Maintenance

A few weekends ago, I was packing an overnight bag to go spend a couple of days with a dear friend in New Orleans. Not wanting to schlep up into the attic for a small suitcase, I grabbed a couple of bags I use for the gym and made do.

While I was shoving a few changes of clothes into one of those bags, I found myself feeling self-conscious.

Why am I bringing so many clothes? Do I really need all the stuff?

And then, when I was packing my toiletries, another series of self-conscious queries.

Do I really need my curling iron? Why am I bothering with my face cream, I’m only going to be gone for two nights?

And why all the self-doubt? Why all the hemming and hawing about bringing a few changes of clothes and my daily regimen of beauty products? Because I do not want to give the appearance of being “high maintenance.”

It’s been a thing with me for as long as I can remember. I don’t like checking bags because I don’t want anyone to think (heaven forbid) that I’d pack an extra pair of shoes that I may or may not wear.

I rejected night creams and skin care products for decades because I thought I should be content with my rapidly drying, in desperate need of biotin and collagen skin. I’m a free spirit. Free spirits don’t moisturize.

I am a 43-year-old woman who only recently learned how to properly curl my hair with a curling iron because, you guessed it, I am too busy, too intellectual, too whatever the fuck other form of self-deprecating loathing disguised as empowerment bullshit to spend twenty minutes curling my hair in the morning.

The question you may be asking yourself, - and I eventually had the self-awareness to ask myself the same question while driving to New Orleans that Friday after work - is who was I worried about judging me for my need to have a couple of changes of clothes and my desire to look as attractive as possible during my girls' weekend with one of my best friends?

Who?

Certainly, not my friend.

Definitely not my mama.

Firstborn could give a flying fig how many bags Mommy shoves into the back of her car.

So, who?

Me.

And why?

Because I’m low maintenance. Except that I’m not. I maintain my body. I take care of my skin and my nails and my hair and my health and my teeth because I’m a grown woman who loves my body and would like to see it last in as good a condition as possible for as long as possible. There. Secret’s out.

Being a woman in America is a judgmental nuclear arms race to the bottom.

We’re all supposed to be beautiful when we roll out the bed in the morning. #nomakeup #nofilter #wokeuplikethis #fuckyouyoudidnot

Let’s take moisturizing, shall we?

My teenaged nephew with whom I share a bathroom LOVES to tease me about my moisturizing routine because, you know, A) he’s a dude B) his skin still has collagen and C) he’s got one drawer in the vanity we share, while I have two drawers and an entire cabinet so I’ve got to give him something in return… fair is fair, after all.

Back to moisturizing.

I gigged in smoky bars and stayed up all hours writing music and running sound for most of my life. When I stopped that, I woke up every few hours to nurse a baby for four years and then, just on the other side of weaning him, I get the bright idea to wake up every day at 5 a.m. to write, regardless of how little or how much sleep I got the night before. My skin is exhausted, y’all. It’s not going to produce collagen unless I force feed it. And I have that weird quirk that I mentioned earlier, although I’m sure no woman or man in the history of humanity has ever wanted to look youthful and rested and attractive for as long as they possibly can. Just me and Dorian Gray, then.

Despite that, whenever my nephew razzes me about my collection of creams, I feel defensive. Like I’m doing something vane and shameful.

I’m supposed to love my lines, right? #aginggracefully #lovemywrinkles #fuckyoutoo

The reason those moments of internalized judgment bother me so is that they’re actually coming from the outside, not from inside me, not really. And they are everywhere and you are damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

However you feel about your body; whatever beauty regimen you are employing; I will guarantee you that you, my friend, have been judged for it – but you probably already know that.

When I posted (what I thought was) an inspirational before/after post about losing 60 pounds and changing my life for the better, the next day, one of my Facebook acquaintances (I don’t actually know this person in real life) posted something about how people need to be more sensitive when they “brag” about a big weight loss because it makes those who are struggling with their own weight feel bad.

Seriously? I lose 60 pounds and want to celebrate that and somehow this is about you? Okey-dokey.

On the flipside, when a woman has fully embraced her size and loves to eat mac ‘n’ cheese hamburgers regardless of her weight, what does society do? Tell her that she should really watch what she eats because she has such a “pretty face” and would “look so much better if she only lost that weight.”

Seriously? Who asked you? Did she ask for your opinion of her weight when she posted that delicious picture of a mac ‘n’ cheese hamburger that I would eat six of if it wouldn’t land me in the ER? No, she did not.

High maintenance women are judged by low maintenance women:

“It only takes me 15 minutes to get ready in the morning.”

Mazel tov, bitch.

Low maintenance women are judged by high maintenance women:

 “I think you’re just so brave. I could never go anywhere without my face on.”

Yeah. Brave is definitely the word you were looking for there. I’m a motherfucking hero.

And don’t get me started on dudes. Gentlemen, when your female friend/colleague/significant other tells you how much it costs to have her hair cut and colored, do not, under any circumstances feel entitled to tell her that you spend $20 at Sportclips. As delightful, and, I’m sure, provocatively attractive you would find women suddenly all sporting Men’s Haircuts #1-9 on the menu, I’m going to take a hard pass.

Women are teased for taking care of their skin.

Mocked for the extra time they take with their hair.

Judged for how little or how much they weigh.

And then, social media demands we post selfies with bad lighting taken by shitty camera phones and hashtag our brave little hearts out.

So. Here’s mine.

 #yesmakeup #hairdid #filteredAF #mylevelofmaintenanceisjustfine

The Red Herring

In every good murder mystery, it is important to choose your antagonist wisely. With a little careful planning, you can develop a smorgasbord of possible suspects from which your reader can choose their favorite candidate; dropping clues and motives and suspicious behavior; and the best part is: you can use your fellow mystery authors’ devices to your advantage.

In this Mystery Monday post, I’m going to take you through three common cons that I’ve found useful to deceive readers into thinking the plot was going to go sideways, zigging one way, when it was actually zagging another.

To avoid spoilers, I will not be referencing any of my books in this post to use as examples. You’re just going to have to trust me that these work well. Very well.

The Lifetime Movie Gambit

This one is easy because it plays on a plot structure that is used in so many predictable Made-For-Television movies that we all grew up watching, back before Hulu and Netflix ruined the genre by making them so damned good.

And you know this plot better than you think you do:

• Act 1: Our lovely heroine is struck by a tragic event. The death of a loved one. A stalker making her life difficult. A vicious attack from which she must recover.

• Act 2: Said lovely heroine meets a man. A wonderful man. A kind man. But she can’t see what the camera shows us and the clever film composer alludes to - there’s something off.

• Act 3: The wonderful man isn’t wonderful at all. He’s the reason for her tragedy and she must fight him to save her life.

There are many variations on this plot. And the reason it became so popular is probably because Mary Higgins Clark did it so fucking well and so successfully in more than a few of her best sellers.

But we know this one. We’ve grown immune to its deception. We roll our eyes and say, “The dude did it. What is wrong with her? Nobody is that nice.”

Out of the Past

This makes it a great one to throw in as a distraction. Because most readers will gravitate towards you being trite. Don’t feel bad. Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane teed up Mary Higgins Clark with that whole Femme Fatale nonsense. MHC just changed up the play and the Lifetime Movie Network took the ball and ran with it.

All you have to do is not be trite.

Sure, it’s fun to make the nice guy/gal really be the bad guy/gal and fuck with your main character’s emotions. But it’s predictable. A generation of authors has beat us all to the punch.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use it. It just means you’re going to have to be super cunning to pull it off.

For the rest of us, it does make a fabulous red herring to manipulate our reader into assuming the most obvious solution is the correct one. While we hide clues in plain sight pointing to the real killer.

The Stereotype Ploy

We all have biases. Gender bias. Sexual Orientation bias. And they’re not all bad. Hear me out on this. I am not advocating for you to cater to a reader's racist, sexist, or homophobic impulses. I’m talking about that other kind of bias.

I write what I like to call Feminist Noir™. My heroine is tough. Her husband is egalitarian as fuck. My readers, by and large, share my viewpoint. So, I know, for example, they’re not going to take issue with a drag queen. In fact, they’re going to have a natural impulse to defend her.

Let’s add fuel to that fiery impulse and make this drag queen incredibly charming. She’s talented and intelligent and witty and kind and the last person about whom any of my readers would ever think a nasty thought. Because they believe, as I do, that we’re all created equal and we all have the right to self-determination.

In the same novel, let’s add an ignorant white dude with anger issues. He pops off too easy. He says cruel and hurtful things. Maybe he drinks too much or has a drug problem.

Who, I ask you, are they going to suspect more? The charming drag queen with the fabulous shoe collection? Or the dick with the drug habit?

You following me, now?

The Stereotype Ploy allows you to play with society’s norms while leading your readers down the primrose path of distraction.

This is a James Patterson technique that’s brilliant. It’s the sweet and thoughtful cop who turns out to be a serial killer. It’s the caregiver who bakes the best chocolate chip cookies that happen to be slowly poisoning everyone around them. In other words, it’s the person you want to love. Usually, they’re also the underdog in some way. Maybe they’ve just gone through a divorce. Maybe they have a stutter. Some minor disadvantage that makes you root for them all the more.

But this works best when you throw in a character that is designed and developed to rouse the reader’s animosity. That’s when you really get them.

Which leads us directly to our next red herring technique…

The Douchebag Maneuver

The characters we love to hate are so much fun to write, making this technique a hell of a good time to create. For this to work, you have to develop a character has done something despicable that the reader will have a difficult time forgiving.

A mother who abandoned her children. A lawyer who defrauded their clients.

They’re not a nice person. But, someone we do care about, usually our main character, cares for them. This horrible person who really annoys you and gives you a great big case of the blechs is important to the character who was designed for you to only love.

This is a tricky one, and super fun, because it can actually play out either way. It works whether the douchecanoe in question is the killer or not.

And here’s why: Gone Girl.

That’s right. Love it or hate it, you can thank the viral success of Gone Girl and the books that followed for this technique working so well.

Your reader will not want to believe that you are being so derivative as to make this despicable person the killer while simultaneously making them hope that they are.

If you really want to cook their noodle, you can provide some acceptable motivation for this character’s douchebaggery. Maybe the mother didn’t leave her children at all; their father actually stole them from her. Maybe the lawyer defrauded clients who were horrible people themselves.

Now your readers are going to want the douchebag to be redeemed. And a desire for redemption is a powerfully manipulative emotion. Just ask anyone who’s ever been in a co-dependent relationship.

The trick here is the motivation revelation. If they are the killer, you’re going to have to draw this out a lot longer. Drop weird clues pointing to another viable suspect. Shift blame around.

In this game, you are not drawing a straight line or even a squiggly one, you are drawing a perfect figure eight that leads the reader right back to their initial assumption.

Like I said, it’s a fun one.

And the cool thing about this technique is that if your characters are like mine and have a mind of their own? You can always pin the crime on another character and use your Douchebag Maneuver as a distraction.

Think about the movie Clue and its three endings. The movie was shot in such a way that two members of the cast of despicable idiots could have committed any of the crimes.

Actually, that movie uses all three of these schemes really well. And that’s because they work well when used in conjunction with one another.

So, be creative. Be original. Break a rule or two. Crafting an interesting journey to the solution is the best way to ensure your novel is fresh and new. And even if a few of your readers see right through you? Make them glad they’re on that path with you. Because that’s part of the fun, isn’t it?

A Safe Little Cage of Inertia

I’ve said it before along with a Greek chorus of other members of the human race: Change is hard.

If little changes, like getting a haircut you’re not sure is you or somebody moving your favorite chair away from its usual spot, can put you on edge, big changes can really do a number on you if you let them.

