CONTRIBUTING TO THE DELINQUENCY OF A MINOR

I was sitting in front of my computer having a mini creative crisis when my five year old son walked into the room and asked me to play a game with him. I exhaled in frustration and blurted out that I couldn’t play anything until I figured out how I was going to kill Erika. My son looked at me and said, "Why don’t you just give Erika a weak heart and then have a dinosaur walk into the room and scare her to death."

I’ll probably skip the part about the dinosaur but the thing about the weak heart wasn’t bad, a little scary coming from a five year old, but not bad.

My son then started to brain storm. "Maybe the dinosaur could accidentally step on a gun and shoot her! Or she could eat some poisonous prehistoric plants that the dinosaur put in her salad!"

So now I’m worried. Is my son destined to be some kind of crazed paleontologist with a thirst for blood? Or is it that he has actually been paying attention to the quiet musings of a mystery writer—otherwise known as his mom. I have always been careful about screening my son’s television viewing and I would never read him a book filled with graphic depictions of violence, but until that moment I had never thought about protecting him from my own artistic ramblings. I wonder what Steven King’s children are like. Do they spend their afternoon fantasizing about rabid Saint Bernards hanging out in Plymouth Furys?

And it’s not just the violence that’s a concern. The title of my book is Sex, Murder And A Double Latte. For some reason hearing those words coming out of a five year old’s mouth is a little disconcerting. My son is so incredibly proud of me and I’m touched by that, but it was hard to suppress my embarrassment when he ran up to a little girl in a bagel shop and told her the name of his mom’s big book.

"It’s about a writer named Sophie Katz," he began, "she’s Jewish and Black just like my mom so my mom should play her in the movie. And then Sophie’s friends are Dena and….and…." He looked at me inquisitively. "What does Dena do, Mom?"

"Um, Dena owns a store."

"What kind of store?" The little girl asked. "A toy store?"

"Mmm-hmm, a toy store. A toy store for adults."

"You mean she sells grown up video games?"

"No, no. But she does sell a few other kinds of videos."

Believe it or not I didn’t have to embellish that story.

But I can’t say that these incidents have motivated me enough to keep my writing career separate from my duties as a parent. For instance I usually help supervise my son’s field trips. Often while escorting a class of screaming kindergarteners down an otherwise peaceful wooded path I’ll begin mentally choreographing a gruesome murder scene. It helps keep my spirits up.

Basically I’ve decided that my best course of action is to make sure my son knows the difference between fiction and reality. I make it clear to him that I would never really kill someone---not even that idiot who cut me off while driving him to school. I save all my violent energy for the pages of my manuscript. As for the sex... well, I said I don’t kill people so shouldn’t that be good enough?

HOW A BORING, MARRIED MOM BECAME A HIP, SINGLE CHICK... ON PAPER

The buzz-words in women’s mass-market fiction today are Young! Unattached! Hip!

So what’s a 35 year old, boring, married mother of two, writer like me supposed to do?

Why, think hip, of course!

It isn’t THAT hard. I wasn’t born 35, boring and married. I was Single in the City once, too (in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, as a matter of fact - all hip and happening, chic-lit friendly burgs don’t you know?). And my memory isn’t so far gone that I still can’t summon up those days - once in a while. (Though I do swear that pregnancy hormones performed a lobotomy on at least a portion of my memory... but I can’t remember which part).

The protagonist for my Figure Skating Mystery series, "Murder on Ice" (November 2003), "On Thin Ice" (October 2004), and the upcoming "Axel of Evil" (January 2006) is Bex Levy, a twenty-three year old researcher for the 24/7 television network.

HOW TO MAKE THEM BELIEVE EVERYTHING THEY READ

I just started reading a Chick Lit murder mystery that was released to rave reviews from Publishers Weekly among other periodicals. I’m only on chapter four and I’ve been enjoying it, but now the mystery element has really begun to take off and I find myself asking “Why is the protagonist doing this? Why would anyone take these kinds of unnecessary risks?”

