A Curious Statistical Anomaly

We went live with the magazines at midnight on September 1st, but we just finished all the tweaks and polishing of the chrome this evening.  The major problem this month was me.  Yup, me.

I got the flu or a cold but it might be the flu.  Yes, I googled the symptoms and I’ve got all of them so I don’t know what I’ve got.  So, I’ve been dragging around for a couple of weeks barely getting out of my own way and trying to do the things that absolutely had to be done and smoothing over the rest.  That means I OCR documents, put the pages together and proofed  them.  Entered and proofed reviews that were sent to me.  Stared at the screen for inordinate amounts of time but didn’t add a line to my novel.  Sent out the announcement of the finalists for the WSFA Small Press Award. I answered some email and entered books.

And I read.  I don’t know what most people do but when I don’t feel good I read.   I read nearly everything I was assigned this month and then some.  The problem is that, feeling as crappy as I did — I didn’t write the reviews immediately but waited.  I thought, silly me, that I’d write them the last three days of the month since I’d already taken notes and stuck stickies in the books to remind me of things I could do that.  Except I then got laryngitis and Hyperion got sick and several people who normally don’t wait to the last minute did and ….

Well, I ended up adding new material on September 1st and 2nd.  So, now we’re really done with the zines and so, if you already checked it out — check again — there may be new stuff because I combed my email today for everything I missed and now–deep sigh,  it’s time to start all over again for the October issue.

Speaking of upcoming events, I’m hoping to get an interview with Monica Fairview the author of The Other Mr. Darcy in October.  She’s doing a blog tour and I’m hoping she’ll be able to squeeze it in between stops.  I’ve got the list of the blogs she’ll be visiting and will post it closer to the start of her tour and just before I post my review of the book.

Gumshoe is going to be running an interview with Laura Childs in October to go with the release of her new book, Tragic Magic (A Scrapbooking Mystery).  I’ll also be reviewing season one of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

On the SFRevu side, I need to see what books we’re reviewing for October and start contacting people to line up an interview.  The problem is usually not that there aren’t enough people to ask but that I dither on trying to decide who to ask because I want to ask them all.

Then there’s the knitting.  I’ve got a pair of socks on the needles and the first one is nearly to the heel.  I’ve got a sweater that needs to be steam pressed and hemmed and a button added.  And, I’ve got two other started sweaters that I hope to finish this fall.  Then there’s the spinning of yarn that I need to do.  I’d hoped to get some spinning done by requesting an audio book for review but when it arrived it was print–no problem but I was looking forward to the listening time.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to get my act together to get geared up for Capclave 2010. I’m really excited about the opportunity to be a convention chair and hope that the convention will turn out to be one that everyone enjoys from the Guests of Honor to the Volunteers to the attendees.

Looking this over, I think I may be over-committed…nah…it will be fun.

I’ve known for a while now that Connie Willis had agreed to be a Capclave 2010 Guest of Honor but hoped that the official website would be up by now. But as you know one thing leads to another and the WSFA Small Press Award and the reviving of WSFA Press sort of took over web design and update time but we’re working on the 2010 site and it should be up soon.

So, since I’m so excited by this I wanted to announce it here so you’ll all be as excited and anxious for October 2010 to get here as I am. I’m particularly excited because this is my first time as a convention chairperson. There’s a lot of work to be done and I’m pulling together my committee and developing my time charts and milestones. I’ve just received the emails for the other two guest and will be sending out the invitations tomorrow so stay tuned in case they say yes — should I have a plan B? I didn’t for Connie and she said, “Yes.”

If you haven’t read any of Connie Willis’s works give yourself a treat and try one. I’ve always liked her books and short stories. She manages to pull me in and get me to suspend belief and live in the world she creates along with her characters for the length of whatever form she’s writing in. She can be serious, silly, and penetratingly observant of the human psyche but always entertaining. Some random novel titles to check out: Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Passages, Bellwether, Lincoln’s Dreams, and Remake. There are also several collections of short stories too: Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, Impossible Things, and The Winds of Marble Arch. (Besides you’ll want to have read some of her works before October of 2010 now won’t you).