If you let them.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that phrase. What we allow in our lives. You see, I think a lot of the time, it’s easier, more expedient, and more comfortable to think of things happening to you. But, in general, things happen to you because you allow them to happen to you.

Stop. Before anybody goes off shift, I’m not talking about disease or some crazy asshole doing something crazy, I’m talking about life. Just ordinary, you’re going about your day-to-days and during that process you allow things to happen to you. You give other people permission to treat you a certain way. You give yourself permission to treat yourself a certain way, too.

And I lump myself into this group with you. You’re not alone. We all do it.

“I’m unhappy.”

Let’s start there.

Over the last few years, I have become convinced that I was unhappy for so long because I allowed myself to be unhappy. I knew the sources of my unhappiness. I just didn’t have the wherewithal to make the necessary changes because (say it with me and Greek chorus over here): 

“Change is fucking hard.”

— [insert brilliant, erudite source here]

It was easier, more expedient, and more comfortable for me to accept my unhappiness as my new state of being rather than to make the big changes to correct it.

Why? You ask.

Because even though you might have a gut feeling, an instinctual hunch as to the source of your unhappiness, it’s still just a working theory. And, like all great achievements, some theories can be wrong. Also, when you get to a point in your life where you are deeply unhappy, dissatisfied, disillusioned, or otherwise suffering from some form of ennui, it’s usually not just one thing you need to change.

If One Big Change is hard. Imagine how hard it is to make Many Big Changes. It’s overwhelming and terrifying and paralyzing. So, you sit, frozen in your state of ennui, knowing you need to do something, but not knowing where to start.

There’s an old adage that my mama loves to use, and it’s amazing how it easily it applies to many of life’s struggles.

Question: “How do you eat an elephant?”

Answer: “One bite at a time.”

The point is that nobody wants to eat an elephant, all that blubber and tusks and things, but if you had to, one little bite at a time would get the job done, right?

So, when faced with a daunting list of major and minor changes you must make to stop allowing yourself to be unhappy, you pick something small and easy. Unless you’re one of those remarkable people who can just say “Fuck it! I’m moving to Casablanca because that’s what I want. Fuck you, responsibility, I’ve gotta do me.”

But most of us aren’t like that. Most of us use our responsibilities and societal obligations as excuses to not change. That nice little framework built from the expectations of others is a convenient structure that we can turn into a safe little cage of inertia.

I’ve found that as I started making little changes, change became easier. I’d mix it up. A few little changes here. One major change there. Working my way up to the biggest, scariest change that I knew instinctively would have to be made at the end of this process. But I wanted to be sure. It wasn't a working theory I could allow to be a failed experiment. I had to be absolutely certain that this last big change was necessary, because I really didn’t want to make it and I definitely couldn't afford to be wrong about it.

The funny thing is that as you cross off the changes from your long “to change” list, it gets easier. And every change you make gets easier to accomplish. New habits form faster. Bad habits fall by the wayside with less work. And then when all that’s left is that one big change? It’s suddenly not so scary anymore.

And here’s why. You’ve seen what happens every time you’ve made a change that took away some of that permission you were giving yourself to be unhappy. And every time you took away that permission, you gave yourself permission to feel joy.

I’ve recently become obsessed with the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy reboot on Netflix. I big heart LOVE the new Fab 5. In one episode, they talk about how you can’t numb just one emotion. When you cut yourself off from fear or anxiety or insecurity, you also cut yourself off from joy and community and love.

The opposite is true as well. If you focus your energy on how unhappy you are, you will draw more negative emotions to yourself until it’s all you can feel. It makes you numb to anything that doesn’t feed that negativity.

Now that I am a generally happy person and especially now that I’ve made that biggest of scariest of changes, I’ve found that happiness is its own sort of magnet. I could be having a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day, but I can’t sustain that dissatisfaction. Some little thing will happen to shine a light in, and all the darkness just falls away.

Change is hard. It’s also expensive. It’ll cost you something to make it stick. But you know why it’s so expensive?

Because it’s fucking worth it.

Let's Talk About Sex

I can hear your thoughts. Right now. Dirty, dirty.

And now you’re thinking a question: Why are we talking about sex in a Mystery Monday blog post?

And the answer is simple: Why not?

At the core, a mystery is just like any other story. And at the heart of any good story are interesting characters and the interesting things that motivate them. One of those things is sex.

So, we’re going to talk about it. Keep in mind, that within the confines of the particular subgenre of mystery that I write, sex is completely expected. Noir is gritty and more realistic than other subgenres. Cursing is allowed. Sex is allowed. Violence is definitely allowed.

If you only ever want to write cozy mysteries or police procedurals, avert your eyes, I don’t want to make you blush. For those that remain, let’s talk.

There is a puritanical thread that runs through the undercurrent of American society which tells us that sex is bad; sex is embarrassing; sex should be glossed over in books, unless they’re naughty books. This means that, for more novels, it’s left up to the reader’s imagination. 

You know the drill (stop snickering and grow up, will you?), it goes a little something like this:

Step 1: Two characters flirt; they’re attracted to one another.

Step 2: One of them, usually the woman in a heterosexual encounter, says something overtly sexually provocative. Think about the ending of Angels and Demons when the chick says to the nerdy professor, “Have you ever been with a yoga master?” Oh my. The possibilities for creative positions, am I right?

Step 3: The music swells, the lights dim, and the rest is left up to your dirty little mind.

And this script has its place, unless you’re writing erotica or romantic suspense, then get busy describing the people getting busy, that’s what we paid for!

But for the rest of us, this creates a quandary. How much sex is reasonable? And how much is just plain prurient? And again, this comes down to what kind of story are you telling.

To figure this out, you first need to decide on your own comfort level with writing a steamy sex scene. Over time, I’ve found that I have no problem at all describing what body part goes where; however, when I tried to describe two people sexting each other and masturbating, I turned such an unnatural shade of red that Firstborn asked me if I’d eaten something spicy.

The next question to discern is whether your characters, in the natural course of their relationship, would get it on. Like really get it on and really like it. 

Assuming the answer to both questions propels you forward, the next thing to figure out is the most important: Does it move the story forward?

Sex for sex’s sake is what erotica is for. And, if that’s your bag, by all means, write some steamy erotica, there’s money to be made in getting people voyeuristically laid. Ask Sidney Sheldon.

But for mysteries, sex serves a completely different purpose:

It’s a distraction.

In last month’s Mystery Monday post, I talked about using sleight of hand to hide clues in plain sight. 

Sex is a convenient device to distract readers from clues that they should be paying attention to and get them to focus on the relationship between two characters instead.

I stumbled upon this literary device almost on accident, if I’m being honest, but boy oh boy does it work.

In my first novel, That Old Devil Sin, the two main characters attraction to one another is a huge focus of the first thirty or so pages. And in between the snippets of their relationship, major clues are hidden. Right there where you can see them. 

The first big sex scene between them happens to be the meat in a clue sandwich, in fact. But it works because it’s so much more than that. It’s not just a literary device to distract the reader’s mind from important information. It works because it steps the reader through something more critical to understanding the story: These two people are falling for each other. 

Reading about them deepening their relationship in a physically meaningful way is another useful tool for character development. The fact that it also says, “Hey, look over here at two naked people, not at the bits of information your brain is trying to thread together right now!” is just an added benefit.

You see, my main character, Q, doesn’t just invite Ben into her bed. She invites him into her life. She takes him into her sanctuary and shows herself to him. And he does the same.

As the series has progressed and Q and Ben have solidified their relationship, sex is still a big part of who they are as a couple. They have the hots for each other. Like bad. Hiding that from the reader, hides who they are together. By showing their private moments, the reader is also given the information they need to understand who this couple is and what they care about when their clothes are on, too. It also helps to show how Q learns to overcome one of her fatal flaws: her impulse to isolate.

Let’s be clear, I’m not advising you to throw in a sex scene if it doesn't fit your story. What I am advising is for you to consider it if you are about to state or imply that two characters are about to fuck, make love, screw up against a wall, or otherwise engage in sexual intercourse. 

Would knowing how they do any of those things propel the story forward in a meaningful way? Would it help the reader to understand why they interact with each other the way that they do? And, if allows you to distract the reader by making them blush for a paragraph or two? Then rock on.

And there is another reason why I advocate exploring human sexuality in a mystery. At its core, a mystery usually involves violence. Horrific violence. The murder of another human being. That’s terrible. And yet, we have an entire genre of fiction devoted to it.

Within the confines of that same genre, describing the way two people physically demonstrate love, attraction, or affection shouldn’t be out of bounds. It’s always been a bit of a point of contention for me whenever I read a review of a thriller, a mystery, or a suspense novel that says, “Oh, but the sex was just too descriptive.”

You’re reading or writing a book about MURDER, usually of a woman, but reading or writing about two consenting adults indulging in a pleasurable act is out of bounds? Come on.

Because that’s the truth underneath a good mystery. The reason people do the things they do. Why would they kill another human being? Why would they risk their life to save another human being? And, if we’re being honest, sex is one of the answers to both of those questions, so, as writers we should never be afraid to explore that in a realistic way if that’s what the story calls for. And if you make your readers blush and get their little thrill on for 100 words? Right on.

The Cloak of Invisibility

I’ve spent the last few years of my life wrapped in a cloak of invisibility. It wasn’t intentional. I just allowed myself to slowly fade into the background of my life until there wasn’t much to see, not really.

It started about thirteen years ago, thinking back on it. And at the time, it was a conscious effort. An attempt to become a more selfless person. A better person.

You see, I used to take up a great deal of space. Too much space really. I loved being on stage. I loved all eyes on me. It was a high like none I’ve ever experienced before or since. But in my personal life, I took up too much space. I was selfish. I made everything about my wants, my needs, my desires, my goals, and never really considered how others may have felt about it.

It’s a hard thing to admit, but I’m just going to say it. I was a pretty shitty person. Lucky me, I was also pretty charming and talented, so I got a pass for a lot of my unattractive behavior and personality quirks.

But after my band broke up, I saw it. I heard it in my actions. One, in particular. It was the line in the sand. I knew while I was doing this one very bad thing, that it was very bad indeed. Cruel, even. But I was feeling vindictive. And I was not a kind person when I felt that way.

Afterwards, I was sick about what I’d done and did a lot of soul searching on how I could do something so mean. I decided I needed to change. Like a lot of people, I turned to religion. I’d always wanted to be Jewish. And when I say that, I mean since the first grade. As soon as I learned about Judaism (which was a bit of a challenge, growing up in Missoula, Montana), I knew it was for me.

You’re rolling your eyes. I can see that. Let me explain.

This feeling, like you’re a bell getting rung at just the right resonant frequency, is common among Jewish converts – especially the ones that are converting outside of a marriage. The rabbis say that it is because we are born with a Jewish soul. A Jewish soul that has been placed in a Gentile’s body. It’s a strange feeling. It’s also what makes me so sympathetic to transgendered people. I know what it feels like to be trapped in the wrong body.

I began to study Judaism. I began to follow its teachings. I began the long process of conversion. And I began to be a kinder person. A more generous person. Someone who listens when someone else is talking. Someone who supports other people’s dreams. Someone who understands that adoration is not a pie that gets divided up. Just because someone else has a success, it doesn’t take away from mine.

And I liked this new person. I really did. I still do. I cringe at who I used to be. Who I allowed myself to become. The person that could do that something so cruel to someone she loved so deeply.

But as time went on, this drive to be a less visible person twisted in on itself. And by the time I had my son, I vanished.

