Memorial Day Isn't Just For Citizens

I've put a bit of this story on Facebook the last week, so if you've already read some, I apologize. But here's more of the story.

My mom's father was named Guiseppe Ciccocioppo. A mouthful, right? He immigrated here from Abruzzi, Italy in 1912. In five short years, he was a private in the U.S. Army and his messmates were calling him Joe Chicco.

After his training, he was on a train slowly traveling through the south, at one point through a watermelon patch. Joe jumped off the train, grabbed a watermelon under each arm and let his buddies pull him back aboard. The incident earned him the name Watermelon Joe.

The army must have been impressed with his food procurement skills, because they made him a cook in the 154th Depot Brigade of the 2nd Training Battalion. Joe was sent to a new base built as a training facility, Fort Meade. No one ever remembers the regular soldiers who do the work at boot camps. In this case, the new recruits who went through Ft. Meade in 1917 ended up in the trenches of France. One of them, at least, remembered Joe Chicco afterward. His name was James Ronca.

After the war, James Ronca was at home when his younger sister brought home a prospective beau. James took one look at him and exclaimed, "That's Watermelon Joe!" Which apparently made the approval process go smoothly.

But the point of this blog is that Joe only became a citizen of the United States after the war, when he legally changed his name to Chicco and married Jenny Ronca. During his time as a soldier, he was still an immigrant.

Twenty plus years later, during World War II, Joe's two sons and most of his nephews were in the armed forces. One of his nieces, too, as an Army nurse. Joe walked the five blocks to the train station every day that he could, to welcome any military personnel coming home on leave. If they were from his neighborhood, he'd walk them home, carrying their duffels for them.

When Joe died in 1948, the VA provided a footstone for him with a flag holder attached to the side. For more than 60 years, that stone stood 4 inches above ground and every Memorial Day a flag was placed in the holder. This year, the cemetery decided to sink all footstones to ground level, so they could get riding mowers over them. They buried Joe's flag holder.

I contacted the VA to get a new one. They asked if I had Joe's discharge papers and death certificate. I didn't, but I took a photo of the footstone, and that was accepted as proof of his service and death. So today, I'll put the new WWI flag holder and flag on my grandpop's grave.

Occasionally, PBS reads off the names of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. A lot of those names are Latino. They are perhaps recent immigrants, or at least, the sons and daughters of immigrants. Their families deserve better than random traffic stops asking them to show proof of citizenship and other harassments.

American immigrants quite often do the work no one else wants to do, including fighting our wars. We need to remember that.

Happy Memorial Day,
Elena

Slipper Lust

My Favorite Moccasins

Go to Pinterest.com and search on the words "shoe lust" and you'll get pages of photos of footwear, 99.9% of which are women's shoes with heels so high your ankle has to bend backward at an anatomically impossible angle for you to be able to stand straight in them. I traced a few photos to their web sources and the average prices for most of pairs seem to be around $750.

I've never quite understood this footwear fetish some women have. It's a relatively new phenomenon, I think. Oh, styles of women's shoes have come and gone forever, but I don't ever remember hearing about footwear obsessions before 1986, when Imelda Marcos, on fleeing the Philippino Presidential Palace during their revolution, was found to have left behind something like 2700 pairs of shoes. Sort of like Marie Antoinette, except the message here was "They can't afford platforms? Let 'em wear pumps."

After that, all of a sudden, you couldn't have a female character on TV or in movies and novels, who didn't salivate at the thought of a new pair of shoes. The characters eventually seemed to morph into a stereotype with the message: If a women doesn't crave shoe shopping, or wear outlandishly high heels (even when  chasing down criminals or lounging around her house), she isn't a real woman. Or at least, not a sexy, desirable one. I'm not dissing my friends who like shoes, but I'm kind of fed up with the stereotype. We've all admitted that Barbie's body measurements are a dangerously unattainable goal for our daughters to strive for, but we've never really let go of those oddly misshapen plastic feet of hers.

Okay, maybe this is no more than the grouse of an old fogey. My formative years were spent back when barefootedness was the summer norm for every young person, and when "in" foot coverings included earth shoes, desert boots and flat leather sandals that molded perfectly to your sole. My favorite shoes now are
slippers. Maybe I'm not sexy and desirable, but my feet totally love me and I'll stay faithful to them.

Not romantic, you say? I disagree. Here's the first draft of a poem by none other than Lord Byron. (He changed it slightly before publication, to read "She walks in beauty like the night....")

She walks in booties late at night,
In soleless shoes that have no ties;
All comfy warm and not too tight
Due to the slightly larger size;
Thus mellow'd more than in daylight
When dressy heels do agonize.

Upon those feet, and under go,
So soft, so warm, so excellent;
She smiles as she sips her cocoa,
Forgetting hours of groaning spent,
Her toes all crushed in stiletto--
In booties now, she's so content.

