Helen Duncan

Helen Macfarlane was born into a poor family in Perthshire, Scotland, in 1897. She fled the village and settled in Dundee after becoming pregnant out-of-wedlock in 1918. Soon she married a soldier, Henry Duncan, and had five more children.In a Europe still reeling from the ravages of World War I, séances came into fashion as thousands reached out to lost loved ones and sought solace in alternative belief systems. Helen MacFarlane Duncan, by all counts a gifted woman, became a well-known spiritualist. By the 1930s Helen took her traveling séance on the road, calling up spirits for incredulous (or perhaps too credulous) audiences.

In 1931, psychic researcher Harry Price invited Helen and her husband Henry Duncan to come to London in order to have her skills “scientifically” tested.According to David Edwards in an article on “Britain’s Last Witch Trial” in the UK edition of the Mirror, 6/12/2006, Harry Price wrote: "She was placed in the curtained recess. In a few seconds, the medium was in a trance. The curtains parted and we beheld her covered from head to foot with cheese-cloth!

"Some of it was trailing on the floor, one end was poked up her nostril, a piece was issuing from her mouth. I must say that I was deeply impressed - with the brazen effrontery that prompted the Duncans to come to my lab, with the amazing credulity of the spiritualists who had sat with the Duncans and with the fact that they had advertised her 'phenomena' as genuine."In a bid to reveal the contents of Helen's stomach, Price asked if she would undergo an X-ray. "She refused. Her husband advised her to submit. But that seemed to infuriate her and she became hysterical. She jumped up and dealt him a blow on the face.

"Suddenly, she jumped up, unfastened the door and dashed into the street - where she had another attack of alleged hysterics and commenced tearing her séance garment to pieces.

"Her husband dashed after her and she was found clutching the railings, screaming."

Despite Harry Price’s alarming account of the séance, Helen Duncan continued with her successful practice into the forties.

On November 25, 1941, HMS Barham, a 29,000-ton battleship in the Mediterranean was hit by three German torpedoes. The ship went down and 861 lives were lost. Already reeling from the Blitz, the British government decided to keep the news under wraps – believe it or not, they went so far as to forge Christmas cards from the dead to their families.

But just days after the attack, Helen Duncan held a séance during which she saw a sailor with the words HMS Barham on his hatband. According to Helen the apparition said: "My ship is sunk."

Two years later, in January 1944, amid fears that Helen would somehow reveal plans for the upcoming D-Day landings, Britain’s Admiralty arrested the psychic and charged her with witchcraft, alleging that she intended "to exercise or use human conjuration that through the agency of Helen Duncan spirits of deceased dead persons should appear to be present".

The trial lasted seven days. Mediums and believers of all sorts rallied to her defense and set up a defense fund which allowed her barrister to call 44 witnesses to testify she wasn't a fraud.
Ironically, it was precisely their fear that she was NOT a fraud that led to her conviction and sentencing.

Years later, in 1956, Helen Duncan gave a seance in Nottingham. Though the Witchcraft Act had been repealed five years earlier and spiritualism had been recognized as a bonafide religion, Helen was once again arrested and subjected to a strip search.

She never got over the shock and remained hospitalized for the next five weeks, until passing over to the next dimension on December 6.

Was Helen Duncan a gifted seer able to communicate with other realms, or a skilled charlatan who exploited grieving families? Whatever she was, she scared the British government enough to become the “unfortunate victim of Britain's last witch-hunt”.

You can find more information here and support the call for Helen's pardon.

Britian’s Last Witchhunt

When would you guess the last witch trial in Britain? As the witch-hunting hysteria in Europe was finally waning? 1780? 1820?

Guess again.

In 1944, professional medium Helen Duncan, affectionately known as “Hellish Nell”, was arrested during a séance in Portsmouth, Hants, and charged under section four of Britain’s 1735 Witchcraft Act.

Examination of a Witch, by T.H. Matteson 1853. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum

The jury deliberated only half an hour before declaring her guilty. Happily, though the court used a law written in 1735 to convict Duncan, at least the punishment for witchcraft had been reformed. Her sentence was nine months in London’s Holloway prison…a step up from the traditional Scottish burning or hanging of witches.

But how in the world did Helen Duncan end up on trial for witchcraft as recently as 1944?

More tomorrow...

Checking in...

I am busy at work -- finishing the book 4 manuscript, drafting a second Juliet Blackwell manuscript, planning book signing events and in general preparing for the July 7th release date of Secondhand Spirits. That is the first in Juliet Blackwell's A Witchcraft Mystery series!

I will get some new posts up here VERY SOON.

In the meantime, my new blog, under the name Juliet Blackwell, is up and running.