I stopped wearing make-up. I stopped doing anything stylish with my hair. I allowed myself to gain an unhealthy amount of weight. I stopped allowing myself to be photographed. And I became invisible.

It’s a strange thing, to be invisible after being the flame in the center of the room for so long and I didn’t even see it. And returning to the land of the present and viewable after you disappear is harder than you think.

After I lost so much weight last year and returned to the slender body I’d inhabited for most of my life, my mom wanted to give me a birthday present. She knew I’d been cutting my own hair and using a cheap box dye and she made an appointment with her stylist for me. It’s a small thing, but it matters.

The next month, I went out with a dear friend of mine in New Orleans and we got manicures and pedicures. Something I’d stopped doing. It was something we used to do together all the time, my friend and I. As I was admiring my nail polish, she turned to me and said, “Dark and sparkly, that’s you, my friend.”

I liked it so much, I had my nails done again before I went to the big trade show I attend every year for my day job. So, there I was, at the same trade show I go to every year with many of the same people and I saw it. People could see me again. People spoke to me again and wanted to continue the conversation. And it felt amazing.

When I mentioned this to another friend, he told me that I smiled more now. I was more approachable. Nobody wants to talk to someone who looks like they don’t want to talk to you.

And I see it all the time. People go out of their way to say hello to me. People see me. It’s startling and so very nice to be a visible part of the world again.

The best part is that I understand that I don’t have to be the center of attention to be noticed.

This struggle between being seen and being selfless is something I’ve written about a lot over the last three Clementine Toledano Mysteries. Detective Aaron Sanger hates to take up room for himself. It makes him feel guilty, a feeling I know all too well.

Q is constantly telling him to express his wants and needs. What she doesn’t know is that he’s hiding a desire that he simply can’t have within the confines of his strict moral code.

In Until the Devil Weeps, Sanger finally gets to take up some space for himself and it’s fun for me to write about Sanger finally being so very visible.

I read this quote the other day:

“Careful how much you tolerate, you are teaching others how to treat you.”

And maybe that was my problem for far too long. I confused tolerance with submission.

In the end, it’s all about balance. You don’t have to hide behind a cloak of invisibility to be a good person. You don’t have to take up all the air in the room to take up a little space for yourself.

On Passover, we sing a song called “Dayenu” (It would have been enough). Learning to be enough for yourself and for others is a hard lesson to learn. Taking up space for yourself isn’t selfish. Sometimes the most generous thing you can do for others is to show yourself to them.

The Art of Suspense

The Aspiring Writer’s Blog fantasy contributor Alexa McGinnis and I recently had a Twitter exchange that changed my plan for this first Mystery Monday post. When you surround yourself with great writers working hard on their craft, this sort of thing is bound to happen.

The topic of our Twitter conversation was coy writing and how irksome I find it. And it’s a problem in many an otherwise brilliant mystery. So, let’s talk about and get it out of the way.

First thing’s first. What do I mean by coy writing? 

Imagine if you will, a strip tease. Don’t look at me like that. I write noir mysteries set in New Orleans. I used to work for Nine Inch Nails. I’ve been to my fair share of strip clubs and Burlesques. 

Unlike a Burlesque performer, when an author is being coy, they have no intention of showing you anything worth seeing. They are hiding information, using it as power and authority over the reader, until they finally drop their clothes, unzip their skin, and reveal that they’re not a beautiful woman at all, they’re a muskrat! Fooled you.

This kind of revelation usually has one of several appropriately annoyed responses from the reader:

Seriously?

Huh?

What the fuck, dude?

[That one’s mine]

It’s information that would help you to understand a character’s motivation better. It’s information that would help you to understand how dangerous a situation is. It’s information that would help you to figure out the whodunit in a whodunit.

Coy writing not only removes these bits of critical information, it doesn’t even hint at it. So, there you are, minding your own business, reading a novel that you think is being honest and building to something, when WHAM! You get a three-page information dump that ties everything into a neat little package with a flourish like the author has done you a favor and you exclaim (and rightly so), “What the fuck, dude?” 

(And if you’re me, you then have to pay your six-year-old resident blackmailer a quarter so he won’t tattle on mommy for dropping f-bombs.)

This is why Agatha Christie is so revered. That woman did not play coy with the reader, at all. She hid all the information in plain sight. It’s all right there for you to figure it out, if you’re on the look-out for it; but to see it, you can’t allow yourself to get so engrossed in the story that you forget you’re supposed to be solving a murder. And good luck with that.

Because that’s the trick, you see. The trick to creating real suspense, not architecting a maze so random and complicated and full of blind alleyways that it’s impossible for the reader to arrive at the correct solution. That’s not suspense. That’s cheating.

But it’s hard. And this is where that strip tease analogy comes into play. (Y’all thought I forgot about that, didn’t you?)

In a strip tease, the performer hints at that reveal. They flash a shoulder here, a little too much thigh, there. But they flash it nonetheless. And it can be slow or fast, because pacing is critical. But - and this is important - everything must be revealed as a part of an honest buildup otherwise you’re wasting the audience’s time and being coy.

Let’s take the character backstory tease. I’m going to use one of my characters as an example, mainly because he’s a raging narcissist who loves it when I talk about him, but also because his backstory is deep; so deep, that I’ve spread it out over the course of five books.

Derek Sharp is introduced in Devil Take Me Down, the second book of the Clementine Toledano Mysteries. He’s an egotistical rockstar and kind of a prick, but a lovable one. Because he’s a suspect in that second book, we don’t learn much about him, he’s an annoying ancillary character that may or may not be trying to kill our heroine. Then comes his strange appearance in the next book, Chasing Those Devil Bones, where his personal demons attack him while recording an album with the main character, Q Toledano. We don’t know what those demons are, but Q does. You see, Q has demons of her own and she can recognize his scars, no matter how hard he’s trying to hide them. Just between you and me, Derek has also grown on Q like a fungus at this point and she kind of likes him, no matter what she says to the contrary.

In The Devil’s Luck, we get to know Derek really well as he becomes more of a core character and at this point, three books into his development, I have now provided every single clue for the reader to figure out what happened to Derek to make him who he is. It’s so obvious, in fact, that I actually thought my beta readers would yell at me about it. But they didn’t. They didn’t figure it out. They just liked that Derek was becoming more human, more real, and a bigger part of the overall story. Ain’t I a stinker?

Now, if I’ve done my job, when the big reveal comes in Book 7, anyone who’s followed Derek from his first appearance in Devil Take Me Down will feel just like that cop at the end of The Usual Suspects as all the puzzle pieces fit neatly into place. (While The Usual Suspects isn’t a book, every mystery writer should watch that movie at least three times for a masterclass in hiding clues in plain sight). But there’s no trickery here. That’s important. I’ve presented the readers with all the information, I just didn’t thread it together for them.

The risk, of course, in hiding all that delicious information right where any reader paying attention can pick it up and piece it together for themselves, is that someone might stumble across the solution to the riddle on their own. I think that’s the reason why so many mystery writers have begun to play coy with information. The desire is to craft an unsolvable Murder on the Orient Express whodunit but the fear is that they don’t have the chops. 

And my response to this fear is so the fuck what? 

So what if some of your readers solve the crime? How fun for them to get to the last page and the big reveal and triumphantly shout, “I knew it!!”

Stumping 100% of your readers is just fascist and it’s plain old boring, especially once your readers realize that you had to trick them by hiding critical information to do it.

Your reader should never get to the end, learn something new, and think, “Sure, if I knew that, I would have solved it, too.”

That’s cheating.

I recently read The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters and he handles these information revelations in a scandalously tricky way: by tricking his main character, too. When new information appears, new information that would ordinarily piss me off, his policeman slaps his head and says, “Palace, you dummy.” Which made me slap my head and say “Wesley, you dummy,” because both of us should have seen that coming, but we didn’t because, well, you know, there’s a big fucking asteroid on its way to destroy the planet and people are losing their minds right and left. But that’s the trick. It’s sleight of hand in its most devilishly clever form. You’re so distracted by the chaos going on around everyone in the story that you don’t notice the tiny little clue in the corner waving at you.

Incidentally, this is also how Christie stumped so many people with Murder on the Orient Express. So many interesting characters. So much backstory. So many loose ends. And most poor readers didn’t know which thread to pull to unravel the mystery, myself included. Actually, and this is a true story, bear with me, I did figure it out, I just didn’t know it. You see, I loved mysteries when I was a kid, and I prided myself on being able to solve them, even Agatha Christie; so, my mom told me I should read Murder on the Orient Express. I checked it out from the Book-mobile and over the course of the week that I was reading it, she’d ask me, “So, did you figure it out yet?” And at one point, I was so frustrated with the sheer volume of clues that I actually said, “No! They all could have done it.”

That, my friends, is genius. Because the solution to the riddle is so improbable, so illogical, that even if you guess it, you won’t believe you’re right. Christie broke a rule to pull it off. A big rule. There can only be one killer, right? 

And herein lies the crux of the problem and the solution. Yes, a mystery is a puzzle. Ultimately, that is all a mystery is. It’s a riddle in search of a solution. But the really good ones are so much more than that. They have well-drawn characters and a complex story arc that gets from riddle to solution in such a way that you almost forget that you’re supposed to be solving a crime. And the solution? Sometimes it’s as improbable as the crime itself because rules can be bent, broken, or gleefully ignored and your reader will forgive you for it as long as you didn’t lie to them along the way.

It’s also what I hoped you’ve gleaned from this first Mystery Monday post. Write a good story. Draw well-developed characters. Make your reader forget they’re reading a mystery while hiding the solution in plain sight. Play with your readers’ bias. Toy with their emotions. Confound their reasoning. Just don’t be coy little muskrat masquerading as a stripper… unless, of course, you’ve planted all the appropriate clues along the way; then go on, little muskrat, you do you.

All the Light Beneath Your Skin

“These are the days you need double what it takes. ”

— –Ryan Adams, Shiver and Shake.

We all have days, moments, weeks, seconds, months, hours, years when we simply just can’t.

Can’t.

Such a funny little word, isn’t it?

I can’t try.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t stand it anymore.

I can’t.

I’ve spent a good deal of my life telling myself the reasons why I can’t do some things. Sometimes, it was a good thing.

I can’t do hard drugs. They’re addicting. I don’t want to become a junkie.

That’s not a bad line of logic. Thank you, ‘I can’t’.

But at some point, ‘can’t’ snaked its way into my internal monologue more and more.

I can’t start a new band.

I can’t go back to New Orleans.

I can’t pursue my dreams anymore.

That’s when things get hard, because when you tell yourself all the things you desperately want to do are the things that you can’t do anymore, that’s when the big scary ‘CAN’T’ starts.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t be happy.

I can’t go on living.

Today the world lost a bright light. One of the brightest to me especially because he taught me to stop saying ‘I can’t’ to the good things.

And the fucked up thing is that I didn’t really see that until I woke up this morning and read these words on my phone:

Anthony Bourdain dead at 61 of an apparent suicide.

Anthony Bourdain and his punk rock travel style. His passion for food. He kindness towards strangers. His pure aggressive lust for living. Anthony Bourdain said a great big ‘I can’t’ last night and the world is darker for it.

As I spent the morning processing why I was so gutted by his departure, this man I did not know personally, it dawned on me. The reason I picked back up the first twenty pages of a discarded novel I’d written feverishly in a single afternoon. You see, it was him.

At the time, I was obsessed with cooking and traveling shows. I’d fallen in love with them while recovering from Firstborn’s birth. I’d sit and nurse my son and watch No Reservations, and Top Chef, and Bizarre Foods.

