Next Big Thing

This week I am honored to participate in the Next Big Thing Blog Chain, featuring authors from across the United States, Canada and beyond. I’ve enjoyed connecting with authors such as Colorado mystery writer Pat Bertram, whose current big thing is working on an online serial with other writers.I was invited to join by A.F Stewart  of Nova Scotia, who is working on a steam punk horror story set in Halifax.

      We've been asked to answer a set of questions about our latest project, which for me is the December 1 release of One Shoe Off. This is the second book in the Jordan Daily News Mystery series. Like the first book, Great News Town, it is set in the pre-internet 1980s at a  small newspaper in a fictional Chicago suburb.

What is your working title of your book?

One Shoe Off

Where did the idea come from for the book?
Molly Zelko, a real-life, crime-fighting newspaper editor, disappeared in Joliet, Illinois, in 1957, leaving  her shoes behind as a sign she was nabbed by gangsters.  Her story is legendary in Joliet, and I became familiar with it when I worked at the Joliet Herald-News in the 1980s.  I wondered what would happen if the spirit of a powerful journalist from the past were to haunt the 1985 newsroom in my fictional Chicago suburb.

What genre does your book fall under?

One Shoe Off is a mystery/thriller. Zelda Machinko, the missing newspaper editor, tells her chapters in a gritty, first-person, present-tense voice, with an appreciative nod to Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane and all Noir mysteries.
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Zelda tells me (don’t your characters talk to you?) that she should be played by Liz Taylor. Since Zelda disappeared in 1956, she doesn’t know that Liz isn’t around anymore. But I like to think Glenn Close would do a fabulous job. She's got grit and glamour, a tough combination. Investigative reporter Duke looks like a young Tom Selleck, with a bit of George Clooney’s dry wit. City editor Josie is a tomboy spitfire, looks like Ellen DeGeneres but tiny like Kristen Chenowith.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
As the spirit of a long-missing newspaper editor reveals her tale, the people and places of the past intertwine with the passions and problems of the present, the gritty gangsters of the 1950s collide with the government graft of the 1980s.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

One Shoe Off is self-published.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I’ve been toying with this story for several years, but just started writing in earnest about a year ago.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I love the series writing of Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, Walter Mosely, Michael Connelly, and many others in which the development of the characters and their continuing relationships is as important to each book as solving the mystery. 
Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The whole Jordan Daily News Series is inspired by my career in journalism, but this book especially is dedicated to the journalists I worked with over the past 40 years and their unflinching devotion to truth and justice.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

My books work on many different levels. If you just want a fast read and a satisfying story, it’s there. But if you like literary symbolism, you’ll find that as well. In this case, for instance, the title can be taken at face value. Zelda kicked off one shoe. But on a deeper level it describes a story in which everything is “off” just a little. People don’t do what’s expected, things don’t work out exactly right.

As part of the December launch of One Shoe Off, you can go to Goodreads to register for a giveaway. Five copies will be given away at the end of the month. Also at the end of the month, the Kindle version will have free downloads Dec. 26-30.

This blog chain will continue next week as more authors post about their latest projects. Let me introduce you to West Michigan career counselor and author Sue Maciak  and Illinois vampire romance writer Denise Unland. Click on their names to check their blogs now, and be sure to check back next week to read about their Next Big Thing.

Better than real

What is it about an impressionistic painting that captures something a photograph misses? Well, that's part of the magic of theater. It was my great privilege to see "War Horse" at Wharton Center on Saturday and it is beyond-belief fabulous. Yes, these are puppet horses, with puppetteers in plain sight. And yes, this is an epic story of war and destruction, spanning years and battlefields and several different countries. And yes, it is all done with a minimal set. And yet, it is so real. So heartbreakingly real. In the climactic moment when a German soldier and a British soldier come out of their fox holes and work together to free a horse tangled in the barbed wire, I cried like I never cried at a movie. I cried for the injured horse and for all the soldiers in all the senseless wars.  I love laughing in the theater, and I laughed at spots in War Horse. But when a play can make me cry, that's real. That's better than real.

Just for fun

Even when I'm not reviewing, I love to go to theater. Which is why I identify so well with "the man in the chair" in The Drowsy Chaperone. He loves musical theater so much that just listening to a recording of a favorite old musical brings it to life in his living room. I first saw this show on Broadway with Michigan's own Sutton Foster. Tonight I relived that experience at Cornerstone University.

What a delightful show! Catchy music, snappy dancing, flashy costumes, outrageous over acting, sappy love stories, terrible head-slapping comedy. (Not to mention Kyle Juresich as the groom skating around the stage blindfolded!) And, of course, a great man in the chair, played by local actor Greg Rogers. As he says, musical theater is a wonderful escape into another world, and The Drowsy Chaperone is an excellent example. This is a challenging show with lots of sets coming and going; one big production number after another, lightening fast costume changes and some demanding solos.But Producer Jennifer Hunter and her cast and crew did an excellent job.

I'm so glad I took a break from a thousand other things I should be doing during this busy holiday season and caught a performance tonight. The show continues through Sunday. Don't miss it!

Normal? What's that?

