R.I.P Andy Rooney--the last of a dying breed

I always thought Andy Rooney looked sort of alike a muppet. It was the eyebrows, I think. And I always kind of got a kick out of his cranky-pants rants, even when I disagreed with him. I hadn't seen many of his broadcasts lately but I always knew he was there, like the irascible uncle at the family reunion who knows all the best stories if only he can be coaxed into focusing on them and not on the shortcomings of the rest of the relatives.
And now Andy Rooney is dead at 92.
I used to be a reporter and  I came of age at a time when "reporter" meant people who reported the news for print and broadcast, not people who chronicle celebrity gossip, keep track of movie box office figures, and indulge in public speculation about the sex lives of strangers while creating a cult of personality around their own "brand."
Yes, I know. I sound cranky-pants too. But I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially in terms of Arianna Huffington's stance on freelance writers. 
I have, as they say, "skin in the game."
HuffPost grew into the media power house it became through freelancers, a number of them reporters. Last year, Huffington sold HuffPost to aol for a cool $315 million and was given oversight of aol, including their micro-news sites, collectively known as patch.com. Almost immediately after the sale, Huffington moved to eliminate the few paid writers on HuffPost and began relying on the contributions of freelancers who were free. A month ago, she turned her attention to the patch sites.
Her logic seems to be:
All reporters are writers.
All bloggers are writers.
Therefore, all bloggers are reporters.
But you know what? All bloggers are not reporters and some bloggers aren't even writers. (And seriously, every blogging template out there has a spell-check function. Would it be too much to ask that bloggers use it?)
What does this have to do with me? In October, Mark Satchwill and I were told that freelancers would no longer be paid for their work on patch.com. That meant we wouldn't be paid for our NoHo Noir stories and illos on the North Hollywood/Toluca Lake site.  (And believe me when I tell you we weren't being paid much.)
We were invited to continue the stories for free but although we love our editor, we have chosen to break out on our own with the material.
\We'll be setting up a NoHo Noir blog soon to host the new stories and we'll also (pending approval from America Online's lawyers who have been sitting on the matter for four months) be bundling the first volume into an illustrated novel.
And what does this have to do with Andy Rooney? 
Nothing much except that it feels like his death marks the end of an era when reporters were valued for their work and paid for it and respected; when stories were researched and objective and fact-checked and edited for spelling and clarity. And most of all, the end of a time when "news" meant what was going on in the nation and the world at large and not which Kardashian spent how much on her wedding.

Happy Birthday Mary

Shay is playing "the toe game" with Orange Cat, an activity both find endlessly amusing. The object is for the cat to nip one of his toes before he can pull it back and OC often wins. It's his kind of game.
He's a very social cat but not a lap cat. He'll let me pick him up and nuzzle him for a bit but he only tolerates it for awhile before he starts squirming to get down.
What he really loves is lying at my feet when I'm on the computer with his big head wedged into the toe of my sneakers. Being around feet seems to soothe him. And oddly enough, he seems to understand that my toes are not playing. Even though they're dangling there in tooth reach, he leaves them alone.
I inherited Orange Cat from my sister. I wasn't looking to add another animal to my menagerie. I live in an apartment where there's a $500 deposit for each animal, and I already had one illegal cat because moving into the place exhausted my resources and I didn't have an extra $500 to put into a black hole. (I've been here almost 7 years now. In Virginia, landlords have to pay interest on money deposited as deposits. Not so in California.)
I had every intention of finding OC a home as I'd found homes for my sister's tortoise and iguana and snakes and other five cats.
But you know what they say about making plans.
Today is my sister's birthday.
If she were still around, I'd make her a cake with brown-sugar and coconut broiled icing.  (She and I shared a love of coconut that no one else in my circle seems to have.)
Instead, I'll celebrate her birthday by loving her cat and giving him one (or two) of the special tuna treats you can buy at PetCo. They're like kitty crack.  (Yes, I'm an enabler.)  And I'll smile when I see him playing the toe game.

Now you know--Candy Corn Facts

My friend Roz loves food history and today she sent this from howstuffworks:

Candy corn has been around for more than a century. George Renninger of the Wunderlee Candy Company invented it in the 1880s. It was originally very popular among farmers and its look was revolutionary for the candy industry. The Goelitz Candy Company started making candy corn in 1900 and still makes it today, although the name has changed to the Jelly Belly Candy Company.

Although the recipe for candy corn hasn't changed much since the late 1800s, the way it's made has changed quite a bit. In the early days, workers mixed the main ingredients -- sugar, water and corn syrup -- in large kettles. Then they added fondant (a sweet, creamy icing made from sugar, corn syrup and water) and marshmallow for smoothness. Finally, they poured the entire mixture by hand into molds, one color at a time. Because the work was so tedious, candy corn was only available from March to November.

Today, machines do most of the work. Manufacturers use the "corn starch molding process" to create the signature design. A machine fills a tray of little kernel-shaped holes with cornstarch, which holds the candy corn in shape. Each hole fills partway with sweet white syrup colored with artificial food coloring. Next comes the orange syrup, and finally, the yellow syrup. Then the mold cools and the mixture sits for about 24 hours until it hardens. A machine empties the trays, and the kernels fall into chutes. Any excess cornstarch shakes loose in a big sifter. Then the candy corn gets a glaze to make it shine, and workers package it for shipment to stores.

For more information, go here to howstuffworks.

Barefoot Contessa's Chocolate Cake Recipe

I was the bellaonline.com site's "Chocolate editor" for more than a year. Somehow, I never ran across Ina Garten's chocolate cake recipe until a friend made it for a dinner party. I watched him make it--pouring coffee into the batter and turned up my nose. I don't like coffee. Not at all.  And I was skeptical of the texture of the batter, which was remarkably soupy.
And then it came out of the oven, a deep, dark, luscious cake with no hint of coffee flavor.
And then there was icing.
The Barefoot Contessa's Chocolate Cake recipe is pretty much the best chocolate cake recipe ever.
Ever.
I'm thinking about it because it's a good friend's birthday today and he really loves chocolate. And because I love him, I see a chocolate cake in his future.
If you're too old for trick or treat but want a treat anyway, check out the recipe. Ina has thoughtfully provided it online here.
If you want a nice little extra touch--instead of flouring the cake pans, use sugar. 

