An Unholy Alliance by Judy Nedry |

“I finally figured out why I am so drawn to mysteries,” my walking partner said the other morning as we slogged through a variety of meteorlogical events. “It’s the adrenaline rush.”

It’s not in her head, nor mine, nor yours for that matter. Most avid readers know that fiction changes us. Now, thanks to a New York Times article   (5. Your Brain on Fiction) published Sunday, March 18 we have a bit of scientific like ‘The singer had a velvet voice’…roused the sensory cortex.”

Alas, one’s brain does not receive this type of stimulation reading history or bdata that shows how and why this happens.

“What scientists have come to realize…is that narratives activate many other parts of our brains…suggesting why the experience of reading can feel so alive.” This explains everything! The research indicates that “Words like ‘cinnamon’ and ‘lavender’…elicit an olfactory response…” and “Metaphors iology texts. (No doubt this is why I found history classes so loathsome. It’s not because history is boring. It most certainly is not. But pedantic writing renders it unbearable.) It’s the metaphors, the descriptive prose, the action prose that makes the reader react, smell, taste, feel, be there.

The research revealed that when reading a highly charged action scene in a novel, the reader’s brain responds as if this actually was happening to her.

“The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated.” Thus, the adrenaline rush my friend describes.

It appears that fiction in and of itself actually opens the brain to new experiences. Some of the research credited fiction with helping readers learn qualities such as compassion. Reading novels can lead to understanding as to how to solve some of life’s little problems. And some of its larger ones too.

Who’da thought?

Well, those of us who voraciously read fiction have always known that something was going on…something important and meaningful and fun. And yet we felt guilty, as if some of us use reading as a drug, an escape from life’s petty miseries. If we do, so what? All things considered, it’s pretty harmless fun.

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Writers all discover, some sooner and some later, that there is much more to writing books than writing books.

Often we discover, to our chagrin and even horror, that authors must/are expected to promote their own books. Where did that come from?, we wonder. Don’t those publishers have rooms full of people to do that for them. Well, yes. If you are Mary Higgins Clark or Nelson DeMille. The rest of us can go fly a kite, basically; and if your first book doesn’t sell, don’t think you are ever going to get them to publish another one.

I’m one of those people who loves to sign books, talk to people, and even write press materials. Where I get into trouble is with that cyber-space crap. I have called myself a “technical moron.” This isn’t even close to half-true, and in fact I can out social media 75 percent of my peers. But trying to get this blog into the email boxes of my subscribers has brought me to my knees.

I write a blog because it is part of what writers do to promote themselves. It’s called branding. It is necessary. It is fun. Until it is time for getting it out. I have a guy working on the delivery part (read technical) for me. This is what he does for a living. I do everything he says, he pushes some keys, tells me the thing is set to go out, so I send it. Nothing.

This has driven both of us, but me in particular, crazy for several weeks now. His last email to me even had the “f” word in it. We no longer are messing around here. This is war. If y’all don’t receive this one I am going to call in one of Cliff Baker’s high-powered hunting rifles from the pages of the novel and all hell is going to break loose.

Wish me luck.

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If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.   –Stephen King, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”

Imagine reading Stephen King’s “Great Commandment” if you’re a writer. It’s  like someone saying to you, “Go ahead kid, eat all the candy you want.” It was a gift, my friends, an absolute gift. Like me, King reads mostly fiction…duh…because that is mostly what he writes. His very fine book on writing also includes a reading list.

I have a recommended reading list to share, one that hopefully will lift you out of the winter doldrums. I read a lot of mysteries, but mainly I enjoy good stories in just about any genre. Time to get reading!

The Ghost in the Machine by Caroline Graham. See “When you read a book” blog dated 2/22/2012.

V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton. Grafton’s work has improved with time, gained in complexity. Her books are comfortable, reliably well-crafted, never disappointing.

I Am Half Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley. Even with her passion for poisons, the young Flavia de Luce is one of the most delightful sleuths ever to grace a mystery.

A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny. A dazzler in the Inspector Gamache series set in rural Quebec.

Faithful Place by Tana French. My favorite of all the books I read in 2011. French’s books are set in and around Dublin. Layered and nuanced Irish Noir.

Some more great recent reads: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin; Hell Is Empty by Craig Johnson; State of Wonder by Ann Patchett; Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand; So Much Pretty by Cara Hoffman; The Paris Wife by Paula McLain; The Help by Kathryn Stockett; Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese; Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson; Just Kids by Patti Smith.

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“Being a novelist,” a rather well-known novelist once told me, “often means going into the office, closing the door, and flipping through magazines.”

During my decades as a writer, I’ve found this to be mostly true.

Writing does not come naturally to most of us. Even when it does, the elusive Muse has her ways of leveling the playing field. I spend more time avoiding writing than I do actually writing.

Here are some of the ways I avoid writing, past and present: Take a long hot bath, go running, go walking, play with a Rubik’s Cube, play computer games (Solitaire, Spider Solitaire….), try a new and preferably difficult recipe, check email, dink around on Facebook, call a friend, go to lunch with a friend, go out in the garden and pull weeds vigorously, get tired and take a nap, walk to the bakery (this I plan to do imminently), read a book.

I call it “chasing the Muse”. Others may call it goofing off. What I do know is this: Somehow over the years I’ve managed to produce enough published copy to fill several file drawers. I’ve written two nonfiction books, two novels (one in its  final run-through), plus a cookbook for my daughter and many, many projects that will never see the light of day.

While I’ve not been as prolific as I once hoped to be, Novel Number 2 is in the final stretch, at least as far as the writing goes. Novel three is brewing and forming as I walk, garden, eat, soak in the bathtub, cook, or goof off.

And yes,  I manage to write every day. It happens first thing when I get up, right after I pour the coffee, and it lasts about half an hour–more when I’ve actually got something to say. It may or may not have anything to do with my current project, but it does maintain the flow. For this writer, flow is everything.

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When you read a book, leave a review somewhere. Wouldn’t you like the same? –C. Hope Clark 

The sentiment above struck home for me because as a reader I do want to share the joy I find in reading with others. And while I talk to my friends and we share recommendations, it seldom goes any farther.

So today, gentle readers, meet Caroline Graham–a nice English lady a few years my senior. She is author of the DCI Barnaby series which just recently began airing on OPB Friday nights as “Midsomer Murders”.

Graham began writing mysteries at age 40, and wrote seven Barnaby books in all. I completed “The Ghost in the Machine” a couple nights ago and it has stayed with me. It takes Graham nearly 150 pages to finally get someone murdered, but the leadup is so completely entertaining it matters not.

Life in the English villages of fictional Midsomer County, as seen through Graham’s eyes, is anything but dull–rife with petty jealousies, sarcastic asides, sexual depravities, and most important, secrets. Lots and lots of secrets. By the time Barnaby arrives on the scene with his sidekick Sgt. Troy, he has considerable sorting out to do.

For the mystery reader, Graham is not to be missed. Her attention to detail, sense of place, character development, convoluted plot and subplots, and wicked sense of humor put her right up there with P.D. James and Elizabeth George.

Over the past couple years I’ve watched ”Midsomer Murders”. The television series spans several seasons and is available on DVD through Netflix and Multnomah County Library. Quality varies depending upon the screenwriter, but the setting, characters, and tone–even when the stories aren’t Graham’s–are spot on.

Hope Clark, by the way, just released her first mystery, “Lowcountry Bribe” published by BellBridge Books. She writes the weekly e-newsletter “Funds for Writers”.

“When you read a book, leave a review somewhere. Wouldn’t you like the same?” Of course we would. If only.

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