Robert B. Parker

I was saddened to learn of the death today of one of America's most beloved writers, Robert B. Parker. He is said to have "died at his desk" at age 77.

I will miss his books, his talent, his wit, his characters. I have a collection of Robert B. Parker books. Most of them are from his series about Spenser, the hard-boiled Boston detective, who made Parker a household word. I can't remember them individually now -- one from another. I can only remember how much I enjoyed reading them, how delighted I was to read of Spenser trading jabs, physical and otherwise, with the redoubtable Hawk, how I both relished and got impatient with his relationship with Susan Silverman.

"Ditch her," I told him on countless occasions. "You're obsessed. She's a loser."

But he didn't think so. And maybe he was right.

Susan was a complex woman dealing with a man who preferred to see things in black-and-white. And they were putting together a relationship -- or trying to -- at a time when social gender roles were certainly changing. Robert Parker captured that ambiguity, that sense of his characters being on social quicksand, while at the same time involving them in a cracking good mystery.

He went on to write books about Jesse Stone which I wasn't as enthralled with but which captured the imaginations of readers who weren't as devoted to Spenser. He never just sat back and 'cranked out' stories because they would make him money. Certainly Spenser would have made him money forever.

But Parker was a writer who wanted to challenge himself, who was bored with sameness, who was always seeking new possibilities, reinventing himself and his literary landscape.

Now that I'm finished with George's revisions (they were tweaks, really. It was wonderful.) and they're gone, I think I may go have a nice day or two of re-reading some of my favorite Spenser books and taking time to appreciate all the gifts to readers that Robert B Parker has left us.

Role Models

Way back when I was a fledgling writer, I used to look at other writers' careers and think about whose I would like mine to emulate.

Hands down, it was always Tony Hillerman.

The talented, hard-working, steady, insightful gentleman who was, in my estimation, not only a wonderful, memorable novelist and essayist, but even more a genuinely fine human being, died a week ago at the age of 83.

His mysteries featuring Lt Joe Leaphorn and Sgt Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police brought the reservation and its people to the attention of readers the world over.

His evocation of the American southwest -- its stark landscape, its disparate cultures and peoples, its religions and superstitions, its beauty and its violence -- has been celebrated for over a quarter of a century.

I read all his books as soon as they came out. They brought back childhood memories of frequent treks across the Navajo reservation en route from California to Colorado. They humanized the landscape for me. They peopled it with men and women who might have grown up in a different culture from mine, but who in very fundamental ways weren't alien at all.

That was one of the talents of Tony Hillerman. Through his work, he brought people together. He created characters you came to love as you came to know them. And I will always be glad that he gave Jim Chee a woman to love him and a potential happy ending in his last book.

If he had done no more than write wonderful books that stayed on the shelves year after year after year (something all writers aspire to), his would have been an admirable career.

But he did far more than just write. He was a generous man -- with his time and with his knowledge. He worked tirelessly for his fellow mystery writers, and even those of us in completely different genres were the beneficiaries of his wisdom and concern.

Twenty years ago I wrote a book called Gifts of the Spirit. The hero, who had been in several earlier books, was a half-Navajo, half-Anglo journalist called Chase Whitelaw. The story I wanted to tell about Chase and his family was going to take him to the reservation as an adult, to discover a part of his heritage he'd never really known.

I know about mixed blood heritage. I didn't know very much about Navajo culture. I needed a resource, a person who understood what a writer needed, and who understood the Navajo culture.

I needed Tony.

I didn't know him personally. But I contacted him, asked if he'd be willing to talk to me. Next thing I knew we were discussing my book at length on the phone. He listened to my story, made suggestions about what Chase's family would think, pointed me in the direction of the most useful books he thought I'd need.

We talked an hour. Maybe more.

When we hung up, he said, "Call me whenever you have more questions."

I said I didn't want to bother him. He said, "No bother. Writers help other writers."

They do. He did. We talked again later in the book.

And right before I sent Chase off to the publisher, I called Tony one last time and thanked him. He was glad to know it had worked out, happy that his books and suggestions had helped.

They had. It would not have been as good a book without his help. I would not be the writer I am without his guidance -- and his example.

I doubt very much that I'll have the writing career Tony Hillerman had. But if I can be half the human being he was, I'll be very well pleased.

Thank you, Tony, for wonderful books, for your wisdom and your time and your generosity. God speed.

