My daughter, Kristine, reads constantly. The day I originally wrote this little essay, she was, in fact, sitting in the living room reading Lord of the Rings with a stack of history books and Jane Austen-related material next to her chair. She got her exercise by walking to the library and lugging home books. This makes her My Hero.
On one of her library safaris, she introduced me to another writer who has also become My Hero. She bagged a library a book about a very particular publishing phenomenon—series children’s books. There were a number of writers who gave their talents to this effort, but the paragon that stood out in my reading of the book was Mildred A. Wirt, the original Carolyn Keene. (The title, for anyone who’s interested is Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak.)
I expect that most women reading this know that byline. Carolyn Keene was the author of record for the Nancy Drew Mystery series that most of us grew up with—that girls are still growing up with and which, after repeated tries to bring Nancy into the new age or to make her adhere to modern assumptions about what girls want to read, has reverted back to the character she was when the inestimable Ms. Wirt was writing her.
So, why is Mildred Wirt My Hero? It’s not just that she wrote 23 volumes of the Nancy Drew series. It was that she also wrote:
Kay Tracey (as Frances K. Judd) Penny Parker (as Mildred A. Wirt) Dana Girls (as Carolyn Keene) Penny Nichols (as Joan Clark) Connie Carl (as Joan Clark) Madge Sterling (as Ann Wirt)
It was that in her most prolific year, 1939, she wrote nine novels. She wrote when she was pregnant, raising a child, caring for a sick husband and sustaining his loss, dealing with her own health problems.
She wrote from spartan outlines and from very detailed ones—both of which can be a blessing or a curse for a writer.
She dealt with editors who were disengaged from her issues and who were jealous of their creations.
She worked under wraps—sworn to secrecy about her involvement with the books she wrote—and reacted with measured calm when others took credit for her work. (Since I also ghostwrite for a living, I understand what this feels like better than I’d like to).
Millie Wirt could fly a plane, climb a mountain, and paddle the Amazon. She could be self-confident yet self-effacing, assertive yet measured, bold yet polite—even in the face of unjust criticism. She was a journalist, too, who worked until the age of 96, using a magnifying lens so as to be able to see the computer display. She turned in her last column one evening in May of 2002, went home and died that night. If that’s not dying in harness, I don’t know what is.
All of that is why she is My Hero. She exemplified something science fiction writer and fellow MAFIA (Making Appearances Frequently In Analog) member Michael Flynn wrote years ago about how writers deal with the changes and chances of the material world. I can’t quote him verbatim, but I can paraphrase and condense his comments thusly: If the world around you seems to be going mad, keep writing. If the sky is falling and you have no means to prop it up, keep writing. If things are splodey-sploding all around you, keep writing.
From Book View Cafe member and New York Times bestselling author Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff comes a new private detective series featuring Gina “Tinkerbell” Miyoko, who goes undercover in the Mexican jungle to hunt down a ring of thieves responsible for looting pre-Columbian archaeology sites. Here fellow author Deborah J. Ross chats with Maya about her book:
Deborah J. Ross: How did you come up with Gina S. Miyoko?
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff: I honestly don’t remember except that she arose from a dream I had, the plot of which (yes, my dreams often have plots) I don’t remember. I knew I wanted to write her as the protagonist of a mystery novel, and I knew I wanted her to be different from the female P.I.s I’d read. I love mystery and crime fiction but I noticed that all the female protagonists were alienated and broken and party to dysfunctional relationships. I wanted Gina to be flawed and have enough pain in her life to be relatable, but I also wanted her to be part of a very functional, if quirky family and support network. Among the Japanese names I was considering, Gina Suzu Miyoko meant, “Silver Bell Temple;” Tinkerbell became an inevitable nickname. And her personality just grew out of that.
DR: And Russian Orthodox witches?