Halloween Cat

Photograph by Tomer Kori

When I was 15, my father retired from the army and the family moved to Richmond, Virginia. It was a bit of a culture shock after living in Germany and France, and entering a high school where everyone had known each other since the first grade was a bit daunting.  Still, I'd been "the new girl" at nine other schools by that time, so after the usual period of adjustment, I settled into a routine.
 Living on an army post is a lot like living in a small town. (Both my grandmothers lived in REALLY small towns, so I know what I'm talking about.) And while Richmond is not a small town, it still had a small-town sensibility in those days, which was both good and bad. The first October 31st we lived there was crisp and cold and there was a full moon with scudding clouds that crossed it every once in awhile. Perfect Halloween weather. (Here in Los Angeles, October is often hot. In fact, a couple of years ago, we had triple digit weather the whole month. THE WHOLE MONTH.)

Chocolate Chess Pie for the Soul

It’s almost Halloween, which means the candy holiday season is beginning and chocolate cravings are waking. Instead of mainlining Three Musketeers bars this year, why not get your choclate fix from a dense, dark, and deeply delicious piece of chocolate chess pie?

If you’re not from the south, you may not have heard of “chess” pies, which are single-crust pies with translucent fillings.  (Think of a pecan pie without the pecans and you’ll have an idea of the consistency of a chess pie.)  They’re rather plain-looking pies but the fillings are so rich and satisfying that just a small wedge will satiate even the most ravenous sweet tooth. 

Leftover chess pie is also quite good served cold for breakfast.

Chocolate Chess Pie

1 ½ cups granulated sugar

1 heaping tbsp. flour

1 ½ blocks of unsweetened baking chocolate

Pinch salt

½ cup milk (skim is fine)

2 eggs, beaten

1 tsp. vanilla extract

½ stick butter

1 unbaked 10-inch pie shell.

Mix the sugar, flour and salt.

Melt butter and chocolate.

Add the eggs and milk to the dry ingredients.

Add the chocolate/butter mixture and mix well.

Add the vanilla extract.

Note:  If you like, you can substitute 2 heaping tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder for the melted chocolate.  If you do that, simply mix the cocoa powder in with the other dry ingredients.

Pour into the unbaked pie shell.

Bake at 375 for 40 to 45 minutes. 

The filling may crack a little in the middle, that’s normal and will just tell people it’s home-made.

Chess pies come in buttermilk and lemon as well as chocolate but it goes without saying that the chocolate version is the best!

Free Download--Here Be Monsters

Just in time for Halloween, Here Be Monsters, eight tales of vampires, werewolves, demons, zombies and other horrors. The anthology includes the story "Figs" by Jeremy C. Shipp and you can find all the details on his blog.

Still bloodthirsty? Check out John Donald Carlucci's collection 11 Drops of Blood, eleven stories for 99 cents. That's nine cents a story--a bargain in any currency.

Patti Abbott has a new collection of fiction out from Snubnose Press called Monkey Justice. (The title story was originally printed in Dark Valentine with an illustration by Mark Satchwill.) You can find the book (only $2.99)  here.

And of course (shameless self-promotion), you can get my first collection, Just Another Day in Paradise free right now on Kindle and Smashwords.

Patti Abbott's Flash Fiction Challenge

Patti Abbott hosts some terrific flash fiction challenges and this one was irresistible. Choose any work by American artist Reginald Marsh and write a 1000-word story inspired by it.  II spent an excellent hour clicking through decades of Marsh's work. All of it was extremely evocative and lively. (See Sandra Seamans' blog about choosing her picture for the challenge.)  Here's a link to some of his work to give you an idea.  (The painting across the top of the page  reminds me a bit of my friend Joanne Renaud's work.)
The painting I finally chose, "Red Buttons," was painted in 1936 in egg tempera on board.  Coincidentally, it's now in the Huntington Library's collection, so one day soon, I can visit the original.

My story is called "A Friend in Need" and it's 992 words long.  If you go to Patti's site, you'll find links to the other stories participating in the challenge.

A FRIEND IN NEED

Nancy met Bea at Child’s Cafeteria when they both reached for the last piece of lemon meringue pie. “Let’s share it,” Bea suggested, and simple as that they were sitting at a table, talking like old friends.

Bea told Nancy she worked for an insurance company as a comptometer operator, making $28 a week, which sounded like a fortune to Nancy.

Nancy’s father ran a general store back in Ohio and delivered mail as a rural route carrier too. Gas was only ten cents a gallon but there were times when scraping together enough to fill the tank was hard because he let so many people run tabs at his store.

Nancy knew her parents were worried about her living in New York City, even though she was sharing a place with her cousin and her husband.

Nancy’s parents were one generation away from farm folk and had a deep suspicion of the big city.

Still, they knew the only work available to her in Ohio was back-breaking farm labor and they didn’t want that for their only child. Nancy had skills. She could type-write and she knew Gregg shorthand.

They were sure she’d be able to find employment in New York, so they sent her off with their blessing and $48 they’d saved up.

Her father had also sent her off with the admonition to stay away from Harlem—“No good can come of associating with colored people,” he’d told her—and her mother had added her own, vague warnings to avoid “mashers” and “men who only want one thing.”

Bea had laughed when Nancy imitated her mother’s warning about men, and taken another bite of the pie.

“How fast can you type?” Bea asked.

“Seventy words a minute,” Nancy replied proudly. She could actually type a lot faster but if she did, the keys started jamming.

Turn the Page

Volume I of NoHo Noir comes to an end.

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

A year ago, late on a Sunday night, I answered a Craig's List ad posted by Craig Clough, the newly hired editor of the North Hollywood/Toluca Lake micro-news site patch.com.
The site, owned by AOL, was one of several hundred hyper-local sites springing up across the country.  (I think there were 300 when we launched and in the last year more of them have appeared.  I live in Valley Village, which is right between North Hollywood and Studio City, which has its own patch.com site.)
Craig had a vision--to publish fiction that featured the area--and I was lucky enough to see the ad before anyone else did. (This was, I think, at one in the morning.)  He hired me on Monday and my first story was due Thursday. And I was off.
We started so fast that there wasn't really a chance to plan ahead and I was writing to deadline pretty much the whole year. I had so many characters that weeks would sometimes go by before I got back to them.  (And there were at least two times when I spelled a character's name wrong and a couple of "continuity" errors on backstory. There was also one storyline where I painted myself into a corner and resorted to a soap opera gimmick to extricate myself.
Generally speaking, though, I'm pretty proud of what Mark Satchwill and I did on Volume I. We're hoping to publish the stories as a novel sometime soon, with the illustrations. Working with Craig is delightful and collaborating with Mark has been a dream. Going forward, he's going to experiment with a more comic book style, and I can't wait to see how that turns out.
The new stories will have a more focused cast of characters--at least initially--and as I mentioned in an earlier post, they'll be more crime centric. (The column is not called "NoHo Nice.")  I want to get more deeply into social issues because frankly, the City of the Angels is falling apart.  The center is not holding. One of the most-read stories on the North Hollywood patch site right now is about a man who used to own a flower shop and is now homeless. (Read the story here.)
But there will be love and there will be hope and there will be some fun too.
Hope to see you there. Would love to know what you think about the new direction and the new characters.
The illustration here is from Sunday's story, which won't be posted until later. But here's the link to the site. By breakfast time "Elephant Walk" should be available.

