It’s fall in Paris. The rows of chestnuts flanking the Seine are turning golden-brown; gingko trees sport their distinctive yellow leaves, preparing to fling down, on one afternoon they keep secret, all their leaves at once.
Fall fashion? Long hair for women, slim tan trench coats at mid-calf, midi-length swishy skirts. Anyone can wear jeans and sneakers (male, female, old, young) with a blazer-cut jacket. In the markets, apples from the Garonne (Pixie Pommes!), quantities of mushrooms, cashmere scarves. Kids scurry to school at eight while their older siblings stride down Rue de l’Universite toward Science Po.
I’m forever grateful to Madame, our wondrous French teacher at McCallum High in Austin. On the first trip to Paris over fifty years ago, fresh off the early train, my husband and I stopped at a café where I opened my mouth in fear and trembling to order in French—deux cafes et deux croissants.
To my shock the proprietor didn’t blink. And the result was magic—our first taste of croissant.
Long past high school I still say “Merci, Madame!” A Parisienne, she had (I believe) a PhD. She maintained perfect class discipline—even with smarty seniors. When anyone asks, how did you learn French? I say, “Madame! She made us sing songs!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96JRl7bER3g&list=RD96JRl7bER3g&start_radio=1
As to “à la Claire Fontaine” I suspect she omitted the first two verses—at least I don’t remember singing about bathing beneath a tree! But this song and the rest we still remember, decades later.
Sur le Pont d’Avignon…Frère Jacques…Alouette, gentille alouette, je te plumerai (le nez, le cou, et la tete, et le dos, etc.). At Christmas, Il est né, le divin enfant. Twisting your tongue around the pretty French words leaves you with life skills.
(She didn’t teach us La Marseillaise. But I still get chills when, in Casablanca, Victor Laszlo leads the crowd at Rick’s in singing it.)
And another beloved teacher taught both Latin and English. She could order grown seniors to race to the blackboard to diagram sentences, and insisted we use proper punctuation.
What was it about those favorite teachers? They made us learn. They brooked no foolishness. They could tell when we faked preparation. They thrust us into difficult novels, demanding paintings, complex unfamiliar music. Hitherto hidden histories. Concepts we hadn’t invented or come upon by ourselves.
Maybe we did learn. Maybe—that learning is worthwhile.
Yesterday we visited La Fondation Louis Vuitton to visit what architect Frank Gehry dreamed of as an iceberg with sails.
Curves, lines, water, wood… magical in their power.
The building invites you to wander and wonder. What imagination, what creativity, what a vision! I listened to the rippling water traveling down the slope—the sound took over. Couldn’t hear traffic, or talking. Just the water–in the middle of a vast city. Being there takes you back to Roman stonework (rectangles, arches, roads in straight lines), and then to the power of curved sails, moved by wind and water. People working there seemed quietly confident that visitors should and would be (but not literally) blown away.
READING: I’m very much enjoying Susan Wittig Albert’s Thyme, Place & Story website where she is now serializing the first China Bayles book–A Bitter Taste of Garlic. Many of us are fans of this series, and would be delighted to visit China’s herb shop in a town not far from Austin…!
I just finished Mick Herron’s Down Cemetery Road. I found it much scarier than the Slow Horses novels…but still wanted to know the ending. It was published over 20 years ago and apparently will be streaming in October.
On the flight over I was reading Graham Robb’s France, including some tales of Paris that were scarier than Down Cemetery Road. Like being the butt of your buddies’ jokes and winding up as a prisoner in Fenestrelle, a political prison during the Napoleonic era. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forteresse_de_Fenestrelle
Meanwhile, at home, Ghost Justice is now out! Book 10 in my Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery Series set in the Hill Country. Available at BookPeople on Lamar Blvd. in Austin https://bookpeople.com/ and on Amazon. https://amzn.to/4pk8WQO
Hope you’ll enjoy it!
Helen Currie Foster lives and writes the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery Series north of Dripping Springs, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She’s also deeply curious about our human history and prehistory and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party. Follow her at http://www.helencurriefoster.com.
Ideas for stories are often triggered by research into family members, alive or deceased, strangers and their stories and the histories of different cities, countries, and states. The information may never appear in a book, but it gives the writer a more profound sense of historical events that color the author’s senses. And of course, the older the city, town, or state, the deeper the hidden gems that may be found.
My short story, “The Runaway Pin Boy,” was inspired by my immigrant uncle, circa 1926, who ran away from home and worked as a pin boy in the New York City Bowery until his father (my grandfather) found him. What was life like for pin boys, often called pin monkeys? The research took me from the Bowery in New York City, where it began, to the development of the sport and bowling alleys across the nation.
Then, of course, there was the period of prohibition, another explosive, compelling time in history, giving birth to the private, secret clubs called speakeasies. Lest we think speakeasies were exclusively in big cities like New York, Austin, Texas, had its own. Some are still in operation, such as the well-known Prohibition ATX on Anderson Mill Road, which is jazzy and more modern-looking than its forerunner. The Midnight Cowboy, an old brothel masquerading as a massage parlor, is now one of the oldest speakeasies in Austin.
