Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers - November 15, 2013 Edition (And, this one's OFFICIAL!)

Here I thought I was toiling alone on Fridays, clearing out my bloggy fridge. But then I learn (why did it take me six years to learn this?) that there's a official day named after this activity -- and, it is today. Yes, today is National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day, started I don't know when by who knows who (though some say it was Whirlpool in 1995.) So let's get those rubber gloves on and get to it!

> The Virginia Quarterly Review has begun a new series, "Writer Dad," the counterbalance perhaps to the mountains of words on how women writers juggle. The first, now up, features Tobias Buckell. 

> I'm a big fan of Roger Rosenblatt's nonfiction, so I loved this PBS interview with Judy Woodruff, in which he discussed the slightly different way in which he views memoir writing and memory (see especially the final 3 minutes).

> When I was a kid, my father gave me tips on how to ask for something from "higher ups" -- make eye contact, shake hands, etc. Today, we writers need to know how to ask for things (blurbs, an agent referral, an introduction to an editor) via email.

> Memoirist Constance Adler -- and her publisher, a reputable university press -- were nearly duped by a scam "book festival awards program". Rather than shrug and move on, Adler went into investigative reporting mode, named names, and emerged with a fine piece of nonfiction narrative, now up at Blackbird.

> From one bloomer boomer to another, thanks Kim Triedman for "Writing Out of Middle Age," over at Beyond the Margins.

> Maybe you've already seen Diane Lockward's post about the specific upside to some of her rejections, as it's been linked to a lot this week, but I think it's worth a little more passing  on. 

> On Small Business Saturday (two days after Thanksgiving), the workforce will grow at more than 100 independent bookstores, when authors will be hand-selling books to customers. The effort began with a challenge from Sherman Alexie in September, and by now, hundreds of authors have signed on. Indiebound has maps, lists, etc; in some stores, a half-dozen authors are volunteering, including a slew of meganames (including Cheryl Strayed, Margot Livesey, Richard Russo, Dave Barry, and Alexie), all interacting and recommending books based on shoppers' interests.

> Canadian author J. Kent Messum has some important words about something wonderful every writer needs:  tough love.

> Finally, in case you're interested in doing the hygiene deed, here are some no-nonsense, no-kidding tips for a healthy fridge cleanse (the real kind).

Have a great weekend.

Guest Blogger Ruth Foley on: Poem Series That Take You Hostage, and Three Possible Escape Routes

I didn't know any poets before pursuing my MFA degree, but at Stonecoast, I quickly got to know many. It was through poets – individuals I liked and listened to, talking about their craft – that I learned to appreciate poetry; so much so that I now begin every nonfiction class I teach with a poem. Ruth Foley was at Stonecoast while I was there, but I really got to "know" Ruth after the MFA, connecting on social media, through mutual writing friends, and alumni updates. (I think I developed a little crush on her with her series of posts about weight loss at her blog Five Things,) Ruth is managing editor at Cider Press Review, a member of the writing faculty at Wheaton College (Massachusetts), and teaches workshops at The Barred Owl Retreat. Her poems appear in many places, including Rattle, River Styx, The Bellingham Review, Sweet, and Bluestem, and her new chapbook, Dear Turquoise, is available from Dancing Girl Press.

Please welcome Ruth Foley.    

I have never intentionally begun work on a series of linked poems, but three times, they have begun work on me.  Each time, I found the experience to be a little like possession—I stare off into space a lot, have trouble getting my other work done, and babble endlessly without making much sense.

As a poet, I'm used to brief possessions, a poem taking me over until it's finished with me, but when it becomes clear that I'm working on not a single poem but a series, I've learned to go along for the ride. A friend told me recently that he's begun to apply a rule he learned in aikido: it is best not to try to stop a powerful force. If you're lucky, you might be able to direct it, but if you try to get in its way, you're in for a flattening.