Capclave is the annual convention of the Washington Science Fiction Association (WSFA). It’s usually held in October and the 2009 Guests of Honor are Harry Turtledove, Sheila Williams, and Rob Balder. It will be held from October 16th to the 18th, 2009.

I’ll occasionally post updates on what’s happening with Capclave 2010 here in my blog and on the official Capclave blog.

Up early again. Hyperion had to be in the Dealer’s Room by 9:30 and I wanted to get to the Green Room for coffee before my 10 o’clock panel. We made it.

10:00 Upbeat Downbeat in YA Fiction. Panelists: Ellen Klages, Gayle Surrette (Moderator), Leah Bobet, Tui Sutherland, Paolo Bacigalupi. Dark and downbeat endings have become fashionable in YA fiction, even to the point where they have been questioned as a fad gone too far. The trend raises a host of questions about the psychology of young readers that need to be asked and answered. Is the tone and resolution of a work of YA fiction actually more important than in adult fiction, e.g., because the readers are still at the age where their worldview is being shaped? Do young readers have a different tolerance for or reaction to downbeat endings than adults? Do they need to be forcibly exposed to the cruel realities of the world, shielded form them, or gently inoculated?

Since I was the moderator for this panel, it’s hard to evaluate how I think it went. I believe it went well and we gave some interesting ideas and feedback to the audience, but then I’m biased. So, if you were there let me know your opinion and what you got out of this panel.

I read several quotes and asked the panelists to give their thoughts in reaction to the quotes.

From Brooklyn Arden (a blog by Cheryl Klein) I got a quote by Richard Peck:

YA novels “end not with happily ever after, but with a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived”; and the events in the book have left the character better prepared for that.

From the ASJA Monthly, a quote from YA author Nora Baskin:

…YA books today are addressing some of the most controversial and authentic topics in our culture, from eating disorders to drug use, death, suicide, transgender issues, incest: the books reflect the issues that young adults are dealing with in their lives, in more honest and contemporary ways than ever before.

From Cheek by Jowl, a book of essays by Ursula K. Le Guin, in “The Critics, The Monsters, and the Fantasists”

The literature of imagination, even when tragic, is reassuring, not necessarily in the sense of offering nostalgic comfort, but because it offers a world large enough to contain alternatives and therefore hope.

We also discussed Meg Cabot’s June 10th post on her blog where she said:

Why read these books? (trauma porn) If worse than your life they make you feel better. … But if your life is worse what then? What do you read.

Meg read books to escape and now she chooses to write books similar to the ones that offered her escape when she was younger.

"Invention of Fantasy" Panel

1:00 The Invention of Fantasy in the Antiquarian Revival. Panelists: Debra Doyle, Greer Gilman, Sonya Taaffe, Kathryn Morrow (Moderator), Erin Kissane, Faye Ringel. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw an extraordinary flowering of scholarship on myth, ritual, and cultural traditions form ancient Greece to contemporary Sussex, a mix which had a profound effect on fields as disparate as classical music, analytical psychology, and literature of the Fantastic. Whether the names Jane Ellen Harrison, James George Frazer, or Cecil Sharp mean anything or nothing to teh average reader of fantasy, their legacy includes the mythic vocabulary that underpins much of our field–an older world beneath this one which still seeps through, to be identified in fragments and perilously traced to its source. Join us in exploring the present-day inheritors of these motifs and their framwork, starting with our own Guest of Honor (Greer Gilman’s Cloud derives its physics form The Golden Bough and The White Goddess, its history from Child ballads; Elizabeth Hand’s Mortal Love not only draws on the Victorian folk revival for inspiration, but sets its plot going among the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Folk-Lore Society; Hope Mirrlees’ Lud-in-the-Mist is perhaps the archetypal novel of slippage between worlds. Green Men in varying guises haunt the ficiton of all three). Is this a peculiarly English take on fantasy? If so, what are two Americans doing writing it? Or have we all internalized katabasis, solstices, Indo-European trinities? Bring folksongs to answer the questions if you must, but Morris dancing will be politely discouraged.