The unlikely combination of a ballet dancer, an old Victorian house in Austin, and the myth of Confederate gold inspired much of Two Wolves Dancing. None of the American Civil War’s hidden treasures, however, have been found or confirmed to exist, including the gold Jefferson Davis supposedly hid when fleeing the Union in 1863. There is still an ongoing dispute about what happened to gold bars that vanished near Dents Run, Pennsylvania, on their way to the U.S. Mint. There is one find that may keep treasure hunting for Confederate gold alive for generations to come: The Great Kentucky Hoard. In 2023, an anonymous person using a metal detector discovered 700 Civil War-era gold coins buried in a cornfield in Kentucky. The hoard was confirmed and the coins authenticated by numismatic authorities.
As a native New Yorker who used the New York City subway system extensively, it was the stories of the hidden subway tunnels that triggered my imagination once again. While a myth of an immense hidden treasure from the turn of the 20th century does not exist in the subways of New York, there is one gem: The Subway Garnet.
In 1885, while excavating for a sewer line beneath West 35th Street, a worker dug up a massive, red-brown garnet weighing almost 10 pounds. Initially, the rock was used as a doorstop by the Department of Public Works until its identity and its value were eventually recognized by a geologist. Now, it is housed at the American Museum of Natural History.
The secrets, legends, and urban myths of the subway system are old and many. There’s the story of the pneumatic subway, constructed in the 1860s by inventor Alfred Ely Beach, beneath Broadway. Eventually, the project was abandoned and the entrance sealed. Decades later, when building the modern subway, excavators broke through and found the abandoned railcar.
The abandoned City Hall station, opened in 1904, was considered the crown jewel of the first subway line. It was closed in 1945 due to its sharp curve and low ridership, but myths of its secrets persist. Today, riders on the Number 6 train can sometimes catch a glimpse of the ornate station as the train turns around. Then there’s Track 61.
Now abandoned, Track 61 lies beneath Grand Central Terminal, running to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s custom five-car train platformed there, allowing him to enter and exit the hotel discreetly, keeping his paralysis out of public view.
And what would Urban legends and myths be without the Mole People: Dwellers who created shantytowns in abandoned tunnels. And ghost stories are a must, and so are ghost trains. Rumors persist of a phantom train that can sometimes be seen in the Astor Place station. One theory suggests the ghost train is the private car, called the Mineola, of August Belmont Jr., the financier of the first subway line, who used it to transport guests to his racetrack. Ghostly pets also have their place in the underground. Due to its connection with FDR and his dog, Fala, legends claim that the terrier’s ghost still haunts Track 61, where the dog used to accompany its master.
And so with all of these histories, stories, and myths in a nation that hasn’t been in existence for quite 250 years, how much more can we imagine from ancient empires?
In book four of the Housekeeper Mystery Series, Mrs. B., and her boss, Father Melvyn decide to take a group to Rome Italy, to study the lives of the early Roman Christians, and find themselves in the middle of a theft and murder surrounding the discovery of an ancient cross that might have belonged to Miltiades, the first bishop of Rome, in the 4th century, when Christianity was illegal and punishable by death. The legend: a special cross, was made by Emperor Constantine, in 312 A.D. after his victory at the Milvian Bridge. He had a vision of the symbol of the cross, accompanied by the words, “In this sign you will conquer,” and he did. This was the turning point for Christianity, and the beginning of the myth that a gold cross studded with gems was gifted to Miltiades, to be passed down to each succeeding prelate. But the cross disappeared and didn’t resurface in Rome until Mrs. B. and Father Melvyn arrived. The question is, why, and who would kill for this cross?
To find the answers, watch for Murder in the Cat’s Eye coming by the end of 2025.
Meanwhile, happy historical explorations and happy reading.
I’m working on a mystery novel—I’ve been working on it for years, but am now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel—and am faced with dilemmas too numerous to whine about in only one post, so I’ll move along.
I will instead write about the one pleasure of the writing life: creating and naming characters.
My novel is set in a little town very like my own hometown. I don’t base my plot on real events, and I don’t use real people as characters—with one exception: Steve Dauchy.
Not Steve, but close
Note: One of my readers, Dr. Cullen Dauchy, knows more about Steve than I do, especially about his early life, and I hope he’ll feel free to correct any errors.
Steve Dauchy was a career blood donor at Katy Veterinary Clinicin Katy, Texas. On retirement he moved to Fentress, where he lived with his veterinarian-owner’s parents, Joe and Norma Dauchy. Joe and Norma lived next door to me; in local terms, next door meant that my house was on one corner, then there was a half-acre “patch” of pecan and peach trees and grass and weeds, then a street, and then on the next corner, the Dauchy yard and their house. The point being that when Steve visited me, he didn’t just stroll across a driveway.
Joe was my dad’s first cousin, so I guess that makes Steve and me second cousins. I have a lot of cousins on that side of the family, although most are human.
Steve is a family name, with a story behind it. As I understand it, back in the ’20s or ’30s, my Great-uncle Cull (Joseph Cullen Dauchy, Sr.), enjoyed listening to a radio program about a Greek character who frequently spoke of “my cat Steve and her little cattens.” Uncle Cull was so amused by the phrase that he named a cat—probably one of the barn cats—Steve. And for the next forty or so years, he always had a cat named Steve.
Uncle Cull and Aunt Myrtle Dauchy’s house, home of the first Steves
So when the clinic cat became part of the Uncle Cull’s son and daughter-in-law’s family, he became the latest in a long line of Steves.
How to describe Steve? He was a fine figure of a cat: a big tabby, deep orange, with an expression of perpetual boredom. His reaction to nearly everything translated as, “Meh.” I’ve heard that’s common among clinic cats.