I have also started fan pages for both Hailey Lind and Juliet Blackwell on Facebook!

Please check them all out -- become fans/friends and follow the blogs.

First Review for Second Hand Spirits

Posted by Harriet Klausner at May 7, 2009 at 10:08 AM at Genre Go Round:

Lily Ivory is a bona fide witch; a powerful mage who can feel the vibrations emitted from old clothing, can smell and sense auras, and can cast spells through brewing. She has been on the run for most of her life; hiding her “witchiness” skills by never allowing anyone to get to close to her so that one would think she is a freak. However, now thirty-one Lily feels a need to settle down so she moves to San Francisco assuming she can fit in best in the City on the Bay. There she opens up a vintage women’s clothing shop Aunt Cora’s Closet.
Her friend Maya takes Lily to the home of Frances Potts who has a ton of beautiful vintage clothing. Lily senses evil directed at Frances by the demon La Llorona. Late that same night Lily returns to Frances’ home to cast a protection spell against La Llorana. The next day the woman is dead and a child is missing presumably by La Llorona who feeds on the souls of children. The magical community rallies around Lily who uses her skills to hopefully bring the child back and send the demon back to the Texas/Mexico border where she came from.

Readers who anxiously await the next works of Victoria Laurie or Madelyn Alt will appreciate SECOND HAND SPIRITS, an enchanting mystery that enables the audience to believe in the supernatural. A mysterious male witch Aiden welcomes her to the neighborhood by giving her a familiar, a goblin disguised as a pot bellied pig. Lily is a great character; a strong woman who believes in doing what she feels is ethically right though it might cost her. Juliet Blackwell provides a terrific urban fantasy with the opening of the Witchcraft Mystery series.

Secondhand Spirits
Juliet Blackwell
Obsidian, Jul 2009, $6.99
ISBN: 045122745X

What the Heck is a Witch, Anyway?

I love research. It gives me an excuse to spend big chunks of my day reading, following leads, and talking to people about… say… the intricacies of binding spells or the difficulties of practicing witchcraft in the modern world.

But anyone who’s ever done research for a book knows that only a tiny fraction of the fascinating stuff you dig up ever makes it onto the printed page. This blog is my forum to share some of the interesting history of witchcraft; an occasional spell or book review; some specialized terminology; and occasional excerpts or deleted scenes from my Witchcraft Mystery Series, the first installment of which, Secondhand Spirits, will be released July 7, 2009, from Obsidian (a Penguin imprint).

I invite you to correct me when I’m wrong, elucidate further on subjects of interest, ask questions about my posts or my books, and fill us all in on anything witch-related that you might know about.
Soooo, What the Heck is a Witch, Anyway? According to the third edition of the American Heritage Dictionary:

Witch [wich] n.

1. A woman claiming or popularly believed to possess supernatural powers and practice sorcery, and often believed to be aided by spirits or a familiar.
2. A believer or follower of Wicca; a Wiccan.
3. A hag.
4. A woman considered to be spiteful or overbearing.
5. Informal A woman or girl considered bewitching.
6. One particularly skilled or competent at one's craft: "A witch of a writer, [she] is capable of developing an intensity that verges on ferocity" Peter S. Prescott.

Dontcha just love the juxtaposition of #5 with numbers 3 and 4: A charming woman might also be a spiteful hag….

But as Walt Whitman would say: Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.

Women in general and witches in particular are no stranger to the concept of duality.

Throughout history and across the globe, witches have been treated with reverence and adoration for their skills in physical and mental health and healing, as well as their talents for “seeing” into the future or other realms. But those very same witches have also inspired fear and loathing, often rooted in fear of their rare abilities. In a later post I will discuss the direct link between the suppression of witches as lay healers in Europe and the creation of the male-dominated medical profession. For now, suffice it to say that powerful women are scary to many male-centered social structures, especially during times of social and economic stress and upheaval.

Most recently, followers of the Wicca religion have taken on the moniker of “witch” in an attempt to reclaim the label so often association with the negative. As is the case with most religions, the practice of Wicca has many different interpretations and I wouldn’t presume to try to define the various belief systems here. But in general, Wiccans may or may not lay claim to particular supernatural powers, but they do tend to practice a pre-Christian, female-centered tradition that worships nature and the seasons, pagan goddesses, and the beauty of humanity. Their coven meetings might include rites such as drawing pentacles, casting a cone of power, and invoking the Lady and Lord – but they are in no way Satanists, and typically do not even believe in the concept of Hell or the Devil. Their beliefs are pre-Christian rather than anti-Christian,

From Secondhand Spirits:

In the old days –the burning times—there was a distinction made between sorcerers and witches. It was said that a sorcerer learned magick through training, while a witch was born with innate talents and connections to the spirit world. The latter was true in my case, to an extreme degree. I hadn’t chosen this path; it had chosen me. One of the many curses my status bestowed was a near-perfect memory, and I could recall every alienating episode, every isolating incident, of my thirty-one years.