But No Reservations was my favorite. I’d heard about Bourdain’s book, of course. Anyone who’s ever known anyone in the restaurant business has heard about that book. So, I finally picked it up and read it.

Kitchen Confidential is a memoir of straight fucking balls-to-the-wall chutzpah. Written by a man who had failed. Like epically fallen on his ass and did something so ballsy as to write an essay and send it to The motherfucking New Yorker. Who does that?

And somehow reading about his success and the wild and crazy journey that led him to it made me stop telling myself ‘I can’t’.

And so I did.

It is terrifying to do something so outlandish. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done audacious things in my life, but none of it was as scary as writing that first novel.

And maybe I would have picked it up eventually, but I really don’t think that I would have.

There was a magic in that book of Anthony Bourdain’s. A magic that was waiting there, just for me. Good books are like that. You read the right one at just the right moment in your life and it can change the course of your journey forever.

Because, that book that I wrote, led me to others. Those books led me back to myself. And once I remembered who I was, down at my basic level, an entirely new world opened up for me.

I don’t tell myself I can’t anymore. Not about the things I want to do and certainly not about the things I must do.

Life is a struggle. I don’t think I know a single person who has never thought those stark words: “I can’t go on living anymore.”

But we must, you see. I must. You must. And here’s why: somewhere in the world, something you have done or something you’ve yet to do will impact someone you don’t even know in ways that neither of you can predict.

This person will be motivated to kindness, because of you.

This person will be motivated to greatness, because of you.

Or, maybe, this person will simply say, “Today, I can,” just because of you.

In Until the Devil Weeps, Sanger tells Q this story:

Before creation, there was only G-d and His light filled everything so completely, that there wasn’t room to create anything else. So, He decided to bottle up His light inside of jars so He could create our universe.

So, HaShem bottled up all His light and created our universe, and the stars, and the planets, and one particularly beautiful planet where He created us. But while He was admiring His creations, He didn’t notice that the jars were cracking. You see, His light couldn’t be contained and it shattered the jars; and the shards rained down to earth and they became sorrow and suffering. Our job is to pick up all those shards and put them back together. Then there will be no more sorrow.

And the light? It shattered, too, and it fell down to Earth, it became the human soul. So, everyone has a little bit of G-d’s light inside of them. That’s how we see each other. We see G-d in one another. I always figured, though, that the shards weren’t all the same size. When something shatters, some pieces are big, others are so small you can barely see them.

Some people, like Anthony Bourdain, they have a huge piece and it fills them. You can see G-d clearly, in everything that they do.

If you’re struggling right now, please know that the people around you see G-d’s light in you. Don’t make the world a darker place by saying, ‘I can’t.’

Keep fighting. You’re worth it. All that light beneath your skin is making the world brighter just by shining, even if you can't see it right now.

https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

May the memory of the righteous be for a blessing. Farewell, sweet rock-and-roll chef. Thank you.

Compulsion

I’ve always had a bit of a compulsive personality. Small obsessions have taken hold of my psyche more times than I care to admit until they blossomed into life-changing decisions. And it’s been this way for as long as I can remember.

Explaining these compulsions to people without this problem is pointless. If you haven’t experienced this emotion, I can’t explain it to you, not really. But I’ll give it a shot.

Imagine, you’re on vacation. You’re sitting at a wine bar in Pirate’s Alley of Jackson Square in New Orleans. It’s a warm April night. It’s just rained. The air is full of music and sex and humidity as only the air in New Orleans can be. And you breathe it and when you do, you have a small little thought. Just a notion. “I could live here.”

Four little words that plant a seed in your brain and root down so fast that by the time you have finished your glass of wine, your decision is made. You will go home. You will sell all your belongings, pack only what you need, end your relationship, quit your job and move to a city where you know no one and where you’ve only spent forty-eight hours exploring.

And the really insane thing is that you follow through with it.

That, my friends, is compulsion.

From the outside looking in, I make major decisions at breakneck speeds. And there’s a reason for that. I do.

No holds barred, bare knuckle street fighting decision making. That’s my process.

And once I’ve made a decision, just you try and keep me from following through with it. It’s an unstoppable force. I will not stop until I have been bloodied to a point past recognition.

I have a friend who often teases me about my vigorous writing regimen and release schedule for the Clementine Toledano Mysteries. What I can’t explain to him is that writing is just my latest compulsion. One that I cannot contain and one that I struggle to control.

And for a long time, I felt guilty about it. Why should I take up this much space for my creative obsessions? Maybe I’m being selfish. Maybe I’m being unfair to those around me. And maybe I am, but if I wasn’t writing there would be other compulsions driving me. Painting a room because I suddenly hate the color. Ripping up a corner of the lawn because I’ve decided to create a garden. That these physical manifestations of my strange personality have benefited others has often been my justification for indulging in them.

But my books benefit others. Just not those immediately around me. People buy them. People read them. Judging from my Amazon rating, people enjoy them. But most importantly, I benefit from them and in and of itself, that should be justification enough.

I’ve mentioned before how writing has helped me to become more self-aware. And that self-awareness has led me down a fairly dark path with my heroine.

In Chasing Those Devil Bones, we meet Q and Derek’s stalker. Burn Bitch Burn, so named because that is the moniker they use to sign their letters. And BBB has a singular desire: for Q and Derek to live happily ever after somewhere on the outskirts of the Never Never.

The stalker situation came to being while I was drafting the seventh book of the Clementine Toledano Mysteries and as I wrote the books that had to come before, I threaded it into their plots. But why? Because there is a part of me that wants to understand my own obsessive personality. And there is another part of me that understands an unchecked obsession or compulsion is a dangerous thing.

Mary Higgins Clark once said:

“I have a need to write. There are people who would like to write, there are people who have a genuine talent for writing, and there are the rest of us — those of us who become known, who truly need to write. And it is a need, like eating or brushing your teeth. We write in the morning, we write in the afternoon, we write on the back of a piece of paper, we get up early, we stay up late, because we simply are compelled to write.”

So, I guess I’m in good company then, because that’s exactly how it feels inside my brain when I’m working on words. For me, there is nothing as freeing; nothing as frustrating; and nothing as fully satisfying as crafting a good book.

And one day, as MHC says, this compulsion will lead to more than just the self-satisfaction of scratching that itch. But for today, I’m satisfied with the words themselves. The words that sustain me. The words that create worlds I get to inhabit and share with whomever reads them.

And that’s enough.

The Great Escape

I’ve mentioned this before, but, damn, do I love a great escape. That whole fight or flight instinct thing somehow got cut in half with me. When life gets stressful, when things don’t go my way, when I am overwhelmed by the immensity that is involved with fundamental change, my first instinct – scratch that – my only instinct is to grab my passport and my favorite pair of Converse and get the fickity fuck out of Dodge.

You don’t believe me. Allow me to illustrate (brace yourself, you’ll be here for a few hundred words):

In 1993, I was about to graduate from high school. Growing up in a small town in Montana, I went to school with the same group of folks from Kindergarten on up. This made evolving in any meaningful way difficult. For me, especially, because of that whole no fighting instinct thing I just mentioned. To overcome this, I could have dyed my hair and pierced my nose within the comfortable tuition of the state university of my hometown, but no. I packed up my shit in a trunk and moved to Iowa City, IA to study (and this is real) Francophone African literature for a whopping $20k/year and dyed my hair and pierced my nose from the safe distance of 2000 miles away from everybody I ever knew… a luxury for which I am still repaying the Federal Student Loan program. After two years, I returned to my hometown, fifteen pounds lighter with black hair, a nose ring, and a two-hundred-pound chip on my shoulder. How you like me now, Missoula?

Two years later, I was in a serious relationship, my first real relationship. We lived together. We were in love, but we were young and things weren’t working out. Did I do the mature thing and break up with him? Nope. You guessed it. I came home one afternoon and announced that I was moving to New Orleans after graduation, alone. I lied to him and told him that we could do the long-distance thing. Then I lied to him again, from the safety of my new home in New Orleans and told him that I had cheated on him. For which, rightly so, he immediately dumped my lying, cheating, pathologically incapable of conflict ass and told me he never wanted to see me again. Problem solved.

Wait. It gets better.

The year 2000. I’m working for Nine Inch Nails (yes, that NIN). Things that are covered by an NDA I signed (and this is also true) to a certain Prince of Darkness, Inc. got, shall we say, uncomfortable. Did I power through? No, of course, I didn’t; haven’t you been paying attention? I took the first gig as an audio engineer I could find and bailed on NIN while they were mixing the Fragility 2.0 DVD, thus forfeiting my first really big album credit rather than muscle through for another year. Nice, right?

2003: I convinced my band to leave New Orleans, where we had just landed three huge gigs and were regularly opening up for the biggest area act at the time, and move to Los Angeles to start from scratch.

Seriously, what the fuck?

2005: I bailed on my band to do movie scores.

I repeat my question.

2006: I bailed on Los Angeles to move to Baton Rouge. That’s right. I left L.A. where I was doing remixes for people who have won Grammies, to move to Baton Rouge, LA and become the head of tech support for a pro audio manufacturer.

And this is where my great escapes ended. I have been little Miss Stick it the Fuck Out through thick and thin for the last 12 years.

But looking back on it, I really just indulged in the greatest escape of all. I gave up.

I gave up yearning for something extravagantly outrageous. I settled for what was easily and readily achievable. And there’s nothing wrong with doing that, except for one little thing: I was not wired to desire what is easily and readily achievable.

It is audacious to think that one of these outlandish goals to which I’ve strived at one point in time or another would arrive within my grasp with minimal effort. Because the truth is, to reach that highest hardest peak, you have to be willing to risk it all. And that is fucking scary. It would also be a lie to tell you that every one of those escapes was a bad decision. At least one of them probably saved my life.

So, when I finally got up my gumption and began to climb towards a faraway, unachievable goal six years ago, I looked up at that distant mountaintop and thought, if I just get up there, that will be enough.

But after That Old Devil Sin was released, I looked ahead and realized I had stumbled up the side of a mountain range, not one individual peak. And this is something else that I’ve struggled with my entire life. The ability to celebrate a victory, even if it isn’t The Victory.

I’ve written, performed, engineered, produced and released three full-length albums. That’s something.

I’ve written, orchestrated, and performed the soundtracks for two independent films. That’s something.

I’ve done remixes for Grammy winners. That’s something.

I’ve written and released four novels. That’s something.

So what if my band never got a record deal? We still kicked ass.

So what if those films never made it to Sundance? My scores were great.

And maybe the Clementine Toledano Mysteries will never be best sellers. And that has to be ok. Why? Because I love them and am proud of them and at the end of the day, that has to be enough. That has to be sustenance for my ego and my soul.

Because the reward for good work should be work well done. That is your reward. All the fame, the fortune, the accolades, none of it means a damned thing if you’re not willing to stand on whatever peak up which you’ve managed to climb and take in the vista.

There is no escaping hard work. There is no fast track. There are no corners to cut. And truth be told, in those moments of frustration, escaping to a new mountain range that, from a distance, looks easier than the one you’re climbing seems like a great idea. But what you find when you get there, is just another series of mountains that are just as challenging.

Of course, there’s always sticking it out on the flatlands. Walking one foot in front of the other, mindlessly trudging day after day, admiring the mountains in the distance, happy that you’re not the one who will be climbing them today. And maybe that’s the choice. The Big Scary Choice that we all have to make:

The risk of failure or the failure of taking no risk at all.

Temporarily Closed for Creative Maintenance

I feel like I  should apologize  for my absence, I have been writing obsessively in the new Clementine Toledano Mystery (working title ‘Until the Devil Weeps’) while prepping The Devil’s Luck for its big launch on June 13, 2018 and have neglected my regular blog posts for more urgent creative pursuits.

