I Keep Coming Back to the Land of the Flowers - A Guest Post by Mary Anna Evans

This month, Fabulous Florida Writers is pleased to welcome guest blogger Mary Anna Evans. Mary Anna is the award-winning writer of the Faye Longchamp archeological mysteries. Her latest novel, Rituals, was released earlier this month and is available wherever fine books are sold. Mary Anna was our featured author on January 17, 2011.

So far, three of my novels, four of my short stories, and one of my songs are set in Florida, and I am currently at work on yet another book that takes place in The Sunshine State. Since I have written eight books (and counting) about a Florida-dwelling archaeologist named Faye Longchamp, my entire writing career could be seen as a love song for the land of the flowers. Florida has been my home for almost all of my adult life, and now I’m preparing to leave it. I’m excited about the next phase of my life, but leaving Florida is an emotional thing for me. I simply love the place.

While I realize that we’ve done a pretty good job of paving over the peninsula and its panhandle, if that was our goal, there are still places here that are achingly beautiful. The beaches, the cypress domes, the springs, the lakes, the live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, the swaying palm trees...there are so many evocative nooks of Florida for a writer to use in her work.

My first book, Artifacts, explored Faye’s home on a lonely island off the coast of the Florida Panhandle, and I returned to that place, Joyeuse Island, in Faye’s fourth adventure, Findings. Strangers is set in the ancient city of St. Augustine. My short stories “Land of the Flowers” and “A Singularly Unsuitable Word,” are set in the Florida swamp. “Mouse House” is set at a nameless central Florida theme park where I enjoyed shoving an unpleasant person off a very high castle turret. “Low Budget Monster Flick!” is set at a resort very like the one at Wakulla Springs, during the filming of a movie very like The Creature from the Black Lagoon. And now my nameless work-in-progress is taking Faye back to her Joyeuse Island roots. That’s a lot of stories for one state, but Florida keeps giving them to me.

And Florida has given me more. The Florida Historical Society gave Artifacts their Patrick D. Smith Florida Literature Award. The Florida Book Awards has given medals to both Findings and Plunder. The Will McLean Folk Festival gave the song I wrote to accompany “Land of the Flowers” an award in their Best New Florida Song Contest. The Studios of Key West gave me a writer’s residency in paradise. Remind me again why I’m leaving?

I’m going away, at least for two years, because I want a chance to study creative writing with people who really know their stuff. I am totally self-taught as a writer. I want the chance to see exactly what I’m capable of doing and it’s for me time to do it. If not now, then when? So, beginning in December, I will be in New Jersey pursuing a Master’s of Fine Arts at Rutgers University.

After that? Well, I don’t know. I can’t see that far down the road. I do know this. Whether I come back as a resident or as a visitor, I know I’ll never leave Florida for good, because there’s no place in the world more beautiful than the land of the flowers.

Janis Froelich - Sports, Writing, and Real Life Drama

The 57^th PGA Championship is best remembered for the miraculous 16^th hole play that won the trophy for Jack Nicklaus. But for Tierra Verde writer Janis Froelich, that event will forever be linked with something far more sinister - the brutal murder of her friend, 27-year-old Linda Mae McLain.

The year was 1974 when Froelich, then a 28-year-old mother of two, accepted a temporary job as an office assistant for the Professional Golf Association in Akron, Ohio, home of the prestigious Firestone Country Club. It was there that Froelich met fellow PGA staffer Linda McLain, herself a young mother with three small children. The two had much in common and soon became friends. Unfortunately, their friendship was short-lived – brought to a sudden and horrific end when Linda was stabbed to death by her husband. The shadow of this tragedy would continue to haunt Froelich for the next three decades.

Since that dark February day in 1975,  Froelich has gone on to lead a full and interesting life. Following in her father’s footsteps, she pursued a career as a writer. “As a student, I faltered in math but got A’s in English,” she says. “In school, if you’re not a cheerleader or a majorette, being editor of the school paper puts you right up there.” She took a job with the Akron Beacon Journal where she worked for over ten years until moving to Florida to be near her parents. She spent eleven years as a food writer and then TV critic for the St. Petersburg Times. Then she moved to Iowa where she worked as the TV editor for the Des Moines Register. In 1995, she married photographer Ray Bassett (owner of Maddock Photography in St. Petersburg) and returned to Florida to write for the Tampa Tribune.