FBI top ten art crimes

•	Iraqi Looted and Stolen Artifacts
•	Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Theft
•	Theft of Caravaggio's Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco
•	Theft of the Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius
•	The Van Gogh Museum Robbery
•	Theft of Cezanne's View of Auvers-sur-Oise
•	Theft of the Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney Murals, Panels 3-A and 3-B
•	Theft from the Museu Chacara do Céu
•	Theft of Van Mieris's A Cavalier
•	Theft from E.G. Bührle Collection, Zurich

FBI Art Squad -- It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it!

Check this out -- from the website of the FBI art squad (and you thought I made them up!):

Art and cultural property crime - which includes theft, fraud, looting, and trafficking across state and international lines -- is a looming criminal enterprise with estimated losses running as high as $6 billion annually.

To recover these precious pieces--and to bring these criminals to justice--the FBI uses a dedicated Art Crime Team of 13 Special Agents to investigate, supported by three Special Trial Attorneys for prosecutions...and it mans the National Stolen Art File, a computerized index of reported stolen art and cultural properties for the use of law enforcement agencies across the world.

Please note: U.S. persons and organizations requiring access to the National Stolen Art File should contact their closest FBI Field Office; international organizations should contact their closest FBI Legal Attaché Office.uad

Arsenic and Old Paint -- the Fourth in the Series!

I'm so excited to announce that the fourth book in the Art Lover's Mystery series, Arsenic and Old Paint, will be published in 2010 by Perseverance Press. I know 2010 seems like a long time from now, but after all, we have to finish writing the book, and then our wonderful new publisher has to do all their publishing magic!

Arsenic and Old Paint finds Annie Kincaid on the trail of a forged, and stolen, piece of erotica that turns up at auction, and may have been used in an insurance scam. She winds up working in an exclusive men's club on Nob Hill, investigating tunnels under Chinatown, and tracking down a stolen 600-pound statue of Hermes with the dubious assistance of her new business partner, Michael-the-ex-art-thief, and her landlord Frank DeBenton-- who may hiding something from his own past.

Another New Series!

I have TWO new series coming out over the next two years: Secondhand Spirits (the first in the Witchcraft Mystery series) and If Walls Could Talk (the first of the Sophie Tanner House-Flipping Mysteries). Both will be released under Penguin’s Obsidian label, and under the new pseudonym, Juliet Blackwell.

Secondhand Spirits will be released next summer (July, 2009). This is the first in a new paranormal mystery about a misfit witch, Lily Ivory, who runs a vintage clothing store in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco:

It wasn’t easy growing up as a (super)natural witch in a small Texas town. The other children, the teachers, even my own mother was afraid of me. If it hadn’t been for my grandmother Graciela, herself a talented midwife and witch who taught me to harness my considerable powers, I wouldn’t have known a moment of tenderness. One of the many curses my status bestowed is a near-perfect memory, and I could recall every alienating episode, every isolating incident, of my thirty-one years.

I hoped to put an end to feeling like a perpetual outsider by settling down and opening my vintage clothing shop on Haight Street. After years spent traveling the world, I landed in San Francisco a month ago and discovered so many beloved local lunatics and cherished iconoclasts in this open-minded metropolis that I fit in quite nicely. Or at least I hoped to. Picking a fight with a child-stealing demon might make that more difficult.

My other new series features an anthropologist-turned-general contractor, Sophie Tanner, who “flips” historic houses in the San Francisco Bay Area. If Walls Could Talk, the first in the new series, will be released in 2010, and a second book in the series will come out in 2011. Sophie is a slightest older, wiser, and more jaded heroine:

Shortly after my thirty-fifth birthday I had come to the conclusion that, in general, people seemed kinder, more intelligent, and more interesting when you couldn’t actually comprehend what they were saying.

Here was my plan: I would move to Paris and crawl into an obscure, anonymous pied a terre to indulge myself in licking the still-tender wounds from my divorce. From time to time I would emerge to eat my fill of glace de cerises, stroll along the Champs de L’Eysees, loiter in the galleries of the Louvre, and maybe even take some handsome, monolingual French man as a lover. But otherwise I would return to my Left Bank refuge to continue my exquisitely solitary pity-party. With the money I received from my divorce, this kind of behavior could go on for years.

