Boo!

In honor of Halloween, here's a photo of me hanging out with some spooky "friends" at Universal Studios last year about this time. :) Enjoy!

"A Book and A Dish" Reviews To Hell in a Handbasket

Martha Cheves, the author of the blog named A Book and A Dish, posted a review of the second novel in my Claire Hanover gift basket designer mystery series, To Hell in a Handbasket, tonight. I'm very pleased with what she had to say!

Martha also posted my recipe for Fruitcake Cookies. I was given this recipe by a favorite teacher when I was in high school many moons ago, and the cookies are a staple at my house around Christmas time. I hope those of you who decide to try the recipe enjoy them as much as I do.

Elizabeth Zelvin Visits!

Today I am pleased to welcome Elizabeth (Liz) Zelvin to my blog. To read her bio and a short blurb about her latest release, Death Will Help You Leave Him, scroll down to Monday's "teaser" post for Liz's visit. Today, we have photos! Of Liz and her book cover. Also, her answers to my interview questions follow. Please feel free to ask Liz questions here today about herself and her books, and if you've read any of her work, share your praises with the rest of us.

1. Please describe your current release and the series in which it’s contained in more depth.

Death Will Help You Leave Him is the second book in the series that began with Death Will Get You Sober, featuring recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler and his friends, Jimmy, a computer genius who’s been sober a long time and Jimmy’s girlfriend Barbara, an addictions counselor who’s also a world-class codependent. In the first book, Bruce got sober—and stayed sober by becoming involved in a murder investigation. In this one, he’s still sober, so he has to deal with all the stuff that he blotted out with booze over the years, especially emotions and relationships. He’s torn between a budding interest in Luz, the friend whose abusive boyfriend is murdered in her apartment, and a toxic but very powerful old relationship with his ex-wife, Laura, who’s pretty crazy. The idea of the series is to show through Bruce how remarkable the transformation that takes place in recovery is, whether it’s recovery from alcoholism or some other addiction or compulsive behavior. He’s coming back to life and taking responsibility for the first time, and it is not an easy process. Throw in a murder and stir, and you have a volatile situation—which is of course what writers and readers want.

2. What tools and process do you use to “get to know” your characters before and while you’re writing the books?

That may be the wrong question for me, because the whole process is completely intuitive. I know certain things about how alcoholics and codependents feel and act—when they’re at their most destructive and out of control, when they’re in that shaky state of early recovery, and when they start to use the 12-step programs and in some cases the tools of therapy to make remarkable changes. But what makes these characters individual and not simply generic recovering people is a matter of voice. Bruce talks in my head all the time, and at this point I have a good handle on what he will and will not say. Someone who edited a short story of mine a while back tried to make some changes that I think demonstrate the difference. Bruce said something was “not far enough,” and the editor wanted to make it “not sufficiently far.” Then he referred to “alcoholics like me,” and the editor suggested “alcoholics such as I.” Bruce wouldn’t say “sufficiently” or “such as I” in a million years.

The process was different with Barbara, the nice Jewish girl from Queens who can’t get past her codependency. She started out as a first-person character with a backstory a lot like my real-life background. What I learned in the editing process was how to make her less like me. I began to take her codependent tendencies—rescue, control, minding other people’s business—over the top, and that was a lot of fun. She also had a tendency to be a little preachy, and I began to see that readers might not like her as much as I did unless I fixed that. Thanks to an editor’s suggestion, I took her from first person to third—got a little distance from her—and that worked much better.

As for Jimmy, who’s a history buff like my husband—well, if you ask my husband, he’ll tell you my process was stealing all his one-liners.

3. How does your training and work experience in psychotherapy help you with character development?

My professional training and knowledge doesn’t exactly dictate who my characters are as people. But if I have a character who’s depressed or suicidal or manic or narcissistic, I’ll make their behavior and thought processes plausible. I won’t use the wrong words, which is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. If someone feels ambivalent, I won’t say he’s schizophrenic. Or if she is in a dissociated state, I won’t say she’s schizophrenic either. Schizophrenic is something else. Dissociation can be as mild as road trance—or getting lost in a good book—and as extreme as dissociative identity disorder, which used to be called multiple personality disorder. I’m not going to get that kind of thing wrong. And if someone does have DID, I’m going to make sure they have a history of childhood sexual abuse, because that’s where it usually comes from—that or some other severe trauma that the child survived only by walling part of him or herself off from what was happening.

