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2000 Years Gone

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gone-girl-screencap

Like most people my age, I’ve consumed massive amounts of entertainment. And occasionally, I’ll digest something—usually some product outrageously hyped—that goads me to levels of outrage so deep that I feel compelled to set the world aright and explain why said product should have been thrown across a room, flushed down a toilet or left completely on the cutting room floor, rather than being foisted upon the unwitting consumer.

Now, I pride myself on my ability to usually avoid such experiences … I mean, who needs that kind of aggravation? I live in San Francisco, which means I get plenty of aggro just driving to Union Square. But I thought I’d be safe with “Gone Girl.” The book was labeled “domestic noir” (on Wikipedia); the film garnered praise and an Oscar nom for Rosamund Pike. What could go wrong?

Oh, what a tangled web we weave …

If you haven’t seen the movie or read the book, turn back right now. I mean it. The rest of this blog will be dealing with issues related to the much-publicized plot twists. You’ve been warned.

Before I explain why “Gone Girl” is the most insultingly archaic piece of misogyny to come down the pike (sorry, couldn’t resist) in a long time, I need to add a disclaimer. I have not read the book. I expect that the book is a better (and hopefully more balanced) experience than the film. However, because the author of the novel, Gillian Flynn, also penned the screenplay, I am making the assumption that the elements she prioritized in the film, narrative and character-wise, were what she considered indispensable. The film was long (2 1/2 hours), so length is neither excuse nor defense.

So what’s wrong with “Gone Girl?”

Forensic/police procedural plot holes large enough to insult any thinking person.
For me, this is a misdemeanor in comparison with the film’s other offenses. I mean, I understand plot mechanics—I’m a writer. We often force ourselves into the position of needing to make the impossible seem plausible. But because this story’s lauded twists depend on Amy’s criminal genius, said criminal genius better be believable. It isn’t. What happened to the injury that supposedly caused all that blood loss? What happened to the video tape that showed her arriving at Desi’s house willingly? Why weren’t the red panties tested for DNA? Why did no one recognize her? Why didn’t anyone test the ink on the journal or question why it was only partly burned but alone in an incinerator, waiting to be found? And why is it that not one of the medical personnel who examined her for her supposed rape reported that she showed no sign of previous pregnancy, as her medical records had indicated (from faking the urine test)?

I guess the ultimate lesson to be learned here is that if you’re going to have a mentally imbalanced stalker obsessed with you, make sure he’s incredibly wealthy and as sweet as a teenage doctor.

It’s the media’s fault.
Some people have asserted that the actual meaning of the film revolves around the media/public demonization/deification of Nick. I beg to differ. If you want to see a really good film that illustrates media manipulation, try “Ace in the Hole”, a Billy Wilder film noir. If you don’t have two hours, listen to Don Henley sing “Dirty Laundry.”

“Gone Girl” is not about the media. In the contemporary arena of reality TV and 24/7 “news” coverage, the media obviously plays an important role, but the film is not “about” the media. “Gone Girl” is about shocking people, either with a plot twist, with language, or with manipulative female evil (more on that later).

And the point of the film is?
News flash: crime exists. Men, women and children commit it. Good people do bad things, bad people do good things. Middle-of-the-road people do, too. Anyone who has ever lived with any violence in her life—or who has suffered from loss, family mental illness, drug abuse, etc.—understands this basic fact and ceases to marvel at it around the age of seven or eight.

In “Gone Girl”, we are given a portrait of a highly intelligent, wealthy, beautiful, presumably successful woman who is presumably a passive-aggressive sociopath. Because this mental condition was not a barrier to her societal success, it would be far more interesting to explore its roots than to shout about its existence (Was it fostered by an odd but fascinating competition with her fictional self? Was it her narcissistic parents? Did it manifest itself in other ways? Maybe the book explores some of these themes—the film, with the exception of a minute allusion to her parents’ fictional heroine, does not).

No, it seems enough for “Gone Girl” to just say, with pride, that Amy is a bad, bad bitch. Her husband is intended as an emasculated weakling who may actually get off at the idea of his wife’s psychosis and domination. There is no exploration of how his affair with a student (a crime itself) may be reflective of someone trying to reestablish the winning hand in a power struggle.

Because these characters were not explored or developed—or the filmmakers chose not to do so—we are left with two despicable characters. That’s not so unusual for a noir. What is unusual is that the lack of depth in character exploration means that they are not only despicable, they’re boring (a far worse crime in a movie). Pike does an admiral job of infusing a cardboard character with as much life as she possibly can, but in the end, that’s not enough. And what we’re left with is a big “shocking twist” and an ending that reads more like a day’s worth of therapy for a very damaged marriage, and, of course, the fundamental reveal: women can be nasty, too.

Which brings me to the worst of the film …

Misogyny.

