Aztec mythology and Mexican Catholicism meet in VIPER

 
When Latina insurance agent Selena De La Cruz walked onto the stage of my first mystery, BLEEDER, wearing those red heels and driving that fast car, I knew she had a story of her own. In fact, when she played a much larger role in BLEEDER than I’d anticipated, I began to feel that the sequel should feature her as the protagonist.
 
Then, when I learned about the Catholic custom of placing a “Book of the Dead” in the church sanctuary on All Souls’ Day to commemorate the parish’s dearly departed, I knew for certain the next book would be Selena’s story. She’d have such a Book in her parish, I thought, and even if she wasn’t exactly a consistently practicing Catholic, she’d know the custom. And what if her name was in it?
 
I quickly discovered that Mexicans celebrate a holiday nearly concurrent with the Catholic All Souls’ Day, called “The Day of the Dead” (El Dia de los Muertos). It is a family fiesta where women bake special breads and weave flower garlands to decorate a family altar meant to remember and respect dead relatives, who are believed to return in spirit for a visit and enjoy their favorite foods and drinks once again. Families decorate the house with colorfully dressed skeleton figures, give candy skulls to children, and have picnics in cemeteries where they call out playful insults to a female ‘grim reaper’ figure (similar to the old Aztec goddess of death) known as “Lady Death” – “Hey, you old baldy, you missed me this year!” It’s all light-hearted and it reflects a subtle blending of Aztec rituals, Catholic beliefs and folk superstitions. Many Mexican-Americans, seeking to acculturate to America and yet affirm their national tradiciones, are at ease with attending Mass and maintaining the home altar, as Selena does.
 
 
Having decided that the “Book of the Dead” had Selena’s name in it, I imagined that her name appeared last in a longer list of 8 or 9 names of men, and that the men listed before her were drug dealers she’d known in her former DEA career, who were being systematically killed in order, presumably by a dangerous drug lord called “The Snake” who Selena had helped imprison years ago but was now out, and seeking revenge on his enemies and competition. It was important that the villain be called “La Serpiente” for a few reasons related to the religious themes of the story.
 
First, I decided that the killer would be a devotee of Aztec deities and would be motivated, in part, by a desire to appease certain goddesses in particular by human sacrifices – cleaning up the community of drug dealer ‘vermin’ at the same time. My research into serial killers suggested that these were legit (and stronger) motives, beyond the simple ‘revenge’ idea. Because of their regenerative skin-shedding powers, snakes were important in Aztec religion, with several snake deities (The Feathered Serpent, for example) and others like the ‘mother of gods,’ Coatlicue, who is depicted wearing a skirt of rattlers. I decided the killer would be a snake-keeper (since they were sacred and regarded as ‘children’ of the deities) and one of the motives would be restoring ‘proper’ reverence for Aztec gods and goddesses among Mexicans, who – as my killer believed – had been misled by the Spanish conquerors into accepting a fake substitute, The Virgin Mary, “Our Lady of Guadalupe”, whose star-spangled blue mantle is remarkably similar to an Aztec goddess of life and death named Xochiquetzal (many Mexican girls are still named “Xochi”).
 
Picking up on this idea, I included a girl visionary in the story who would claim to be visited by a mysterious “Blue Lady” announcing the next killing. While some in the Mexican community would believe it is “Lady Death” and others believe it is perhaps Xochiquetzal or another Aztec goddess of death, the girl would describe the apparition exactly as Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego, looking like a pregnant Aztec princess, a form recognizable to all Mexicans since She is the Patroness of Mexico.  Her miraculous image, imprinted on Juan’s tilma (cape), is still preserved in the glorious Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. It is hardly a coincidence that She is named “Guadalupe,” for it derives from an Aztec phrase, coatl-lupe, meaning ‘She who crushes the snake.” This can be understood in a couple of ways: First, Her appearance prompted the conversion of the Aztecs by the millions, whereby they abandoned their practice of human sacrifice (which took tens of thousands of lives per year, including children). In this symbolic way, then, Mary ‘crushed’ the Aztec “snake" deities who were appeased by the slaughtering. Secondly, it points to a passage in Genesis chapter 3, where in Eden – after the ‘fall’ – God tells Eve that the snake, now on its belly, will snap at women’s heels but a woman shall crush its head. This is why many statues and paintings of Mary show Her with a foot on a snake, since She is the “New Eve” who brings the Savior into the world, thus defeating the devil, ‘that old serpent.’ Third, it prefigures the confrontation of my protagonist with the killer’s most dangerous snake, the Barba, known to Mexicans as – what else – El Diablo, The Devil.
 