Greer has about 8,000 variants of Child ballads.Child was interested in the survival of the text but not in the music or the performance. Sharp (sp?) saved the music too and what he could of the performance of the songs.

There was a lot of talk of the strong impulse that seems to insist that a rite or ballad or ritual must be historic and unchanged and the belief that those doing it are following in the footsteps of their ancestors. When, in truth many of these rites/rituals/songs have been transformed or invented or melded with other traditions and none of them can be traced unbroken to the neolithic past.

One point I enjoyed was that nostalgia was really fast. TV today has nostalgia for the 1990s. History begins when you are born and everyone wishes for that “better” past.

There was much discussion of the research of Jane Ellen Harrison and how she was dismissed by her male counterparts but that they then used her research as the basis for their own.

"I Spy" Panel

2:00 I Spy, I Fear, I wonder: Espionage Fiction and the Fantastic. Panelists: Chris Nakashima-Brown, C.C. Finlay (Moderator), Ernest Lilley, James D. Macdonald, Don D’Ammassa. In his afterword to The Atrocity Archives, Charles Stross makes a bold pair of assertions: Len Deighton was a horror writer (because “all cold-war era spy thrillers rely on the existential horror of nuclear annihilation”) while Lovecraft wrote spy thrillers (with their “obsessive collection of secret information”). In fact, Stross argues that the primary difference between the two genres is that the threat of the “uncontrollable universe” in horror fiction “verges on the overwhelming,” while spy fiction “allows us to believe for a while that the little people can, by obtaining secret knowledge, acquire some leverage over” it. This is only one example of the confluences of the espionage novel with the genres of the fantastic: the two are blended in various ways in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, Tim Powers’ Declare, William Gibson’s Spook County, and, in the media, the Bond movies and The Prisoner. We’ll survey the best of espionage fiction as it reads to lovers of the fantastic. Are there branches of the fantastic other than horror to which the spy novel has a special affinity or relationships.

Spy novels have a specific atmosphere to them. Usually a person working for a heartless agency and the mission are imposed onto the agent or innocents are pulled in assist.

SF has movement into different space –middle class world to the underworld — while spies seem to go between governments.

Agents are always alien because a spy always is alienated from those around them. Their mission and purpose is imposed and they aren’t themselves. They don’t have true feelings. In SF the character’s feelings are their own.

Spies seldom have personal connections because they aren’t themselves — they play a part and if they have feelings they are based on false premises.

There was a long discussion of sexism because spy novels seem to be an area for men. However, the audience mentioned La Femme Nikita, Alias, and others. But it was considered that the pronoun on most of these female characters could change and no one would notice. There was also the mention of Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Polifax novels where the pronoun couldn’t be shifted and still have the book work.

Other books mentioned:
Time Power’s — Declare, Three Days to Never
Dresden Files
The Wolf’s Hour by Robert R. McCammon
The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service by Erskine Childers

3:00 Is Darwinism Too Good for SF? Panelists: Steven Popkes, Anil Menon, Jeff Hecht (Leader), Robert J. Sawyer, Caitlin R. Kiernan, James Morrow. This year marks the sesquicentennial of the publication of The Origin of Species and the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth. Considering the importance of the scientific idea, there has been surprisingly little great SF inspired by it. We wonder whether, in fact, the theory has been too good, too unassailable and too full of explanatory power, to leave the wiggle room where speculative minds can play in. After all, physics not only has FTL and time travel, but mechanisms like wormholes that might conceivably make them possible. What are their equivalents in evolutionary theory, if any?

The problem is that with science and physics you can look at the rules and the equations and they work just about anywhere and you know what would happen if you changed any one bit. But for biology we don’t have a handle on things. We’ve only got Earth to see how things work. One sample just isn’t enough. We need another planet to have some comparisons. If we found life on another planet and the DNA matched bits of ours that would tell us a lot. But we don’t, and things aren’t solid.