Food For Thought

Thanksgiving is still more than a month away, but I've already got deadlines related to the holiday so feasting is on my mind. Over the years I've refined my Thanksgiving dinner menu--simplifying it from the Southern extravaganza it was in my mother and grandmother's day.  (Ham AND turkey, mashed potatoes and candied yams AND sweet potato pudding AND corn pudding...I could go on.) but what I put on the table still costs a pretty penny, even with coupons. (I could go without the gingered yam souffle, especially since I'm the only one in the house who eats it but since I'm the one masterminding the meal, it stays in.)

Photo by as012a2569/StockXchange

I was doing research on fluctuating food prices when I came across this site. It's a breakdown of what food cost in 1961 and an ad for a three-course restaurant Thanksgiving dinner.  Yes, I realize wages weren't that great back in the Mad Man era but still--cranberry sauce was 25 cents for TWO 16-ounce cans? A 20-pound turkey was ... 29 cents a pound.  Is there anything in a grocery store you can even buy for 25 cents now?  Even the candy bars cost a dollar.

Book Giveaway

 Too Much of a Good Thing is Never a Bad Thing.

Photo by Julia Freeman-Woolpert

I live in an apartment with a lot of books. The bookcase that came from my grfandfather's law office is in the living room, along with another bookcase I bought from an ex-roommate.  Both are crammed full and double-shelved. My office has four bookcases, two are birdseye maple, and come from a client who gave them me when he moved (the wood is beautiful), one from Ikea and one salvaged from the trash room when a neighbor moved out.  (Yes, I am not too proud to take advantage of freebies.  Alas, not everyone in my household shares  my gypsy gene.)
The point (and I do have a point in here somewhere) is that I have a lot of books. And more coming in every day. so I've decided to give a bunch of my books away.  I took bags full over to my library yesterday but I've put together some packages of books I'd  like to give away.  Yes, two different batches of books free for the asking.  And all I ask is that you follow the blog.  If you're already a follower, all I ask is that you comment. Because really, I want these books to have a good home.  (A lot of them are brand new because people sent them to me after I'd read them in galleys or ARCS.)  Just let me know which package suits you (you can pick both if you like) and next Saturday (October 22), I'll pick winners at random. 

Halloween Silliness

I was researching cheap Halloween costumes for this year's NoHo Noir Halloween story (Volume II begins next week) and ran across this collection of ideas from CBS/Los Angeles blogger Suzanne Marques.  Ranging from the clever (Royal Couple) to the questionable (Amy Winehouse), they have a distinctly LA bent.

I also found this website where you can order all kinds of Halloween props to complete your decorating schemes.  My neighborhood looks like the Halloween blimp exploded overheard and rained down tacky decor. It's fun but frightening in a way that has nothing to do with ghouls and ghosts.

All the stores are full of big bags of Halloween candy.  It's a minefield. I'd get some but it would only mean I was getting it for myself. In the six years we've lived in this apartment building, we've never had a single trick or treater.  I miss trick or treaters.  My all-time favorite was a little kid who came dressed as Ozzy with his mom dressed as Sharon.

I am so never going to do this but just in case you want to make your own candy corn, Elizabeth LaBau (about.com's Candy editor) has a recipe here.

NoHo Noir gets a facelift

Photo by Thomas Hawk

"NoHo Noir," the illustrated serial novel that Mark Satchwill and I created, will be a year old next week. We're closing out volume one with two more stories, then introducing a whole new cast of characters for volume two. Mark has created a new (and I think creepier) version of our logo which will debut with our first story. We also hope to use it on the cover of the collected stories when AOL gives us the go-ahead to go forth and publish.
The clown logo for the series is a version of the real-life Circus Liquor clown sign, a North Hollywood landmark for years.  The real clown (see photo on the left) is pretty creepy. It looms over the street right across from a bus stop.  Mark put the logo together overnight because we were hired the same week the first story posted.
We found a lot of people loved the clown (shudder), so Mark put the logo up in his online shop. Yes, you can get NoHo Noir swag here. I am very fond of his original logo. (See right)
Now, though, as we move into the second year of stories, Mark has come up with a more surreal version, a Bozo-gone-bad image that suits the darker tone the new stories will take. There will be a more crime-centric vibe for the new stories, and the volume will start off with the murder of a homeless man that may or may not have been at the hands of a couple of junior high kids.  (That's right, NoHo is not fooling around this year.)
The new logo is below.  What do you think?

Baby Boomer Nostalgia Gone Wild

Yes, the movie/TV reboots and remakes and re-imaginings continue. I can't really make fun of some of the sillier projects coming down the pike because the studios responsible pay my bills but seriously. Mr. Ed?  Seriously? Here's the skinny from JoBlo.com.
For every one of these recycled/retro/resurrected projects there are a dozen that were commissioned and paid for that died a horrible death. (And trust me on this--they deserved it.)   So every time someone goes off on how "young people" are in charge of the movie-making process, I think, "Please God let it be true."  Because you know, it's not the 20- or 30-somethings who are green-lighting big screen versions of television shows from the 60s.
Mr. Ed?  Really?

Soup for the Soul

It is raining in L.A., the kind of sideways, wind-driven rain we usually don't get until January. I'm recovering from a week-long cold and just do not feel like doing any of the work that's sitting on my desk. Days like this, what I really want to do is curl up with oatmeal cookies and hot chocolate but I'm a big girl now, so what I'm going to do instead is make soup.
We're big soup makers here at Casa Tomlinson and the last pot (curried chicken quinoa) has one bowl of its earthy, chickeny goodness left.
I've been craving a different range of flavors though and have pulled out a recipe I normally only make in the spring. (Spring and Fall in Los Angeles are pretty much the same season though, even the Japanese magnolia trees seem to bloom twice a year.)

JADE SOUP

4 cans low sodium chicken broth

1 large carrot, peeled and cut into thin "coins"

3 green onions, diced

2 Tbsp. reduced sodium soy sauce

2 tsp ginger (or 1-inch piece of ginger root, peeled and grated if you have the patience)

20 smallish spinach leaves

Small square firm tofu

1 Tbsp. dark sesame oil

Dash crushed red pepper flakes

 

Open cans of broth and put in soup pot.  If you can’t find low-sodium broth, just use two cans of broth and dilute with two soup cans of water.  Add ginger and soy sauce. 

