attempting to prosecute users of medical marijuana, which has been declared legal in the state of Arizona. Odd, that. In the meantime, escapee after escapee from Jeffs’ cult have been sharing their stories about alleged rape, sodomy, and even child homicide, but the Arizona authorities still haven’t gone into Colorado City to investigate their allegations. What are the authorities waiting for? Remember, it took only ONE phone call for Texas to act.

Among the excuses the authorities have given me for Arizona’s failure to act are these:

1. No complaints have been made about any crimes being committed against children in Colorado City.
2. But even if complaints were made and the authorities attempted to go in, it would probably result in another Jonestown, Waco, or Heaven’s Gate. So they’re not going in for the sake of the children.
3. The authorities can’t prosecute a crime without evidence, and they can’t get evidence without going into the compound. This excuse dovetails nicely with the above two excuses.

Sounds like something out of Alice in Wonderland, doesn’t it? This kind of legal gobbledygook is the reason Arizona children remain at risk in Colorado City. This sad state of affairs will continue until we – the American public – make such a fuss that Arizona politicians and law officials can no longer ignore it.

Here’s what you can do to help protect Arizona’s children. Write or call Tom Horne, Arizona’s attorney general, at 1275 West Washington Street, Phoenix, AZ 85007-2926. Tom Horne’s office phone number is 602.542.5025 or 800.352.8431; fax is 602.542.4085. Send a copy of your complaint to your local FBI office and to your local government representative.

Arizona’s children deserve justice, too.

Links (if the link doesn't work, copy it into your browser)

http://drdrew.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/27/are-women-in-flds-responsible-for-abuse/?hpt=dr_t3

http://nancygrace.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/05/former-flds-members-react-to-verdict/?iref=obinsite