Bookstore Fun

Last year, we wrapped up the Pens Fatales blog after we felt it had run its course and we each needed to focus on our quickly-expanding writing careers. But once we did so, we missed it! So earlier this year, we bought it back. But as you may have noticed, we haven't been as active as we were in our first incarnation. We asked ourselves what was different. The answer wasn't what we expected:

It's been interesting to realize that in this world where social media is ubiquitous, we connect more *in person* than online. You'll still find us online individually (e.g. Juliet loves Facebook, Gigi loves Twitter, Rachael loves her blog, Mysti is part of another group blog), but when we get together as a group, more often than not it's at a cafe or a bookstore instead of here on the blog. Case in point: this past month, several of us did bookstore events together.

Here are a few photos from our events at Borderlands Books in San Francisco and Village House of Books in Los Gatos.

Borderlands Books manager Jude Feldman with Juliet Blackwell.

Juliet Blackwell signing books at Borderlands in San Francisco.

Gigi Pandian, Juliet Blackwell, and Kate Carlisle at Borderlands Books.

Sophie Littlefield, Rachael Herron, and Gigi Pandian
at Village House of Books in Los Gatos. 

5 Tips for Getting the Most out of Bouchercon

by Gigi Pandian

Named for mystery author and editor Anthony Boucher, Bouchercon is the big convention for fans of mystery fiction. It takes place each autumn, and the location bounces around the world. Mystery readers and writers gather to talk mystery, meet their favorite authors, discover new books, and generally have a good time.

Juilet Blackwell, Gigi Pandian, Sophie Littlefield
at Bouchercon 2009 in Indianapolis.

I attended my first Bouchercon five years ago, in 2009. I was taking my writing more seriously, but I wasn't yet published. Two author pals suggested I attend Bouchercon with them. I admit it sounded a bit daunting, because I knew only a handful people in the mystery community, and there were going to be over 1,000 people attending. But I figured as a huge fan of mysteries, I owed it to myself to check it out. It turned out I had such a great time that I've been back multiple times, and can't wait for this year's convention! Murder at the Beach takes place in Long Beach, CA, from November 13-16, 2014.

For those of you thinking about registering but who haven't yet done so because of reservations such as the ones I initially had, here's what I can tell you to put your mind at ease:

5 Tips for Getting the Most out of Bouchercon

1. Realize that many mystery writers and readers are introverts, so you're not alone! The vast majority of us are pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones when we attend big conventions. But everyone I've met over the years has been friendly, so with only a small amount of effort, you'll find yourself with new friends in no time.

In the photo directly below, taken at Boucheron 2012 in Cleveland, I hadn't met half the lovely women in the photograph before that weekend, but by the time I flew home, I thought of them as friends.

Gigi Pandian, Juliet Blackwell, Victoria Laurie,

Chantelle Aimée Osman, Susan Boyer, Lesa Holstine

at Bouchercon in Cleveland..

2. Though the schedule is jam-packed with fabulous programming, you shouldn't feel you have to do everything. Take time for coffee breaks with new friends, as well as solitary breaks back in your hotel room to recharge. Truly. Give your brain at least a little bit of time each day to rest. You might even get out of the hotel and see some of the sights in the city you're visiting. (This year they've got some cool organized tours.)

Bouchercon is a lot bigger than mystery conventions like Malice Domestic (celebrating traditional mysteries) and Left Coast Crime (the West Coast's mystery con), meaning there's so much to see and do -- but also that it's even more important to take a break. 

Mysti Berry, Gigi Pandian, Sophie Littlefield. 

Meeting online friends in person.

3. As soon as you arrive, look through the program book and circle the events you want to be sure to attend. That way you can be sure to get in the good stuff you want to see, such as a panel on a topic that interests you or an interview with one of your favorite authors. Trust me. If you don't write it down on paper or put it in your phone calendar, you'll miss things you meant to see. I've done this multiple times, so I need to follow my own advice!

4. Once you've figured out everything you absolutely must attend, be open to new experiences. One of the reasons I had such a good time at my first Bouchercon was because I had no expectations. I didn't have a book out to promote, so I was attending to see what the convention was all about. I loved picking up bookmarks from new authors, having hallway conversations with people as passionate about mysteries as I was, and meeting interesting people at the bar. None of  those things were formal parts of the program, yet they were core parts of the Bouchercon experience. 

Opening ceremonies of Bouchercon in Cleveland

at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 

5. Don't forget to look over the attendee list. The long weekend will be over before you know it, and you want to be sure to connect with people you might not have another opportunity to see. Be it saying hello to a favorite author at their signing, or meeting up with a friend you know through an online mystery discussion group, making a checklist of names in advance is helpful. 

I hope to see you at this year's convention! 

--Gigi Pandian

Secret Poison

by Sophie

SECRETS

It would be hard for me to convey just how much I hate secrets. The greatest hurts of my life have been due to things unsaid, terrible truths that lay thick on the ground all around while those who tried to ignore them were crippled by their own shame. Secrets are especially damaging to children, whose struggle to understand the world in the face of partial truths and lies is made near-impossible, and whose attempts to shift their understanding to fit the flawed picture can result in invisible emotional deformities that can cripple them for their entire lives.