Once when Steve was standing on my front porch, the neighbor’s Great Dane got loose and charged over. I was frantic, shouting at the dog, shouting at Steve. But when the dog hit the porch, Steve just looked up at him. Dog turned around and trotted home.
Some would say Steve was brave, and I’m sure he was. But I believe his grace under pressure had their roots elsewhere.
First, he had experience. He knew dogs. In his former employment, he’d observed the breed: big, little, yappy, whining, growling, howling, cringing, confined to carriers, restrained by leashes, sporting harnesses and rhinestone collars, hair wild and matted, sculpted ‘dos and toenails glistening pink from the OPI Neon Collection. He’d seen them all. He was not impressed.
Facing down a Great Dane, however, took more than experience. There was something in Steve’s character, an inborn trait that marked him for greatness: his overarching sense of entitlement. He was never in the wrong place at the wrong time. My porch was his porch. The world was his sardine.
Except for the kitchen counter. Steve thought kitchen counters were for sleeping, but Joe and Norma’s maid didn’t. Consequently, he stayed outside a lot. He took ostracism in stride and used his freedom to range far and wide. Far and wide meant my yard.
Steve’s house
At that time I had three indoor cats—Christabel, Chloe, and Alice B. Toeclaws—and a raft of outdoor cats. The outdoor cats started as strays, but I made the mistake of naming them, which meant I had to feed them, which meant they were mine. Chief among them was Bunny, a black cat who had arrived as a teenager with his gray-tabby mother, Edith.
One day Bunny, Edith, and I were out picking up pecans when Steve wandered over to pay his respects, or, more likely, to allow us to pay our respects to him. Bunny perked up, put on his dangerous expression, and walked out to meet the interloper. It was like watching the opening face-off in Gunsmoke.
But instead of scrapping, they stopped and sat down, face to face, only inches apart. Each raised his right paw above his head and held it there a moment. Next, simultaneously, they bopped each other on the top of the head about ten times. Then they toppled over onto their sides, got up, and walked away.
That happened every time they met. Maybe it was just a cat thing, a neighborly greeting, something like a Masonic handshake. But I’ve wondered if it might have had religious significance. Bunny was a Presbyterian, and Steve was a Methodist, and both had strong Baptist roots, and although none of those denominations is big on ritual, who knows what a feline sect might entail?
Steve had a Macavity-like talent for making himself invisible. Occasionally when I opened my front door, he slipped past and hid in a chair at the dining room table, veiled by the tablecloth. When he was ready to leave, he would hunt me down—Surprise!—and lead me to the door. Once, during an extended stay, he used the litter box. Christabel, Chloe, and Alice B. Toeclaws were not amused.
Distance Steve traveled between his house and mine. His house is way over there behind the trees.
Invisibility could work against him, though. Backing out of the driveway one morning, I saw in the rearview mirror a flash streaking across the yard. I got out and looked around but found nothing and so decided I’d imagined it. When I got home from work, I made a thorough search and located Steve under my house, just out of reach. I called, coaxed, cajoled. He stared. It was clear: he’d been behind the car when I backed out, I’d hit him, and he was either too hurt to move or too disgusted to give me the time of day.
It took a long time and a can of sardines to get him out. I delivered him to the veterinarian in Lockhart; she advised leaving him for observation. A couple of days later, I picked him up. Everything was in working order, she said, cracked pelvis, nothing to do but let him get over it.
“Ordinarily,” said the vet, “I would have examined him and sent him home with you the first day. I could tell he was okay. But you told me his owner’s son is a vet, and I was afraid I’d get it wrong.”
Although he was an indoor-outdoor cat, Steve managed plenty of indoor time at his own house, too, especially in winter, and when the maid wasn’t there. One cold day, the family smelled something burning. They found Steve snoozing atop the propane space heater in the kitchen. His tail hung down the side, in front of the vent. The burning smell was the hair on his tail singeing. They moved him to a safer location. I presume he woke up during relocation.
At night, he had his own bedroom, a little garden shed in the back yard. He slept on the seat of the lawnmower, snuggled down on a cushion. Except when he didn’t.
One extremely cold night, I was piled up in bed under an extra blanket and three cats. About two a.m., I woke up to turn over—sleeping under three cats requires you to wake up to turn over—and in the process, reached down and touched one of the cats. It was not my cat.
I cannot describe the wave of fear that swept over me. It sounds ridiculous now, but finding myself in the dark with an unidentified beast, and unable to jump and run without first extricating myself from bedding and forty pounds of cat—I lay there paralyzed.
Unnecessarily, of course. The extra cat was Steve. He’s sneaked in and, considering the weather forecast, decided that sleeping with a human and three other cats in a bed would be superior to hunkering down on a lawnmower.
Steve’s full name was, of course, Steve Dauchy. In my book, he will be Steve MacCaskill. MacCaskill was the name of a family who lived next door to my Aunt Bettie and Uncle Maurice. Their children were friends of my father and his brothers and their many cousins. They were a happy family.
“My family had to plan everything,” my dad’s cousin Lucyle Dauchy Meadows (Steve’s aunt) told me, “but the MacCaskills were spontaneous. If they decided they wanted to go to a movie, they just got into the car and went to a movie.” When Lucyle and the other girls helped their friend Mary Burns MacCaskill tidy her room before the Home Demonstration Agent came to examine it, one of the first things they did was to remove the alligator from the bathtub.
