If it's dark it must be better.

This title only applies to chocolate!

Amazon just sent me a list of the best mysteries and thrillers of the year so far. And I read it with a growing sense of annoyance. They were ALL dark, violent and mostly by men.  I.e the typical list of nominees for the Edgar award.

So can somebody tell me why darkness and violence is somehow equated with higher quality? And why the traditional mystery is now called cozy and we less violent mystery writers are given a condescending pat on the head? After all the most successful writer of all times--Dame Agatha herself--wrote exactly what I write: a good story, among ordinary people, with no excessive guts or gore. And there are plenty of terrific writers still following in Agatha Christie's footsteps: Louise Penny, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Margaret Maron, Nancy Picard, Carolyn Hart, Deborah Crombie to name a few. (and you'll notice they are all women).

These writers show us the human condition at its frailest--when relationships and communities are shattered by a murder. They explore the depths of character. They take us somewhere with vividness of setting. Who has not shivered when reading Louise Penny's novels set in wintertime Quebec? Or smelled the fresh scent of the great plains in Nancy Pickard's Kansas?

These writers create a world, people it with real people and make us care about them. We so called cozy writers write about people you know, people who could be your next door neighbor, and thus when murder strikes on an ordinary street it is all the more shocking. If we wrote about loners and alcoholics, drug runners and CIA operatives then murder would be commonplace. Life would be cheap.

For us life is precious and it is devastating when it is wasted. 

It seems that too many people think that what is wanted today is fast pace, lots of explosions, people dying on every page in horrid ways--in other words A VIDEO GAME!
But I can tell from the number of people who check out my books from libraries, who write me lovely fan letters and who put me on the New York Times bestseller list this year that many people long for well crafted books, decent people, interesting settings and a good chuckle sometimes too.

I'd love to hear your comments on the cozy versus noir debate. Please chime in.

The Best Laid Plans

So much for my updates from Malice Domestic convention! It wasn't that I was partying so hard that I had no time. I actually missed the entire convention due to an accident on the first evening. I went out to dinner with a group of friends. We were given a big table at the back of the restaurant and I dakidn't realize it was up a step from the rest of the room. At the end of the meal I decided to use the rest room before we walked back to the hotel. I turned from my chair and stepped out into nothing. I went down like a tree onto brown ceramic tile. There was no kind of stripe or indication at the edge of the step which was tile like the rest of the room.

I was taken in a taxi back to the hotel and then it was determined I should go to the emergency room. It was my first experience of being in an ambulance and such cute paramedics too, but I was hurting too much to enjoy the experience. Three friends from dinner--Carolyn Hart, Eve Sandstrom and Jan Giles--came with me and spent the next seven hours with me in the emergency room, chatting to me and keeping up my spirits. I can't say enough how wonderful they were.

Less praise for the emergency room. It didn't seem busy but it took over an hour each time between doctor visits, e-rays, CT scan and all the while I was lying on a very hard gurney. It even took an hour and a half before I got an ice pack and then only because Carolyn made a fuss.

End result was that I have broken a bone in my pelvis. It is in place and the only cure is time. At close to five o'clock in the morning we arrived back at the hotel. The staff there (Hyatt Bethesda) were fantastic. I can't say enough about their kindness and willingness. The bell man who pushed my wheelchair up to my room telephoned the next day to see how I was getting along. The hotel sent up flowers and a lovely note. How rare is such attention these days.

I also can't say enough about the kindness of my roommate, Carolyn Hart, and of Eve and Jan, and so many other mystery writing friends at the convention. They kept up my spirits, came to visit and looked after me so well. As you can imagine I was worried about how I'd get home from Maryland as I couldn't put any weight on my left leg. Then I remembered that we have emergency medical evacuation insurance (taken out in case we got sick somewhere exotic) but it worked equally well in the USA. The next day a nurse arrived for me with limo to the airport and then she accompanied me home, first class, with a limo at the other end.  So given the circumstances it could not have been better managed.

The next morning I learned that I had won the Agatha Award for NAUGHTY IN NICE. I rather think the sympathy vote had something to do with it, but I promise not to go to extreme measures to win any awards in the future!

So now I'm home in my own bed and already thinking impatiently about starting my next book. I have at least a month ahead of me not being able to move, so why not get a head start. I've already got a great idea for Georgie's next adventure!

I'll keep you updated on my progress.

Where the Heck am I going?

Celebrate with me--I've just reached the stage in my new book when the end is in sight--I can see where the story is going and I KNOW I'LL BE ABLE TO FINISH IT!! Heavy sigh of relief.

Every book is the same tortured process--panic at beginning, worry until about page 150 then gathering momentum on the downhill slope to the finish line.
All this could be avoided if I could just outline the story in advance.

The problem is that I can't. I've tried. I can come up with a reasonably good outline for a story BUT it would be nothing like the story I'd end up with if I just let the book grow and develop. And if I had an outline, I'd feel obliged to follow it. Hence the book would not be as good.

Luckily I have wonderful editors who trust that I'll be able to come up with a book in the required length of time and don't demand to see a proposal. If they did want one it would say "she finds a body and then bad things happen to her."

So I have to let my characters stumble through their world, having things happen to them, meeting people I haven't anticipated, finding bodies where I least expected them and in the end it turns out that my characters (or is it my subconscious) knew pretty well where we were going.

Today on Jungle Red Writers , the group blog I belong to, mystery icon Carolyn Hart blogs about exactly this. She can't outline either... and you know, I don't think she's done too badly outlineless.

I hope to finish my first draft by the beginning of April. I'll keep you posted!