Add carrot coins and green onions.

When soup is boiling, add spinach leaves, which will wilt.

Cut the tofu into little chunks and add to the liquid. 

Stir in sesame oil and red pepper flakes at this point. 

This is a light soup, more of a broth.

I don't like mushrooms, but a handful of enoki mushrooms works well in this soup. I usually also add snow pea pods.

The Return of David Boyer

Two years ago I'd never heard of this scofflaw. Then he sent a story to Dark Valentine called "Bugs." It was a very good story--creepy, atmospheric, dark. I accepted it.  One minute after the issue dropped I knew more about David Boyer than I ever wanted to know. My colleagues and I were horrified by the thought that we'd unknowingly published a plagiarized story.  We sent emails to Mr. Boyer who was shocked, SHOCKED that we would even bring up the P word, which actually we didn't in those first communications. As we got more information, our feelings of betrayal grew.  And so did the number of questions.  Would someone really go to all this trouble to rip off a story for $10?  Really? 
We were never able to prove the story didn't belong to Boyer. We reached out to as many blogs as we could, directing readers to the story in hopes of finding out the true author. We copyscaped the story and didn't find a single sentence match. In the absence of proof, we felt we could not simply remove the story, so we left it in. To this date no one else has come forward to claim the piece. So, apparently  he got away with this one.  But a couple of writers he's victimized are not going to let him get away with it. Read Brian Keene's blog today to find out about the legal action they want to take against him. The wheels of justice grind slowly ... but they grind exceeding fine.

Movie Night

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I am troubled by the trailer for War Horse.  I  know it's more a boy-and-his-horse movie than it is a war movie and therefore a "triumph of the human spirit" kind of a film, but it looks like grim scenes of the trenches are juxtaposed against moments of staggering beauty and a sort of magical realism/mythic undertone. (The ads describe it as an epic adventure.)

There's something about this trailer I find troublesome.
War should not be beautiful.  That's part of the package that's been sold to young men (and now women) for years, part of what Stephen Crane scathingly portrayed in The Red Badge of Courage. Journalist/screenwriter/combat veteran  William Broyles, Jr. wrote an essay for Esquire's November 1984 issue called "Why Men Love War" that covers the subject pretty well. But I once did an enormous reading project involving hundreds of memoirs written by Vietnam vets (and if you haven't read Michael Herr's Dispatches, do so) and almost every single one described combat as being ... like in the movies. It's disingenuous to pretend there's not a connection.
What do you think?

Trailer for One for the Money

The first book in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, One for the Money, is one of the funniest books I've ever read.  I loved it. It's been in development as a movie for a looooong time.  And now the trailer is here.  I like Katherine Heigl. I like Daniel Sunjata (although my heart was set on Dwayne Johnson as Ranger). What do you think?

It's Banned Book Week--Buy Some Bling

Best banned book quote I've read lately comes courtesy of @Beatitudes on Twitter:  "Books cannot be killed by fire," Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Over on Etsy, an artisan using the handle Pi-Hole has created this banned book bracelet. It's $40 and you can get it here.

On the same site, at Cobweb Corner, you can also get a cool "I read banned books" bracelet for $32.

Carolyn Forsman, who specializes in "conversation piece" jewelry created two different "banned books" bracelets for the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom. Her bracelets cost $24 or two for $40. Be sure to check out her other goodies. Her bug bracelet is just the thing to wear on Halloween; or to pick up for your favorite Goth for Christmas.  (Yes, it's coming.)

Toxic Tidbit: Birds of a Feather

Here's another story from Toxic Reality, my upcoming story collection.  Birds of a Feather is my foray into the Lovecraftian world.

Birds of a Feather

Algernon didn’t really understand his wife’s fondness for birds. She had come into their marriage with a parrot that had belonged to her grandmama and it had lived in a cage in the drawing room where it had moulted and shed and screeched and squawked. Algernon had loathed the parrot. One day when his wife was out making calls, Algernon had poured a dose of Godfrey’s Cordial down its feathered throat and that had been the end of the feathered nuisance.

Eleanor had been quite upset but as the bird had no mark on him, she could only accept the explanation that it had died of natural causes. If she had noticed the marks on his hand where the bird had pecked him (pecked him quite hard in fact), she had not mentioned it.

Algernon had suggested that Eleanor have the infernal thing stuffed if she missed it so much but his suggestion had been met with a stony glare and a glacial silence. Algernon had often told Eleanor that sulking did not suit her. Unlike a beautiful woman whose allure was only enhanced by a pout, a sullen expression simply magnified an ugly woman’s unappealing looks.

Toxic Reality...The Cover

Here's the cover. Designed by Joy Sillesen of StonyHill Productions, published by Dark Valentine Press. The core image was a photo of an oil spill taken by photographer Valeriy Kirsanov.

I am angry with my friend

She's not so much my friend as a good friend of several of my friends, but we share an orbit and I care about her. Last week she dropped out of sight. She stopped answering her phone; she stopped answering emails; she stopped posting on Facebook.
She went dark. I wouldn't have thought anything about that because when I'm busy, I don't tweet or update or post either. But here's the thing. The last status update she left on Facebook before pulling the plug was a stark, two-word message:  Goodbye everybody.
A frantic Facebook-fueled search ensued with people sharing information--where they last saw her, where she might have gone, who she might be with. Her sisters were all contacted and it was clear they had no idea where their little sister was.
They posted pleas for their sister to call them. Their kids posted pleas for their aunt to get in touch. No response. Radio silence. And the clock was ticking. People drove up and down streets looking for her car. People contacted a coffee shop where she was known to hang out. There was talk of posters and flyers and news stories on patch.com. (My over-burdened  NoHoNoir editor was ready to step up with an article, even though he is insanely busy.)

Free Friday Fiction

A mermaid tale that originally appeared in the Anniversary issue of Dark Valentine Magazine.

                                 Siren Song

He was the third generation in his family to follow the sea and young to captain his own ship. The Rebekah Lee was a three-masted barque made of two kinds of oak and two kinds of pine, eighty-seven feet long, and twenty-six feet wide. She wasn’t a large ship as whale-ships went, but she was as sturdy and reliable as her namesake.

When he left New Bedford on the maiden voyage of the Rebekah Lee, Nathaniel Goode had every expectation that he would return in three years with a hold full of whale oil and riches enough to build Rebekah a fine house in the best neighborhood in the city where they had both been born.

Rebekah had told him all she wanted was for him to return home safely, but he’d seen her wistful looks at the mansions whale wealth had built, had seen her lingering glances at the rich clothes the captains’ ladies wore.

