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I recently joined an online group that calls itself the Chicago Writers Association. It’s a new experience for me. The few times I’ve gone to groups online there’s been so much garbage to wade through that it hardly seemed worth it for one lone nugget. I signed up for this forum only to discover that almost no one uses it! [Some of them didn't even know how to log in]

Then a day or two after I joined, my in-box began to fill with email from different members of the group. I was intrigued by the topics and contributed a short response here and there. But by the end of the day, the email was full of the original comments AND the responses — multiplied by several users. There had to be a better way.

Upon asking the group’s leader, I was told that I could opt to have the comments and responses collected into a digest format, complete with a mini table of contents and links at the top. Now I can keep an eye on what’s happening, although not in real time unless I navigate to the website I guess. It’s still better than twenty messages a day — all repeating what went before.

While I’ve already learned some helpful things, about publishing, for instance, I am amazed that the folks in the group prefer not to use the forum. I admit that there is an informality and spontaneity to both email and the digest that might be missed with the forum. On the other hand, the information that the group shares remains with just the few on the list.

I mention the group now because I’m still learning how best to participate. One of the things that drew me the most was the opportunity to have others critique your work. I have a few short stories that I would love some feedback on.

But just today I got a critique of a published piece. The author is a person whose writing I enjoy and who has decent credentials. While I appreciate that he took the time to do the critique, I can’t help wondering what was behind some of the things he said. Maybe it’s the teacher in me. Not that some of what he said wasn’t right on target — it was. But there was no kindness, no gentleness, no hint of praise anywhere. No help for how to make it better other than to abandon it and start over.

Frankly, I can abuse myself just fine thank you. I don’t need anyone else to do it for me. What would have been helpful would have been comments like, “Where were you going with this?” Not, “This just plain doesn’t work.”

So while I hope to submit a short story or two to this writers association that I am now a member of, I can’t help feeling just a tad leery. What kind of people are they? How will they treat my work? With the respect that I hope to give theirs when asked for a critique? I’ll let you know.

I’ve been in email contact with a writer in Arizona named Jinx Schwartz. Her website mentioned that she lives in a 55+ community. I thought that she might be able to give me feedback on PARK RIDGE.

I wrote:

“I was particularly interested in the fact that you live in a retirement community (or what we here in my part of Illinois call a retirement community!). My first book just came out in September. Everyone in it is over sixty (killers and victims) except the detective and the Senior Center director.”

The curious thing is that we somehow miscommunicated over the words “senior center.” With my midwestern blinders on I just assumed that those words would be understood to mean a non-residential facility used for activities of senior citizens. [In self-defense this appears to be the general definition on the National Institute of Senior Centers' website.]

Anyway, I said something and Jinx wrote back:

“Here in Arizona, most 55+ communities are popular not for organized activities, but for the lack of noisy kids and neighbors. The center you describe sounds more like what they call ‘independent living’ where each has an apartment, with daily restaurant service.”

So I wrote back:

“The Senior Center that I describe is overseen by the Park District. They have their own building for daily activities (sometimes evening) — but nothing residential. We have all sorts of classes and activities — like a YMCA. I teach the writing classes.”

and it got straightened out. But I was really surprised at another comment that she made — actually an idea for a plot. 

“If you need an added angle, there is a long waiting list to get into these places, so maybe they need to off people to get their friend in.”

At my book signing last week, I met a gentleman and his wife from Del Webb’s Sun City in Huntley, Illinois.

I confess that I was a bit surprised; Huntley is just under an hour’s ride from Park Ridge. I would have thought that there would be a senior center a lot closer. In thinking about it further, it could be that they had lived in Park Ridge before they had moved into the retirement community. I’m in trouble already for calling it that — the Del Webb website calls it an “active adult community for those 55 and over.”

Back to the book signing. Although they stopped to look at my book, PARK RIDGE, they seemed to think that since it was about Park Ridge it wasn’t for them. They were from Huntley. I told them that for sure they should read my second book about the Six County Senior Olympics. The man corrected me, “Don’t you mean seven?” “No,” I replied. [in order to write this post, I double-checked with the Encyclopedia of Chicago. Sure enough, Cook has five what are called "collar counties": DuPage County, Kane County, Lake County, McHenry County, and Will County.]

Then I emphasized that the book would be about the Senior Olympics. Teresa, the Director of the Park Ridge Senior Center, had told me that Huntley always had a large contingent of competitors. The man and his wife agreed with that. “Particularly swimming,” said the wife.