Here was the problem: my recently widowed father tricked me into staying “for a few months” to help him out with his construction business. That was four years ago. I was still trying to get to Paris, but I kept getting talked into “flipping” just one more historic home.

I love old houses with the kind of passion some women reserve for bad men: you know the effort’s probably not worth it, and yet there’s an irresistible belief that with enough sweat, tears, and devotion you’ll be able to fix them. Thing is, with buildings, you’ve got a shot. As far as men went…well, that’s another story altogether.

Since both new series will be published under the Juliet Blackwell moniker, I’ll be setting up a new website and blog. Please do check in, though, to see what’s new with Annie Kincaid and the gang, and to follow links from one site to the other.

Again, I love to get mail and I respond to every letter I receive. Write me at hailey@haileylind.com with questions, comments, or to be put on my mailing list (I’ll never add you to that list unless you give me permission!)

What's in a name?

Juliet Blackwell is the pen-name I'm using for my new Witchcraft series (Secondhand Spirits, the first book in the series, will be released July 2009).

So, what's in a name, and why do I keep changing mine?

I wrote the Art Lover's Mystery series together with my sister, Carolyn. We wanted the books to read with a single voice, and thus decided to put a single name on the cover. Hailey Lind is a pseudonym my sister and I came up with over a three-hour phone conversation (she lives in Virginia, I'm in California). I swear, it was more difficult to decide on a name than it was to write the *$%#@) book in the first place! Lind is my middle name, and an old family name on our father's side (ever hear of Jenny Lind?). Hailey comes from my mother's side of the family.



But I'm writing the new series solo, and wanted to come up with a new moniker. It's taken me a while to get used to answering to Hailey (which I now do, so feel free to call me by any name when you see me!) and I thought it would be too much for my wee brain to introduce yet another first name. Juliet seemed slightly more formal than Julie, my real name...and I figured I'd be able to remember it even after a couple of drinks in the bar at the convention hotel.

The last name was harder. I ran through lots of options, but as I was researching the history of witchcraft, I came upon the story of Elizabeth Blackwell. Elizabeth was the first real-life, official, female doctor, graduating with an M.D. in 1849.
"Her application to Geneva Medical School (now Hobart & William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York) was referred to the student body. They accepted with great hilarity in the belief that it was a spoof perpetrated by a rival school." --National Women's Hall of Fame

The joke was on them, as their first woman student quickly outstripped all the young men in her class. Blackwell was by all accounts a remarkable woman, who went on to found her own infirmary (at one point working with Florence Nightingale) and then to establish a Medical College for Women.

And what, may you ask, made me think of female doctors while researching witchcraft? Historically, many women accused of witchcraft have been traditional healers with a vast inherited knowledge regarding herbs and botanicals, bone-setting, and what we now think of as psychological problems. It was precisely this kind of knowledge and ability that made them frightening to certain sectors of society...and during times of social change and upheaval, many of these women healers have been vilified, accused of being in league with the Devil, cast out of their homes, tortured, and killed.

As fun as it is to write about a witch, the history of the theme becomes very sobering, very fast.

Anyway, I chose the pseudonym of Blackwell as an homage to Elizabeth...plus, it's just a great name. And so Juliet Blackwell was born!

Guest Blogger: Margaret Grace, author of the Dollhouse Miniature Series

(A word from Hailey: This is my first guest blogger! A wonderful author, gifted scientist, and good friend, Margaret Grace is the author of the Miniature Murder series from Berkley Prime Crime, including Murder in Miniature and the new Mayhem in Miniature, coming out August 5. Check out these ideas from a master miniaturist!)

Double Strangeness


Here's what a good friend sent me as a birthday present—a pile of junk. She knows me so well!

Crafters are strange people.

I've trained many of my friends and relatives to save their bottle tops, pill containers, small pieces of, well, anything.

In the lower left hand corner of the first photo is a piece of bubbly plastic that covered a layer in a box of chocolates. It will be transformed into a mat for the floor of a dollhouse shower.

The wooden container next to it is an old stamp holder; the plastic cup in back of the dime is the cap of a liquid cold medicine bottle; the white plastic "table" is a pizza order staple, keeping the cover off the cheese. You'll see how I used them in the second photo, for different scales of room boxes or dollhouses.

The small cylinder is one of those ubiquitous moisture absorbers that come with nearly every mail order package. I'll print out food labels from the 'net, shrink to size, and wrap dozens of these cylinders for use in a miniature kitchen or grocery store. The green sheet is actually sandpaper (it comes in all colors these days!) that will be used as a lawn in an outdoor scene.

