Thinking Pink, A Happy Year from My Last Radiation Treatment

Last weekend the Boston Globe ran an opinion piece that said people shouldn't have to crowdfund to pay for their health care. The piece described a man with critical diabetes who fell $50 short of his fundraising goal -- and as a result, the piece implied, he died.

I'm not sure the article made complete sense. But I get the point: Health care should be better than this. Sick people shouldn't have to go out and ask their friends and total strangers to donate, to save them. It's terrible.

Equally shocking, a quick Google search shows that crowdfunding is now supporting cancer research (both breast and prostate, say the articles, showing gender equity).

Wait, does that mean if the lab falls $50 short on donations, it doesn't get the testing equipment or microscopes? Sheesh.

I'm happy to celebrate a year this month since my last radiation treatment for very ordinary, very treatable, and still very scary breast cancer. Great treatment doctors and teams, top-notch support. And thanks to waiting until I was over 65 for the diagnosis, my health care insurance (part Medicare, part gap coverage) took me through this, brilliantly. Without added health care debts. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! (I try not to remember that if I'd dared to get the diagnosis a year before 65, which might have been wiser in terms of cancer's action, I'd be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Truth.)

There is one other small downer, though: Since I'm self-employed, even though I worked really hard and completed every assignment last year, I didn't have the extra energy for a while to go chasing extra work—and these days, the routine assignments don't cover all the living expenses. Fact of life. For 2019, I'll do better. But gosh darn it, I've still got to make up for that slowdown in 2018.

So I've taken a tip from the Big Research Labs and the little uninsured and everyone in between who's running behind these days financially, and done it my way:

Crowdfunding publication of my awesome (and already award-winning!) Vermont mystery, ALL THAT GLITTERS.

It's simple: Pre-order a copy of the book (click here to see it and browse). You get your money's worth as the book goes to print (we need 750 pre-orders for that), and I'll get a share after that happens, which ought to make up a chunk of the difference in what I needed last year, versus what I earned.

Oh, and if you pre-order three copies -- you get your name into the book as a sponsor. (So, like, you could sign the book next to your own name, really!) One thing I especially like about this route is, you can read the book for free on the website and make sure you're going to like it. (Sure, click here.)

This crazy notion comes via Inkshares, which is printing some really lovely books, on nice paper, well bound, well made ... and without a fuss. I love it!

So if you're in the mood to "Think Pink" may I suggest buying this mystery? You'll have a lot of fun, and you won't have to walk five miles or make people sign your pledge page or call the radio station or any of that. Just click here, and sign up for a book.

Then tell a couple of friends about it. That's how the real "crowdfunding" works. Because getting through modern life takes a lot of help. And trust me—I'll be signing up for YOUR crowdfunder next year.

Hugs and hope to you all!

Virginia Woolf, Vermont's Alison Bechdel, and ... Me?

Mom and me ... way back when.

My mom died suddenly, at the appallingly young age of 53, not quite done with child-raising. So in a real sense, I didn't get to see who she might have grown into as an independent woman. I picture her taking up oil painting seriously, and going to amazing lectures, and expanding the new career she'd started, creating recreational crafts at a local nursing home.

I imagine now things we might have started to do together, too: She would have adored 12-Step group meetings, for instance, I'm sure of it! (All those stories ... ) Schmoozed excitedly at Sisters in Crime gatherings. Hosted a book club (or two!). Maybe we would have taken some trips as "just the two of us," too.

Most of all, I wonder how she would have adapted to today's feminism. She was always, at heart, a woman who didn't stand for discrimination. But in her time (she was born in 1927), marriage was WAY different, and so was employment.

Still, I am certain she'd be calling (and e-mailing and Facebooking) all her friends near and far about the "Break the Bechdel with Strong Female Characters" badge that landed on my mystery, ALL THAT GLITTERS, this winter. I'm elated that this "syndicate" on Inkshares chose my teen sleuth mystery set in Vermont for the honor. Here's the reason:

All that Glitters hooks you in the first paragraph and doesn't let go! Beth Kanell has crafted a main character who feels real from the first page, and has already introduced a mother whose voice is all her own-- and certainly someone to reckon with! We can't wait to follow Lucky as she tracks down the person who shot her father, with the help of her two friends who also already show great potential for fully developed roles!

(Pre-order link at end.)

With my eager, curious mother in mind, I've been trying to figure out how to explain this award. It's about a "test" named for Vermont graphic artist Alison Bechdel (who's said she wished it were the Bechdel-Wallace Test, because it came up on conversation of two people). And in turn, she was thinking about Virginia Woolf's comments in Woolf's 1929 essay A Room of One's Own:

All these relationships between women, I thought, rapidly recalling the splendid gallery of fictitious women, are too simple. ... And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends. ... They are now and then mothers and daughters. But almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman's life is that...