MKB: Around the time I was developing Gina and the characters that would surround her, I was reading a book entitled THE BATHHOUSE AT MIDNIGHT: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia (WF Ryan). I was reading it because the novel I was working on at the time (MAGIC TIME: ANGELFIRE, from Harper-Voyager) had a Russian ex-pat as one of the central characters. Okay, and also I’m Russian-Polish on my father’s side and have been fascinated with the folklore and history of Slavic culture since I was a child. Probably more so because my grandmother was so adamant that I not be taught anything about the Old Country but be brought up thoroughly American. In any event, the book sparked the idea that I wanted Gina’s mother to be Russian and fascinated by arcana. She was originally going to be a psychologist, but by the time I started writing the book that became THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER, she had morphed into a cultural anthropologist and folklorist.
As tends to happen with these things, as I began to write the characters, they essentially told me who they were. I’m sure you know the feeling—as if the character is inside your head whispering sweet somethings to your Muse.
DR: Did you research PI procedures like the post-it notes and Who/What/When etc?
MKB: I have to laugh. The post-it note method is something I’ve used to plot novels for years. It seemed to me that my post-it process would be as ideal for working out the nuances of a real world mystery as it is for plotting a novel. My editor suggested editing the scene in which you first see Gina use the post-its so that she just wrote on the white board. I declined and explained the beauty of post-its to her by having Gina demonstrate it for the reader.
DR: How did you become interested in the problem of looting of antiquities? Why the Southwest?
MKB: I have loved archaeology for as long as I can remember. I subscribed for years to Archeology magazine, and KMT (Kemet – which is the old Egyptian name for Egypt). I happened to read an article about a female undercover agent for the National Park Service and the sort of work she and her teammates did, chiefly in the Southwest where there are a lot of vulnerable caches of artifacts, mostly on First Nations land. But I’d also been following several international cases at the time—the Elgin Marbles that the British Museum had to return to Greece and the black market cases that big US auction houses and museums alike had been implicated in. I was also following the rediscovery of the Rosalila (an utterly fantastic nested temple at Copán in the Honduras) and some amazing finds at Bonampak, which is in Chiapas, Mexico.
It was that last item that gave me the location for some of the action in the book. I sort of let all of that percolate and it seemed natural to have my protagonist have the experience I’d dreamed of having—seeing those antiquities first hand. More than that, I wanted her to have a hand in saving some of them. The lack of funding for preserving these sites is a real and persistent problem in the world of archaeology.
DR: These days cultural appropriation is a sensitive topic. How did you go about portraying Hispanic, Asian, and Native characters in a respectful manner?
MKB: I suppose every writer has their own approach; mine is to love the people I write about and to recognize that they’re people first, not representatives or symbols or archetypes of a particular culture. But, in writing them, I have to recognize that their cultural framework will condition their responses to things. So, to Rose Delgado, though she’s married to a non-Hopi, living in Sausalito and working all over the country, she’s still Hopi. That means that Hopi lands are still sacred to her and that she takes the theft of native artifacts personally. Her job is more than just a job because of her cultural background and her investment in it is different than the other members of her team.
To me, Gina’s tattoo is exemplary of the cultural intersectionality I’m portraying. It’s a Russian Orthodox True Believer cross with a Buddha seated at the nexus in a lotus blossom. The cross is for her mom, the Buddha for her dad. Gina calls herself a Russian Orthodox Buddhist, which is an echo of what I told people who asked about my religion before I became a Baha’i. I’d say I was a Hindu-Buddhist-Christian. So, what I was trying to capture in Gina was a character who was an intersection of three cultures—Japanese, Russian and American.
I’ve been privileged to have been surrounded by people from diverse cultures all my life and I think that if you approach characters of any culture with curiosity, love and an attitude of learning, you’ll strive to portray them as complete, three-dimensional human beings.
DR: Is there such a thing as SASH (Society for the Appreciation of Sherlock Holmes), and would you join?
MKB: There’s a Sherlock Holmes Society of London, but as far as I know, there’s none in the Bay Area—at least not like the one Gina’s dad, Edmund, is part of. I made it up. Or maybe Edmund did. I would totally join SASH if there was one around. I love Sherlock Holmes—in fact, I have a Sherlock Holmes pastiche idea I’d love to write.
DR: What have you written recently?