In the second photo you can see the stamp holder being used as a small coffee table; the plastic cup is a wastebasket; and the pizza keeper is a bistro table, made by removing the plastic legs and gluing on a twisted wire base. I've also added a contact paper top to it. The chair is more wire, twisted to shape; its seat is a bottle cap.

Crafts are like that. They start from "junk," like pieces of yarn or tangled necklaces, and get worked into a coherent piece of art. Hopefully.

For me, writing is like that, too. A mystery novel starts with odd pieces that eventually get shaped into a story. It can be an unusual name that strikes my fancy, an interesting interaction in a coffee shop, a view from a hotel window, or a job that no one thinks much about, like bagging in a supermarket.

Oh, the arm? It's from a broken doll. Or did I pull it off myself while building a miniature crime scene?

Mystery writers can be strange, too.

For more miniature scenes by Margaret Grace, visit http://wwwdollhousemysteries.com

Out with the old, in with the new: A New Series!

Should I change the name of my blog???

I've got a new contract for a new series!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, books 4, 5, and 6 of the Annie Kincaid Art Lover's Mystery Series will not be coming out anytime soon. (This despite the fact that Feint of Art was nominated for an Agatha for Best First Novel, and is being translated into Japanese even as we speak... what can I say? Publishing is a cutthroat business these days.)

Believe me, I'm sad about it...Book 4, Arsenic and Old Paint involves a mystery at an exclusive men's club, tunnels under Chinatown, and a secret collection of paintings...not to mention lots of progress on the Annie/Michael/Frank romantic triangle. It's way too much fun not to publish!

In any case, the Art Lover's Mystery series is on haitus for the near future. We may find another publisher, or Signet may relent and continue the series at a later date. For now, the books are still available and in print, so if you're a fan please remember they make great presents for Mother's Day...and Father's Day and Groundhog Day and Christmas!

About the new series: Secondhand Spirits features a woman, Lily Ivory, who owns a vintage clothing store, Aunt Cora's Closet, in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco...and who just happens to be a witch. And no ordinary witch, at that. For one thing, her familiar is a shape-shifting gargoyle marquerading as a miniature Vietnamese Pot-Bellied pig. For another, Lily attracts demons and spirits like flies to honey, even though all she wants is to finally settle down, run her vintage clothing store, and develop normal human friendships...and maybe even find a man. Too bad the most interesting guys around are an arrogant male witch on the one hand, and a dedicated "mythbuster" on the other.

The new series is a bit of a departure from the world of art forgery. But I've had so much fun writing it, I hope even those of you who don't normally venture into the paranormal might give it a try! Beyond the fun San Francisco setting, the beguiling mystery, and the engaging characters, I get to delve into the history of witchcraft, the study of botanicals and herbs, the history of healing...and plenty of fascinating tales of contemporary folks who call themselves as witches. It's a truly captivating world of its own.

Secondhand Spirits will be coming out July 2009, under the pseudonym Juliet Blackwell. I'll be writing more about the pseudonym, and what's in a name, very soon. So please do check back!

My latest portrait

Keeping up with my blog isn't the only thing that takes a while...gee, I'm sensing a pattern here. Could it just be that I'm habitually late? I arrive on time to dinner...


In any case, last summer/fall we ran a portrait contest in conjunction with the release of Brush with Death, the third in the Annie Kincaid Art Lover's Mystery Series. Linda Adams, of Virginia, won and decided she wanted a painting of her grandmother in the style of Monet. In the above picture, peeking out to her left you can see the black and white copy of an old photo portrait of her grandmother, Della (known as Dick). Doesn't she seem like someone you'd like to know?

Don't Blink....

Most of the time I'm a true Oakland type, listening to a funky blend of classic 60s rock, reggae, newer pop folks like Macy Gray and Ozomatli, and even venture into a little hip-hop with M n' M, Kanye West and the Black-Eyed Peas.

But there's one time of the year that only country music will do: when I make my annual trek to the Siskiyou mountains in Northern California, up near the Oregon border. That's when I switch on the local country station and catch up on what's up in country music. One thing I love about country songs is that they tell stories; another thing is that the stations play them so repetitively that I am able to learn the entire current repertoire by the end of the first weekend, enabling me to croon along with them for the rest of the trip.

There's one song I kept hearing that seems particularly appropriate to this time in my life: Don't Blink. The song is about the advice of a 100-year-old man, who tells all that you blink and your childhood's over, then your children's childhood, then your own life...because "100 years goes faster than you think. Don't blink."

Lately I'm trying to keep my eyes wide open, because time does, indeed, seem to be slipping by with alarming speed.

