It was a Sunday afternoon in June. The temps and the sun and the sound of a baseball game on the television reminded me of those meals I looked forward to every week when I was a kid. The inviting aroma of pan-fried chicken wafted through my grandmother’s kitchen and lolled through the dining room. Thick-sliced, just picked tomatoes mounded from their plate on the dinner table. In the fridge was a pitcher of brewed iced tea. The potato salad sat heaped in a serving bowl comfortably slathered in my grandmother’s secret ratio of mayo to mustard, a touch of sugar and a sprinkle of celery seeds. And biscuits . . . oh, my. I lolled about in this dreamy cloud of culinary nostalgia until I began to contemplate cooking for myself.
I started thinking about recipes. I started thinking about the great dishes my grandmother and father could whip up without directions using just their unique sense of proportion and seasoning. I started thinking about the food fiascos I had single-handedly instigated with my lack of any of the above. I sat down until the pipe dream of my cooking could cool and evaporate. Close call! What the heck was I thinking?
It may have started with my contemplation of mystery novels that involved cooking, some that even included recipes. Who wouldn’t love The Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder by Joann Fluke where the Cozy Cow Dairy milkman lies dispatched in a scattering of cookie crumbs? Or how about Glazed Murder by Jessica Beck in which our amateur sleuth opens and runs the “Donut Hearts” coffee shop very peacefully until a dead body appears at the shop’s door. Ah, deserts and just deserts in the context of our favorite treats.
If you’re a Chinese food fan, there is always Death by Dumpling by Vivien Chen, part of “The Noodle Shop” series. Coffee anyone? Honey Roasted by Cleo Coyle offers us a clever coffee shop owner matching wits with murderous chefs in the cutthroat world of restaurant startups. And my fave would have to be Deadly Inside Scoop by Abby Collette – you know that murder victim is going to be found in the freezer! And if you want to sample the wilder side of edibles, try A Half-Baked Murderby author Emily George about a pastry chef who opens a cannabis bakery; her beloved aunt becomes a murder suspect and our baker must disprove those half-baked theories of her aunt’s guilt.
As I contemplated these tasty reads, the urge to whip out a rolling pin and attempt the perfect crust grew dimmer until they were not even a speck on my event horizon. I could still savor the stories, the twists and sprinkling of clues without donning an apron and plunging into the too-deep end of a Kitchen Aid mixing bowl. I took a deep breath and started thinking more like my old self about cooking – and eating! Now where could I make reservations and get that dream Sunday dinner?
An undefeated season meets a singular phenom who could drop a shot from mid-court. March Madness Women’s Final was a three-ring, three-point thriller and we could not look away. It was legendary play from surefire hall of famers. Dawn Staley and Caitlin Clark drove to the goal, opposing teams but united in belief of their skill, their discipline and their power.
One fine day in 1891, Dr James Naismith, was lolling about in Springfield, MA trying to think up a sport that one could play in the winter. His boss, head of the YMCA International Training School, Luther Gulick, gave Naismith 14 days to think up a game to counter the rowdy energies of young men with little to do in snow-bound New England. Gulick wanted something that required vigorous activity but that did not take the physical toll of the immensely popular game of football. He wanted an indoor game – way too cold to play anything outside – and that game was to be more skill than brute force.
Five minutes later Senda Berenson, physical culture director at Smith College, was meeting with Naismith. Berenson began teaching basketball to her student in hopes the activity would improve their physical health. Of course, this was the Victorian era so every man jack of an athlete, would-be athlete and plain old misogynist had something negative in comment on this development
Charles Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin, co-founder of the International Olympic Committee and known as the father of the modern Olympic Games called women’s basketball “indecent.” Then again, he also decried women participating in any sport. He declared that the Olympics with women would be “impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and indecent”. The “Games”, he said, were created for “the solemn and periodic exaltation of male athleticism” with “female applause as a reward”.
Oh, give us a break! Another road to success barricaded by short-sighted males with personas as fragile as a soap bubble. Unadmitted fear in the male psyche coursed like a heat-seeking missile. How could men compete with women for the spotlight? Unimaginable to the dim and unallowable to the ones who recognized reality.
