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![[IMAGE]](images/newsltr7.jpg) Spring, 2004 - Vol. 3, Number 1
ALL POINTS BULLETIN
By William Kent Krueger
Yee-haw! Let's Ride!
Lock up your women, children and scaredy-cat men folk. Hide your money in a good, safe place. The Minnesota Crime Wave is about to hit the road again, and we may be coming your way.
That's right, we're filling our gun belts, hitching the bandanas over our faces, and skedaddling out of the land o'lakes. The middle of April will find us spreading a reign of mayhem across the Midwest, Madison, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Dayton, Indianapolis, and Kansas City—none of these places will ever be the same. For generations to come, the good folks there will speak with awe and trepidation about the day the Crime Wave came to town.
Why do we do it? Why put up with Carl's rock-shattering snore, my constant whining and kvetching, Ellen's incessant (some say maniacal) laughter, or Deborah's running commentary on the flora and fauna of every damn microclimate we pass through? Although in the beginning it had a lot to do with our realization of the value in sharing individual resources and the responsibilities for arranging events, I think there's something different and stronger at work these days. As maudlin as it sounds and seems to run contrary to the hard-tack reputation of the Crime Wave, I think what keeps us together now is friendship.
For my part, I love traveling with the Crime Wave. I love that there's not a single subject Carl doesn't know a little something about; that Deborah's deep well of stories about growing up in small-town Ohio resonate with my memories of my own Ohio boyhood; that Ellen actually encourages us to offer absurd titles for the books in her culinary series. In the company of the Crime Wave, I have never felt anything but a profound and mutual respect. So, if you happen to find yourself running from a posse (or an irate mystery book group), or preparing to dangle from the end of a strong rope, I couldn't recommend a finer bunch with whom to share your final moments.
(But about that dangling from a rope thing, you can count me out.)
ERIN HART
Interviewed by Carl Brookins
Recently I posed a series of questions to new Minnesota crime fiction writer Erin Hart.
Carl: How did you come to write a mystery?
Erin: I've always been an avid mystery reader, but I'm not sure I ever would have started writing a novel if I hadn't heard an absolutely irresistible story—and a true story, by the way—about two Irish farmers cutting turf discovering the perfectly-preserved severed head of a beautiful red-haired girl. All I could think was that it was the best opening I've ever heard for a mystery. Who was the girl? How long had she been there? And what had happened to her that she ended up beheaded and cast into a desolate bog? The idea rattled around in my head for ten years before I ever put pen to paper. But just like the characters in Haunted Ground, I felt compelled to give her a story, even if I had to make most of it up.
Carl: Which authors do you consider your most important writing influences (not limited to mystery writers)?
Erin: Well, P.D. James has to be the largest single influence. I actually made a conscious study of the way she develops characters and structures her stories, trying to find out what it is that makes them work so well. I once mentioned that close reading to a journalist, and he asked whether I wasn't afraid that some of James's style might rub off on me. My only thought about that was, "I should be so lucky." From singing, I've found that it's very difficult to copy any other artist; even when you try mightily, everything ends up being filtered through your own interpretation in your own voice, anyway. Other crime writers I admire would certainly include Ruth Rendell, Elizabeth George, Scott Turow, Ian Rankin, Minette Walters, and probably dozens of others I'm forgetting.
Carl: Talk a little about your educational background.
![[cover]](images/Erin_Hart.jpg) Erin: I have a bachelor's degree in theater from Saint Olaf College, and had every intention of becoming a theater director upon graduation. But the recession of the early 1980s landed me into a series of arts administration jobs, and so I went back to school at the University of Minnesota and started taking writing classes, just to keep my brain from shrinking too much. I started writing freelance theater reviews while I was in school, and that turned into a sort of secondary career. Eventually I decided to pursue a master's degree in English/Creative Writing, but it took almost ten years, start to finish. I started writing Haunted Ground just after graduate school.
Carl: Is there a sequel in the works?
Erin: Yes, I've just been working on changes to the next book in the series, Lake of Sorrows, which will be published in October 2004. Cormac Maguire and Nora Gavin return, along with a whole new cast of secondary characters, and a few more bog bodies. The story is set on a big industrial bog in the Irish midlands, where peat is harvested by the ton as fuel for power plants. It's quite a dark story, full of illicit liaisons, and rumors of ancient gold and blood sacrifice.
Carl: Will you write a play?
Erin: People always used to ask me that question when I was a theater critic, and my first reaction was always, "I could never do that." That strong first reaction was always followed by an equally strong impulse to try it, since writing dialogue is something I don't think I do very well at all! So the short answer is: "Who knows?"
Carl: What surprised you the most about the crime fiction community once you had become a published mystery novelist?
Erin: I suppose how very ironic it is that such a nice bunch of people spend so much time dreaming up ever-more-depraved ways to top their fellow creatures! And how perfectly normal that seems to me.
