Pardon Me While I Back The Bus Up

by Sue Ann Jaffarian

 

Okay, okay ... I know last week’s question was on favorite reference materials and this week is my week to post, but I just have to put my 2 cents in about my favorite reference tool or I’m gonna bust: 

GOOGLE MAPS!!!! 

I love using Google Maps, especially the zoom feature, when I'm writing. It's a great tool when I have to describe places, roads, routes, etc. or know the relationship of cities to each other in both distance and travel time, or what buildings are on which streets and intersections. Or even if it’s rural or developed. It’s almost as good as getting in the car and driving the area. Even better if you factor in time and gas.

Right now, this very minute, I have 2 different Google maps up while I work on my current manuscript and I'm using both of them to give readers an idea of where the story is taking Emma and Granny. Here's a hint.

 

I also use Google Images when I need to picture something specific in order to describe it. What can I say, I’m a very visual person.

Another great resource is the online Farmer’s Almanac. If you want to know what the usual weather is for a place, that's the best place to go, especially if you're looking for historical weather, which I sometimes use in my Granny Apples books.

 

The Internet is a virtual cornucopia of useful information at my fingertips and I use it as much as I can.

Now if you’ll excuse me, according to the online Date Calculator, I have just 10 days to get GHOST OF A GAMBLE to my publisher.

P.S.: I want to be Jessica Fletcher of Murder She Wrote. She's retired and spends her days writing and snooping around. And she lives in a cute, albeit homicide-riddled, Maine village.

Location, Don't Punch Me, Location.

This is tough.  One fictional world?  One single, solitary world?  It's easier to pick a world I wouldn't want to live in: Myron Bolitar's, because he always gets beaten up.  I've never been beaten up and I want to keep it that way.

I've got it down to three. 

I wouldn't mind being Alvirah Meehan in Mary Higgins Clark World.  There are no pictures of Alvirah - a cleaning lady - so here's one of Hilda Ogden, another iconic cleaning lady from the world of Coronation Street:

And - I realised when I dowloaded this photo of her - my identical apron twin.

Why Alvirah Meehan?  Anyone who's seen my house will tell you I'm not cut out to be a cleaning lady.  Well, Alvirah lives on 59th St in New York with a view of Central Park and - crucially - she is a lottery winner.  Also, she's married to a plumber, which is like winning the lottery all over again.

If I couldn't be Alvirah, I'd be Isabel Dalhousie in Alexander McCall Smith's Sunday Philosophy Club series.  Now Isabel is a philosopher with inherited wealth, and I'm beginning to look shallow here, but the crucial factor is that she lives in Edinburgh.  She lives in a house like this one:

a place I understand, with window weights and shallow presses by the fireplace, encaustic tiles in the vestibule and sarking to keep an eye on.  As I wonder about when to have my California house checked for termites again and begin to plan a new barn to replace the one that blew down, I could quite happily revert to a big lump of Scottish stone. 

And if I lived in Merchiston then, right now, tonight, I could hop in my rusty little manual shift Fiesta and visit my mum.

My final choice is the serious answer: I'd like to be Minnie Cassands in the opening chapters of Margery Allingham's Beckoning Lady (before it all goes wrong).  Minnie is a splendid old trout, married to a splendid old buffer - Tonker - and when we meet her she's in the midst of preparing for their annual spectacular - a completely bonkers garden party held at their house, The Beckoning Lady, in Suffolk.  Ohhhh - just writing that much means I'm going to have to read it again. 

Minnie wears a Mother Hubbard and - again - an apron, buys too much Champagne and serves it all, and says things like "clowns are children without innocence; that's why they're so awful".  She's right too.   When I first read the novel, years ago, I took to her on finding out that she polishes her dining table by putting towelling knickers on fat babies and letting them wriggle.  That's my kind of housekeeping.  And Minnie Cassands is my kind of gal.

Lost in a Good Book

by Chris F. Holm

"If you could step into the world of a fictional sleuth or crime-stopper, which would it be? What would be your role/character in their story?"

