Volume 5, Issue 1 – February, 2002

Nancy Bartholomew: Murder, Mayhem and Mirth

Nancy Bartholomew says she’s like a psychopath, and she should know. A practicing psychotherapist, Bartholomew routinely hears voices in her head. North Philadelphia voices, mainly. Sierra Lavotini, the Florida stripper with a body and a brain, comes in loud and strong. So does newcomer Angelina Donatelli, running from a mid-life crisis and the Mob in a stolen Pepto-Bismol(r) pink Winnebago. But you shouldn’t count out Greensboro, N.C., country and western crooner Maggie Reid just yet.

Like the three leading ladies of her current and future mystery series, Bartholomew specializes in combining mayhem and mirth. At Bouchercon 2001, Bartholomew confessed, she just can’t help it. The two naturally flow together in the mind of a soccer mom — at least they do in the mind of a wild child preacher’s daughter soccer mom who used to sing country and western in Philadelphia biker bars.

Crescent Blues: What was the inspiration behind Sierra Lavotini?

Nancy Bartholomew: Desperation. I had really good beginner’s luck. I wrote a short story, and Kathy Trochek told me to send it to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Naïve girl I was, I sent it, and they bought it. I thought, this is great. I went out and bought a laptop — 90 days, same as cash — because I knew I was going to be famous. I did not publish anything for two years after that.

My husband was like: “What is with this obsession? You need to be working more. You’ve got a [social work] practice.” Pressure. So I thought, I’m going to Sleuthfest, and I’m going to enter a short story contest, and if I don’t place in the top ten, then he’s probably right. And I’m going to come back be the best little social worker there ever was. But I was facing turning forty in a couple of years, and I thought, I’ve never taken a risk. I’ve never done anything that was hard, and it’s been a dream of mine to write, so let’s give it a shot.

That was all well and good. The conference was going to be in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and my husband loves to go to Fort Lauderdale, so this is great.

I wrote four horrible stories. They had to be set in Florida. So I just I wrote one right after the other. Not good. Then I wrote one that was…okay.

Then, the night before the contest, I’m sitting there in the basement, in the cold, sitting at the computer when my little boy came down. He said. “What you doin’?”

I said, “I’m writing.”

He said, “It don’t look like you writing, Mama. It look like you just sitting there. If you just sitting there, why don’t you install a software [program] for me.”

I said, “No problem, Ben.” I had so much caffeine, and I was so upset, I threw the box up in the air accidentally, and all the papers fluttered out. The one that landed at my feet said, “Sierra reveals all.” I thought, “What a great title. I wonder who would reveal all.” Then, it was just like they said; I heard my voice.

I always thought my voice would be a nice Barbara Kingsolver voice. No, it was Sierra. She said, “Yo. Listen. Write this down. I’m gonna talk to you real fast, and I hope you can type.” [Imitates the sound of fingers flying over a keyboard.]

I sent it in, and I went to Fort Lauderdale. I remember that I was so nervous I thought I was going to throw up the whole time. Finally, it got to Saturday night. The awards ceremony was in this little disco, and Stuart Kaminsky and his daughter were handing out the awards. When they got to number eight, they called my name. I ran up and got my award, and my Atlanta, Ga., Sisters-in-Crime chapter was there, and we were all having a big time. And I never asked which story got eighth place.

The award’s sitting there, and people are congratulating me. I’m thinking, “Eighth place — woohoohoo. That’s okay, but it’s not like it’s…”

Then they called out my name for first place. I just remember a few people clapping, and Jeremiah Healy was out there, and all these writers and agents were out there. I looked at them, and I couldn’t stand it any more. I asked, “So which one won?” I didn’t know.

“It’s ‘Sierra Reveals All.’ I think you’ve got a book there.” Stuart was a great mentor, and he was right. I sat down, and Sierra was born.

Did you use your Downingtown, Pa., background in the creation of Sierra, or did she spring fully formed from your brain?