An individual poem is, in some ways, easy to handle. It's almost always small enough for me to keep in my head, for one thing, which means I can walk away from it once I have a workable draft. I'll go make dinner, walk the dogs, go for a run, take a shower—almost any activity will suffice—all the while turning the possibilities over in my mind. I'll make a mental list of rhyming words; I'll spend some time trying to figure out the right texture of an object I'm describing, the qualities of a specific tone I'm looking to capture, or looking up variations of color names; I'll test out rhythms and line breaks; I'll work out the details of a metaphor. Any aspect of a single poem is available to me at this point, largely because the form is compact, easily contained.

A series, however, isn't so compliant. The poems in a series are likely to take on multiple angles. Some of them might be free-verse, while others are in a received or nonce form. They can use different perspectives and speakers, different language, different tones. Though related in theme, their specific topics often vary. Writing a series is an opportunity to explore a topic in depth, and because of that, there's often no time at all between my finishing a draft of one poem and beginning work on a brand new one. Sometimes, I finish a draft and believe—rightly or wrongly—that I've made it through the generative stage of the series-writing process. Sometimes, I finish a draft knowing there are three more poems lined up behind it, and maybe more behind those.

When a series takes me hostage, often I can do nothing else. I spend all of my free time—and some time that isn't technically free—mulling ideas, thinking about the last poem or the next, wondering when it will be finished with me. I know that eventually I'll have to sort through what I've written, discard the redundant poems in favor of ones that handle their particular aspect of the topic more successfully, and revise the promising poems, but when the series is in control, there's no point in worrying about any of those tasks.

Thus, my advice for living with the creative stage of a series: just go with it.

As with individual poems, when a series is finished with me, I know it. When this happens, I often find myself taking a brief break from poetry, sometimes from literary endeavor altogether—I'll read a crime novel, maybe, or watch some terrible television. Eventually, I start to wonder, What exactly am I going to do with all these poems I just wrote?

While one of poetry's sad realities is its limited market, that is also one of its advantages, as poets can choose between submitting a series of poems individually or together to traditional print literary journals, to online journals and poetry websites, and as part of a longer collection; and we also sometimes have the option of self-publishing, be it online or in chapbook form (though publishing a full-length collection through a vanity press still carries a stigma, and often rightly so). This means that any of my series could appear as individual pieces in journals, as chapbooks, or as part of a larger collection.

For me, the right method of publication for each series I have written so far has been different. The first is a set of what I came to call "the infidelity poems"—they felt personal and real despite being fictional. While they might have made a good chapbook, they also risked becoming overwhelming when read as a whole. For that reason, I decided to send them out individually, where most of them eventually found homes in journals.

The second is a series of poems inspired by the Universal monster movies of the 1930s and '40s. I became obsessed for a time with the archetypes—the mad scientist, the specific visions of some of the monsters, the villagers—developed in those films, and with the actors who helped create them. This is, in some ways, the most complicated of my series, because it's most at risk for misinterpretation. They're not monster poems or Halloween poems, but poems about what it means to be human; and for two years I was unable to decide what to do with them. Some ended up in journals, but because so many of them seem to belong surrounded by others in the series, I eventually decided to put them together myself into a chapbook called Creature Feature, a process I'm undertaking right now.

The final series is difficult for other reasons. Styled as a series of letters written to my cousin Turquoise after it became clear she would not win her battle with liver cancer, these poems are deeply personal. While I've included a small handful of them in the chapbook  Dear Turquoise (from Dancing Girl Press), it felt to me that collecting them as a whole might become overwhelming for a reader. In fact, I was reluctant to send them to journals, even in small batches. There is no gap in these poems between the "speaker" and the poet—both are very clearly me, the poet, and the subject is very clearly my grief. It was important to me that I find the perfect way of putting these poems out into the world—I kept saying that I needed to do right by these poems, because publishing them in the wrong way would cheapen them.

A few months ago, I realized that the poems could serve as thematic anchors for a longer collection, so although they could certainly fill a dedicated section of my book-length manuscript, I've chosen to weave them throughout as guideposts along a larger route through the book. There, they feel settled, at home, honored. Will a wise editor agree with me? That remains to be seen.