MKB: I’ve been doing a lot ghostwrites lately. And they have been diverse and interesting. I just finished up a YA set in Seattle, and am still working on one that also makes use of my deep love of archaeology. Beyond that, my dear agent is shopping a crazy range of novels I tossed at him, including an SF novel with a peculiar genesis that I’d love to see be the first of a trilogy, a YA paranormal/contemporary fantasy featuring a 14 year-old-protagonist who discovers she’s a witch from a long line of witches, a magical realism yarn that is my take on the old Russian fairytale, Frog Princess, and a paranormal romance that I collaborated on with a couple of show runners from LA.
DR: What lies ahead? What lies ahead for Gina Miyoko – are new novels in the works?
MKB: I’ve been working on what I hope will be the next book in the Gina Miyoko series. I’ve got about eight or nine novels sketched out and more ideas popping into my head all the time. I’ve also been outlining a steampunk novel I’d like to write, involving yet more artifacts. (I got the idea from a book cover someone asked me to design, then didn’t want.)
DR: How does THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER fit into your repertoire of published works?
MKB: It’s a real outlier among outliers. I started out writing science fiction. In fact, I’d published a bunch of stories in Analog before I shifted gears and wrote four epic fantasy novels all based on dreams. Then I discovered magical realism and fell madly in love with it. That caused my writing to take a weird turn that peaked with “The White Dog” (Interzone). In moving over to crime fiction, I’m really pursuing something that’s fascinated me as a reader for years. I’ve been in love with mysteries and detective fiction forever. So, even though THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER looks like a departure from the outside, from where I sit, I’m just writing what I’ve always read. I also realized, when I looked at the fiction I’ve written, that most of my stories have a mystery embedded at the core—sometimes blatantly, as in “The Secret Life of Gods” and “Distance”(Analog), or in a veiled way as in my novels THE SPIRIT GATE (originally from Baen, in reprint from Book View Cafe) and STAR WARS LEGENDS: SHADOW GAMES (Del Rey/Lucas Books).
DR: What authors have most influenced your writing? What about them do you find inspiring?
MKB: My greatest prose heroes are Ray Bradbury, W.P. Kinsella (whom I cast in DISTANCE with his permission), and Tim Powers. These are the writers whose use of language, storytelling chops, and sheer imagination made me hungry to write. Bradbury and Kinsella have written some of the most beautiful and evocative prose in the English language and Powers has given me epiphanies about the many ways reality can collide with the fantastic.
I admire Dean Koontz, JK Rowling and Sue Grafton as well, especially for their character development chops and the uncanny way they connect the reader to their characters from page one. I also have to credit Harry Turtledove (who’s written some of my favorite Analog stories) with making me stray into alternate history, with my novelette “O, Pioneer” (Paradox) which takes an upside down and backwards look at Christopher Columbus’ ”discovery” of the Americas.
DR: Why do you write what you do, and how does your work differ from others in your genre?
MKB: I write what I do because either a character demands to be written about (Gina Miyoko being a case in point) or an idea demands to be explored. I thrive on exploration. It’s why I love road trips (What’s around that next curve?), research, archaeology (What is that thing I just dug up?), first contact stories, and mysteries of every kind. Writing is exploration I undertake to satisfy my insatiable curiosity about what if.
I’ve been told that I write fantasy with rivets, meaning that my fantasy work tends to take a very pragmatic approach to the fantastic. It works the other way, as well. My Gina Miyoko stories have an undercurrent of the supernatural to them if the reader chooses to read the pragmatic references to obereg (the good luck charms her mom is forever sneaking into her pockets), Holy Water, and spells as being more than just a concession to Nadia Miyoko’s avocation. This means that my fiction often falls through the cracks. When I sent “The White Dog” to Interzone, the editor wrote back and said essentially, ”I loved it, but where’s the fantasy element?” I responded, “In the eye of the reader.” He bought the story and it was a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award.
DR: How does your writing process work?
MKB: Mileage varies … a lot. With short fiction, I’ll sometimes scribble a handful of questions that become notes and when I see a beginning and end, I start writing. With novels, I sometimes get out the sticky notes. I had a great little flow chart app I used for a while, but they stopped making it. I use Evernote to toss bits and pieces into, as well. The sticky note brainstorming is still the best method I’ve found of plotting a novel because it allows me to visualize relationships between characters, their motivations and other plot elements.