4. In talking about your visit to my blog, you said, “This book is about bad relationships.” What did you mean by that? What types of bad relationships do you explore in it?

I said “bad relationships” rather than any kind of clinical term because I want to engage the reader. Everybody’s had at least one bad relationship of some kind. The two that popped into my mind just now were my first marriage, to a guy who was quite controlling and argumentative, and a boy who stalked me when I was fifteen. Really—he was a classic erotomanic stalker. Google it if you want to know what they’re like. Only we didn’t have the term “stalker” then, and everybody around me thought it was funny. It went on my whole senior year of high school. His delusion was that it was a relationship.

But I don’t think the “badness” of the relationships in Death Will Help You Leave Him are debatable. Frankie, the guy who gets killed, bullies and spies on and intimidates Luz, his girlfriend, probably hits her—shoving and shaking are also physical abuse, by the way—periodically walks out on her, and lies to her about his marriage. No wonder she’s the prime suspect when he’s killed in her apartment.

Then there’s Bruce’s relationship with his ex-wife, Laura. She’s all sex, drugs, and rock & roll, and he’s trying to stay clean and sober. She takes him to bed and then rubs his nose in her relationship with her new boyfriend. She makes suicidal phone calls to him late at night and guilt-trips him into taking care of her. She doesn’t want him, but she won’t let him go. And he’s hooked, even though she epitomizes the “people, places, and things” he needs to stay away from to remain in recovery.

The third bad relationship is Laura’s with her new boyfriend. She’s pathologically attached to a guy who’s brutal to her. There are reasons for this. I wrote a piece called “Why She Can’t Throw the Bum Out.” It’ll appear in the November issue of Mystery Scene. The first version was too clinical—I got caught up in explaining the reasons—and I had to rewrite it and bring it back to the story. And even more in the book itself, I have to keep telling the story and not start describing a clinical case.

5. Are there any good relationships in the book? If so, which ones? And how do you distinguish a good relationship from a bad one?

Jimmy and Barbara have a good relationship. It’s not a perfect relationship, and I don’t dwell on it. But you can see the affection between them and the graceful way they handle how very different they are from each other. There’s a lot of backstory that doesn’t appear in anything I’ve written so far. And there’s future backstory that I might eventually get a chance to write. For example, Barbara’s biological clock is ticking. But Jimmy is afraid he’ll be a father like his alcoholic dad. And both of them are scared that any child they have will be genetically predisposed to alcoholism or other addictions. That’s more like a biological bomb ticking—very scary for those involved.

How do you distinguish good from bad relationships? Uh, it’s not a good relationship if one partner abuses the other physically (hitting, beating, kicking, punching, pinching, shoving), sexually (forced sex, including marital rape), verbally (calling the partner obscene names, belittling, perennial sarcasm), or emotionally (bullying, intimidation, contempt, controlling, the silent treatment). In fact, I’m not exaggerating—you’d be amazed how many people have experienced some kind of abuse. But for a measure of the necessary conditions for a good relationship, I like the tenet from relational psychology (for which I bless the feminist psychologists of the 1970s and 1980s, who finally figured out how women develop) that says that an emotionally healthy relationship is mutual and growth enhancing. Think about it.

6. Okay, in the age-old question of character versus plot, which one do you think is most important in a murder mystery and which one do you emphasize in your writing? Why?

Character every time. No contest. People are the most interesting thing in the world, as far as I’m concerned: their feelings, their relationships, their struggles to change and grow. That’s not only why I’m a writer, it’s also why I’m a shrink. E. M. Forster’s famous tag, “Only connect,” works for me.

7. Now here’s a zinger. Tell us something about yourself that you have not revealed in another interview yet. Something as simple as your favorite TV show or food will do.