I'm comfortable with my decisions about the three series that so far have come to me. Working with a series—both the writing and the publishing options—can teach us more about who we are as poets and the place we want our work to take readers.

 Note from Lisa:  You can watch a video of Ruth reading one of the Dear Turquoise poems (and 2 others) at the Extract(s) site. Two of her monster movie poems ("Dear Dr. Griffin" and "Dear Ardath Bey") are up at Forge.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- November 8, 2013 Edition

> Here's a beautifully succinct, but substantial piece, by Stephanie G'Schwind at Essay Daily, on parallel narratives in essay, with links to illustrative essays in the Colorado Review (hat tip - Brevity blog).

> Like podcasts about writing, book publishing, and marketing? Thanks to Marion Roach Smith (who has a terrific blog on memoir writing), for alerting me to this trove of more than 160 podcasts by Joanna Penn over at her Creative Penn site, also a vital resource. 

> On YouTube, coach Debbie Reber is compiling a series of (mostly-under three minute) answers to commonly asked questions, such as the importance of the title of a book, what permissions are needed, the difference between royalties and an advance, when book promotion should begin.

> Very cool Tumblr -- self-pics of writers at work at Every Day I Write The Books. No carefully made-up, staged shots here, just regular folks cranking out the words, wherever, whenever. Any writer can send in their own photo.

> Wooden Horse Publishing asks an intellectual law attorney to explain the intersection of copyright and the web (and whether everything on Facebook is up for grabs).

> Not new, but helpful: Jane Friedman with a comprehensive, clear breakdown to help you "Understand the Key Book Publishing Paths" (pdf) -- traditional, partnership, fully assisted, DIY plus distributor, and DIY direct. Plus "special and hard to classify cases."

> A few months ago, Vela Blog posted an "Unlisted List" of women writers (dozens and dozens of them, with links to their work!): "A list of women writers of various forms of creative nonfiction that future list-makers and anthologists, should they notice that their inclusion of women is on the paltry side, might peruse and thereby make their “bests” and “greats” better and greater, their collections more representative of the world we live in, rather than reminiscent still of those dead white guys we were raised up on..." Plus, lots of additional suggestions in the many comments.

> Still mystified by Twitter, or just a late adopter?  The New York Times' Personal Tech blog breaks it down. 

> Finally, the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad business of being a successful best-selling author. Yes, lots of non-writing tasks are required. Yes, those activities squeeze out writing time. But, seriously?


Have a great weekend!

Every Writer Can Get Something Out of NaNo -- Whether Signed Up or Not

NaNo-ing or not?

Are you one of the 287,052 writers participating in National Novel Writing Month? 

I'm not, lots of writers I know are, but either way, signed up or not, there's a lot about NaNo that can help a writer.

And not only novelists, either. Plenty of NaNo writers are working on memoirs, poetry, children's books, essays collections, general nonfiction, plays. And writers of all kinds can learn something from how NaNo is designed.

The concept travels well across the literary landscape:  You commit to banishing your inner critic, to keep moving forward without dropping back to revise or edit; you commit to keep track of your word counts, to be accountable, and at the end of a month, you have at least 50,000 words (do-able at a daily rate of  about 1667 words).

You get to say I Did It!

That alone is a good thing, because writers so often say the opposite:  I never got around to finishing X.  I planned to write Y but life got in the way. I can't seem to get going (or keep going) with Z.

I completed the NaNo sprint twice in the last five years, but instead of expecting to end the month with a draft of a book manuscript, I used the motivation and group peer pressure, the sweep of public let's-all-get-it-written, and the external productivity and accountability tools to carry me along toward private goals, accumulating pages that would feed several projects.

Whether you're "doing NaNo" or not this year, you can still benefit from the wave of NaNo mania that is certainly showing up in your social media stream. Maybe you don't want to write 50,000 words in a month (there are good reasons NOT to!), or your writing goals and projects are in different stages right now than would benefit from such a blitz.

