Author: Elizabeth Spann Craig

I know y’all think I spend more time at the grocery store than any other place…and you’d be right. I just can’t seem to organize my food menus enough to keep from going to the store every other day.

So I was there yesterday, in a tearing hurry. The school bus was depositing my 3^rd grader in 30 minutes but we were out of yogurt and napkins.

The cart, naturally, was $65.00 full by the time I got to the cash register. I’d realized all the things that I was out of while I walked through the store. On top of that, I was hungry, which is a huge no-no when grocery shopping.

So, still in the wild frenzy, I race up to the checkout and start pulling out cans of cream of something soup. Then, who should come up behind me but a lady with only a few items.

My personal rule is that people with only a handful of items go in front of me. All the time. It results in good karma the next time I go to the store for only sugar. But…the school bus. And my frenzy. And she might be one of those people who pays with dimes and quarters. And…

So I started off pretending I didn’t see her and unloaded my cart. By this time the customer in front of me was finished paying.

I couldn’t stand it. It was my personal rule! I quickly stopped the cashier before she started scanning my things and asked, “Would you like to go ahead?”

Fortunately, this lady apparently had nothing else in life to get to because she said, “Well aren’t you sweet! No, hon, you go right ahead.”

Hot diggity dog!

As for the writing?

I have a personal rule—I go with editorial suggestions. It’s a policy that has served me well. Once it gets into an editor’s hands, I truly think of the book as a collaboration and not my baby anymore.

I was asked to incorporate a particular idea into a book. And I did. I wrote it in and wove it into my story.

Except I thought there might be a problem with one aspect of the addition.

As I continued writing, I saw the problem grow.

I decided to continue writing the idea. Following editorial direction is my personal rule! It results in good karma. I’m easy to work with. I like to do a Good Job.

Sure enough…there ended up being a problem.

Fortunately, after the issue was realized by the editor, I had a great idea for getting out of the problem and still incorporate a part of the original idea.

Following both personal rules served me well. The lady beamed at me for asking if she wanted to go first—I played nice and still got home in time. I followed editorial direction, was a team player, and was able to tweak the problem area later.

Do you have certain rules or principles that guide you each day? Do you stubbornly stay the course like me? Do your personal rules ever lead you astray, or do they work out in the end?

I’m one of those people who has a really tough time writing settings if I’m not looking at the setting I’m writing.

This is why I acted like an insane tourist in Memphis and took hundreds of pictures of…everything. Who knows what might be needed for a future book? I believe I frightened the good people of the Peabody hotel.

I’m also a fan of snapping pics of abandoned houses, old barns, and decrepit rural downtowns. They tell a story. And may host a few ghosts.

Daylight Noir: Raymond Chandler’s Imagined City by Catherine Corman was a full of Los Angeles locales that told stories. And that likely had a ghost or two wandering around.

Corman, in the book’s introduction, explains that Chandler created a world in Los Angeles that’s full of falsehoods:

I first discovered the book on Lesa’s Book Critiques blog. To me, it’s a great tool for capturing a mood. The author of the book has cleverly included quotes from Raymond Chandler’s novels on each page. The black and white photos, the sharp angles of the buildings and the shadows they create are very evocative…to me it lends a lonely, deserted feel to each picture.

There’s also a certain seediness to some of the locations, which I enjoyed:one photo showed a set of cement stairs leading to an old door with a cracked-paint threshold. You can easily imagine some dark characters holed up inside.

Even my small-town settings aren’t all cheer and light. As Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple pointed out, evil can reside anywhere—even in villages. Keeping a book like this on my shelf can help me create an ominous mood.

Daylight Noir: Raymond Chandler’s Imagined City by Catherine Corman. Charta, ©2009. ISBN 9788881587247 (paperback), 128p.

Today I’m over at the Ink Spot for my recurring gig with fellow Midnight Ink authors.

My topic du jour is “Public Speaking.” Hope you’ll pop over and say hi.

Every six Sundays, I host a guest at the Berkley Prime Crime cooking blog, Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen. Today, I’m pleased to announce that my mystery writing friend Patricia Stoltey has prepared a delicious recipe at the Kitchen. She also shares some wonderful tips for down home French cooking, Colorado style. Hope y’all will pop over and check it out.

I did a little writing outside yesterday and was surprised by how much more productive I was. Over the summer I got used to writing at lots of different places (wherever I was with my children.) Since school started back, I’ve written at home or the library. I’m thinking now that a little location writing at parks or outdoor cafes might be fun. The weather has changed for the cooler here and with temps in the 70s, it couldn’t feel better. Hope you’ll have a great day writing, wherever you do it.

Today I’m part of a writers’ workshop, similar to this Waldenbooks event from last weekend (I’m at the far left. I’m with my Carolina Conspiracy promotional group…Jim and Joyce Lavene and Terry Hoover are both pictured). I’m in Mint Hill, NC today, at the library there from 10:00—12:00, talking about “Mysterious Characters”.

I spend a lot of time communicating with other writers—both online and in person.

I’ve been genuinely surprised twice in the last week when people have told me at events, “You’re the first writer I’ve ever met!”

To me, we’re everywhere. The writing community is such a huge part of my life that I find it hard to believe we seem elusive to many people.

But then I thought about it. Writers are fairly tribal. Yes, we’re out in the community a bit…at bookstores and libraries. We’re at schools and workshops and writing conferences. Places where writers and readers hang out.

We like to hang out with each other because writing is a solitary and challenging pastime and only other writers (or maybe, serious readers, know what it’s like.)

I don’t even like introducing myself as a writer when I’m with non-writers. I’ll label myself a mom or a stay-at-home mom. I’m uncomfortable meeting people for the first time, and I don’t want to focus attention on myself.

I came out of the writing closet a couple of weeks ago. I was doing a local signing and I thought, “Why the heck not?” I sent out a global email to everyone I regularly saw when volunteering at the school, or volunteering at scouts, or who hosted my children at playdates. I invited them to come to my Barnes and Noble signing.

The response was amazing, really. So many people that I’d been acquainted with for years had no idea that I was a writer. They were completely shocked.

Because I didn’t tell them.

I’m not ever going to be the hard-sell type person. But I’m getting better at acknowledging what I do in a natural way. How many people do know writers, but don’t know they know writers?