Regular posts will resume on this blog shortly. 

If you’d like to pre-order The Devil's Luck, by all means, please click  button below  and do so. You will make one author very pleased with you. Be back shortly with all kinds of yummy news!

The Shattering

For the last month or so, it seems like I am constantly cleaning up broken glass. At first, it was funny. Firstborn and I would say “Oops, we have the dropsies!” But lately, it’s stopped being funny and started being just plain strange.

We came home a couple weeks ago to find the glass in our outdoor table shattered for no apparent reason. And when I say shattered, I mean not a single piece of it was spared. Every square inch had been haphazardly divided in four and carved up accordingly.

After cleaning it up and scouring the patio for errant pieces, I thought we were safe, especially after a big rain storm came through and washed it clean. During another big rain, Firstborn and I were splashing through puddles and dancing (it’s a thing), and he cut his foot open on a stray piece of glass.

A water glass got kicked off the coffee table at our Passover seder and didn’t shatter, even though it fell onto the cement. But when I went to refill it, it cracked in half.

And this past weekend, I was pulling a glass down from the cupboard to get some water, and my elbow hit a wine glass that was on the counter waiting to be put up in the china cabinet. It shattered, and a shard of glass lodged into my elbow. And when I say it shattered, the goblet exploded into jagged shards and the stem stayed put on the counter like nothing had happened.

I’m not a superstitious person, but that’s a lot of broken glass, kids. 

And  now that I think of it, my pondering the meaning of broken glass started long before these  physical events. Two years ago, while I was working on Chasing Those Devil Bones, I was stuck. So stuck that I had to jump ahead to the seventh book of the Clementine Toledano series and write it, almost to completion. It was while writing this book that I came up with the idea of the Scarification album that Q and Derek write together in Chasing Those Devil Bones. 

Scarification is a concept album about a child who carves their skin open with broken shards of glass to let the magic inside of them bleed out. It's dark and tragic, much like Derek and Q themselves, and the idea for it came out of nowhere. I was writing a scene in that seventh book (working title, Gods and Devils) and it just wrote itself.  This isn't a surprise now. I've learned that Derek Sharp demands to tell his own story when he wants to and I have very little to say about it. And now that I'm getting closer to revealing the deeper meaning of this album in the series, broken glass starts following me wherever I go. The universe is a magical place, no?

The shattering. That’s how you end a Jewish wedding. The breaking of the old life and the beginning of the new. A reminder that even in joyous times, sadness exists. 

In my own life, this constant reminder of shattering is a little more prescient. You see, my life is awash in new beginnings at the moment. I’m starting a new book (working title, Until the Devil Weeps), taking on new challenges in my career, and, as for me? I’m a walking, talking fresh start.

When something shatters, there is no going back. Sometimes that’s a bad thing, but a lot of the time, it’s not. I spent years being miserable and uncomfortable in my own skin. It took two years, three novels, and a concerted psychological and physical effort to retrieve the fragments of myself that still existed and pull them back up to the surface.

And until a few days ago, slipping back into my old patterns was a comfortable pair of pajamas that constantly stared at me from the hidden corners of my inner closet.  But then that piece of glass lodged into my arm.

As I stared at this sharp object protruding from my skin, watching the blood trickle down my arm, I realized that I can’t go back. There is no going back.

Also, that having a piece of glass stuck in your arm is painful. I yanked it out and was relieved to find that I didn’t need a stitch. It hurt for the rest of the day and most of the next morning. But somehow, during those few hours of discomfort, my own shattering was complete.

Sometimes you need a physical reminder that new beginnings are ugly and painful before they’re inspiring and beautiful. Birth may be beautiful, but laboring is an unpleasant, agonizing business. 

That these transformative experiences are so rare in a lifetime is the reason they’re so common in fiction. It’s the main goal of any character-driven book: How are the characters transformed by their experiences?

In That Old Devil Sin, Q learns that world is beautiful and can offer love.

In Devil Take Me Down, Ben faces the ugliness of the world that he can ignore so easily, most days.

In Chasing Those Devil Bones, Sanger discovers that he can’t walk through the world alone.

In The Devil’s Luck, Derek decides that he can trust someone with his vulnerability and still be safe.

Of course, larger transformative experiences happen in each book, but it’s important for me that all my characters get a little something out of the raw deal that I hand them every time I start a new Clementine Toledano mystery.

And there’s a lesson in that. Life hands out raw deals all the time. The important thing is to get something out of it.

The Quiet

““You should really write a book. It’s like you’re the king of everything.””

— First Born

This is what my first-born said as he wrote his own Snoopy adventure story a few weeks ago. And in that moment, he summed up artistry in that brilliant, succinct way that only a six-year-old can seem to do.

You see, artists are notorious control freaks. In creating art, there is a space where the creator has complete dominating control over their creation. But that feeling of power while creating, sometimes leads to a feeling of powerlessness when dealing with the real world and its laundry lists of mundane problems.

And that’s where I find myself right now.

There is a stillness that settles over my brain when a book is done. Not that first draft done. That induces a flurry of panicked energy that, quite frankly, I rather enjoy. But when I really know that a book is complete; that all that’s left to do is dot the i’s and cross the t’s and make sure that all those pesky commas are in the correct location, that’s when the Quiet comes.

And for me, the Quiet arrives around the same time as the inevitable let down from the realization that I must start again on a new project. I stand in the Quiet, admiring that giant mountain I’ve just conquered with a sigh of accomplishment and look ahead to see another equally large mountain I must climb. And in this same moment, all the voices in my head – Q’s, Ben’s, Sanger’s, Derek’s – turn on radio silence and I am alone with my own thoughts and feelings without theirs to keep me company.

And it’s lonely.

It’s lonely not to hear Q and the boys sing silly songs so I can hum along with them. It’s lonely not to hear Ben’s big, booming laugh when I see something that would make him smile. It’s lonely not to see Sanger’s shy grin flash at me when I close my eyes. It’s even lonely not hearing what horrible pick-up line Derek will use next.

These voices of mine, they keep me company and it sucks when they’re quiet. And the Quiet hurts. So, I can’t enjoy it.

But it’s a necessary part of the process because sometimes you have to pay the bills. You have to Kosher the kitchen for Passover. You have to make a fucking diorama for a first grader. You have to figure out how to use Instagram and make book trailers for your newly finished book and catch up on your reading. And in between, you have to face that great big scary decision you’ve been pushing aside and do something about it. And you have to take action, otherwise you’ll just sit on the couch paralyzed.

Action is easy when you’re the master of the universe. That’s what my son was getting at. When you write a book, you are the ruler. What you say goes. Not so much in the real world. In the real world, no one has to listen to me or do what I want and that total lack of control sometimes leaves me spinning and scared and alone in the Quiet to which I’m no longer accustomed.

If Derek were speaking to me at the moment, he’d tell me that I’m not really powerless in my real life, no one is. He’d make me say his mantra (which maybe one day he’ll want to share with the rest of you, but not just yet) and then he’d remind me that real change is fucking hard. Real change takes will. Real change takes strength. Real change takes determination. And real change takes resolve.

And that’s the problem I face: Change is coming, both in the world that I create in my books and the one where I actually live my life. The fact that I stand at an astral crossroads where I must do something disagreeable both in the world I control and in the one I do not, is not a coincidence. I think I planned it this way on some level.

In both worlds, it’s for the best. But there’s no way to predict how an action is going to ultimately end up out here in the real world.

And I hate not knowing the ending. As soon as I’m emotionally invested in a book, I read the last chapter before continuing. I’m one of those people.

Don’t look at me like that. I told you 600 words ago I’m a fucking control freak. And if you’ve read just one of my books, you already know I write almost exclusively about people like me: Q’s a control freak, too. So, is Derek. So, is Sanger. Yvie’s worse than all of them combined. But not Ben.

Ben doesn’t need control to feel powerful and it is beyond frustrating. His ability to just let things go. Hell, he even let Q go, once. I’m trying to think what Ben would say, if he was talking to me at the moment. He’s being stubbornly silent, which is why I’ve had to take a break from working on the next Clementine Toledano Mystery. Hard to rewrite a lame-ass first chapter when the character that should be doing most of the talking isn’t talking to you.

But there’s a certain level of powerlessness that even Ben isn’t willing to accept. And maybe that’s who’s been whispering in my ear to take a break from writing and get some real tangible things done in my own life. Q is the dreamer. Ben is the practical one, after all.

Posturing

I am a newly converted health fanatic. And like all new converts, I can be a little overzealous and obsessive. Having felt so unhealthy and miserable for so very long does tend to pour gasoline on the paranoia fire that burns in my skull telling me that if I’m not careful, I will wake up one morning and suddenly be twenty pounds on the wrong side of a healthy BMI and feeling like an old woman again.

In my latest quest to encourage my body to be as healthy as possible, I took advantage of the new 3D body scanner at my gym. It spat out a bunch of numbers that would seem to indicate that I am a very healthy person for a 35-year-old woman. Which means I’m really healthy for a 43-year-old woman. Yay me.

Except for one thing: my posture.

The fact that my right shoulder is higher than my left wasn’t a surprise. I have scoliosis. So, I’m always going to have that oh-so-trendy-for-1987 slacker lean, no matter how hard I try not to (eat your heart out, John Hughes). But then came the bad news. My head is almost 4” out of alignment, which means I’m looking down when I should be looking out. Staring at what’s immediately in front of me, instead of looking up that beautiful, expansive horizon.

And that, my friends, is exactly what I’ve been doing for so long, I’m too embarrassed to say it out loud.

When your back is it to the wall, and things are catching fire all around you, what do people tell you to do?

Keep your head down and just keep moving forward. Because sometimes that horizon isn’t bright and beautiful and full of possibilities. Sometimes there’s a big fucking hurricane filled with sharknados heading your way, and you know it’s coming, and everything on the road in front of you is telling you to stop, reassess, and try another path, but you doggedly, stubbornly stick to your guns, because goddamnit, that’s the path you’ve chosen.

I’ve never been a superstitious person. I don’t believe in signs. I don’t believe in charms. I’ve broken mirrors and think black cats are the cutest of felines. But I do believe in G-d. And I do believe that if you pay attention, sometimes, if you’re really heading into the shit, Adonai will shout at you to stop what you’re doing and maybe reassess for a minute. The problem is that most of us - myself included - don’t listen until it’s too late.

There’s an old joke that goes something like this:

Once a very religious man was in his home, watching the news and the weatherman said, “Everyone in the city needs to evacuate. There’s a storm coming, and it is going to bring a flood.”

The man looked at his dog and said, “Don't worry. G-d will provide for us.”

As the water began to rise around his home, his neighbor pulled up to the man's  front door in a boat.

“Get your dog and get in!” the neighbor shouted. “I’ll take you to safety.”

The man just smiled and said, “Don’t worry. G-d will provide for us.”

The water rose higher until the man had to climb onto his roof to escape it. Soon a helicopter came along, hovering overhead. A soldier shouted into the megaphone, “Climb the ladder. We’ll take you to safety.”

But the man waved him off and yelled back, “Don’t worry about me. G-d will provide.”

The water soon overtopped the roof, and the man’s loyal dog was swept away by the current, but somehow managed to make it safely to higher ground. The dog howled at the man to take the same chance, but the man just laughed to himself as the water rose up to his neck. “Silly old dog. G-d will provide for me.”

And so, the man drowned.

When he got to heaven, he was pissed. And he stormed through the gates and shouted at G-d, “I believed in you. I had faith. And you let me drown!”

