Author Archives: Samantha

Writing a Mystery Without Murder In My Heart

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It’s November! Finally it is National Novel Writing Month—NaNoWriMo. This year, I am trying to write a mystery–adult, not middle grade or young adult. I need 50,000 words by the end of this month, and a beginning, middle, and end.
Tea cup on scalloped white napkin with necklace and Christmas card.
Tea, jewels, and Christmas–all part of the story.
I’ve tried to write mysteries before without success. Somehow my mind doesn’t work in the right way for plotting a clever murder (and how the murderer will nonetheless fail to get away with it.) I have the same problem with heists and other criminal plots. I love to read books with ingeniously carried out crimes, but I draw a blank when I try to think one up myself. I think other authors must look around them, wherever they are, and notice potential murder methods. As in “Hey, look at the spike on that beach umbrella. I wonder if you could kill someone with it, then put the umbrella up so no one would notice the blood on the spiky bit.” And other such thoughts.
Okay, so apparently I can come up with a murder method, at least a weak one. But it doesn’t happen easily or spontaneously.
There’s another, more serious, problem. I don’t really want to write about a murder.
I have no difficulty enjoying mysteries in which one (or two or three) people are murdered. You’d think it might bother me, but it doesn’t. Granted, I avoid the really dark, disturbing varieties of murder mystery, but I don’t read only the humorous or cozy variety, either. One of my favorite series is the one with Inspector Gamache, by Louise Penny, which is serious but not overly dark.
So why doesn’t murder bother me when I read a mystery? I suppose it’s sufficiently unreal, and so entirely expected, that I don’t take it to heart. And yet, when I set out to write a story in which one of my characters kills another one, it feelsdifferent. To make sense of the murder, I have to have a character who is so dark or so desperate that he is willing to kill. And I have to have other characters who can be suspected of being that dark or desperate. Suddenly it all feels much too serious—a world I don’t want to live in long enough to write about.
It could be partly that I have been very lucky in my family, neighbors, and co-workers throughout my life. I haven’t had a lot of experience with the kind of people that make you really want to kill them, or the kind of people that leave you scared for your own safety. Mostly I meet those people in fiction—and then I do see red and want violent things to happen to them. Maybe if I had to live with such people, I would be more interested in putting those people in a story and either killing them off in a painful manner, or meting out justice to them after having them kill someone. Or maybe it’s got nothing to do with that. I really don’t know.
So I’m not writing a murder mystery. At least, I don’t think so. The plan is for a robbery to take place, but lots of things could change over the course of the month. Somehow I’ve already gotten 10,000 words in (which is a speed record for me, I think) but I haven’t gotten much farther than introducing my cast of characters. That theft better happen soon or I won’t have a story.
Cat sniffs the teacup on the white napkin near the necklace and Christmas card.
The cat investigates. Not in my novel, however.
Till next post.

"They Spoke French"–how stories get lost between generations

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The stories you think you’ve passed on to your children are not necessarily stories they know.
Earlier this year, I was talking with my daughter about who-knows-what, something to do with languages, and I said that since my grandmere and grandpere always spoke to each other in French, and usually spoke in French to my father as well, I had grown up thinking it perfectly ordinary that grown-ups sometimes spoke to each other in a language the kids didn’t understand.
“What!” She nearly fell off the sofa. “They spoke French? I didn’t know that!” She had assumed that they spoke Italian, which would be a reasonable thing to assume if I hadn’t told her otherwise. My grandparents had come over from Italy, after all. Just… a French-speaking part of Italy. At least for Grandmere.
“I’m sure I told you!” And I probably had. Once. When she was very young. And apparently never again.
So she hadn’t known, and hadn’t had the slightest idea that her own Granny and Grampy could also speak French (though they didn’t normally speak it to each other, and probably hadn’t spoken it for years.)  Had she known, she said, she might—might—have considered taking French in school instead of Latin.
Suddenly things were clearer. I had wondered a little about her choosing Latin. I had offered good reasons why French or Spanish might be more fun (including that fact that I knew some of both and we would be able to talk together), and in the back of my mind I had wondered that the family connection didn’t seem to enter into her decision. But I’d never actually said, “Why don’t you take French? Your great-grandparents spoke French and your grandparents would probably be delighted.” No, I just assumed she’d considered that fact and decided that Latin would be more fun, especially since she already knew the Latin teacher and liked her.
And she did get a series of very fun Latin teachers. Later she went on the Latin Club trip to Italy, so the family connection did come in, sort of.
But how had I failed to pass on such an important bit of information? What else had I failed to tell her?
“You know Grandpere was a baker?” Yes, she did know that. Good.
“And Grandmere worked as a maid?” Yes, and now that my daughter knew Grandmere had spoken French, the story that Grandmere had passed herself off as a French maid, not Italian, made more sense. (Apparently French maids were desirable back then—Italian maids, not so much. Prejudice has a long history, though the groups involved change.)
But she had a question for me. “What did my other great-grandpa do?”
Uh.
Photography, though I don’t know whether he made any money at it. Some acting, apparently. And my mom always says that there was a brief spell when he sold used cars. And…uh…
I need to go back to my mom and ask more questions, I think. I wonder what stories she told me that I have now forgotten?
At any rate, this discovery led to a discussion of the family tree, a search for the two books I have relevant to that side of the family (though one is mostly a photo book), and the conclusion that we really ought to get a genealogy program and sort this all out. And, as my daughter said, we should write down all the stories I can remember, and all that Granny can tell us, so that my daughter can pass them on to her own children some day.
Maybe they’ll decide to take French in school.
The Aunts by Isabella Halstead, The Fabulous Hooper Sisters, and assorted genealogy papers
Till next post.