I’ve already done it, when I talked about the high school stalker. I’ve been thinking about it since I read an article on stalking in one of the MWA or SinC newsletters (if anyone remembers which one, please email me), and I might blog about it eventually. But if you really want the deep stuff? West Wing or True Blood and peppermint stick ice cream.

8. What’s next for you, and Bruce, after Death Will Help You Leave Him?

The next book has Bruce, along with Jimmy and Barbara, taking shares in a lethal clean and sober group house in the Hamptons. And they may appear in some more short stories: three have been published so far. But a very different story, a historical about a young Marrano sailor on Columbus’s first voyage, has been accepted for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and I’m toying with the idea of a Young Adult novel about that character.

9. Is there anything else you would like to tell my blog readers?

You can visit my author website and I blog weekly on Poe’s Deadly Daughters. I’m also on Facebook and open to friends—though not to any of the games or applications. Death Will Help You Leave Him is in stores now, and I’ll be visiting some bookstores, libraries, and writers’ groups in North Carolina in November. I’m delighted to meet with book clubs if I can get to them, and discussion questions for both Death Will Help You Leave Him and Death Will Get You Sober are available on my site. In my “other hat,” I do online therapy at LZcybershrink.com. And if you want two great gifts for the mystery lovers on your holiday lists, I hope you’ll consider not only Death Will Help You Leave Him but also the holiday crime anthology The Gift of Murder, which benefits the Toys for Tots Foundation. I have a link to the ordering information from Wolfmont Press on my site. My story in the anthology is about Bruce, and it’s called “Death Will Trim Your Tree.”

Elizabeth Zelvin will visit my blog tomorrow!

I love hosting fellow mystery authors on my blog when they're conducting virtual book tours, though I do warn them that my readership is probably not as high as the multi-author blogs. Tomorrow, I am pleased that my good buddy and fellow Sisters in Crime Guppies member Elizabeth (Liz) Zelvin will visit my blog during her virtual tour to promote her latest release, Death Will Help You Leave Him.

In Death Will Help You Leave Him, recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler and his friends, computer genius Jimmy and world-class codependent Barbara, investigate a murder when a friend's abusive boyfriend is found dead in her apartment. Bruce has to juggle sleuthing, sobriety, a crush on the bereaved girlfriend, and the lure of his compelling but self-destructive ex-wife, who's on her own collision course.

The series started with Death Will Get You Sober and includes three short stories, one nominated for an Agatha award, one published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and the third in the 2009 holiday crime anthology, The Gift of Murder, to benefit Toys for Tots and to which I gave a glowing blurb. Liz is a New York City psychotherapist who has written and lectured widely about addictions, codependency, and relationships. Please visit her author website and her group blog, Poe’s Deadly Daughters.

I had fun coming up with unique questions that I thought Liz would not get from other hosts on her tour, and she told me she had fun answering them and said things she hasn't said elsewhere. You can find out about a scary incident in Liz's past and her favorite food, among other interesting facts. So, please stop by tomorrow to read the interview, post questions and comments for Liz, and talk about her books!

Another Good Review and Royalties

Kristen Howe at her Kristin's Book Jungle blog has posted another good review for A Real Basket Case. Please take a gander at her review of my book and others that she has read. I hope she reads To Hell in a Handbasket soon and lets her blog readers know what she thinks of that book, too. :)

Also, I just received my royalty statement from Five Star for January-June, 2009 and two checks (one for each Claire Hanover gift basket designer mystery novel). I was thrilled! I earned out my advance on To Hell in a Handbasket, which was released in mid-May, and got a nice check for additional royalties. A Real Basket Case is still selling and making money for me, too. I have the funds to go to the Malice Domestic conference next spring now. I want to say a big thank you to all my readers!

My novella is available for 40% off preorder!

My long-awaited science fiction novella, The Epsilon Eridani Alternative, will be released in late November in eBook, eSerial, and paperback formats by Virtual Tales. The publisher is waiting to see how many pages the paperback will be once it's typeset to set the price, but they expect it to be under $10. To register for the pre-order mailing list for it, e-mail epsilon-presale@virtualtales.com. As soon as the novella goes to press, you will receive an e-mail with a link to purchase it for 40% off the cover price. If you're still interested, simply click the link and finalize your purchase. For more information and to see the beautiful cover art, go HERE.

