TATTOOS AND THE LIMITS OF RESEARCH: Guest Post by Clea Simon

CLEA SIMON: Tattoos and the Limits of Research 

She rubs her thumb over the F clef on her wrist. A reminder, faded now, of what she had. The cost … 

Gal Raver, my protagonist, has a tattoo of an F clef on the inside of her wrist. It’s an old tattoo, faded blue, but whenever she sees it, it reminds her of one of her former bandmates – as it is supposed to. Those memories are a part of who she is – and they’re key to the mysteries at the heart of Hold Me Down. This new, dark book centers on a murder of one of Gal’s old colleagues and the question of why the accused, another old friend, is refusing to defend himself from the charges. To get to the heart of that, and maybe save her old friend, Gal has to delve into her own checkered past, to look back on the life she led as a wild-child rock and roller and the damage she inflicted along the way. 

To write this dark psychological suspense, I – like Gal – had to re-immerse myself in the Boston rock scene of decades past. An era when women like my bassist protagonist were making music, and their own way, in a male-dominated world in part by proving themselves as tough as the men around them. 

So many of my friends back then were getting tattoos, an act that was still a little transgressive for a woman. J. got a Celtic braid as a bracelet – something she could hide with a watch when she went to visit her mother. K. originally intended to get a small goldfish on her shoulder, but the artist she went to create a gorgeous design that covered her shoulder blade. Before long, skin art became common. But for a few years there, ink defined a certain crew of rockers, so I knew Gal would have some. 

She’s certainly not alone. While researching Hold Me Down, I reached out to multiple sources. Musicians for the most part. Critics (like I was) and fanzine writers who had documented the scene and club personnel, from bookers and managers, the folks at the soundboard and behind the bar. And, of course, the fans who had made up the beating heart of the nocturnal world. I remembered a lot, and these conversations sparked more memories, and I also used a lot of what these people shared with me, even as I shaped it to work with my story, and with Gal’s. To make it, like the music, Gal’s own. 

I also wanted to get the legalities right – especially once Walter, Gal’s friend, is arrested. For that, I reached out to my old roommate, Susan, now a law school dean. She put me in touch with a professor who specialized in this aspect of criminal law, and who could talk me through the steps from arraignment to trial and who let me try out various possibilities along the way. 

Professor Elizabeth Jones of the Western State College of Law even read a full draft of the book, once it was done, for which I am truly grateful. But her one critique, of a passage halfway through, surprised me. 

“An F clef,” she’d said, drawing one on his pad to make sure he understood. “Here.” 

“You sure?” His brows had gone up when she’d turned her arm over, revealing the soft, pale flesh of her wrist. “It’ll hurt.” “Good,” she’d said. 

“I have tattoos,” she told me. “And what that tattoo artist says to her? That would never happen.” 

“Not even when it’s on the underside of her wrist?” I may not have skin art, but I know how sensitive that area is. 

“Doesn’t matter.” 

I thought about this for a while. Liz had given me great information, solid feedback on the legal aspects of the book. And then I remembered what she didn’t yet know – that this was Gal’s story, and that what we learn of Gal’s memories may not always reflect what happened. Instead, the stories she shares show us who she was and who she became. Where, in other words, it hurts. 

***

A former journalist, Clea Simon is the Boston Globe-bestselling author of three nonfiction books and 29 mysteries. including the new psychological suspense HOLD ME DOWN. While most of these (like A Cat on the Case) are cat “cozies” or amateur sleuth, she also writes darker crime fiction, like the rock and roll mystery World Enough, named a “must read” by the Massachusetts Book Awards. Her new psychological suspense Hold Me Down (Polis Books) returns to the music world, with themes of PTSD and recovery, as well as love in all its forms. She can be reached at www.cleasimon.com, on Twitter @Clea_Simon and on Instagram @cleasimon_author 

 

A TIME FOR COZIES: Guest Post by Clea Simon

Clea Simon:

A Time for Cozies 

Now that the holidays are well and truly over, winter is really here – as harsh as a “Game of Thrones” nightmare. Not only are the days short and cold, between the pandemic and the ongoing political rancor, I cannot remember a darker, or scarier, era. Which makes this the perfect season for a cozy, right? 

