Anthony nominations for Ashes and Bones and The Lords of Misrule!

This Thursday I got a call from my friend, writer Toni Kelner. I was all excited because I thought she was calling up to see if I could do lunch and I was just itching to get away from my desk. Yay, lunch!

She wasn’t calling about lunch. She asked if I’d heard about the Anthony nominations, and I was all excited because I figured her wonderful Agatha Award-winning short story “Sleeping with the Plush” had been nominated—and it had!

Way to go, Toni!

Then she asked me to guess who else had been nominated.

I guessed. I guessed wrong a bunch of times. I’m not real good at guessing.

Then it began to dawn on me. I said “Not ‘Lords?’”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

That went on for quite a while, my voice getting higher and higher—it can get way up there, apparently, despite it starts out pretty low—but you have to understand, I’ve never been nominated for a mystery award before and “ The Lords of Misrule” is my first short story and this is a BIG DEAL!

I was well into the supersonic range at that point, but before that news could sink in, she told me to guess who got nominated for Best Paperback Original.

“Ummm…”

Toni’s a patient person, and I’m not good at guessing, but she was still all excited so I took a shot.

“Not Ashes?”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“But you said ‘Lords of Misrule’—?”

“You got nominated for both!”

At point, my brain melted down. My voice started going to places that caused the cat to run around and yowl with concern—something must be up, if Ma’s making noises like that!—and I’m sure the neighbors had their phones out, fingers hovering, ready to dial “9-1-1.”

I don’t remember the rest of the call; I’m sure I was babbling, I hope I was polite enough to thank Toni and congratulate her again. When she sent me the complete list, I was simply amazed. I’m honored to be in the company of these amazing writers:

ANTHONY NOMINATIONS (winners to be announced at Bouchercon 2007)

BEST NOVEL

• ALL MORTAL FLESH, Julia Spencer-Fleming, St. Martins


• THE DEAD HOUR, Denise Mina, Little Brown & Co.


• KIDNAPPED, Jan Burke, Simon & Schuster


• NO GOOD DEEDS, Laura Lippman, Harper


• THE VIRGIN OF SMALL PLAINS, Nancy Pickard, Ballantine

BEST FIRST NOVEL

• A FIELD OF DARKNESS, Cornelia Read, Mysterious Press


• THE HARROWING, Alexandra Sokoloff, St. Martin’s


• HOLMES ON THE RANGE, Steve Hockensmith, St. Martins


• THE KING OF LIES, John Hart, St. Martin’s


• STILL LIFE, Louise Penny, St. Martin’s

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

• ASHES AND BONES, Dana Cameron, Avon


• BABY SHARK, Robert Fate, Capital Crime Press


• THE CLEANUP, Sean Doolittle, Dell


• A DANGEROUS MAN, Charlie Huston, Ballantine


• 47 RULES OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE BANK ROBBERS, Troy Cook, Capital Crime Press


• SHOTGUN OPERA, Victor Gischler, Dell


• SNAKESKIN SHAMISEN, Naomi Hirahara, Bantam Dell - Delta

BEST SHORT STORY

• “After the Fall,” Elaine Viets, Alfred Hitchcock Magazine


• “Cranked” Bill Crider, DAMN NEAR DEAD, Busted Flush Press


• “The Lords of Misrule” Dana Cameron, SUGARPLUMS AND SCANDAL, Avon


• “My Father’s Secret,” Simon Wood, Crime Spree Magazine, Bcon Spec Issue ’06


• “Policy” Megan Abbott, DAMN NEAR DEAD, Busted Flush Press


• “Sleeping with the Plush” Toni Kelner, Alfred Hitchcock Mag

BEST CRITICAL NONFICTION

• THE BEAUTIFUL CIGAR GIRL, Daniel Stashower, Dutton


• DON’T MURDER YOUR MYSTERY, Chris Roerden, Bella Rosa Books


• MYSTERY MUSES, Jim Huang/Austin Lugar, Editors, Crum Creek Press


• READ ‘EM THEIR WRITES, Gary Warren Niebuhr, Libraries Unlimited


• THE SCIENCE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, E.J. Wagoner, John Wiley & Sons

SPECIAL SERVICES AWARD

• Charles Ardal, Hard Case Crime


• George Easter, Deadly Pleasures


• Franchi & Sharon Wheeler, reviewingtheevidence.com


• Jim Huang, Crum Creek Press and The Mystery Company


• Jon & Ruth Jordan, CrimeSpree Magazine


• Ali Karim, Shots Magazine


• Lynn Kazmarik & Chris Aldrich, Mystery News


• Maddy Van Hertbruggen, 4 Mystery Addicts

To say that I am shocked and thrilled is an understatement; I’m still processing it all. But I can tell you a couple of things. If you are going to get good news, it’s even better coming from a good friend who also has reason to celebrate. If you ever get a nomination for an award, I hope you find yourself among people you truly respect.

I’m over the moon. Let me say: many thanks for voting my work Thank you for having supported my writing over the years.

On to Alaska!