But you can take the time now, while many writers around you are re-dedicating themselves to meeting daily word counts, to ask yourself if you're meeting your daily word or page or time-in-writing-chair goals. Is your manuscript draft humming along?  Are you visiting it often enough? 

In less than two months, you'll be asking yourself what you got done as a writer this year. Maybe November – NaNo or not – is a great time to begin taking stock, while there's still time to do something about it.

Are the chapters moldering?  Are you watching reruns instead of revising?  Have your submissions slacked off? 

For many smart writers who don't expect to come out of NaNo with anything other than a stack of pages that need an awful lot of work, the real reason we all need a productivity boost once in a while is just that: You emerge with pages that need work, pages that you can work on, revise, edit. And isn't that the goal of every writer, every day, every month anyway? To end up with pages filled with words? Because you know what you can't do with a blank page, right?

Looking Inside: Creative Nonfiction in the Fall Issue of Compose

Excuse me for kvelling just a little. (Can an Italian Catholic girl kvell? Nevermind.) I'll just say the Fall 2013 issue of Compose journal is now live and it's lovely. I began as creative nonfiction editor this spring and from the start I knew that founder/managing editor Suzannah Windsor (I interviewed her here), would make sure every aspect of it was excellent, and I've loved being part of a group of editors who are interesting folks.

It's been fun, instructive, challenging, frustrating, and surprising to be involved in my first issue from start to finish – soliciting, reading, selecting (and yes, declining – that's the frustrating part), and editing. I'm proud of the CNF pieces which appear, and working directly with the writers of each piece was one of the most gratifying things I've ever done – and I'm jazzed that I get to do it again for the Spring 2014 issue, and again.

Here's a little tour of the creative nonfiction section.

Because it's likely to make you a little sad in a very good way, depending on the type of person/reader you are, either begin or end with Eliana Ramage's lovely short essay of remembrance, 26 Tea Lights.

Then turn to Lori Horvitz's Little Pink Hatchling, a tale of a college coupling and the messy ways it continues, and doesn't, and does, and ends. Plus, a side of Italian ice.

If you've ever inherited something from a loved one – and then that treasured item was lost from your life  – you will understand the heart of Milena Nigam's Stolen Family Jewelry, and Other Gifts. Actually, I take back the part about inheritance. Anyone who has loved and lost – anything – will find her/himself in Milena's story.

I love a piece of prose that feels like poetry, but is also very clearly creative nonfiction, a piece with brevity and verve, snap and grit, a little mystery and moxie, and that's what Lita Kurth brings to Red on White. Hard to describe, so I won't:  Read it and you'll get it, and be glad you did.

Finally, listen in on Ana Consuelo Matiella as she muses on a certain aunt from her Mexican childhood, an image on a bottle of tequila, and a sudden midlife shift, in La Viuda-The Widow. The turn at the end is delicious.

There's fine fiction and poetry and artwork on offer too, as well as features and craft pieces to feed the writer, from three favorite nonfiction writers/teachers: Marion Roach Smith on Time Management;  Beth Kephart with an excerpt from her new memoir writing book; and Katrina Kenison on the value she found in a reader's nasty email.

Take a look. Read. Maybe submit something to Compose for the next issue. Or submit anywhere.

Many people have said this, and I always wanted to believe though had my doubts, but now I know it's true:  Editors everywhere, at every journal – are waiting, hoping to find something great, something unexpected in the submissions inbox. Surprise one of them.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers - November 1, 2013 Edition

> Have I ever mentioned how much I love the How We Spend Our Days series over at Cynthia Newberry Martin's terrific Catching Days blog?  Well I do. In the newest one, novelist Rebecca Makkei explains how she gets the writing done in between the 70 other demands on her time -- and why a time out is a blessing.

> Good Housekeeping magazine is launching SheBooks, an ebook publishing venture, and they're on the lookout for memoir pieces on aspects of mothering, in the 3000 - 7500 word range.