Nathanial sailed for South America, leaving behind a father who was proud of him and a woman who loved him and a land-lubber business partner who envied him.

He sailed with a crew of whale-men recruited up and down New England’s coast, plucking them from harbors and taverns and seaman’s halls.  He knew most of them, or their families, even the Portuguese who’d come down from the Azores, looking for a berth.  They were good men and well-seasoned, and Nathaniel was pleased to see how smoothly they worked together.

The First Taste is Free

My new collection of short fiction, Toxic Reality, will be available shortly and as a teaser, I offer this story, "Finders Keepers."  It began life as a 450-word response to one of the Clarity of Night fiction challenges. Hope you enjoy it.

FINDERS KEEPERS

When my husband and son came home early from a camping trip, hauling a big footlocker in the truck bed and grinning like fools, I got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.  For one thing, Deke hadn’t called ahead to tell me they were coming home early so when I saw the 5150 pull into the drive my first thought was that something had happened to Andy. 

I’d been upstairs when the truck pulled in and had practically levitated to the front door.  Andy had launched himself into the house, throwing his arms around my knees and crowing, “We found a treasure mama.”  I looked up at my husband and he nodded excitedly, his expression somewhere between ecstasy and fear.  It was his O-face and I’d never seen it in broad daylight.

Deke brought the tarp into the living room and laid it down on the rug before humping the footlocker into the house.  It was one of those olive-drab ones you see in war movies, rusting at the corners and the latches, the paint peeling off the metal.  With the dirt and mold clinging to it, I couldn’t help but think that it looked a lot like a coffin.

“Open it, darlin’, go on,” my husband urged, and I felt a physical wave of revulsion.  I didn’t want to touch it.  I had the irrational thought that if I never touched it, I could deny the reality of it being in my living room, sitting there halfway between the sofa and the plasma television I’d bought Deke for Father’s Day.

Eager to show me what was inside,  Andy darted forward and sprung the latches.  He couldn’t quite manage the heavy lid, so Deke reached past him and pulled it open.

Inside the box was packed with small boxes and velvet pouches and bags and rolls of silk and satin.  Deke grabbed the first sack and pulled it open, pouring the contents into my hand.  Diamonds.  Each one as big as a walnut.  They were cool, like the earth they’d been buried in, but each one flashed with a fire that scalded me.

“They’re real,” Deke said.  “We tested them.”  He and Andy exchanged a conspiratorial giggle as they reached for more sacks, poured more jewelry onto the floor.  One box held tangles of gold chain heavy enough to anchor a yacht.  Another yielded what looked like a Celtic cloak pin.

“Look Mama,” Andy said, rummaging through the plunder and pulling items out willy-nilly.  “A crown.”  He put a bejeweled golden circlet on his head.  It was so big it slipped down his head and over his eyes.  Deke took it off him and put it on his own head.  “You’re a king, daddy,” Andy said, laughing.  Then he dived back into the sacks and boxes to see what else was there. 

Song for my mother

I miss my mother. She would have been 83 last month and I think she would have gotten a kick out of the 21st century. She definitely would have enjoyed YouTube, the closest thing to a time machine yet invented. I like to think she'd be surfing the net, clicking on videos that amused her. She loved this one, which was playing in heavy rotation on MTV in 1986.  Bowie and Jagger... Dancing in the Streets. This one's for my mother.

Writing Alchemy--Spinning Three Words into 100

Chuck Wendig's flash fiction challenge this week is to take three words out of a list of five (Ivy, Bishop, Lollipop, Blister, Enzyme) and write a 100-word story. I chose LOLLIPOP, BLISTER, and ENZYME.

LIFE SUCKS

Amy sucked on the enzyme lollipop and contemplated the holographic game board. She moved a piece and the AI moved three for the win.

“You cheat,” she accused and threw her lollipop through the board image, which popped like a blister.

The maintenance sensors dispatched a robo-scrubber to clean up the sticky mess.

Amy knew she needed the enzymes to thrive, but the candy tasted like ass.

Still, her parents hadn’t gone to all the trouble to therapeutically kill her in 2012 only to have her new doctors label her “non-compliant” in 2042.

Amy sighed and unwrapped another lollipop.

Toxic Reality coming soon!

My second collection of short fiction, Toxic Reality, will be a reality within weeks. Joy Sillesen of StonyHill Productions is currently designing the cover and layout, and I'm going through the final edit and selection process,. killing my children with wild abandon. (Read Sandra Seamans' blog on the process she's going through prepping her as-yet-unnamed collection for Snubnose Press here.)

Late one night a few months ago I'd been toying with the idea of writing a title story for the collection and I came up with the story below. Well, not really a story so much as a splat of words that after a good night's sleep I realized should never, ever see print. But it kind of amused me to collect my anxieties in one big rant, so I'm posting it here.  Complete with the groovy font-playing that seemed such a great idea at one in the morning.

Acid rain  

A

Bees dying

Cancer clusters

    C

Deforestation

E-coli

          E

Famine

Genital mutilation

Hole in the ozone

Icebergs melting

    I

John Galliano

Kabul

Love Canal

             L

Mercury poisoning

Norwegian extremists

Oceans dying

   O

Pandemics

Quadriplegia

Radioactive breast milk

        R

Superbugs

Terrorism

   T

Urban blight

Vanishing species

Whale stranding

Xenophobia

                        X

Yeast infections

      Y

Zero-sum mentality

Autism on the rise

BP oil spill

Capital punishment

Ethnic cleansing

Fukishima meltdown

Greenhouse gases

Habitat destruction

Improvised Explosive Devices

                          I

Job losses

Kudzu vine

Lyme Disease

Malaria

Neutron bombs

Overpopulation

Piracy

Q Fever

Road rage

Sun damage

Traffic jams

     T

Upside-down mortgages

Vehicular homicide

War

Xenodermia

Yellow fever

Zombie apocalypse

ACEIL ORTZYIT

TOXIC REALITY

The Smallest of the Summoner's Bells--in French

The multi-talented Joy Sillesen of StonyHill Productions has done it again. She created this beautiful cover for the French version of my story, "The Smallest of the Summoner's Bells."  The translator is still twiddling with the front matter, but the story should be available by the end of the month.

Zombiefied Gets a Release Date

Cue the shameless self-promotion!
My story "Dead Letter" is included in this Sky Warrior Books anthology. The ebook version will be available on October 1st (more info later); with a print version following. Here's the cover to whet your appetite (for brains!!!)

And since we're talking about zombies, have you been reading the great zombie stories on Eaten Alive?  All zombies, all the time, with stories from Col Bury, Chris Rhatigan, R.S. Bohn, A.J. Hayes, Jimmy Calaway, Richard Godwin, Kenneth James Crist, Michael J. Solender, Michael Moreci, and me...