I heard so many delightful stories about the MacCaskill family that I decided they were too good to be true. Then, at Aunt Bettie’s 100th birthday party, my mother introduced me to Mary Burns MacCaskill, who had traveled from Ohio for the party.
So as an homage to that family, I’ve named my main character Molly MacCaskill. And when choosing a pet for Molly, I couldn’t choose a finer beast than Steve.
*
Note: Cullen Dauchy no longer owns Katy Veterinary Clinic, but he did when Steve worked there, and the clinic was Steve’s first home, so I’m leaving the link.
And I’m so glad the Home Demonstration agent didn’t inspect bedrooms when I was a girl. I didn’t have an alligator, but she might have thought I had something worse.
***
This post first appeared in Ink-Stained Wretches in 2021.
***
Kathy Waller blogs at Telling the Truth, Mainly. She has published short stories, and a novella co-written with Manning Wolfe. She is perpetually working on a novel.
It’s September 1. New school year! New shoes, after a hot barefoot summer! New outfit, for the first day of school! And then––new classes! New subjects, new teachers, new tools! New friends! New lockers, new classrooms, new hallways…. New season—new teammates, new coach, new plays.
Remember your first day back at school? Back to college, back to university? Do you remember the excitement, the nervousness, the anticipation?
Today is Labor Day. And now there will be apples, apple pie and apple crisp. There will be chrysanthemums, spilling out of baskets. Even in central Texas, leaves will change color—as Maxwell Anderson’s lyrics have it, “When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame.” Here in the Hill Country, sumac and Spanish oak turn red, sweet gum turns yellow. No, not the glory of the maples, but a change in the landscape. Because finally, after the dog days of summer, that’s what September brings: something new.
It’s time to pull up the tired summer flowers and thank them for their service. Time to dig some holes and plant new trees, and order some bulbs. I’ll be planting the Mexican plum seedlings a friend gave me, and ordering narcissus bulbs for indoor blooming.
Then the Hill Country brings its own fall excitement. Dove season began today and a down-the-road neighbor, disturbed by shotgun pellets falling on her roof, had to call the sheriff, and have officers explain to a clueless (thoughtless? lawless?) neighbor that it’s contrary to law to allow your ammunition to cross your own fence line. Also unneighborly. But hmm, that could find its way into a future book plot….
Our Hill Country holds surprises. One is the way water hides in the Hill Country—down in secret seeps and creeks, around curves and hollows. And what odd creatures live out here! For example, this fall we’ve seen again the rare and secretive rock squirrel.
(We’ve seen a solitary rock squirrel only once every few years.) We’ve heard the great horned owls that call at night, up and down the creek, and the herons who call, flying down the valley. The buzzards drone, annoyingly, from the tops of telephone poles. We treasure glimpses of the shy, gorgeous painted buntings who appear briefly at the bird feeder, then flit away. Porcupines visit. Roadrunners dart across the road.
And finally the dog days are over. (This year they were July 3-August 11, and these hot sultry days have borne their name from ancient times supposedly because it’s when Sirius, the Dog Star that accompanies Orion, rises with the sun.) https://www.almanac.com/content/what-are-dog-days-summer But during the dog days I took refuge at night reading two mystery series that were new to me, by British author Peter Grainger: the DC Smith Investigation series and the Kings Lake Investigation. http://bit.ly/4gmPsad
These wry British procedurals are set on the coast of Norfolk, providing a cool and rainy ocean-side backdrop for the appealing characters. At least I could read about rain and cool breezes. But the books offered not only a respite from ridiculous heat, but a welcome respite from writing. For the last few weeks I’ve been finishing Ghost Justice—Book 10 in my Alice MacDonald Mystery Series, set here in the Texas Hill Country. For me that process inescapably includes waking in the wee hours with my mind on plot additions and subtractions, dialogue, characters. For just such moments—when the characters wake me up at night voicing their further demands (yes, they come alive!)—I find mysteries provide absorbing distraction.
Watch for Ghost Justice this week!
Helen Currie Foster lives and writes the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series north of Dripping Springs, Texas, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She’s also deeply curious about our human history and how, uninvited the past keeps crashing the party. Follow her at http://www.helencurriefoster.com.
According to BondVet.com, cats are among themost intelligent creatures on the planet. Scientists believe that cats are uniquely smart when compared to dogs and other animals, which makes it understandable that, like their human counterparts, cats have witching hours. (PetMed.) During those episodes, which generally take place at dusk or dawn, felines may suddenly have bursts of extra energy and display athletic and agile abilities.
In addition to watching my cat, Miss Millie, run, jump and stare at objects or minuscule insects that I either can’t see or don’t exist, I learned that she, to my amazement, could leap four feet up from one piece of furniture to a higher surface. (Now her middle-aged spread has reduced her airtime). And yes, I did measure the distance!
Millie has given us a few spooky behavior episodes of the midnight crazies too. She jumps on my bed at 3 a.m., stands on my chest, pokes her cold, wet nose against mine, and stares into my closed eyes, willing me to open them. On one occasion, she then ran repeatedly to the back door and shoved her head under the window covering to stare out at the back deck. Perhaps at real live prey beyond her reach. How frustrating for her, and no, I didn’t open the door and let her out! Fortunately, those episodes are few and far between since she then settles down and takes intermittent naps during the day—a luxury I don’t have. To be clear, my Millie cares not a whit for what the experts say. Her most frequent witching hour occurs almost daily between three and four in the afternoon – my time to sit and read. It’s also her way of showing who’s the boss. Hey, human, forget the book. Look at me. She runs, jumps, pounces on invisible prey (invisible to me), and she will often roll onto her back at my feet and stare up at me with shiny eyes that challenge. Try and stop me.
