Category Archives: Mystery Writing Workshop

Mystery Making and a Book Fair with Sisters in Crime- NE

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I recently had a ball  with Sisters in Crime New England appearances.  On February 11, I joined Ursula Wong, Edwin Hill, and Tilia Klebenov Jacobs for a session of Mystery Making at the Warwick Public Library.
We had a wonderful time working with the audience to create a mystery from their suggestions that included a standard-poodle service dog and a black-leather-clad martial arts femme fatale, both named Angelica; a retired detective with a Welsh name living on the Cape with the service dog; a baker of dog treats with a dark hidden life; a busybody who thinks she’s Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher rolled into one; and trafficking in illegal human organs!  I got to be the MC, writing up all the suggestions on a white board and helping audience and panel alike draw their thoughts together – those teaching skills never cease to find an outlet!  How do the authors and audience put this kind of thing together?!  If you think such an adventure would be fun or inspiring for your library, school, book club, etc., click here for details from the Sisters in Crime Speakers Bureau on how to set up something.
I also had fun at the Cumberland Library Book Fair.  The library is located in a former monastery and surrounded by woods full of trails.  Gorgeous!

There were lots of folks from Sisters in Crime there, like Arlene Kay, Dale Phillips, Leslie Wheeler, Nicole Asselin, to name a few.  I made sure to wear by best 1948 ensemble, including the nylons with the seam up the back.  I also have several appearances lined up for March and April.  On Monday, March 16, I’ll be at the North Reading Library, hosting a showing of Walter Wanger’s 1940 warning to Americans about the true danger of Nazism, The Man I Married.  The film raises many telling points about how easy it is for people to be sucked in by Fascism and racism, sadly still relevant.  And it’s worth seeing just to catch Joan Bennett kicking Nazis! On April 4th (11:30), I’ll be doing a reading and signing at the Whitinsville Social Library; on April 16th (7:00), I’m doing another Sisters in Crime Mystery Making session at the Groton Public Library.  Click here for more details on my Appearances and Events Page.  Come see me!

 

Mystery Making with Sisters in Crime in Vermont

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Recently, I had the fun experience of being involved in the Sisters in Crime panel Mystery Making at the Brattleboro Literary Festival in Vermont.  The authors with whom I participated were Sadie Hartwell and Max Folsom.  Lisa Lieberman was our MC. This panel is quite unique, challenging our creativity and drawing in the audience to  craft a mystery with us.  How does it all work?

The audience members are all given index cards and asked to write on a separate card:  a character name, a motive for murder,  a method for murder, and a location.  Each of the three members of the panel circulates with a bags for each category, and the audience puts the appropriate card in the designated bag.  Then, under the direction of our MC, the fun begins. Starting with names, each of the panelists selects a card from the bag, and we have to come up with a character whom we think goes with that name, including a back story and how the character fits into the story.  Sleuth? Suspect?  Victim?  Sidekick?.  Then we go through each of the other bags and create a story around the locations, murder methods, and motives, working with each other and the audience to resolve conflicts and develop the intricacies of a mystery plot. Lisa kept track of the projections on a white board in the front of the theatre. I was so impressed when my husband Yang jumped in from the audience to explain how you could have  a poisoning by tofu!

Initially, I had a little trepidation about whether I would be up to the task, ad libbing a story, but I had a ball! We ended up with an intriguing tale about a vengeful love child, a shady importer, a socialite with a stripper’s past,  a militant health food maven, a deceptive scuba expert, the Nobel Prize, and, of course, poisonous tofu.

 

The Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro was quite the venue!  An art deco theatre, likely from the 1920s, this building had gorgeous statues, mosiacs, carvings, and Spider Man.  How did Spidey get in there?  Listen, bud, he’s got radioactive blood.  He can do whatever he wants.

 

 

Mystery Making is a session that is available for libraries, schools, festivals, etc. through the Sisters in Crime New England Speakers Bureau.  Usually, there is a fee, but under certain circumstances, there may not be.  Check out the web site for details at Sisters in Crime New England.

 

Passport to Adventure: WSU Writers Workshop

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On Friday, April 26th, I had the pleasure of joining Lisa Lieberman in presenting the writing workshop “Passport to Adventure” at Worcester State University.  Like me, Lisa writes historical mysteries.  Hers follow the adventures and intrigues of Cara Walden from 1950s Hollywood to England and Italy (special guest appearance by Cary Grant!) to Hungary during the Revolution and soon to Indochina.  Lisa is also Vice President of Sisters in Crime New England.  In that role she’s been working to bring new blood, so to speak, into our organization.  This fun work shop is one means she is rolling out to do so.  I was happy that she asked me to join her.
To give you an idea of how fun and inspirational this work shop is, here’s Lisa’s description: “The Surrealists used to pool their money and buy a one-way ticket to the furthest destination they could afford. They’d send one person off on an adventure and they’d have to make their way back somehow, and tell the others all about it when they returned.  Along they way, they’d collect talismans that helped them navigate the dark places they encountered. In this workshop, we’ll be sending each of you off on an adventure and when  you get back, you’ll have the outline of a short story.”
Of course, we didn’t literally send anyone off ‑ that would be a really long workshop.  More pragmatically, we had a display of all kinds of intriguing objects from which participants could choose for the “talismans” or souvenirs. For a destination for their journey into the mysterious, we had them select one sealed envelope from an array, each with a different noir image to inspire their journey into creativity.  They had time allotted to get started on who one character in the image was and what his/her concern was.  Then, to spice things even more, I got to do individual tarot reading of past, present, and future of their characters ‑ which would aid them in thinking through where their characters had been, what conflict they were in now, and how that conflict might be resolved.  It was fun for me to give vague interpretations of the cards and then watch our writers run with them, already inspired by their images and selected souvenirs.  Wonderfully, the writers all seemed pretty well pleased with what they had come up with and planned to continue their tales.  One fellow even told me he had finished his short story and had submitted it to the Al Blanchard Short Fiction Contest.  Since he’s one of my students, of course, I’m pulling for him to win!
Our faculty liaison, Cleve Wiese was so excited by our endeavors, that he not only now has a story he wants to finish, but asked us to come back next fall to do the session with the WSU writers’ club INK.  Another faculty member wants us to do the workshop with his course The Writers Life in the spring!  And here’s the good news for everyone else out there!  Lisa and I would be delighted to come to schools or writers’ groups to do the workshop as well!  So let me or Lisa know if you would like us to work with you.  Once again, Sisters in Crime is out there making a difference for writers, published and unpublished!  Joining was one of the best decisions I ever made!