October 2006 will mark the 20th anniversary of Sisters in Crime (SinC), celebrating two decades of opening doors for female mystery writers. To commemorate this anniversary, Sisters in Crime National is planning a whole series of events beginning with Bouchercon 06 in Madison, WI and ending at Bouchercon 07 in Alaska. In between, there will be many opportunities for you to get involved.

One way you can get involved is help us develop projects and ideas to highlight our organization and authors. The winning chapter will be awarded the funds to actually carry out the project, and the top three ideas will be included in the SinC guidebook, which will be distributed to all chapters in 2006. Send a detailed description of your proposed project and an estimated budget to Beth Wasson (of SinC National) at sistersincrime@juno.com?Subject=SinC%2020th%20Anniversary by March 31, 2006.

And if you haven't already done so, mark you calendars for Book Expo America, on May 19-21 in Washington, DC where our local chapter of is sponsoring a booth. Complete details are at http://www.sistersincrime.org/events.shtml. There's still room from more volunteers, so what are you waiting for? Sign up now!

And, don't forget to renew your dues! See page 5 for more information.

Have a safe, happy, and prosperous New Year, and see you at the meeting in February.

Marcia Talley
President
marcia@marciatalley.com

PI to address chapter

In the early 1980s, when Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone was breaking into the PI business in books, Lynn Levy was doing it for real.

Back then, female private investigators were almost non-existent, Lynn said.

"I felt like I was always having to prove myself."

Not anymore. Lynn now owns her own PI firm with two investigators on her payroll, and last year she was named the first Investigator of the Year by the Professional Investigator’s Alliance of Maryland.

Chessie Chapter members will have the chance to hear Lynn discuss her investigative techniques and more at the January 14^th meeting.

Lynn’s company, the Baltimore-based L H Levy Investigations, Inc., provides services to businesses, law firms and individuals. On the business front, she performs standard employee background checks and mystery shopping, analyzing how well stores are prepared to forestall shoplifters, for instance.

The background checks "involve mostly [using] proprietary databases that I have," Lynn said. "It’s not just going on the Internet and Googling" the person under investigation.

Individuals also hire Lynn to do personal background checks, including on potential nannies, tenants, and spouses for their children. These cases, particularly, can get interesting.

"The parents of a young girl, 24, hired me to check out her fiancée," Lynn said. "She lived in North Carolina, he lived in New York."

Things seemed fishy to the parents because the daughter had never gone to the fiancee’s supposedly nice New York home, nor visited him at the company he supposedly owned, Lynn said.

"They just had his name, date of birth and [the town] where he lived," Lynn said.

That was enough. She tracked him down, investigated his job situation and took pictures of his home, which turned out to be a trailer with no running water or bathroom.

"Her parents told her what I found out and gave her my report. She married him anyway and stopped talking to her parents," Lynn said. "But she ultimately got a quickie divorce."

Another interesting task Lynn’s company is often hired to do is locate a person no one else can find.

"We’ll look to see if this person has a traffic ticket, is in jail, is on a sex-offender list," she said. "We’ll go back to the last-known address and knock on doors. We actually find a lot of people that way. As long as the [sought] person isn’t wanted on a criminal matter, people talk."

Lynn still often relies on the old gumshoe techniques.

"When looking for a witness, you still knock on doors, canvass neighborhoods. It’s not all database research."

Another of Lynn’s techniques: "I steal the garbage. It’s legal. There are still a lot of goodies to be found. Smart people shred. Businesses shred. But we still find bank account statements, credit card statements. We’ve also done DNA research [on items recovered from trash left at the curb]. We’ll look for a Q-Tip, cotton ball, gym sock for a paternity test."

Lynn makes sure to dress the part when going out in the field. Not too fancy for the neighborhood. And after all those years proving that a woman could do this job, she finds her gender is now an asset.

"It helps because I don’t look like a cop. Also, women are much more willing to open a door for a woman. The fact that I speak Spanish helps a lot, too."

Being a PI isn’t as exciting in real life as it seems on tv, Lynn said. "We can’t finish a case in an hour. We don’t always have a conclusion."

But she loves the job anyway, particularly because "there are no two days that are ever the same."