Suggested ways to manage these activities include creating climbing areas – but she already climbs on everything. Create hiding spots and exploration zones. Miss Millie knows every inch of this house. I think she knows spots I have not yet discovered, and she can squeeze herself into narrow spaces between furniture and the walls that amaze me. I know she has bones, but sometimes I wonder if they become cartilaginous.
Especially fascinating is how she rules, or should I say communicates. If I’m at my computer in the late afternoon, we have a problem. According to her time clock, I should be in the kitchen at that hour, taking out food groups to prepare for dinner. So, to move me, she jumps on my lap, proceeds to purr, and opens and closes her paws on my legs, kneading them as one kneads bread dough. And if I don’t acquiesce fast enough, she nips my forearms. I have even warned that I’d send her to the cat-sausage factory if she doesn’t stop, but Millie is immune to my empty threats.
“Maybe she just wants some attention and affection,” said my husband. Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong. Miss Millie will have none of that. She turns her head, stares into my eyes, gives a warning growl, nips my forearm, then jumps down and runs to the kitchen as if to say, Get out in that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans. (Weren’t they words to a song in the 1960s?)
And so, my cat is a fine example of the extraordinary intelligence, determination, and intuition and communication of a cat – and one who demonstrates clearly who’s the boss.
Miss Millie is the personality prototype for LaLa in the Housekeeper Mystery Series. At this time, LaLa is waiting for Father Melvyn’s and Mrs. B.’s return from Italy, but her active participation is minimal in Murder in the Cat’s Eye,A Roman Antiquities Mystery.
In the eternal city, there is a particular cat sanctuary worthy of mention. Torre Argentina (no relation to the South American country) is located in the ancient ruins where Julius Caesar’s assassination took place. The cat sanctuary was established in 1929 and provides shelter for stray and abandoned cats. It’s run by volunteers who provide care, spay and neuter services, and find homes for approximately 150 cats living within the ruins. Visitors may tour if in Rome, and through their remote adoption program, meet the cats and view their habitat. Makes one wonder what their witching hour looks like among the ghosts of ancient Rome.
In Murder in the Cat’s Eye, A Roman Antiquities Mystery, we meet two precious and precocious felines, Romo and Remo, named for the mythical founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus. Watch for them and Murder in the Cat’s Eye in the fall.
Where small-timers are concerned, the rule seems to have fallen by the wayside, and that’s a shame. It stimulated creativity.
***
The backstory:
I wrote the following review to answer a “challenge.” I intended to post it at the end of September 2009. But in the process of writing, I got all tangled up in words and couldn’t finish even the first sentence.
I intended to post it at the end of October. I still couldn’t write it.
Finally, after telling myself I didn’t care, I managed to write it after the October deadline.*
In the middle of the “process,” I considered posting the following review: “I like Nancy Peacock’s A Broom of One’s Own very very very very very much.”
But the challenge specified a four-sentence review, and that was only one, and I didn’t want to repeat it three times.
So there’s the background.
I must also add this disclaimer: I bought my copy of A Broom of One’s Own myself, with my own money. No one told, asked, or paid me to write this review. No one told, asked, or paid me to say I like the book. No one told, asked, or paid me to like it. No one offered me tickets to Rio or a week’s lodging in Venice, more’s the pity. I decided to read the book, to like it, and to write this review all by myself, at the invitation of Story Circle Book Review Challenge. Nobody paid them either. Amen.
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The review:
I like Nancy Peacock’s A Broom of One’s Own: Words About Writing, Housecleaning & Life so much that it’s taken me over two months and two missed deadlines to untangle my thoughts and write this four-sentence review, an irony Peacock, author of two critically acclaimed novels, would no doubt address were I in one of her writing classes.
She would probably tell me that there is no perfect writing life; that her job as a part-time house cleaner, begun when full-time writing wouldn’t pay the bills, afforded time, solitude, and the “foundation of regular work” she needed; that engaging in physical labor allowed her unconscious mind to “kick into gear,” so she became not the writer but the “receiver” of her stories.
She’d probably say that writing is hard; that sitting at a desk doesn’t automatically bring brilliance; that writers have to work with what they have; that “if I don’t have the pages I hate I will never have the pages I love”; that there are a million “saner” things to do and a “million good reasons to quit” and that the only good reason to continue is, “This is what I want.”
So, having composed at least two dozen subordinated, coordinated, appositived, participial-phrase-stuffed first sentences and discarding them before completion; having practically memorized the text searching for the perfect quotation to end with; and having once again stayed awake into the night, racing another deadline well past the due date, I am completing this review—because I value Nancy Peacock’s advice; and because I love A Broom of One’s Own; and because I consider it the equal of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird; and because I want other readers to know about it; and because this is what I want.
*Not caring is often the key to cracking writer’s block. Nancy Peacock probably would say that, too.
Just before a trip I get anxious: is there enough stored in my Kindle to keep me happy? You constant readers know that feeling. Did you upload enough for the waiting room at the airport? For the plane? For a sleepless first night, jet-lagging? Enough to keep you happy even if weak (or no) wi-fi at the (tent, cabin, hotel, boat, campsite, rental) precludes another download? Yes, there’ll be news–but I am escaping!
