"You're Free"

By Pat Remick

During the weekend, I completed my year-long presidency of the New England chapter of Sisters in Crime and my lovely parting gifts were accompanied by a card that showed an open pair of handcuffs and the words "You're Free."

While I laughed at this message, it is true. I am now FREE of a job I volunteered for that has consumed vast amounts of time over the past twelve months. Don't get me wrong -- I loved this task because of the friends I've gained, the unforgettable experiences I've enjoyed, and my great delight at seeing many of my ideas come to fruition, thanks to a supportive and hard-working board that oversees our dynamic chapter of almost 200 women and men spread over a six-state region.


MWANE President Margaret McLean and SinCNE President Me

As president, I also had the opportunity to co-chair the 9th annual New England Crime Bake for Mystery Writers and Readers with the president of the New England chapter of Mystery Writers of America as these groups co-sponsor this amazing event (and profit from it). Crime Bake sold out four months early this year and featured the incredible Charlaine Harris as Guest of Honor and a "nest" (that's Vampire-speak, I've learned) of incredible New England authors led by Dennis Lehane.  Believe me, if it weren't for SinCNE, I would never appear in public in a vampire cape and sunglasses.

The conference, as I noted in a previous posting, required a great deal of time to organize, but was a blast to be part of and an experience for which I will be forever grateful. 

My point here is that serving as President and Co-Chair was memorable, fulfilling and mostly a whole lot of fun. These volunteer positions also were a whole lot of work and consumed a great deal of my time in order to further the cause of my fellow New England authors. Because my first novel is still a Work in Progress, these jobs never were platforms for promoting my books. So what did I gain from these endeavors?

I leave knowing I did the best I could to support my fellow members of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America, both within our mystery writing community and outside of it. I made wonderful writing friends and had an opportunity to work with incredible people who also love mysteries. In sum: This past year has been a wonderful experience.

But now, it's time to move on -- and back to where I belong. The closing words of the card thanking me for my hard work and inspiration were: "Now get back to writing!" And that's what I plan to do.

But this has been my dilemma over the past year: The more time I devoted to SinCNE and Crime Bake, the less I had for my own writing. However, my thank you card reminds me that I'm "FREE" to return to it once again, with my life much richer because of my experiences.

I'm sure many of us have faced this conundrum -- wanting to support the writing community but knowing it could interfere with our own writing. Which choice did you make -- and why? 

Two Out of Three Ain't Bad

By Paula Matter


As some of you know, I along with fellow Stiffs Pat Remick and Ramona Long attended the Crime Bake conference in Dedham, MA. Awesome conference and I hope to see a couple more Stiffs attend next year. Hint, hint.

Two highlights for me came on Sunday when I won prizes. A new event this year was the Scavenger Hunt which I believe was sponsored by the New England SinC chapter. Attendees were given a sheet of paper and had to go around collecting signatures from people who matched the description. Such as: First Time At Crime Bake which Ramona signed; NE SinC Board Member which Pat signed. Twenty-five blocks and I had a ball meeting new people and talking with others I already knew. Hank Philippi Ryan signed Anthony Winner, and the bookseller signed Grandfather. A great way to interact with other attendees.

To top it off, I won a book by Margaret Maron!

The other prize I won Sunday morning was as one of four winners of the Flashwords contest.

Contest Description: Use at least ten of the listed “Title Words” from novels by Charlaine Harris in a flash fiction story of no more than 150 words. Include a crime or suggestion of a crime. Keep it clean. Write in English.

Title Words: Bedroom, Bone, Club, Corpse, Counselor, Dark, Dead, Family, Fool, Grave, Heels, Ice, Landlord, Living, Pick, Scene, Secret, Surprise, Trollop, Worse

Dead to Me and Worse, I Paid for Law School

I didn’t have to pick the lock, thanks to the foolish landlord. Grateful he didn’t know about Vinnie recently dumping me for that trollop at the VFW club, I moved quickly through my ex-fiancé’s living room and into the bedroom. I grabbed Vinnie’s revolver, then hurried to the VFW.

Now, crouched over her corpse, the gun resting against my hip bone, I pictured the scene outside my cramped, dark hiding place. Vinnie’s family--the rotten heels--had decided to go through with the unnecessary-but-paid-for bachelor party. An excuse to celebrate Vinnie winning his first case.

I had five bullets left. One for each of them.

I waited for the secret signal--what would’ve been Trollop’s cue to jump out of the cake.

“Grave situation, Counselor, we’re out of ice!”

I put a smile on my face, my finger on the trigger, pushed the hinged lid up and yelled, “Surprise!”

Mo Walsh, the woman in charge of the Flashwords contest, read the story beautifully, perfectly. Winning this prize two years in a row tells me I need to stick with short stories! My prize was a bottle of Vampire wine, a nice Merlot. Other choices were mugs or T-shirts.

 And with Crime Bake over, so is the 2010 conference season for me. I'm thinking of attending Malice Domestic and Pennwriters next year. And Crime Bake, of course.

How about you? What will you be attending? Do you have a favorite annual conference or writerly event you can't miss? What do you look for when attending these events? What's your most memorable moment?

You Get What You Play For

By Martha Reed

I’ve been working steadily on the new novel and something has come out of it that is new to my process – I’m using background music to help me develop my characters. For instance, my new femme fatale is a character named Sally Poldridge who is known among her enemies as The Witch of Wauwinet.

Wauwinet is a small village on Nantucket and it was also the working title of my manuscript until about a year ago when I decided to go with an alternate title because of the difficulty most folks would have in asking for a book with the word Wauwinet in it – a word compounded of a stutter and a bite. That is asking a bit much from the paying public.

I’m not going to reveal the new title until the day the manuscript gets sold. Of course, cut me a check and you can call it anything you want.


Anyway, today, I am going to show you just a little bit of what I’m holding in my hand. It’s a tease, just like Sally is, and as I’m writing her character into the story I listen to the following song on a continuous looping track and do my best to imagine Sally working her evil magic behind the scenes.

I invite you to close your eyes and listen:



This amazing voice belongs to Canadian jazz stylist Diana Krall who happens to be married to Elvis Costello. For someone who managed to survive the ‘80’s, that combo is pretty cool. Someday I’d love to be in a position where this song gets incorporated into a movie based on my book – and isn’t that a lovely dream to work on? Something this good does make it easier to get up every morning at 5:30 to work feverishly on the manuscript before I head out for my day job. Actually, the writing part is so sweet right now I can’t wait to go to bed so I can get up and write even more.

And my dream isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. A couple of weeks ago Charlaine Harris turned up on the red carpet at an HBO premier of her original story TRUE BLOOD. Of course, scoring an HBO series based on your story, produced by Alan Ball (American Beauty, Six Feet Under) is a bit of a stretch, but if we’re dreaming, why not dream big? You get what you play for.

PS. HBO’s TRUE BLOOD has just been signed to a second season and it’s the focus of an immense viral marketing campaign that includes the development of an ARG (Alternate Reality Game), a wiki collaborative Web page and what I am sure was an extremely expensive print/mail campaign that targeted high profile members of social Internetworks. I’m glad I didn’t have to pay for that mailing list!

This is what targeted subjects found waiting in their mailboxes:



Hey! Why aren’t we seeing anything this creative coming from the publishing houses? Actually, let’s be honest. When was the last time you saw anything sent out from a publishing house? Bookmarks, anyone?