VIPER is an action-packed thriller that moves at a fast pace, richly informed by Aztec culture and Mexican Catholic customs. It’s all meant to be in the background, part of making Selena completely authentic as a character coming to terms with her bi-cultural identity, and showingrespeto for her community and her heritage.



 
Amazon links – USA paper, Kindle, and UK paper, Kindle:
 
http://www.amazon.com/Bleeder-Mystery-John-J-Desjarlais/dp/1933184566/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1297207709&sr=1-1
 

http://www.amazon.com/Bleeder-A-Mystery-ebook/dp/B004L62D4K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1297207753&sr=1-1
 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bleeder-Mystery-John-J-Desjarlais/dp/1933184566/ref=sr_tc_2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297207898&sr=1-2-ent
 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bleeder-A-Mystery/dp/B004L62D4K/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=A3TVV12T0I6NSM&qid=1297207898&sr=1-2-ent
 

http://www.amazon.com/Relics-John-Desjarlais/dp/0840767358/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1298297119&sr=1-3
 

http://www.amazon.com/Throne-Tara-John-Desjarlais/dp/0595155979/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1298297119&sr=1-4
 
 
 
 
 

The Joys of Historical Research

My new book, a historical mystery set in Prohibition era central Illinois, is taking me in many new directions. Since my protagonist, Dr. Earl Snyder Junker, is a physician, I need to know about medical practice in the 1920s. Could my character be a medical examiner as well as a family doctor? What kinds of diseases would he encounter, and what could he offer as treatments before antibiotics?

Fortunately, I have a physician husband (a retired pathologist) who can steer me to the right sort of medical information. Even better, I just signed up for an online course of the history of forensics with Dr. D. P. Lyle, a physician/author who frequently teaches mystery writers:

Dr. D.P. Lyle

Dr. Junker is also an amateur archaeologist during a time when it was still okay for private individuals to dig up burial mounds, before archaeology became an academic discipline. Early arrowhead hunters in Illinois sometimes operated like cowboys, laying claim to sites illegally and shooting at anyone who tried to stop them. Here I have plenty of help from Illinois archaeologists who know the colorful characters and history of digging in the Midwest.

Junker’s wife, Martha, is a German immigrant, so that means investigating anti-immigrant feelings that were rampant between the World Wars. And their nineteen-year-old daughter, Anna, is a nursing student by day and a fun-loving flapper by night. The 1920s was an exciting time for women who had just gained the right to vote and were breaking social taboos left and right: they drank booze and smoked cigarettes in public, wore revealing dresses and short skirts and bobbed their hair short.


But the most fascinating subject is Prohibition and the myriad ways for ordinary people to make and transport illegal liquor. The literature on this subject is vast and often available on the Internet. Two of my favorite discoveries so far: my hometown of Champaign, Illinois, had an underground passage between two major streets so speakeasy patrons could escape excise agents, and there’s a wonderful article on Prohibition in Cincinnati online

Prohibition

Archaeology and Murder,

Meet author Sarah Wisseman

Archaeological sites are composed of layers, just like geological strata. In the Middle East, where I worked on my first excavation, people chose the same sites over and over again to build on for two reasons—the availability of water, and defensibility. Thus, walled cities with protected cisterns inside rose on the same “tells” over and over again.

Unlike the layer-cake they are so often compared too, archaeological layers are messy. Instead of being neat, horizontal layers that are easy to interpret, they are disturbed by running water, animal burrowing, tree roots growing, and humans digging garbage pits and foundation trenches.

Mysteries are composed of layers, too. The top layer, or stratum, is what the reader sees and where the main story takes place. A couple of strata down is where the villain hangs out, plotting and planning away, occasionally rising to the surface like a misplaced artifact in an ancient garbage pit.

Personalities are layered as well, and it's the job of writers to reveal the layers in their characters in ways that move the story along. And everyone has a garbage pit--the family traumas from the past, the dysfunctional relationships of the present. Garbage, like compost, can provide rich beginnings for new stories.

Gradually I'm excavating my own life to unearth situations and characters that will make good mysteries. These include creepy old attic museums, digs in Israel, Italy, and Nevada, and peculiar academic characters that morph into murderers (or murderees!).