Obviously the protagonist is taking unnecessary risks because cautious people rarely make interesting amateur sleuths. But it does raise an interesting question---how far can you stretch a reader’s suspension of disbelief before you start to annoy them? This is a problem that most fiction writers face, but it becomes particularly problematic in amateur sleuth novels. The fact of the matter is ordinary civilians rarely solve crimes and it’s rare (although perhaps not unheard of) to have a police department filled with disinterested incompetents.

By making my protagonist, Sophie Katz, the target of a kille,r I hoped to create a situation that she was unavoidably drawn into. I also tried to structure the plot in a way that adequately justifies the police’s inability to grasp exactly what was going on without making them look like idiots. I’m not saying my book is realistic, but (hopefully) I have not asked too much of my reader’s suspension of disbelief.

But Sex, Murder And A Double Latte is the first book in a series, and the sequel presented a much bigger problem. I’ve managed to come up with yet another crime that Sophie can’t avoid getting involved in, and I’ve constructed enough twists and turns to keep even the best police force guessing. But there is a problem. You see Sophie and I are approximately the same age, we share the same profession and we’ve both spent the bulk of our lives in San Francisco and other urban areas. Yet, in my thirty-two years of life no one has ever tried to kill me. People try to kill Sophie all the time. Furthermore they do so for many completely different reasons. That makes her life a little unusual and perhaps unbelievable. So I cross my fingers and pray that anyone interested in an amateur sleuth series will be willing to accept the fact that the starring sleuth is an extremely unlucky person. I suppose it’s the difference between the Bond Films and the latest “Charlie’s Angels” movie. No one’s surprised when Bond’s car turns into a plane—most would be disappointed if it didn’t. But when Cameron Diaz was able to distract the entire Korean Army by riding a conveniently placed mechanical bull most of the audience rolled their eyes and advised their friends to wait for the video.

So I suppose the rule of thumb is to know what is acceptable in your genre. You can make up an entire city but you can’t fire 8 shots out of a Smith and Wesson. Your protagonist can run across a dead body on a bi-weekly basis, but if she’s going to investigate she’s going to have to have a semi-realistic motivation.

No matter what you write, there’s always going to be a few people who will say that your book doesn’t ring true, and at least one of them is likely to publish this opinion in a review. But if you can convince the majority of your readership to shelve their cynicism, you’ve successfully mastered the suspension of disbelief. After all, when it comes to novels, the facts can always be molded to fit the fiction.

THE UNBEARABLE WHITENESS OF BEING (BLACK)

My son is African-American.

On his father’s side, he can trace his family history to a Civil War Virginia plantation, and then even further back, to pre-Revolutionary War America.

But my son is also an African-American who looks white.

At one time, this might even have been considered a good thing. He could certainly “pass” for White if he wanted to, and reap all the societal benefits that had to offer.

But this is not that time, and nowdays, I worry about the opposite. I worry that my son will “pass” so well, that it will cause him problems his darker-skinned brother might never encounter.

If they never see his father or grandparents, there is no reason for anyone who knows him to guess that my son is African-American. The dominant culture will simply assume that he is “one of them.” And with that comes it’s own particular dilemma. What happens the first time someone makes a racist joke in his presence, without realizing who he’s talking to? Will my son have to choose between outing himself and risking losing his friends, or keeping quiet and knowing that he allowed the ruse to continue?

Is this a choice any six year old should be forced to make? Any ten year old? Any college student?

Based on his own experiences, my husband worries about his son running for a bus and being stopped by a policeman who wants to know why he’s in such a hurry. He worries about teachers who’ll assume he’s fundamentally inferior, and employers who won’t even go through the motions of an interview.

But I worry about the opposite. I worry about his being told he isn’t “Black enough” by other African-Americans. Of people calling him a half-breed or high-yellow and suggesting he doesn’t deserve to explore that part of his culture. I worry about him hearing, “Oh, but I meant other Black people. You’re different,” and having to come up with a proper way to respond.

Because I do expect him to respond. The fact that some people are idiots is more reason to educate them, not less.

My son is African-American. Don’t let the blue eyes fool you.

WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE ME

Over the last few weeks I’ve been interviewed several times by different periodicals due to the recent release of my novel Sex, Murder And A Double Latte. I’ve learned that there are a few questions that will always come up:

1) What prompted you to write a chick lit murder mystery?
2) Why did you choose to explore the idea of life imitating art?
3) What’s it like to be a biracial woman?