To run the "test" today, you look at a film or novel this way, which originally applied to a movie in Bechdel's comic strip:

1. The movie has to have at least two women in it,
2. who talk to each other,
3. about something besides a man.

 Well, yeah. I mean, sure. I mean, isn't that a big part of what a "girl sleuth" is doing, in the best books? Nancy Drew didn't talk with her sort-of boyfriend Ned much -- she confabbed with her "chums" Bess and George (both of them young women like here). And although Flavia de Luce, my favorite recent "girl" sleuth, depends on her dad's assistant to help her think through how to use her amazing science skills, her most important discussions are with the other women in her home.

It's not that we sleuth typed don't enjoy all of life -- but, as the Grand Sophy emphasized in a Georgette Heyer novel that I adored in my younger years ... there's a time and place to pay attention to some things (like what you're going to wear). And another time and place to focus on what needs to be solved.

Come to think of it, when Sherlock Holmes focused on "that woman" in his life, his detecting skills weren't quite as good, right?

Mom would have completely understood.

PS - Ready to pre-order your first-edition copy of ALL THAT GLITTERS? It's the first in a series of eight, and I bet each of them will make a good run for the Strong (and Smart and Sassy) Women category. We need to line up 750 orders to get this into print, so it really matters when you opt for a copy (or the special for three, which puts you into the published book as a sponsor!). It's easy to pre-order, just click here.

How to Rely on Your Best Friend: A Sisters in Crime Story

Remember those "series" books from way back when? Nancy Drew, Happy Hollisters, Cherry Ames, the Hardy Boys? (Also Swallows and Amazons.) They got me through the toughest years of learning how to be and have a friend.

Think it looks sort of Nancy?

Jennifer Fisher, the American expert on Nancy Drew history, writes about the teen sleuth this way: "She offered American girls a sense of resourcefulness. She taught us to signal S.O.S. with a tube of lipstick, to break out of a window using spike heels and to keep an overnight bag in our car — a girl never knew when she’d encounter a sleuthing adventure. Real-life kidnapping victims have said that Nancy Drew stories inspired them use their wits to escape."

Years ago, I joined Sisters in Crime (New England and National) because of the annual get-together, called the Crime Bake: a cheerful, noisy, exuberant gathering where my husband Dave and I could meet more mystery authors, seek their signatures (he's a VERY serious collector), figure out trends (for our mystery book business at the time, Kingdom Books), and delight in knowing that if we said "what are you reading?" to anyone, there'd be an interesting answer.

I knew, also, that I'd be sharing my own mysteries with authors (published and not yet) at the Crime Bake: my very New England YA (young adult) mysteries Cold Midnight and The Secret Room, as well as my history-hinged adventures that rely on a teenaged "girl" to figure out how to handle risk, danger, and crises (like The Long Shadow, an 1852 adventure).


What I couldn't know ahead of time was, I'd make new friends. Well, sure, we all hope for that, in any big gathering or organization. The nice thing is, I'm now old enough to know the basics of "how" and to apply them:

1. Pay more attention to the other person than to yourself. (You can talk with yourself later.) Find out name, home, work in progress, and what kind of sense of humor the person has.

2. Remember that their work matters to them as much as yours does to you -- so if you have a chance (at a shared table, or co-leading a panel), point others' attention to what you've learned about them and their book. I saw Nancy Pickard do this with intelligent grace, for five authors in a row. (She'd read a book by each and had great comments, too.)

3. Watch for their "posts" during or after the conference -- leave a hello or "like" to assure them you think they are interesting (maybe even nice!) and will write an awesome book, if they haven't already.

Those sound pretty ordinary, right? Here's the tough one:

 4. When you next wish you had a friend to lean on -- be a little bit open about it. Leave room for someone to step forward, with words or a hug or a "like." Just the way you'd do for them, if you knew they were having a challenging day (or month, or year). 

That's where the Nancy Drew roots, and the "Sisters" aspect, come into play. We're more than just "people working in the same field" -- we're people who, in our own way, CARE. We do it in the stories we write, and we do it in person.

So this is a thank-you to two special groups of friends from Sisters in Crime New England:

(a) The ones who said "oh, your books are good for Nancy Drew readers? give me one" and thus inspired me to write my teen sleuth mystery, All That Glitters. Thank you so much!!

(b) The ones who heard me whisper "oh sh**, I've got breast cancer," and made room for an extra seat at a book event, an extra Facebook message, an extra steady hand while I wobbled through the year of revelation, treatment, recovery, and buckling down to writing the next book. I really COULD NOT have done this without you.

Bottom line: You've helped me to be sure I could still and always be my own core self: a little shy, a little nerdy, always "in" a book, and totally aware that I can't be here in this way without you.

Two short notes:

* You can pre-order All That Glitters here. It really matters ... it only gets published when we reach 750 pre-orders (gulp), so I'd love your help.

* And don't forget that I still review mysteries that are not self-published (because this is a resource for collectors), at kingdombks.blogspot.com, and more at the New York Journal of Books, and would love your comments there, on the wonderful books coming through!

PS -- I got the next book written! It's called This Ardent Flame, and it went to the publisher last Friday. Fingers crossed that they like it and think it will earn them some money and joy!