And of course, you've bought your copy of Peter Mark May's excellent undead anthology Alt-Dead, right?  More zombie stories than you can shake a stick at, from both sides of the Atlantic.

Food. Wine. Mystery. Romance.

I don't know Christina Dodd's books but just stumbled across her fantastic website (thank you Twitter). It's so inviting and so inventive and low-key in the way it introduces a visitor to her world and her cast of characters that I want to go out and buy her books.  I also want to live in her fictitious Bella Valley and drink wine and eat food. Check the site out.

Ready. Steady, Write.

Every time I sit down to work on THE NOVEL, a bunch of really interesting short fiction challenges and contests and calls for submission seem to pop up.  Focus.  I struggle with it.  But in the meantime, here are some people who want to see short stories...some for glory, some for pay.

NPR is back with their three-minute fiction contest. Submissions are open until September 25 for stories no longer than 600 words. The theme this time--leaving town, arriving in town. Full details here

Chuck Wendig of Terrible Minds continues to entice with his weekly flash fiction challenge. (Last week's 100-word "Revenge" challenge scored triple digit numbers of submissions.) This week the challenge comes with a photo prompt. For details on "The Torch" go here

Then there's Paragraph Planet, a site that posts 75-word stories--one paragraph, one micro-story. I sent them a snippet story on a lark and they're publishing it Monday.  (Notice how I slipped in that bit of shameless self-promotion?)  Here's the site..

For Haruki Murakami fans, there's a really interesting fiction challenge being sponsored by his publisher to promote his latest book, 1Q84. The challenge is to use this sentence from the book as the opening line of a story of your own:. Carrying a single bag, the young man is travelling alone at his whim with no particular destination in mind.' Word limit is 1500.  The winning story will be published on Random House and Foyle's websites and a complete cache of the author's backlist.  Here are the details.

And finally, consider submitting to Omnium Gatherum's Detritus anthology. They want stories about your collections--your secret obsessions. Stories up to 5K, deadline is October 15. (The cover is very handsome.) More information here.


 




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Chicken Salad for Mayonnaise Haters

I know, that's not the most appetizing headline ever, but that's really the best way to describe this.  My friend and catering partner invented it on the spot one night when nibbles were running low and the cupboard was bare. It's great on crackers or bread, or even topping a salad.  Best of all, the mayonnaise is so minimal that even mayo-averse types like me can chow down.  Both my parents were from the south but split along culinary lines when it came to mayonnaise. My mother and brother ate it with impunity; my father, sister and I refused to touch it. (My sister's aversion was pathological and eating out with her was often a trial.)  And seriously, who invented coleslaw?  Raw cabbage soaked in mayonnaise.  Shudder.  Even Ina Garten's version with bleu cheese doesn't do it for me. But I digress.
Here's the recipe:

1 large can of chicken, drained and shredded with a fork
Lemon pepper to taste (don't be shy--shake it on)
1 forkful of mayonnaise (just enough to make everything sort of stick together)

That's it.  Enjoy.

Roasted Tomato Salsa Recipe

It is ungodly hot here in the Southland--triple digit weather on the 7th of September. I was out and about in it and decided to fight fire with fire by heading over to La Salsa for their taco salad. I am a huge fan of their thin avocado salsa and their smoky roasted tomato salsa and usually load up on both to add to the salad fixings. So imagine my disappointment when I turned the corner and found an empty storefront and a sign announcing La Salsa had moved to a mall several miles away.
Noooooooo.
I came home and immediately started searching for a roasted tomato salsa I could make myself to assuage my disappointment. I found this one at AllRecipe.com. It's pretty delicious but it's not La Salsa.
I was not consulted on this move and I do not approve.  And I really don't want to have to trek over to a mall (I hate malls) to get my salsa on.

Cats are not dogs

My family had cats as pets. My father wasn't a fan of the feline but there were five of us in the family and he was outvoted. (At the time of his death there were three cats in the household and we came home from his funeral to find all three of them lounging on his bed. "That's right," they seemed to be saying. "You're dead and we're still here. Neener, neener, neener.")
I've had roommates with dogs from time to time, mostly silly little dogs--a cockapoo, a Chihuahua--and I really like dog energy, but you don't have to walk cats when it's raining like ... you know what.  I leave dry cat food out overnight so my cats don't wake me up at the crack of dawn, begging to be fed. When I lived with the Chihuahua, she was up every morning at 5 a.m., ready to eat. And since I was the one awake, I was the one who fed and walked her. She got used to that and never bothered her actual owner.

The Sisters Brothers

has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The L.A. Times called Patrick De Witt's novel a "bawdy cowboy noir," which just about covers it. I read it in manuscript this January when it was called "The Warm Job." (The titular brothers are Eli and Charlie, hit men for a man they call "the Commodore" who wants a man named Hermann Kermit Warm dead.)

Here's what I said about it at the time:

There is a lot to like here.  The story is episodic and reminiscent in some ways of Little Big Man, only taking place in a more focused context.  Eli and Charlie seem to run across a whole cross-section of Western types (the diligent Chinese house boy, the luckless prospectors, the soiled doves and so forth) that Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) would recognize.  There’s also a tinge of superstition and the paranormal (the weird gypsy) that unsettles us a bit.  What the story mostly reminds us of is a graphic novel, even though this is a fully fleshed tale that doesn’t need illustrations.

A story for Labor Day

I don't write a lot of stories about work. I love what I do for a living and rarely fantasize about killing co-workers or wreaking havoc on my workplace.  I am fascinated by office politics though, and had a good time with this story based on the corporate culture of a now-defunct magazine I used to work for.

ZERO-SUM GAME

When she saw the binders piled on the conference room table Erin’s heart sank.  She could always predict the length of a meeting from the heft of the reference material compiled for everyone’s use.  Binders were not a good sign.

If there were just legal pads and cheap pens lined up at each seat, that meant only one person would be talking and the rest of them could zone out as long as they occasionally scribbled something on the legal pad. 

            Legal pads and manila folders weren’t so bad either.  The folders usually just held an agenda or a list of talking points and that usually meant there’d be some form of interaction, like brainstorming or maybe a Q and A.  Erin didn’t mind question-and- answer sessions. You could learn a lot about your colleagues from the questions they asked.  She usually just sat quietly and listened.  Her s.o.p. was to jot down random words and then underline them with a thoughtful nod in case someone above her pay grade was watching.  Sometimes she would draw a rectangle around a word.  Occasionally she would add an exclamation point to the mix and very occasionally, she would sketch a star in there somewhere. 