We’re really still resistant to Darwin’s thesis of Natural Selection because it means we’re not special or fallen angels, we’ve simply evolved along with all the other animals on this planet.

Discussion continued on what would have happened if Darwin hadn’t published. Would Wallace have published? Would the theory just come from one of the other researchers who was working along the same lines.

In our instant world, could you develop a theory based on historical perspective when our current history is only about 17 hours old.

We need to get the supernatural out of the way. Would a Buddhist have similar arguments for/against Natural Selection as Europeans and Americans do? If the theory came from another culture would it be more acceptable?

The panelists seemed to agree that SF and Fantasy tended to play it safe with Darwin’s theory — some books mentioned:
Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear
Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century by Robert Charles Wilson
Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick
Teranesia by Greg Egan
Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer
Frameshift by Robert J. Sawyer

The Dealer’s Room closed at 6 PM and then a group of us went out for Chinese. But, by the time we got back to our room the lack of sleep was catching up to us so we’re going to make it an early night since we start driving home late tomorrow afternoon with a stop in Providence to visit our son. So, we need a bit more shut eye than the six hours we’ve been getting.

Unfortunately, by the time we got to the WSFA meeting, voted, caught up on business, got home, and wrote up the Malice Domestic report from Friday and got to bed, it was nearly 3 a.m. So we overslept this morning. We arrived in time to check out the silent auction and found that we’d been outbid on everything we had bid on. Looks like the auction is doing great work raising money for their charity (check the website for information on the charity Malice Domestic has chosen to assist.)

2:00 – 2:50: North, South, East, West – This is Where We Kill the Best: How Setting Impacts the Story.
Panel: Judy Cater (moderator), Deborah Sharp, Carole Nelson Douglas, JoAnna Carl/Eve K. Sandstrom, Cheryl Solimini.

NOTE: While answers are attributed to a speaker, remember it’s all from my notes and my not be exact or I might have misinterpreted what was said.

How do you decide on a place to set your series?

Deborah: I live in Florida and my part of Florida is not the usual part of state that people know about. It’s the rodeo part.

Carole: I traveled a lot throughout the country. For Midnight Louie, I need a certain type of activity and picked Las Vegas and had to then go do more research.
JoAnna: Used to work at a chocolate shop, my daughter does but in another state. Used to be chocolate was very expensive and couldn’t put in small town. So, I needed to find a place to put it. Husband’s family owned a cottage that is now in an area that is becoming popular and lots of rich people moving in so it could afford a chocolate shop.

Cheryl: My home town was 3 miles long and three blocks wide. Everyone knew everyone else and all went to school. Which now years later I realize was not that usual and that it would make a good spot for mysteries.

How was your setting an active part of the plot or a character in itself.

Carole: Las Vegas has changed much over the twenty years, and even though the characters over the books have grown by a year but I keep up with the changes in the city. It’s a fantasy city, so I can do pretty much what you want. Because of the restrictions in working with existing properties so the Las Vegas in my books is slightly imaginary.

JoAnna: People write and ask what town it is that is in my books. But my town is fictional, my towns are usual fictional so I can do what I want. Based on the town where my family cottage is located. (Michigan gold is peaches.) Lots of diversity of people living in the area and make it ideal for mystery.
Cheryl: New Jersey itself is a character in itself. Town in book is based on Edgewater across from New York City. It’s small town people living in view of metropolis and trying to hold onto their values. Set in 1992 because that was when town was going through transition when it was becoming a bedroom community for NYC.

Deborah: Character is part-time animal trapper and is based on an actual ranching town so the town is fictional. Threw in the South Florida that I grew up in — now that area is all strip malls and interstates. Town is a character itself.

Do you think the setting of your books helps to develop a fanbase?

Deborah: If I was thinking as a marketer rather than a writer I wouldn’t have sent the book in a place with more cows than people.

Carole: People always going to Las Vegas looking for Louie places but they are fictional and only exist in my mind. The apartment building that the characters live in was actually in Corpus Christie (recently found it and found out the name).