By gosh, they threw everything but that proverbial sink at us. Scroll back to the 1967 Boston Marathon. In 1967, women weren’t allowed to officially enter the Boston Marathon, so Kathrine Switzer entered that year as “K.V. Switzer” to hide her gender. Two miles in, an official tried to eject her from the course. She finished anyway, becoming the first woman to complete the race as an official entrant. Women weren’t officially allowed to enter the race until 1972. Women’s marathoning wasn’t part of the Olympics until 1984.
And were we glued to the TV in 1973 to watch a tennis match? We were. On a September night in Houston, Billie Jean King smashed an ace for women in sports with her defeat of Bobby Riggs, a self-described male chauvinist pig. King subsequently organized a meeting that led to the creation of the Women’s Tennis Association. She threatened to boycott the 1973 U.S. Open if male and female champions were not paid the same, which led to the Open becoming the first major tennis tournament to offer equal prize money.
Shoot forward to a few weeks ago, Dawn Staley and Caitlin Clark planted another flag in our craggy climb to recognition and equality. Unhampered by the “nervous fatigue” warning from starched collar Victorian men. Bowing to none who forced women’s teams to pay their own way until Title IX, they played. They played to a packed house of 24M, almost double the audience for NCAA Men.
That skirmish is over, the giant leap taken. It could not have been without the play of hundreds of women who went before. I still remember when I played guard in a tunic, a dress; I couldn’t even cross center court and there were six of us. It was a soft game for people perceived as too soft to play the real thing.
Basketball and the sports arena is but one metaphor for women’s emerging role. We will bring the full court press. We will block shots aimed at keeping us subservient. We will not go back to anything where we are “less than.” And we will vote to secure our gains and continue our forward advance.
“I figure, if a girl wants to be a legend, she should go ahead and be one.” —Calamity Jane
“That deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball.” We’ve all read stories of the physically challenged who have overcome. Like most, I could not conceive that nothing threatening my life and my work would happen to me. Hey, I made it almost to 75 years without fear that at any moment I could shoot off the planet like a punctured balloon. Those “bad things” happened to others. Until it didn’t
It was a Colorado August afternoon. The sun sizzled the thin air like deep fry oil awaiting the fries. Over Long’s Peak a restless motion of super-heated sky roiled clouds into towering banks of cumulous thunderheads. The breeze stiffened. It’s always a crap shoot as to whether that weather would remain a speculation or pound the earth below.
I decided not to chance it. I needed to lug an open bag of mulch into the garage. There were three roofers shooting nails into spanking new shingles on my roof. Yeah, they told me not to go outside but . . . . Within inches of the garage door, a heavy something slugged the back of my wrist. I looked up first – saw nothing and no one. When I glanced at my wrist, I expected to see a bruise, a big bruise. I saw bone. I saw ligament tatters. I saw stars.
Every worst-case outcome sped through my horrified head as a friend punched the accelerator on the way to the closest emergency center.
I had an initial surgery to reattach my ligaments. I sported a spiffy purple fiberglass cast, followed by a softer support splint a few weeks later. Thought I was on the short path to recovery. But the incision refused to close two small but nonetheless oozy and resistant-to-closing wounds. A month after the usual healing period of such an opening, the incision gaps refused to progress.
My optimism started to flag. My hand hurt and it wasn’t functioning. I couldn’t type. While I previously viewed the wound as an annoyance, I began to doubt. The surgeon speculated on errant stitches and recommended a reopening of the site to hunt. Nothing turned up. While I had just completed my second book, musings on long-term disability at first trickled. After disappointment in the second surgery though, the intermittent disaster scenarios became a steady flow. My emotional state sank like the Titanic – without benefit of the band or Leo DiCaprio!
I thought back to the writers who I read had survived the incidents and setbacks of bad fortune. I considered Hemingway who endured back-to-back plane crashes only one day apart. In order to extricate himself from the day-two crash, Hemingway had to ram the plane door with his head. He survived with a legacy of persistent killer headaches and the after effects of damages to his kidneys, liver and spleen. Given my own depressed state engendered by far less egregious injuries, I could not imagine how Papa managed to write with the incessant distraction of head pain. Of course, he tried suicide multiple times before he set himself free.