She sprang, fully formed. I can see her parents; they’re not mine. I can see her house. I can see her neighborhood. Every now and then, my dad, who still lived up in Philadelphia, would say, “You remember Wyamissing Avenue. You remember the guy up there who sold the soft pretzels.” He would remind me, and he could visually lead me through the old neighborhoods that I lived in after I graduated from college, and some of the places we used to go when we were younger and we would go downtown.

I had worked with a lot of bikers and a lot of strippers, but I never asked them the tricks of the trade or anything like that. I guess I absorbed it.

Sierra is very, very proud of her profession. A lot of the strippers that I worked with in the drug clinic were not. They were, basically, glorified hookers — and not very good ones. It was if Sierra just stepped out of somewhere.

Do you do research now? On your website you mentioned a woman named Nova Wite.

Nova is an exotic dancer in Atlanta, and I met her on-line, and she invited me down, because she was about to open up a school for exotic dancers. So I went down, and she was dancing in the Club 9 ½ Weeks, and she said, “I read your stuff first, to see whether I thought you were for real. Because if you treated us like bimbos, I was gonna tell you, I won’t talk to you. But you got it right.”

And the eerie thing was that walking into that club, even down to Vincent Gambuzzo, they were all there. And I was so nervous! I went with my husband and a friend of his. We were walking down this long corridor to go to the door, and the doorman looked just like Bruno. He looks at me. “You’re Nancy.” He even had a New York accent. The minute I said yes, he goes, “We’ve been waiting for you. Come on in.”

At that point, the men I was with evaporated. No one talked to them. No one saw them. All these naked women came and talked to me. I had never seen two men look more disappointed in their lives. We know the routine at these places. They don’t talk to you.

I went in the back, in the locker room, and it looked just like Sierra’s locker room. I ate pizza with the girls, and it was nice. They took me in the ladies room and showed me how to put Clinique(r) bronzer on my body and then concealer on your butt for the white lines. They said, “Oh, we would never go to a tanning booth. It ages your skin.” And I thought, “Absolutely.” They taught me all kinds of stuff.

Was that incorporated into Strip Poker?

Those experiences were helpful in Drag Strip and Film Strip and Strip Poker. I saw Nova again this summer, and she’s doing make-up — makeovers. She did all my publicity pictures, which if I could ever get them printed out and on the back of a book would be spectacular. I don’t look anything like myself. She’s just marvelous with that stuff but very interesting. And very interesting for a dancer, because she’s an A-cup.

Are you involved in Nova’s makeover business?

No. I just went to visit, and she said, “I want to do [your make-up].” I said, “Please, do.” She did, and it was so much fun.

Will the pictures be up on your Web site?

When I figure out how do it, they’ll be up there. My older son, who is about to turn 13 told me, “You cannot put those up there.”

I said, “Why?”

“You look strange.”

I found out that “strange” means: “You look like one of those women that we don’t let you look like.” My sons had the same reaction six years ago when I tried acrylic nails. “You are not that type of woman.”

I said, “What kind of woman would that be?”

They were so little — this was five or six years ago — that they said, “We don’t know, but you’re not that kind. I could have died from laughing. And they’re right; I’m not that kind — whatever that kind is. I broke every nail off, because I work in the garden. They all fell off. Still it was pretty amazing that they don’t see me that way. So they don’t like these makeover pictures.

Which is interesting, because you make such a big deal about being a bad girl grown up — the “preacher’s daughter” who ran away to become a country and western singer in a biker bar and now writes about strippers.

I think that there must be several people living inside me. This conservative person that my boys see in me — I don’t really get with that. Maybe I look like that. Maybe I walk into their classrooms as the good mom with the tray of cookies. Maybe that’s what they see, but there’s a part of me that’s “I am they, and they are me.” My sons don’t see me as outside of their circle. They want to keep me right there in the house where it’s safe, and I don’t look like one of those tarted-up women.

However, they like Sierra. When I talk like Sierra they fall on the ground. Unfortunately, I read it out loud at the end of the day. I will never forget — I was reading one particular scene, and I wasn’t aware that Ben, who was five, was there. And I said in [Sierra’s voice], “How would you like it if I was to knock your teeth so far down your throat you had to fart to see daylight?” He fell to the ground, hysterical, laughing.