G-d replied, “I sent you a weather report, a boat, a helicopter, and a loyal dog to guide you to safety. You just didn’t listen.”

Sometimes keeping your head down and believing that the path you’re on will somehow lead to a good destination, despite all evidence to the contrary, is just fucking stupid.

And so it’s been in my own life. Without getting into too much detail, trust me when I tell you that G-d sent me a lightning strike, a mild civil war, and a blood curse to try and stop me from the path that I insisted was the only one for me.

When lightning struck, I told myself I was being superstitious. It didn’t mean a thing. I was happy, wasn’t I?

The tempest in a teacup of a civil war? I just need to be more convincing. I needed to win. And I did win that fight to lasting damage of everyone involved. Yay me.

The blood curse? I’m not going to lie, that one about did me in. That one brought me to my knees, but I told myself, these things happen and not to read too much into it.

Hindsight’s 20-20, but there you go. That’s what you get for keeping your head down and looking directly in front of you instead of at what’s looming on the horizon.

So, after actively not paying attention to the VERY BIG SIGNS that I can now see were VERY CLEARLY POSTED along my path towards self-destruction, now my head is up, and my eyes are wide fucking open.

Now that I’m cognizant of my poor posture and have been straightening my shoulders and my neck, I have to admit, it makes me uncomfortable. I feel so visible, so tall, so powerful, so very alert.

And while being visible, tall, powerful, and alert are all marvelous things, they mean that I am out there in the world and it makes it difficult to hide from it. And it makes me wonder if somehow my subconscious wasn’t trying to tell me all of this four years ago when I created Ben Bordelon.

Ben. Six-foot-five, gorgeous, striking, big, beautiful Ben Bordelon. Why did I make him so fucking tall?

Between you and me, I used to think I knew exactly why. The thought process went a little something like this: you see, once I knew this man…

[Before any of you rush off to buy plane tickets to New Orleans to try to find out if Ben Bordelon is a real, live, actual man… Stop. He’s not.]

…. but once I knew this man. And while he was very tall, the way he carried himself made him larger than life. He was always the biggest thing in the room on and off the stage. And it was a remarkable thing to behold. I used to call him the Collector of Sighs, because that’s what followed him wherever he went. A collection of sighs from women who wanted to be his girlfriend, men who wanted to be him, and me, who just sighed in appreciative wonderment that such a person actually existed.

It was that presence, that towering, magnetic charisma that I wanted Ben to have.

But now I think it was more than that. Bad things have happened to Ben, but he has a center. A core that is so solid, it holds him upright, vigilant for opportunities and dangers alike.

I think I wrote him to remind myself to stand up. To smile more. To love myself more. To carry the weight of what was happening to me with a little more aplomb and self-worth.

Why? Because of this…

In That Old Devil Sin, Ben says this to Q:

“Baby, everyone’s broken somehow. It’s how you carry it that matters… I smile because I like my business to be private. No one tries to figure you out when they think you’re walking in the sunlight.”

Just between you and me, that last bit is something my friend, the Collector of Sighs, once told me. I wasn’t handling a bad day very well, and that’s what he told me. And now that I’m neck deep in the flood waters of this Sharknado Hurricane I’ve strolled into, that’s what I remind myself to do every day.

Stand up. Head high. Smile. Be kind. And look for that flashing neon sign that’s got to be around here somewhere, pointing me to a better path

The Zeroing Out

It’s springtime, which means one thing in a reasonably practicing Jewish home: cleaning. Like obsessive, Silkwood level cleaning. Every nook. Every cranny. Every closet. Every drawer. No exceptions.

The desperate search for every trace of leavening, or chametz, to prepare for Passover.

The psychological metaphors for this search are so multifaceted that it’s hard to imagine even the least self-aware Jew on the planet not getting something from this exercise in humility.

Removing that which puffs us up. Searching the narrow places in our homes for it. Working like a slave to remove it. Creating a blank slate.

Now that I live a grain-free existence, this cleaning is really more metaphoric than necessary. If it wasn’t for my love of shellfish and pork, I’d keep Kosher for Passover year round. Not by choice, mind you, but since my body decided that corn, wheat, and dairy are the enemy, and rice and beans are really more frenemies than friends, I’m locked into a new way of eating. If I could kick my love of traif, I could keep Kosher without any effort at all. But I do love me some shrimp, y’all.

When I did have actual, real chametz to remove from my home, I have to admit, that I cut a few corners. Three, to be exact: my studio, my vanity, and my sock drawer.

The remnants of my music studio were a dusty disorganized mess and cleaning it meant facing the fact that I no longer make music. That was not a fact I wanted to face, so I simply closed the door on the first day of Passover and didn’t open it until it was over. A perfectly halachically acceptable practice. That it allowed me to avoid the self-reflection cleaning that hot mess would have caused, allowed me to avoid a very narrow place in my life.

But last summer, without warning, and without contemplation, I announced to my family that we were remodeling the studio over the Fourth of July weekend. We took everything out. Ripped out the carpet. Installed a new tile floor. Painted the closet and turned it into a reading room and a library. I wired up all my gear. We pulled the foosball table out of storage and, by the beginning of August, the narrowest place in our home became a functional, usable space for the entire family.

And I faced those years of ignored chametz while grouting that fucking floor.

I’d taken the day off of work to do it. And while I was on my knees, pushing the rapidly drying grout into all those nooks and crannies and feeling lower and less accomplished and more of a failure by the minute, someone knocked on my front door.

My dad. In his work clothes, with a bucket in his hand. My mom had brought me another bag of grout in the middle of my rapidly compounding failure and told him his daughter could use an assist. We finished the floor in about an hour, silently working on the last third and cleaning up all the stains I’d made.

Post-renovation music studio

When you hide from a narrow place full of darkness and so much bad juju for so long, sometimes you need help to finish pushing out the darkness and letting in the light. And when it was done, this marvelous thing happened, I felt better. It was as if making that physical remnant of my old life whole again, made me whole again and I was ready to face the other narrow place in my life: my not-so-narrow waistline.

I stopped drinking alcohol. I cut out dairy. I did the Whole 30 diet and I worked out four times a week. And now, here we are, seven months and forty pounds later and it’s time for the search for the metaphoric chametz to begin. And this year, I started with the corners I used to skip.

I cleaned my vanity this weekend. Organized my necklaces and creams and tossed old lipsticks I don’t wear. Spent an afternoon untangling all the things I use to puff myself up and make myself feel beautiful on days when I can’t stand to look at myself in the mirror. And it was while I was untangling the dozens of necklaces that I rarely wear that I realized how I’d been cheating all these years. How I’ve been honing denial and avoidance into an art form even while cleaning for Passover.

And it stops. Now.

Q had the same problem. Still does, to a large extent. Sometimes I’m working on a Clementine Toledano Mystery and I think nobody could be this obtuse. Then I remember the closed door to my music studio with a sign that read ‘Do Not Open during Pesach’ and I realize that most of us are exactly that obtuse.

In That Old Devil Sin, Q avoids telling Ben that she’d been raped ten years prior until she absolutely can’t avoid it any longer. She describes how it changed her, like this:

“You know, it’s a funny thing, when something bad like that happens, it changes you so fundamentally, it’s hard to recognize the person you were before. I remember that girl. I do… She was fearless, so fucking fearless.”

I wrote that four years ago and it’s taken me until this past weekend to realize that I was writing about myself. The bad thing that happened to me wasn’t as dramatic as an attack, but it hurt me in ways that I refused to admit.

Losing New Orleans to Katrina and losing my band at the same time.

That’s what I used to think pushed me to the brink. But that wasn’t the bad thing: it was the crushing disappointment of failure.

Not the failure itself. The loss of potential. The weight of knowing that future that I envisioned for myself was never going to happen.

In audio, there is a term for starting over: Zeroing Out. When you zero out a piece of gear (usually a mixer), you return all the functions to their default state so that you can start a new mix.

And that’s what the search for chametz does. It resets your home. Resets your mind. Resets your disappointment and your frustration and reminds you that every day is a chance for a new beginning. You can’t avoid the narrow places in your life, they will always find a way to bring you to your knees eventually.

Tonight, I'm tackling my sock drawer.

Jealousy

I recently stumbled across another set of murder mysteries set in Louisiana. Within 15 words of reading the description of the first book, it became overwhelmingly clear that the author was not from Louisiana, nor had they spent any significant amount of time here beyond the odd episode of True Blood or, perhaps, a few chapters of Interview with the Vampire.

Before you cry “foul” and tell me how arrogant I’m being for making that assumption, the word “crayfish” was the 16th word in that book description. People in Louisiana do not raise, consume, say, or write about “crayfish.” We lovingly raise, copiously consume, say with relish, and write volumes of poetic love about “crawfish.” There’s a fucking Elvis Presley song that teaches the proper pronunciation of this delectable creature, for the love of shellfish.

As I stared at this novella’s 284 reviews with growing animosity and an endless cascade of “This motherfucker. This motherfucker, right here” falling from my lips, I realized that I was jealous.

I haven’t felt jealousy towards another artist’s success in over a decade, so it was little off-putting. And I know that success has very little to do with talent, or in this case a fucking five second Google search. But there I was, jealous.

While bemoaning this discovery to a friend, he said this, “Comparing yourself to others is a benchmark for failure… or at the very least, disappointment.”

(I know I’ve said this before, but I am surrounded by brilliant friends and thank Gd for that.)

And then it hit me. That’s what I was doing. I wasn’t jealous of this author’s success at attracting a readership. I was comparing myself to them, and all my fears - all those fears I tell myself aren’t real and all those fears I speak a mantra daily to overcome - were bubbling up to the surface in a single mind-killing scream: I am not good enough.

Isn’t that always the fear? That’s the one. The one that gets everybody.

I’m not smart enough.

I’m not talented enough.

I’m not pretty enough.

I’m not thin enough.

I’m not young enough.

I’m not good enough.

But the question we never ask ourselves, at least I don’t, is good enough for whom?

Who is this mythical person we’re trying so hard to impress? And, more importantly, what makes them so fucking special that we’re trying to impress them?

Jealousy is an irrational emotion. It’s not easily contained, and it’s even harder to explain but at the root of it is just self-doubt. Whatever makes you insecure; whatever portion of yourself you still haven’t learned to accept; whatever deep, dark fear keeps you up at night; I will guarantee you that at some point in your life you have felt jealous because of it.

I’ve spent a good portion of the last five days being jealous. It was like once that book’s blurb and those 284 reviews tore a little hole in my confidence, all those fears came tumbling out like Pandora’s fucking box.

And it was deeply illuminating.

In the last five days, I’ve found myself being jealous of lineless faces, stretchmarkless tummies, job promotions, job offers, happy marriages, childless friends, stay-at-home parents, and authors who don’t know their crawfish from their crayfish, just to name a few of the things that spiraled me down into a pit of depression that I didn’t know if I was going to rise back out of, faster than a knife to the gut and just as startlingly painful.

You don’t get over your insecurities. You learn to live with them and silence them.

In Chasing Those Devil Bones, Q tells Derek:

“You have to shove that darkness back into whatever prison you let it live inside of you and lock that shit back up. Lock it up tight and don’t let it hurt you anymore. Listen to me now. Don’t let it get a foothold. That’s what it wants. But you’re stronger than that, aren’t you? You’re braver than it could ever hope to be because you’re still here. So, let that shit go and don’t let it take anything else from you. Ever.”

And she’s right. And that’s what my friend meant, too. When you are jealous of someone, you are comparing yourself to a single portion of who they are, and you’re not seeing the big picture. You’re also leaving yourself out of the equation. You’re stacking the deck against yourself: Here’s everything they do right and here’s everything I do wrong.