My latest book, The House of the Sphinx, has at least three layers. Lisa Donahue, archaeologist and museum curator, finally gets to visit Egypt with her physician husband, James. Their standard tour of Egypt, complete with a four-night cruise on the Nile, is the top layer. Underneath is a terrorist plot to infect Western tourists with smallpox at major archaeological sites. And below that is the complicated layer of interactions within the Arab family that aids the terrorists.

I love reading layered mysteries, especially historicals. A recent discovery is Medicus, by Ruth Downie. It’s about an irascible but loveable Roman physician working in Britannia and his slave/housekeeper Tilla who won’t obey orders. A fabulous read!


Web Site

Peg Herring's Blog Jog Day

Thanks, Pat, for hosting Peg’s Blog Crawl. Yesterday’s post, “Why Do We Say That, Part II”.

The Post - Dialogue and What It Reveals

When I taught high school, I used to get a kick out of watching certain students look at choices for their upcoming book reports. They would flip through the pages, looking for a book with lots of dialogue: fewer words, less to read, more movement. No long descriptions for them!

Dialogue indeed moves a story along. We are interested in what people have to say and how they say it. Writers convey many things as dialogue flows: personality, plot, and emotion, as well as time and place. Readers often get the messages subconsciously, without really thinking about specifics. Here are a few of the methods.

First, the words themselves. What vocabulary is appropriate for the character, the setting, the time period? With historical characters, readers want the flavor of the era, but they also want to understand what is said, so dialogue must be carefully researched. Most of the time an occasional word or phrase is enough to remind the reader of the time difference.

In any era, characters speak as their backgrounds demand. Writers ask themselves: would this character use four-syllable words, figurative language, pidgin English, expletives, baby-talk? Other description can often be minimal if the author displays his characters’ personalities by the way they express themselves.

Authors must consider word order, syntax, and level of complication of a character's language. One speaker might use as few words as possible. Another might love the sound of his or her own voice. Some people "decorate" their sentences with lots of extras: modifiers, qualifiers, even brain stutters. I once had a speech student who started every sentence with "You know--" It meant nothing, but it said something about her personality and her hope that others would agree with her statements.

Another consideration is how words are said. Does the speaker mumble? Stammer? Have an accent? Authors can add variety and depth with differences in dialogue. We must be careful, though. Taken too far, odd spellings and syntax of dialect or argot interrupt the reader's understanding.

A question writers argue among themselves is so-called “bad” words. How much of a character’s cursing is too much? The answer to that is quite personal. Some don’t mind it and contend that swearing helps a writer depict characters realistically, and it is certainly an easy way of conveying anger or lack of education or socialization. Other writers avoid offensive words whenever possible. For me, swearing quickly becomes tiresome, though I recognize that it can be used successfully by a writer with the right sense of timing and character.

Dialogue interest readers, and truthfully, it interests me as a writer, too. I like hearing what my character have to say. I like tweaking their words so that they unconsciously reveal themselves. I like choosing just the right expressions, the ones that tip readers off to who a character really is, just like real-life conversations do.

The Poser-Name a book/series where a child is the sleuth. (Let’s make it a little more difficult and eliminate Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.)

The Prizes-Weekly prizes (your choice of THE DEAD DETECTIVE AGENCY in e- or print format) drawn from the names of those who comment on the blogs as we go. Comment once/day, but the first commenter each day gets entered twice in Saturday’s drawing!

The Pitch: THE DEAD DETECTIVE AGENCY, First in The Dead Detective Mysteries, paranormal mystery. Tori Van Camp wakes in a stateroom on a cruise ship with no memory of booking a cruise, but she does have a vivid recollection of being shot in the chest. Determined to find out what happened and why, Tori enlists the help of an odd detective named Seamus. Together they embark on an investigation like nothing she’s ever experienced. Death is all around her, and unless they act quickly, two people she cares about are prime candidates for murder. Read more about this book and the author here or buy the book here.

The Perpetrator: Peg Herring writes historical and contemporary mysteries. She loves everything about publishing, even editing (most days). Peg’s historical series, The Simon and Elizabeth Mysteries, debuted in 2010 to great reviews. The second in the series will be available in November from Five Star.




The Pathway: The next entry, “Portmanteau Words” and the answers/comments to the Poser will be up tomorrow here.

The Perpetrator: Peg Herring writes historical and contemporary mysteries. She loves everything about publishing, even editing (most days). Peg’s historical series, The Simon and Elizabeth Mysteries, debuted in 2010 to great reviews. The second in the series will be available in November from Five Star.