In 2008, Froelich was laid off from her job at the Tribune, but she didn’t take a hiatus from writing. Inspired by an article she had penned for the St. Pete Times, she spent the next two years writing a book that would help her exorcise the ghost of her murdered friend.  Part memoir, part true crime story, My Life Looking Back at a Murder revisits the circumstances surrounding the McLain tragedy and explores the ripple effects of domestic violence. “The story is a sort of stream of consciousness, with my life paralleling what Linda would have been experiencing in hers,” Froelich explains. “I also wanted to re-examine the case to see if I could find something new.” The hardest part for Froelich was talking to Linda’s family and seeing for herself the long-term effects of domestic violence.

Froelich hopes My Life Looking Back at a Murder will help raise awareness of the epidemic of domestic violence. “While there is more help available today, domestic violence is a social problem that still hasn’t been solved,” she says. “Three women are murdered by their significant others every day.” She would like to see relationship classes taught in high schools, and thinks parent-child dialogue about domestic violence would be helpful. To do her part to address the problem, Froelich is donating a portion of the profits from her book to The Spring of Tampa Bay and the Domestic Violence Center of Greater Cleveland. 

Froelich’s latest book, Team Shop, takes an insider’s look at another popular sport – baseball. Team Shop chronicles the Tampa Bay Rays’ sensational 2011 season. “I was working for the Rays, the MLB,” she says. “Well, that’s not quite right. In my dreams, I guess. I actually sold t-shirts and cowbells in the team shops around Tropicana Stadium.” She decided to take notes on the season to use for her writing class at Eckerd College.  By the time the season ended, she realized she had enough material for a book. “When the Rays made their unlikely comeback in 2011, I had a rare home stand vantage point. Not only did I witness the muscle, sweat and steel nerves played out at the Trop, all kinds of life experiences rumbled in front of me under the dome.” Team Shop looks at sexual romps in the dressing room, puking in the bushes, picky managers implementing strict drink cup rules, distraught co-workers pushing mops long after the game, and the constant foam finger drama.

A much more serious drama was playing out in Froelich’s real life at the time. In late September of that same year, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She includes an account of this very personal experience in Team Shop and donated $500 from the proceeds to the Morton Plant Mease Foundation that provides free mammograms for women in need. She also hopes the book will inspire others to write down their thoughts. “You never know what’s down the road,” she says, “and writing helps immensely to clarify your thoughts and feelings.”

For more information, visit the author’s website at www.janisfroelich.com. 

You Never Know Where Your Book Will Take You - A Guest Post by Diane Gilbert Madsen

This month, Fabulous Florida Writers is pleased to welcome guest blogger Diane Madsen. Diane is the author of the DD McGil Literati Mysteries, a series of novels that link true incidents in the histories of famous authors with current-day mysteries. She was our featured author on June 26, 2012.

Once your book is published and on the shelves, you go on to the next one.  But sometimes one of your books rears up and takes you places you never envisioned.  That’s what happened to me after Hunting for Hemingway, my second DD McGil Literati Mystery, was published.  The extensive research I did for the book really paid off in unexpected fashion.  It took me to Cuba.
I lived in  Hemingway’s boyhood hometown of Oak Park for 24 years, and was also an English Major (eeekk),  so the forces of the universe undoubtedly dictated some interest on my part in Ernest Hemingway and fueled my research.  Parts of that research involved Hemingway’s Corona #3 typewriter - the one his first wife, Hadley Richardson, gave him as a present on his 22^nd birthday.  After finishing my mystery novel, I wrote an article on the importance of that Corona typewriter and the importance of typing itself to Hemingway’s career as a young journalist and fiction writer.  That article was published in the Spring 2013 issue of The Hemingway Review, and the Review kindly chose a photo of a Corona #3 for the cover!