I confess, upon reading this week's question, I was tempted to offer up the Lily Moore series, by Criminal Minds' own Hilary Davidson. Lily is a travel writer, after all, who flits from Manhattan to Spain at the drop of a hat, and spends her workdays in luxury hotels from Acapulco to Machu Picchu. But then I got to thinking, and realized -- exotic locales aside -- folks in Lily's orbit don't exactly have a great survival rate. So maybe instead, I'll wait and see how Lily's trip to any given locale works out before I book my ticket, and steer clear of her in the meantime.

So if not Lily's, whose book-world would I most like to inhabit? Easy: that of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next. Thursday, for those not familiar, inhabits an alternate reality in which literature is the dominant pop culture, and travel between the real world and the world of books is not only possible, but common. Thursday is involved in policing literature both in the real world (as a Literary Detective) and within the world of fiction (as a member of Jurisfiction). She also has a pet dodo named Pickwick, because of course she does.

Sounds crazy, doesn't it? In truth, it kind of is. But if you're as much a bibliophile as I am, it might just be your brand of crazy. Folks communicate via footnoterphone. There is a Great Library, which consists of every book ever written, and within it, a Well of Lost Plots, which contains works either unpublished or unfinished. Every character ever written lives and breathes (though the poorly sketched ones are kinda boring to hang out with). Which, incidentally, takes the pressure off of me for part two of this week's question. Who in Thursday's world would I choose to be? Any character in the whole of human history I felt like.

Provided they're a safe distance from Lily Moore, of course.

The Crime Tour Takes Ontario!

By Hilary Davidson 

I've finally finished my book tour for Evil in All Its Disguises, and it was capped off in the best way I could imagine: a four-day, seven-event tour with fellow crime writers Ian Hamilton, Robert Rotenberg, and my dear partner in crime Robin Spano. We hit a series of towns in Ontario, and we had a blast.

At the Woodstock Art Gallery for an event sponsored by the Woodstock Public Library (L to R: Robert Rotenberg, Robin Spano, Ian Hamilton & me)

At Centre Fellowship in Orangeville for an event sponsored by BookLore. We also raised $600 for the University Women Scholarship Fund! 

In Orangeville

At the Clemens Mill Library in Cambridge

Being introduced at the the Brantford Public Library

Robin reading in the stunning event space at the Guelph Public Library

Getting a hilarious intro at the the L.E. Shore Memorial Library in Thornbury. Two truths and one lie about each of us...

Signing books in Thornbury

Murder and Mayhem on Mother’s Day at the Manticore in Orillia

In case you haven't guessed, I love doing library events. This is the second time Ian, Robin and I have toured together (last year we were in BC with Deryn Collier). Anyone have suggestions for next year's library tour?

Welcome to Ocean Beach

By Reece Hirsch

If I could inhabit a fictional world, I think I would choose the Ocean Beach of Don Winslow’s “The Dawn Patrol.”  First, it’s probably the most thoroughly entertaining crime novel that I’ve read in the past few years.  Second, I like the notion of being a charter member of the Dawn Patrol, that group of surfers and longtime friends sitting in the waters off the San Diego coastline sharing laconic jokes and engaging in minor debates as the sun comes up over the horizon and they wait for the big swell.

And, no, I don’t surf, so the Dawn Patrol is the sort of club that would never have me as a member in real life.  But I do like the idea, particularly the quiet and stillness of sitting out there on a board, simultaneously together with your friends and alone with the ocean.  The Dawn Patrol consists of part-time PI Boone Daniels, Hang Twelve, Dave the Love God, Johnny Banzai, High Tide and Sunny Day.  In Winslow’s expert hands, they are fine company.

After working up an appetite riding the waves with the Dawn Patrol, I would proceed to The Sundowner, the wood-paneled, surf-photo-adorned restaurant next door to Boone’s office.  It’s best in the morning when the place is full of locals and before the tourists arrive.  I would order the eggs machaca, which come with warm flour tortillas on the side.  As Winslow notes, correctly, everything tastes better on a tortilla.