I know the arguments. The arts – including fiction – should reflect the era. Artists should mine the zeitgeist for meaning to help us understand our conflicts and travails. And I do believe there will be time for that in coming years. (Full disclosure, I’ve got a post-pandemic short story, featuring a woman whose life has been permanently changed by the extended lockdown, in Masthead: Best New England Crime Stories.)

I tend to read all over the spectrum. Only two years ago, I was entranced by Karen Thompson Walker’s The Dreamers, a novel about a strange plague that caused people to fall into a deep, coma-like sleep. Some woke up, others did not, and the reactions of both those affected and the government made for intriguing drama. But just as I don’t believe in hitting myself over the head every time I forget how horrible things are out there, I also don’t think such dystopian books are what I want to read right now. 

I suspect I’m not alone. When I tell people that my latest – A Cat on the Case – is a cozy (a feline cozy, no less), increasingly they sound relieved. Whereas, in better times, when I’d mention my kitty-centered books at, say, a cocktail party, I’d expect to see smiles start to freeze or eyes drift over my shoulder in search of a more interesting guest, these days it’s just the opposite. Maybe it’s because these parties are on Zoom now, but increasingly I’m seeing people light up, smiles appearing on mask-less faces. Actual cheer. 

“Cat mysteries?” Even newcomers to the genre sound intrigued. “Do the cats solve the mysteries?” 

“Well, yes and no,” I explain. At which point, I tend to go off into the intricacies of my fictional world, in which my three witch cats are in fact the ones who do much of the sleuthing but who are also all very aware that their decidedly un-magical human thinks she’s the one in charge. More often than not, Thisbe has joined me by this point – prompting pets being picked up and displayed on other screens, and sometimes sitting on the keyboards. And just like that, we’re all distracted – thinking not of the cold, cruel world outside but the pups and pusses we love, or the ones we visit remotely as they sniff our screens. If I’m still talking about my books at all, at this point I’ll point out that they’re puzzle mysteries – the kind of adventure that engages the reader, providing the kind of agency that we’re feeling the lack of in reality. That they have happy endings is a given, but sometimes I bring that up too – because we need happy endings right now. 

I like to think we’ll be seeing more of those beyond the pages of our books soon. Spring will come, and it seems like the end of this pandemic is in sight as well. But until those joyful days when we can gather, perhaps at a mystery con or even just a bookstore event, I think cozies fit the bill. If I can engage a reader, distract and amuse, then I’ve done my job. Right now, that’s what I’m looking for as reader, too.

***

Clea Simon’s latest, A Cat on the Case, will be published by Polis Books on Jan. 26. “Fans of feline cozies will be charmed,” says Publishers Weekly. Her previous “witch cat” books, A Spell of Murder and An Incantation of Cats, are available in all formats now, as are her more than two dozen other mysteries, most of which involve cats. Currently hunkered down in Somerville, Massachusetts, Clea can be reached at http://www.cleasimon.com

The Magic of Cats: Guest post by Clea Simon

Happy Caturday! Today we have a wonderful 'cat' post from mystery Author Clea Simon!

CLEA SIMON:
The Magic of Cats

It took me 26 books, but I’m finally back where I started – exploring the magic of cats. Because, yes, my new cozy An Incantation of Cats, draws on the premise I established last year, with A Spell of Murder, that is, that my human protagonist might want to be a witch but it is really her three felines that have the supernatural powers. But as I launch Incantation into the world (and dig in to start book three in the “Witch Cats of Cambridge” series, tentatively titled A Felony of Felines), I find myself once more exploring the lore and legends that have surrounded cats for millennia.

Long ago, and in another world, I was a journalist. I wrote nonfiction books on serious subjects, like mental health and family dysfunction. But when a friend – a non-cat person, I should note – suggested I turn my research and writing chops toward felines, the idea immediately clicked. Yes, I wanted to write about cats. At that point, I had cohabited with Cyrus, an elegant long-haired gray gentleman, for several years, and I knew that many of my friends and colleagues had similar close relationships with their pets. But being a journalist, I wanted to dig a bit. And so I did, researching the various roles felines have played as gods and goddesses (from the Middle East’s Inanna and Bastet to the Americas, where the Olmecs worshipped a half-jaguar deity). I also found numerous incidents of felines being power adjacent – partnering with deities (usually women) in mystical ways. The Norse goddess Freya, for example, rides a chariot drawn by black cats, a precursor to our more modern concept of the witch and her (flying) familiar.