Learning American Sign Language–it's interesting, challenging, and (as with most languages) probably easier if you aren't shy

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Last spring, my daughter and I (and one of her friends from school) started taking a class in American Sign Language. Since this blog is about the interesting (sometimes shiny) things that grab my attention, I thought I’d mention some of the features that make this an exciting language, and also say something about my experience trying to learn what is, to me, a very unfamiliar language.
First, some of the things I find interesting about ASL. One of the most obvious is the use of space and direction of sign. For example, if the signer wants to say that she gave something to her mother, she can indicate that she is going to use the area to her left as the space for “my mother”, and then direct the movement of the “to give” sign to show that the signer is giving something to her mother. By placing “my father” to her right, she can describe an encounter between her mother and her father, neither of whom is there, without repeatedly signing “my mother” and “my father”. (If her parents were there, she could simply point to them.)

As well as using space in interesting ways, facial expression is very important. (Our teacher keeps reminding us of this—apparently we have relatively inexpressive faces most of the time.) Expression seems to play much the role that tone of voice plays for English speakers, plus more. I say “plus more”, because I think there might be some signs aren’t really complete without the appropriate expression. I’m not sure though—I think the teacher said that if you sign “sad” without a sad face, it comes across as either sarcastic (which would equate to deliberately inappropriate tone of voice) or confusing (which suggests that you didn’t really communicate what you meant).
Then there’s the fact that there is no “is.” The verb “to be” is basically non-existent. And here I thought “to be” was such a basic, crucial verb! Apparently Russian doesn’t have it, either. Our ASL teacher, who is a CODA (Child Of Deaf Adults), knows quite a few languages.
One final thing that is really neat—ABC stories. Many signs incorporate the same hand shapes used for fingerspelling. For example, “family” uses an “f” shape on both hands, and the hands make a circle. (Isn’t that a nice sign?) In ABC stories, the signer tells a story using signs that incorporate the hand shapes from A to Z, in order. We saw a Halloween ABC story on a video in which the thumb of the “A” was Dr. Frankenstein’s surgical slicing open of his creature’s skull (to put in the brain) and the final “Z” was the terrified doctor’s mad zig-zag as he fled the scene of his creation.
I said earlier that ASL is, for me, a very unfamiliar language. The only languages I know are spoken, and I’m not used to watching movements for that level of meaning. (I’m used to gestures for simple stuff, like “Over there” or “Come here” or maybe a sarcastic playing of tiny violins.) Sometimes it feels like my brain is burning from the attempt to focus and recognize the words as they are signed—and our teacher is signing at what is surely a v-e-r-y s-l-o-w pace.
As I get more familiar with the signs, I expect I will be able to recognize them faster and the sensation of my brain burning will fade. Also, maybe I’ll be able to catch more than the first and last letter of finger-spelled words (and the “h”s—for some reason, they grab my attention.)
I neglected to mention earlier that the grammar of ASL is completely different from English. That’s another challenge—figuring out the order in which I should sign so as to get across my intended meaning. John gave Jane an apple. Is it BEFORE-APPLE-JOHN-GIVE-JANE (with appropriate direction of ‘give’)?  Still not sure.
Our teacher keeps nudging us to go to DeafChat meetings and practice our conversational skills with ASL speakers, but she seems to have gotten an entire classroom full of introverts and shy people. (We have a class of about five, now.) She tells us entertaining stories about traveling to other countries and practicing her conversational skills, laughing at her mistakes and urging us to do likewise. She’s right, of course, but I have a hard enough time talking to strangers in English, never mind when I can barely get beyond my name, the weather, and my favorite food (chocolate). It’s been a problem with every language I’ve learned (some French, some Spanish). Eventually, I hope, my vocabulary and nerve will both be sufficient to give it a try.
Anyway, American Sign Language is pretty neat and I commend it to your attention. Try it–whether because you think it is cool, or because you want to learn about Deaf culture or work with Deaf people, or because you want to be able to talk to your friends during noisy concerts. Just don’t use it to give answers across the room during exams—no matter what my ASL teacher says.
She’s just being mischievous.

A hand finger-spelling the letter H.
For some reason, “H” stands out.

 Till next post.