That’s weird, I know. I can’t listen to music because it makes me want to dance or transports me to somewhere else, but I also don’t work well in silence. I used to, but after living in a construction zone for months as my house was being put back together after the CZU fire in 2020 and having compressors, hammers, and saws around me all day, I lost the ability to write when it’s quiet.

There is an unexpected consequence to writing to talk, though. I just released book six in my PIP Inc. Mysteries series, “What Lucy Heard,” and as I was reading through it again in an attempt to keep from embarrassing myself when  the editor saw it, I noticed it had subtle references to this year’s big new stories that I must have heard as I listened and typed. Evidently, they found their way into my subconscious even as I thought I was ignoring what I heard and that it was just writing white noise.

The cover of the book features a Cybertruck. When I was deciding what sort of vehicle the accused murderer should drive, something which matters for the story, I picked a Cybertruck not only because it’s quiet but also because that vehicle was so prominent in the news in the days of Elon Musk.

At one point in the story my protagonist, Pat Pirard, the former Santa Cruz County Law Librarian who has become an unlicensed private investigator to keep her and her dalmatian, Dot, and her ginger tabby, Lord Peter Wimsey—yes, a definite nod to the famed Dorthy Sayers detective—housed and fed after she was downsized out of her job, is coyly asking a suspect if it’s possible to make a text message disappear to see what they know. Her suspect says it’s easy if you use something like Signal to do it. I came up with that particular app after the news was all about a reporter accidently being included in a hi-level phone conversation he shouldn’t have heard and that a feature of the app was that conversations could be made to disappear.

The murder victim was a serial philanderer which gave me many suspects to play with since there were numerous people who had reason to want him dead. If that storyline is reminiscent of recent headlines, it’s probably not a coincidence. And the book ends with the protagonist asking her husband what will happen to the killer. He responds that rule of law must be followed or we have nothing, also a topic in the news today.

Editing is finished and the book was released on August 15^th so any new current events and news stories will have to wait until the next book to make it to my pages.

I’m preparing to read it aloud in serial form to a group called Well Connected starting on September 9^th. You have to sign up to join, but listening is free if you are over sixty.  I love doing live readings and have read all my books to that group. Here’s the link to sign up if you want to listen in to “What Lucy Heard.” https://frontporch.net/ connect/well-connected/ I hope you’ll join me.

Every time I start a new book, I wonder how my words and ideas will come together. Expressing myself sometimes can be tough. Can I do it? Because, let’s face it, it’s more than stringing a lot of pretty words together. Can I find the right ones to tantalize the reader into staying with me ‘til the end of the book? Or will the words and ideas become a mish-mash?

Remember Snoopy in the Peanuts comics? He used to sit on top of his doghouse and bang on a typewriter, writing the words, “It was a dark and stormy night…” Snoopy stole that line from Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1830 novel, Paul Clifford. “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind that swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.” Mr. Bulwer-Lytton himself stole it from the journal of the Doddington shipwreck that was published in 1757. Although Snoopy claims his great, great to the 15th power grandfather, Basil MacDoggal, was the originator of those words, written when he was aboard the Doddington as a mere pup. What it shows is you can’t keep a good sentence down.

What that sentence led to was a worldwide contest, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, where writers would write marathon run-on sentences for the pure joy of doing so. And the tradition was carried on until the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest hung up its pen in 2025 after 42 years. Here is just a sampling of the yearly winners:

“On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained.” — Rephah Berg, Oakland, CA

“The corpse exuded the irresistible aroma of a piquant, ancho chili glaze enticingly enhanced with a hint of fresh cilantro as it lay before him, coyly garnished by a garland of variegated radicchio and caramelized onions, and impishly drizzled with glistening rivulets of vintage balsamic vinegar and roasted garlic oil; yes, as he surveyed the body of the slain food critic slumped on the floor of the cozy, but nearly empty, bistro, a quick inventory of his senses told corpulent Inspector Moreau that this was, in all likelihood, an inside job.” — Bob Perry, Milton, MA

I’ve read a few books, particularly by novice writers with similar opening sentences, but I suspect they weren’t thinking of the contest when they wrote them. I may have mentioned this before, but one newbie went on about a building for an entire paragraph. This building had nothing to do with the plot and was never mentioned again. A paragraph is a long time to wax poetic about anything non-germane to the story, especially on page 1. However, as it had only been one sentence, he could have submitted it to the B-L contest and just might have won. I like to look on the bright side of bad writing.

Hmmmm. I wonder if I can write one of those danged sentences? How about: “It was a dark and stormy morning with drafts swirling around like clothes in the rinse cycle of a washing machine, white clothes, bleached within an inch of their lives because that’s what you do with white clothes, bleach them, even though it weakens the integrity of the fabric, especially cotton, and cotton-linen blends, and can turn them yellow, not blue the way bluing does.”

What do you think?