The phrasing of the last question tends to vary—sometimes it’s “What was it like growing up biracial?” or “Are your experiences as a biracial woman similar to those of your protagonist’s?”

But no matter how it’s phrased the question is always saved for last because as hard- hitting as these journalists may normally be they seem to all harbor the fear that the question might not be PC. They needn’t concern themselves with such things; I’m difficult to offend and I’m happy to answer their questions. The problem is that the answer to that particular question isn’t on the tip of my tongue. Up until now I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about my ethnicity.

Like my protagonist my mother is Jewish of Eastern European descent and my father was Black. I have always felt very connected to the Jewish community and I’ve never considered myself to be White, nor has anyone perceived me as such. Puerto Rican, Brazilian, Latina, Middle Eastern, those are all nationalities that have at one point or another been wrongfully applied to me but no one has ever said “Hey, any chance you’re Swedish?”

It’s true that there have been times when I was subjected to both racism and anti-Semitism. But most of the time my race isn’t a big focus for those I interact with. That’s partially because it’s not a big focus for me. I have a lot of things to worry about; my son’s education, balancing work with parenthood, making it as a writer and so on. These are all issues that affect my daily life, so why should I stress about something that is rarely a hindrance?

This is why I get irritated when movies like The Color Purple and Mississippi Burning come out and everyone starts talking about how great it is that there are parts available for Black actors. Congratulating Hollywood for employing minorities to star in movies about the civil rights movement is kind of like giving a school for the blind kudos for providing accommodations for their seeing impaired students. If you want to give props to Hollywood for opening their arms to minority stars then you should use movies like I Robot (with Will Smith) and Die Another Day (with Halle Berry) as the basis for your opinion. It’s nice that there are movies out there that feature Black actors living the “Black experience” but it’s also necessary that we have movies that show actors dealing with everyday life who just happen to be Black. Of course ‘everyday life’ in a Hollywood flick may consist of finding a secret treasure or fighting sexy vampires but you get the idea.

The same rules apply to literature. Almost every book featuring a Black protagonist that is marketed to the mass population deals with the “Black experience” (read slavery, racism and the fight against unfair stereotypes). But if the book is just about an African- American dealing with experiences outside of the race issue then it is only marketed to an African American readership. That’s why I’m so thrilled about Sophie Katz, my protagonist for Sex, Murder And A Double Latte. Most of the marketing material Red Dress Ink has put out regarding Sex, Murder And A Double Latte doesn’t even mention Sophie’s race. Nor was it brought up in the review in Cosmopolitan magazine or in the Romantic Times review. From the feedback I’ve been getting most readers don’t think of Sophie as being Black or biracial. They just think of her as being Sophie.

That’s pretty much what its like to be me.

IF BOOKS WERE COFFEE

Elizabeth George’s books would be double soy lattes--European with an American sensibility.

Stephan King: coffee---black, dark roast. This isn’t for the faint of heart.

Grisham books are kind of like those bottled frappuccinos they sell in every store across the continent.

Janet Evanovich’s books are the standard coffee frappuccinos ---those babies are consistent best sellers. Perhaps that’s because unlike espresso drinks when you order a Frappuccino you know exactly what to expect.

Linda Howard’s books are the White Moch’s of the literary world. Buy one when you’re in the mood for something sweet. (throw in an added shot for her slightly darker mysteries).

Sue Grafton --- Espresso con panna. When you see the whipped cream you expect it to be frothy but then you get to the dark espresso underneath and you realize that this beverage has bite.

Carl Haaisen’s books are Light White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccinos with extra whipped cream. It’s kind of silly but still fun to drink.

JK Rowley’s Harry Potter series ---Mexican Hot Chocolate---suitable for kids but just spicy enough to be enjoyable for adults.

Laurie King ---Espresso Chai--- the perfect drink for those who are open to something different and on the alternative side.

Dan Brown ---Well lets face it, The Da Vinci Code has surpassed coffee and gone into coca-cola mode. Do you really know anyone who hasn’t had a coke yet?

Until the next issue!
All the best from Alina & Kyra!