> If you're writing about 1850 words a day during November  -- whether officially participating in NaNoWriMo or like me, doing your own variation on it (writing 50K words in a month on several projects) -- here's a simple word count meter you can slap up on your blog, tumbler or website. 

> Not a new list, but a potentially helpful one: Literary Magazines That Pay.

> So Amazon has published its first...literary journal, titled Day One, available by subscription in digital formats. Here's the spin  official info. Some cursory digging didn't yield an answer to whether it belongs on a list like the one mentioned just above. 

> Preserving writing time vs. building a social media presence. Laura Harrington weighs in on the modern author's struggle.

> Being interviewed (or conducting one), or recording a podcast over Skype? Mystery novelist Elizabeth Craig offers a checklist. 

> You know I love writing prompts. Here are enough to get you through a month.

> Finally: Before my husband and kids surprised me with a Nook HD+ (which I love!), I resisted an e-reader for reasons I no longer remember. Now, I keep trying to explain why I don't want, won't get, and enjoy not having, an iPhone. And while I do have a semi-smart phone (I can check email but that's about it), I still mostly agree with Mary McGrath's reasons for resisting. (But check back after Santa has his way with me.)

Have a great weekend!

Thinking: An undervalued, vital part of writing.

Let me think.

Factoring in time to think, that will probably take about….

Think about that some more.

Rethink this.

Wait. I'm thinking.

Hmm…but what do you really think?

The above are things I say at various points in the drafting, writing, revision, editing, or rewriting process.

I say them to myself.

Reminding myself about the need to factor in thinking time – as a preamble to the drafting time, within the writing time, around the editing time, as part of the research time, before and during the revision time – has become something I do now as a matter of course.

This wasn't always the case.

Time was, I didn't give a thought to thinking time. It happened, of course, but often as a side effect, a belated blip, the thing that popped up and slowed me down.

Now I try hard to recognize, and honor, the time we need to think. About how to approach a topic. About what a story is really about – underneath the topline situation, the this-happened-then-that-happened. About why I'm writing about some particular thing in the first place, and how I could make it better.

About what needs to happen on the page, about why I'm even at the page.

I'm also learning to take, or to ask for (or find a way to insert, quietly), time to think more deliberately before responding to requests, prospective projects, the occasional mean-spirited or disturbing comment, and to my own knee-jerk reactions.

But mostly, I'm now honoring the time that is a vital  -- and largely undervalued and unrecognized – part of writing.

What do you think?

Stuff My Writing Students Say, Part 15

"I'm just not that into this assignment."

I give out an assignment in a nonfiction writing class. It typically has well-defined parameters, an assignment specifically designed to flex a new or developing writing muscle, with a word count that makes sense for the time that will elapse between assignment and due date. An assignment that will subtly force the writers to edge just outside their writing comfort zone, or to engage with a sticky craft concept we've been covering, or to introduce a new way of working with prose or approaching a familiar form in a new way (a personal essay in second person).

It's not that I want to inhibit a student writer's imagination, limit their subjects, or promote a particular aesthetic. Rather, I want them to stretch, to try something new or something hard or sometimes just something else. And yes, I have a reason, which might not always be apparent at the moment.

Mind you, it's almost never an assignment that would stretch over more than one-third of the class sessions, and usually it's simply a one-week project. And – and this is important – I'm talking here about organized, instructional-based classes in writing development; not workshop-style sessions where the underlying assumption is that you write what you like any way you like it, for any reason you may have. Here we are talking about a class which built on the assumption that assignments will be made, that such assignments will help develop and polish writing skills.

So, the assignment is made, and inevitably, someone complains/explains, "I'm just not really interested in that assignment.  Maybe I can do something else instead."

Reasons?  Oh, plenty:  I've never liked doing X.  I'm short on time and Y will be easier. I'm just really into Y right now.  I can't see how doing/writing X will help me.  I'm trying to write a book, and there won't be anything like X in it. I'm on a roll in my other writing and don't want to distract myself with X.  It seems like busywork. How can this possibly help my writing?