The Pathway: The next entry, “Portmanteau Words” and the answers/comments to the Poser will be up tomorrow on Mid List Life

DOING RESEARCH FOR MY DEPUTY TEMPE CRABTREE MYSTERIES

The Deputy Tempe Crabtree series is set in modern times in a small mountain community in the Southern Sierra. Though the community of Bear Creek is similar to the town I live in, I moved the location 1000 feet higher into the mountains. The Bear Creek Indian Reservation in the books is similar to the Tule River Indian Reservation, also nearby. Tempe is a quarter Native American and she is often called upon to help out with crimes that occur on the reservation or involve Indians.

When I first began about Tempe, I really didn’t know it was going to be a series. The first book I wrote—though not the first published—Deadly Trail is about the murder of the owner of a local Inn. One of the suspects is Nick Two John who has made a garden behind the Inn with native plants. In this book, Nick introduces Tempe to much of her Indian heritage. The Inn is similar to one in our little town. Much of the information about native plants came from an Indian couple who have a similar garden.

In the second book, Deadly Omen, a princess candidate is murdered at a Pow Wow while Tempe is working there. I got the idea for this book while attending a Pow Wow and helping the invited photographer by getting permissions and names of people she took pictures of. During the Pow Wow, I took many notes. When this book came out, one of the local Indians called to tell me that I’d gotten everything right.

Number three is Unequally Yoked (only available as an e-book) and is about a child’s disappearance. Tempe participates in mourning ceremonial and her eyes are opened to who is responsible. I learned about the ceremony in a book about the Tule River Indians written by Frank Latta.

Intervention is set in a mountain lodge during a blizzard where Tempe and her husband have gone for a romantic weekend. The other guests include several people from the movie industry and one disappears. Tempe is guided by the spirit of a Great Blue Heron—or perhaps, an angel. There is a mountain lodge near where I live and I borrowed a lot of its history for this book. (Again, much of what I used came for an interview I did for the newspaper about this particular lodge.)

In Wingbeat, an owl flies down in front of Tempe, a warning of danger ahead. While investigating the death of a long missing granddaughter she encounters a hidden marijuana farm. The location for the pot farm is a place way up in the mountains where I once interviewed someone for a newspaper article. The home was self-sufficient and so difficult to find, I thought at the time it was the perfect place for something illegal.

Due to the death of my publisher, I had to find another publishing company. The next in the series is Calling the Dead. Tempe calls back the dead to find out the truth about a suicide. I learned about this through a book about Indian ceremonies and it fit right into what I was writing.

Next came Judgment Fire. In this one, while investigating the murder of a battered wife, Tempe learns why she didn’t embrace her Indian heritage. Under the guidance of a shaman, she does a star ceremony which opens her eyes to much of what is going on.

Kindred Spirits came about while I was visiting in Crescent City, California and met a Tolowa woman. We became instant friends and she told me all about the Tolowa people who were nearly wiped out when the white settlers came to the area. I knew I had to write a book with her in it. She had such a dynamic personality, she became two important characters. Tempe goes to Crescent City to learn more about a murder victim found after a wild fire in the mountains above Bear Creek. During her stay she learns about the Tolowa’s encounters with Big Foot.

While doing research about Big Foot on the Internet for the earlier book, I came across a webpage that tells about a creature called the Hairy Man who roams in the mountains near the Tule River Reservation. I was fortunate to go on a field trip with the local college’s anthropology class to a rock shelter with pictographs of the Hairy Man and his family. While there, I knew Tempe would have an encounter with the Hairy Man and Dispel the Mist is the book where it happens.

The latest, Invisible Path, also has its roots in my visit to the rock shelter. A short distance from there, at the end of the paved reservation road, there is rehabilitation center for Indians with drug and alcohol abuse problems. I decided the next book should have something to do with the rehab center and some of the young men on the reservation.

The book that will come out this fall is title Bears With Us and the ideas began when my police office grandson began telling about his encounters with bears while he was on the job. At the same time, we had a few bear visitations in our little town. I asked him lots and lots of questions and got plenty of great answers.

I am quick to let people know that I am writing fiction. Though I borrow a lot from the Tule River Reservation and the Indians who live there, the stories and the characters come from my imagination. Despite that, I often run into Indians who say, “Oh, you’re the woman who writes about us.”