Ahhhh...
Elena

Eagle-Eye View

When I was in grad school studying music composition, my teacher, Alice Parker, told us that beginning a new piece like being an eagle circling high above the earth. The metaphor works for writing as well.

At the outset of a project, your idea seems very far away. Your mental image is something like a blurry aerial photo. Then as you work on the piece, you circle lower, picking out details, seeing how parts of the landscape relate to other parts. At last you reach a point where you can identify buildings and cars and maybe even people, but you're still far enough away to see the big picture. You see how everything in that aerial photo makes sense together. Most importantly, you understand why that photo exists and why you need to share it with others. You start writing.

The problem is, in order to write it, you need to zero in on details and get them right. You circle lower and never see that big picture again. You have to rely on the memories of that snapshot to keep you true to your original vision. If you don't, you're likely to forget that first epiphany that got you inspired and excited enough to start writing the work in the first place.

I began a children's novel more than a year ago. The project was a departure from my usual mystery stories. Great fun at first, but I quickly became hopelessly stuck. I simply couldn't seem to make it work. I talked through the story with my brother and one of my writer friends. I changed some major plot points, but that only made things worse. Last fall I finally surrendered and moved on to other projects.

This week I was staying with a non-writer friend who I don't see very often. She asked what I was writing, and instead of telling her about my current work-in-progress, I found myself talking about the kid's book I didn't talk through the plot as I had before, but only gave her the basics. Sort of an elevator pitch, assuming
the lift was slow and headed for the penthouse of a skyscraper.

As I described the story, I found myself getting more excited about it than I'd been since last summer. Somehow, I'd recreated that "big picture" snapshot. Now I've got a better feel for what details and tangents led me away from my original vision.

So, back to work.

Peace,
Elena

Multiple Author Syndrome

I attended the Malice Domestic conference last weekend. Malice is for mystery fans who love the "traditional" mystery, the kinds penned in the style of authors like Agatha Christie, usually with non-cop sleuths and small town settings. I've been to more than a dozen Malice weekends over the years. Probably a lot more. I've lost count.

This year they had a tribute to Barbara Mertz, who writes under the pen names Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels. I'm a big fan of all of her works. Her paranormal Barbara Michaels suspense novels certainly were a major influence on my Possessed Mystery series. Among the authors presenting the tribute to Barbara were Joan Hess, Dorothy Cannell and Margaret Maron.

Watching them, I remembered the first time I'd seen them together in the same room. The four of them plus Charlotte MacLeod and Sharyn McCrumb had come to my local independent bookstore for a signing. I was a yet unpublished writer, and here were some of my favorite authors, so I'd taken a long lunch hour from work to go see them.

I was struck immediately by the fact that these women weren't simply writers traveling together on a book tour. They were good friends.

Since then, I've done signings of my own. My book tour buddies are most often Robin Hathaway and Caroline (Charles) Todd. And yes, we're good friends. When you share hotel rooms and meals and long hours on the road, as well as a love of good books, it's inevitable. I have other writer friends, too, with  whom I've done local mystery panels and presentations. We all support each other's work, and we love to get together and talk shop, which is important in a profession that requires you to be home alone most of the time. The friendships writers develop while hawking books in unison are precious, and as Barbara, Joan and Dorothy reminded me last weekend, often lifelong.

In the last 15 years or so, I've noticed a definite decrease in multiple author events at bookstores. Some stores seem less willing these days to deal directly with authors, but only want to set up events through the publisher. And some publishers seem to keep a fairly tight rein on their authors' promotional activities, insisting they go through their publicists, discouraging their writers from appearing with authors from other publishing houses.

For many authors, especially new ones, it never seems to occur to them to try to schedule signings with other writers. In my opinion, this is a huge mistake. More than one author at an event can generate larger audiences and more excitement. Fans attending to see one author are more likely to take a chance on the others. I've always sold more books at multiple author signings. And I can't name one big name author, on having to share space with a newbie, who has complained that his or her sales suffered.

At that signing years ago with Barbara Michaels, Joan Hess and the rest, I bought six books. One was the first novel I'd read by Margaret Maron. I've since read all in her Deborah Knott series. If only one author had been in the store that day, I might not have bought more than one novel, and possibly never discovered Margaret's work.

Happy fans, happy writers, happy bookstores.

Happy reading,
Elena

Living on the Wind

I've been trying to write an Earth Day blog all week, but frankly, I keep thinking everything I write will fall on deaf ears. Americans care less about the environment now than they did 3 years ago. Even my friends who are rabid liberals and complain about anti-environment legislation all the time don't seem too concerned about how much energy they waste personally.

So today, instead, I'm just going to brag about my electricity provider.