I said, “If you tell one person in your school that. You will not use that. That’s Mommy’s writing, and you cannot use that.”

He said, “Mom, I know what to do. I will not use it in school.”

Well, I heard it everywhere else. I’m surprised he didn’t get up in church and say, “How would you like it if…”

I have to admit I’m whacko. My dad’s whacko. My mom’s whacko. Everybody in my family is whacko. We all have great senses of humor. Except my mom doesn’t like it when I say “shitty,” so I guess I shouldn’t do that. But other than that, they’re cool.

Have you shown your parents your writing?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Dad is the closest thing to totally evolved. He’s the epitome of unconditional love. You asked me how did Sierra come out the way she did. I remember when I was younger — and I was a wild teenager — I went to spend some time with my paternal grandfather, who was very conservative and insisted on things being done just the right way. So I went to the store and bought all new clothes, enough to last for the week [of the visit]. I came back, and my dad said, “The clothes look nice, but you don’t dress like that.”

“But I don’t want your dad to think I’m a bad person. I want him to like me, and I think he wouldn’t like me if I was who I was.”

And my dad sighed. I didn’t know at the time, but that was the experience my dad had with his dad. But my dad said, “Don’t ever be ashamed to be who you are. You be exactly who you are and as rebellious as you are. You’re a real pain in the ass, but we love you.”

It was that kind of acceptance. When I would sing, underage, in bars, he would come — wearing his collar — to the biker bars. And all my girlfriends would sit with him and flirt with him, because he was cute. At the time I thought he was showing up to give me support. But now I think he was also kind of being a bodyguard, so they would know that’s his daughter, don’t do anything wrong. And no one ever did.

I think my boys are growing up in that same kind of atmosphere, where you can be a soccer mom and also have a brain and think outside the stereotypical soccer mom box. I think most moms get stereotyped as soccer moms, just because they drive kids around, but these ladies’ minds go on, though they look like they’re very conservative and not as “in the world” as we did in our twenties. If that makes any sense.

There’s a lot going on in the minds of the soccer moms at this convention [Bouchercon 2001]: blackmail, arson, burglary, murder, mayhem…

Yes. I look at all the women who are about my age. Everyday I pick Ben up from school like all the other mothers. We get out of the cars and walk up to get our kids, and we look so innocuous. But I know so much is going on in their heads.

I got so much support when I started writing. They all said, “Go get it. You’re out there doing a thing that you really want to do.” I think that’s really, really cool.

From the way you approached the Sleuthfest short story competition, it sounds like you’ve been part of the mystery fan community for a while.

Probably since second grade when I got my first Nancy Drew. My mom was a huge fan. She introduced me to Nancy Drew, and from there she would throw the books she liked to read my way. By the time I was in sixth grade I was reading Ngaio Marsh, Agatha Christie and bunches of other people.

When did you start attending conventions?

Sleuthfest was my first, and I think that was in 1994. I went every year for as long as I could — at least five years. It was incredibly valuable. I made all the mistakes that people make. You know what they say in all the little books: “Know who’s going to be there. Know their names. Know their pictures. Look in the program book.” I got into an elevator at my first convention, and I’m in there with Albert Zuckerman, who wrote Writing the Blockbuster Novel. It’s just him and me in the elevator, and he’s asking me what I do.

That’s when you’re supposed to make your pitch. But I say, “I’m just hanging out. What are you doing?” I missed my shot, right there. You’re supposed to have a one-minute commercial ready. Did I? Nooooooo.

Sometimes it’s better if you don’t give your pitch. Then they don’t feel the need to run whenever they catch sight of you.

Yeah — they’re not running away. I watch a lot, and I see. It’s real easy to see if you put yourself in an editor or agent’s place that they want to run away most of the time.

Getting back to your books. Your second heroine, Maggie Reid, appears in two books.