We’re on a family trip to France, with children and grandchildren. I loaded up the Kindle diligently beforehand. Of course there are way too many wonderful things to do besides read…
Still, my heart sang when we entered the rental in the French mountains and spied—A BOOKCASE!
Moreover, the shelves held mysteries! Ian McEwan, Patricia Cornwell, Elizabeth George, Janet Evanovich, V.I. Warshawski, Alexander McCall Smith…
Also serious nonfiction and titles from Kazuo Ishiguro, Dostoevsky, Graham Greene, Julian Barnes and more. Then I spotted Kinky Friedman’s Frequent Flyer and thought—eclectic tastes! Perhaps some were left behind by guests. Still, the shelves made me want to meet the owners. The welcoming bookshelves and, to boot, a choice of comfortable corners where a tired tourist can flop, prop up the well-used feet, and read…what more can one ask?
(Sidebar—when you see a Talking Head on your screen, with a bookshelf behind—do you wonder if the books really belong to the Head? Or are they just a prop intended to impress? Maybe we’ll see some interviewer pose a question: “How did you like Crimes Against Humanity?” Blank stare.)
If you’re familiar with Dunnett’s stunning two historical fiction series, The Lymond Chronicles and The House of Niccolo, you already know she delivered powerful (and powerfully surprising) plots, magnetic characters, and vivid reconstructions of the 15th and 16th centuries. Using (for all that detail) an omniscient narrator.
But in her spare time she also wrote the Dolly mystery series, involving an astoundingly talented portrait painter named Johnson Johnson (yes, two), who happens to turn up in scenic locations in his yacht, the Dolly, on secret missions for the British ministry of defense. I’ve reread three of those on this trip—one set in Ibiza, one in Morocco, one in Canada. Unlike the Niccolo or Lymond historical series, Dunnett’s heroines in these first-person mysteries are in their late teens or twenties and trying to make their way in the world (as an au pair, a cook, an executive assistant, etc.). Naturally they find themselves in dangerous situations while trying to identify a murderer, and Dunnett gives each her own first-person voice—each interestingly different.
Clearly Dunnett didn’t merely set foot in these locales: she absorbed them. The action’s fast-moving, but she paints a landscape with details that place you right in the square where the villains are about to—well, here’s an example from Moroccan Traffic, in the Atlas Mountains, where Wendy, a young executive assistant, watches as Johnson and the engaging inventor Mo pursue two ruthless adversaries up perilous cliffs:
…where they had set their faces to climb was the flank of the mountain; the boulder slope rising to cliffs and ridges and rock bands interlaid with tongues of snow, and scree-fields, and stony pockets of pasture. And further up, behind escarpment and terrace, the burning forepeaks of the range.
I had seen it all from the road. Somewhere there, already entrenched, already waiting, were Gerry and Sullivan, ex-SAS marksmen.
You can also tell that Dunnett (as well as her character Johnson) was a painter:
All around us the hills, limp as blankets, glowed in soft reds, their milky hollows the colour of amethyst. The snow on Sirwa was tinged golden pink, and cast china blue shadows which were technically impermanent. A man walked by the road, a black goat like a scarf around his neck.
And from Roman Nights – the young heroine, an astronomer, battles spy dealings in Italy including the Aragonese Castle on Ischia in the Bay of Naples:
On a plateau the cathedral reared its three roofless sides like a kind of dismembered Versailles, white and flaking; the walls furnished with crumbling cherubs and statues, with rococo arches and pillars and architraves.
Dunnett gives her astronomer heroine plenty of tongue-in chic wit:
Johnson and Lenny sailed out of Amalfi, in a pure, warm air blowing about eight on the bloody Beaufort scale, and the rain lashing down. After becoming exceedingly well acquainted with the water filling the Gulf of Salerno, we fled into a fishing harbour called San Marco and spent the night offshore in a cat’s cradle of other boats’ cables.
Thank you, Dorothy Dunnett, for stupendous scholarship and for witty mysteries in places so believably described. What a gift to the traveler! Sorry, gotta go—I’m deep into Tropical Issue, set in Madeira, where I’ve never been—but it sure looks great in this prose…
What gifts they are to humans—to write, to read!
Award-winning writer Helen Currie Foster lives and writes in the iconic Texas hill country, supervised by three inquisitive and persistent burros. After practicing law for more than thirty years, she found the Alice MacDonald Greer Mysteries had suddenly appeared in her life. Book 10 in the series, Ghost Justice, is expected to debut in August 2025. Helen is continually fascinated by human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps invading our parties. Follow her on Facebook and Amazon, and in Austin at BookPeople.
Research for book four of the Housekeeper Mystery Series brought me to legends and myths connected to jewels and gemstones, many of which have traveled a long way in storytelling traditions. Often, a mystical aura goes beyond the material value of some precious stones and metals, and these stories show us how jewelry is not only beautiful to look at but also carries the power of love, misfortune, and protection. Some of the most famous are The Curse of the Hope Diamond, The Myth of Pearls, and The Legend of Cleopatra’s Emeralds.