For the summer of the book, Sedgebrook, an Erickson Retirement Community in Lincolnshire, is a corporate sponsor of the Six County Senior Olympics and site of the Breakfast of Champions and Vendor Expo. I had portrayed a group from Sun City as being in attendance. But because of the wife’s comment, I went back and made sure that Huntley showed up in the swimming competition.

Teresa Grodsky, Director of the Park Ridge Senior Center, played host to my first ever book signing. Thanks, Teresa!

Luanne and I spent hours at the Park Ridge Senior Center at the book signing. 110 people had reserved places at the annual Thanksgiving luncheon. Since only three didn’t show up, I can tell you with confidence that I personally spoke with 107 people. If you add in staff, etc., it would probably be closer to 125! In most instances I was able to hand them a copy of the Journal-Topics article about me and my book.

I wore my DePaul University sweatshirt – Go, Blue Demons! – which in and of itself attracted attention and comments.

Location
I had the prime spot for selling. Bert the janitor set up an eight foot table in the lobby. Behind me were several display cases with crocheted and knitted items, lots of ceramics, flower arrangements in baskets or vases. Off to one side hung colorful aprons. Bus schedules, hospice brochures and information on insurance and in-home caregivers lined the top of one case.

To my left were the two restrooms (guaranteed traffic past my table!). To the right was the office and the meal tickets. The first day 110 people had made reservations for lunch and almost everyone of them went by me. Plus a group of women came in to sing for an hour as the entertainment. There must have been at least thirty of them. I think Gloria told me that the second day 90 folks were expected.

I had some pretty stiff competition for the dollars people brought with them. The Rec Area had several tables filled with ceramics, wreaths, small trees, jewelry, afghans, scarves, etc. A large happy looking Santa and Mrs. Claus were also being raffled off.

When I left yesterday, Teresa had agreed to take ten books for sale through the office!

News
The catching up I did with folks was not all good news. Eileen, one of the writers from class told me that her husband had passed away four months ago. We often write about memories for class, either anecdotes or impressions, so her words instantly conjured miscellaneous information about Joe, whom I had never met.

Lee stopped by and bought a book. While I don’t remember the details, I do know that she was injured while on a visit back east, Maine, I think. When she was released from the extended care facility, her daughter accompanied her home. So now she has someone to help her get around.

Speaking of getting around, the tickets for admission to the luncheon had been placed on a table quite near where I was located. One woman picked up three tickets and I kidded her about eating three meals. “No,” she explained. “One is for my husband who is in a wheel chair. The other is for his new caregiver.” I don’t know if he needed assistance eating or if this was just a gesture of kindness. Several other caregivers dropped folks off, left and then returned two hours later.

War
A gentleman announced that he was ninety and looking for a woman. When I pressed him about his age the second day, he admitted to being “not quite ninety,” actually several years shy of the mark. He had been shot twice while in Europe during World War II. He tossed this information at us more than once. What is it with men of a certain age? My father is “that age” and like this gentleman from the Park Ridge Senior Center, the war was the most important event in his life evidently. I confess that I don’t get it.  He and his wife were married for sixty years. “She was Polish, I was German, we got married during the war. What do you think of that?”

Poison
The luncheon was catered by Inglenook out of Lockport. No, I didn’t mean the food didn’t taste good! The food was great. Teresa invited Luanne and me to help ourselves once the paying guests had been served. What I meant by the subtitle “poison” was that I had a chance to talk with the gentleman who catered the dinner. We had a good chat during which I discovered that in addition to catering, he was also a Master Gardener. I told him briefly about a short story I had written about a caterer who uses digitalis leaves in her spinach rolls as a treat for her nemesis. He grows digitalis from seed in his basement on a quest for some new variety. He told me that aconitum monkshood would make a much more effective poison.

In conversation the second day I learned his name is Paul. In spring he works for a local nursery where they refer to him as “Perennial Paul.” He has recommended helianthus (lemon queen), a perennial sunflower, for our garden. It grows six to eight feet tall and becomes covered with 2-inch blossoms.

Vicki
I was joined by a woman with a very thick foreign accent for most of the second day. She had wandered in early in the day in search of someone to help her with some reading. The book was for a CPR course (from the fire department, I think). Her husband couldn’t read English and spoke very little of the language. Vicki spoke, not very well, and much too softly. I have difficulty hearing in the best of circumstances. With voices bouncing off the cement walls and tile floors, I had to struggle to hear her.

When I sat down to begin greeting people and sell my books, Vicki took a seat beside me and began reading out loud from her book. Occasionally she would ask me what a word meant. I would try to explain while working hard not to miss an opportunity to invite people to take a look at my book. I confess to being somewhat annoyed.

