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!

Which of These Did You Read as a Teen?

What makes a book into a good one for "young adults" or "middle graders"? When do adults start reading those same titles? This and more, on Saturday as I take part in "Writing for the Younger Set," a panel at the annual conference of Sisters in Crime New England. Here's what I have in mind ...

Writing for the Younger Set – Notes from Beth Kanell

In the 1800s, “Books for Young Persons” included The Swiss Family Robinson, Waverly (Walter Scott), Oliver Twist (Dickens), The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas), Great Expectations, Alice in Wonderland, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Kidnapped (Stevenson), and Kipling’s The Jungle Book. According to a Wikipedia author, these were books that “appealed to young readers, though not necessarily written for them.”

In the 1960s, the market for “adolescents” blossomed – and in 1973 Deathwatch by Robb White won the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery. I’ve heard it said often that the true impetus of the “young adult” genre came from librarians, who saw a need for good books that wouldn’t push young readers into areas that were too mature for them.

But in the 1980s, that taboo was broken by books that dealt with rape, suicide, parental death, and murder – perhaps more at the YA (young adult) level than for middle grades (MG). With this trend came the teen romance novel, wrapped in adventure and with a more frank sexuality, even if the characters “resisted.” Contrast this with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, long a favorite among teens but containing no sexuality at all!

The Harry Potter series and the Hunger Games trilogy broke the barriers down further, making it clear that the important cultural questions, when addressed in fiction, could command a mixed audience of middle graders, young adults/teens, and adults. A book positioned deliberately for such a mix is now called a crossover – especially prominent today are “YA crossover” books, intended for adults as much as for teens.

Some aspects of writing “YA crossover” that intrigue me within the history-hinged mystery area are:

* The protagonist is a teen and thus by definition not very experienced – which leads to an “unreliable narrator” in a good way.

* The emotional value of the book comes with the teen’s confrontation with the world in some form, leading to “coming of age” – maybe not all at once.

* Issues that adults think are obvious or settled become open to new experience for teens: racial injustice, gender walls, technological windows, even illness and death.

I also spend a lot of thought and energy on issues around “who speaks for whom” and the amounts of violence and explicit physical awareness (which includes sexuality) when I write.

Most deeply, I believe the writer for young adults owes the audience three things: integrity, a chance to reach different conclusions than the writer’s, and a sense of hope for the future of each individual.

Beth Kanell lives in northeastern Vermont, with a mountain at her back and a river at her feet. She writes poems, hikes the back roads and mountains, and digs into Vermont history to frame her “history-hinged” mystery novels: The Long Shadow, The Darkness Under the Water, The Secret Room, and Cold Midnight. Her poems scatter among regional publications and online. She shares her research and writing process at BethKanell.blogspot.com.

(for November 10, 2018)

 
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