As a result, I was asked to speak at the International Hemingway Colloquium, held in Havana, Cuba last June.  I realized that my mystery novel had been the trigger (as we crime novelists say) that impelled this adventure into action. 
Hemingway, who spent almost 20 years in Cuba, loved the island and its people.  When he won the Nobel Prize in 1954 for The Old Man and the Sea, he dedicated it to the fishermen of Cojimar and to the Cuban people.  The medal is housed at the El Cobre Sanctuary, located just outside Santiago de Cuba.  It was stolen in the 1980s, but Castro put out a notice warning the thief to return the medal within 72 hours or face the consequences. It was returned but is no longer on display.

 I did find that Cuba has 2 different pesos minted in Hemingway's honor – one a portrait and another a fishing scene with him aboard his boat, the Pilar.  All the Cubans we met on the street knew about Hemingway and expressed excitement to meet people from all over the world at the Colloquium. 

Hemingway’s former home, the Finca Vigia (Lookout Farm), is now a museum, maintained for the past 53 years just as it was in 1960 when Hemingway left for the States, never to return. The Finca, with the help and cooperation from various organizations, had gotten some needed repairs, and on my visit, it was in wonderful condition.  It looked as if Hemingway had just left to go have one of his favorite Papa Doble rum drinks down at La Floridita. For all of you who live as I do in South Florida and know all too well the ravages that just one summer in our tropical climate can do to a property, this was great news to me.  The staff was very knowledgeable and it was obvious they enjoy caring for this property that reflects so much of Hemingway’s personality. I encourage you not to miss visiting this living museum if you get the opportunity.    

On a private tour of the Finca with Director Ada Rosa Alfonso Rosales, I was able to see up close and personal how Hemingway lived his life in Cuba and examine what treasures he left.  The first thing I noticed was what a prolific reader he was.  There were some 9,000 books scattered throughout the beautiful house.  He only had a few mysteries that I knew of – Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr and Isaac Dinesen – all recorded in the packing slips of cartons he shipped to Cuba from Key West in 1940. 

Hemingway is often thought of as the man’s man who filled his life with hunting, fishing, boxing, bullfights, and drinking. Indeed the walls of every room had his mounted trophies of lion, leopard, buffalo, Impala, and fish, all recently refurbished, Ada Rosa informed me. Then I saw the other side of Hemingway’s character on the grounds of the Finca where several small headstones marked the graves of some of his favorite cats and dogs. He was especially fond of Black Dog, who used to lie on the lesser Kudu skin on the floor where Hemingway stood - usually barefoot - while he worked.

Visiting Cuba involved obtaining all sorts of permissions, visas, etc. Fortunately we had a tour director, Scott Schwar, former President of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, who’d made over 20 trips and knew all the ins and outs, thus making our journey smooth and enjoyable. I made many Cuban friends and met many Hemingway scholars while I was Hunting for Hemingway in Cuba. If I hadn’t written Hunting for Hemingway, this intriguing opportunity would not have been presented.

More information about Diane Madsen can be found at:

www.dianegilbertmadsen.com

https://twitter.com/DianeMadsen       -    Twitter @dianemadsen
https://www.facebook.com/diane.g.madsen

Patricia Friedberg - History's Lessons

It started with a cryptic inscription in an old book.

As a child visiting her grandparents in London’s East End during World War II, Bradenton writer Patricia Friedberg has vivid memories of that tumultuous era. She recalls experiencing Nazi air raids during the blitz and seeing her grandmother’s house in Aldgate reduced to rubble. But what stands out most in retrospect is the courage of the Londoners as they faced danger with endurance and determination.

Friedberg seems to have inherited some of that courageous spirit. In 1964, she accompanied her physician husband to the Rhodesias (now Zambia/Zimbabwe).  Having studied at The London School of Journalism, she wrote newspaper articles and documentaries for Rhodesian television. After several years, however, the growing civil unrest forced her family to leave Southern Africa for the safety of America. Moving to Milwaukee, Friedberg attended Marquette University,  wrote newspaper columns, and hosted “People of the Book,” a PBS talk show.

While visiting her mother in London after her father died, Friedberg  came across a book she recalled seeing as a child. It was a 1934 original copy of A Frenchman in Khaki, a memoir by the French impressionist Paul Maze recounting his experiences as a field artist during WWI.  On the title page, written in Maze’s hand, were these words: “To Mrs. Simon: Whose help and devotion was a factor in writing this book which the author will never forget. In memory of the days when she entered my room with that refreshing smile of hers that led to her present happiness.”  Friedberg asked her mother about the book, and a fascinating story emerged.