As I did my research, the rationale for such linkages became clear. Cats, with their excellent night vision, were believed to be capable of seeing in the dark, while their flexibility made them appear to be able to shape shift and fly, if not actually confound death. Their fecundity and apparent ease producing litters of multiple kittens made them exemplars for childbirth. Add in their beauty and sensuality – that fur, that grace – and it’s no wonder that cats became linked with the magics, the mysteries, of women. Birth, death, the ability to see beyond this world … well, the resulting book, The Feline Mystique: On the Mysterious Connection Between Women and Death kind of wrote itself.

In that book, I wove real-life stories, including that of me and Cyrus, in with the mythology. But while acknowledging the symbolism, I kept the present-day accounts grounded in the everyday. We love these beasts as they are, I wanted to say. And that’s fine. But in the years since, I’ve found myself observing my cats – Musetta, after Cyrus, and now Thisbe – with growing wonder. How did she just appear like that? Could he have really known how I was feeling?

Once I started to ask myself what other powers do these truly wonderful animals might have, I was hooked – and I came up with three cats – “weird sisters” – who each have their own supernatural power. And, to me, this makes perfect sense. I’ve either become more fanciful, or … could it be? Maybe that’s the secret of cat magic. Once they draw you in, they refuse to let you go.

Clea Simon is the author of An Incantation of Cats and 25 other mysteries, most involving cats. A former journalist, she lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with her husband Jon and their marvelous tortie Thisbe. She can be reached at http://www.cleasimon.com  

Before I was Cozy: Guest Post by Clea Simon

After three nonfiction books and 22 cozy/amateur sleuth mysteries, Clea Simon returns to her rock & roll past this fall with World Enough (Severn House), an edgy urban noir. She is also the author of four mystery series with cats in them, the most recent being the black cat-narrated As Dark As My Fur (Severn House) and the “pet noir,” When Bunnies Go Bad (Poisoned Pen Press). A recovering journalist, Clea lives in Massachusetts. She can be reached at www.cleasimon.com 

Clea Simon:
Before I was cozy… 

Back in the day, there was little that was cozy about my life. Sure, I had creature comforts, thanks to a part-time secretarial job that paid most of the bills., and even a long-haired grey cat whom I loved dearly. But what I needed for soul sustenance was loud, hard, and fast.

For the first few years, after I graduated from college, the local music scene was the center of my life. The clubs where bands played original music – the Rat, the Channel, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Storyville, among others – became my “third place,” not home, not work, where I could go. Through it, I found my tribe of friends and lovers. My first profession – as a music critic. More fundamentally, in the loud garage punk scene of ‘80s Boston, I found an outlet for the emotional turmoil I had grown up with in a family plagued by mental illness and dysfunction. The friends I made there understood this – many of them had similar stories – and the late nights were as often as not joyous celebrations of relief and release as expressions of pain or rage.

Perhaps it is the nature of things to change. At any rate, things did. The writing I was doing for music magazines led to more mainstream, more stable, jobs. The clubs I knew closed, the bands broke up, and between the need for more sleep and the pleasures of more secure relationships, I felt less of a need to learn the rhythms of new ones. The books that had been my salvation growing up ¬ – from C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Beatrix Potter to Lillian Jackson Braun and Rita Mae Brown – once again claimed center stage, and I rediscovered the joy of whimsy and mystery. I started writing cozies.

Granted, there was some overlap. My first cozy, Mew is for Murder, featured a freelance writer trying to establish herself as a music critic. Throughout the six books of that series, my heroine Theda Krakow’s sidekick was a purple-haired punk musician who calls herself Violet Haze. But in the 12 years and 16 other mysteries since, the music scene has receded. Granted, not all my books have been cozies – my editors usually prefer the term “amateur sleuth” and I’ve dubbed one series “pet noir” – but they’ve been gentle. No cursing, no overt sex. As the old saw goes, “the blood is dry before it hits the page.” And the music, when it plays, is secondary, no longer the life blood – the pulse – that it was.