I don’t throw the term around lightly (I’ve been called all kinds of things), and Gillian Flynn had no idea when she wrote the book that 30 women who have accused Bill Cosby of rape and assault would be ridiculed, mocked and disbelieved. But for Ms. Flynn to say that her creation of Amy is a “feminist” act—simply because Amy is a sociopath—is the most asinine and outrageous piece of author denial I’ve ever witnessed.

Ms. Flynn needs to read more.

How about Semonides of Amorgos? Translations aren’t too hard to find. He wrote about the different types of women in the world, nine of whom are highly negative, all of whom are compared to animals. This was the 7th-6th series BCE.

Or she could try the Bible—both approved and unapproved bits—stuff about Lilith and Jezebel and Delilah and the godmother of us all, Eve. There’s also the Ramayana.

Still too old? Let’s see, there’s the Pandora myth or Pygmalion story (best read in Ovid), or we can skip right to Dickens or, let’s see, Henry James “The Bostonians” or Lady Brett in “The Sun Also Rises” or Nathanael West’s “Day of the Locust”. Of course, we can cut to the chase and list “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and “Double Indemnity” and nearly every noir novel and film written or made from 1940 to the present.

The fact is that smart, successful, beautiful, sexualized women—women with power—have been portrayed as transgressive criminals of one type or another for more than 2000 YEARS. Traditional noir elevated the formula into a lyrical art form. “Gone Girl” is absolutely, positively, unimaginably unoriginal in this regard which—as I mentioned above—seems to be its entire raison d’etre.

This bothers me because my career has been built around a character and a series created to countermand the very stereotype for which Flynn is applauded. I consider Miranda Corbie not just a personal choice but an ethical one. And let me be perfectly clear: whether or not my books ever attain the financial success of Ms. Flynn’s, I will always be proud of the choices I’ve made.

Let me be clear here, too: I can understand creative chafing. I’m not suggesting that the very fact of writing about a woman who fakes a rape is, in itself, unethical. But if you’re going to write about something so heinous, so potentially damaging to the millions of women who are sexually assaulted and too afraid to report it—then, by God, what you write had better be so good, so deep, so memorable and so alive that it doesn’t leave the grimy residue of female self-hatred behind.

Unfortunately, the grime is not gone. “Gone Girl” is just another layer of two thousand year-old dirt.

What We’re Losing

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This weekend, our culture diminished.

Not in a tragic way, as we see in the devastation, death and loss behind events like the recent Washington State mud slide, or in Hurricanes Sandy, Ike and Katrina. This was more a whimper than a bang, a footnote in a newspaper, a local event that a few thousand—not a few hundred thousand—people will recognize and remember.

Century 22
The Century 22 Dome complex

We lost the Century Domes. Movie theaters in San Jose, California that represented optimism for the future—the optimism of Camelot, the Moon Race, and that peculiarly pleasing geometric design that could be found in everything from Bob’s Big Boys to motel signs to animated shows like The Jetsons.

In that gung-ho embrace of what the Utopian future was sure to hold, the domed complexes—the first domed movie theaters of a number built in the architecturally-adventuresome West—were even named Century 21, Century 22 and Century 23.

Century 21 ... the first and last
The glorious sweep of Century 21

Century 21 was the first and most glorious. Built in 1964 as a Cinerama theater, it showcased the really big movies, encompassing everyone under its tent, like a space age camping trip or a Technicolor planetarium show or an adventure in another world.

For me, the loss is also personal. I spent a good part of my childhood in San Jose, and seeing movies at the Century was a true event. They were my generation’s movie palaces. I remember watching Funny Lady and Disney’s Robin Hood and even the re-release of Gone With the Wind at Century Theaters when I was eleven or twelve years old.

Century Marquee from the 1970s
Century Marquee from the 1970s

So when I found out on Saturday that they were closing for good … well, it hit me. Perhaps harder than I would have expected, and for reasons again personal: when I lost both my parents to cancer, I also lost my childhood. My history. As an only child, I have no one to fact-check with, no one to share early memories with.  Somehow knowing that those theaters were still there, still showing movies, kept part of my own history alive, too.

The theaters have always been successful, even now. They were not closed because no one saw movies there, or because people are staying at home watching Netflix. The reasons they will be no more, unless California designates Century 21 a historic landmark (a long shot, for reasons cited below), are simple.

Development.

Such a loaded word. Not necessarily negative, but in recent years—in San Francisco, in San Jose, in California and the Western United States in general—it has become a word synonymous with diminishment, loss, and even death.

"Luxury" condos and "upscale" stores in uninspiring boxes ...
“Luxury” condos and “upscale” stores in uninspiring boxes …

See, there is a shopping center across the street from the old theaters, which are, themselves, adjacent to the (in)famous Winchester Mystery House. They don’t call it a shopping center anymore, it’s now “live/work” or “mixed-use retail”—but essentially, it’s a shopping complex and an upscale one. It’s been built out and up to the edges of a box—a density more suitable to Manhattan than the traditional low-rise architecture of California and the Golden West.

The shopping center and its progenitor, Federal Realty, has been hungrily eyeing the expanse of parking lot and movie theaters across Winchester Boulevard. And now, thanks to an expiring (and unrenewed) lease and the determination of the land owners—who also own the Winchester Mystery House—to squeeze as much money as possible from their fortuitous landownership (their family bought the parcel in the 1920s), the shopping center is metastasizing.

Developers—and is it a coincidence that they share the first syllable with Devil, I wonder?—stand to make another fortune (and another, and another) as the working-class and middle-class spaces of domed movie theaters (or bowling alleys or ice-skating rinks or performance halls) are converted into tawdry odes to the new American past time … for a large part of the diminishment I first mentioned is our conversion from a country that produces to a country that consumes. And consumes, and consumes …

And what we are told to consume are “luxury” and “upscale” objects and things, “lifestyle” choices we are meant to embrace and aspire to. Shopping malls like the one across the street from the theaters are symbols of this aspiration, and the “town hall” architecture—which is about as insipid as the consumerism it represents—is the new medium by which we can conveniently do so.

Century 23
Century 23 … irreplaceable

Roll out of bed in your luxury condo, pop down to a Starbuck’s below and pick up a few shirts at Abercrombie and Fitch. Then check out the scene in your Google Glasses while you take a small break from your 14-hour a day tech job which is paying you an insane amount of money to forget that you have no life beyond consumption.

The former Bob's Big Boy with the Century Theaters in the background
The former Bob’s Big Boy with the Century Theaters in the background

There’s your live/work/condo for you. And that’s what is going to be built on the corpses of the Century Theaters and the former Bob’s Big Boy that is now home to an equally old-fashioned coffee shop. Federal Realty has stated that it has no intention of preserving Century 21 … and I have no intention of ever supporting Federal Realty.

I am not anti-building. I am not even anti-development. I’m sure that somewhere in this vast nation is an architect or landowner of some creativity and soul. I’ll even go out on a limb and suggest that there may even be a developer who favors and understands the importance of historic and cultural preservation. But what I protest against, with every fiber of my being, is the notion that a shopping center can and should replace a movie theater. Or a bowling alley. Or a Palladium. Or a Bay Meadows or Hollywood Park.

Last Day
Last Day

Look, we used to be a society where people came together. Remember the feeling of social unity? Remember how good it feels, even on a micro level, when you share a communal experience? Movie theaters gave us that. So did bowling alleys and dance halls, race tracks and amusement parks and drive-ins and community centers and even the real town hall/Main Street USAs that are being replaced by these grotesque new architectural odes to our not-so-proud role as Number One Global Consumer.

We are losing public and community spaces, one by one, city by city, town by town. In their place we build big-box retail and match-box condos and tall, dense and ugly buildings where people never meet. They sleep there (if they can afford it); they shop there (if they can’t).

Century 21 - nightAnd that’s what we’ve become. And if we don’t start preserving some spaces more dedicated to coming together than pulling out a wallet—and perhaps addressing topics like monolithic corporate monopolies and the growing wealth disparity—well, let’s just say the future is not as bright as it was when the Century Theaters were built.

There is still a fight to be fought. The domes will not ever be first run movie theaters again—we can bet on that—but they can still be saved from the wrecking ball. The Preservation Action Council of San Jose has been battling to have the theater(s) named historic landmarks worth saving and simultaneously trying to convince a criminally recalcitrant mayor and city council of the need to architecturally preserve and incorporate (at least) Century 21 into any new development. To their great shame, Mayor Chuck Reed and the City Council actually sent a letter to the state requesting that the theater NOT be designated a historic landmark.

If I were writing a noir based on this fact, I’d follow a money trail. And I’d remember, come election day.

Because ultimately, preserving Century 21 will not eliminate the obscene profits the developers and landowners and all other interested parties will make from their deal with the devil. New always trumps old when it comes to the money generated by development. But if enough political pressure is applied, perhaps Mr. Reed and the Council will realize that they stand to lose more than whatever has already been calculated to “pencil out.”

The rest of us, unfortunately … already have.

The battle is not yet over! If you would like to help (the most rewarding kind of community interaction), please sign the petition to save the domes. You can email or call the California Office of Historical Preservation in advance of their April 22nd meeting to decide the fate of Century 21. You can “like” and follow the “Save the Dome” Facebook Page. You can also put financial pressure on Federal Realty and its properties, since money is the only language they understand.

The X-Factor

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I’m just back from Monterey and Left Coast Crime.

Incredible. Energizing. Inspirational!

How inspirational was it, you ask? Enough to make me start blogging again. And anyone who has ever stopped blogging knows exactly how much inspiration restarting it takes.

So … welcome to the new Writing in the Dark! My goal is less dark and more writing. Wink

The Left Coast Crime X-Factor Panel (from right to left, Sara J. Henry, Robin Burcell, Lisa Brackmann, Marcia Clark and Kelli Stanley)
The Left Coast Crime X-Factor Panel (from right to left, Sara J. Henry, Robin Burcell, Lisa Brackmann, Marcia Clark and Kelli Stanley)

On Saturday at LCC, I was fortunate enough to moderate a panel  called “The X-Factor: Responsibilities and Issues for Women Writing Women”. My stellar compatriots included Marcia Clark, Robin Burcell, Sara J. Henry and Lisa Brackmann. We discussed whether we do, in fact, have responsibilities as women in a male-driven but female-consumer-based creative industry; whether “torture porn” is more even more objectionable when written by women; how some of us have dealt with the sexism we’ve encountered in writing and other careers; how we aim to write believable human beings first and foremost, and many other aspects of the topic.

What did we discover? That we could have gone on discussing this subject—and this alone—for the length of the entire conference. We barely got a chance to scratch the surface, both in relating experiences we’ve encountered as writers and women or as police officers (Robin Burcell) and prosecutors (Marcia Clark). My hope is that we can make this panel a regular feature of Left Coast Crime or Bouchercon.

Here are some follow-up considerations I’m thinking about this morning …

Metrics. Sisters in Crime, a number of years ago, gathered metrics that showed an alarming discrepancy between the the likelihood of women writers versus male writers getting reviewed. A male name is far more likely to generate a “serious” look.

Based on our own experiences, we know a portion of the male reading public will not read a book by a female writer. [Some female readers won’t read books by male writers, but I think we’d find that the percentage is far smaller.]

Likability. Women writers are expected to produce “likable” female protagonists. My own work has been attacked by online reviewers because Miranda Corbie isn’t “likable.” Sam Spade is not likable, either, but no one really expects him to be. “Likable” seems to imply a certain ability to “put up and shut up.” You know, accept your lot in life and don’t make too much noise. I don’t know about you, but I don’t consider “likable” to be a particularly memorable epitaph.

Language and Behavior. As part of that “likability” quotient, things long accepted as typical male behavior—smoking, drinking and swearing—immediately push your heroine toward the “unlikable” category. You can get away with it more easily if she does these things with humor or in a self-deprecating way. If she does so with any attitude of defiance or confidence, you run the risk of seeing her called even worse than “unlikable.”

Expectations. Women are expected to behave in certain ways. Hell, women are expected to behave, period. As female writers, we are already transgressing the boundaries. We’ve found our voices and have stories to tell. So the stories we do tell—if they are to succeed as profit-making entertainment for a wide audience—had better fall within a certain acceptable range.

That’s where labels come in.

I write a hardboiled female P.I. with a sense of time, place and (in)justice centered squarely in noir. I’m at the far end of what is acceptable (and some of what I write isn’t acceptable to some readers). Thrillers and procedurals—particularly those that deal with violence—are also flirting with the borders. The undeniable areas that seem to fit squarely into the expectations we meet as female story-tellers are traditional mysteries (with the hobby-cozy on the opposite edge of the spectrum from the noir end but still very acceptable for women), romance and humor. Paranormal—as long as it’s not “Exorcist” levels—seems to be acceptable (psychics, whether genuine or not, are usually female) particularly if mixed with romance.

These are the boundaries of expectation.

The X-Factor Panel ... smiling faces and some serious discussion!
The X-Factor Panel … smiling faces and some serious discussion!

I’m thinking (with my tongue only partly in my cheek) of a color spectrum from dark to light that we could use as a clear warning on our books: this one fits the expectations in setting but might rock your boat in terms of character. This one has a very likable, funny protagonist who falls in love within the first twenty pages, but there’s a female friend who swears a lot. This one is traditional but features a male protagonist who is curiously asexual, very OCD and vain about his mustache … but no swearing, so it’s OK.

[As an aside, Miss Marple is clearly the smartest character Agatha Christie created: a dark genius of crime in a physical embodiment society always takes for granted and always overlooks, a person for whom there is always the injustice of expectation … the “little old lady.” Dame Agatha was transgressive.]

There is much  more to be thought, and much more to be said, and hopefully we’ll get to those conversations at later conferences and perhaps in later blog posts. But at LCC this weekend, I think we all discovered—and this is perhaps the best takeaway from the panel—that we are all stronger people and writers because of the challenges we’ve endured as women. Because of what is expected of us as women. And because of what we hope to give our readers—and ourselves—as women.

We’ve come a long way, baby. And we’ve got a long, long way to go.

Left Coast Crime Family

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Left Coast Crime in Sacramento was such a special event in my life that it’s taken me a few weeks to process everything.

Despite an injured leg that kept me limping around the hotel (and resulted in a wonderfully fun and memorable lunch at the nearest deli across the street, with Criminal Minds cohorts and good friends Rebecca Cantrell, Hillary Davidson, Gary Phillips and honorable CM Rhys Bowen), I managed to get to all the important spots: room, conference rooms, book room, restaurant and (of course) the bar, where more talking than drinking occurs, despite the yarns we writers like to invent. 🙂

Co-Chairs and Wonder Women Cindy Sample and Robin Burcell pulled off a flawless, wonderful conference, along with volunteers like Pat Morin and Patricia Canterbury and Janet Rudolph.

Getting to spend a little time with writers and friends like Michelle Gagnon and Alex Sokoloff and Deb Ledford and Chantelle Osman and Roni Olson and Judith Starkston and James Rollins and Andy Peterson and Sophie Littlefield and Juliet Blackwell and Diana Orgain and JJ and Bette Lamb and Rita Lakin and Gar Anthony Haywood and Allison Brennan and Keith Raffel and award-winners Ann Parker and Darrell James and Camille Minochino and Naomi Hirahara and Lucinda and Stan Ulrich and my wonderful agent Kimberley Cameron … well, the list goes on, but the time spent with friends was incredibly healing.

Being shortlisted for the Golden Nugget award with outstanding writers like Jan Burke, Michael Connelly, Janet Dawson and Sue Grafton was a tremendous honor, and winning it for CITY OF SECRETS will always be one of the highlights of my life.

Seeing a character name in my next book–CITY OF GHOSTS–go for $1000 in a bidding war was a breathtaking, giddy thrill, and I can’t wait for Tom and Marie O’Day to meet Miranda. 🙂

Ultimately, though, LCC was about healing. It is frightening to be in a public space when you’re vulnerable and hurting. The kindness and love of my friends and crime fiction family was like being swaddled in the softest cotton, and having a literal support underneath me whenever I felt like I was in free-fall.

This weekend I’ll be heading to the Los Angeles Times Book Festival for a panel (California Noir) and book signings. It’s a special place and a special event, as last year I was a nominee and I was able to take my mom with me. Coming back will be emotionally demanding, as I’ll be thinking of her everywhere I go.

The thing is, I wouldn’t have been able to handle this without the strength and support I felt at LCC. As much as my career meant to my parents–as happy as they were to see me successfully published–I know they would be even happier to see the kindness and love given me by my crime fiction family.

Thank you, one and all, from the bottom of my heart.

A Valentine For My Parents

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My last blog–in September, which seems as immediate as yesterday and as far away as the distant past–was a happy one.

I’d traveled to St. Louis and Bouchercon with my mom, and the fact that she was there to see me win the Macavity Award for Best Historical Mystery was and will always be the highlight of my professional career, and a highlight of my life.

We met my Dad in Cloverdale the weekend we came back (an easier drive for him than negotiating the city traffic and constant repair and expansion work near Santa Rosa), and spent a hour or two together, eating lunch, before he returned to Humboldt with my mom.

It was a warm, sunny, blue-sky day. The last time we were all together, whole, as a family.

Many of you may already know that I lost both my parents within a month, during December and January. Some of you may know how close I was to them. My parents were my best friends, both in different ways. They loved me unconditionally, supported me in anything I did in life, accepted me, protected me, advised me and fought for me at every age and during every crisis, minor or major. I didn’t live near them; I live six hours away. But they were a crucial, integral part of my every day life, and not a day passed without a call, without a sharing of news, of opinions, of thoughts.

What I didn’t fully realize, though, despite my closeness to each, was how very, very much they loved one another.

At first it seemed an unlikely bond. They met at eighteen, my mom a smart and beautiful blonde Polish girl, hard-working and independent. She was an adventurous rebel from Harvey, Illinois, with a shiny new red convertible Impala. She was sophisticated, a girly-girl, who loved Chicago hot dogs and the Cubbies and Marshall Field windows and was proud to fight the winds off Lake Michigan in the City with Big Shoulders, while walking to work at the flagship Sears store on State Street.

She’d gone through pain–her parents’ divorce, her father’s subsequent remarriage, and subsequent feelings of devaluement. Her mother’s diabetes and ill-health, a constant struggle to make ends meet. But she was determined to see life, to experience it, and to enjoy it.

She did so without a negative word about other people–my mom was truly the kindest, gentlest person I’ve ever known. She was the mitigator of all sorrows; the magnifier of all joys. Sure, she got angry–when someone tried to hurt her family, when injustice–racism, ageism, sexism, prejudice and selfishness of every kind–ran unchecked. At those times she became a warrior, and her green eyes flashed steel.

Pain and injustice was what my father, a homeless boy of 18, knew best. One of nine poverty-stricken children in dirt poor Appalachia, he was beaten and abused by a mentally ill father and protected only by his mother, a nurturing and loving woman who died when he was ten. The children were abandoned, and my father wandered the country on foot, living with Native Americans, adopted by missionaries (and running away), and finally finding a temporary home on the race track, where all his mother’s nurturing genes blossomed as he took care of thoroughbreds.

He loved animals. People made him uncomfortable. He’d never had a chance at socialization, never really had a home, never had a formal education. Yet he was–and this is really the only word that fits–brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. A first-class mind, capable of superhuman leaps of creative conjecture.

He honed that intellect throughout his life, first through self-education and reading, then through a GED and the Navy and college classes. My father’s intellect helped save him, not from the horrors of his early years, but from something even worse, a pain he had to deal with every day.

My dad suffered from an undiagnosed mental illness, which clinically was probably a form of paranoid schizophrenia. Three of his siblings had been diagnosed with it. The genes of  his mentally ill and abusive father ran deep and strong within the family.

My mom didn’t know this when they met and fell in love and married five years later, on September 14, 1963. She knew she loved him and he loved her and yes, they were scared, particularly when I came along. Dad was in the Navy then; he suffered a wound that would later qualify him for 100% disability.

His mental illness grew more virulent when he hit his thirties, and life was hard. He self-medicated with alcohol, which made the condition worse. There was abuse involved–very, very hard times. Through it all, my mom stuck with him.  She saved him, time and again, as she’d done when he was a race track kid of 18.

Eventually, my father quit drinking. They became older. Mom lived with me for a time, worked with me, traveled with me. And I spent more time with my Dad as his disease became more manageable, though every day was a challenge for him. He played chess every day (most of the time beating the computer) as a way of using his intellect to keep the raging chaos in check.

In September of 2009, we found out mom had uterine cancer. After surgery and painful chemotherapy that resulted in neuropathy, she was in remission for six months. Then, during Bouchercon 2010 in October, we found out the cancer had come back and was terminal.

The light flickered in my father’s eyes, though he tried to keep it burning for my mom. You see, he’d prayed–though he wasn’t a religious man–that he could help save her. That he could give his life for hers. That he could give her back the love she’d given him, that he could find redemption and grace. His kind and nurturing soul focused all its energy on her.

He devoted every minute to taking care of her, until, finally, his body betrayed him. He was diagnosed with pneumonia before Thanksgiving; the day after Thanksgiving, we found out he had terminal, metastasized lung cancer.

My father died two weeks after the day he was hospitalized, just a couple of hours after seeing me. He’d been waiting for me. I’d had to run to San Francisco to make arrangements for family leave.

He’d been determined to get to the next stage first, to not have to face life without my mom, the person who’d been his whole life. To prepare the way, to light a fire in the stove, as he always did, to warm the house for her.

My father passed away on December 5th. The day after he died, my mom’s condition immediately worsened.  She’d been expected to live a few months longer. We tried radiation for eleven days straight, but it didn’t help, didn’t help the pain. She was determined to live through the holidays for my sake, not wanting Christmas–which was always one of her favorite things–compromised. She passed away on January 8th.

We had a chance to talk–not enough, nothing could ever be enough.  She said I should write about how she had to join Dad sooner than we all expected … that it was sad, yes, but also romantic. We talked about how it was like one of those melodramatic movies from the thirties we both loved.

The truth is, my parents loved each other enough to die for each other. And about the only thing that consoles me, in my pain and grief and the horrible pain of missing them is that they’re together, that neither one had to spend much time apart from the other.

I’m also consoled by the fact that I’m here as a result of that kind of love. A love that transcends mortal flesh and human weakness, that soars with the red-tailed hawks my father loved and the voices of angels that sound so much like my mom’s.

Their love is eternal. My love for them is eternal.

And that is what I will remember every Valentine’s Day.

Miranda’s Back!

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Book Cover to CITY OF SECRETSToday is the day!

CITY OF SECRETS is now on sale.

This long-awaited sequel to CITY OF DRAGONS is a deeply felt, personal book, and it deals with themes that have haunted me for a long time. Themes of man’s inhumanity to man, themes that  unfortunately still exist and are as relevant today as they were more than seventy years ago.

Miranda Corbie—my hardboiled, broken idealist of a protagonist—is hired by a surprise client to investigate the murder of Pandora Blake, a girl she barely knew but who, like all the girls who worked Treasure Island’s Gayway in flesh shows, was a soul she’d sworn to protect.

Pandora was a girl with stars in her eyes, dreaming of her name on a Hollywood Marquee. Like many pretty girls—in 1940 and 2011—those dreams crashed against reality. She found herself working as a nude model at the World’s Fair, object of desire for the daily stream of men who paid 25 cents a piece to snap her photo.

On May 25th, opening day of the 1940 World’s Fair, she’s found nude on the stage she worked on, stabbed to death … a filthy, anti-Semitic epithet scrawled in blood on her white skin.

CITY OF SECRETS exposes American anti-Semitism on many levels, from a domestic terror group that plotted to kill Jews in New York to the clubs and housing developments that denied them entry in San Francisco. It, and all other forms of racism, sexism, homophobia and intolerance, are the supreme tragedy of human existence.

I hope you find the story fast-paced and thrilling, of course, that you keep turning the pages and step side-by-side with Miranda on her harrowing journey through a familiar yet unfamiliar City by the Bay. But I also hope CITY OF SECRETS helps you renew your commitment to a future where anti-Semitism and bigotry are truly relics of the distant past.

As always, thanks for reading — and your support!

The Intimate Paperback

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Today is a red-letter day for me … and Miranda Corbie! 😉

Miranda’s out in paperback for the first time, in a beautiful trade edition of CITY OF DRAGONS. This isn’t actually her debut in paperback—that came with the mass market paperback of FIRST THRILLS—but it is her first solo gig in softcover.

I love paperbacks. They’re informal, more intimate that a hardcover  … though of course I love hardbacks, too. They’re parental and solid, reassuring and stable. They’re the books you can depend on and reach for, time and again.

But paperbacks … well, paperbacks are kind of sexy.

They are, after all, the books you take to bed, covers bent backwards, with dog-eared pages and the spine weathered and lined. They accompany you to the beach, on planes, on vacations to sunnier climes, sporting water rings from the Mojito you just finished.

Paperbacks are a summer fling, a quick tryst in the ski lodge, a book to be devoured in a burst of passion.

Alas, comes the time for fall or spring cleaning, and many a paperback—torn, tattered, scarred and bent out of shape, old beyond its years—is sent off packing to Goodwill or a garage sale, banished from the vacation places it used to call home.

Of course, some readers actually save their paperbacks (bless you!), collect them, and keep them looking beautiful. I’ve always adored paperback cover art from the past—from lurid, sensationalistic covers to  Deco beauties to the famous Dell “Map Backs”—and add to my collection when money and opportunity permits.

I certainly hope the CITY OF DRAGONS trade paperback brings Miranda new admirers … whether they read it on a beach in a last hurrah for summer or take it on a plane trip or peruse it at home in a comfortable chair. The cover stock is nubby and textured, colors vibrant and warm, size pleasantly holdable … altogether, it looks like much more than a fling. 😉

Shaken, Secrets and a Very Special Cat

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I received some wonderful news yesterday—CITY OF DRAGONS has been nominated for a Macavity, specifically the Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery Award!

The Macavity is as wonderful as it gets, a recognition of your work from some of the most astute readers in the community: members of Janet Rudolph’s Mystery Readers International. I’m deeply honored to have Miranda’s debut novel nominated … and am especially tickled because when I was a kid I used to be able to recite by heart “Macavity, The Mystery Cat” (the poem by T.S. Eliot for which the award is named). I can still remember a few stanzas, so if you see me at a convention and ask me to recite—be forewarned! 😉

I’m also celebrating something else: a special effort by authors—an anthology of short stories—written and published and sold to raise money for Japan in the wake of its almost unimaginable calamity. The anthology is called SHAKEN: STORIES FROM JAPAN, and is currently available on Amazon for $3.99. The brainchild of author (and fellow Macavity nominee) Tim Hallinan, the book features 20 stories by 20 authors, many crime fiction favorites, with elegantly translated haikus interposed between the stories. Even the cover is designed by the multi-talented Gar Anthony Harwood. I’m proud of participating (my story is called “Coolie” and is set in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake); proud, too, of Amazon, for donating their share of the royalties: fully 100% of this book goes to help the people that need it. It feels so good to be able to help, even a little.

It’s hard to believe that July is almost upon us. CITY OF SECRETS will be hitting stories on September 13th, and I’m busy writing the third Miranda (working title is CITY OF GHOSTS) while preparing for the launch. My website will soon have all the bells and whistles I hope my readers have come to expect: a book trailer, video, photo gallery, sound track, inspirations and more. In the meantime, you can check the progress by going to the CITY OF SECRETS page and exploring the sub-menu.  I’m also looking forward to the paperback of CITY OF DRAGONS, which hits stores August 30th.

To celebrate the launch of Miranda’s second novel, I’ve written a special short story: “The Memory Book”. Set on Treasure Island during the World’s Fair, it takes place before CITY OF DRAGONS and after my previous short story, “Children’s Day.” I’ll have more news on the release soon.

Speaking of “Children’s Day, FIRST THRILLS has been out for over a month now, as a mass-market paperback. My first! And what a thrill it is, to see my short story in such stellar company! If you haven’t read this prequel to CITY OF DRAGONS, you can now read it FOR FREE on the ITW website: just go to The Big Thrill and click on the banner.

In the Roman part of my life, we’ve made NOX DORMIENDA newly available as an e-book! You can find it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Diesel, Sony and Smashwords for $3.99. I’m happy to see it back in pixel-print, and hope to have word on a paperback version before the end of the year.


I have a number of events coming up this summer … a trip to Yreka, CA and Ashland, Medford and Klamath Falls, Oregon, as part of the fabulous Ashland Mystery Readers Group Festival, now in its ninth year. I can’t wait to visit my old stomping grounds–I traveled to Ashland every year in high school, and it’s been way too long since I’ve been back!

I’ll also be speaking at the fabulous Desert Sleuth’s WRITE NOW! 2011 Conference in Scottsdale, AZ, with friends Sophie Littlefield and Juliet Blackwell … I can’t wait to see my fellow Sisters in Crime and the desert in all of its summer glory!

In the meantime, I’m writing … and writing … but will be back sooner rather than later with, I hope, some movie recommendations. Hope you all have a wonderful Independence Day, and thanks for sticking with me while I’m writing in the dark! 🙂 And congratulations to all the Macavity nominees!

North by Northwest

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The Curse-Maker is here!

THE CURSE-MAKER has been out for a little over a week, (yay!) and now I start the out-of-state leg of my tour … back to my home state, Washington.

I admit it: I get a little choked up when I see Mt. Ranier standing over the Seattle-Tacoma-Puget Sound area, majestic and awesome and beautiful. I was born in its shadow, and I always feel like it protects me.

Seattle, of course, is home to one of the best mystery stores on the planet, Seattle Mystery Books. Fabulous people, fabulous store, and I love getting to hang out with friends like Fran and J.B.! It’s also the home to some of the best coffee anywhere. My own preference is the home-grown Tully’s, rather than their most famous (and ubiquitous) competitor.

On my first trip to SMP for NOX, I discovered a wonderful hat store in Seattle, too. Byrnie Utz–and it looks just like it must have seventy years ago! (It was founded in 1939, a year dear to my heart). Wooden shelving and cabinets, and even one of the vintage machines that can stamp gold lettering on the inside of your fedora rim. I’m not sure if I’ll get back to Byrnie’s on this trip, but I’ve got one more book launch coming up this year (CITY OF SECRETS), so if not now, then. 😉

One place I MUST go–on this and every trip–is the Tacoma factory outlet for Brown and Haley’s Almond Roca. I grew up with Almond Roca, and I love buying it for friends and colleagues. The outlet is actually a wonderful little round (and pink) building from the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962–the one that gave us the Space Needle, the monorail, and a fair-themed Elvis flick. 😉

So I’m looking forward to Seattle–and Portland, where I’ll get to spend time at two great bookstores, Murder by the Book and the fabled Powell’s–and see my dear friend and fellow writer Bill Cameron.

You know, there are many, many reasons to go on book tour, beyond the obvious ones of (hopefully) meeting new readers and selling copies.

Tully’s, Almond Roca and friends are just three more. 😉

Thanks for reading–and big thanks to those of you who’ve already picked up THE CURSE-MAKER!

An Epiphany of Noir

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Today marks Epiphany, the day after Twelfth Night, and in the words of the immortal Bard, “If Twitter be the food of writing, tweet on!”

January dawns in 2011, and it truly is a brave new world of social networking. Just four years ago all this checking in and updating and status reporting was strange and new, as much a figment as Hamlet’s ghost (bear with me—I’m trying to keep up the Shakespeare references here). And now … well, the first app that I added to my new HTC Hero smart phone (and yes, I love it) was Tweetdeck. I sometimes wonder at the familiarity—nay, indispensability!—of the technology that was the stuff that dreams are made on such a short time ago (see—I told you I’d bring up Shakespeare again).

So—luckily for me, since I’m more comfortable in the past when teens actually sulked and talked to each other, rather than sulked and texted—every January brings a little bit of old to mix with the new … and the best kind of old, at that.

The only way to spend January ...

Noir! Noir City. At the Castro Theater, in glorious black and white (with an occasional technicolor thrown in). The line up this year is particularly grand, and deals with a theme near and dear to most writers … insanity. After all, if we don’t write about it, we often live it … hearing voices in our heads, getting up at odd hours to scribble notes about ice pick wounds (that’s coming up in CITY OF SECRETS) … trying to juggle all the tweets and updates while working on multiple storylines, mumbling to ourselves when we walk down the street … er, maybe I should stop now.

Anyway, I’m really looking forward to seeing The Two Mrs. Carrolls (fabulous Bogart/Stanwyck film) and Beware, My Lovely on the big screen—along with the sublime performance by the late Jean Simmons in Angel Face. I’m buying a passport—I’ve got my citizenship papers—and will cram as many late night noir fests into my schedule as possible.

It’ll be tough because THE CURSE-MAKER launches February 1st, and then it’s book tour time … but at least I’ll get my annual Noir inoculation first. Forget the flu shot—get a noir shot!

Meanwhile, I’m ringing in the New Year in San Diego tomorrow, signing ARCS of THE CURSE-MAKER and copies of CITY OF DRAGONS for the wonderful librarians at the American Library Association Midwinter Conference! I’ll also be part of a mystery writer contingent with some good friends at Mysterious Galaxy tomorrow night—come by if you’re in the area! Saturday morning I sign in the great cavern of the San Diego convention center, then 2 PM will be moderating a panel of very cool “Tough Guys”: T. Jefferson Parker, Ken Kuhlken, Timothy Hallinan, and Gary Philips. So much to look forward to!

The next Miranda Corbie ... coming September, 2011.

In the meantime, I just want to thank you all for reading—my blog, my books, and the books of so many outstanding writers throughout the year of 2010. I’ve been very lucky with the response to CITY OF DRAGONS, and I’m blessed to be able to publish two novels this year. [That’s a sneak peek at CITY OF SECRETS, releasing in September]

May 2011 shower you with good fortune, a gentle spirit, kind thoughts—and crime fiction! 🙂

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