It’s a pointless, futile exercise and somehow you have to learn to let that shit go.  

The Tipping Point

Once I was in a band called Hadji. Looking back on it, we were a great band. We did amazing things that nobody in the New Orleans music scene was doing 18 years ago. Don’t believe me?

Check it.

So, we did what bands did back in 2003. We packed up our gear, said goodbye to our friends and moved to Los Angeles. And we worked, and we struggled, and then it happened: that magical tipping point.

We showed up at the Derby on a Saturday night, and it was packed. The opening band was perfect to hold the crowd. There was a film crew there wanting to do a documentary on us. Us!

As we walked to the stage to set up, the soundman came up and told us we were moved to the last position on the bill. I started to argue. This is our slot. We’re supposed to go on now. This is our moment.

But I lost the fight. The band that was supposed to play last was on “tour” and said they needed to hit the stage right then and there because they had a long drive ahead of them. They were lying, of course. They wanted to play in front of 500 enraptured people. The people of Los Angeles are not well known for their attention spans.

Unfortunately for all of us, the out-of-tune, combination Reggae-Punk musical stylings of said band cleared the bar  exactly 90 seconds into their first song.

And that, my friends, was that.

You don’t get a big moment like that twice. That was ours, and we lost it. Things fell apart pretty quickly after that.

It’s a hard thing to lose a dream like that. To have to let go of something you’ve put so much of your blood into. But we had to. Our drummer was battling some demon we didn’t know about until it was too late. Our bassist needed to make ends meet for his family. And I was tired.

By the end of the year, a hurricane wiped out our home city and stranded us all in Los Angeles. So, I went on, on my own, for about two more years. Making film scores. Doing remixes. Mixing records for other people. But my heart wasn’t in it anymore. I just didn’t want to continue.

But when you’re a creative creature, you can’t let go of that energy easily. I hit the pause button for a while, throwing my energy into learning everything I could about Judaism. Thinking G-d would have some answers I didn’t.

Then I tried gardening. I loved it; until I didn’t. I moved on home improvement, which frankly I only enjoy in small, concentrated bursts. I tried photography for like a nanosecond, but that really isn’t my bag. (Don’t believe me? Check out my Instagram feed.)

And then, one magical morning in November of 2012, I rediscovered writing. I remember how bad traffic was as I made my way to my office that morning and I was really desperate for a good book. The last Harry Dresden book had left me thirsty for more (hint, hint, Jim Butcher. Come on, already, dude) and I couldn’t find anything to scratch that itch.

Then other itches bubbled back up to the surface. The band itch. I missed my band. Missed my bandmates even more. I thought how long it had been since I’d spoken to our original drummer. He’d quit years before the move to L.A. to make his own move to New Zealand. I thought about those sweaty, dusty nights, packing up the U-Haul for out-of-town gigs, carrying that fucking drum coffin of his down the steep steps at our rehearsal warehouse and dropping it into the trailer.

“She was a good ol’ girl, but I just had to go and kill her.” –Kyle Meades, ladies and gentlemen.

And that’s when it happened. That lightning spark of an idea. That flash of creative stimulation: what if a dead body had tumbled out of that case?

And Clementine Toledano was born.

I wrote the first two chapters of what would become That Old Devil Sin in an afternoon. A flurry of words came rushing out. I could see everything so clearly.

I’m not going to lie, the first few characters and places in that book were initially inspired by real people and places I know. Until the characters came alive all on their own and took their own form. But that moment was the beginning of me really starting over and building myself back up.

Before that, I’d lied to myself about being ok after Hadji broke up. I wasn’t ok. I wasn’t anywhere near ok. Everything I was, all the mythology I’d built up around who I thought I was, was centered around being the leader of that band. And when it was gone, so was my center of gravity.

And it’s fucking tough to live without a center of gravity, y’all.

It’s even tougher to build a new one.

Now that I have FOUR books under my belt, (did you catch that? That’s right, The Devil’s Luck is D.U.N. done. Just five more chapters to edit and off to beta!) I’ve built a new core. And it isn’t based on a mythology. It’s based in reality.

I am more than a musician. I am more than a writer. I am more than any one thing that defines me, and I do not lie to myself.

That last part is key. While I daydream of one day quitting my job and writing novels the whole world will read, I know that the likelihood of this ever happening is very small. That doesn’t mean that I don’t try to write the best novel I can. It doesn’t mean that I don’t plan marketing strategies and try to make that dream a reality.

But it does mean that I don’t let the rise and fall of my books’ Amazon rankings define who I am.

Having talent does not guarantee success.

But at some point in time, all the hard work and positive thinking and self-actualizing visualization have to come to a head and raw, dumb luck will tip the scales one way or the other. It’s just the way the universe seems to balance itself.

The trick is not to let it tip you over.

Scandalous

From the outside looking in, I’ve led a marginally scandalous life. I’ve done drugs. I’ve partied with rock stars and gone skinny dipping on a private beach in Miami, also with rock stars. I’ve had sex with strangers and gotten into a bar fight (although I’m still not entirely convinced the latter was my fault… I mean, he was really asking for it).

But I’ve never considered myself a scandalous person. On the contrary, I think I’ve led a pretty normal life. I went to University and got a degree. I’ve worked a full-time job since I was eighteen, sometimes two at the same time. I have a good relationship with my parents. I don’t have any tattoos or addictions. I’ve never been arrested. I got married. I had a kid. I have a mortgage that gets paid every month.

Unfortunately, the closer I get to societal norms of good behavior, the part of me that loved my wild nature best feels trapped in a cage of my own creation. I know what you’re thinking: Mid-Life Crisis Alert.

And maybe you’re not far off, but if I’m being honest, this shit started over a dozen years ago. The war between my socially acceptable self and my wannabe scandalous nature. The former won the  fucking knock-out drag-out fight in my mid-thirties. Won it so handily that it took almost ten years for my inner wild child to regain consciousness.

To combat this crazed maniac that lives beneath my skin, I write books. Books full of people leading scandalous lives and doing scandalous things. But at the center of this hurricane of debauchery is Q. Q, who is a nice Jewish girl at heart. Q, who gets tamed and settles down with a good feminist husband.

I often wonder why I’ve chosen this path for her. I’m not going to lie. Shit’s about to get very real for my heroine, but that urge to push her into a “normal” life is still so alluring. And honestly, it’s making me examine my own gender bias. It makes me wonder if Derek Sharp or Charlie Bourdel were the centers of my stories, would I be pushing them towards marriage and a quiet life of quiet desperation?

Society isn’t a fan of women who behave badly. There are volumes full of names for women like me. Or rather, the woman I used to be.

Being sexually autonomous is equated with promiscuity which gets you labeled whore or slut.

Being ambitious and career-focused is equated with being conniving which gets you labeled bitch or cunt.

Standing strong for your rights is equated with not knowing your place or, worse, bucking societal morays which gets you labeled dyke or femi-nazi.

And I could go on, but you get the idea. What I’ve come to realize, though, is that all these insults and labels get boiled down to one thing: A woman’s instinctive scandalous nature.

There is a popular saying that well-behaved women rarely make history. And  that is true. Well-behaved women rarely make interesting   heroines, too.

So, fear not, dear readers, Q has all kinds of scandalous adventures in store for her. But when she’s ready and tired of all this death and mayhem, I think I may just go ahead and give her the happy ending everyone deserves.

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”

— Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

The Sleeping Dragon

And here we are, one week out from the big day and anyone who’s marginally aware of the emotional world around them can feel it. That rise in the self-indulgent, seemingly out-of-character behavior of the populace at large. And because Carnival Season was so short this year (it follows the Lunar Calendar, so it changes year to year), it is concentrated like a motherfucker.

I love this week. I hate it, too. I’ve always been a champ at ascetic self-denial. But give me a taste of pure pleasure, and I’m as bad as a smackhead.

And this week, the world around me is screaming for me to go ahead and give in. Everyone else is. Disciplined dieters are devouring their weight in King Cake from Gambino’s. Teetotalers are, at this very moment, consuming their fifth hurricane after smoking their very first joint or eating a random hit of Ecstasy. The prudish are fucking their brains out and flashing body parts they don’t usually admit to having and blush to show to their family physician. And me? I’m hanging on by my fingernails.

I tell myself that Carnival season is a family event. I take my kids to parades, and catch the best throws, and I don’t drink, and I don’t eat King Cake, and I don’t do public exhibitionism. But good lord. It’s difficult not to want to.

Everybody needs a vice. It’s a human need. So, what do you do when every single one of your vices has been systematically taken away from you? What do you do when drinking makes you physically and spiritually ill inside? What do you do when a bite of King Cake would put you into anaphylactic shock? What do you do when you’re a grown ass woman who knows and understands that the Internet is forever and has only every flashed a nipple whilst breastfeeding a child?

I tell you what you do; you make the best of it. You enjoy the spectacle and try not to be jealous, year after year after year. But then, you get a taste. A tempting, tantalizing taste. And that sleeping dragon wakes up and consumes your entire being and it’s all you can do to not claw your fucking face off.

That is the power of collective hedonism. It’s societal permission to break every social moray you’ve been trained from childhood to follow. And you know what? That ok.

It’s ok to drink too much, every once in a while, and remember how bad a hangover feels. It’s ok to eat too much and gain a few pounds and take a break from the gym, so your body remembers how good it feels when it’s being taken care of. It’s ok to let your guard down and kiss a stranger or expose a little too much skin. You’re a grown-up. It’s your body. You do you.

As for me? All of my vices have been removed from my life either with intent or by consequence of my actions. And to be honest, I don’t miss most of them. Just the one. The big one. And, of course, that was the one I got a taste of the other day. A tantalizing glimpse of a beautiful afternoon filled with the one sin that I will never stop desiring.

Escape: my one, true vice.

You see sweets, booze, drugs, and sex in moderation may all be depraved in various ways, some more than others, but those are for chumps and children. You want a bad habit? Pick up the high you get from real escape. Not that temporary buzz from having a drink or seven to forget your troubles. I mean running far away. Starting over as a stranger. Just you and a couple of suitcases and the open road full of possibilities.

That, my friends, is a real high. The rest? It’s for the weak.

But when you build a life, you put down enough roots to bind your feet where they stand with iron chains and multiple padlocks. And, man, that hurts sometimes.

Gnawing off that foot seems like a better idea than standing still and waiting to see what happens next. Or worse? Using your calm intellect to fashion a few extra links in that chain, or even finding a way to unlock the trap yourself so you can walk those few steps away to see a new vista. But, if I’m being honest? I’m nibbling on my ankle right now and have been ever since I was given the glimmer of a glimpse of the key to the chain that’s holding me in place.

And the key knows it and has total control over me right now. And, while I hate giving up control, I crave it, too. That raw terror just adds to whatever thrill I’m seeking. An afternoon of escape? I can resist. An afternoon of escape and giving someone else the wheel? Now, that is making the dragon that sleeps inside me coil around my spine and blow fire into my blood and bring me to my knees, willing to beg for my taste of temptation.

The convergence of decadence, hedonism, debauchery, and wantonness has a hold over this state and me. And it’s fucking awesome.

I wish I could tell you there is a moral lesson in all of this. I know you’re begging for it. That punishing resolution to all this bad behavior. You’ve been trained to want it. That’s the defect that all of us have been given by our Puritan founders. They’re screaming in your ear using your own inner voice right now. Can you hear them? They’re shouting, “You did something sinful. Where’s your scarlet letter?”

But you’re not going to get it. There are no scarlet letters this week. This is no punishment. And, to a large extent, there are very few consequences. Just embarrassing photographs that become funny stories you tell at a boring cocktail party one day. And there are still seven glorious days and nights for the most mundane of us to act wild.