To which I reply: I understand, I get it, I've been there. 

But that's the assignment. Try it. See what happens.

My reasons: You may learn something. You may surprise yourself. You may like it. You may not like it. You may figure something out about yourself as a writer. You may have fun. You may be miserable, but still find a way to complete the assignment – and pass another milestone on the way to being a grown-up writer.

You may find, as I did many times when I completed assignments I initially groaned about, that sometimes the best response is no response. The best response to an assignment in an instructional-based class is simply to do it. Write it.

You may find (maybe not right away, but eventually), as I did on several occasions, a door or a window or a crack you've never once thought of seeking out on your own. You may find that through that door or window or crack is the small beckoning stream of light that opens you up to something new and wonderful, on the page, in your writer's mind.

Try it. See what happens.*

You can read the first 14 installments of Stuff My Students Say here.

* I use this simple two-sentence bit of advice all the time, something I cribbed from a writer I admire enormously, Leslea Newman.

The Personal Essay and Me: The sudden path from zero to urgent

Had you asked me a year ago if I would ever be writing about the Jersey Shore, the answer would have been "probably not." Although I'm a native born, lifelong Jersey Girl -- I don't pump my own gas; I love Bruce Springsteen, like Bon Jovi, and eat in diners -- unlike almost every Jersey Girl I've ever known, I never developed an early childhood crush for the Jersey Shore. 

For me, The Shore is a place I learned to appreciate only long after I'd initially dismissed it -- something I thought little about until after Hurricane Sandy destroyed so much of the Shore last fall. Which is when I began writing about my complicated relationship with this iconic part of my home state.

For me, this is how it is with essays and personal nonfiction narratives: one day a topic is of no appeal, and the next, I have something to say, and urgently. This is how an essay begins for me -- a moment, an awakening, a realization, an urge; that itch that won't go away until I pay attention, on paper.

The eventual essay that I began in November 2012, titled "Not a Shore Thing," is now live -- just ahead of the one-year anniversary of the storm's destruction -- over at bioStories, a lovely online home for personal stories.

Here's an excerpt:

....When I was about eight, I sashayed about my living room, empty Coke bottle in hand, singing along to the Drifters' sixties classic Under the Boardwalk. I hoped and wondered if I'd be kissed on a warm blanket in the slatted shade, people walking above. Eventually, I was that girl, or at least a version of her, though the kissing all took place right on the Boardwalk: some stringy blond boy whose name I'd forget, a high school boyfriend, my fiancé.  
        But before any of that, and even during some of that, I was a shore snob.
        My parents were to blame -- if showing your child the world beyond one's home state has anything to do with blame. When my father, an early polyester manufacturer, wanted to get away, he meant an airplane ride and five-star resort, where the beach was just one of 18 amenities. Boardwalk games, un-air conditioned rentals, motel pools, and waffles and ice cream were something other kids told me about...

You can read the whole piece here.  And please do drop in at bioStories from time to time, where editor Mark Leichliter posts new essays every five weeks or so.

(Image: Flickr Creative Commons / b0janagles)

Guest Blogger Karen Pullen on Writers Police Academy. Or, Wake Up and Smell the C4

One of the best parts about Stonecoast, the MFA program I completed, was the opportunity to meet writers in other genres – fiction and poetry of course, but Stonecoast offers one of the nation's only MFA concentrations in popular fiction. Which is how a nonfiction writer like me got friendly with Karen Pullen.  Karen's debut mystery novel, Cold Feet (published by Five Star Cengage), was released in hardback in January, and in ebook format last month. She's published stories in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Spinetingler, Every Day Fiction and anthologies, and teaches occasional workshops at Central Carolina Community College.

Please welcome Karen Pullen.