When she asked me what hepatitis was, I gave her the only answer that came to mind. I was reasonably sure that “hepa” referred to liver and “itis” referred to an inflammation. She actually agued with me that it was something to do with a virus that ate the liver and dried it up. According to my search this morning, none of the hepatitis varieties (A-E) have anything to do with drying up the liver, although all are caused by viruses. Hepatikos (Greek for liver – Vicki was Greek), not hepa. Oh well. At least I was right after I put the pieces together – it’s an inflammation of the liver.

Angela
In my acknowledgments I mentioned Angela Scott, the woman I want to grow up to be like.

I often think that it’s ironic that I’m as afraid of electricity and things electrical when my father supported the family early on by working for the phone company. Perhaps the way I wrote that sentence gives away the fact that he worked climbing poles, etc. If I had not mentioned electricity, would you have thought the same thing?

That’s actually one of the stereoptypes that I rely on in my book. Eons ago, men who worked for the telephone company worked with wires, women worked as operators, placing calls and dispensing information. But as with most stereotypes, this one is also flawed. Someone at the phone company sent out bills, received payments, and kept track of that information in a set of ledgers.

So, too, in my story. The Professor had worked for the telephone company so Ben assumed (incorrectly) that he knew his way around wiring. The truth was that electricity terrified the Professor the way it does me.

Last night, the switch in the bathroom was flipped on. When my partner left the room, she flipped it off — but the light stayed on. After unscrewing the switchplate, she toggled the switch and the light went off. Since it was late, we went to bed figuring that it would be easier working in the daylight.

I said “we,” but I meant she. I wouldn’t go near the switch. I didn’t even have confidence that once we turned off the electricity it would be safe to poke around. Not so with my partner. Luanne has never met a machine she couldn’t master. Years ago (lots of years ago) when she worked for Alpha Phi in Evanston, she took the copier well in hand. Enough so that the repairman left a set of tools for her!

This morning Luanne pulled out the thing-y and said that everything looked copacetic. So she put it back. Can’t fix what doesn’t appear to be broken.

I learned recently that Frank Kaiser, editor of the website and magazine Suddenly Senior, is a Park Ridge native. (I’m never sure what to call them — Park Ridgians is the best I’ve come up with!). Anyway, I popped an email off to Frank to tell him about my book. I had enjoyed his comments about his fiftieth high school reunion. His article “Whatever Happened to Front Porches” also resonated.

Spoiler Notice: Discussion/Study Questions reveal parts of the plot and the ending.

Question: “Portraits of the victims are rounded out in various ways - using the director’s descriptions to the detective (Sheila, Ben), videotape transcripts (Gordon), and the interview with Zabo’s wife. Which is most effective and why?

One of the more difficult things for me is how to sketch a character in the fewest possible words or actions. This becomes extremely important in short stories, especially if you’re trying to avoid stereotypes and cliches. Weaving backstory material is just as hard.

In PARK RIDGE a presentation of the victim immediately preceded a murder. This meant that all I had was this one shot (no pun intended) at describing the victim. Depending on the reader’s response to this portrayal, they would either be outraged or indifferent (or somewhere in between) when this person was murdered. I was limited by the space I felt that I could allow for the description. After all, the book wasn’t about the victims but the killers.

I looked for other ways that I could introduce information (backstory) that would make these “incidental” characters more three-dimensional. One option came from reality. Teresa (the real center director) told me that they often have groups come into the senior center, generally once a year. These groups are looking for people they can interview — oral history type stuff. Sometimes the focus is even narrower — they just want to talk with veterans. Teachers may bring in elementary school children for an intergenerational activity. Either way, groups do come in to the center and have contact.

I reasoned that videotaping the interviews without any intervention by the interviewer would be a good way to force my characters to speak in their own words. Five minutes on camera with no prompts is a long time. Only bits and pieces would be relevant to the narrative, but as the author I could isolate sections from the transcript.

Another way that I rounded out the characters was by what other people said about them. The discussion question we’re looking at specifically mentions Leonard Zabo’s wife. Even though she’s speaking with the detective, who’s investigating her husband’s death, the conversation conveys a lot of information with the same candor as the tapes.

It’s my personal opinion that comments about the victims, or even the killers, by Teresa Cusentino, the center director, are not as effective. Her views are less objective because of her defensive stance toward “her people.” On the other hand, as a character, she grows in understanding, admits to this defensiveness, and emerges as much more sympathetic and aware.