Friedberg learned that her mother, a young woman from a working-class Jewish family in London, had been employed by Maze to help him write his memoir. Despite the differences in social class and culture, the two forged an intimate friendship.  “My mother lived to be almost 100,” Friedberg says. “She began talking more about her past after my father died, and later told my sister she had a secret she would take to her grave. Between her stories and my memories, I knew I had a story.”

That story eventually became a screenplay titled 21 Aldgate which is being considered for a TV mini-series. Friedberg then decided to rewrite 21 Aldgate as a novel.  Writing the book was a unique experience for her. “It was difficult to stay outside the story and not see the main character as my mother,” she says, “but I enjoyed bringing to life the people I once knew.”

21 Aldgate is a tribute to the brave civilians caught in the Blitz. It is also a fascinating tale of love, endurance, and family. At its heart, however, 21 Aldgate is an indictment of the senselessness of war. “I found a photo taken in 1914 of my mother’s brother fighting in Mesopotamia in WW I,” Friedberg says. “It was almost identical to a recent picture of my grandson stationed in Iraq. Here we are, all these years later, still fighting that same bloody war. Having lived through World War II and the war in Rhodesia, I strongly believe we should think before deciding war is the only answer to far-off conflicts.”

Friedberg has recently completed a memoir titled Letters from Wankie: A Place in Colonial Africa. Based on letters she’d written to her parents, the book chronicles Friedberg’s experiences while living in Rhodesia. “In a drawer in my mother’s dressing table I came across a bundle of blue air letters tied with a yellow ribbon.  I recognized them at once – they were letters I’d sent from Rhodesia,” she recalls. “My mother had kept each and every one of them – over five hundred – each depicting daily life in a hotter than hell colliery town on the outskirts of a game reserve.” 

After Friedberg and her husband were married, the couple spent a few months living in Johannesburg but decided that living under apartheid law was not something they could tolerate. They then moved to Wankie, a town in Southern Rhodesia, where Friedberg took a job as Clerk of the Court in what was known as the Native Commissioner’s Office.  It was here that she penned the letters to her parents which served as the inspiration for Letters from Wankie. “I realized on reading those letters they were documents of a time long gone,” Friedberg explains.  “They give a firsthand account, written by a twenty- year-old naïve young woman seconded into history without knowing she was to become part of a period often despised and rarely appreciated.”

History can come alive when viewed through the eyes of people who experienced it. Patricia Friedberg’s books are proof of this, helping readers to relive the past and, hopefully, learn from it.

 For more information, visit the author’s website at www.21aldgate.com.  
 

Florida : A Feast for the Senses - A Guest Post by Deborah Sharp

This month, Fabulous Florida Writers is pleased to welcome guest blogger, Deborah Sharp. A former USA Today reporter, Sharp traded sad news stories for funny fiction with her Mace Bauer Mysteries, featuring Mace's wacky Mama. “Mama Gets Trashed” (Midnight Ink, $14.99, Sept. 2013) is the series' fifth book.  After a tipsy Mama tosses out her wedding ring with the trash, she drags daughter Mace to the city dump to search. When they stumble upon the body of librarian Camilla Law, the straitlaced town is scandalized. Not only is a killer on the loose, but prudish Camilla is all done up in sexy black leather. Foul play and fetish wear in little Himmarshee, Florida? Mama's blushing fifty shades of pink!  Deborah was our featured writer on September 8, 2011. Visit her online at www.DeborahSharp.com or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/deborah.sharp

I'm a native Floridian, old enough to remember my dad shooting a gator in our front yard in what is now an extremely urban south Florida. When I decided to write a Florida-set series, I wanted to place it somewhere like the wilder state I knew as a child. My husband and I have a little piece of property in middle Florida, a spot to escape the stresses of too much noise, too many cars, and too many people. I chose that untamed part of the state -- north of Lake Okeechobee and south of Orlando -- for my setting.