I also was reminded of Stephen King’s almost fatal walk along a narrow Maine road where he sustained a broken hip, collapsed lung, multiple lacerations and his right leg was so badly shattered doctors debated amputation. At the scene, EMT’s told King’s brother he might not make it to the hospital. He spent three weeks in said hospital and endured five surgeries. In the immediate aftermath, he decided he would not write again. The pain was too overwhelming. Still, the siren call of writing persisted and, determined to complete his Dark Tower series, he began perspective repair. And we know King did, in fact, return to his work which became his saving grace.
Debilitating what-ifs swirled faster than a mixing bowl beater on high when I learned from the surgeon that a third opening of the wound might be of help. I swore I wasn’t going to cry. Fear cozied up to me. It wanted attention and I gave it. Like a hapless customer in the clutches of a time share salesman, I had no wherewithal to flee. I could not rationalize my way out. I experienced my self growing smaller and smaller. Inversely, fear expanded by leaps.
In a moment of clarity, a still small voice whispered “Enough.” I clung to that and like a climber scaling a fearsome bare rock wall, I gathered myself to act. I spent time learning the specifics of how my ligaments were re-attached. I talked with others who had similar injuries from which they’d recovered. I learned about things I could do to promote my own healing. Once I retook my rightful place as chief of extricating myself from this painful tangent, my strength returned, though slowly. And like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, I embraced the necessaries that would restore me. I booted my PC and took up where I had left off.
Without overt summoning, the flint of defiance stuck the stone of resolve. I would find a way and I began to take heart as surely as I had begun to take action. It took some time but I found a chronic wound specialist who made a suggestion for a trial remedy. It worked!
With success came confidence and I’ve been able to return to my writing. At my lowest point, I had given up the idea of being able to create another book, but ultimately, I’ve never been a quitter. My recent brush with defeat is far distant in the rear view. While I continue to have healthy respect for “black swans” and “freak accidents”, they no longer threaten me with nagging residence in my head.
Every adversity has the potential to cut down or build character. I want always to keep the faith and it was the words of Churchill, whose island was crumbling under the Luftwaffe’s devasting rain of bombing, who delivered the message of defiance that stiffened the Brits’ backbone. If you’re going through hell, keep going. And I am.
Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw— For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law. He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair: For when they reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!
T.S. Eliot
The Macavity Awards, established in 1987, are a literary award for mystery writers. Winners are nominated and voted upon annually by members of the Mystery Readers International, the award is named for the “mystery cat” of T. S. Eliot‘s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The award is given in four categories—best novel, best first novel, best nonfiction, and best short story. Congrats to all this year’s nominees!! Winners will be announced at the San Diego Bouchercon which runs from August 30 to September 3.
Like to vote for your favorite but don’t know if you’re eligible? Send an email to janet@mysteryreaders.org.
Here are the 2023 MACAVITY NOMINEES:
Best Myster Novel
Back to the Garden by Laurie R. King (Bantam)
Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone (MCD)
A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin (Little, Brown)
Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)
You just boarded a plane to New York. There are one hundred and forty-three other passengers onboard. What you don’t know is that thirty minutes before the flight your pilot’s family was kidnapped. For his family to live, everyone on your plane must die. The family will only survive if the pilot follows his orders and crashes the plane.
T.J. Newman, the author of the suspense internationally acclaimed “Falling”, graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University with a degree in Musical Theater in 2006. She moved to Queens and hopped from job to job, facing rejection at many of her acting auditions, and eventually moved back to Arizona.
Head held perhaps a little lower because of so many slammed doors, Newman persevered and landed a job working in a bookstore. Then, the wanderlust that runs in her family caught up with her. She began her new career as a flight attendant for Virgin America Airlines. It was here, surprisingly, that she found her love of writing.
Newman was struck by inspiration while on a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to New York. Using cocktail napkins, a move reminiscent of great songwriters and inventors, she began to jot down ideas for her book during layovers.