So, what are you waiting for? Go dance.

Demonic Exercises in Emotional Bonding

Reconnecting

I have a confession. A dark and terrifying one that I am going to reveal to the world: I am a terrible friend.

Ok, not really. I’m actually a pretty awesome friend. Unfortunately, I’d also be perfectly happy to never speak to another human being as long as I live. It’s not something I seek out, friendship. And, while I love Twitter and Facebook and MySpace before them, this brave new social media world has made it easier and easier to become, if not a terrible friend, an extremely lazy one. And it suits my personality a little too well.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I think they’re stupid. If you want to do something, then do it. Don’t use the planet’s annual cycle around the sun as an excuse. But I made one this year. A simple one. I am going to reconnect with friends that I’ve allowed social media to be the substitution for real contact and [gulp] reconnect with friends with whom I’ve had no contact for years.

It was scary. I’m not going to lie. But, as the saying goes, I will not fear. Fear is the mind killer.

And I can’t take credit for the idea. I “friended” an actual old friend last summer on Facebook and he immediately sent me his phone number so that we could actually talk. I’d lost him after Katrina. I couldn’t find him. I worried about him for years and then there I was on my lunch break, listening to his voice and geeking about gear and hearing about his grandbabies. It was wonderful.

And then, another marvelous, deliciously delightful human being who I get to call my friend did the same thing. He called me. Just to talk. Just to catch up. Two hours later, we were still talking.

And I decided I was going to follow their lead. I was going to make an effort. I was going to be the one to reach out first.

So, Step One: when wonderful, beautiful friend sends her annual text message wishing me a happy birthday, make a real, actionable plan to go to lunch on a specific date and then drive that paltry one hour and change to go see her. And it was so simple. 

We do this all the time, in our modern culture. We say “we never see each other; we should really get together soon,” and we never follow it up with “when is a good time for us to do that?”

And it’s not because the desire isn’t there. It’s because saying “we should” is easier than saying “let’s.” When did that happen?

And since step one and the subsequent lunch with my dear and fabulous friend was amazing and within five minutes we were back to talking as if five years hadn’t passed between us, I did it again.

I had dinner two nights ago with another beautiful, strong woman that I am lucky enough to call my friend...after seven years of not seeing each other. Again, ten minutes in and we’re sharing our struggles with motherhood and relationships, and we’re right back to where we were. A little older, but just the same.

And I get to do this again on Saturday with another dear friend, and I can’t wait. Although, I can’t take the credit for this one since he’s making the effort to drive all the way out to visit me at the convention I’m attending at the moment.

What friends I have, right?

Ok, so that was fun. I’m now back in touch with a handful of people who I adore and who amaze me. Time to strap my courage to the sticking place for Step Two and reach out to those that I’ve truly neglected. Like the ones I haven’t seen or spoken to or about for a decade.

Gulp.

So, I send a very short note to another friend on social media, and he replies back with a very non-committal message with subtle undertones of “why the fuck are you messaging me?” 

Wonderful. 

I did actually have a reason for wanting to contact him. You see, Q’s penchant for wearing t-shirts with [insert metal band logo here] on the front, periodically provides me with the opportunity to give a shout out to bands that I love or bands with members I know. His is one of the latter, and I wanted to tell him because I thought he might get a kick out of it. So, I send a screenshot of the paragraph in Chasing Those Devil Bones in question and tell him about my new status as a published author and done. Right?

Wrong.

Now, it becomes abundantly clear from his response that he has absolutely no clue who I am and thinks some crazy woman is stalking him online. He’s flattered, but confused (and who could blame him).

And here comes the rub of it. That moment when you have the full and very realization that you are not as memorable as you think you are. 

This man was an important part of my life. He inspired me with his drive and ambition and generosity and kindness, and I was fortunate enough to count him as a member of my social circle.

And I what did I do? I walked away from it. I got lazy. I used MySpace updates (that’s how long ago this started) as actual contact. I used mutual acquaintances as go-betweens.

But you know what? “Tell so-and-so, I said ‘hi.’” is not telling so-and-so you said anything.

Pick up a phone and tell them.

I’ve just sent an overly long message to this person to tell him how we knew each other and to apologize for not getting in touch sooner and to let him off the hook if he doesn’t want to resume contact. And I don’t know how he’ll respond.

I know I deserve for him to tell me to fuck right off. But, he’s a musician, and we all live on tour time, so these lapses in contact don’t seem to impact us emotionally as much as it does civilians. But still, I know that option is rightly on the table for him, and I won’t hold it against him if he chooses to take it.

Tour time.

It’s a blessing and a curse. I’ve often wondered if this is something unique to the music industry. We see each other for these brief and intense interactions: recording a record, playing a gig, and then nothing. For months. Because we’re off having intense interactions with other people we know and will not see again for months or years.

I’m at one of those intense interactive experiences right now. The NAMM convention is an annual pilgrimage a good portion of gear nerds and music enthusiasts make to Anaheim, California every January. It’s where music manufacturers show off all their new wares and try to sell said wares to music merchants (the MM in NAMM). I write technical articles and documentation for one such music manufacturer, and we are here, right now, having a demonic bonding experience for the next four days.

And this reconnecting that I’ve been actively working on with those who used to be closest to me is constant. I walked into the hotel from dinner last night and saw a colleague and his wife who I haven’t seen since June at another tradeshow and we’re screaming and hugging and talking like we saw each other last weekend. And it’s like that every year.

Even if you meet someone for the first time at one of these crazy events, it’s like you are instantly bonded for life. At that same tradeshow I attended in June, I met a colleague from another music manufacturer for the very first time. We were booth neighbors. I saw him yesterday and we were asking about each other’s kids and talking about our health like we’ve known each other for years. When, in actuality, we’ve only known each other for three days.

Insane, yes?

I only see some of my friends when they’re on tour in my state and we hardly talk in between. I only see some of my most favorite colleagues once a year. But you’d never know it when if you saw us together.

For my friends who’ve never experienced tour time (and none of the people mentioned so far can be counted within this group), it’s not a part of my personality they enjoy. They don’t like the long silences followed by bursts of intense emotional contact. It makes them uncomfortable. It makes them angry.

But I can’t explain how this works to them. It’s just something that I’ve learned to live with. That I’ve adapted to, because being a musician means being away from people you love. A lot. It also means isolating yourself so that you can create what you love. A lot. 

It’s the bargain. It’s the trade-off. And we all understand that about each other. I think it’s why musicians and music makers travel together in packs. We’re a herding species of humans. Nobody understands us, but our own.

But even in this lifestyle, you can’t lose that one critical element. You can be absent for months or years with minimal contact, but to maintain that bond, that chain of connection, you need those intense bursts of emotional intimacy.

And emotional intimacy has never been something that I’ve been particularly good at. But, thankfully, Ben and Sanger are wonderful at it. And they’ve taught me how. So, during this, my first year of following through with a New Year’s resolution, I’m going to practice what they’ve taught me.

To all my friends waiting for me to reach out; I’m working my way to you, don’t you worry. But if you’re tired of waiting, give a yell because I’m likely dying to hear from you. And if you’ve given up on me entirely and never want to hear from me again, that’s alright, too. 

This is me: flashing one of Sanger’s patented easy smiles at you. We’re all good, you and me. 

And if you're one of the crazy herd living on tour time and swarming on this poor California town, you know where to find me.

Like a Newborn Screaming

Writing is a lonely business. 

I know I’m not the first author to write those words, much less think those words. Before I wrote my novels, I thought that this phrase referred to the process of writing being lonely. You can’t rely on anyone but yourself, your talent, your vocabulary, your research. I mean, the process of composing music is devastatingly lonely, so why would writing words be any different?

But writing, for me, isn’t lonely. Especially not when I’m writing about Q and the boys. They keep me company. Sometimes, they’re more real than the people I encounter every day. And even when I’m drafting manuals or technical articles, it’s not lonely either, because I’m imagining the person reading them. What they’re most interested in learning. What worries they may have. How I can make their day just a little easier.

So, no. Writing, in and of itself, is not a lonely business. But writing is just the beginning. It’s the gestation, not the birth. Release a novel sometime, and you’ll understand why newborns scream bloody murder when they come into the word. Because you see, the business of writing is a cold and lonely hellscape of desolation.

Why? Because that, my friends, is where only your intestinal fortitude holds you upright. That is where you must say you did something good. Something to be proud of. Something worth all that time and energy you spent doing it. And guess what? Most days, you and only you are the person validating your work.

Don’t believe me? Most of my friends have not read my books.

Let that sink in for a minute.

My husband has not read a single one of my books, blogs, or articles. (And it’s an ongoing point of contention in our marriage, but still, not a one.)

I’ve often wondered why that is. And I don’t have to really think that hard about it. I know why. They are all terrified of being the only person in my life to look me in the eye and say, “Your books suck.”

That is how much the people in your life love you, folks. They’d rather hope that maybe you have a ton of talent and are not, in fact, wasting your time on an art form you should abandon, than actually find out for themselves that you don’t have a lick of talent and be forced to tell you that you should quit or, worse still, smile politely and lie to your face. 

The logic goes something like this: I’ll tell this person whom I love that I’m proud of them, but I won’t read the book, just in case it sucks.

Still don’t believe me? I used to live in terror of having to listen to my friends’ albums. I still do. I’m picky. I used to be a professional audio engineer, and it makes me hear things all funny. For example, a friend sent me his new track a few months ago, and it had a terrible phasing issue (if you don’t know what that means, trust me, you’d rather not know, because then you’ll hear it, like all the time); and I debated for ten solid minutes before I erased my text that read, “hey, the string part is out of phase with the bassline and that breakbeat is about 1/32 out of time for half a measure at 1:38," and replaced it with “Love it!!!”

And it gets worse. I literally ranted about how poorly one of my friends’ last albums was mixed to my coworkers for twenty minutes one afternoon. "The guitar solo is always the loudest thing in the mix!! How could they be doing this for so long and so successfully without learning that one little thing? Who the hell mixes a metal record without automating levels? Seriously, what in the good fuck is that??"

And did I say that to their faces? Hell, no. I told them the new record was great. Because it was and it was too late to fix it anyway, I mean it was already out there. And besides, it wasn’t their fault their engineer has his head up his ass. And I can’t tell them that either because they love him and I’m sure he’s a lovely person if they love him so much they don’t care that he can’t mix their guitars properly. And that would make me the bad guy. And I don’t want to be the bad guy. 

You see what I mean? Terror. Absolute terror. 

So, I get it. I truly understand why only the bravest of my friends reads my books and, even braver still, tells me where I fell short (I’m looking at you, Heather and Jim. You’re both god damn warriors). Unfortunately, it also means that, by and large, I am the only person in my life that reads the words I write and knows that I should continue. And that’s ok. Because, in this particular endeavor, it’s my talent that keeps me up at night. My talent that tells me to wake up at five in the morning and write, even though it’s hard.

Because, even if one of my friends told me my books were terrible, it wouldn’t matter. Because I don’t do this for them. I do this for me. It was the same with music. And, looking back on the things I recorded, I can see where I fell short. But I can also see where I succeeded. And that’s a great feeling. 

“I am creating” is so much more powerful to me than “I am succeeding.”

I succeed when I create something I am proud of. Something that I want to share with the world. Something that gives me so much inner joy that the people who love me most are terrified to read it and tell me otherwise.

But the joke’s on them. Because they’re missing out. Don’t believe me? Click on this link and find out for yourself.

Chasing Those Devil Bones is NOW AVAILABLE.