The typical mystery writer is a voracious reader who made her literary way from Nancy Drew to Agatha Christie and now devours Ruth Rendell, PD James, and Sue Grafton. She’s probably an introvert, a homebody, a mild  soul. She owns cats. She’s a mom, a teacher, a social worker, a librarian.  (No kidding, this description fits me and 90 percent of the mystery writers I know.)

Her only contact with law enforcement and the criminal justice system has been jury duty and her vote for a sheriff. She’s never been in a jail, known anyone who went to prison, compared fingerprints, interpreted blood spatter, or interviewed a “person of interest.”

But her readers expect and deserve authenticity, whether she’s writing about the FBI, evidence analysis, or the local police department.

So what’s a writer to do? How can she write convincingly of courtroom procedure, forensics, prison, DNA evidence, drug smuggling, human trafficking – with virtually no personal experience?

Lee Lofland – retired police investigator, author and consultant -- to the rescue. Four years ago, he organized an intensive three-day, hands-on conference held at Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown NC, the site of a law enforcement, EMS, and firefighter training facility --  Writers’ Police Academy. 

WPA is a blast.  I’ve been twice. In 2012, I managed to squeeze in less than half the offerings, so of course I had to go back, along with about 160 other mystery writers.

 This year’s WPA began with a vehicle extrication. We watched a heavy rescue team take apart a car by prying open doors, removing its roof and lifting the dashboard. Impressive teamwork.

Heavy Rescue 1, car 0.

Kathy Bradley, a writer, smart lady, and juvenile court DA from Georgia, told us how to get it right in the courtroom – the layout, who’s there, order of business.  So many details! For example, I didn’t know that a defendant can waive a jury trial and ask for a bench trial before a judge, when the crime is so heinous that a jury won’t be sympathetic. And the most important characters in the courtroom? Lawyers, with witnesses a close second.

The chief of police of Thibodaux, Louisiana, Scott Silverii, gave an overview of law enforcement organizations and their structure, and told us fascinating anecdotes about small-town policing after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated his area. Did you know that it’s better to be stopped for speeding by a sheriff’s deputy than a policeman? Since sheriffs are elected, they court good will. Scott also shared the three most common calls to a police department: false alarms, animal complaints, and keys locked in car. Not very glamorous!

Dr. Dan Krane, a professor and DNA expert, described the science of  DNA analysis and also the potential for misuse of DNA as evidence.  DNA can be planted, old, transferred innocently, contaminated in the lab, or misinterpreted.  I’m definitely going to watch his videos. DNA misuse would make a twisty mystery plot.

When we gathered outside on Saturday morning, someone observed an abandoned backpack and summoned a bomb squad.  Reno, a beautiful German Shepard and trained bomb-sniffer alerted to explosives in the backpack.  A remote-controlled robot picked it up and carried it farther away, then a technician in a bomb suit laid a charge next to it, to be detonated remotely. Phew! We were safe, and wiser in the ways of bomb squads.

Even the bloggers among us found too much to describe – ride-alongs, firearms training simulation, underwater evidence recovery, traffic stops, new recruit training, building search, microbiology, fire scene investigation, arrest techniques, street prostitution, cold case investigation. The professionals were there to teach us what they do, the departments to bring their equipment to demonstrate, the scientists to explain the research. 

Equally important to me were the personalities. Generally speaking, I find cops to be reserved, wary. They are not selling anything, they are not trying to entertain. At WPA, they seemed to uphold my impressions -- protective of each other, skilled, committed, and preferring never to fire their weapon. They answered any number of questions honestly, fully, and carefully. They seemed to appreciate the opportunity to explain so writers could get our facts right.

My chapter of Sisters in Crime, a national organization for women mystery writers,

subsidizes members’ cost for WPA, making it very affordable for seven members of our chapter (only $100 each for the three days).

WPA sells out very quickly, and no wonder. It’s the coolest, most exciting (writing, or maybe any!) conference I’ve ever attended.

Note:  Karen will stop by the blog several times over the next few days, to answer any questions you'd like to ask her, about the WPA, mystery writing, her book, etc. Just leave it in comments.