2025 is the 20th anniversary of the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries. I created the family of detectives living in Palo Alto back in 2005, centered around protagonist Liana Alvarez, better known as Lee. The anniversary made me nostalgic, and I thought back on each story. Dumbfounded, I discovered that Lee was in one dangerous situation after another in every single book.

I had to face it. I like to have Lee in peril. Actually, I love it. And the more challenging the peril, the better. When I come up with a new catastrophe for her to endure in one of the books, I chortle in a way that would make Vincent Price feel right at home. When I think of another calamity, I shamelessly chortle louder.

I’ve stranded Lee at the top of a tree eye-to-eye with a territorial falcon. In another book, she crawls around inside a yucko garbage truck looking for a specific clue, ruining brand-new silk pajamas. In yet another, she’s chased by a woman armed with deadly poison darts, then held captive by said lunatic at her own wedding, a wedding at which nothing goes right. Lee’s been conked on the head, arrested for murder, trapped in an airless mine shaft, and even shot in the arm by a villain on a boat in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico during a hurricane.

What’s the matter with me? Why did I do twenty years of these things to a young(ish), charming woman, whose only fault was being in my books? As I look back on it, I’ve been merciless.

In my latest WIP, Cleopatra Slept Here, Lee reluctantly accompanies her entire family, pets included, on a private plane to Egypt for a working vacation. They are to join an archaeological dig, receiving no pay but having free room and board on a beautiful ship docked on the Nile in Luxor. The goal of the dig is to discover who Cleopatra’s real mother was. Apparently, they didn’t have birth certificates back then.

Once in Egypt, the Alvarez family is followed by unknown persons. Then Lee receives a warning note telling her to go back to where she belongs. But she soldiers on, looking forward to seeing ancient pyramids, temples, and museums, the sights that make Egypt one of the most magical countries in the world.

But I got in there, and in my own nasty way, made sure Lee doesn’t see any of the sights. Instead, she’s in and out of police stations, grappling with felons, crawling around in the ship’s hold seeking a missing youth, and leading a camel chase through the desert.

Wait! Maybe I can be absolved. She does manage to see the Nile River while on the elegant Blue Nile, the ship housing the dig’s personnel. On further thought, no absolution here. Lee sees the Nile a little too “up close and personal” when she has to jump in to save Tugger, her cat, thrown overboard by an unknown bad guy. Right after that, there’s an encounter with a deadly Egyptian Cobra hiding in the wardrobe closet of her cabin. And then there’s the – never mind. Sufficeth it to say, I’ve been coming up with messes for her to get into continually. Why, on why? Well, there’s only one explanation:

The devil made me do it.

I’m having an unusually quiet (writing) week, listening to the noise of a hammer and a radio playing on the lawn as workers repair my porch. I could write during the racket, interspersed with the sounds of traffic and occasional voices passing on the sidewalk. But instead I’m marveling at how clear my to-do list is. This summer, instead of planning to get the Crime Spell Books anthology out the door to KDP in September, it’s almost ready to go—in August. I have time to work on a short story and the sixth Anita Ray mystery. How did this happen, I ask?

Over the last several years, I’ve trimmed my volunteer activities, cutting back on responding to last-minute requests for help, or invitations to join another committee. But as I see blocks of time open up and think of things I’ve put off and can now get to, I’m reminded of something else. I didn’t get here on my own. I had help. 

The one key reason I continue to volunteer for various groups devoted to writers and writing, artists and their mediums, is I believe in the importance of sharing what I know with others. When I started out writing, back in the 1980s and even earlier, in college, friends read my work and offered suggestions. That meant they took time for me. I joined a writer’s group, the first of several, and listened carefully to how they commented on each other’s work in a way that was clear and respectful, and vowed to always do the same. I went to classes, asked questions, offered to help organize workshops, and read other writers’ work. As my skills improved, and I began to publish short fiction and then novels, I was invited to participate on conference panels. I read and commented on work by writers I didn’t know, wrote reviews, composed blurbs. I enjoyed it all.

The kind of volunteer work I do with and for other writers has changed over the years. My initial modest reader responses to someone’s new story has now been replaced with a critique of how a panel will work with these writers or those, who brings what to the table and how will the writers complement each other. I refer new writers to agents I think will like their work, I advise writers interested in self-publishing what that will mean (or not mean).

I think it matters that writers share what they have learned on their own or from others, participate in the larger community, and help bring along new writers. We benefit from working with each other. Even during my college years, when I worked on the student humor magazine, I understood that to succeed, we had to work with each other. That has never not been true in all the years since. I’ve enjoyed watching new writers find their voice, an agent, a publisher; established writers try something new; others take a risk and stretch themselves. That “top of the heap” some strive for is not a peak; it’s a mesa. There’s a lot of room at the top, or whatever we call it. Sharing it with others is more fun than standing there alone.