Agatha Award Winners 2011

These awards are presented annually at the Malice Domestic convention.  "Malice" is slanted to the traditional mystery as opposed to the suspense and thriller genres.  A special shout out to Sarah Smith of our local MWA chapter whose  YA book, The Other Side of Dark won.

Best Novel:
Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny

Best First Novel:
The Long Quiche Goodbye by Avery Aames

Best Non-fiction:
Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: 50 Years of Mysteries in the Making by John Curran

Best Short Story:
"So Much in Common" by Mary Jane Maffini, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - Sept./Oct. 2010

Best Children's/Young Adult:
The Other Side of Dark by Sarah Smith

Writing Is Rewriting

During the Patriots/Green Bay game last night, I got back into my novel revision which during this pass is strictly cuts and fixing word usage when/where it jumps out.   With regret, I've cut several whole scenes and am contemplating cutting a semi-major character and all those references.  Ugh!  This is the part of writing that isn't much fun.  On the plus side, I must have sliced and diced several thousand words.  If I expunge the character or at least his many phone calls, I can purge a few thousand more, making the novel . . . the right length?

Do you like slim books like Dame Agatha Christie's that can be started at 9:00 p.m. and finished at 11:00?   Or do you like the big meaty novels of P.D. James or Elizabeth George?   Every reader has her faves.  I know local publishers who will not look at a book with more than 75,000 words (slim, slim, slim) which eliminates character depth, subplots, local color and really hones in one one story line.   That's not how I write, and those slim books are straight whodunnits, usually small town cozies.    Do you know what a so-called "cozy" mystery is? It's a story where "more tea is spilled than blood?"  Isn't that a great description?  Miss Marple comes to mind.  Usually a cozy has an amateur sleuth set in a small town and the murder occurs off scene, in other words, no graphic violence.  No sex and usually no bad language. Your 12 year old could read it.

The word "lite" comes to mind, but these are a beloved part of the genre, also known as "traditional" mysteries, but those can have sex and violence and a professional sleuth, think Spenser, Robert Parker's slim volumes without any "kerfluffel,"   Of course, Robert Parker wrote 3-4 books a year, so naturally they wouldn't be 125,000 word tomes.   The Boston mystery community misses him a lot.  No one can take Parker's place.

Back to rewriting.  Parker claimed he never did, that his first draft was also his last, and he wrote fast, so this is a great mystery to me how anyone would NEVER have a clunky sentence or forget the color of the car a character drove, or eye color, or all the details that make a book believable.  I genuflect before such genius.

I make my corrections in red ink.  It will be a job and a half to fix the manuscript.  Word for MAC has been throwing hissy fits lately.    Spell check aborts, losing my changes, the tool bar has to be tweaked every time a document is opened, and now the printer thinks I'm printing "small" pages and is doing something goofy to the page.  If you go to the help screens, you want to run off screaming, because the "fixes" are hideously technical and come with lots of warnings and even an old geek like me wouldn't  touch some of them with a ten foot pole. I don't know if re-installing Word for MAC would help.  Maybe for a while, but it began to crap out after just a few months.

My desktop looking neat for a change

Well, bleak thoughts that do not help the situation.   When software doesn't work as intended,  it makes life very difficult, like when the new financial software changed all my accounts to Euros during a upgrade and I couldn't change them back.  Alas, Microsoft Money, you were such  a gem, why did they get rid of you?

Enough gnashing of teeth.  It's the solstice, almost and the days will become longer and winter is truly here.  Not my favorite season, and once the holidays are over, endlessly bleak.   St. Agnes Eve and all that.  "The owl for all his feathers was acold."  How I love that poem.  Reading Proust again, too.  The favorite authors keep calling.

Back to editing and chopping out words and paragraphs.  I notice that sometimes the exact same thought is stated twice, and I can just strike out the poorest statement.   Chop those words.  Out!  Out!  Damn word.

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Agatha Nominees from Malice Domestic

Some of my friends listed here, good writers all. The Agatha awards are for "traditional" mysteries, which means whodunnit. Most are so-called cozies, is the spirit of Agatha Christie. The best definition of a cozy mystery that I have ever heard is "a story where more tea is spilled than blood." You get the idea. Of course some stories are edgier than others. This type of novel does not tend to be nominated for the Edgar awards by the MWA. See previous post.

Your assignment is to buy or borrow the books, read them, and determine your favorites. There will be a test.


