"Maternal Instinct" on NoHo Noir

Yes, it's Sunday self-promotion day as another episode of NoHo Noir appears on patch.com.

This episode ties together characters from three separate storylines in an incendiary way. The artwork is by Mark Satchwill and features the mother of the missing girl from "Good Samaritan" and "Mother Love."

You can read "Maternal Instinct" here.

Bouchercon-Bound

I went to a book-signing for Kelli Stanley yesterday at Book Em' mystery bookstore in S. Pasadena (a wonderful place to drop a dollar or two). Had a great time and came away energized and inspired. I went to a Sisters in Crime event a couple of years ago that left me feeling the same way. I had wanted to go to Bouchercon last years when it was in San Francisco but that didn't happen. Now I have my sights set on Bouchercon 2011 in St. Louis. I've been to St. Louis in the summer. it's sticky. but that's why they made air conditioning.

New episode of NoHo Noir

"Love the One You're With" updates the story begun on Valentine's Day when Erik's proposal went so badly awry. Read it here.

R.I.P. Reynolds Price

I didn't get the memo. I never read my Duke alumni magazines any more unless the cover story intrigues me so I hadn't heard the news that Reynolds Price died in January after more than 20 years fighting the cancer that put him in a wheelchair and inspired his 1994 memoir A Whole New Life.

Price was a novelist, a poet, a Rhodes Scholar. (At commencement every year, he would wear the Oxford colors, a practice other professors mocked.) He was a James B. Duke professor at Duke University (his alma mater) where, among other things, he taught a semi-annual seminar on Milton. You couldn't take it your freshman year, so I had to wait until I was a junior to enroll. It was worth the wait.

In fact, taking that class was pretty much my whole reason for applying to Duke. Even at 17 I was already word-struck and his brand of grandiloquent Southern writing appealed to me. (Another professor I adored used to mock Price's penchant for somewhat heavy-handed allegory, as when he named a character in his most famous novel Pomeroy--as in King of the Apples, as in ... the devil.)

If you don't know Price's work, here's his Wikipedia entry, which says that he was one of Bill Clinton's favorite authors.

To this day I can quote huge chunks of Paradise Lost. There were other lessons I learned in the class but that was my take-away.

Reynolds Price is dead. Somehow I should have known.

Sticky Toffee Pudding

I'll never make this myself because Trader Joe's carries an outstanding frozen sticky toffee pudding, but when Kate Middleton's recipe for the sticky toffee treat showed up, well, I had to make a note. If you've never had it, the dessert is an incredibly decadent confection of moist cake (filled with dates) and buttery toffee sauce. Here's the link to the recipe.

P.S. Sticky Toffee Pudding is said to be Johnny Depp's favorite dessert. Just so you know...

Two Noirs for the Price of One

This past week marked the debut of twice a week NoHo Noir stories. From now on Mark Satchwill and I will be bringing you a double-tap of noir for your reading pleasure.

This week's episodes are all about sin and secrets.

Read Fools Rush In here.

Read Curb Appeal here.

Patti Abbott's "Scarry Night" Fiction Challenge

Here's my entry into the fiction challenge posted here.

SCARIFICATION

Ned knew she was sensitive about her appearance. The fire had barely touched her face but it had left her right hand nothing but a fingerless knob, sheathed in taut shiny skin. She still had the nubs of three fingers on her left hand, enough to hold a pen, enough to pull a zipper, enough to handle a fork. She was clumsy with them, though, because she had been right-handed.

Ned admired her for using her hand in public, for defying the stares and the curiosity of strangers. He knew she was self-conscious and applauded her courage. It was just one of the things he loved about her. When he took her to bed, he kissed the fingers of her left hand tenderly and then kissed what remained of her right hand.

As he stroked her from shoulder to hip, she trembled at his touch. She quivered and moaned, making noises in her throat in her rising excitement. Ned liked that. He liked a vocal woman.

He undressed her gently, delicately, peeling back the layers of clothes like the rind of a succulent fruit. The scarred skin on her torso was so textured and tortured it seemed like an alien substance, like the melted remains of some plasticized machine.

He traced his finger down the worst of the wounds, a thick, calloused ribbon of flesh that marked the edge of a graft where some dead stranger’s skin had been used to cover the raw redness left when her epidermis burned away.

“I really don’t mind the scars,” he said as she turned her head away from him as if ashamed. “They mark you as special,” he added, twining his hand into her hair to turn her face back towards him. “They are why I chose you.”

She began to cry then, her tears leaking silently down her cheeks and soaking into the duct tape that gagged her. He had stuffed her underpants into her mouth before sealing it with the tape and so the only sound she could make sounded like a baby mewling. It excited him even more than the scars.

He hadn’t been lying when he told her it was her scars had attracted him to her. Scarification was his thing.

By the time he finished with her, she would be beautiful.