Here's the blurb:

What would you do if confronted with a kill or be-killed scenario? What if you had to kill an infant? Of an alien species? And what if the future of the human race depended on your decision? The Epsilon Eridani Alternative novella explores a timely ethical issue--the use of stem cells for medical research--but with a futuristic twist. Space colonists from Earth face the dilemma of whether or not to harvest stem cells from alien infants to counteract the effects of human aging.

"Entertaining and thought-provoking. Groundwater uses engaging characters to adeptly contrast the intellectual, biological, and emotional urges we have to protect our species."

-- Laura E. Reeve, author of the Major Ariane Kedros Novels

Bouchercon Report

I had a wonderful time at my first Bouchercon conference, held in Indianapolis this year, but was so exhausted afterward that it took me until now to blog about the experience. A lot of my fellow mystery community cohorts have already posted their thoughts and photos, and I've enjoyed reading & viewing them. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera! So, if anyone took a photo of me with others, I'd love to get a copy. Please send it to me by clicking on "Contact Me" at my website.

I flew in Wednesday afternoon. After dumping my things in the hotel room I'd be sharing with fellow Five Star author Patricia Stoltey (who has some great posts about the conference), I registered for the conference and rushed into the book room to meet some of the booksellers. I saw that Jim Huang's The Mystery Company was already carrying my books, and I left consignment copies with Mystery Mike's and Scene of the Crime Books. I also met Steve Warne there, who is a distributor for UK mystery books in the US, and we really hit it off. I dined that night at the Old Spaghetti Factory with about thirty members of the 4MA yahoogroup, organized by our fearless leader Maddy, who had us each shout out our name & what we wrote if we were an author, where we're from, the favorite book we read this year, and our goofiest nickname. Great fun!

Thursday morning I attended the Bouchercon 101 session featuring Hank Phillipi Ryan, who gave me not one but two of her lip balms, saying the second one was for the baboons! :-) At 9:00 am, I shared the stage with Joanna Campbell Slan, Margaret Grace, Sally Goldenbaum, and Betty Hechtman for the Killer Hobbies panel. We had a standing room only crowd, got lots of laughs and gave away prizes, including two mini gift baskets from me featuring Zulu necklaces from my recent trip to South Africa. After that I signed books in the book room and enjoyed meeting new readers and getting reacquainted with existing fans. I had so much fun talking to people that I missed the next panel session. I grabbed a quick snack in the room, then manned the Hospitality Suite from 1:00 - 3:00 pm. Instead of serving ice cream as I was supposed to, I spent the time explaining why there wasn't any ice cream (mechanical failures with the machines).

After that was the Sisters in Crime librarian tea with lots of scrumptious goodies, lots of mystery authors, and a panel discussion about Why We Love Librarians featuring Charlaine Harris, SJ Rozan, Nancy Pickard, Carolyn Hart, and Eve Sandstrom. I donated a copy each of A Real Basket Case and To Hell in a Handbasket to the book giveaway and came away with a lovely teacup and saucer and a full tummy. Next, I listened to the announcements of who won the Derringer Awards from the Short Mystery Fiction Society, then snuck out of the room before the other awards were announced to join some fellow MidnightInk authors for dinner at Weber Grill: Keith Raffel, Cricket McRae, Jess Lourey, Lisa Bork, and Deborah Sharp. I ate just a salad and beer after the filling tea. After that I headed over to Gameworks for the Extravaganza. Over dessert and decaf coffee with whiskey, I watched the Author Talent Show. Parnell Hall and Peter Lovesey earned my votes for best laughs for their ditties, though fellow Coloradoan and Five Star author Mike Befeler was a close third for his stand-up comedy. Then my roommate Pat and I raced cars, doused fires and slaughtered zombies on the video games until collapsing into bed at midnight.