Until now. For World Enough, I’ve created Tara Winton, a heroine who shares many characteristics with the woman I once was. Isolated, somewhat disconnected from her family and her past, back in the day Tara too found solace and a community of sorts in the clubs. Twenty years later, she’s not doing as well, though. She’s marking time with a boring corporate job and drifting emotionally, unable to move on from her divorce. Until, that is, she runs into an old friend – now the editor of a glossy city magazine – at the funeral of a former scenester, a bartender/bouncer who had settled down with a wife and kid before dying in what appears to be a freak accident.

Tara and her buddy start talking at the wake, and he throws her a lifeline – an assignment to write about the old scene. In particular, about a band – the Aught Nines – that should have been famous. That would have been – if only the singer hadn’t OD’d, twenty years before. That rising star had a tenuous connection to the man whose funeral they’ve just attended. In many ways, all the attendees are connected. And so it makes sense for Tara to start interviewing her old cohort. Her ex Peter and her best friend Min scoff at the assignment, but Tara is grateful for the chance to write again about something she cares about. To reconnect with a world that once meant so much.

That world is rife with drugs and sex. With petty rivalries and struggles for fame and attention. It is the world I once knew and still, in some part of me, love. It is not, in any sense, cozy. But it is a world that I was ready to revisit. A story that maybe, after 22 lighter mysteries, I finally had the discipline to explore, the skills to chronicle, and the will work into the larger plotline of a double-edged (and morally ambiguous) mystery.

Will there be others? At this point, I think so – though I am very much enjoying the playful feline-centric cozy that I’m working on now. Maybe it took this long for me to be able to go back and write about the club scene, to balance its attractions with its excesses and flaws. Maybe I needed the distance to be able to see what really happened. Or maybe I’ve simply reached the point where I can put on an old record – vinyl, even – and think, “Damn, that was something, wasn’t it?”

Authors and their Cats: Clea Simon: Putting the Kitty in the Crime Fiction

Today for Caturday, in addition to posting a photo of an Author with her Cat, I have a guest post from the wonderful and talented cat author, herself, Clea Simon. Clea wrote a post for Mystery Fanfare last summer -- On Writing: What Happens Next?  Simon is the author of several mystery series, including the Theda Krakow Mystery series, the Dulcie Schwartz feline series, and the Pru Marlowe pet noir series. She also publishes short stories and appears with regularity in several magazines. She has published three non-fiction books dealing with topics ranging from mentally ill siblings to the connection between women and cats. 

Clea Simon:

Putting the Kitty in the Crime Fiction

Why do I write books with cats in them? Honestly, it’s a mystery.

It’s not like I ever set out to write cat books – cat crime fiction, specifically. My first mystery (yes, Mew is for Murder) arose from a nonfiction book I’d written (ok, that was about cats too). I’d explored the phenomenon known as “animal hoarding” – aka, the “crazy cat lady” – and found myself considering how many suspects there would be if one of these hoarders were to be found dead. And now I can’t stop. Even though I’ve left cozy territory behind with my latest, The Ninth Life*, somehow every time I sit down to write, a feline appears. Twenty mysteries in, I’m almost resigned to it.

It’s not like I enjoy only cat-centered books. Even aside from my current required reading (books for a panel I’m moderating at Crimefest, a review assignment for my local paper), my taste runs to darker fiction, crime-related or not. (I just finished Ann Cleeve’s wonderful Silent Voices, which followed Alexander Chee’s intriguing, but not entirely successful, historical Queen of the Night).

Yes, I do have loads of cat books in the house (a current favorite, thanks to a generous friend, is the hilarious picture book, Fat Cat Art). And yes, I do have an actual cat – a little tuxedo kitty who goes by the name of Musetta – but as much as she likes to think she runs the household, I do not find that she narrates my books for me, although at times I wish she did. (As I pen this, I’m deep in revisions to the sequel to Ninth Life, and I really wish she would shoulder more of the load.)

Nor was it ever a conscious marketing ploy. I mean, if I had gone into this field for the big bucks, I’d be writing sexy, dangerous shoot-em-ups. Thrillers with car chases and explosions. Only when I hunker down by the computer, well, a little voice says, “mew.”

