Author of Geek Love takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'

Katherine Dunn is my hero First, she wrote Geek Love: A Novel. Second, at Wordstock, I got to meet her and she said she was an admirer of my work! I seriously thought I could die happy right then. And here’s a third reason to like Katherine Dunn - she’s a fighter. Literally. And I’m not talking about the essays she has written on boxing. On Tuesday, she was walking home from Trader Joes when she was attacked by a purse snatcher. 
 When a young woman grabbed her purse, she clamped down on it. The woman began to kick her in the shins and slap her in the face. Katherine said [according to media accounts] "That's what gave me permission to hit her in the face." Her only regret? She was wearing flip flops and kicking seemed futile. "Next time, Doc Martens," she said.

But they were in a stalemate. "She didn't let go. I didn't let go." Dunn started to call for help from passersby. She yelled "Help, fire." Just like a character of mine in Heart-Shaped Box (A Claire Montrose Mystery), she had heard that passersby are more willing to get involved if they think it’s a fire. When some people responded, Katherine yelled that she being robbed. But the robber yelled "please help me, she's trying to rob me." Katherine described that vocal countermove as "just brilliant. She was very sharp, I have to say." 

The passersby were confused. But then a neighbor came by and saw what was happening. At that point, all three women were tussling. Two employees came out of Trader Joes and said the attacker had just tried to shoplift at the store.

Finally, cops arrived. Katherine told reporters said the attacker must have been in a "really really desperate" state to attack her. She also thought she was under the influence of drugs. “I had scratches from her fingernails, a bloody eye where she had thumbed me — it was a helter-skelter affair,” she told the Oregonian. “Getting a tetanus shot, it made me feel young again.” She said she was proud of herself for putting her years of fight training to use, staying relatively calm and hanging on to her purse. She was a little disappointed not to bloody her attacker’s nose, but pointed out she was fighting with her rear hand. “I would normally lead, as all good boxers do, with my left hand,” she said. “But my left hand was tied up in the purse.” Read a recent essay about Katherine here.

"Going down the stairs with a gun in his hands"-just found out great-grandfather was a murderer

My grandmother didn’t marry until she was 32, in 1920. I just figured she was a late bloomer. This weekend, when I should have been working on my editor’s revision letter, I goofed off by Googling my grandmother’s name. “Effie Satterwhite.” Google has obviously been scanning more books since the last time I looked, including one published in 1907 that listed the opinions of the Arkansas Supreme Court. One of which involved Effie. When Effie was 18, her father shot her boyfriend for kissing her. I’ve got booklets of family history and this is mentioned NOWHERE. My mom didn’t know it. She is sure my dad, who died in 2003, didn’t know. According to the court records, when she was 17, Effie started seeing a man named Jim Wallis. One night they went to an “entertainment,” and returned at 11 pm. The court transcript states, “She started to go in the house, but was stopped by Wallis who reached out his hand and drew her to him and kissed her. She put her hands against him and pushed him away. They walked to the end of the porch, and stood there talking until the clock struck eleven. Wallis looked at his watch and then turned and kissed her again. He then left the house.” Effie went inside, heard a door open, and then saw her father “going down the steps with a gun in his hands.” She heard the shot, and tried to run to Jim. Her father grabbed her, and said it was all her fault for hugging and kissing Jim. Finally he let Effie go to her boyfriend, who lay bleeding in the street. Jim told her that he was sure he was dying. A neighbor carried him into a nearby house. Jim’s father came and said he should have known something like this would happen. At the trial, Effie’s brother testified that a year earlier he had seen Effie and Jim together “in a very suspicious attitude, conducting themselves in what he thought a very unbecoming manner on the front porch.” He ordered Effie inside, and told Jim to never come back. But Jim did, the next day, and told Effie’s brother that he loved her. They continued to see each other until the night he was gunned down. My great-grandfather’s defense was that he was sure Jim “was trying to seduce his daughter and relieve her of her virtue.” But the jury found that the two intended to marry. My great-grandfather was convicted of assault with intent to kill, and his appeal was denied. Jim died in a hospital four months after the shooting. And my grandmother did not marry for 14 more years. My grandmother in 1920, shortly before she married at 32 - and 14 years after her father shot and killed her boyfriend for kissing her - Did Effie feel it was her fault for kissing and touching Jim? - Her fault that her father spent two years in prison? - Did she regret not having sex with Jim? - Or had she? - Did they let Effie visit Jim in the hospital where he lingered until he died? - Did everyone in town know, and whisper about her? Was she branded a loose woman? - How did the murder affect her relationship with her father? My grandfather had pernicious anemia and wasn’t a prime catch. They were 36 and 43 when my dad was born. She was 72 when I was born, and 90 when she died. She was slender, with a sharp mind and sharp opinions. She was prim, severe, judgmental, fanatically religious. She could whistle really well. Our written family history has stories my great-grandfather shooting a puma and catching horse thieves. Nothing about him murdering his youngest child’s beau. One of the last coherent conversations I had with my dad was about his grandfather. The man who murdered his own daughter’s boyfriend.

"Dead, brutalized women sell books"

One British author who is also a reviewer is speaking out about what she sees as the increasing violence against women in mysteries and thrillers. She says that an increasing number of books feature male villains hurting women. “"Each psychopath is more sadistic than the last and his victims' sufferings are described in detail that becomes ever more explicit, as young women are imprisoned, bound, gagged, strung up or tied down, raped, sliced, burned, blinded, beaten, eaten, starved, suffocated, stabbed, boiled or buried alive,” she said. “Natasha Cooper, former chair of the Crime Writers' Association, agreed with Mann. "There is a general feeling that women writers are less important than male writers and what can save and propel them on to the bestseller list is if they produce at least one novel with very graphic violence in it to establish their credibility and prove they are not girly," she said.” Full disclosure: I know a female writer who has enjoyed incredible success due in no small part to graphic, over-the-top violence. I'm thankful that the adult mysteries I'm writing with Lis Wiehl are pubbed by Thomas Nelson, where graphic depictions of violence are not part of the publisher's DNA. You can read the article about the reviewer by clicking here.

For this, Palin needed a co-author?

From the first paragraph of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue. "I breathed in an autumn bouquet that combined everything small-town America with rugged splashes of the Last Frontier”

"rugged splashes"??? It sounds like it would hurt.

and can you even start to imagine smelling that? What does "everything small town American" smell like? How about "Last Frontier"?

So much for appealing to the senses.

Somehow this seems like cheating

Teen someone managed to persuade her lit teacher to let her choose Shock Point as a book for her "reading response journal." Of course, she has an advantage no one else does: she can ask me questions. The report begins: "This story is pretty good so far. I like the author’s (my mother) use of time." And beware how you dress your characters (the book was written when Teen was just Kid). Teen writes, "I don’t like the main character all too much though. I know it is kind of shallow of me to base it off the way she dresses, but really the way a person dresses can tell you a lot about them. For instance Cassie wears “[a] vintage black thrift store shirtdress, black fishnets, and pink Chuck Taylor All-Stars.” A person who dresses like this would generally be the kind of person who wants to be noticed but just doesn’t want to admit it. The kind of person who wants to seem all punk and tough but really isn’t. I asked April (my mother/the author) about it and she said she didn’t really think that much about, she just saw someone dressed like that on the bus and made Cassie dress like that. So I guess I shouldn’t read so far into the way she dresses." Ah, the language of clothes. I guess back then I wasn't speaking it very well.