Ideas Are Easy . . .

In his book, Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future, Cory Doctorow writes a lot about all of the above.

I skimmed a fair bit of it because I'm trying to get as much done on my own book as I can before I take off next week.

But a couple of sentences in his essay on fan fiction caught my eye and made me cut and paste them here.

He said, "Ideas are easy. Execution is hard."

And I thought, oh, yes. And then, speaking from mid-book, I said it again even louder, OH, YES!

He goes on to explain, "That's why writers don't really get excited when they're approached by people with great ideas for novels. We've all got more ideas than we can use -- what we lack is the cohesive whole."

Amen. (Picture me leading the nuns in Lilies of the Field in a rousing chorus of them.)

I've written before about the age old question, "Where do you get your ideas?" from non-writers who think that it's the ideas that are hard to come by.

As Cory Doctorow says, they're not.

What's hard to come by is that cohesive whole.

It's getting from here to The End without falling into the abyss or getting eaten by dragons or sidetracked by brown cows with blue eyes or secondary characters who are way more interesting and fun and energetic (waving to Anne Gracie!) that is the real trick.

I'm wading around in chapter four right now. I can't see the beginning from here -- too far back. I can't begin to see the end. There are a whole lot of bends in the road before The End is likely to come in sight.

I'm knee-deep in the mud of the first draft, and trying to envision the cohesive whole is like trying to walk through it for the next six miles holding jello in my bare hands and expecting to have anything left of the jello at the end.

Not easy.

Thanks, Cory, for reminding me of what it is I'm trying to do -- and why it gets frustrating. I'm just going on, trusting the process -- and my characters -- and myself. And hoping we get there with story at the end.

Check out Content. Guaranteed food for thought.

What's On Your Book Shelf?

Liz Fielding posted a list of "the top 100 books" put out by the British National Endowment for the Arts.

She got it from Kate Hardy. Kate got it from Michelle Styles. Michelle got it from Amanda Ashby. Amanda presumably, got it from someone else. Or maybe she actually reads the literature put out by the National Endowment of the Arts.

Anyway, the National Endowment people say the average reader has read 6.

I've read slightly over half.

I don't remember a lot about most of the ones I've read. Quite a few were read as part of lit courses I took, not because I was enthralled with them. But some I genuinely loved and went back to read on my own again. And again.

Others -- let's be honest here -- I hated.

And I had a heated discussion with The Prof about Madame Bovary (as always), since he loves it and I hated it. Ditto Gone With The Wind (well, he didn't love it, but he thought it was worth reading).

He said, "It's an American Madame Bovary."

And I said, "Exactly."

And he said, "They're anti-heroines, Madame Bovary and Scarlett O'Hara. You're not supposed to like them."

And I said, "Why would I waste time reading books about people I don't like?"

So, I'm a philistine. Get over it. He has. Sort of.

Anyway, here's my list. The ones I've read are in bold. Read it over and let me know which ones you've read and what you think of the list.

By the way, the comments (go to the link and scan to the bottom) over on Liz's blog are well worth reading -- as well as Liz's own comments on the ones she's read. So check them out.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (first time I read it I was too young and bored. Then I reread it and loved it.)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (yes, indeed, some of us haven't)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (and yes, there are actually romance writers -- well, one anyway -- who haven't read Jane Eyre)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (does it count that I've read five of them and have the rest? I'll get to them someday)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (amazing book)
6 The Bible (probably not all of it, but most)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (yes, you can be a romance writer and not have read this)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (we read a lot of Hardy in school)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (loved it!)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (does half count?)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks (bought it for my dad)
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (ah, teenage angst)
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (still not a big fan)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (hated the movie, won't read the book)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (like Hardy, we read Dickens till our eyes fell out)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (from a long line of dust bowl Okies, it cut a little close to home)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (loved it)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (loved it)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (over and over to my kids and never got tired of it)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (all the Anne books! Yes!)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons (loved it!)
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (memorable, moving)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (I told you we read a lot of Hardy)
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (hated it)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Where Have All My Red Dots Gone?

Those of you who drop by here frequently might have occasionally glanced at the sidebar and noticed the ClustrMap which shows the whereabouts of people who drop in here. Or if not the people themselves, at least where their IP address is coming from.

I love seeing those little red dots turn up. Between ClustrMaps and Neoworx I can get a feel for the global scope of my readers and casual visitors. And it's always a thrill to see new dots or discover the flag of a new country.