Maybe that’s it, after all. Maybe I write cats because they give voice to the other, less coherent impulses emanating from the back of my head. What does any sidekick do, after all, but reflect the protagonist’s musings back at her? Provide a little comic relief? And for someone who spends hours alone – well, alone except for a certain tuxedo cat – maybe it makes sense that when my characters need to air their innermost thoughts, they do so to (if not through) an animal character. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. I’ll let you know when the cats tell me.

*Really. The Richmond Times Dispatch said, specifically: “Unlike other catcentric mysteries — there’s nothing cozy here — it offers an unusual and satisfying take on contemporary noir.”

On Writing: What Happens Next? by Clea Simon

Today I welcome Clea Simon. This post is very timely, as I recented moderated a panel on Plotters vs Pantsers (a very odd term, indeed) at Kepler's Mystery and Thriller Saturday. If you're a writer--or a reader-- you'll love this article on What Happen's Next?

Clea Simon is the author of several mystery series, including the Theda Krakow Mystery series, the Dulcie Schwartz feline series, and the Pru Marlowe pet noir series. She also publishes short stories and appears with regularity in several magazines. She has published three non-fiction books dealing with topics ranging from mentally ill siblings to the connection between women and cats. The recipient of multiple honors, including the Cat Writers Associations Presidents Award, she lives in Massachusetts with her husband and their cat.

Clea Simon:
What Happen's Next? 

Readers often ask how we mystery writers plot. During panel discussions, this usually leads to a chat about “pantsers” vs. “plotters,” those who let the writing guide us as opposed to those who outline what will happen before the writing starts. But I don’t know if these readers are really asking about our process, per se. Whether they too are writers or are simply fans, reading for pleasure, I think they want to know something more basic. They want to know how we figure out what happens next. I wish I could give them an answer.

Sometimes, it’s easy. When a mystery is based on a real-life crime that case can provide at least a bit of path. My new mystery, Code Grey, is the ninth in my feline-filled academic series for Severn House. Because my protagonist is a graduate student writing her dissertation on 18th Century books, I try to keep up on what’s happening in rare books – and the case of the Girolamini library in Naples, Italy, did give me some ideas (though I won’t say which ones!).

More often, it’s not that simple. Even when there’s a solid spark to kick off the book, the questions begin early. Usually, I’ll start with an idea or a scene in mind. A troubled former scholar is found unconscious deep in an excavation, with a rare book tucked into his coat. He’s assumed to be homeless, only the book is in good condition – and it has been missing for thirty years. Where has it been? Who found him? Was anyone watching? Why does he have that book? Did he steal it or save it? And will he ever wake to tell us?

In short, what happens next?

To answer these questions, we ask ourselves the same questions readers do. And in the best cases, we – like our readers – let the story unfold for us. I know other writers have spoken about this, but I will say it again: Sometimes, the best times, the story tells us where it wants to go. I might write a scene in which Dulcie jumps down to help the scholar, but then I’ll stop. Dulcie will feel sympathy, for sure, but she’s not a jump-into-a-pit type. She’s an academic, a bookish girl who is not athletically inclined. And so I delete that passage and have her going for help … only on the way, she meets someone. Or hears something… or ….

Before I know it, the story has taken off on its own direction (and, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about that poor scholar. We’ll get him out of that hole somehow). By being true to my character, by letting Dulcie be Dulcie, the story takes on a life of its own. A life that, I hope, will be more realistic to my readers – will feel less manipulated, despite the odd ghost or benign feline spirit that haunts this particular series.

For the record, I’m a “pantser.” I rarely know exactly what will happen with my stories as I begin them. This means I have to do a lot more revision after the first draft is done. After all, the character who ends up being the murderer might seem like a nice guy in the first five chapters, but there ought to be some hint that he’s not, right? My books are somewhere along the cozy-traditional-amateur sleuth continuum, and part of my deal with my readers is that my books should function like a puzzle – a riddle they, too, can unravel if they read carefully. I’m not going to surprise anyone with an identical twin villain or a last-minute newcomer responsible for all the mayhem.

But I’ve spoken with enough of my colleagues to know that this kind of serendipity is not unique to pantsers. In fact, I’ve heard more than one plotter laughingly talk about crafting a detailed outline … and then throwing it out the window when a character refuses to go along with the program. Because ultimately we mystery authors are not concerned simply with producing the manuscript, despite the deadlines and waiting publishers. We don’t simply want to get the story written. We, too, want to know what happens next.