Adult Winter Reading Program – SinC into a Good Mystery; Celebrating 20 Years of Sisters in Crime
Sign-up begins December 1.
2007 marks the 20^th anniversary of the mystery writers' organization, Sisters In Crime. This special reading program highlights member writers. Sign up at the Central Library Readers’ Advisory Desk or at the branch libraries. For more information, call our Readers' Advisory Desk at (847) 923-3189.

Rhys Bowen is no ordinary “cozy” mystery writer. She is the multi-nominated, award-winning author of two different series: the Constable Evans mysteries, set in the mountains of Wales, and the Molly Murphy Mysteries, set in turn-of-the-century New York City and featuring a feisty Irish immigrant woman. Her books have been nominated for every major mystery award, including the Edgar for best novel, and she has won seven of them.

Rhys was born in Bath, England, of a Welsh/English family, and educated at London University. She went to work for the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), specializing in drama and becoming a studio manager. While there, she started writing her own radio and TV plays. Desiring to escape the dreary London weather, she accepted an invitation to work for Australian Broadcasting in Sydney. Living “down under,” she met her future husband John, who was on his way to California. She married and settled in the Bay area, where she has lived ever since, raising four children.

In California, Rhys began writing children’s books and young adult novels, many of which were best selling titles. She also wrote some adult historical sagas and some TV tie-ins. When she felt she had exhausted her enthusiasm for writing for teenagers, Rhys decided to write what she likes to read: mysteries with a great feel for time and place. Her childhood memories of her Welsh relatives were the inspiration for her Constable Evans novels. These stories were immediately well received. The 10 books in the series have been published in several other languages, in large print, book club and in audio form.

Wanting to try her hand at something different and edgier, Rhys conceived Molly Murphy, a brash, fearless Irishwoman who struggles to survive as an immigrant in New York City. The first book in this series, Murphy’s Law, won three awards including the Agatha. Every subsequent book has received starred reviews and award nominations.

Rhys also enjoys writing short stories and several of these have been Agatha and Anthony nominees. "Doppelganger" won the Anthony award and was included in The World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: Fifth Annual Collection anthology (2004). More recently, her story "Voodoo," an Anthony nominee, was chosen to be part of Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense—the anthology of the best of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

Rhys is a past national board member of MWA. When not writing she loves to travel, sing, hike, play her Celtic harp and entertain her grandchildren. Next summer she plans to launch a new and very different series, this one about a minor royal in 1930s England. It has been described as “Bridget Jones meets Charade as told by Nancy Mitford.”

For more information, visit her website at: www.rhysbowen.com.

We are pleased that Ms. Bowen will be visiting our library on Wednesday, October 4, at 7:00 pm in the Rasmussen South meeting room. Come and ask questions about her work and career. Copies of her books, courtesy of Brain Snacks, will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

Titles in the Constable Evan Evans series:

Evans Above (1997)
Evan Help Us (1998)
Evanly Choirs (1999)
Evan & Elle (2000)
Evan Can Wait (2001)
Evans to Betsy (2002)
Evan Only Knows (2003)
Evan’s Gate (2004)
Evan Blessed (2005)
Evanly Bodies (2006)

Titles in the Molly Murphy series:

Murhpy’sLaw (2001)
Death of Riley (2002)
For the Love of Mike (2003)
In Like Flynn (2005)
Oh Danny Boy (2006)

So many of our readers are, themselves, also fledgling writers. Just as the Readers' Advisory Department offers programs geared to writers so, too, this section of our electronic newsletter designed to keep writers informed of tools available at our Library, web sites of interest to writers or other topics of interest.

Conflicting Advice from Authors

If you have ever attended local or national writing conferences, you will attend sessions where other writers provide tips and suggestions for your writing life. Many novice writers take copious notes and vow that, when they return home, they will put all these pearls of wisdom to good use. But, what inevitably happens is that the novice writer becomes frustrated that they cannot incorporate that advice into their writing lives or that the advice just doesn't help them. But that's okay. You're not them, you're you.

If you attend ten different sessions, you'll get 10 (or more) varying opinions. For example, the question always arises of when is the best time of day to do your writing. One writer works best at night, one in the morning, one at five a.m. when the house is quiet, and one in the afternoon in-between normal household activities and when the kids come home from school. Some authors write a synopsis of the book before they begin; some authors write the synopsis long after the book is finished because the one thing they absolutely detest is writing a synopsis. One author may outline the entire book before they begin writing; another writes by the seat of his/her pants and the story simply spills out on the paper. Some authors use note cards or post-it notes tacked up on the wall to keep track of major plot points. Whatever works for you is okay.

Ernest Hemingway wrote standing up, but that doesn't mean you have to unless, of course, you are more comfortable standing while you're writing. There is no harm in trying a new technique to rev up your writing. Never assume that you have to work that way to be successful in your writing. Take what works for you and throw the rest away.

GRAMMAR TIP: Typography versus Typing

The advent of word processors in writing brings us closer to typesetting rather than typing. Consequently, many of the rules we learned as typists do not apply in the world of word processing. Below are a few rules of typography that differ from what was used for the typewriter:

(a) Use one space after all punctuation, including periods, question marks, exclamation points, and colons. Using two spaces was a convention that evolved because typewriters were equipped only with monospaced fonts, which made it difficult to see where a sentence ended. Typographers always used one space because they use proportionally spaced fonts which do not require the extra space in order for a series of sentences to be readable. Because most of the fonts used in word processing software programs are proportional, the additional space is not needed.

(b) Use typographer's quotation marks. Typographer's quotes--the turned, or "curly," quotation marks--are actually quite different from straight quotes, which were all that old typewriters could muster. Straight quotes should be used only as symbols to denote minutes, seconds, feet, and inches--and then, only in charts, tables, and the like. Most word processing software is already programmed to use these "smart quotes," as they are called. We must remember, however, to convert back to straight quotes to indicate seconds and inches (double straight quotes) and minutes and feet (single straight quotes) in charts and tables.

(c) Use italics, not underlining, for such purposes as indicating the titles of works that stand alone and emphasizing words in running text. Because our typewriters could not italicize, we underlined instead. Now we reserve underlining for those situations in which we cannot use italics, such as when we are writing in longhand or using the old-fashioned typewriter.

(d) Avoid using the space bar to indent a paragraph or to move text (say, for example, to center it). Word processing software offers a host of formatting options, including tab options, centering, right and left justification, and columns. When you use manual spacing rather than formatting the text using these handy functions, you create two problems: the text will never be evenly aligned, and the work will be made more difficult if you ever want to revise the text in any way.

WRITERS ON WRITING: “It is perfectly okay to write garbage -- as long as you edit brilliantly.” (science fiction and fantasy author C. J. Cherryh)

Happy writing!