Your Cheatin’ Heart and Stand By Your Man.

Did you use any of your own experiences in creating Maggie?

Absolutely everything I could find.

When I started Sierra, I thought: “Well, I’ll write Sierra books, and I’ll just do that.”

My agent called me up, and she said, “Do not do that. That is a bad thing. You have to write another series, because you want to make a living from this, don’t you? What if your first series stinks?” Miracle Strip [the first novel in the series] hadn’t even come out yet, so this was a terrible blow to my confidence, but it was smart. I think I learned from it.

But I asked myself, “What the hell am I going to do now? Who else is in there?” I thought a long time about it. I thought about a character I’d been playing with, and I thought, “You know, I always wished that I had worked harder at singing, but it’s too late now. I’ll just give it to Maggie.”

So Maggie went off and did her thing. But in order for her to have the whole world that she needed to live in, I went downtown to meet the Greensboro, N.C., police department. It was wide open, and they said, “Come on in.” Because it’s a small town — relatively small, compared to Atlanta or Philly.

The police took me in, and they took me around. I rode with them and got to know them, and I thought, “Wow, this is useful. I can use a lot of this.”

And the guys I used to play with in the band — I thought it would be neat if I could fit them in. I hadn’t seen them in twenty years, so I just described them from my memories. I added some things and took some things away, and plopped them all in there. Then, in the middle of writing Your Cheatin’ Heart, I went to visit my brother in the town where we grew up and ran into the guy who was the model for Harmonic Jack. It was so wonderful. I had such a great time.

How’s he doing?

He has evolved. We had such a free, beautiful relationship when we were in college. Maggie doesn’t have that with him. But it was so clean and so sweet — and so painful when it ended. So I got to work through all of that, both by talking to him and writing for Maggie and giving her some of the ways to work out things. Like she and Jack are on the fence a lot of the time about what they’re going to do. She has to work through that now in a way that I couldn’t, because she’s older, and he isn’t.

In fact, he’s grown into this great man, who’s exactly like he was as a kid, only he’s a wonderful dad, and he’s got a job working with semiconductors and all this stuff that I don’t understand. It’s kind of cool to see how people grow up and change, and how their lives evolve.

He’s obviously left the music business too.

He teaches harmonica as a part-time job. He still goes to the Philadelphia Folk Festival. Some of the local musicians still call him, and he’ll go sit in with them, because he’s still up there with all of them, but neither one of us was in any danger of becoming famous.

Actually, now you are.

[Bartholomew laughs.]

One of the things that struck me about Stand By Your Man was the potential for developing numerous relationships, which lead me to wonder how you pace your series. Do you have a story arc in mind, or do you plot book by book?

I should’ve read the article about that too — how to think about a series before you start it. In a lot of ways, Maggie and Sierra get locked in. Like the end of Strip Poker — I’m as flummoxed as everybody else. I have no idea what will happen next. And it was the same way with Stand By Your Man.

I just follow along after my characters. I’ve gotten better about plotting the mystery itself, because that’s just a matter of who did it, and where all the clues should go. I know the rules about that. But the rules about relationships and what these characters are going to choose to do — I’m not privy to it. They just say, “We’re doing this.”

So your characters are leading the charge.

I’m like a psychopath. I’ll look at what I’m writing and think, “You cannot put your unconscious on the page. If you have issues, you’re going to have to resolve them yourself.” Or I think: “These are issues that you’ve clearly resolved.” Nuh uh.

Then one or the other of the characters will go: “You need to write it, forget about it and let it go. Or Sierra will jump right back out of the paper.” So you write whatever they say.

Are you a full-time writer now?

I have a half-time practice.

Do you write at the end of your workdays?

No, because then I’m braindead. When I go into a room with someone to work with them, everything in my head gets cleared out. When I leave that room, everything gets cleared out too. I remember at the next session — everything, no matter how many years it’s been since I’ve seen the person. You have to learn to detach from that. But it takes up a lot of energy, and by the time I’m done… I see cases back to back from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. without a break. Then I go get Adam, and I go get Ben. Then soccer practice.