Those of you out there who happen to stumble upon this blog (or wait breathlessly for the next instalment, never sure what will be said or when it will be said...) have probably noticed that --once again! -- I have let a good deal of time lapse between posts.

Why, one might wonder, does a writer have such a danged problem with...ahem...sitting down and writing?

When I was a kid I would start a new journal every New Year, positive that this year was the year when I would begin my deep emotional journey--a journey which I would duly note in scrawled volumes which were destined to be published one day, after I had become the world's greatest surgeon/actress/ veterinarian. Of course, I never actually studied medicine/acting/veterinary science, so the road was decidedly less sure for me than for many others. But I suppose it's just as well, since, after all, I never made it past February in those diaries. Years ago my mother presented me with an entire cardboard box full of old diaries with only the first ten pages written upon. Given the content of those pages, however, it was a blessing for all concerned that I never continued. My early life with a loving family in a ranch-style tract house in the Cupertino suburbs was safe and wonderful for a young child, but not a circumstance that would encourage a rich emotional inner life that needs to be set down for posterity on the pages of a journal.

I do have a rich emotional inner (and outer) life, now, however, which has become the stumbling block. I'm just so danged busy all the time, if not physically, then emotionally. I admire people who seem able to do it all, and get their car washed.

But I keep forgetting not to blink.

I looked at my calender to find some reasons I haven't written:

My 16-year-old son (do you remember being 16? I do. I empathize. Still, I find myself yelling a lot, and under any kind of normal circumstances I'm not a yeller.)

Personal paperwork.

Business paperwork.

Open Studios (big local art event in which we artists throw open our studios so people can wander through and, we hope, buy stuff. It requires a lot of cleaning.)

My dog. (No, I'm not still in deep mourning for my dog. But she was a truly great dog, and a member of the family, and I still hear the "click click click" of her nails on the hard wood floor at five in the morning, expecting in my sleepy state to see her coming into my study to curl up on the rug as I write.)

My 16-year-old son.

Paying bills.

Painting for money (this is connected to the last one--that pesky rent).

Painting for fun (very occasionally)

Being president of NorCal Sisters in Crime (because I didn't have enough to do)

Sick and elderly parents who live two states away.

Checking in with/visiting those parents.

My 16-year-old son (did I mention that he's 16?)

Oh yeah...and landing a new contract for a book series from Signet! (More on this in the next post)

So once again, for those of you who check in from time to time, I apologize! I am pond scum. I'm the scum that feeds off of pond scum. I'm a lazy blogger.

And I keep forgetting not to blink.

Ode to a Good Dog

Sam

1995-2008

Thirteen years ago, when my son was three years old and I was a single mother who had recently moved across the country and was trying to get my art business off the ground, I decided I needed to further complicate my life.

My housemate, son, and I went to the Berkeley Humane Society, “just to see.”

Since my son was still a pup himself, I wanted him to grow up with a littermate. There were two puppies at the Human Society that day: a darling silky black collie-mix with a white chest and a jaunty air; and a curly brown dog with long lanky legs, curled up shivering in a corner. The black pup already had two admirers, but the brown dog, I was told, was the last (read: “runt”) of a litter of five puppies that were left at night on the steps of the Human Society. She was labeled as “some sort of lab mix” (I was later told that at the pound, every dog is either a “lab mix”, “collie mix,” or “shepherd mix”); and they gave her an approximate age of six weeks.

She was trembling and wild-eyed like a junkie on the second day of rehab. We fell in love.

We named her Sam after my son’s favorite book at the time, Sam-I-Am. Throughout her life people would assume her full name was Samantha, but she was really plain old Sam.

She didn’t stop trembling for two days…but she started to eat. And eat. And to grow at an astonishing, worrying rate. We had been told that Sam would be about thirty-five pounds at full maturity; at this rate, she’d turn out to be more on the scale of a Great Dane. Our bungalow was 900 square feet, with a postage-stamp-sized yard. We lived in fear.

Most days we took her to the nearby park, where a number of neighborhood dog owners gathered in the evenings to let their dogs run. Like most dogs, Sammy loved to run. She ran with wild abandon, silky wavy brown ears flopping over her velvety head, long pink tongue lolling to the side. Soon a pack of adult dogs started running behind her, chasing her around the field not in anger, but joy. And lust. Sammy was in heat.

Apparently, Sam and her siblings had been starved over a long period of time. She wasn’t six weeks old, she was six months. Her remarkable growth rate was more a catch-up than an indication of things to come. Though she grew to about fifty pounds, at least she wasn’t the horse we’d feared she’d become in those first months.

However, she never lost her love, her adoration, her deep personal longing and desire for food. Any kind of food, with the possible exception of certain vegetables and unbuttered popcorn. She loved her people, sure, but food…she had something of a doggy eating disorder.