JoAnna: I get people who email to set me straight if I get something wrong about Michigan. Three types of people in Warner Pier: locals, tourists, and summer people (own or lease cottages long term). Hero in book is a guy who restores antique speed boats and thought it would be unique. Found out there are five of these guys in the town it’s based on.

Cheryl: Tried very much not to mention the name of the town or the state in which it is. I worried about being sued. I was told I had to give some geographical information so ended up mentioning New Jersey a couple of times and NYC. Hadn’t been back since I was twelve and when the book was coming out got contacted by many of the people from my childhood. Got back in touch with people I hadn’t seen for 40 years. Did use the name of the deli that it used to have.

3:30: Guest of Honor Interview: Nancy Pickart interviewed by Carolyn Hart.

There was a lovely introduction by Carolyn Hart detailing the writing history of Nancy Pickart (3 time Agatha winner, 17 novels).

Nancy introduced her agent (Meredith Bernstein) and editor (Linda Merrill).

Nancy Wolf – her maiden name, decided to use married name because she wanted to be at eye level in the bookstores. Now Pickart is at floor level and Wolf would be at eye level.

Grew up reading mysteries. Mother loved mysteries, earliest memory was of trying to mother attention when she was buried in a book.

Started as Journalism major. Graduate of U of Missouri school of Journalism. Always felt like a fish out of water and later realized because it was because she was a really a fiction writer. First job covered a large area and covered city council meetings. Covered a zoning meeting and tried to give it the flavor of the meeting, after it was published a council member called and said it was great coverage but the story says the voted “Yes” when they actually voted “No”.

Then wrote for anything that would pay for it. Saved money and quit job and went to Europe for a year. Came back and became freelance. Had a lot of little jobs and made a lot of connections.

See Nancy Drew as shining example for young women. When young lots of libraries wouldn’t allow Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys on their shelves. Years later among women mystery writers you’d find many were fans of the original (not watered down) Nancy Drew stories. Suspect that if you had a map of which libraries had the books you’d find a correlation between women writers and Nancy Drew.

When mystery writers described their sleuths they usually say she’s thinner, smarter, etc. than me. Jenny is much the same. She’s part of me because I made it up. Jenny would think snarky comments and not say them and fans would write that they thought those things and didn’t say them either. Now women Jenny’s age do say those things.

Virginia Rich diversion. Long story about writing a fan letter to her when first started writing and years later being asked to finish the books Virginia had started before her death (27 Ingredient Chili Con Carne Adventure).

Was on committee to pick best True Crime book of the year. Hoped reading these books would give them insight into why criminals did what they did. Found that this didn’t really happen because most of the criminals were alive and in prison and so didn’t really tell truth to the writers and the family didn’t either.

Lot of traditional mystery writers don’t want to get into the mind of the bad guys and readers don’t like it either. As a writer, I didn’t think I should feel that way and wanted to be able to understand that so started new series until I satisfied myself. (Ray Raintree) Then returned to the traditional mystery.

Virgin of Small Plains has won just about every award and has been nominated for most of the others. Realized that I’d set books in just about every other state and finally decided it was time to set a book in Kansas. Looked at my life and my family which now is my mother, me, and my son. Realized that I’m a midwestern girl and swept by a desire to write about Kansas. At this time Kansas was getting a lot of bad publicity and it was time to write about what I loved.

Two things happened: 1) Kansans are almost pathetically grateful. 2) people say I never realized that Kansas had such beautiful place and it makes me want to get off the highway and look at it.

Story is told from a point of view of a girl who loves Kansas.

Next books is Scent of Rain and Lightning. Set in another part of Kansas – not done and turned in yet.

Also writes short stories too. Sold first short story I ever wrote and one and half years later I hadn’t sold anything else and I was depressed and discouraged. Wondered what I was doing wrong. I always say that if you go to a writers conference and learn one thing it’s worth it. At a conference an instructor said, “Every short story must have an epiphany”–an aha moment when they learn something not about the crime but about themselves.