I try to write Mondays and Fridays when I’m not scheduled to be in the office. But I try very poorly, because I’m a procrastinator. I have to pull myself to the computer sometimes. It’s not writer’s block. I call it writer’s A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder). But when I do sit down, and I do get going, and I do get back into the zone — it’s like playing sports and being in the zone. It just goes and goes and goes. Then I can write any time of the day or night. I can write in the afternoon when the boys come home and they’re playing. I just invite more kids over so there’s a crowd and everybody’s independent.

Have you found that the analysis required of a psychotherapist — analyzing situations and deriving conclusions — helpful in your writing?

Not with plot. But characterization — oh yeah. When a character comes to me, I can think about him or her. If they’re side characters, I can flesh them out more.

I know what Sierra is dealing with. She’s dealing with how do you commit to a relationship when you’ve been hurt so many times and all the issues that go with that. I can build that case history, and I can do that with everybody else.

Raydean is one of my favorites, because she is so nuts. What I like about that is that she is also the wisest character in the series. Bar none, she is the wisest. That’s just my own, personal soap box about those who dismiss people who appear to be mentally deranged and say that these people could have nothing to offer. But they are so incredible. So I put Raydean in there for me.

When it comes time to flesh out the characters, I will think, “What is your Myers-Briggs type? What were your parents like?” until I can get some feel about what’s going on in their heads. Then I can write them.

I’m very intrigued to find out who Big Moose turns out to be.

You and me both. I swear I don’t know.

How do you keep the different voices of your main characters straight? How do you keep that Philadelphia, Florida, very East Coast speech pattern separate from Maggie Reid’s North Carolina drawl?

It’s the setting. I think I change as soon as I walk through the door of either Sierra’s trailer or Maggie’s house. Living around in Greensboro, I am constantly bombarded by Maggie’s voice, Marshal Weather’s voice, and all the gossip about the real marshal and all the people at the police department. I can immerse myself in Maggie.

I remember when I was trying to write the first novel in the Maggie Reid series, Your Cheatin’ Heart. I was into the book, but I wasn’t into it enough to have a strong feel for it. I had been in the middle of writing Drag Strip, and I was so into Drag Strip. It was so intense. I missed Sierra like she was a part of me.

I walked into Barnes and Noble [bookstore]. All the Christmas cards were out on the table, and there was this black and white photograph of a little trailer with colored lights around it. I had to leave the store. I had to go back to buy the Christmas cards, but I had to go back into my car to cry. And I’m thinking this is ridiculous. This is somebody I made up!

Maybe she’s out there. You just don’t know! What kind of research do you do for the books? You mentioned going around with the Greensboro police, and you connected with Nova and checked out her club.

Family vacations. One time I told the boys, let’s go do research in Panama City, Fla. We need to stay in a seedy motel on the Strip. Orange shag carpeting, smoke billowing in under the doors from whoever was staying next door, loud sounds. Open the door, it’s right out on Beach Strip Drive. The kids said, “There’s green algae in the pool.” They thought that was the coolest thing they’d ever done.

There’s this supper club that was started right after World War II — Green’s Supper Club. It has this great ball, and it has this guy, who used to play in the ‘Forties. It’s frozen in time. Everyone’s a hundred and fifty years old, but they have the scroll bandstand with the first letter of the band’s name. They play dance music. All these older couples come, all dressed up, and they dance. They have the little tables, and the waitresses bring dinner. So I said, “Let’s go. We have to do research.”

We got there. Ben had a hand-held, voice-activated recorder, and I didn’t know it. So he taped a 50-year-old birthday party with all the raucous things that were said — which he did not understand, but I did.

The boys went into the men’s room. They said, “We’re going where you can’t go, Momma.” After they got back, they said, “All the potties were so low to the ground.” This was unbelievable. “And some of them had cigarettes in them. Put that in the book. That’s not right!” I said, okay.

Then they got totally swept up in the whole aura of the thing. Ben came up, and he bowed and said, “May I take this dance, Momma?”