Among the Dawn Patrol’s topics of conversation is the constantly revised List of Things That Are Good, which includes:

"1.  Double overheads.

2.  Reef break.

3.  The tube.

4.  Girls who will sit on the beach and watch you ride double overheads, reef break and the tube.  (Inspiring Sunny’s remark that “Girls watch – women ride.”)

5.  Free stuff.

6.  Longboards.

7.  Anything made by O’Neill.

8.  All-female outrigger canoe teams.

9.  Fish tacos.

10.  Big Wednesday."

On my own personal and constantly revised List of Things That Are Good, I would most definitely include Don Winslow’s “The Dawn Patrol.”

The Professionals

by Gary

 

Including the aforementioned Chicago Manual of Style and Strunk & White, here’s my list of indispensible reference material written by the professionals.

While it’s obtainable via them internets, I have a lovely hardback copy my wife bought me for a birthday of Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing.  While I don’t always follow his rules to the letter, there is something comforting and reassuring to be able to crack this book open now and then to re-read the master of dialogue’s take on this thing of ours.

 Plots and Characters, A Screenwriter on Screenwriting is by my late friend Millard Kaufman, best known as the screenwriter of bad day at Black Rock.  Millard also produced and directed several movies, co-created Mr. Magoo, and had great stories about his time as a marine in WWII to his travails in Hollywood.  You don’t have to want to writer screenplays to dig the insight Millard brings to matters such as pacing and character development, helpful hints to any type of writer.  

The Story is a Promise by Bill Johnson.  I don’t have many “how to” write books on my shelf but Bill’s is one I always recommend to people.  Using examples from various novels, Bill lays out how writers build structure, use metaphor and symbolism to tell their stories – to fulfil the promise to the reader to deliver an emotionally satisfying resolution.

James Baldwin’s The Devil Finds Work isn’t about the writing process per se but rather a book-length essay about the racial and social context of movies.  His often wry commentaries also include him talking about how he got fired from writing the screenplay of Che!  This the ‘60s studio version with, and I kid you not as I’ve seen the flick, Omar Sharif as the famous revolutionary and Jack Palance as Fidel Castro.   

Raymond’s Chandler’s classic essay on “The Simple Art of Murder” should be re-read each year by mystery and crime storytellers.

My wife and her mom gifted me many Christmases ago this wonderful honking mother of all dictionaries I’m always looking up words and their correct iteration in; the 2,400 some odd page The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, Unabridged.  When I get loopy from writing, I take a break and do come curls with it.

And just because I think it helps if writers can think visually when putting scenes to paper, the late great comics artist Gil Kane wrote an article years ago, “Bypassing the Real for the Ideal” that’s worth reading  He explores the dynamics of comics art and offers samples in his trademark style of what he’s talking about.  Click this link here to check it out.  There’s also the well-illustrated book Comics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner (who wrote and drew the Spirit among many other creations) that goes further in depth on the power of visuals...all to the good in helping craft memorable stories.

I Need Style

What reference work (dictionary, thesaurus, style guide, etc) is indispensable in your writing? Why?

Here’s what I’ve got on my reference bookshelf (yes, these are actual printed books!):

The Dictionary of Clichés
The Bantam Medical Dictionary
The New International Dictionary of Quotations
What Happened When
Woe is I
Chicago Manual of Style
The Elements of Style (otherwise known as Strunk and White)
Mark My Words
Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript
Webster’s Dictionary
Roget’s Thesaurus
The Synonym Finder
Illustrated Reverse Dictionary
The New York Public Library Desk Reference
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Quotations
A Treasury for Word Lovers

Do I ever use these books? What, with the Internet a click away? Are you kidding? Truth is—for good or for bad—I do most of my research/grammar-checking/spell-checking/synonym-finding/procrastinating on line.