7 Steps on the Writer’s Path: unhappiness, wanting, commitment, letting go, emersion, fulfillment (I’m missing one but can’t remember what it was). Feel the most important one is letting go – let characters do what they are going to do.

4:30 – 5:20: Welcome to the Dark Side: Mysteries with Edge and Grit
Panel: Don Bruns, Carl Brookins, Stefanie Pintoff, Robin Burcell, Barbara D’Amato (moderator), John L. French.

Bad language doesn’t make a story dark.

Don Bruns: Bahama Burnout is based on a story a sound engineer told him about a studio that used to be magic (lots of great groups and hits), when rebuilt things didn’t go as well so went out of business. He wrote a story to go with these few facts.

Carl Brookins: Says every author absolutely must pay attention to their contracts and electronic writes.

Stephanie Pintoff: First book just came out (Shadow of Gotham), it’s turn of century New York City. Next book will also be about NYC, early Times Square.

John L. French: Is crime scene investigator with Baltimore City police department. When write that dark stuff he sees in his job comes out and that sort of makes it more real.

Robin Burcell: Forensic artist mysteries. Some of the incidents are things that happened when she was a police officer.

Satisfying to kill off someone you really hate.

Research often makes the writer very despressed but when you finally write it comes out better because you’re in the head of the character.

Stephanie writes historical fiction and likes the way you can blend what was with some new stuff. Need to do research to ground the world. Found about the beatings, and nastiness of the election for mayor at the time.

Carl Brookins: My detective tells me what to write and he’s dark.

What ever makes the book dark must be from the character — it’s the character that drives everything.

That’s the end of programming for Saturday. There’s to be a banquet tonight when the Agatha winners will be announced. We should have the list of winners for you sometime tomorrow.

Unfortunately, we won’t be at Malice Domestic for Sunday. Luckily for all your readers all the sessions were taped. I asked at the desk and the tapes will be available at some point. The information will be on the Malice Domestic website so check there for availability. If you can’t get to Malice Domestic listening to the session could be the next best way to enjoy the convention.

This year, we managed to get to the convention at lot earlier than usual. In the past, we arrived for Opening Ceremonies and missed the programming that was held earlier. So, we managed to check out the silent auction items, visit the dealer’s room, and get to some panels before Opening Ceremonies.

[NOTE: We didn’t get back until quite late and can’t seem to find the download cable to the camera so photos will probably be added tomorrow sometime.]

2:00 – 3:30 PM: The Poison Lady – Lucy Zahray

This program item is always a big hit because what writer doesn’t want to know how to kill off that annoying or evil character in a manner that will be a challenge for their protagonist to identify and find the killer. Everything is turned around in ways that would help to make a story more interesting.

The following is a smoothed out version of my notes from this panel. However, the information is general and as a writer you really need to make the plot fit the facts as much as possible and be plausible as well as working as a traditional mystery.

Poison is not a rare crime it’s just usually undetected. People are rarely caught on their first poisoning. When a poisoner is caught on their first victim it is usually because they got drunk and bragged, spent money like crazy, or killed five people in five days (overkill).

The topic today is the Big 3: Arsenic, Strychnine, Cyanide

Arsenic – a rock that’s mined straight from the ground. It’s the 25th most common earth element.

LD 50: 150 milligrams (NOTE: LD 50 is the dose at which 50% of the subjects will die from the dose.)
always arsenic doesn’t break down, found in cremains, found in cemeteries.

There are a lot of areas where the water or land is contaminated with arsenic. During the Civil War the dead were sent home, if the first war where the dead could be transported back to their homes. The bodies had all the parts that could spoil or hold disease removed and the cavity with arsenic. So, most cemeteries with Civil War bodies buried in them would contaminate the land and water around them.

You can find arsenic in antique stores – usually as fly paper, or any products that say something like “sure death” or have a skeleton on label. Often the products don’t say poison – just read the ingredient label.