There were all these professional ballroom dancers around, and I do not dance. But I said, “Sure.” We went out to the floor, and he extended my arm out and put his arm around my waist and proceeds in his little eight-year-old way to dance me around. It cleared the floor, because everybody’s going, “Ooooh.”

Adam’s not going to be outdone, but he’s too cool. So he walks over to me. “May I take this dance?” I said, yes. We walk out on the floor, and like a teenager he puts his arms around my waist, buries his head in my chest and freezes. He just stands there.

I said, “You know it’s okay to move.”

He said [in a whisper], “Nevermind. I’m fine.”

It has been an interesting growing up time for those two.

Are your boys mystery readers?

They are diehard Harry Potter fans. They disappeared for days when the last book came out. Otherwise, if it’s not Nickelodeon Magazine, it’s hard to get them to read, but they have to for school. Of course, now they read with the jaundiced eye of a critiquer. “There’s not a good hook in this, Mom.” I walked in on Adam the other day, and he said, “The characterization in this book is fabulous.”

Ben’s English class asked me to speak to them. They thought my job was great, because I got to write in my pajamas. But they were all going, “How’s this for a hook? How’s this for a hook?” Their teacher’s been teaching them about hooks.

Did you take any writing classes, or did you just sit down and do it?

In my undergraduate work, I double-majored in creative writing and psychology. That was fun. I took a mystery writing/adult continuing education class in Atlanta, and that was fun too. But what helped the most was Writer’s Digest magazine. I really read that. I got Donald Maass’s book, The Career Novelist, and memorized that. Then I listened very hard to the stories of other writers who told me what did and did not work. I also joined a critique group that was very helpful.

Does humor naturally go hand in hand with mayhem for you?

Yes. I don’t know why. I’m a scaredy cat. I do not like to be scared. I can’t watch violence in movies or on the TV. It upsets me, because I feel all of it. Sierra is such a wiseacre. I just keep seeing all these funny things that happen. I guess they just go hand in hand. I can’t separate them out. I’ve tried, and the result is just boring.

How do you get from mayhem, madness and the “Babes in Black” panel to judging the Edgar Awards for young adult mysteries?

That isn’t so big a stretch. In fact, I’ve found out I’m a very juvenile writer, because so many of these writers write so beautifully.

I thought it would be good, because my kids have been begging me to write a young adult book. Adam told me it’s my duty, so that he will have something to pass on to his children. I asked him, “What about Sierra?”

He said, “No, you’ve got to write the stories you told us when you were putting us to bed every night.”

“But I don’t remember them.” (There was this period where I was telling them a different story every night.)

He said, “You have to write that too. I don’t care if you don’t remember them. You’re just going to have to write a new one.”

Reading young adult mysteries has been very educational, not only for my adult writing, but especially for thinking about writing a young adult book. And to read what’s out there. In Ben’s class, they’re making him read all the Caldecott Medal writers. To me, that’s the same as reading all the Oprah Winfrey book selections, because these kids are totally depressed when they get finished reading these books. They’re heavy-duty books. I want kids to learn that reading is also a fun adventure. A lot of the writers in the running for the Edgar Awards for Young Adult Mysteries are writing fun adventures. They are books I can turn my kids on to, and the writing is excellent.

You’ve got a new series character getting ready to make her debut. Could you tell our readers a little bit about her?

Angelina Donatelli was born like Sierra. Maggie — I had to go into labor a while for Maggie. But Angelina Donatelli jumped up fully formed, and she jumped up at a writing conference. I was teaching at a writing conference, and they said it would be rustic. It would be up in the mountains. No TV, no radio, no newspapers, no phone in your room.

I thought, “Not a problem. I’ll just hook up and be on-line.” Well, not if there’s no phone in your room. So I get up there. I get in my room, and I try to plug in. By the third day, I’m like every junkie I’ve ever seen in withdrawal. I was evil. I was so mean. By fourth day, I thought, “Oh, I’m going to die.”