I signed on with the PA Energy Cooperative a couple years ago. PECO still delivers my electricity, but the Energy Coop provides it. I chose them because

1. They're non-profit. I pay dues ($15/household/year) and become, essentially, one of the owners. The dues can be waived for low income households.

2. They give me the option of 20% or 100% sustainable electricity. Their 20% option is LESS than what PECO charges. Their 100% option is, at the moment, about a fifth of a cent per kilowatt hour more than PECO.

3. For their sustainable energy, they use wind power generated in Pennsylvania. No fuel from foreign countries, no getting power from across the US. The energy is generated locally. It's not only good for the earth, it's good for my state and local economies.

I use an average of 231 kwh per month, so it only costs me an extra 44 cents a month to go with the 100% sustainable energy option. (I might also point out that my kwh usage is less than the national average per person. I save about $15 per month just being a bit stingy about how much electricity I use--but that's another blog).

If you live in Pennsylvania, I definitely recommend the PA Energy Coop. Other Energy Coops are springing up across the country. Check them out in your area.

Happy Earth Day,
Elena

National Library Week!

Kansas City, MO Library. I love this building!

First, the news: I'm happy to announce that ALL my novels are now available on Kindle and Nook. BY BLOOD POSSESSED and HANG MY HEAD AND CRY were both released as ebooks in the last two weeks. Only $3.99. These novels are also available in print.

So, here it is, National Library Week. I'll be spending the day at two local libraries. This afternoon from 1 to 4 pm, I'll be chatting with readers at Wissahickon Valley Library in Blue Bell, PA at their Author's Day. Tonight, I'll be discussing what goes into a great mystery novel with mystery writers J.J. Murphy, J.D. Shaw, Sandra Carey Cody, Kathleen Heady and Augustus Cileone at Tredyffrin Library in Strafford, PA at 7:30 pm. All are welcome to attend.

Last month I traveled down to Philly to spend an afternoon at the American Library Association convention. I was reminded that librarians are the coolest people on the planet. I've never met a librarian I didn't enjoy talking to.

But I was thinking this week that I don't get to libraries as often as I used to. Most of my research can be done online these days. I don't have as much time to read as I once did. Yet, when I walk into a library, even one I've never visited, I always feel at home there. The part of my brain that derives comfort from certain foods and certain books also comes alive when I spend time at a library. Lots of great childhood memories. Lots of good feelings from that many books under one roof. Lots of hope for the future when I see parents bringing their children in, especially when the.kids race inside, excited to be there.

Even with the increasing prevalence of the Internet and electronic books in our lives, we can't let libraries become obsolete. They're so much more than just a public storehouse for books. They're a kind of canary-in-a-coal-mine indicator of the health and development of their local communities. Even if we library patrons never speak to each other, we all know we're there because we love learning and exploring and imagination. In this day and age, the affirmation that we aren't alone in our quest for these things is essential for the growth of humankind.

Go visit your library.
Elena

Controversial Clothing

The last several months I've been working on a new book called The Todd Chronicles, in which Todd MacBride, a quirky, creative undergrad at the University of Arizona, self-appoints himself to chronicle the case files of his criminal psych prof, Gen Ziegler. He sees himself as Watson to her Holmes. I'll tell you more about the book when it makes its debut later this month.

I admit, it's been a while since I went to college, so I had to do all sorts of research into current college life. For instance, in my day, I'd dined at a dismal college cafeteria. The U of A has two student centers with food courts, ethnic restaurants, etc.

Arizona is a fairly warm place, but it can get chilly at night, especially in the winter. In one scene I had Todd stopping at his dorm to don something warmer before going back out for the evening. I googled images of college students in outerwear. Most were wearing sweatshirts. So I went to the U of A store site to view their selection. Out of 18 sweatshirts, 12 had hoods. I recalled that every college student I'd known for the last ten years had at least one hoodie in their wardrobe. I wore one in college, for that matter, though we just called them sweatshirts at the time. And a hoodie seemed to absolutely fit Todd's character.

Then came the Trayvon Martin murder, along with the inane comment by pseudo-journalist Geraldo Riveria that African-American parents shouldn't let their teens wear hoodies lest they be mistaken for criminals. Which is like saying that if you allow teenage daughter to let her belly button show, she might be mistaken for a hooker, or if you let your teenage son wear his pants low, he might be mistaken for a plumber.

But suddenly the hoodie became a symbol for, depending whose side you're on, the urban perp or racial profiling. I asked myself if I should change Todd's cool weather clothing of choice to something else, instead of saying "hoodie" and risk pulling my readers out of the story. My editor, on reading the manuscript, voiced the same concern.

In the end, I decided that Todd would keep his hoodie. It was right for the college setting of the book. It was right for his character.

But, hey, if the reader stops to remember Trayvon Martin a moment, I don't think that's a bad thing. Better we shouldn't forget too soon.

Peace,
Elena