It's finally happened

I know I’ve been heading in this direction for a long time now, but today, for the first time, I had to retire some of my old anthropology books.  The office I work in had been devoted strictly to archaeology, anthropology, and cultural history.  Then, about five years ago, another bookcase crept into the closet, this one loaded with books on writing and reference books on forensics, police procedure, and pirates (I will write that pirate book one day).  It also has some office supplies, my academic robes, and some old field equipment (tape measures, string, a trowel or two), but since the writing books are stacked two deep, even if I clean all that out, I won’t gain a lot of space.  For some reason, the cat chooses to sleep amid this precariousness; I’ve tried her basket in other, equally protected, more salubrious places in the room, attempting to figure the cat-calculus of being near the center of things and yet being hidden, neither too warm nor too cold.  It didn’t work; she likes it here, possibly because the curtains I put up when I removed the closet door makes her feel like a princess.  I even bought another narrow bookcase to go outside the closet, but it’s already filled to the brim with reference books for Exit Interview. 

Anyhoo.  I ran down the list of shelves that I might free up and realized I still use a lot of these in my work.  But I realized I never wanted to see the theory books again.  I get what it’s for, but theory always seemed to me to get in the way of what I went into archaeology for in the first place: the people.  I always tried to be aware of my biases and how I framed research, but once that was overtly stated, I just wanted to spend time with the people I was studying, long dead, but still oh, so human.  

I won’t throw the books out, not yet.  They’re more than likely dated anyway, but it’s still hard to let them go entirely, as unloved as they may have been.  I’ll put them in the basement in airtight containers so they won’t mildew, and if I don’t find myself wondering where they are in a year, maybe I’ll give them to a library.  Who will use them to prop open doors, more than likely (I don’t expect to be greated with “Oh, thank you!  We’ve been dying to score some 25–year old social science theory!”).   For now, Marvin Harris has been replaced with Ben Bradlee and Bruce Trigger with Bob Woodward and Hunter S. Thompson in the new journalism/Washington Post section. 

All this is good for reassessing oneself, for organization, and for rediscovering things.  If the books remained piled on the floor (and there is never not a book pile somewhere on the floor), how will I know whether I already have Jane’s Guns Recognition Guide?  And reshuffling things led me to find a notebook that I was afraid was MIA as well as a URL for a good online underwear store (interestingly, this was tucked in a copy of Dick Crouch’s Down Range).  Now I can get a good idea for what I need next time I have a rave-up at the bookstore at the International Spy Museum.

I don’t know what will go next.  It’s nice to know I can set some things aside in favor of new adventures.  And then there’s that good puritan feeling of cleaning.  So watch this space:  next, I’ll be tackling that closet and the fiction library/guest bedroom, and just maybe, sometime soon, there’ll be room for an actual guest.

Palate cleansers

June was a busy month for travel, some of it unexpected.  The latest was two trips to NH.  The first was to donate the last lot of Edgar books from last year to a library in Maine (the other batch went to our library here in Beverly), and apart from the pleasure of meeting up with my friend A (who is ferrying the books the rest of the way to Maine), I got to visit some archaeological friends out in the field.  It was a charming site, beautifully situated on a river, and it made me a bit nostalgic for fieldwork.  However, I was very happy to be in my air-conditioned office last week (it was 96–100 degrees F here, and a real steam bath).  The next trip was also to New Hampshire, with Mr. G’s family.  Since the trip was historical in nature and involved crawling around in rickety church towers and wandering through cemeteries, it was right up my alley.  Since the weather was fantastic, and the cops were involved only once, it was counted a success.

These trips were great, because they also distracted me from my WIP—works in progress.  I’ve mentioned having “Plan B” before, that thing to occupy you while you’re waiting.  Waiting to hear from an editor, an agent, a reader with notes on your latest opus can drive you crazy if you’re not carefully distracted.  For me, it’s not just a good idea, it’s my process.  A draft is always better once it has, well, composted for a while.  I get a little distance—and therefore, a lot of perspective—and I find I can do a really good job on the rewrite.  Plus, if you’re working on Plan B, you’re making good use of your writing and work time and we Puritan types approve of that. 

Okay, so if you read this regularly you know that I’m working on an espionage novel and waiting for notes back on that.  So, I started work on a short story.  With werewolves.  I was tickled to be asked because werewolves don’t figure in my work so far.  Not even a whiff of a wolf-pelt.  But I loved the idea that folks thought I could do it and I love trying new things and so I went and banged a draft out.  It was fun, and I can see all sorts of other things to do with the characters and that world.  Since it’s only a first draft, it also needs work, but I got some ace criticism from Toni.  Emailing back and forth with her taught me that it really is good to say out loud or print what you’re trying to do.  Being specific about what you’re trying to do lets you figure out whether you’re actually achieving it. 

So now I want to let that sit a while before I go back to it.  All the parts I need are there, just not in the right places, and like a washing machine full of wet towels, it’s a little unbalanced.  Ke-thunk, ke-thunk, ke-thunk.  With any luck, when I go back to it, I’ll be able to redistribute the key elements and it will be a lot smoother, and I’ll end up with a fluffy batch of warm towels.  Fluffy, warm werewolves.  You know what I mean. 

In the meantime, I’m occupying myself with another Madam Chandler short story.  So that means going back to Stone Harbor and deciding whether I’m going to finally do the project I wanted with pirates, or whether that’s a whole novel.  With any luck, by the time I finish that, I’ll be ready to go back to my werewolves and spies.