She adored children, especially my son and his friends, because she soon learned that little boys drop crumbs with alacrity. Any possible nutritional source that hit the floor was gone. Anything left on the coffee table was gone. And once or twice, particularly tempting items –like an entire barbecued chicken—left on the table or kitchen counter…gone. Food.

Sam’s coat was a deep chocolaty brown everywhere but her white chest, and a white bullseye right under her tail. One of her nicknames was “brown dog”; she was, indeed, very brown. As she aged, she stayed curly on top but grew out long feathers on her tail and haunches, like an Irish Setter. On walks people constantly stopped and asked, “what kind of dog is that?” Some guessed Chesapeake Bay Spaniel mix; some guessed Chocolate Lab mix. As time went on, I cast my vote with “some sore of Irish Setter mix”, not only because of her longish snout and flamboyant feathers, but because she was dumb. I mean really dumb. Not a whole lot going on upstairs.

I’ve loved mutts my whole life, and they’ve always been so smart that I assumed the mixing of the breeds naturally resulted in intelligent animals. But Sam proved that theory false. She was an elegant-looking, sweet tempered, dim bulb. She would lie down, long legs pointed out regally in front of her, head held proudly aloft, and look as though she should be featured in an oil painting hung with pride of place above the mantel of an English manor. Then you would call her name and her head would loll toward you, her soft brown eyes looking up with adoration and…nothing much else. Food?

At one point a very clever dog from across the street, Max, showed Sam how to break out of our fenced yard. The two would trot happily about the neighborhood, until Max-the-escape-artist would break back into his house for dinner. Sam, though, couldn’t find her way back into the yard. We’d find her sitting on the front porch, waiting to be let in, and watching squirrels.

She may have been missing a few intelligence genes, but she got more than her fair share of personality. To be kind, she was quirky; weird might be closer to the truth. She wasn’t particularly dog-like. She hated riding in cars. She couldn’t see the point of running after balls. Frisbees were dull. She’d pull on a toy with you if you insisted, but once you dropped it, she dropped it. By and large she disdained other dogs, and though she was friendly enough the truth was that she didn’t care that much for people, either.


However, she was devastatingly, fanatically attracted to squirrels. We moved into a house with a huge yard and she was in canine heaven. She was capable of sitting at the base of a tree for hours, talking to a squirrel, tracking its movements with her eyes, occasionally trying to climb the tree herself. Squirrel! Her whimpers and whines broke out into ear-piercing shrills from time to time when she could no longer keep the excitement to herself.

She would bark fanatically when her people arrived home, for to her barking was a form of discussion. She’d hop around, still barking, and then run the other way, ostensibly to show you she was on the job, patrolling the perimeter of her territory. If you danced, or sang, or had a loud discussion, or ran, or wrestled in a playful way, she would bounce around you stiff-legged, and bark. She barked at friends and neighbors as well as the postal carrier and the UPS guy and the prowler. Few could tell her friendly bark from her fierce bark – all of which were surprisingly shrill and high-pitched for a dog of her girth.


She had one special bark particularly beloved by the neighbors: the “rooster crow”. She let out a bark that sounded exactly like a rooster crowing, usually signaling that someone was at the gate or – even worse—the front door. God forbid anyone ring the doorbell. Later she used “single bark” whenever she wanted to be let in from outside. Short and sweet, rather polite, she would let out one, single, distinct bark. Hello? If you didn’t open the door, she’d wait exactly four minutes. Another bark. Hi? Four minutes later, another bark in exactly the same tone. Let me in! She was relentless.

Another dear love was cats. I know a lot of dogs chase cats, but Sam loved cats. She loved chasing them, but she also loved just sitting and watching them. Her lifelong desire was to be able to lick a cat without it squirming away. She had an unrequited love affair with Midgie, a black and white cat from next door. She yearned for Midgie; if she would have been able, she would have written poems to Midgie. She would sit and look through the metal gate at Midgie for hours, leaving only to ride herd on squirrels. Cat.

Our next-door neighbors, Midgie’s humans, were board members of our local SPCA. I’m sure that’s why Sammy lived as long as she did. Their house was like Sam’s Funhouse. They often left their front door open, and if Sam was out of the gate she’d trot right inside, eat the cat food that was just lying there, unguarded, obviously they didn’t want it, and it was sooooooo good. Then she would chase the cats –for Midgie was one of several—up the stairs and down the stairs, through bedrooms and living rooms. One must understand that when fifty pounds of brownness is barreling through one’s home, things get broken. Food. Cat.