I’ve noted elsewhere, that in the eyes of a lot of people, having your book listed on Amazon.com is the defining moment in which an ordinary person suddenly becomes AUTHOR.

I’d like to suggest an alternative transforming moment (not that I believe there really is one, other than the act of writing itself). I’d to offer the receipt of your first royalty check as a possibility. I just got mine in the mail — whooohooo!

I was sure that there were rules governing what to do with the first one so I went in search of them. I found one author whose initial response was similar to mine: “The day I got my first royalty check, I was tempted to frame it. But you can’t live on a framed check, so I copied it and took the real check to the bank.” However, one author wrote: “My first royalty check was for 66 cents, I framed it.” A third author is handling it a little differently: “We haven’t yet, but at some point, the next day or two, I’m going to ask Mary to do the corniest thing in the world. Take a photograph of me holding my first royalty check.”

Then there was this (I really cropped it for the effect): “it was nice to actually sell one or two books and get paid for it.” When the numbers go up, so does the enthusiasm: “And my first book … sold 57 copies it’s first month. But hey, you’ve got to start somewhere The royalty check was $110.43.”

But there’s always another way to look at it when the check seems to have taken forever to arrive: “This weekend I received my first ever income from my first ever book … . The royalty check came in the mail …, a whopping $44.60. While my first sale came way back in January, this is the true moment to celebrate. When you have something you can put in the bank. It amounts to 10 copies of my book.”

Two selections mentioned food: “I would say I would take the family out to dinner to celebrate, but I don’t think that the check would cover it;” and “ 
I took my first royalty check and bought myself a dinner of fried shrimp & french fries and topped it off with a slice of pie & a half bottle of bubbly! Of course, that means I have about twenty-five cents left, but all in all, it was very a good day.”

The last comes from a website about Charles Dickens:
“Why did Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol?

“He needed the money! He was seriously in debt and he hoped to turn a quick profit from the royalties. As one Biographer described it, his bank manager had given his muse an enthusiastic push. A Christmas Carol was a runaway best seller and Dickens expected his first royalty check to be at least £1000 but due to the high production cost of the book-in part because of his many last minute changes and its expensive materials, he received only £250.”

I had an interesting opportunity to speak with one of my readers this morning. Nope, not one of those email things. Just sitting quietly across from each other with a cup of coffee. I’ve posted the full text of the interview on my website but thought I’d share a couple of impressions here.

First off, I guess I never really thought about strong prejudices when it came to mysteries, even though I admit to at least one myself. I hate gratuituous violence. Most of the time I struggle with violence period. Guess that’s why, with one exception, all the murders in PARK RIDGE are pretty low-key. But that’s not the prejudice I’m talking about. I’m not even talking about the “whodunnit” versus the “whydunnit,” although that did come up in the interview.

My reader said, “I work hard, am always with people, and don’t want to have to dig for deep meanings when I read a mystery. I want to be entertained.”

To be fair, she qualified entertainment with the word “light” a bit later in the conversation. We even made a list of how to know you have a “light” read when you pull a book off the shelf in the mystery section of the library. We decided if it had “cat” in the title, etc. 

I confess that I was surprised to think that folks didn’t just pull books off shelves, give them a scan, then take it home and see what they had. Guess my partner has me trained well! When we fetch our ten books home, some are light, some heavy duty, some in-between. Patricia Cornwell is never light but an awesomely entertaining read for me.

So this idea of not reading for meanings, or not wanting to dig deep, bewilders me. A Dark Adapted Eye, the first novel by Ruth Rendell under the pen name Barbara Vine, was really heavy duty. When the murder finally happened, it struck me as almost anti-climactic. The whole essence of the story was in the convoluted family relationships and interactions. [Made into a movie in 1994] Twenty years later (or is it more?) Rendell/Vine did the same thing in The Minotaur (2004).

Not that I don’t understand about “light” entertainment. I do. I just haven’t written that kind of book. At least, not this time around

Chris Rogers did a great job on this book, even if it got a bit sappy at the end. We had gotten all three books, this one, Rage Factor and Chill Factor, at the library. Have to tell you, folks, I forced my way through to page 92 of Rage and gave it up. I managed to read the first rape, but the subsequent vigilante rape of the rapist was way too graphic for me. My partner had already read the book and, when I complained about the violence, she warned me that it only got worse. That was all I needed to hear. Didn’t finish the book and have no interest in the third.

As a sort of “by the way, that reminds me,” that’s the reason we both stopped reading Dick Francis. We devoured everything he wrote in the beginning. When the violence and just plain gruesomeness seemed to dominate, we bailed.