Naturally, this sort of sad landscape is rich with story potential, and I suppose it's no surprise that I'm most comfortable there when I'm writing. And I think the inexhaustible thirst of the reading public for revelatory stories, addiction memoirs and abuse stories and even dark thrillers with unspeakable crimes at the heart - I think this reflects a collective longing to understand and best the homely horrors of everyday life as practiced in our society. And I'd go a step further and say that the reader of this type of fiction is not just looking for the catharsis of seeing a victim rise above her torment - but also recognizing a core darkness that is present in the villain or antagonist of the story, the abuser or the addict or the killer.

It's a sad but basic truth that victims and perpetrators, especially when the former is a child, have muddy relationships. The villain steals innocence, sometimes intentionally, sometimes despite himself. The child is stamped forever with the shape of his particular darkness. Extrication never returns the victim to the same state she was in before, and that is why pat endings to thrillers are never very satisfying - we know, deep in our hearts, that the child rescued from the killer's clutches, who is seen reunited with his mother in the last frame of the book with the handsome sheriff looking on - we know that child is a changeling, that this is only the first page of a new book that cannot end well, one colored with a whole catalog of shame and terror and self-recrimination and doubt.

(As just one of thousands of examples, I'm currently reading DRINKING: A LOVE STORY by Carolyn Knapp, a chronicle of her years of alcoholism. One of the most compelling things I took away from the book is Knapp's painstaking insistence that there was nothing dramatically wrong with her childhood, just a general lack of closeness and a vague sense of secrecy, of things witheld. At times we learn of small hidden dramas later discovered by the now-alcoholic adult Carolyn, but one senses that it was the more diffuse and general sense of things unsaid that created the emptiness Carolyn filled with drink. That is, of course, just my reading.)

So: secrets -> inner life minefield -> great potential for fiction.


My own kids have probably suffered an overabundance of truth as a result of my determination to avoid the deception snares. We laugh about it now, but I am sure that there were many times when an evasion or even a gentle fabrication might have sufficed. I've outed people and habits and history that could probably have been left to rest with no great consequence. If I could start parenting over again I'm sure I'd make different choices. But I was well-intentioned, and I think I got the basic point across - truth is best.

That said, I confess now to being an incurable secret-keeper. I'd say we all are, but speaking just for myself, I fail every day in my professed hope to be more open. I'm secretive for convenience' sake, to save feelings, to get what I want. I even, though I try *really* hard not to, keep secrets from myself, the most damaging ones of all. But I'm getting pretty good at recognizing it. By the time I'm dead I intend to be an open book.

Of course there are lovely secrets, the sort that are accompanied by blushing and quickened pulses and mysteriously-signed notes...and I'll leave those for my sunnier Pens to plumb.

Writing Around the Dad-Filter

by Sophie

PARENTS

You all know the old writing advice, right - "Write as though your parents are dead"?

It's good advice. Parents are one of the strongest filters between what's cooking in our brain and what ends up on the page. And that's not always a bad thing, of course - parents are often our first teachers, our value-setters, our moral guides. I'm grateful to mine. But the day came when I had to stick my fingers in my ears and go "blah blah blah I don't hear you, Dad" - figuratively speaking, of course.

(Now I have to pause here and tell you that my dad reads this blog regularly. Hi, Dad! So even as I write about filters, I'm probably filtering. But in the last year Dad and I have had lots of great conversations about a variety of things and I don't think he'll mind me sharing.)

I've written for many, many years, and my dad's always read bits and pieces of what I was working on. My brother's always written too, and Dad read some of his work too. One day we were all talking about writing, and my dad said, "Just don't ever write anything gratuitously violent. There's no excuse for that."

(Pause, again. We have to wait a minute for my dad to say "I said that? I never said that! I don't remember saying that." I'm hoping Mike is reading this too so he can back me up.)

Here's the thing. I wrote lots of stuff for a long time with my dad's words in my mind. I tried to ignore them, but they were just too powerful. So while I wrote my women's fiction and literary fiction and so on, I veered away from violence. Which some of you, those of you who have read my stuff, may find curious. Because I would say that one of the themes uniting all of my recent work - whether it's mystery, young adult, or paranormal - is human violence and where it springs from and what it does to people and how it informs our emotional landscape and visa versa. I'm telling you, it's a *big* deal to me. It might not be going too far to say it's fundamental to my work as a whole.

Now I could wimp out here and go "yeah, but it's not ever gratuitous." The thing is- "gratuitous," I mean really, isn't that a cheat? Who gets to decide? Whether it's sex or violence or wordiness or grammatical liberty-taking, isn't your not-enough often my over-the-top? I reject the non-gratuitous defense.

I write violence. I have my reasons. for some people it's too much, for others too little, and I reserve the right to change course at any time.


I'm going to pause one more time for my dad to say "Dear, I would never dream of telling you what to write" and "You and your brother are my favorite authors." I like hearing that. :) Yeah, he's my dad and all, but I can't hear that enough. If the Nobel committee took notes from people's parents, I expect my dad would write one, and that's nice.

So you know I have my own little writers, right? I tell them all the time that they are brilliant writers, because to me, they are. They shine bright, bright, bright for me, and I know I can't be objective, and I don't care. I'm sure I'm saying other things to them that are messing with their heads, and that thirty years from now I'll hear about it and probably deny it. My niece and nephew are also budding writers. They're also brilliant.

Being the parent of a writer is probably a thankless task much of the time, so today I'd just like to say "Thanks, Dad."

Here's a sample of my nephew's recent work: