let me define conflict for you.
Makes frequent mention of "my arch-enemy John Douglas."
Today: 3 miles.
Yesterday: 3.5 miles.
I had lunch with Michele today, in which we discussed her pages. (You may remember that at our last lunch, we discussed my pages.) We're both still planning on entering novels in UCLA's Novel Writing Master Sequence, which means we have to be done by September 7. Ha!
I told her about Murder For Fun and Profit, and she told me about Novel Writing II, which she's taking this summer (and which is 10 weeks long, not our 6 weeks...grrrr). She almost dropped it the first night, however, because evidently less than half the class has taken Novel Writing I. Meaning that students are asking questions like, "What is conflict?"
"Boy, did we get lucky with our class," she said. I agreed.
However, the teacher, Noel Hynd, is evidently going to personally review large sections of people's writing and not inflict them on the class as a whole, which is good. And evidently he's a quite prolific author, so he knows something of commercial publication.
I've been plowing through Laurie R. King's Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell pastiches of late. I don't know why I'm enjoying them so much--I'm not a big Holmes fan--but they're fun and erudite and all the rest of it. One nit I have is that the reader can't possibly solve these crimes, I don't think, but that's clearly not the important part.
- The Beekeeper's Apprentice: The first book, in which 15-year-old Mary Russell runs into 54-year-old retired detective Sherlock Holmes and manages to impress him that's she not only not an idiot but quite intelligent. They go on a number of minor adventures, culminating in a rather larger one.
- A Monstrous Regiment of Women: More coherent than the previous one, but the interesting part is not the mystery but the relationship between Holmes and Russell. Wisely, King does not spend too much time on that aspect, so the resolution is more satisfying that way. The description of the mind-over-body scene--a woman heals severe injuries caused by battering by concentrated meditation--is somewhat disappointing.
- A Letter Of Mary: Okay. Mostly enjoyable for Russell's voice. Not enough Holmes.
- The Moor: Haven't read this one yet, but it's on the to-read list.
- O Jerusalem: The new one, in hardback. If I haven't gotten to The Moor, I haven't gotten to this one!
I don't know if knowing Holmesiana improves or detracts from the story, but reportedly these books are well-regarded. Although what Irregulars think about the decided dearth of misogyny on Sherlock's part--he quite clearly doesn't have an aversion to Miss Russell--I don't know.
I've also picked up one of King's modern-day mysteries, A Grave Talent, set in San Francisco, to see a)how she depicts the City and b)whether I enjoy them as much.
I joined DorothyL (a mystery writers-and-readers mailing list) the other day, and I mentioned to Jerrilyn at our coffee chat that the list was awfully quiet. "We just went on a month's hiatus!" she told me. "Something that only happens about every 3 years!"
"So I shouldn't take this personally?"
"I don't think so, no."
I mentioned to Jerrilyn that I found it funny that "A Madeline Bean novel" is written on the outside of her first novel, Sympathy For The Devil, as though there were already a series in progress. "That's a big marketing tool," she told me. "People like series. They like knowing there are other books to buy in that series." (I should know about that, doing such things as buying the entire Harry Bosch series in one weekend, or the entire Holmes/Russell series in one week.)
So I guess it's good that I've planned my mystery novel as the first in a series. It's a selling point.
Something rather vexatious has been happening to me, physiologically speaking: I now cramp for a good 24 hours before my period starts. Longer this time, in fact. This has been building up over the past several months, and it's damn annoying. If this is what most women mean by PMS, then I understand why they want to take shotguns and kill people. It's all the hell of the period without actually going through it--you know that's still yet to come.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com