From time to time, however, I will crack open my Chicago Manual to check on some arcane usage question (I slept through my high school English classes). There’s just something about that authoritative tome that I trust!

(This entry is “simul-posted” on Criminal Minds.)

Reading, Writing, and Reference

by Tracy Kiely

When I first set up my “office” (a desk/hutch off the kitchen) I stocked it with every single reference book I’d ever acquired over the years – even the ones I never liked or used. Among the many tomes stuffed in my shelves is a dog-eared version of Strunk and White, an embarrassingly pristine copy of The Chicago Manual of Style, a mildly worn Eats Shoots and Leaves, one thesaurus, and three dictionaries, one of which is so massive that it’s mainly used to press flowers. Of course, I don’t need three dictionaries, and as my prom going days are a thing of the past, I don’t really need the flower-pressing dictionary. However, I love it because it’s fun to look up modern words in the version I was routinely sent to in my youth as the all-knowing resource center and find…nothing. 

I stacked my writing desk with these items because I thought it lent the area an air of authenticity and made me look like I knew what I was doing. However, the thing is, I hardly ever use them. I find that when I need the thesaurus, I use the online version. And can I just send out a special “Hallelujah” to the creators of SpellCheck? Seriously, I would be lost without that technology. Although it’s horribly embarrassing to admit, considering I make a (paltry) living as a writer, I’m a terrible speller. Terrible. You don’t even want to know how I just butchered the hell out of hallelujah before SpellCheck stepped in to save the day – and most likely – my eternal soul.

Of course, the grammar check thing is for the birds. I would love to write a blog one day in which I accept all of grammar check’s helpful suggestions.

So, while those books sit forever at the ready like patient soldiers for the times I need them, they are not the books that I constantly reach for when I write. Those would be my battered Jane Austen books, their pages covered in various shades of gold highlighter, with half legible (and mostly misspelled thoughts) scribbled in the margins. I have two sets of all her books (and, in some cases, more); one for my “proper” bookshelf and one for my desk. The ones I keep at my desk, I write in and make notes in without feeling like I’m defiling a masterpiece because I know there’s a pristine version in the next room. That is, until I can’t find my research copy and have to steal the “good” copy (FYI: grammar check just recommended this: “Those is, until I can’t find my research copy and have to steal the “good” copy.”) That’s why I have more than two copies of some books. Once I’ve scribbled in a copy, I have to buy a “clean” version.

It’s a thing. Don’t judge.

Anyway, those are the books I constantly reach for when I write. While I have read Austen’s books so many times I can practically recite most scenes (which makes me a huge hit at any gathering where sports are a focal point), there are times when I can’t quite remember it all. That’s when I reach for my book –and find myself losing a solid thirty minutes because once again I’ve become lost in Austen’s prose.

Ohhh, Lost in Austen’s Prose. That’s a fun title, eh? I’m calling dibs on it now.

I think I’ll make it a research book.

     

The Importance of Mothers in Crime Fiction

by Vicki Delany

         

Last week’s question was about mothers.  Because I have a mother, and because I am one it’s is a topic close to my heart so I’ll address it today.

Mothers are important in my books because family is what my books are largely about.  They might be comedic mysteries, police procedurals, gothic thrillers, but someone’s mother, or the memory of her, is in there somewhere.

In my debut novel SCARE THE LIGHT AWAY (just re-released by Harlequin) the protagonist, Rebecca McKenzie, returns home after thirty years absence to attend the funeral of Janet, her mother.  While there, Rebecca discovers her mother’s journals as a WWII English War Bride, and comes to understand Janet and the depths of her courage only after her death.

In my most recent novel, MORE THAN SORROW, the character Hannah is trying to keep the severity of her TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) hidden from her mother, who’s a doctor.  The book is largely about Hannah trying to get her life back after her experiences in Afghanistan, and she tries to pretend to her mother that she’s far healthier than she actually is.

Never try to fool Mom!