Her job allowed her to people-watch constantly, which contributed to her keen eye for detail. Newman recalls that she never let anyone know she was writing a book, saying it was less scary to write and never have anyone read her work than to stand in front of a panel of dismissive judges and audition for a play. This only goes to prove the quiet bravery of embarking on an impassioned experiment turned full-blown career. When her draft was finally complete, Newman taught herself how to contact publishers with the help of a book called “The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published”. She was turned down by countless people on account of her inexperience, but pushed onwards until someone said “yes!”.
Today, the rights to T.J. Newman’s novel have been sold in 24 foreign territories as well as to Universal Pictures (motion picture coming soon). The book was named “Best Book of the Year” by many organizations and hit #2 on the NYT Bestseller list at its debut. Her success allowed her to leave her position as a flight attendant and pursue her passion for authorship full-time.
Let this story be a message to all of the aspiring writers out there: you are never too old, too busy, or too deep in a career to follow a dream.
From reviewers:
“T. J. Newman has written the perfect thriller! A must-read.”
Gillian Flynn
“Stunning and relentless. This is Jaws at 35,000 feet.”
Don Winslow
“Falling is the best kind of thriller…Nonstop, totally authentic suspense.”
James Patterson
“Amazing…Intense suspense, shocks, and scares…Chilling.”
In recent years, the landscape of crime fiction has become delightfully unpredictable, reshaping the genre’s expectations and norms. The once rigid boundaries of classic whodunits, thrillers, and noir have transformed into a fluid arena, thriving on audacious experimentation. If you’ve been following crime fiction, you’re likely to have noticed some fascinating trends that are captivating readers across the globe.
Firstly, the genre is currently experiencing a significant shift towards inclusivity and diversity, a reflection of the broad societal demand for representation. While crime fiction has always been a lens into society’s nuances, it is now delivering narratives from a wider range of cultural, social, and geographical perspectives. The protagonists and settings have become more eclectic, the mysteries and crimes more layered. The inclusion of diverse authors also means authentic voices and distinct storytelling styles, enriching the genre’s oeuvre.
A prominent example of this trend is the burgeoning sub-genre of “Glocal” crime fiction – narratives that blend global themes with local cultures and situations. Such stories tend to explore socio-political dimensions of crime while deftly weaving in cultural nuances. The Scandinavian noir wave, with its unique blend of grim settings and sharp social commentary, has paved the way for other regional influences, such as Latin Noir, Asian Noir, and more.
Secondly, crime fiction has evolved from linear “whodunits” to complex psychological narratives that prioritize “whydunits.” The genre’s focus has transitioned from just solving a crime to exploring the motivations and mental intricacies behind it. This shift towards psychological crime fiction is fueled by readers’ curiosity about the darker recesses of the human mind. Consequently, crime fiction’s palette has grown richer, delving into the perpetrator’s psyche and blurring the lines between villain and victim.
Another fascinating trend is the rise of the “unreliable narrator,” a trope that enhances the enigma and suspense of the story. This technique, where the narrative is relayed through a character whose credibility is compromised, keeps readers on the edge, as they grapple with layers of deceit and ambiguity. It creates a pervasive sense of unease, a hall of mirrors, where distinguishing truth from illusion becomes a challenging exercise.
The fourth trend is the incorporation of technology in crime narratives, mirroring its pervasive impact on our lives. In a world dominated by the digital revolution, tech-savvy detectives and cybercrimes are increasingly featured in plots, replacing the traditional magnifying glass with the high-powered microscope of digital forensics.
Lastly, true crime narratives have found a new home within the realm of crime fiction. Inspired by real-life events, these narratives are blurring the line between fact and fiction, offering readers an exciting blend of authenticity and narrative invention.
In essence, contemporary crime fiction is continuously evolving, mirroring the changing facets of our society. Its current trends reflect an all-encompassing world, a deeper understanding of the human psyche, a sophisticated integration of technology, and a fluid mix of reality and fiction. As writers, it’s an exciting time to be part of this genre’s evolution, as crime fiction continues to stretch its boundaries and shatter its own cliches.
Valerie Webster and Driven: A Rita Mars Thriller in the spotlight via Author of the Day interview.
Make your next book club event an author event with a writer who’s lived the cases, developed the crime fighting technologies. Contact Valerie Webster today.