            Todd from marketing, who’d replaced Dave from marketing, usually sat next to her and copied her notes right down to the exclamation points and rectangles.  He drew the line at stars though.  He thought they were gay. 

The topic is Revenge...

Freelance penmonkey Chuck Wendig's flash fiction challenge this week is to write a story of revenge in just 100 words. He clearly struck a creative nerve and as of 9:48 PDT today, there were 62 responses and counting. Here's the link to see the stories.

Here's my story:

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Los Angeles is a desert, and transplants who want to replicate their lush East Coast-style gardens are frequently frustrated. I tried to explain to Mrs. Weston that in order to grow jack in the pulpits, she would have to transform her yard into a swamp. “Do your job,” she responded. So I have. And to give her garden a real East Coast ambience, I’ve also planted some poison sumac here and there. It normally grows only in very wet soil, so it’s never taken hold here in the southland. I expect it to thrive in Mrs. Weston’s garden.

The Day Before My Birthday

There's a scene in the first (and best) season of Denis Leary's series Rescue Me where a firefighter who was a first responder on 9/11 has joined a survivor's group. As the others recount their stories, he gradually realizes that they have no "real" connection to what happened that day and he lashes out angrily, mocking their claim to the pain that has engulfed him. It's a powerful moment and it works for the episode, but it also trivializes the very real emotion that swept the nation on that day.
In the days and weeks and months and years that have followed the events of 9/11, the urge to find a point of connection, a stake in the events, has remained strong. What amazed me at the time, and continues to astonish me, is that in a country of 300 million people, almost no one I've ever talked to didn't have a story to tell, some anecdote to share, some memory that has refused to die. I am a storyteller by trade and yet my own story is not coherent, but made up of fragments of thought and scraps of emotion, and a sense of surreality blanketed with stunned and numbed disbelief.   Here it is.

Social Media is Our Friend

I joined Twitter kicking and screaming. And found I LOVED it. Now I am pretty obnoxious about urging my friends to join the party. I'm still learning my way around, but I have my own personal social media consultant in my long-time friend Janette Kotichas. (Follow her @janettekotichas.) I've read John Locke's book on marketing, and I just ran across Chris Brogan's "An Author's Plan for Social Media." He put it out there a year ago but everything he suggests still makes sense. Writing is a solitary occupation. Get social!

Impersonating a Fairy

Petrillo stuck one of his size 12 shoes into the elevator just as I pushed the “down” button. The closing doors slid open again.

“Got a minute Doc?” he asked.

“Got a minute?” may just be the three scariest words in the English language when your life is measured in appointments and you haven’t eaten lunch or dinner.

“It won’t take long,” he promised. “And I think you’ll find it interesting.”

I sighed and got out of the elevator.

“Thanks,” he said.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” he said and I sighed again.

It wasn’t like Petrillo to play coy so whatever was going on probably was worth my time.

We walked through the squad room and into the hallway overlooking the interrogation room. His partner, LeAnne Jacoby, was questioning a handsome blond man who appeared to be amused by the process. He was practically sprawling in a metal folding chair pulled up to a table, his body language completely relaxed.

“Who is he?” I asked Petrillo.

“That’s a good question,” he said, “but a better one would be, ‘What is he?’”

I raised my right eyebrow, a useful skill when I’m trying to figure out what to say next while waiting for someone to fill in the blanks.

Petrillo obliged.

“He claims he’s a fairy.”

He saw my expression and quickly clarified. “As in one of the fae, not as in the derogatory slang expression for a homosexual.”

#

LeAnne looked up with relief when I entered the interrogation room. She gave me an eye-roll as she passed me on the way out and whispered, “Good luck.”

I turned toward the prisoner. He was smiling slightly, his expression open and sincere.

“So you broke into the museum to steal a bracelet you think was stolen from the fairies?” I asked. “Haven’t I seen that in a movie somewhere?”

“You’re thinking of Hellboy 2,” he said, “except it was a crown in an auction house and they were elves, not fairies.”

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

A story a day?

Now that I'm putting together my second fiction collection (Toxic Reality, available October 31), I'm looking through my files to make sure I haven't forgotten any stories. What this has shown me is that I'm really pretty bad at organizing--I have four or five files of "completed" and "submitted" and "in progress"--and that I have a ton of stories that are almost but not quite finished. One of the reasons for this half-assed, half-baked, half-finished state of affairs is that I often begin a story in one of the notebooks I carry around in my purse. I hate waiting around, so if I'm at a bus stop or waiting for my monthly shot at the eye clinic, I'll work on a story or play with a stray idea.  The problem is I'm not particularly disciplined about transcribing those pages into my computer. And I have a LOT of notebooks.  So sometimes stories get lost in the process.  I ran across one such story this morning. "Impersonating a Fairy."  It's lighter than my usual fare--I can't be noir girl all the time--and all it needs is an edit. 
My goal today is to finish that story. My goal this month is to track down any other stories in the same condition and finish them.
It's good to have goals.

Alt-Dead is in the house

I have my contributor's copy of Peter Mark May's Alt-Dead anthology in my hands and I am fondling it.  It looks really sharp--the blood-red font against the white backdrop. It's available as both an ebook and print and it is priced to sell!  If you love zombies, or just like short stories, check this collection out. Contributors include Stuart Hughes, Stuart Neild, Stuart Young, Stephen Bacon, Steven Saville & Steve Lockley, plus a whole crew of other writers who are neither named Stuart nor Stephen like Jan Edwards, Ian Woodhead, Zach Black, and more. 
Let me know if you'd like to review the anthology--I can hook you up with a copy.

September Six Questions Schedule

Jim Harrington's Six Questions For blog has scheduled next month's interviews. Here's the list:

Below is the schedule of posts for September at Six Questions For. . . . http://sixquestionsfor.blogspot.com/

9/01—Six Questions for Sam, Editor, Spilt Milk Magazine
9/05—Six Questions for Anne M. Stickel, Editor, Black Petals
9/08—Six Questions for Gay Degani, Editor, Flash Fiction Chronicles
9/12—Six Questions for Tyler Gobble, Editor, Stoked Journal
9/15—Six Questions for Kristin Ginger, Editor, YoYoMagazine
9/19—Six Questions for Dena Rash Guzman, Editor, Unshod Quills
9/22—Six Questions for Doc O'Donnell, Senior Editor, Dirty Noir
9/26—Six Questions for Bjorn Wahlstrom, Owner/Editor, H.A.L. Publishing
9/29—Six Questions for Meredith E. Torre, Editor, Bumble Jacket Miscellany