In the Klondike Gold Rush series, Fiona MacGillivray is a mother.  Her son, Angus, loves her, but he’s twelve years old and thus almost a man.  She still tries to ‘mother’ him, whereas he thinks he should now be the head of the family.  In the forthcoming GOLD WEB, Angus thinks:

Then again, his mother wasn’t exactly like other women.  Some of the things she knew… Angus didn’t know much about women, but he didn’t think other boy’s mothers carried a knife in the top of their stockings (as he’d seen on the Chilkoot trail) or could unpick a lock with a hatpin as fast as he could blink (the day they’d been accidently locked out of the house).

Still, she was just a woman, and it was Angus’s responsibility as her only male relative to protect her.

Fiona herself lost her both of her parents when she was eleven.  She still thinks of them almost every day.

Which is why a mother can be so powerful. Long after her death, she influences us in so many ways. (Here I am speaking not from experience as my mom is alive and kicking!)  

Molly Smith’s mother, Lucky, is also most definitely alive and kicking.  And closely involved in the politics of their small town, demonstrating against wilderness development, even once, to Molly’s horror, taking part in a riot.

It’s not easy for a cop, knowing that you mom is likely to be involved, on one side or another, in anything that affects your small town.  But Molly’s relationship with her mother is deep, affectionate, sometimes antagonistic, often embarrassing.  But always loving.

Sorta like real life.

My mom, who hasn't embarrassed me since I was Angus's age. Snorkeling in T&C.

  

Just the answer I need

What reference work (dictionary, thesaurus, style guide) is essential to your writing?

by Meredith Cole

When I started my first book, I carefully collected a dictionary, a thesaurus, a baby naming book and various writing and formatting books and lined them up on my bookshelf. I also added our giant French/English dictionary because it looked weighty and important. I was a writer and I needed to show the world I was serious about my craft.

So when do I crack open and consult all these tomes during my writing process? Uh, almost never. I think I've opened the baby naming book once or twice. I get to that point in the story where I realize that all my secondary characters have names starting with the letter "P" and I need to fix it right away. But I find baby naming websites much faster and easier to use (quick--what's a Lebanese boys name that starts with an "R"?).

But the dictionary and thesaurus have gathered some serious dust over the years as I've grown to want the instant gratification (and the immediate results) from online sites. If I can't remember how to spell something, Google will sometimes even help me out by suggesting the correct spelling. I find this so helpful that I manage to suppress my uneasiness about how much information Google is collecting about me. It's also great not to have to leave my computer and interrupt my writing flow since I write often somewhere other then my desk in my office.

I just had to go out and buy a new bookshelf so I could pick up all the novels piled onto my floor (reading for contests creates quite a lot of clutter!). Perhaps it's time to get rid of the dictionary and thesaurus and make some more shelf space. But then I think--maybe the Internet will go down and I'll need to know something right away! So I keep them and tell myself I'll crack them open again one of these days...

Where's a Bat When You Need One?

by Sue Ann Jaffarian

I'm so excited about this week's question because I've just completed a second book featuring Odelia Grey's mother, Grace Littlejohn.

#5 Grace's 1st appearance

When Odelia was just sixteen she came home from high school to find her alcoholic mother MIA - no note, no nothing.

I still remember the day I came home from high school to discover my mother had moved out – lock, stock and vodka bottle. There was no note, no forwarding address, not even a prior clue that this might happen. One morning I left for school. She was getting ready for work, as usual. When my day was over, I returned to find her and all her personal items gone. I lived in our apartment alone for nearly a month, wondering if she’d return, half-hoping she wouldn’t, but not daring to call anyone. I even paid the rent out of my savings account to avoid having to call my dad. On the surface, I was sure she’d be back as soon as her bender was over. In my heart, I knew she wouldn’t be. I wasn’t a favorite handbag she’d simply forgotten. I was old baggage she didn’t want to lug around anymore.