Friday morning dawned hard and early, and I slurped down lots of coffee at the Sisters in Crime breakfast where we voted in our new slate of officers, including Marcia Talley as President. Next I attended the Setting as Character panel with William Kent Kruger, Debby Atkinson, Tom Corcoran, Jonathan King, and Eric Stone. Then I popped into the First Novelists "speed dating" event to hear some new authors (including Lisa Bork) tout their first books. After having "been there-done that", it felt good to be on the other side of the table and find out about some interesting new talent. Then came lunch at Buca di Beppo with the Sisters in Crime online Guppies chapter, followed by the Michael Connelly interview at the Convention Center.

My energy was flagging by this point, so I took a brief rest in the room before boarding a bus for the Eiteljorg Museum and the Art of the Western Mystery panel with good friend Ann Parker and Scott Montgomery, C. J. Box (who signed two Joe Pickett mysteries for me while waiting for the bus), Craig Johnson, Blake Crouch, and Steve Hockensmith. Then I headed over to the Marion County Public Library for the Indiana Authors Reception where I chatted with Colorado author Lori Lacefield, who I discovered grew up in Indiana, and with Debby Atkinson and her sister over snacks. I ended the day at the bar with fellow Five Star authors and Tekno editor John Helfers, where we talked about the Five Star/Tekno relationship and future plans.

I got up early again on Saturday morning for a 7:30 am breakfast with some fellow Mystery Babes, including Dana Cameron and Toni L.P. Kelner. Then I sat with prolific short mystery fiction author and friend, R.T. Lawton, to listen to the State of Mysterious Short Fiction panel with Terence Faherty, Clark Howard, Melodie Johnson Howe, Janet Hutchings (editor of the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine), and Linda Landrigan (editor of the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine). At 10:30 am, I taught my Mystery-themed Gift Baskets session in the craft room to a class of about thirty. We had great fun constructing creative baskets out of assorted Halloween goodies the craft room committee had purchased for the workshop. I sure hope future Bouchercons include this new idea of a craft room. I heard a lot of compliments not only about my session, but about all of the craft sessions and the concept in general.

After a quick lunch with Pat, I attended the IMBA and the Dilys Winn Award panel with Robin Agnew, Greg Bruss, Sean Chercover, William Kent Kruger, and Louise Penny, which was unexpectedly hilarious. A sucker for humor, I followed this with The Humor Panel, featuring Alan Gordon, Donna Andrews, Chris Grabenstein, Harley Jane Kozak, and Allyson Roy. Then I attended the Anthony Awards Ceremony and was especially pleased that Chris Grabenstein won the Best Children's/Young Adult category. Dinner was munchies served at the reception following the awards, then I had a glass of wine at the bar with fellow Crimespace member Curtis Hawkins and some other Colorado authors. Okay, Crimespacers, Curtis and I were at the Hyatt bar between 6 & 7 pm. Where were the rest of you? At 7, I headed over for the amusing Chris-and-Donna show at the live charity auction at the Artsgarden, as the two tried to get folks to up their bids. The desserts there were just too yummy to resist. After that, I soaked in the hot tub to ease my old, tired muscles, took a hot shower and hit the sack.

Sunday morning, I joined the crowd at the Book Bazaar, jostling to reach the authors whose books I wanted. I ended up trading my tickets for books written by authors whose last name was between J and M so I only had to negotiate one row. I beat a hasty retreat to drop the books in my room, then I attended the Would I Lie panel with Dana Cameron, Charlaine Harris, Ed Lin, and Eric Stone competing to win honors as the best liar to questions posed by S.J. Rozan and the audience. A good time was had by all. After that, I closed out my consignment accounts with the booksellers, packed and checked out of the room with Pat, and we met Bonnie Ramthun & her hubby Bill, and Cricket McRae for lunch. I found out there that the Mystery Through the Ages silent auction item that Patricia Stoltey, Mike Befeler, Bonnie Ramthun and I had donated, for a character name in our next four books, went for $350. We were gratified to raise so much for the charity! After lunch we shared a taxi with them and Laura DiSilverio to the airport, where we all caught the same flight to Denver after taking turns nodding off.