According to the legend, the curse of the Hope Diamond originated when the diamond was stolen from a statue of a Hindu god in India. The priests of the temple placed a curse on whoever possessed it, and throughout history, many who owned it have suffered great misfortunes, including King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt, is said to have loved emeralds., which were symbols of fertility and protection in her time. Legend has it that Cleopatra possessed an enormous and valuable emerald that she wore often to show her power and divine status. The emerald was lost after her death, and its whereabouts have never been discovered.
The Myth of Pearls. Called Tears of God in many cultures, pearls became symbols of purity and femininity. In Greek mythology, pearls are said to be the tears of the goddess Aphrodite and were often used as wedding gifts to symbolize purity and happiness in marriage.
In Rome, onyx, especially sardonyx, which is a layered gemstone composed of bands of sard and onyx, both varieties of chalcedony (a variety of quartz (silicon dioxide) known for its fine, fibrous structure and waxy luster). Onyx is known for its striking contrast of colors, typically reddish-brown alternating with white or black onyx layers. This banded structure made it popular for jewelry and carvings and was considered a talisman for protection and good fortune. Onyx was favored by the Roman army. Soldiers often wore sardonyx amulets carved with images of Mars, the Roman God of War, or Hercules. The Romans believed that wearing onyx or sardonyx would instill bravery and courage in battle, bring good luck, and ensure success in combat while protecting the wearer. Many of these legends and myths began in connection with historical events, and such is the legend of the Miltiades Cross.
THE HISTORY: It began on October 28, 312 C.E. Miltiades, the first Christian bishop of Rome, was revered by his community and addressed as papa or father by his followers. He was a small man of 62 years and of humble means, working in the Roman marketplace. When he was summoned from his hiding place, a small house in an alleyway in Trastevere, by two centurions, he assumed he was about to meet his end since Christianity was outlawed in Rome and punishable by death. Wearing a threadbare robe, the poor little man made the sign of the cross and prepared to meet his fate as a martyr for Christ. He followed his Roman guards out into the sunlight and came face to face with the six-foot, imposing figure of Emperor Constantine, flanked by hundreds of soldiers, all of them, including the emperor, covered in blood and grime. They’d come from the battle of the Milvian Bridge, where Constantine had defeated his imperial rival, Maxentius. Constantine was now the sole ruler of the entire Roman Empire.
To Miltiades’s great shock, Constantine greeted him with a hug and had him wrapped in a purple robe. The emperor explained that he followed the instructions he’d received in a dream.,the night before the battle. He was told to paint the Chi Ro on his soldiers shields, and “in this sign, conquer,” and he did. After his victory, Constantine decided to make the god of the Christians his god and the god of the Roman Empire.
Instead of the gruesome death Miltiades expected, the emperor asked to be brought to the spot where the bones of Peter, Christ’s Apostle, were buried. In a little cemetery outside of Rome, Constantine dropped to his knees and swore to build a great basilica over those bones. Then, the emperor took the dazed bishop to a grand palace on Lateran Hill and decreed that, henceforth, all successors of Peter would live in that palace.
THE MYTH: Two weeks after Constantine’s conversion, Miltiades was again summoned to the Emperor. Terrified that Constantine had changed his mind, Miltiades again prepared to meet the fate. Trembling, the old bishop appeared before the emperor and knelt in respect, but Constantine pulled him upright. Around Miltiades’s neck, the emperor hung a gold chain with a gold cross studded with Servilia pearl, the most valued gemstone in Rome. Constantine then decreed that this cross should be handed down to all succeeding bishops of Rome. It was the cross Constantine had envisioned in the shape of the Chi Ro. Legend, has it that the cross was last seen on Pope Innocent I in 417 C.E. when he fled Rome before the invasion of the Visigoths. Over the following 1600-plus years, the position of the Catholic Church was that the cross either never existed or was taken by non-believers and refashioned.
In book four of the Housekeeper Mystery Series, Murder in the Cat’s Eye, Father Melvyn and Mrs. B. take a group of parishioners to Rome to study the lives of ancient Christians, where they become random victims of a criminal enterprise involving jewel theft and murder. This high-stakes web of deceit blurs the line between upholding and breaking the law, straddled by a police inspector when a not-so-scrupulous antiquities dealer disappears and a young woman is murdered. Organized crime, a member of Rome’s elite, and the Catholic Church face off when it’s discovered that among the stolen jewels is what may be the ancient and priceless Miltiades Cross, given to the first bishop of Rome by Emperor Constantine in 312.
Watch for Murder in the Cat’s Eye in the fall of 2025.
Today’s post is by our friend and former Austin Mystery Writer Kaye George, author of several successful mystery series. When I asked Kaye to do a guest post, I told her to pick her own topic. She’s chosen to write about her newest project, a departure from the mystery.
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Kathy Waller gave me free rein, so I can write whatever I want here, right? Okay, okay, I’ll stick to writing about writing.
My latest project is foremost in my mind. SOMEONE IS OUT THERE came out in April, but it’s still getting noticed, which makes me so happy. I’ve done several mystery series, cozies and traditional, but got it into my head one day that I could write a suspense novel. It does kinda make sense, since I love to read them.
I’m trying to remember where the first seed for this came from, but I don’t really know, now that it’s done. I do know what went into it. I wanted to use a disaster that occurred in Ohio when we lived there. We lived in Dayton for about six years and, one day when the sky looked ominous and my husband was on the golf course, a disaster struck Xenia, a small town nearby—a town we used to drive to for chopping down our Christmas trees on a farm nearby. A vicious tornado struck the town in 1974, killing and injuring many, and wiping out, obliterating at least half of that town. That year they had what they called the 1974 Super Outbreak, one of the worst tornado seasons in US history. I figured it would make a good backdrop to a tense story.