AGATHA AWARDSNamed in Honor of Agatha Christie
2008 Agatha Nominees

Best Novel:

Six Geese A-Slaying by Donna Andrews (Minotaur Books)
A Royal Pain by Rhys Bowen (Penguin Group)
The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
Buckingham Palace Gardens by Anne Perry (Random House)
I Shall Not Want by Julia Spencer-Fleming (Minotaur Books)

Best First Novel:

Through a Glass, Deadly by Sarah Atwell (Berkley Trade)
The Diva Runs Out of Thyme by Krista Davis (Penguin Group)
Pushing Up Daisies by Rosemary Harris (Minotaur Books)
Death of a Cozy Writer by G.M. Malliet (Midnight Ink
Paper, Scissors, Death by Joanna Campbell Slan (Midnight Ink)

Best Non-fiction:

African American Mystery Writers: A Historical & Thematic Study by Frankie Y. Bailey (McFarland & Co.)
How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries by Kathy Lynn Emerson (Perseverance Press)
Anthony Boucher, A Bibliography by Jeff Marks (McFarland & Co.)
Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories by Dr. Harry Lee
Poe (Metro Books)
The Suspicions of Mr. Whitcher by Kate Summerscale (Walker & Co.)

Best Short Story:

"The Night Things Changed" by Dana Cameron, Wolfsbane & Mistletoe (Penguin Group)
"Killing Time" by Jane Cleland, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine - November 2008
"Dangerous Crossing" by Carla Coupe, Chesapeake Crimes 3 (Wildside Press)
"Skull & Cross-Examinations" by Toni L.P. Kelner, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - February 2008"
A Nice Old Guy" by Nancy Pickard, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - August 2008

Best Children's/Young Adult:

Into the Dark by Peter Abrahams (Harper Collins)
A Thief in the Theater (A Kit Mystery) by Sarah Masters Buckey (American Girl Publishers)
The Crossroads by Chris Grabenstein (Random House Children's Books)
The Great Circus Train Robbery by Nancy Means Wright (Hilliard & Harris)

Kate's Mystery Books

This evening, Kate of Kate's Mystery Bookstore in Cambridge, MA will throw her annual holiday party, a soiree not to be missed. The crime-writing literati of the Boston area will gather to chat with fans, autograph books, nosh, schmooze, and yes, imbibe.

Kate is Boston's best known promoter of the mystery genre. Her wide umbrella shelters thrillers, cozies, horror, true crime and of course the traditional mystery. Her collection of black cats (statuary) is totally awesome.

With the book business in crisis, this is an opportunity to buy personalized (signed by the author) holiday gifts the recipients will actually read and enjoy, support local authors and give a leg up to one of our local booksellers. Kate can always recommend books that you or your gift list will adore, a knack born of many years in the business. Her knowledge is encyclopediac and her inventory is vast.

The party is from 5:30 - 7:45 at Kates (2211 Mass Ave in Cambridge). Close to Porter and Davis Squares. Lots of eateries and drinkeries nearby. The party becomes a mob scene but is ever so much fun. You literally rub elbows.

I'm bringing my spicy empenadas, a riff on Paula Deen's recipe. The dough is resting in the fridge and the filling is waiting for the diced tomato. The party food is always toothsome. One year there was a meatloaf to die for.

Look for me. Ah, hell. You'll probably be gazing at Robert Parker or Dennis Lehane. So will I.

http://www.katesmysterybooks.com/events.html

Come "dressed to kill."

Cheers!

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Feet Up, Brain in Neutral

We spent the last three days at NEIBA at the Hynes Convention Center. I discovered I have no comfortable shoes that are good for 8 hours of standing, at least none of the non-sneaker variety.

Being around books and writers and booksellers and publishers is heady stuff, and free books are totally awesome, esp. if signed by the author. We worked hard and had a good time, and am I ever glad it's over.

After I finish my Red Zinger tea, I'm going to soak my feet and slather on some of the Body Shop's Peppermint Foot Balm.

Then I find some totally mindless TV, or maybe I pull out one of the cool new books I've got and curl up. What could be finer? SinC into a good mystery. Yeah.

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Malice Domestic

The Agatha (named after Agatha Christie) Awards for 2008 were handed out a week ago at the Malice Domestic Conference in Washington (Arlington).

Here is a link to the winners.
http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2008/04/and-malice-toward-all.html

Special congratulations to Hank Phillippi Ryan who won for the best first novel. Hank belongs to our local Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America chapters.

Her novel was a delightful read and it's always cool when the home team wins.

The Agatha are awarded for traditional mysteries, that an Agatha Christie born today might write. The Edgars, mentioned earlier tend to have a bleaker outlook about crime and murder.
I like both kinds of stories.

Right now I am liking (and admiring) The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. It is a real tour de force, and one feels so sorry for all the characters as they stumble through their sad imperfect lives. If Franzen wrote crime, he'd be in the noir section of the shelves.

Yesterday I made rhubarb bread and it was good. That sweet-sour combo is a dynamite taste sensation.

This recipe is very similiar to the one I used. Enjoy.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Rhubarb-Bread-I/Detail.aspx
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