Tough stuff for a 16 year old to handle.  Odelia went to live with her father and crazy step mother until she was 18, then hit the trail of independence. She didn't see her mother again until she was 50 years old, when her father passed away and among his things was a clue to her mother's whereabouts.

Even though readers know the story of Odelia's missing mother from the beginning of the series, Grace first shows up as a full character in Corpse On The Cob, the 5th Odelia Grey novel. She has a new family, is sober but not very likable, and offers no apologies for the abandonment of her daughter.  To complicate matters, the first time Odelia sees her mother in over 30 years, she's hovering over a dead body.

Odelia is tough-minded and independent, she's also used to being on her own, having had to carve her own path most of her life. Nothing was ever given to her. Her parents' volatile marriage and divorce, her mother's alcoholism and disappearance, and her father's marriage into a bullying family, all helped mold her, for better or for worse. When Odelia marries, is it any wonder she finds it difficult at first to see herself as part of a couple - a united we instead of a solitary I.

Grace's next appearance -
Out December 2013

I brought Grace back in Secondhand Stiff, the 8th Odelia Grey novel, which will be out December 2013. Since the 5th book, Odelia and Grace have stayed in touch and Odelia has become quite close to her stepbrother, Clark Littlejohn. Grace is still cantankerous and prickly and still offers no apologies for her past behavior, but she's making an effort to be part of Odelia's life and vice versa. In Secondhand Stiff, Grace is visiting Odelia for Thanksgiving and insists on getting involved in Odelia's snooping when a body is found in a storage locker.  It makes for both a funny and tearful reunion.

“Are you allowed to eat that?” I asked my mother. “Don’t you have a cholesterol problem, like Clark?”

Mom turned on me and said loud enough for the woman and her son to hear, “You don’t see me counting your calories, do you, Chubs?”

I swear, if there had been a bat close by, I would have been tempted to take a swing. I’m not sure at what since I wouldn’t want to rot in jail for matricide, but surely I could find something to hit that would only result in a vandalism charge.

I stepped up to the window. “Make hers a double, extra cheese and butter.”

The woman shook her head and laughed. “Mothers. They always have a hold on us, don’t they?”

Yes, they do...

And now for some shameless BSP:

In addition to the Odelia Grey mysteries and the Ghost of Granny Apples mysteries, I write a digital short story series - Holidays From Hell.  And, yes, I have a Mother's Day story!  It's called Pull My Paw, available for only 99 cents from Amazon.

A dog with a flatulence problem wasn’t high on Judy Bowen’s wish list of Mother’s Days gifts, no matter how cute the canine. So imagine her surprise when the spa gift her eldest daughter, Norma, usually gave her was substituted with a little dog named Crankshaft who suffers from tummy trouble.

A tale of three mothers

That's Dandy Gilver's, Opal Jones's and mine.

Dandy Gilver's mother started her off with a good smack in the chops by naming her Dandelion.  Mr and Mr Leston were great devotees of the Arts and Crafts movement, so popular in the late Victorian age, and it seemed like a good idea, I suppose, to call their daughter after one of England's most neglected wildflowers.  I think, in contrast, that if you want someone in your family to have a funny name you should change your own.

After the christening, Dandy's mother receded and Nanny Palmer came to the fore, as was usual in the upper classes at the turn of the 19th century.  It's Nanny Palmer whose voice is still in Dandy's head and whose spirit hovers.

 

 

Dandy got a better deal than Opal Jones, the heroine of my new stand-alone AS SHE LEFT IT (8th June).  When the book opens Opal is coming back to her childhood home after her mother's death.  Here's what she finds:

The curtains were shut, like always, and the bed, like always, was heaped up

with pillows and cushions, piled high with quilts and blankets, a nest. 

Magazines and a toilet roll, some clothes, some bottles of course, an ashtray

and a big soup tin without its label for emptying the ashtray into and, where

the blankets were pushed back and the pillows and cushions were flattened,

a round hole, tiny.  Big enough to hold her mother?  Must have been.