As she aged, her brownness mellowed, and even ceded to white in spots. Eventually her whole muzzle and her expressive, elastic eyebrows were snowy-white. She stopped chasing squirrels, and toward the end, even stopped barking. But she never lost her love for food. Laying on her side, not enough energy even to rouse herself, she was still happy to eat the expensive steak we fed her. To the bitter end, the old gal was fond of a good meal. Or three. She never stopped eating. Food.

Who says no one reads anymore? Check out the LA Times Festival of Books!

I recently came back from my third L.A. Times Festival of Books, held on the beautiful UCLA campus.

It's a hard scene to describe. Tens of thousands --some say hundreds of thousands--of people from all over the country descend upon the main UCLA campus, where hundreds of tents are set up featuring all things book related: publishers (both large and small presses), authors of all stripes, reading paraphernalia, and books: children's books, travel books, art books, coffee-table books, romance books, literary books, research books...and, of course, mysteries!




It was very, very hot...but the readers and fans came, undaunted.














Here I am, looking about as hot and sweaty as I felt (and I don't mean that in a "she's soooo hot" kind of way...!) Many thanks to Mark Coggins for the photo...why do I NEVER remember to bring a camera?
I signed all three of my books, Feint of Art, Shooting Gallery, and Brush with Death, at several booths: Mysterious Galaxy, Book 'Em, and LA Sisters in Crime. I also sat the Mystery Writers' of America table at the LA Mystery Bookstore, where I was quite literally shoulder-to-shoulder with the charming Catherine Coulter.

All in all, it was an inspiring, though sweaty, weekend. Wonderful to be around all those lovers of the written word in its myriad forms. And we even got out of Westwood for an evening, traveling to Koreatown to eat many kinds of meat cooked at our table. It was great fun...especially the
Soju (otherwise known as Korean saki).

The festival takes place every spring around this time. If you're around next year, I'll see you there!

Sloth resting in Phoenix

Karen Thompson, of Archetile, her husband Tom, and I went down to Phoenix to install Sloth, at long last, in her garden. Below are a few shots of her temporary resting spot...she may well have to move when the other sins are complete.

Medusa

Medusa is a fascinating figure. In Greek mythology, she was a beautiful woman who was ravished by Poseidon, which enraged Athena. The goddess transformed her into a monstrous woman and replaced her fine locks with snakes. It was said that she was beheaded by Perseus, who then used her head as a weapon, for anyone who gazed upon her would turn to stone.

Medusa, by Caravaggio

Typically depicted as a horrific vistage crowned with snakes, recently some have re-interpreted Medusa as a strong, fierce woman. I was commissioned to paint a portait of her to be used as a logo for the Memoir Journal.

That's her up in the left-hand corner. In this version, she seems quite serene despite all those snakes where her hair should be.

Spring begins...and brings the Popular Culture Association to San Francisco!

(At left: Phoenix in two guises. A gorgeous natural setting...and what we've done to it. Hmm.)

I just returned from Phoenix, where I installed Sloth (see earlier posting about the first of the seven deadly sins) for a wealthy client. She looks lovely lounging by a fountain...I'll post pictures soon. Phoenix was warm and breezy, and our hotel had FOUR pools, plus what they claim to be the biggest jacuzzi in Arizona. I don't care much for golfing or driving around in air conditioned cars, but I do love swimming!

But now I'm off to speak at the Popular Culture Association along with Simon Wood and Mark Coggins. This time the conference is at the San Francisco Marriott on Fourth Street.

Above: the Art Deco-inspired facade of the San Francisco Marriott

Simon, Mark and I will be chatting about mysteries...after all, what could be more popular? If you happen to be in the area Friday, March 21, at 8:30, look for us on stage...or in the bar!

Off to Left Coast Crime!

I'm off to Left Coast Crime, a great mystery convention, held this year in Denver.

I've only been in Denver once, and that was passing through as I went to an anthropology conference in Boulder, years and years ago (another lifetime....)

This time I look forward to the Tequila bus tour of famous Denver murders, led by the invincible Mario Acevedo. I've got my salt shaker ready, Mario...

(Mario writes vampire novels...can you tell?)

On Saturday morning, early (8:30, which will be 7:30 to us West Coasters--someone bring Peet's coffee!!!) I'll be on a panel entitled "Kick Ass Women on a Mission," along with Nancy Pickard, Carolyn Hart, and Roberta Isleib. I always wanted to be thought of as a "Kick-Ass Woman"! (Apparently this is in reference to our heading up local and national chapters of Sisters in Crime, but I like to think I give off that vibe anyway.)

So if you happen to be near Denver...stop on by!!!