Neoworx's flags turn up right when the visitor appears. ClustrMaps redraws its maps every time there is a 10% increase in the number of visitors, so there is delayed gratification as the numbers build. Below is last year's map. We've started over on the sidebar.

My 88th country was Albania. Someone from Tirana (waving to Tirana!) turned up last week. And I was eagerly awaiting my red dot on Albania.

But -- alas! -- ClustrMaps did their yearly archive of my map yesterday. And now I have just a few dots again. No dot in Albania. So I hope whoever it was in Albania comes back. And I hope lots more people from lots more countries visit. It's always a thrill.

I know Kate Walker's flag list is well over 100 now -- creeping up toward 150 when last I looked. I have 12 more to go to reach 100. Hmm.

Could we have a concerted effort here, do you think? Write to your friends in Burkina Faso and Chad and Bolivia and Norfolk Island and tell them to drop by. Not to mention all the places that already have flags but whose dots have been archived!

# # #

Tomorrow is the day I'm giving away a signed copy of The Mephisto Club by the brilliant talented personable Tess Gerritsen, who is -- it goes without saying -- a terrific writer who scares me to death in her books.

Maybe if you're into the less terrifying stuff, you won't want to read Tess. But if you have friends who love that 'edge of your seat' 'what's going to happen next' and 'oh God, it's worse than I thought' then they really need to drop by and comment to get in the drawing.

Or better yet, just tell them to go out and buy Tess's books!

# # #

Post script: 89! I just got my 89th flag -- from Colombia!

Ask and you shall receive, I guess. Anyway, welcome, Columbia, whoever you are. So glad you stopped by.

And to add to the international flavor of the day, the postman just brought books -- The Santorini Bride in its Polish edition and a trade-sized paperback of The Boss's Wife For A Week in Dutch (I think. Well, it's almost German but not quite. But I can't see a place of publication. Must go examine it more closely).

In the meantime, who will be country #90?

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

I worked my tail off.

I'm still trying to read through all the handouts I got in my government documents and law libraries research course at Samford University's Institute for Genealogical and Historical Research.

They asked for comments on the evaluation, and my main comment was: Give us the handouts a week early. Then maybe we'll have time to read them before the class is over.

It was a terrific week. It gave me lots of ideas for future research and exploration. And it even provided me with a few clues to follow up on research I'd already begun and had thought I'd probably exhausted. Turns out there is a lot more there.

And, of course, I determined that Natalie dropped out of law school. Always a plus. Now I just have to figure out why she would have thought it was a good idea to go there in the first place.

And I need to think about more of the back story. Maybe do some writing. Scratch a bit -- like Twyla Tharp in The Creative Habit. And I'm reading a book by Sol Stein called On Writing, which I've had for years and which I've only dipped into a few times. It looks like a good book.

I've got photos to download -- including a lovely one of Tess Gerritsen from her visit here two weeks ago. And I have a signed copy of her book, The Mephisto Club, to give away, which I will be doing on Friday. Make a comment and get in the drawing for Tess's book.

If you can give me a good reason why Nat dropped out of law school, you get two spots in the drawing.

I noticed that Anne Gracie is blogging on Tote Bags 'n' Blogs today about being a serial killer. She's pretty much a softie, so I think you can take that with a grain of salt. But there's a great tribute there to her dad on his birthday as well, and that's absolutely heartfelt. Check it out.

On the move!

I don't know where I ever found time to write books. It seems like I'm never home.

Saturday I'm leaving to attend Samford University's Institute of Genealogical and Historical Research for the third year in a row. I'm taking a course in Government Documents and Law Libraries.

Lest you think this is all very dusty and boring, let me tell you what it really is -- it's about people. It's about stories.

I was thinking the other day about the "theme" of my blog, because while it's largely about writing and writing-related stuff (yes, Hugh-in-a-towel is writing related. How could you think otherwise?), it's also about other things that interest me -- like genealogy and local history, about travel and books and films, about dogs and grandchildren.

And I got to thinking what they all had in common -- and basically, it's story.

Genealogy and local history are means of learning about peoples' stories, who they were, what they did, why they did it. All the things plot-challenged people like me love to learn about.

Travel brings me into the sphere of other people, teaches me about their lives, their culture, their stories. Books and films, of course, do exactly the same thing.

