Back when I was a callow youth of 35, I was invited to speak at a meeting of Sisters In Crime. This is an organization of women mystery writers, a national group with various local chapters.
I spoke on legal procedure. The title was, “What you’re doing wrong in your courtroom scenes.”
(Which will make a good topic for another day on this blog. Please remind me, class.)
I should have joined the organization then. My guess is that hanging around with these literate, intelligent and active women would have spurred me to writing a quality mystery that would have been my entree into the publishing world.
The world was smaller in 1993.
Oh well, the old man says. There are a thousand things in life to regret and one or two that still give you joy.
I am now a member of Mystery Writers of America, which I joined after I won the Black Orchid all the way back in 2018. Seems like forever.
Part of my membership is a newsletter. In this month’s MWA newsletter was a note that Sisters In Crime is putting together an anthology called “Crime Under the Sun.” These would be mysteries set in Southern California.
As you might remember, class, my well-known character Minerva James is based in Sacramento. Sacramento would only be considered Southern California if you were living in Toronto.
But I decided to write a story for the anthology anyway. After all, Minerva and her amanuensis Carson Robinson can get in a car and drive, can’t they?
I ended up writing “Minerva James and the God of the Sea,” a tale in which Minerva represents a surfer accused of killing another surfer in the ocean. As part of the story, I decided to have Minerva surf!
And while writing the story, I realized she would not have brought her surfboard all the way from Sacramento, so she had to have an old surfer friend to borrow a board from.
I looked up the names of famous surfers of the time and came across…Gidget.
She was perfect. So, Gidget became a character in the story. Heck, Gidget (being a primo surfer) actually springs into action and rescues the client from the clutches of the ocean. If she’s still out there, I hope the girl (now in her 60s) reads it and is flattered. The portrait I painted was totally complimentary.
The purpose of this blog entry (as opposed to many of my other blog entries, which rarely have a purpose other than to annoy you) is to crow that I wrote this story (4000 words) in two days. Wrote it, had it reviewed by my friend Leslie, revised and submitted it. All in two days!
I guess the fallow time is over. Whew.
Mark Bruce, Writer 