I created the fictional town of Himmarshee, and placed it in this authentic slice of Florida. It remains the sort of place a man would shoot a big alligator that ventured too close when his grandkids were swimming in the Kissimmee River. He’d plop the head on an ant pile, so the bugs and other critters could pick it clean, and then he’d give the skull to his city slicker neighbor, who comes once in a while to visit.

I know this, because I was the city slicker gift recipient. Hey, I’ve gotten sweaters I liked a lot less.

One of the most striking differences between my south Florida home and my characters' home is the unique way each place stirs my senses. When I give classes on fiction-writing, students always want to know what's missing from their stories. Often, it's the full array of the senses. We're all pretty good at describing how a scene looks. But what about what we hear, or smell? How does the texture -- the touch -- of a thing feel?

My characters experience a completely different environment in Himmarshee than I do at my home in Fort Lauderdale. I spend time in that part of the state so I can describe the sensation of life in Himmarhsee. I grew up on the coast, as distinct from Florida's interior as a seagull is from a Sandhill crane. When I think of the beach, I smell the fruit-stand scent of suntan lotion. I hear the tck-tck-tck of palm fronds rustling together in a light breeze. I feel the crunch of broken shells beneath bare feet as I walk along the shoreline.

Fictional Himmarshee sits just north of the big lake, in Florida's real-life cattle belt. When my main character, the tomboyish Mace Bauer, is outside, she notes the sweet smell of orange blossoms in citrus groves, tinged with the faint odor of manure. At dusk, she hears a chorus of croaking frogs and the steady hum of insects. She feels the sharp sting of a mosquito. The wind blows off the lake, drying the sweat on her skin.

These two different parts of Florida stir my senses in different ways. The contrasts help me create a unique setting for my characters. Writers have to be aware of all the senses. The eyes should be open, of course. But so should the ears, and even the pores of the skin. Like alligators in Lake Okeechobee, inspiration is abundant in Florida. Writers have to be receptive. Be ready to sense it.

What's it like where you are? What does it smell like? How does it sound? What can you touch?

James O. Born - A Different Kind of Cop

When James Born worked as an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, he whiled away many long, uneventful hours of surveillance work reading novels by Tom Clancy and W.E.B. Griffin. When he was asked by crime fiction icon, the late  Elmore Leonard, to provide technical advice on police issues, Born was bitten by the writing bug and decided to pen his own stories – tales that would capture the real-life element of police work.  “I wanted to show cops as real people with wives, kids, bills to pay,” he says. “The job isn’t everything to every cop. They have lives too.”  Fourteen years later, Born is the award-winning author of five books he describes as “realistic police novels – not like the crap you see on TV.” His books give readers an up-close-and-personal look at police work, from the inside jokes to the moments of gut-clenching fear that come with the territory.

Born’s first novel, Walking Money, marked the debut of Bill Tasker, a state cop who becomes entangled in a complex web of embezzlement and double-crossing that puts him at odds with the FBI. Publisher’s Weekly praised the book as “a terrific debut…Born’s been there, and it shows.” Tasker reappears in Born’s next two books, Shock Wave and Escape Clause, where he goes on the hunt for a stolen stinger missile and investigates some shady doings at a Florida state prison. Born’s fourth novel, Field of Fire introduces readers to ATF agent Alex Duarte. Born’s editor liked the more serious Duarte character, so Born featured him again in his fifth book, Burn Zone.

Born’s next novel was perhaps his most unusual. Human Disguise, released in 2009, was such a departure from his other works that Born decided to go with a new publisher (TOR) and a new pen-name: James O’Neal. “I didn’t want people to be confused thinking this book was like my others,” Born explains. “I’m really excited about it because it’s so different.”  A near-future sci fi police story, Human Disguise is set in a post-apocalyptic Florida where Tom Wilmer, a lone detective, finds himself pitted against an ancient alien menace. The book took Born a year to write. His inspiration came from his experiences working for the government and from his Florida roots. “As a native Floridian, I love to think about where the state’s been and where it’s going,” Born says. According to Publisher’s Weekly  “…his (Born’s) self-assured, hard-edged writing style, solid characters and wildly entertaining thriller plot will keep readers enthralled."