I have to admit I was a little doubtful going  to Thursday's opening performance of "Next to Normal" at Actors' Theatre. I worship the American musical, characters breaking into song because it's the natural thing to do. But singing about mental illness? I mean, we can't even TALK about mental illness. But somehow this show makes the singing seem perfectly... well, normal. And you know why? It's because they're not singing about mental illness. They are singing about love. And the hurt that love brings. This is a family ripped apart at the seams by love and hurt. And it all seems, well, understandable if not almost normal. "Powerful" everyone was saying as the show closed with a standing ovation. See my review.
BTW -- Sold out house. Standing ovation. Busses pulling up outside dropping off sections full of enthusiastic patrons. One bus load came all the way from Dayton, Ohio, to see this show on Thursday, a performance of  "A Christmas Carol" at Civic on Friday, and attend classes at Civic on theater arts. Tell me this is the New Normal for local theater.

A Shoe Thing

I love shoes and easily have 'many more than I need (especially Merrells). But I'm no competition for Imelda Marcos or Cary Bradstreet on "Sex in the City."  But today I have 100 extra shoes in my kitchen.

I say shoes, not pairs of shoes because they're all facing the same direction, though I don't think they'd fit right or left feet. They're cookies. A kitchen counter full of red cookie shoes. They're all for my Sneak Peek Book Release Party tonight at Grandville Library. (6:30-8 p.m.) The cookies celebrate the publication of my new book, One Shoe Off.

It's about a newspaper editor that disappeared in 1956 leaving just a shoe behind.

Believe me, I have a lot more respect for the shoemaker now ... and the cookie baker too! The dough kept sticking and twisting. Sometimes it would stretch out so the cookie cutout looked more like a snake. And sometimes the thin pointed toe would get brown in the oven way before the rest of the cookie was done.

And I've been playing Lady Macbeth all afternoon, washing my hands and  repeating "Out, out drat spot," because my hands are stained with red food coloring!

Come join us tonight and take a bite out of crime... I mean, cookies.

Pie school

I spent the morning in remedial pie school. My mother, 85-year-old Bobbie Merrell,  claims she failed pastry in her high school home-ec class, but everybody says Mom's pie crust is the best ever. So this morning, as she was preparing a pumpkin pie and a blackberry pie for tomorrow's Thanksgiving feast. I paid extra close attention.
She uses one cup of flour, 1/3 cup Crisco, and 3 tablespoons of water for each crust. Today we were making three crusts, one for the pumpkin pie and two for the fruit pie, so she started off with three cups of flour and one cup of shortening.
Secret #1: sift the flour. We've become lazy about that over the years but Mom always sifts the flour. Otherwise you get too much she said.
Secret #2: Use cold shortening. Cold. Mom put it into the measuring cup and put it into the fridge. Then when she decided that wasn't cold enough she set it in the freezer for a few minutes.

Secret #3: Cut shortening into flour with a pastry blender until all the flour has a bit of the shortening. Mom's old pastry bender is different than mine and does a fantastic job.
Secret #4: Use cold water. Mom used water from the dispenser on the fridge. And she's a little stingy on the water. Her mixture looked too crumbly to me to roll out on the pastry cloth, and I would have been tempted to add more water but she said to do so would make it tough.

Secret #5: Work quickly, and don't overwork. Lickity split, mom took a handful of her crumbly dough, rolled it out and then made quick patches. Working the dough too much will make it tough too. It doesn't need to look pretty to be nice and flakey.

Of course, the best part comes tomorrow, after dinner, when we get to eat pie!

Don't be alarmed, the play will go on!

Grand Rapids Civic Theatre's production of "A Christmas Carol" is an evening of fun and inspiration. But I have to admit the biggest laughs on opening night came from the mishaps.
      Just as the first act is really heating up, when Scrooge's long dead partner Jacob Marley calls upon his chums in chains from the netherworld to really scare Scrooge, billows of fog fill the stage. Chains are clanging. Marley is flying and skeletons are popping out of the closet. It's sheer bedlam.  So on opening night when a pair of strobe lights started flashing in the auditorium, at first it seemed like part of the special effects. Except for that ear-piercing squeal on the decibel level of something from the sound system of today's overly enthusiastic rock bands. We put our fingers in our ears, the required pose for many of today's "music" performances.  As the on-stage singing continued in spite of the squeal, we soon realized this wasn't a special effect. This was a malfunctioning fire alarm. The horrible sound continued for what seemed like forever, but was probably less than a minute. For the rest of the show, house manager Mary Jo DeNolf was stationed at the alarm controls in the lobby just in case it went off by mistake again.
      But the next mishap was on stage. Near the end of the second act, when the Ghost of Christmas Future shows Scrooge his own grave. His tombstone, with his name inscribed in bright red lights, opened up from a stage platform, and from the brief glimpse we saw it was an impressive marvel indeed. But no sooner had the stone showed its face but something snapped and BOOM! it was lying face down again. The show continued with Scrooge bemoaning the hidden grave, while backstage and under the stage someone managed to make sure the stone had slipped back into its place in the stage platform just in time to become a floor again for a chorus of singing citizens.
        As is the theater tradition, the show went on. I laughed on the way home to write my review, which gave only a brief, necessary mention of the mishaps. And I thanked my lucky stars that at least we had avoided the problems of the sick patron which beset a Broadway show earlier in the week.  You gotta laugh!