SinC celebrates 20 years: Much accomplished but work remains

Twenty years ago, a bunch of female mystery authors got together at the Bouchcon mystery conference to discuss their place in the industry. Were they getting the same number of reviews as men? No. Were they getting the same PR push from their publishers as men? No. Were they going to do something about it? Yes.

And Sisters in Crime was born.

But twenty years is a lot of time. Is SinC still necessary?

Chapter President Marcia Talley gives a resounding yes.

"We’ve made a lot of progress," in the last 20 years, Marcia said. "But we need to keep plugging on the goals. We’re still needed. Women still are not represented in reviews compared to the number of books they write. Their books still don’t appear on bookstore shelves as often as men’s books do."

And even at Bouchercon, which helped spur SinC into existence, it seems discrimination against women still occurs.

At this fall’s Bouchercon in Chicago, for instance, the Thursday panels were dominated by women, while the Saturday panels were filled with men. Bouchercons typically have the lowest attendance on Thursdays, while attendance spikes on Saturdays.

"Panels dealing with PIs, police, hard-boiled or noir are more likely to be all male or almost all male and run on Saturday, the most visible day," said immediate-past SinC National President Patti Sprinkle, according to The Lipstick Chronicles blog. (Thanks to the gals at The Lipstick Chronicles, http://thelipstickchronicles.typepad.com/, for allowing us to quote from their site.)

Sprinkle gathered and publicized figures addressing the prominence accorded to male versus female authors at the Chicago Bouchercon. Many of these details can be found on the Lipstick Chronicles blog.

After reviewing the data, chapter member Elaine Viets shared her view on this "girl ghetto" on the blog.

"The idea of [a panel on] ‘cutting edge mysteries’ being all male was outrageous," she said. But because Sprinkle got her statistics publicized, "future conference organizers promised this would not happen at future Bouchercons. They would be more careful about their programming."

That’s good. But Bouchercon is just a symbol of the apparent continual marginalization of women in the mystery field. It’s one of the reasons why the Chessie Chapter is sponsoring a booth at Book Expo America (BEA) next May, where SinC authors will have the chance to meet publishers, booksellers, librarians and other industry professionals while giving away copies of their books and other promotional items from the SinC booth.

"The BEA booth will provide the opportunity to meet face to face with librarians and booksellers from across the country, making them aware of who our members are and what they write," Marcia Talley said. "We write, as women, a wide variety of books in all genres, and I think that’s not well understood by the publishers and newspapers. We do a lot more than just write about cats and teacups."

Chessie Chapter: 15 years and going strong

This just-past fall marked another milestone for SinC: the Chesapeake Chapter’s 15^th birthday. Fifteen years of promoting local authors, giving local readers the chance to meet their favorite writers, and attracting high-quality speakers to chapter meetings.

These speakers have included poison experts, FBI, ATF and secret service agents, parole officers, homicide detectives and judges. Speakers have addressed DNA techniques in fingerprinting and the investigation after the first World Trade Center bombing. (A list of many of the chapter’s speakers may be added soon to the chapter’s website. Thanks to Secretary Val Patterson for compiling this list.)

The chapter’s first luncheon meeting was held in December 1990 at a packed Bish Thompson’s Restaurant. Chapter member (and future SinC National president) Elaine Raco Chase was the speaker. She discussed the importance of working together to promote women mystery writers, how to get reviews and how to market yourself to libraries and bookstores.

"It was packed," she said of the meeting. "We filled the restaurant."

Elaine had been a past-president of several Romance Writers of America chapters, and she said she found working with mystery authors much more pleasant.

"Everybody was very friendly," at that first Chessie Chapter meeting, she recently recalled. "I’ve found that mystery writers (and science fiction writers) are much more genuine than romance writers. Mystery writers are always ready to pitch in and help a newbie."

In addition to hearing speakers, in the early days, chapter members donated books to soldiers serving in the Gulf War and went on a lot mystery-related field trips.

One such trip was to a conservators’ workshop at the National Gallery of Art. "There are a lot of mysteries with people doing tricky things with paintings," said Maureen Collins, who was the chapter’s first secretary and its president in 1993-94. "We learned how to go about restoration, how you could cover up paintings."