Fly paper is good and common way to find arsenic. It’s water soluble and has no flavor or odor (slight garlic smell when cooked/hot), looks like sugar in a bowl and could be put in coffee, tea, juice. If someone was dosed in the morning they might not get sick for hours and the killer could be far away from the crime. If symptoms not recognized might not even no it was murder.

Two Methods – acute way – big dose get sick and die or the chronic way give tiny doses over time and they sicken/recover/sicken again then finally die usually seen by doctor in between and thus have a history of health problems so death is not suspicious. The trick is to give the poisoner a good motive and to make the murder interesting enough to deserve writing about it.

Many myths have developed around arsenic:
One is that taken a bit over long period of time and then get immune – what you get is dead.

Medically you can test bodies for arsenic so it could be found. They can test hair, for example. Many people live in environments with high background levels of arsenic (causes intestinal problems, rice water type diarrhea – may indicate arsenic poisoning.)

Arsenic has been used to treat refractory cases of leukemia (kills off blood cells) and used to kill off intestinal parasites.

Lots of history behind arsenic – once called inheritance powder…
First reliable test didn’t come along to 1850s Marsh Test after that it could be tested for. Previously to this test, they ground up parts of body and fed it to animal and if animal died same way then it was presumed to be poison.

Strychnine:
Again antique stores good place to buy it. It was sold until 1965 as a vitamin (chocolate coated to make it taste better). It was believed to improve your blood and wind and GI motility (constipation treatment).

Strychnine is one of the most bitter flavors (1 part in 15,000 is detectible from bitter taste) so it was chocolate coated, or licorice or espresso. Or put in something that is supposed to have a bitter taste so it would be less noticeable.

The phrase “If it tastes bad it is good for you” was basted on the strychnine taste.

LD 50: 15-30 milligrams.

Didn’t need Rx or doctor’s orders, you could just buy it.

If you spit it out because of taste you still might have enough to die or at least get very sick. It inhibits the ability of the cells to not send messages. Everything is stimulated to contract (example with fist, thumb in and pull toward body). All senses are heighted and don’t loose consciousness. Strongest muscles controls contractions so body bows (head and feet on ground, body raised up). Victim can’t breathe because diaphragm is contracted. Anything can set off next wave of contractions – still aware and more sensitive to the pain.
Becomes cyclical. Most victims die between 3rd and 5th set of contractions.

You really, really, really got to hate someone to use strychnine.

Organic compound, comes from a tree can by seeds (when extracted is tarry black substance, if further processed then white powder). Seeds are size of quarter; round fuzzy, small indent (myth says that indent is finger print of God).

Any old poisons have a lot of myths and legends associated with them.

Still used in US as predator control. Legal to buy it – no real control on sale.

It was thought for a long time that if you survived contractions (can survive if get to hospital, give huge amounts of muscle relaxation drugs, put on a vent). But now they know that the contractions cause body to heat up to 106 or 108 temperatures – in about three weeks liver, spleen, and kidneys got too hot to keep functioning. Now we know there’s a latency period and will die of complications weeks to months later. More distance between victim and poisoner the less likely of being found as the murderer — which makes for better plots and the killer being harder to find and identify in the story.

Taken off market as vitamins in 1956.
When a drug is withdrawn you can sell what you have in stock…can’t make anymore. If it is Recalled — take of shelves and send it back..
Most things are withdrawn not recalled.
Rigor mortis sets in almost immediately, and body stays in contracted state by time rigor set in it’s really just wearing off – throws off the time of death.

Cyanide:
If you want instant death – hydrogen sulfide (death on indrawn breathe)

LD 50: 2 milligrams.
Between 2 to 30 minutes to die, bitter almond smell, most people can’t smell it and most of the people who can’t smell it are men).

Death in few minutes or 3 hours depending on dose (everything depends on dose).
Generally inhaled is fastest way to kill someone
Injection is second fastest way (but harder to do)
absorbed through intact or abraded skin. (patch)

Cyanide binds up oxygen carrying cells so it’s a suffocation type of death.