On the fifth day, Angelina said, “Listen, you’ve been going so fast you have not listened to me, and I talk faster than anybody you’ve ever known. So you better write this down real fast.” And she starts off with this whole thing about this Pepto-pink Winnebago. I don’t know who she is. I don’t know where she’s going. I don’t know why she has this thing. I don’t even know it’s stolen until she told me. This is awful. And it gets worse! I’m reeling.

Angelina just left her husband. He’s had all these affairs, and now he has sired a child with ears as big as Dumbo’s. This is not nice. Then she starts hallucinating on me, and I go, “No, you cannot do this.” She’s hallucinating herself when she was 18, because she’s having this total mid-life crisis. All Angelina wants to do is have her mid-life crisis in peace, but the other woman manages to get herself knocked off, and it looks like Angelina did it.

Angelina’s got the stolen Winnebago®, and the Mob’s after her, because her brother-in-law Vito does not believe that blood is thicker than water. “In-law” is water, and he’s going to take her out anyway. It’s just one thing after another with Angelina.

When do you think Angelina’s story will be ready for prime time?

I had a hundred pages yesterday. Today, I have 15, because I changed the plot line, and in order to do that I had to go back. But now I know her better, and I also know some of the other characters who want to be in this book with her. All these characters in Las Vegas want to be in this book. Angelina’s in Philly, and I don’t know how we’re going to get out to Las Vegas. I have no plot.

Isn’t Bouchercon going to be in Las Vegas in two years?

Is it?

Yes.

I will be there. I have these police officers that are also truckers in their off-duty time, and they convinced me that I need to research cross-country trucking, because it would be very interesting. I’m like, okay. And they said, “No. We mean you have to ride. You can go on a short run.”

I said, okay.

“We don’t think we can have you back in time to pick up your kids after school, but we think we can have you back by four. We’ll leave at six.”

“This means I’ll have to be in a truck all day.”

“It’ll be fun. We’ll talk about turkey hunting.”

I’m sure that will be in this book somewhere.

Are you working on any new books for Sierra and Maggie, or are you concentrating on Angelina?

I’m concentrating on Angelina, and I’m waiting to see how the numbers look for the other characters. That will be very much a factor, because Sierra and Maggie are mid-series. Harper-Collins and Avon Books merged, and they cut Maggie. So she’ll have to find another house if she’s going to continue. But a lot of people want her to continue, including some smaller publishing houses. I’ll have to think about whether I want to do that or let Angelina come out and try her wings for a while, then go back to Maggie.

Anything else you’d like to add? Anything you feel we should’ve covered but we didn’t?

Other than my bra size, I think we covered everything.

Oh, I haven’t been half as bad as I could’ve been. We didn’t go into Downingtown.

No, we didn’t. But funny thing about Downingtown — one of my girlfriends in Greensboro has been single for a long time. Finally, she launched her barge. “You know, I think I want to meet somebody,” she said. “I just don’t meet anybody around here.”

So I said, “Why don’t we do a personal ad for you in Yahoo. You don’t have to meet the people who answer if you don’t want to.” Do you know, of all the men in the universe of Greensboro that I found for her, I hooked her up with a guy from Downingtown who was my babysitter’s best friend? Whoa! Now that’s a little eerie.

I’d like to read that in a story.

Publishing a book is so good for your ego. You know all those guys who didn’t want to date me in high school? I’ve heard from every damn one of them, and they all have such a different picture of me now. “You were the girl I most respected.” “You were the pretty one.”

You know he didn’t. He dated Betsy. She was my best friend. Hey!

Jean Marie Ward

In addition to editing Crescent Blues, Jean Marie Ward writes for a number of Web-based and print magazines, including Science Fiction Weekly. She is the author of Illumina: the Art of Jean Pierre Targete (Paper Tiger) and several short stories, including “Most Dead Bodies in a Confined Space” in Strange Pleasures 2 (Prime Books). Her first novel, With Nine You Get Vanyr, written with Teri Smith, is scheduled to be released by Samhain Publishing in late 2006.