A sequel, The Double Human, hit bookstores in 2010. Here, Tom Wilmer returns to go undercover in search of a serial killer unlike anything he’s ever encountered. Known as “The Vampire,” this killer is not human...and neither are his victims. Kirkus Review named The Double Human to its list of “Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2010," and USA Today Bestselling Author David Hagberg compared the book to the George Orwell classic, 1984.

Born is a writer who enjoys everything about the process. He even claims to be “one of the few writers who like having deadlines.” And when he isn’t trying to beat those deadlines, Born enjoys reading, teaching at writer’s conferences, windsurfing, kayaking, scuba diving, running, and sharing time with his family. “My goal never was to be wealthy,” he says. “If people read my books and respond to them, that’s what makes me happy.”

For more information, you can visit the author's website at www.jamesoborn.com.

Dirk Wyle - The Mystery of Science

For Miami author Dirk Wyle (pen name of Duncan Harold Haynes, Ph. D.), there are few things as fascinating as the wonders of science. After receiving a degree in chemistry from Butler University, he went on to earn his doctorate in molecular biology at the University of Pennsylvania. He spent four years in Germany as a post-doctoral scientist, and after returning to the United States, spent the next 30 years working in biomedical research.  Wyle also became something of an entrepreneur after discovering a way to convert general anesthetics into injectable form. He started a small company with its own lab that grew into a thriving business he sold 13 years later for several million dollars.

In the mid ‘90s, Wyle was bitten by the writing bug. “Reading was a constant in my life, and I always thought I had a novel in me somewhere,” he says. “I guess I could have turned into a literary type, but science eclipsed that.” He noticed that none of the books he read depicted scientists realistically. Inspired by the works of John D. MacDonald, a writer he calls “one of my influences and a kindred spirit,” Wyle decided to pen a novel that would show what life as a scientist was really like. Three years later, he had completed Pharmacology is Murder, the first in what would become a five-book series Wyle describes as “captivating mystery/thrillers with a scientific background.” Pharmacology is Murder introduces Ben Candidi, an amateur detective with a doctorate in pharmacology. Wyle calls his protagonist “candid and idealistic, a guy who thinks the world could be a better place if everyone applied themselves and tried to do the right thing. He doesn’t look for trouble, but it comes to him framed in the challenging projects he’s given.”  Publishers Weekly praises the Candidi mysteries as “pleasing for both their intrigue and their intellect.”

Pharmacology is Murder was followed two years later by Biotechnology is Murder. Here, Ben Candidi is investigating a biotechnology company that claims to have discovered a cancer cure. The deeper he digs, the more enmeshed he becomes in a web of murder and intrigue. The third book in the series, Medical School is Murder (2001), has Ben in a Miami medical school where he has taken over the lab of a dead professor. After agreeing to write the old man’s biography, Ben uncovers some disturbing clues that lead him to believe that the professor did not die of natural causes. Amazon Gold (2003) takes Ben deep into the Brazilian rainforest searching for his fiancée, Rebecca Levis, who has mysteriously disappeared.

Wyle’s latest addition to the Candidi series is Bahamas West End is Murder, a novel that was inspired by his voyage to the Little Bahama Bank. “I put in at the West End Marina. It was a really funky place, full of interesting characters.  I always thought it would be natural to have Ben sail into that place and have to deal with the people there.” What starts out as a romantic vacation for Ben and Rebecca turns into an adventure complete with a dead body on a boat, a host of seamy marina characters, corrupt local police, and a new breed of pirate in a novel Booklist says, “…blends scientific smarts with quirky characters in another fine outing.”

Wyle’s latest projects include a sixth Candidi mystery that will take Ben to the Yucatan Peninsula and a stand-alone psychological thriller set in Boca Raton. Wyle finds it challenging to “fit science into exciting circumstances,” but you don’t need scientific background to enjoy his books. He hopes his novels will give readers a greater appreciation for the human side of science, and perhaps help them learn something new along the way. “I’d like to make science real enough to resonate with the reader who’s interested,” he says. And it’s easy to be interested when science blends with a healthy dose of excitement, mystery, and intrigue in an unforgettable story.

For more about Dirk Wyle, visit his website at www.dirk-wyle.com.