THE DIVA MUMMY

Earlier this year, I learned about the best-preserved mummy in the world for a talk I was giving. Surprise: it’s not Egyptian, but Chinese. The Lady of Dai, or “Diva” mummy of the Western Han Dynasty was prepared and buried over 2,000 years ago and is so well preserved that type A blood still runs in her veins and physicians can autopsy her body as if she died yesterday.



How did the Chinese undertakers do it? First, they swaddled her body in 20 layers of silk, then they immersed her in a salt solution that was mildly acidic with some magnesium in it, they encased her in four separate coffins. Finally, they sealed her in a cold chamber under many layers of charcoal and coal.

Who was she? Her name was Xin Zhui, and she was the wife of the ruler of Dai near the city of Changsha. Researchers have discovered that the woman was middle-aged and obese, with clogged arteries and a damaged heart. Seems like heart disease is not unique to modern American society—this lady overate the wrong stuff. She also showed evidence of several parasites and probably lower back pain at the time of her death.

The Diva starred in a National Geographic special in 2004. She continues to be a person of fascination for mummy enthusiasts, and I expect to hear more about her at the World Mummy Congress in San Diego in June.

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Pace Robbers

In our rush to write our stories, we focus on getting words on the page. The events in the story unfold. The characters face their challenges and overcome them. We've written a fantastic story, rich with details, humor, sexual tension and sensory details. Yeah!

Then, when we re-read or when beloved crit partners, agents or editors take a look, they flag certain sections and comment "the pace drags here". What to do? Become the pace police and hunt down those sneaky pace robbers. The ones that slow down the pace of your story like rush hour traffic. Let's profile a few of these nasty pace criminals.

Pace Robber #1 – Dilly-dallying Description

Description should have a purpose for the character. If it has a purpose for the character, it will have a purpose for the reader. I’m talking about more than just a line or two of description to set the scene. Pace-robbing description is whole paragraphs of scenery, landscapes, description of the architecture of a building or the décor of a room, or its occupants.

Even if you are using description as a way of slowing the pace, you can’t expect most readers to enjoy long paragraphs of description (even though some do). Many readers skim or skip description, but this doesn’t mean you should leave it in. Keep it trim, give it a purpose, or break it up and present it a little at a time as the characters interact.

Pace Robber #2 – Exhibitionist Exposition

Exposition is information. Usually it’s information you need your reader to know in order to understand the story. The trouble with exposition is that the characters in the book typically already know this information. It’s a bit silly to have your character, Jane, think: “I think I’ll call my Aunt Sally, the only aunt on my mother’s side who lives too far away for me to visit and who always has the best advice for me when I’m in trouble.” Not only is this “telling” rather than “showing” but it can jar the reader right out of the story when what you really want is for the reader to get lost in the story.

Exposition often equals “author intrusion” which means that the reader can sense the presence of the author, rather than the characters. You can treat exposition the same way you treat description by giving the characters a reason for talking about it or giving it a little at a time so the reader doesn’t notice your author intrusion.

Another exposition pace robber is the blow-by-blow form of exposition:

Joe got up and brushed his teeth, then showered. He dressed in his best blue suit. He left the house around eight and got into his silver Hummer. Driving the forty miles along Highway 17, he reached the city in about thirty minutes. He parked in the VIP spot in the Allied United underground lot and got into the elevator, pressing the button for the 9th floor. He stepped out of the elevator and walked the empty hallway to the corner office.

Um…I’m bored. Not only is this uninteresting, most of it is unnecessary. We don’t need to know how he gets ready for his day or how he gets to work unless these things are critical to the plot. Oh, that was just characterization, you say? Right, so um you wanted a cardboard character?

Pace Robber #3 – Dopey Dialogue

A partner to blow-by-blow exposition is bland dialogue. "Whudda you wanna do? Dunno, whudda you wanna do?"

What you wanna do is get to the meat of the conversation. Unless there is some special tension about these words for the characters, just cut to the point of the conversation and leave the rest out. The same goes for people greeting each other, thanking each other, ending a conversation, introducing themselves, and all those other polite social things we do every day. If it’s not crucial to the story, just leave it out.

Pace Robber #4 – Rogue Scenes

Rogue Scenes are scenes in which readers learn nothing new. Suppose your character Sally has just had an encounter at the bank with a handsome stranger who mysteriously gave her roses and kissed her hand. She gets home and repeats the experience to her mother, then phones a friend and tells her all about it. It’s a very realistic scenario, because that’s exactly what someone would probably do.

But this is not reality, this is fiction.

Each scene should have a purpose and the reader should learn something new in each scene. Sure, Sally is going to talk about it to other people, but let most of that happen “off screen”. For example, assuming she’s had her “off screen” conversation with her friend, she could have an “on screen” scene with her friend and say, “I’m going to meet that guy, you know, the one I told you about. The guy who gave me roses at the bank.”

It's fine to do a little recap now and then by giving readers reminders in the form of quick, small details, but don't let a great scene turn into a rogue later on.

Pace Robber #5 – Intrepid Introspection

Introspection happens when a character shares his thinking process. Character introspection is important for the reader to fully understand what your characters are thinking. Beware of overusing introspection to get your point across or simply using it to run through a list of possibilities as your characters think things over. Too many questions quickly throw the scene out of focus and rob you of the pace you set. It’s tempting to put in the questions that your character has and present a number of avenues for them to pursue because this can add to the tension, but don’t give the reader too many things to focus on at once.

There's no point in ranting a character's internal questions at your readers. They don’t know the answers, only you do. Your job is to pose a question and then reveal answers in a way that makes them want to know more.

That's my top 5 Most Wanted list of Pace Robbers. Am I saying you should never slow down the pace? No, you should slow down the pace from time to time and make sure the reader has a chance to breathe. But make the pace work for you by keeping these rotten pace robbers in the clink!

Interested in learning more about pacing? Join me for a year-long novel writing course at Savvy Authors where you can immerse yourself in craft and emerge with a completed, polished novel. Where do you want to be with your writing a year from now? Or stop by my blog for more great craft articles.


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THE RETURN OF THE MUMMY

A wrapped body from antiquity is the ultimate mystery. We don’t know who is inside, how he or she lived or died, what the story is behind it. Unwrapping it, either with a surgical knife or virtually using a computer, is like Christmas for archaeologists and physical anthropologists.


Twenty years ago, we CT scanned an Egyptian mummy from our University of Illinois museum. Using medical imaging is wonderful because it doesn’t harm the artifact—you can obtain a lot of information without cutting the mummy open to look inside the wrappings. In 1990, we used a huge, expensive university supercomputer to do a “virtual autopsy.” Now the software is so accessible that you can download it and “unwrap” the mummy on a personal laptop. Then you can trim the images, change colors and densities, and rotate them in three-dimensions.

The first time around, X-rays and CT scans revealed that our mummy was a child, maybe 8 years old at the time of death. Physical anthropologists can age bodies by looking at growth plates at the end of the long bones and the teeth: our child showed adult teeth coming in right behind baby teeth and open growth plates. Here are some of the early pictures:

My husband calls this little mummy Lazarus because it keeps coming back. After our real-life adventure 20 years ago, I wrote my first mystery, Bound for Eternity, based on the mummy investigation. It will take us weeks of work to go through the hundreds of images and actually understand the new data. Since I am crazy about mummies and love computer toys, I am in heaven.

Here are some pictures of the trip to the hospital:

Hospital

--
Sarah U. Wisseman, Ph.D
Web Site


Archaeological mysteries:
author email: suwissem@gmail.com

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!


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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