Tartlets with chocolate ganache and raspberries, selective focus
Once I’ve charted something that way, I write a synopsis that becomes a living document that I can add to as I work. At some point the characters start yakking and doing things and I have to start writing. I used to have to write everything in #2 pencil on lined paper first, then edit as I committed it to the computer. Then I’d do that until roughly the last third of the book when the boulder started rolling downhill. But for some time now, while I still love writing notes long hand, I do all my writing at the keyboard. I’ve only ever had a laptop, because I feel the need to be portable. Sometimes a silent house is the best place to write, and sometimes a noisy coffee shop is best. I’ve also learned to give myself permission to do what I heard one writer refer to as “moodling”. It looks (and feels) like I’m not doing anything, but my mind is hard at work looking for connections. And when enough connections are made between elements and characters, the writing happens.
Whenever I sit down to write, I always read back what I did previously. I tried Hemingway’s stopping in mid sentence and it only led to frustration.
DR: What advice would you give to an aspiring writer?
MKB: First, write without editing. Ray Bradbury famously said of writing, “Don’t think.” He advised hiding your editor hat and just getting the bones of a story or a scene down without worrying about whether you found the right word. THEN, put on your editor hat and edit. This can make the difference between a story ending up attached to an email on its way to an editor’s inbox or ending up in an obscure file folder.
Second, learn your tools—words. Know what they mean, what they imply, how they taste, how they sound. Read your prose out loud before you submit it. Here, I find Mark Twain’s advice sage: “Use the right word, not its second cousin.”
Third, be flexible. The method you used to write one story may not work for the next one. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re broken or that your process is broken. It just means it’s different this time. This was a hard-learned lesson for me. It took reading Lawrence Block’s learning experience with regard to flexibility (in one of this Writer’s Digest columns), to understand that I wasn’t losing “it”; “it” had just morphed a bit.
I’ve learned a lot from the experiences of other writers and from their prose. One of the most valuable learning experiences for me is to read other writers’ prose with an awareness of my own responses to it and analyze why it makes me feel how I feel. Then I try to apply that in my own work.
Oh, and when you’ve written that story and read it out loud, making sure that (as Twain said) you’ve used the right word, not its second cousin, send it to the magazine or agent or publisher you really want to see it with, not something less. When I sent my first story to Stan Schmidt at Analog, the wisdom in all the writing magazines I’d read was that I should send it to a small non-pro market first and work my way up. And I should send something short that stood a better chance of being accepted. I went against that advice and sent a 19,500 word novella to my favorite magazine and got accepted.
Short form: Always shoot for the moon.
THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER is available in print (trade paperback and hardback), audio book, and eBook formats.
“Ha! Serves you right for trying to set me up with your stalker.” “You think that’s who it is—Cruz Veras again?” “I don’t know,” I admitted, chewing thoughtfully on a ring of calamari. “It’s hard for me to imagine him making threatening moves on you in a Chrysler LeBaron. A Beamer, maybe, but a LeBaron? Never.” She tossed a shrimp at me. “Tth’izi,” she called me, Hopi for “goat.” “Mule,” I corrected, and went back to my squid.
Excerpt From: Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, The Antiquities Hunter
Still celebrating last week’s release of the trade paperback edition of THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER starring the inimitable Gina “Tinkerbell” Miyoko, private eye. Daughter of a retired police detective and a Russian-American professor of folklore, Gina rides a Harley named Boris, packs a titanium blue Taurus Magnum, and has a lucky charm for every occasion.
THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER (Pegasus Crime) tells of her first major case in which she joins forces with her National Park Service agent friend to thwart thieves of black market antiquities. You can get your trade paperback copy from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you or you can get the eBook from all the usual suspects. The hardback release is also still available for those of you who like the fashion statement of a hard cover in a lovely dust jacket.
Over in Book View Cafe’s online bookstore, the prequel novelette, “Tinkerbell on Walkabout” is on sale for $1.99 if you purchase it directly from bookviewcafe.com.