Though I’m not a Native American myself, I have a great-granddaughter who is ¼ Tule River Indian and a daughter-in-law whose father is a full-blooded Yaqui. In fact, she looks a lot like I envision Tempe.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll run out of ideas for this series, but so far that hasn’t been a problem.

Bio: 1Marilyn Meredith is the author of nearly thirty published novels, including the award winning Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series, the latest Invisible Path from Mundania Press. Native American Tempe is the resident deputy of the town of Bear Creek, which has a great resemblance to Springville. Invisible Path is the 9^th in this series and can be purchased in the usual places and is also available on Kindle. Writing as F. M. Meredith, her latest Rocky Bluff P.D. crime novel is Angel Lost, the third from Oak Tree Press.

Marilyn is a member of EPIC, Four chapters of Sisters in Crime, including the Internet chapter, Mystery Writers of America, and on the board of the Public Safety Writers of America. Visit her at http://fictionforyou.com and her blog at http://marilymeredith.blogspot.com

Breaking Horses to Harness

A fascinating look at what is involved in breaking horses to harness and the sort of things they need to be exposed to. Obviously not all of these training experiences would be applicable before the internal combustion engine was created, but there would still be a lot a horse would have to learn to tolerate without panicking. The dangers or cart horses is clearly illustrated by the death of six-year-old Lena Russo in New York's Lower East Side in 1922 when a cart horse bolted and plowed into the family.

Before eBay there was Sears, Roebuck

Before there was an Internet, even before telephones and electricity were common in American homes, buying household good could be done from the comfort of your living room. Americans have always loved convenience. The first drive-through restaurant, the first automatic car wash, the first assembly line were all American inventions designed to make like easier and more convenient. Before the nineteenth century rolled out you could buy anything from groceries to houses through the mail, have it guaranteed and on credit. A Sears, Roebuck home ordered through the mail would go for a little more than a $1,000.00 and would be shipped by rail to anywhere in the US. Some of the Sears’ houses still stand, surely a testament to their quality. How many homes built today will be standing in 2120?

Browsing through an 1897 Sears, Roebuck & Co. Catalogue is a fascinating glimpse into the past. Into a past where there was no FDA or USDA to set rules on the safety of items sold, even the ones meant to be taken internally. You could buy tinctures of arsenic, belladona, digitalis and of course laudanum, a liquid heroin mixture. Turpentine was sold for internal use. Many of these concoctions were sold as cure-alls for ailments we haven’t even heard of today.



For instance, you could purchase Peruvian Wine of Coca, It was “urgently recommended” for such ailments as cures for anemia, impurity, impoverishment of the Blood, Consumption, weakness of the lungs, asthma, Nervous debility, loss of appetite, Malarial Complaints, Biliousness, Stomach Disorder, Dyspepsia, Languor and fatigue, Obesity, Loss of Forces and Weakness caused by excess and similar Diseases of the same nature. It was especially recommended for persons in delicate health and convalescents.

Or try Dr. Rose’s French Arsenic Complexion Wafers. Sarsaparilla would cure scrofula tuberculoses. ‘Female pills’ containing one or more abortifacients that carried the warning that they must be taken carefully for female troubles. Many of these compounds were concocted by Sears, Roebuck themselves and came with money back guarantees. The ingredients were never listed in either the catalogue or on the products themselves. No way of knowing what dosage you were getting or ever exactly what was in each potion. It was truly buyer beware in those days.




On a lighter side, you could buy an Electric Washer made of the best Virginia white cedar for $3.50. An Acme Hay Tedder could be had for $21.00. For $19.95 you could purchase the 1897 Encyclopedia Britannica. A Columbus A Grade Canopy Top Park Wagon Surrey went for $79.00 or $76.63 if you sent cash.

Sears, Roebuck offered discounts for cash and encouraged club purchases where several people would send in order together for more discounts. Sears, Roebuck also introduced monthly payments for their pricier objects. To give an idea of what the prices mean, a dollar in 1897 had a consumer price index of $26.70 or a GDP Deflator value of $23.60.

These catalogues are a wonderful glimpse into a different world long gone.

Richard Sears illustrated the cover of his 1894 catalog declaring it the "Book of Bargains: A Money Saver for Everyone," and the "Cheapest Supply House on Earth," claiming that "Our trade reaches around the World." Sears also knew the importance of keeping customers, boldly stating that "We Can’t Afford to Lose a Customer."

Sears, Roebuck & Co.