Other outings included trips to a coroner’s office, FBI headquarters, and to see forensic anthropologists at the Smithsonian and at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Chapter members also manned the phones at a telethon for the local PBS station, WETA.

The field trips ultimately mostly died off due to timing problems. Many chapter members worked on weekdays, and "the people we wanted to visit wouldn’t be at work on the weekends," Maureen said.

The chapter’s main focus of late has been on attracting great speakers.

"We want to continue with the high-quality of speakers we’ve been able to offer," chapter President Marcia Talley said. "We bring them to our members both as interesting people and as resources."

Marcia is also proud that the Chessie chapter promotes its own writers, and plans to continue doing so.

"We showcase our writers twice per year with panels, particularly our newer members," she said. "We’re pushing our nestlings out in the world, helping them spread their wings."

In memorium: Dotty Sohl

We sadly report that former chapter member Dorothy (Dotty) Sohl died November 20^th in Seattle. Dotty, 80, had a mystery about a blind, diabetic amateur sleuth titled Hearing Faces published by HarperCollins in 1995.

Chapter Vice President Donna Andrews remembers Dotty as "not only a lovely, upbeat person but an inspiration to all of us who didn't manage to get published while still in the first flush of youth."

Dotty edited technical reports and other publications for the Defense Intelligence Agency from 1972 to 1981. She lived in the northern Virginia area for 49 years before retiring in 2002 to Seattle. A lovely picture of Dotty, as well as a complete obituary and written memorials of her from family and friends, can be viewed at http://obit.columbiafuneralhome.com/obit_display.cgi?id=267115&listing=Current.

Volunteers needed

The monthly meetings are spectacular, and reading this newsletter is great, but don’t you want to do more with this organization? Opportunities to volunteer abound.

Like publicity? We need you. Want to participate in the Monitoring Project (count the number of reviews given to men versus women in a particular publication)? Sign on up. Or maybe you have your own special talent, your own way that you’d like to help the Chesapeake Chapter. We’re open to suggestions.

On your chapter renewal form – which you received along with this newsletter – you’ll find space to tell us how you’d like to become more active. So take the plunge! We look forward to hearing from you.

Two positions the Board is actively looking to fill are program chair (or co-chair) and library liaison.

The program chair’s main duty is to arrange a speaker for each monthly meeting. The chapter now has contact information for more than a dozen possible speakers, which should enable the new program chair to hit the ground running. Current program Chair Mary Ann Corrigan would be willing to stay on if the new person wants assistance, or she is willing to give the job over to an eager member. The position takes only a few hours a month, she said. No special skills are needed to do the program chair job, just a desire to help, Mary Ann said. If interested in this position, please email Mary Ann at programs@chessiechapter.org.

The library liaison position is new. The person filling this job would work with area libraries, promoting SinC, particularly its 20^th anniversary, and trying to publicize local authors and to develop events for them. SinC National is also planning a celebration at libraries nationwide on March 15, 2007, and each chapter’s library liaison would be instrumental in helping make it happen. If you are interested in taking on this position, please contact Donna Andrews for more information at vicepres@chessiechapter.org.

The chapter also is looking for input on who you’d like to hear speak at meetings. If you know of a particular person you’d want us to invite to speak, or if you’re interesting in learning from a individual in a particular field, please let Mary Ann Corrigan know.

Chapter elections

Seems in Washington, there’s always an election going on. Though unlike other campaigns, there’s no controversy here. The uncontested slate for the 2006 Chessie Chapter board is:

· President: Marcia Talley is running for re-election

· Vice President: Donna Andrews is running for re-election

· Secretary: Val Patterson is running for re-election.

· Treasurer: Lee Mewshaw is running for re-election

Fully paid members are eligible to vote. The election will be held at the January 14^th meeting. If you can’t attend, please vote via absentee ballot, which was included with this mailing with return instructions. Absentee ballots should be postmarked by January 10^th.

Though who will win may not be suspenseful, we’d still appreciate all our members voting. The winners will be announced on the chapter’s listserve sometime in January.