“I’m still being followed.” Those were the first words out of Rose’s mouth when I reached her on her cell phone.
“Our reporter-archaeologist friend?”
“If it is, he’s changed cars. This one is a metallic green Chrysler LeBaron.”
I felt a shiver run through me at the mention of LeBarons. My last encounter with one did not conjure pleasant associations, mostly because I’d found a body in the trunk. I reflexively reached for my lucky Caddie wire, which was sticking jauntily out of my pencil cup. “Well, like you said—his cover was blown, so I suppose he might have changed vehicles. When did you notice this?”
“This morning, when I drove to the courthouse for the pretrial deposition with the Blankenships’ defense team. Listen, Tink, this guy—whoever he is—is a little more aggressive than our professor. I mean, maybe it is him, but . . .”
“What do you mean ‘more aggressive’?”
“I mean, pacing me in the left lane, pulling up, then dropping back, tailgating. Weird stuff.”
More shivers. “Close enough to get a look at?”
“Except for the smoked windows, yeah. All I can see is a silhouette with shades.”
“Where are you, Rose?”
“I’m still at the courthouse. I called Ellen Robb and told her about it. Tink, this has really got me spooked. I mean, the timing and everything. I’m supposed to go back down to Albuquerque for the trial in five weeks.”
“And you think someone is trying to dissuade you from doing that?”
“That’s what Ellen thinks. Listen, can you meet me at the NPS offices in about half an hour?”
“I’ll do better than that,” I told her. “I’ll meet you at the courthouse in ten minutes and escort you there.”
“Woo-woo!” she said gamely. “A one-Harley motorcade.”
“Don’t diss Boris. One Harley is better than half a dozen lesser machines.”
I sounded flip, but I was seriously worried.”
Excerpt From: Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, The Antiquities Hunter
I’m celebrating the February 11 release of the trade paperback edition of THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER starring the inimitable Gina “Tinkerbell” Miyoko, private eye. Over in Book View Cafe’s online bookstore, the prequel novelette, “Tinkerbell on Walkabout” is on sale for $1.99 if you purchase it directly from bookviewcafe.com.
“What’d he look like?” “Like I could tell from that distance?” I kept my narrowed eyes on her face. She closed her eyes. “Dark hair, I think. He was wearing a baseball cap and dark glasses. Uh . . . well-tanned or dark-skinned. Slender. Tallish.” “Ish?” “Around five-ten, five-eleven.” A titan in my little universe. “If you are being stalked, you need to tell someone. Besides me. Preferably your boss . . . or the police.” “And if I’m not, I look like I’m paranoid. Not good for my professional credibility.” I suddenly felt much less impotent than I had about two minutes earlier. “All right. The first thing we need to do is establish the existence and identity of the stalker.” “And how do I do that?” “We, Rose. We.” She smiled. The first genuine Rose Delgado smile I’d seen for weeks. “How?” I pulled my lucky Caddie wire out of the side pocket of my gym bag and twisted it around my wrist. “We turn the tables on him.”
Excerpt From: The Antiquities Hunter, a Gina Miyoko Mystery by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Today is the 99th anniversary of the birth of a man who filled me with the love of words, of sentences, of stories, of ideas, of possibilities.
A man who gave me the best advice on writing I’ve ever gotten (Don’t think, write.)
A man I wanted to name my daughter after. (The fam objected, alas.)
A man who looked out at a group of book-clutching, fannish outsiders at an environmental conference and said, in tones of wonder, “Oh, but you’re all my children” and brought us all to tears.
The man who wrote Something Wicked This Way Comes, the love of my literary life. I think it is one of the most beautiful and powerful works in the English language and I often read passages from it aloud just to hold the words and sentences in my mouth.
I love you Ray Bradbury, now and forever. Thank you.
The writers’ eZine, RE:Fictionhas posted the first of my two part craft article on names. Specifically, the names of the people, places, and things and the stories that contain them.
I just put the final (draft) period on the novelization of ARCHANGEL: ASCENSION, Book One of the Winter Chronicles. The book is based on a movie script written by Dave Di Pietro of ReelCoolEntertainment.