Dogs -- well, dogs are stories in and of themselves. And grandchildren are both the continuation of my own story as well as stories unto themselves.

All of it is grist for the mill. I never know what's going to spark off an idea. It will be interesting to see if Christo and Natalie get any new bits this week while I'm gone.

Speaking of ideas and bits, last night I had the pleasure of meeting fantastic medical thriller writer, Tess Gerritsen, for the first time. Her books are fantastic (and give me the creeps), and it was great fun to listen to her talk about how she gets her ideas for stories.

Not the same stories I get, that's for sure. But the gut level instinct that says, Yes, I have to write about this -- that's the same. I was comforted, too, when she said she didn't plan her books but just wrote and discovered what happened.

I have a signed copy of her Mephisto Club that I'll be giving away next week when I get back. If you want to be thrilled and scared by a very fine writer, drop in and comment sometime this week. I'll put your name in the hat.

Celebrating a First Book!

Several years ago I ran into a writer on the eharlequin site called Anna of Cumberland. She was bright and sparkling and witty and had a wonderful voice.

When I first 'met' her, Anne Louise Lucia (aka Anna of Cumberland) was writing a book. And then she'd written a book. And then she was trying to sell the book. And then she sold it!

It was called McAllister's Wife. Is there a better title than that? Surely not.

Still her publisher changed it. I'm not sure when the title got changed (I'm sure Anna had nothing to do with it because, of course, she wouldn't tamper with a great name like McAllister), but now it's called Run Among Thorns, by Anna Louise Lucia.

And it just came out onto the shelves on June 1st!

I have my copy on order -- due to arrive tomorrow according to the tracking records -- and I'm dying to read it because I love simply reading Anna's blog. And I am soooo looking forward to a whole book by her.

I'm counting her continuing to have her wonderful voice, but now she'll be providing me with story and suspense and excellent characters (McAllister, of course, among them).

Sight unseen I'm recommending it. But I'm not the only one.

Kate Walker loved her book. Romantic Times gave it a 4 1/2 review. Harriet Klausner thought the suspense and characters and writing were all terrific.

I have no doubt that all this praise is well-deserved. And it couldn't happen to a nicer person.

Besides being a terrific writer, Anna is a terrific person.

She and her husband took my husband and me around Millom (of Cumberland) looking for dead relatives a couple of years back. I'd casually mentioned an interest in going there, and Anna, who went there frequently in her day job, offered to show us around. She did her homework, scoured the graveyard, looked up people in the register, and marched us all over downtown Millom in search of places my ancestors had once lived.

It was fitting to discover that one of them grew up in a place on Lapstone Road that is now called Greetings and is a bookshop! I hope they stock dear Anna's book and sell piles and piles of copies.

My copy of Run Among Thorns is going with me to Birmingham this coming week t0 be my solace when things get tough in government docs and law libraries. It will make a change!

Regency Romp

I love regency novels. Of course Jane Austen is a favorite -- particularly Persuasion and, of course, Pride and Prejudice, though I've never felt the same warmth for Emma.

I'm also extremely fond of Georgette Heyer and have a collection of the new Arrow editions of her books (which are not in my bag of 'finding new homes for'). Sorry about that.

But today's book is a delightful regency romp by talented, clever, witty NYT-Bestselling author, Stephanie Laurens, called Four In Hand.

And no, she's not referring to horses.

The title refers to the four stunningly attractive, perfectly delightful Twinning sisters -- including the irresistible Caroline -- whose guardianship it befalls Max Rotherbridge, the Duke of Twyford, to inherit.

Max, a regency rake of the first order, is not given to "guarding" women's virtue. He would very much like to bed, not wed, the delectable Caroline. But even a rake like Max knows that isn't in the cards.

On the contrary, it's his duty to protect her from men such as himself. It's his duty to protect all the Twinning sisters from unprincipled men and bad alliances. Max has his work cut out for him.

I found Four in Hand to be absolutely delightful. If you like regency romps, I'll bet you like this one.

# # # #

Lovely HM&B medical author Margaret McDonogh has just sent me a picture of a frog she stumbled across.

She says that, given the look on his face, he could be my Missing In Action Frog #8.

Margaret has a good eye for resemblances. It is my frog indeed. Though why he also reminds me of Jack Nicholson, I'm hard pressed to say.

Oh, and IF I get my book done by May 1, I get to go to visit youngest grandchild who is now crawling like a Marine from room to room. Such a talented girl.