Blood testing for poisons: No general test for poisons just a test for each individual poison or drug. Tests are expensive, time consuming, need to know what to test for or you won’t find it. So has to narrow down the field via symptoms or lifestyle. Test take time and often find the problem after victim is dead.

3:45 – 4:45 Mystery Shrouded in Classic Literature: The Mystery of Emma.
Panel: Jane Cleland & Peggy Ehrhart.

First, Jane Cleland went over the definition and identifying characteristics of a traditional mystery. Her talk was very interesting and filled with lots of observations and quotes. Here’s a few from my notes:

What is a traditional mystery?
Definition: work of fiction, drama, film dealing with crime.
Fair play mystery – audience knows everything as soon as the detective but it’s identifying the important from the non-important hides the clues.

Thriller – stopping the crime is the crux of the story.
Traditional mysteries – suspense is not as crucial. Try to figure out what happened.

Mystery is novel of revelation not action.
Contemporary mystery has evolved into whodunit and whydunit

Traditional mystery – character drives plot, reader must crave knowing how this person will handle that situation.
Reader engaged not by trill seeking by need to know.

Traditional and cozy are often used interchangeably.
Qualities for traditional: murder usually happens off stage, if violence occurs on stage no graphic details, murder occurs in first chapter or two, no swearing, victim and killer are known to one another, solution is from deductions of sleuth, in series secondary characters occurs. Red herrings.

Red herrings are crucial elements of trad. Mystery – false trail. A narrative element to distract reader from something else.

6 ways red herrings used:

• overlooked detail
• wrong interpretation of a known fact
• casual mention in conversation
• no reason to be significant unless you have specialized knowledge
• absence of something that should be there
• band wagon fallacy – when someone argues for a certain interpretation because of their own beliefs. Popularity is unrelated to its correctness.

Next Peggy Ehrhart discussed Jane Austen’s Emma as a traditional mystery but without a murder. It’s a mystery that rather than solve a murder tries to determine who loves who. P.D. James said that if Austen was writing today she’d be one of our greatest mystery writers.

Emma is blind to obvious clues. Mr. Knightly is far more observant. Shown best by the fact that Emma doesn’t recognize Mr. Elton true characters when she tries to match him with Harriet Smith.
Three examples of Emma’s blindness: painting of Harriet, the riddle delivered to Emma not Harriet, and the party that Harriet misses.

Second misunderstood plot element: Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax (secret engagement).

If Austen wrote mysteries they would be fair play ones since all the clues are there. Frank always promises to pay a visit to his father but only actually comes when Jane is visiting her relatives. Austen disguises this fact so that reader misses as does Emma. Jane plays piano and Frank is off to London for haircut and suddenly Jane gets a piano delivered. (to hide his involvement with Jane he grabs onto Emma’s notion that Jane must have an admirer and runs with it, setting Emma on the notion that Mr. Dickson is the man).

Clue hidden in plain sight: Mrs. Bates very talkative. At ball, Frank helps Jane on with her wrap which shows his interest but his clue is buried in the tons of other information that Mrs. Bates talks on and on about.

Mr. Knightly brings up the fact that he believes Frank and Jane are a couple and gets pooh-poohed by Emma.

Frank’s letter in Chapter 14 after Mrs. Churchill’s death is much like the final reveal in a traditional mystery.

In many of Austen’s works you end it and then it’s the realization that you should have seen this because all the clues are there.

Opening Ceremonies: Announce the Guest of Honor, the nominee for the various awards and welcome every one to the convention. This was followed by a reception.

7:30 – 8:20 pm: Humor Panel
Panel: Elaine Viets (moderator), Don Bruns, Pari Noskin Taichert, Parnell Hall, and Jeff Cohen.

There was lots of joking around and some serious discussion of humor in mysteries. The most important point that was made was that:
The humor has to come from your character not from you.
If you try too hard it will fail.
If you think what you wrote is hilarious, wonderful humor — it probably isn’t.

This was followed by the auction but we had to leave at this point. We’ll be back tomorrow to cover the full day of programming.