This is a steampunk series and has taken me to a world I have longed to visit. I’ve written steampunk short fiction—notably “The Accumulating Man”, which is the origin story for Book View Cafe’s SHADOW CONSPIRACY anthology series, and “Steel Seraph” which is a ripped from the headlines look at “UFOs” . . . Ripped from the headlines of 1896, that is. That story appears in the second Shadow Conspiracy anthology.
Archangel is a different sort of story—a steampunk superhero story set in what should be Victorian England, but isn’t quite because there’s also a bit of alternate history in Ascension. (Eee! You got alt-history in my steampunk superhero adventure!)
I wanted to drop some little tidbits about characters in the book and while it might make sense to start with Our Hero, that’s not where my mind is today because part of what I did this morning was to throw a spotlight on one of the other characters in the story. This guy, MacKenzie Graham. (Photos by Matthew Noonan.)
Kenzie is a pivotal character in the story, though I can’t tell you why, because spoilers. Kenzie can’t tell you why, either, because it’s as big a secret to him as it is to everyone around him.
Well, now. I hope that has been sufficiently ambiguous to make you wonder, who is this Kenzie Graham? And how can I find out? I will write about Our Hero, I promise.
Cool news from the producer of the steampunk movie I’m novelizing even as I speak.
He has cast the arch-villain for the movie—a true piece of nasty work named Benton Cross.
Cross will be played by veteran British actor Peter Woodward. If that name sounds familiar to you it may be because he is the son of the marvelous actor Edward Woodward who, memorably, played the towering and jolly Ghost of Christmas Present in the seminal production of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and who was also the star of the popular Equalizer ’80s TV series.
OR it may be because Peter Woodward has also collected his own impressive dramatic credits.
What follows is the official announcement from my friends at Reel Cool Entertainment. (Ahem!)
Peter Woodward
It is with great excitement that all of us here at Reel Cool Entertainment would like to announce that actor Peter Woodward is now attached to our adventure film project, Archangel: from the Winter’s End Chronicles. Many of you will know Peter from his multi-faceted career with roles such as Galen in the TV series, Babylon 5: Crusade, and such blockbuster films as Mel Gibson’s The Patriot, and fan favorite, National Treasure: Book of Secrets.Peter will also be seen in the recurring role as Philip Edier in the new upcoming Netflix sci-fi series, Dystopia, created by Michael Copon and Simon Phillips.
Our cast is rounding out nicely, so follow our Facebook page www.facebook.com/archangeltheseries to stay informed on all upcoming news and have a wonderful 2019!
And of course, stay tuned for release dates for the novelization!
I’ve never sat down and counted all of my ghostwriting/editing clients. Every once in a while, when I go in to clean up my file folders, I realize that I’ve had more than I thought and that I’ve actually forgotten about some of them. Some I work with once and that’s that; some I’ve been working with for years. A lot of them, in one way or another, came to me from one of several editorial services I’ve done work for—companies who, in turn, came to me through a wonderful (but, alas, deceased) freelance resource called Freelance Daily.
The clients that puzzle me most stand at two ends of a spectrum. At one end are talented people who have no desire or who lack the confidence to take the next step toward getting published. At the other are people with little or no writing talent, a seeming inability to understand how either the writing craft or publishing works, and the ambition and sheer moxie to believe that they can be or are writers just as good as Ray Bradbury or Shirley Jackson or Umberto Eco (you may add your favorites to the list).
Take the fellow who wrote a brilliant murder mystery set in the dotcom boom and bust then hired me to edit it. He decided to self-publish despite my strong belief that the book—which was 200,000 words in length and riveting through just about every one of them as far as I was concerned—could be a bombshell. His reason for self-publishing: he was unwilling to let anyone else control any aspect of his work. Having read the book—which was autobiographical in part (he really did write what he knew)—I understood the impulse. Still . . .
Then there was the fellow who penned rough drafts of one novel after another set in different time periods and who hired me to rewrite them. He had a few issues that . . . well, let me share a handful. Continue reading