Membership renewal time

It’s time to renew your membership, both with the national chapter and the local. (Membership in National is required to be a member of the local chapter.) You should have received your renewal notice from National in the mail by now. Please respond directly to National by January 31^st, including your National dues check for $40. You can renew through the mail via the paper form you hopefully have received, or you can renew (including payment) online. To renew online, go to http://www.sistersincrime.org/memberform.php.

Here at the local chapter, we’re giving you a little more time to renew, though early response is appreciated. The 2006 Chesapeake Chapter dues will be $20, and they are due by February 15^th. The local renewal form was included in the envelope along with this newsletter. Thank you for your continued support.

Scholarship opportunity

Authors of mystery fiction, nonfiction, plays and screenplays take note: two $500 scholarships are available to offset tuition and fees for writing workshops, seminars and/or college-level writing programs in the United States.

The Helen McCloy/MWA Scholarship for Mystery Writing is designed to nurture talent in the mystery field. You don’t have to be a member of Mystery Writers of America to apply, though you do have to be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.

Candidates must submit an application, samples of their mystery work, and recommendations by February 27, 2006. The winners are scheduled to be announced by next autumn. Applications are available on the web at http://www.mysterywriters.org/pages/news/mccloy.htm.

Member news

Whose got bestsellers? We do!

Delete All Suspects, the fourth book in Donna Andrews' Turing Hopper series, ranked eighth in hardcover sales in November at stores that are members of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association (IMBA).The book, in which Donna kills a spammer, was released by Berkley Prime Crime last month. Donna recently was interviewed on Elizabeth Foxwell's weekly radio show, "It's a Mystery." An excerpt from the show is available at http://www.elizabethfoxwell.com/ItsaMystery.html.

Marcia Talley’s latest book, This Enemy Town, ranked first in the IMBA’s October paperback list.

As of early November, Maria Lima’s Matters of the Blood was Quiet Storm Publishing’s fifth-highest seller for 2005.

Chesapeake Crimes II, featuring short stories of 15 chapter members, ranked first in Quiet Storm’s sales in October and as of early November was Quiet Storm’s third-highest seller of the year. The anthology’s predecessor, Chesapeake Crimes, is also still selling well, ranking tenth in Quiet Storm’s 2005 sales as of early November.

Debbie Mack’s first novel, Identity Crisis, ranked tenth in Quiet Storm’s sales in October. On Saturday, Feb. 11, Debbie will sign copies of the novel at Barnes & Noble on Jefferson Davis Highway in Alexandria. Debbie also signed at Barnes & Noble in Ellicott City, Maryland, in October.

Maureen Robb’s first novel also is doing well. Patterns in Silicon was chosen as a 2005 favorite new mystery by New Mystery Reader magazine, and it was selected by the online Mystery Most Cozy book group as its December read.

Maureen moderated a panel at Bouchercon and served on a panel at Magna Cum Murder this fall. A segment on her and her book was scheduled to air in late December on the PBS regional tv program Voices of Mystery. Maureen also was profiled in some newspaper articles and was interviewed on the Frank Truatt Morning Show, a radio show that airs in New York and New Jersey.

In October, Sujata Massey discussed and signed her latest novel, The Typhoon Lover, at Borders in Baileys Crossroads, Virginia.

Sandra Parshall’s fist novel, The Heat of the Moon, will be published next year by Poisoned Pen Press. The book is a psychological suspense.

The Library of Congress has released Jack French’s book, Private Eyelashes: Radio's Lady Detectives, as a book on tape available for free through its Talking Books program, which serves individuals who are blind, sight-impaired or disabled. This is the third significant honor accorded to Private Eyelashes. Jack and his book received the Ray Stanich Award for best vintage radio literature last fall and the Agatha Award for Best Non-Fiction last spring from Malice Domestic.

Heidi Vornbrock Roosa’s unpublished novel Taking the Village made the short list in this year’s Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger contest. Heidi’s novel was one of 12 short-listed novels out of more than 400 entries.

Member spotlight: Maureen Collins

Crime may not pay. But advertising does.

Maureen Collins’ involvement in the D.C. mystery scene began in 1989 with a small notice in the Washington Post for a new conference called Malice Domestic. A mystery reader, Maureen had attended a similar conference when she’d lived in San Diego.