Carl: Any funny stories you'd care to share about touring the book?
Erin: I've been collecting a whole series of very strange, cousin-related coincidences. (Cue the "Twilight Zone" music.) The first fan letter I received about Haunted Ground was from an Irish doctor who hailed from east Galway (where the story is set). He turned out to be first cousin to the musician friend who was best man at my wedding. A book reviewer in Port Townsend, Washington, was reading Haunted Ground and just happened to set it on her car's dashboard when a passing stranger saw it and said, "Hey, how do you like that book? My wife's cousin wrote it." Finally, just before going to Ireland for the Haunted Ground book launch there, a friend e-mailed us with news of an ancient body found in a bog near my husband's home town in Ireland by a farmer cutting a drain in a bog. As it happened, the discoverer of the new bog body was my husband's cousin. We visited the site, and the circumstances were eerily similar to the opening chapters in my new book. It's getting so that I don't quite believe in coincidence any more.
Carl: I just learned that you are an accomplished singer, in addition to your other talents. Is this something you are pursuing as another career as well as all your other projects?
Erin: I've always sung, and have recorded a few songs on my husband's CDs or for local compilations, but usually only under duress. It's not something I've ever considered as an even semi-serious career, since there's not that much demand for Irish songs delivered in the old unaccompanied style. It's just something I do because I can't help it.
Carl: As both a successful writer and reviewer, do you have any sage words of advice for budding writers?
Erin: My only advice would be to fight against your instincts, and at least try the things you're most afraid of. Certainly there are no guarantees, and it may even sound a little flip, but how do you truly know you can't do something unless you at least give it a try? I often think how different my life would have been if I'd never even tried fiction writing because it was too scary. I do think people take that old saw, "write what you know" far too literally. I'd change it to say: write what you really care about, and you can figure out ways to learn the rest.
![[COVER]](images/intimate125.jpg) ELLEN'S LATEST
Ellen's new Jane Lawless mystery proves it is possible to write a book while lying in a hospital bed with a broken leg... not easy, but possible.
"The poignant history of the groom's father, Alden Clifford, provides the ballast for this richly layered narrative... Incorporating societal ills torn from the headlines, Hart bares the weaknesses in her well-realized characters as well as their strengths. Despite a plot refreshingly short on guns and gore, the tension is palpable in this spunky page-turner."
-Publishers Weekly
WE LOVE TO GO A-RAMBLING...
SOMETIMES
By Deborah Woodworth
One of the perks (we take them where we can get them) of traveling to promote books is the opportunity to visit intriguing places and meet fascinating people. There are readers and booksellers, of course, and the guy who patches your flat tire on a Sunday morning in rural Indiana. Then there are those special opportunities that come only because we do what we do.
I'll have two of those opportunities next year, and I'm stoked. (See details below.) In February 2005, I'll be a guest speaker at the annual Friends of the Shakers weekend, held in Pleasant Hill Shaker Village in Kentucky. If you've never been to Pleasant Hill, I urge you to make it a destination. The village is completely and beautifully restored, including the lovely winding staircases—two, one for Sisters and one for Brothers—in the Trustees' Office. My visits to Pleasant Hill have provided inspiration for much of my Sister Rose series. Oh, and be sure to try the Shaker Lemon Pie.
In November 2005, I'll be teaching a writing course at the John C. Campbell Folk School, located in the mountains of South Carolina. Ever see the movie The Songcatcher? It was loosely based on the founding of the John C. Campbell Folk School. I'll be teaching during "Shaker Week," when all sorts of Shaker experts will be giving intensive courses in a variety of Shaker arts and crafts. If you are interested in the Shakers or just want a unique experience in a beautiful setting, try out the Folk School. I was there a few years ago, and I can't wait to go back. Plus, the food is fabulous!
February 18-20, 2005
Guest speaker
Friends of the Shakers Annual Meeting
Harrodsburg, KY
1-800-734-5611 or info@shakervillageky.org
November 13-18, 2005
Teaching "Where History Meets Fiction"
John C. Campbell Folk School
1-800-365-5724 or folkschool.org
Read back issues:
Winter, 2002 - Vol. 1, Number 1
Spring, 2002 - Vol. 1, Number 2
Fall, 2002 - Vol. 1, Number 3
Winter, 2003 - Vol. 2, Number 1
Spring, 2003 - Vol. 2, Number 2
Fall, 2003 - Vol. 2, Number 3
Spring, 2004 - Vol. 3, Number 1
Fall, 2004 - Vol. 3, Number 2
Spring, 2005 - Vol. 3, Number 3
Fall, 2005 - Vol. 3, Number 4
Spring, 2006 - Vol. 4, Number 1
Fall, 2006 - Vol. 4, Number 2
Spring, 2007 - Vol. 5, Number 1
Spring, 2008 - Vol. 6, Number 1
Fall, 2008 - Vol. 6, Number 2 |
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