 

She hadn’t died there; she’d gone to the hospital; admissions, acute medical

– or that bit of acute medical that’s basically the drying-out ward – then HD

then ICU and there she had died.  But it had started here.  One night, or one

morning more likely, she had climbed in and never climbed out again.

 

My two heroines have very different lives and grew up into very different women.  Dandy is brisk and capable and it would take a lot to sink her. Opal is tough on the outside but wary of going to places that will open her wounds. One the other hand, Opal can feel things; Dandy believes that feelings are not quite respectable and avoids them.  Hm, maybe they're more similar than I realised, after all.

 

I got a whole lot lucker than either Dandy or Opal when it came to mums. My mother, Jean McPherson, brought up four girls, knitted all their jerseys, cooked two hot meals a day from scratch and taught them a love of books.  What more could you ask for?  Okay, themed launch-party cakes:

 

 

cut with the McPherson family musical cake-slice. UK Mother's Day has been and gone but every day is a good day to say "Thanks, Mum."

 



 



If you wanna find hell with me...

"Describe your protagonist’s mother. How did her influence help shape your protagonist into the hero he or she became?"

Yikes. This week's question is a doozy. I mean, I get the Mother's Day angle and all, but some of us Criminal Minders write dark fare indeed, so whatever our attitudes toward our own mothers (hi, Mom!), our characters aren't likely to've sprung happy and well-adjusted from stable, supportive homes.

Sam Thornton, the hero (antihero?) of my Collector series, is a bit of an outlier as far as mystery protagonists go. See, Sam died back in '44, felled by an emissary of hell as a result of the devil's bargain he made to save his dying wife. And ever since, he - much like the man who killed him - has spent his days collecting the souls of the damned at hell's behest.

Sam doesn't think about his birth-mother much; she's part of a life he's long since left behind. But that's not to say he doesn't have a mother-figure. His handler, Lilith, is at once his boss, his mentor, his jailor, his confessor, his occasional antagonist, and quite possibly his closest friend. She also happens to be the physical embodiment of lust and carnal sin, so it's a minor miracle poor undead Sam doesn't have more issues than Oedipus and Norman Bates combined.

Those who've read DEAD HARVEST and THE WRONG GOODBYE are well aware Sam and Lilith's relationship is a complex one to say the least. But believe me when I tell you, you ain't seen nothing yet. The third book in the series, THE BIG REAP, focuses in part on the genesis of their relationship. It brings us back to Sam's first shaky days in hell's employ. To his first encounter with Lilith. To his first, and maybe most epic, collection ever. And when you see how it goes down, you'll understand why he never calls, never writes...

***

A note about my post's title: it's taken from Glenn Danzig's cheesy, awesome shock-rock single "Mother." It seemed appropriate for Sam and Lilith's particular brand of dysfunction. Personally, I prefer Sleater-Kinney's barn-burning riot grrl cover of the song to Danzig's corny macho posturing, but alas, YouTube failed me when I tried to find an S-K version of any quality. So, that said, enjoy the original:

Indebted

By Hilary Davidson

You don't want to ask Lily Moore about her mother. If you've read my books, you know they had a terrible relationship. In The Damage Done, the NYPD detectives investigating the death of a woman found in her sister's apartment make the mistake of bringing up Lily's mother in an interview. It doesn't go well. In fact, it goes like this:

“Cards on the table,” said Bruxton. He put both hands on the table and leaned forward, so that his face hovered close to mine. I guessed he was in his late thirties, but up close I saw the fault lines etched into his face. The lines made him look older, but the scars made him seem dangerous. “When were you planning to tell us about your mother?”  

“My mother?” My mouth was dry. “What does she have to do with this?”  

“We know,” he said ominously.  

“Know what?” I wasn’t going to make this easy for him. If he wanted to dredge up the past, he could do it alone.  

“Your mother killed herself on New Year’s Eve eleven years ago.”  