To be honest, I also fed in some of the stories the people in Wichita Falls told me about the similar disaster they had there in 1979. We lived outside that town in Holliday years after that, but they people who had gone through it had vivid memories of every second. We had our own experiences there, too. Our second night in Holliday, there was a straight line windstorm with 90 mph winds that took off many roofs and caved in the school gymnasium, which had just been evacuated, fortunately. The night we moved out, a tornado touched down a mile away.
Anyway, enough about storms. I also needed to work up some stormy characters. I used my knowledge of nursing (from my mother, who was a nurse, and from my nurses’ aide experience) to create my main character. Unbeknownst to me, I used subconscious knowledge to create her name, Darla Taylor. I had a good portion of the book written when I realized I have a Facebook friend named Darla Taylor! I had used her name! I was mortified, and messaged her about it. She was actually okay with that, so I kept going. And gave her a copy when the book was finished. She liked it and reviewed it! Whew!
Stalking seemed like a scary thing to build the plot on, so I did that, keeping the identity of the stalker hidden until the end. I threw in my son’s family dog, Henry, a big chocolate lab (and renamed him Moose), and gave Darla a hobby of archery, since I used to love doing that.
You can see that so much of the book came from my life, because, where else would it come from? Although I have never been stalked. And hope it never happens.
Kaye George is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer. She writes cozy and traditional mysteries, a prehistory series, and one suspense novel, which is her seventeenth book. Over fifty short stories have been published, mostly in anthologies and magazines. A horror story will come out in 2026. With family scattered all over the globe, she makes her home in Knoxville TN. You can find out more here: http://kayegeorge.com/
I recognize that sometimes I can be excessively literal. That’s why when Julia Cameron reminds us to make time to fill our creative well, I picture an actual old-timely water well. In my mind’s eye, ideas, quotes, games, puzzles, cartoons, pictures, and music pour into the well from every direction – a rainstorm of colors, smells and sounds.
I was first introduced to the concept when I joined an Austin creative community, led by the inestimable Ann Ciccoletta, Artistic Director of Austin Shakespeare. The group draws inspiration from Cameron’s self-help classic, The Artist’s Way – A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. Since its initial publication in 1992 it has been reprinted more than forty times and served as a catalyst for dozens of other inspirational works by Cameron. Her message is intended for everyone– writers, artists, photographers, actors, composers, dancers, poets, musicians, singers, and everyday folks alike alike — who want to unlock their inner creative self. Her advice:
Filling the well involves the active pursuit of images to refresh our artistic reservoirs. Art is born in attention. Its midwife is detail… In filling the well, think magic. Think delight. Think fun. Do not think duty. Do not do what you should do …Do what intrigues you, explore what interests you; think mystery, not mastery. A mystery draws us in, leads us on, lures us.
Once married to Martin Scorsese, Cameron’s life was a rollercoaster of good times-bad times-terrible times until she ultimately found sobriety. In an article about the 30th anniversary of her landmark book, The Guardian says:
Inspired by the Alcoholics Anonymous model, the book offers a programme for “artistic recovery”.
Cameron has benefited from her own advice with twenty-three titles on creativity to her credit along with seven books on spirituality; three works of fiction; one memoir; seven plays; five prayer books; four books of poetry; and one feature film.
The prompt for that bombardment of ideas to “fill the well” is can be the weekly Artist Date – another Cameron recommendation consisting of making an appointment with yourself to intentionally seek out sources of inspiration. In gardens. In museums. In craft stores. In coffee shops. Anyplace that can excite the senses is a destination for a date with oneself.
I find that it’s often a good idea to pair these dates with something to nudge you forward. For instance, I subscribe to Austin Kleon’s weekly newsletter (it drops into my email each Friday). It lists his “ten things worth sharing” with brief commentary and links to articles, songs, books, films, podcasts, events, and other content. Kleon is an Austin-based, best-selling author (Steal Like an Artist) who, like Cameron, writes to inspire others. More can be found at his website: https://austinkleon.com.
I was reminded of these never-ending sources of inspiration when, in late April, I had the good fortune to share a table with Spike Gillespie at the Austin Public Library’s second annual Greater Austin Book Festival (aka GAB Fest). Gillespie is well known in Austin writing circles for her unflinching commentary and multiple books. She lives on a ranch outside the city where she hosts gatherings for writers to find inspiration.
We had a chance to chat as we watched readers and fellow authors mill around the book festival, occasionally dropping by our table to ask about our book displays. Then a little girl – probably no more than seven or eight years old — approached to help herself to our free mints. She kept picking up one after another until her hands couldn’t hold anymore. After she walked away my conversation with Gillespie built on the encounter …and how often desire can exceed capacity. From there we talked about the importance of being a listening writer. To observe. To absorb. To listen.
I thought about this later and remembered what Cameron advised writers in her 2021 book, The Listening Path: The Creative Art of Attention:
We do not struggle to think something up; rather we listen and take something down. Very little effort is required; what we are after is accuracy of listening.
Inspiration can be right under your nose. It can come over the transom unexpectedly. It can spring from an unplanned conversation. It may drop into your email. Watch for it so you can fill the well.
Ink-Stained Wretches 