Now there’d be a conference for mystery writers and readers here, in Washington? She had to go.

At that first Malice at a Sheraton Hotel in Silver Spring, Maureen attended a breakfast sponsored by an organization called Sisters in Crime. She sat next to author – and future SinC president – Pat (P.M.) Carlson, who told her about SinC, which then was merely four years old.

"I liked the idea of promoting women mystery writers and getting together on a regular basis," Maureen said. "Women weren’t getting reviewed as often as men, so librarians weren’t as aware of their books, nor were booksellers. It also was thought that you should be able to write a mystery, a suspenseful story, without so much violence toward women and children."

So Maureen signed up, as did a number of other local mystery fans. In a little more than a year, twenty-eight women joined together to form the Chesapeake Chapter. Maureen served as its first secretary, sending out mailings and keeping track of board meetings.

"We had people who read mysteries, like me, people who wrote mysteries and people who sold mysteries get together and have a speaker and have lunch together." These meetings were important, especially to the authors, Maureen said, because "writing is a very lonely job."

Maureen has remained active in the chapter since its founding, serving as its president in 1993 and 1994. And throughout that time, she’s been an avid mystery reader. So much so, that in 1998 she was named fan guest of honor at the 10^th Malice.

"I like a broad range" of work, she said, through she doesn’t enjoy thrillers or romance-type mysteries. "My favorites are the Dorothy Sayers-type book, the P.D. James-type book. Police procedural with a human interest."

Indeed, the first item on her Christmas list this year was P.D. James’ latest.

When she’s not reading, Maureen spends time sharing her love of mysteries, including the genre’s history. With the support of the Montgomery County Commission on the Humanities, she’s run local programs on the history and development of mystery stories. A few years back, she branched out to the Smithsonian.

"Last year I did a session on the golden age of the mystery" at the Smithsonian, Maureen said. "In 1999 I did a mystery lovers tour of England."

And coming full circle, Maureen also has become a regular moderator and panelist at Malice.

"I did the Sherlock Holmes panel at the last Malice. The thing I’ve found at Malice conferences and in mysteries is that people don’t tie in their knowledge of history into what they read and write."

By sharing her knowledge, Maureen hopes to encourage writers to do just that, thus making their stories richer.

Looking back on her fifteen years with the Chessie Chapter, Maureen calls "all the nice people I’ve met" her best memory. "I’ve made a lot of good friends. That’s really the main point of joining any group."

Tips from an avid reader

After years of reading mysteries, Maureen offers these suggestions for authors:

· Don’t be Dr. Phil. "Put in less psychoanalysis of your subject. You can give psychological indicators, but don’t tell. Show."

· Weave in that back-story. "Most people’s eyes start to glaze over if they have a lot of background that isn’t interspersed with the action of the story or the dialogue. Don’t give a history lesson."

· Less is more. "Sometimes the setting is described too much. Let people work on their imaginations. Don’t get bogged down into detail."

Mystery events near and far

Interested in real-life historical crime? Corruption? Intrigue? Then the January 10 meeting of the Mid-Atlantic chapter of Mystery Writers of America (MWA) may be right up your alley. Local non-fiction author Ken Ackerman is scheduled to discuss what it takes to write gripping non-fiction, as well as how to dig up historical facts on real-life crime.

The evening meeting will be held at the Embassy Suites Hotel at the Chevy Chase Pavilion in Friendship Heights. Admission, including dinner, is $35. To RSVP, or to receive more information about this MWA event, email Bonner Menking at bmenking@comcast.net.

Next Chessie Chapter Meeting

The next Chessie Chapter meeting will be held at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, January 14^th at That’s Amore in Rockville (15201 Shady Grove Road). Private investigator Lynn Levy will be the featured speaker, as detailed earlier in this issue.

Directions and reservation information are listed on the reservation sheet that was included in this mailing.

Next Newsletter

Please send your news by Feb. 5^th to Barb Goffman at chessienews@chessiechapter.org or by snail mail to:

4903 Edgemoor Ln. Apt. 604
Bethesda, MD 20814.

URL: http://www.chessiechapter.org/Criminal_Tendencies/CT_05dec.html
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Last updated: 8 January 2006