I stared back at him silently while my stomach clenched in a Gordian knot. For a moment I felt 18 again, as if I were hearing the news for the first time, feeling it with the force of a slap. Bruxton’s voice was as flat and jaded as that of the officer who had told me about my mother. There was something triumphant in his face that made it clear he knew more than he was saying. He expected me to roll over in shock, or break down in tears. Instead my hands clenched into fists under the metal table and my nails sliced into my palms. “What does that have to do with this dead woman I’ve never met before?” 

Bruxton stood up straight. “You’re a hard case, aren’t you?”  

“What do you think my mother has to do with this?” I said, my temper boiling over. “What, is that your first line of investigation when you find a dead body?”  

“No, but in this case…” Bruxton snarled back.  

“How did you find out about my mother?”  

There was an awkward glance between the detectives. “Actually, Brux was…” Renfrew started to say, but her partner cut her off.  

“A neighbor mentioned it,” he said.  

“What neighbor?” I demanded.  

“From down the hall. Sarah Lyons.”  

The face of the woman I’d met the day before floated into my mind. Claudia told me a little of your family history, she’d said. I imagined her gleefully spilling every ounce of gossip she’d gathered to the police. She’d pretend to be concerned, but deep down this was amusing for her. I’d disliked her when she’d shown up at Claudia’s door; now I loathed her. 

“Lily, it’s important you understand,” Renfrew continued. “We need to know all the facts in an investigation. Even if they don’t seem relevant to you.” Her calm voice was like balm on a wound. 

I took a deep breath. “My mother killed herself, but before she did, she had made many attempts. She would take pills, then call for help. They had to pump her stomach out at the hospital. You can check with Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca. She was there four times.” My shoulders were trembling. “I don’t think she wanted to die. It was her way of controlling Claudia and me. If we did something she didn’t like, she would threaten to kill herself.” 

“Had you done something she didn’t like?” Renfrew’s voice was soft. I nodded and looked down at my hands. They were wrestling in my lap like palsied snakes. “She didn’t want me to go back to college in New York City. I don’t think she meant to die. She just wanted me to come back, and not leave again.”

There's no way to antagonize Lily faster than bringing up her family history. But it follows her around wherever she goes. In the latest book, Evil in All Its Disguises, she knows something is terribly wrong at the Acapulco resort where she's staying, but she finds it hard to accept. Deep down, she's terrified that her feelings are a sign of mental illness and that she's following in her mother shadowy footsteps:

It took all of my energy to get my laptop out of the safe and onto the bed. At least I wasn’t dizzy anymore. The pounding in my head was probably from my paranoid delusions. Had I really thought someone was poisoning me? That was pure paranoia, and if there was one thing that terrified me more than anything else, it was the idea that I might end up like my mother. She was a drunk, but that wasn’t the worst of it. My mother had paranoid delusions that sometimes made her abusive, though she wasn’t completely crazy. She was also incredibly manipulative, and she had a talent for getting under my skin, and Claudia’s, wounding us with barbed words that went in like arrows and couldn’t ever be cleanly extracted. The last thing my mother ever said to me was, You only care about yourself, you selfish little bitch. I used to spend a lot of time wondering if she’d really meant that, or if she’d simply relished wielding words like weapons. Then I’d made the decision to put her out of my mind, and I did my best to stick to that.

When I was getting The Damage Done ready for publication, it hit me suddenly that people might mistake Lily's mother for my own. I realized that I'd given Lily my career and travel history and some of my personal quirks, and so it wouldn't be a stretch for people to wonder if my family history was like Lily's. That couldn't be further from the truth. My mom, Sheila Davidson, is my best friend, main cheerleader, and the kindest person I've ever known. She is also an unusually wise woman: when I was in second grade, she recognized my nature for what it was and got me into karate (a gift that keeps on giving). She's also the first reader on all of my books. This Mother's Day, all I can say is that I won the lottery when it comes to moms, and it's made all the difference in my life. I ended up dedicating The Damage Done to my mom, saying, "For my mother, Sheila Davidson, for so many reasons." Now you know some of the reasons!