I Tremble For My Country

This morning CNN.com posted a story about a Syrian cartoonist who was kidnapped, beaten, and threatened.  His abductors broke his hands as a warning to stop drawing.  He's now in the hospital. The story is here.
The story is horrible and a reminder to anyone reading that "freedom isn't free."  What's even more horrifying, though, are the comments.  There's the guy who thinks the story is made up. There's the guy who uses his comment to rag on "Shrillery Clinton." I read through dozens of comments and there were very few addressing the actual subject of the story--Ali Ferzat, a brave and idealistic man. Comment after comment spewing rage and bile and toxic ichor.  Comparing Obama to Hitler.
(Seriously?  Hitler?  Really?)
I'm particularly horrified by this display of  hate because two days ago, when CNN.com ran a story about a woman in dire financial straits, the story elicited almost 500 comments.  Most of them were of the "Poor woman, how can I help? variety, but a lot were ugly.  For some reason the one I found most damnable was an accusation that she probably had enough money to support her two-pack-a-day cigarette habit.  (Nowhere in the article did it mention that she smoked.) 
I know, I shouldn't be surprised by this, but I still am.  The utter conviction in these posts is as predictable as the bad spelling and specious arguments.  The people who write these posts are registered to vote. And there are more of them than me.

I've been Zombiefied!

Thanks to Christopher Grant and Peter Mark May who first got me thinking about zombies, I've now written a couple of stories about Zees.  One of them, "Dead Letter," which Christopher first published on Eaten Alive, has been accepted in the upcoming anthology Zombiefied.
Publisher is Sky Warrior Books. Planned pub date is October 1. More information as I have it. 

Pardon My French

About a month ago, I suddenly decided that I simply had to translate some of my stories into French. I decided to pick a couple of my fantasies because I am very fond of a French-language fantasy site and thought that I might be able to link up with them for a promotional hit or two.
My French is nowhere near fluent enough to translate anything more complicated than, "My name is Katherine." Fortunately, though, the talented Pauline Pangon agreed to do the work for a price that wouldn't zotz out my budget.
I am thrilled by the result but also bemused because who knew there were so many phrases in English that don't have exact French counterparts?  Pauline has been incredibly resourceful in finding French substitutions, and we're working on refining the material as I look for images I can give to Joy Sillesen in hopes she will design the cover for me.
As I read over what Pauline's done, I'm reminded again of what a lovely language French is.
Here is the opening of "The Smallest of the Summoner's Bells" in French.

Appelez ça hasard.

Appelez ça fatalité, destin, ou encore  karma.

Appelez ça comme vous voulez, mais quand cet adolescent trop hâlé a passé ma porte avec ce petit bout d'or prodigieux en main, j'y ai vu d'emblée l'opportunité d'une superbe cerise sur le gâteau. 

And here it is in English: 

You could call it coincidence.

You could call it fate or destiny or karma.

You could call it any number of things but when the too-tan teenager walked through my door with that little scrap of fairy gold, I saw it for what it really was, a big tasty slice of opportunity pie.

SinC25--the Fifth and Final (for now) Shout-out to Women Crime Writers

In Game of Thrones, John Snow asks Tyrion Lannister why he's always reading. "A mind needs books," he says, "like a sword needs a whetstone."
Writers need to read or their writing gets stale.
My parents refused to allow us to read comic books (we'd sneak them at friends' houses) but encouraged us to read anything else that struck our fancy. The result was that I turned into an omnivorous reader, devouring both good and bad books without judgment. 
When I discovered I could make a living as a "reader" for the movie industry, I felt like I'd been given my heavenly reward early. "I get paid to read books," I told my relatives, who kept asking me what my "real job" was.

Fourth Post in Praise of Women Crime Writers

Patricia Cornwell, creator of the Kay Scarpetta mysteries used to live in Richmond, Virginia. The first novel in the series, Postmortem, is based on a notorious real-life serial killer case that had Richmond connections. (The Killer was Known as the Southside Strangler) In both the book and real life, the killer was a strangler. In real life, he was a "secreter" and it was DNA that did him in.  (It was the first time the Commonwealth of Virginia successfully used DNA in a legal case to prove the identity of an assailant.) There were some interesting things about the real-life case. The killer was a black man who crossed racial lines with his victims, which is unusual.  One of the victims was a young Asian-American girl, another was a 35-year-old white woman named Debbie Davis.
I knew Debbie Davis. She worked at Richmond Style Weekly with me in the late 80s. She was the only child of parents who had been older when she was born and her death just about killed them too. Remember Fred Goldman's emotionally blasted response to his son's death? Multiply that by ten.

SinC25 #3--Women Crime Writers

I used to work for a now-defunct weekly newspaper called the L.A. Reader. I was a general assignment reporter there, which meant I covered everything from hearings on mosquito abatement policies (just as fascinating as it sounds) to best Halloween costumes.
Occasionally, I snagged a crime story. The last crime-related story I covered was a report on a very special meeting of the local Parents of Murdered Children group.  They were meeting with the state's Attorney General and they had some questions to ask and some bones to pick.
One of the attendees was Dominique Dunne's mother Ellen.  (Dominique would have been 52 now. Next year will be the 30th anniversary of her death.)
Ellen Dunne died in 1997 and this was a decade earlier than that and she was already extremely frail and wheelchair-bound. She must have been a great beauty in her youth and even pain-ravaged and grief-stricken, she had an immense presence.

I sat through the meeting, listening to the parents tell their stories and listening to the Attorney General try to deflect their anger.  "The man who killed my son did five years," one man said. "Why shouldn't I kill him?  I can do five years standing on my head." The room was  not with the AG when he pompously suggested that would be a bad idea.
I was not a great crime writer and this experience was actually the one that soured me on reporting news. I switched to features and then I switched to fiction and I've never really looked back.
But that doesn't mean I don't love true crime.  I'm not as avid about it as my friend Berkeley, but a well-written crime story is a thing of beauty.  And the queen of that is ...

EDNA BUCHANAN.  Edna Buchanan wrote for the Miami Herald and covered thousands of crimes.  She was tough, smart, and savvy.  And she was GLAMOROUS.  Even now, as a woman of une certain age, she's got it going on. 
She won a Pulitzer for general reporting in 1986 and a slew of other awards for both her crime reporting and her fiction. I've never read any of her novels but I loved both The Corpse Had a Familiar Face and Never Let Them See You Cry, her memoirs about working the crime beat. The late, great Elizabeth Montgomery starred in several television movies based on these non-fiction books and she copied Buchanan's signature look of touseled hair and big sunglasses. (See the above photo.) You can download Buchanan's short story "Red Shoes" from Mary Higgins Clark's mystery magazine here.