It’s New Year’s Day and I’m not hung over, and that’s a very good thing. In fact, I haven’t been hung over for a very long time and that’s an even better thing.

Time to shrug off 2011. Many good things happened. My first mystery, No Dice, was published. It’s sold a modest number of copies. A few good friends died, more friends felt the pinch of the economic vice, and a good few Americans lost their last bit of faith in our government.

My second mystery, Rip-Off, is in the hands of the third proofreader and then ready to launch. Oh, was that a bad day when I opened the first copy of No Dice. Despite careful, careful proofreading it appeared that every time I’d opened the file to correct something, words flew out of sequence, and paragraphs jiggled themselves around. Oh woe.

And I’m almost ready to turn the third one over to a story editor.

All this time and productivity was exacted from my addiction to email, Facebook, and lately Twitter. Did I mention Spider Solitaire?

I make daily resolutions to turn on the timer on the stove and stop frittering around when the buzzer goes off. Do I do it? Sometimes.

Well, it’s 2012 now. In the interest of human perfectibility, I vow to do better this year. Cut back on the things I do that I punish myself for later. Admit it. You all have those.

Be kinder. Watch out for gossiping, stretch a hand out in friendship, and give away more money and things.

I have so much.

Pacifico is a spell-binding story teller, and for a crime writer it’s a task to keep up with the anecdotes and good stories you want to make notes on.

I worry sometimes that I’m developing a far too positive perspective on law enforcement because I’m only meeting the good cops. I wonder if other crime writer’s watch themselves in fear of writing from a too rosy vantage point.

Last week I did a ride-along with Officer Milosevich of the Santa Monica Police Department where my murder mystery series featuring Detective Dave Mason is based. Over a long shift I learned he taught defensive tactics, and watched him interact with a mentally ill woman who likes to fight. We went on a lot of calls that led to the humdrum non-excitement of an upscale beach city’s ordinary doings.

Much in contrast to the ride-along experience I had in Compton on a hot, August Saturday night a few years ago. I thought I was going to die as we raced from one call to another, lights and siren. An old latino man pulled us over to where he was sitting on the curb to show the officer a bullet wound in the sole of his foot he’d got from running away from a fracas.

At one point in a very long graveyard shift, we were sent to a parking lot behind of one of the projects. A crowd of young black kids watched the cruiser pull in with a lot of jeering and name calling. The officer slid down the window and slowly drove through. The kids moved out of the way, taking their time. Lots of attitude.

There’s no place to dive for cover in the passenger seat of a police cruiser once the shooting starts. My heart had just settled down after he got a call and we humped over the median racing in the opposite direction.

All that happened was him dispensing a lot of “Hi, how are ya’s? How’s it going, buddy?” He called a lot of them by name, people he gets to know as they cycle of in and out of County jail. Maybe he was just showing the flag of law enforcement.

These guys were great and I admire them for their discipline, people skills, and self-control. There’s a lot like them.

But what about the cops I’m not meeting? All I have to do is pick up a newspaper to know they’re out there. Close by, the Bakersfield Police Department seems to shoot first and ask questions later. The Maricopa (a Kern County town near here) Police Department has been investigated for gross incompetence and mismanagement, and Kern County Sheriff’s Department has taken them over. I notice the Seattle Police Department is in trouble.

I’m sure J.A. Jance who writes about a Seattle investigator shakes her head reading that, thinking of all the good cops she knows.

Check out Derek Pacifico’s seminars for yourself at http://www.crimewriters.globaltraininginstitute.com/HOMICIDE_SCHOOL.html

It’s the puzzle. It’s keeping violence and mayhem at a distance maybe. It’s hoping to learn some new wrinkle on human behavior.

I’m curious to watch how other murder mystery writers perceive the world, to find out if I’m weird or not. Am I weird?

I’m not one of those who flips back to look for half-remembered clues to figure whodunnit before the story ends. I’m content to look for the scaffolding to see how the author unravels the plot. I can wait, if I like the book and the characters, content that I’m in good hands.

But once in awhile a book comes my way where nobody dies violently, and I enjoy it hugely. I wonder what happened to my resolution to read the Russian classics, all of De Maupassant’s stories, Hemingway from beginning to end. I still intend to, really I do.

But writing takes so much time. And as I get older, my energy wanes. Am I the only one in my sixties who can’t imagine pulling an all-nighter, even for a real page-turner?

I read Chechen newspapers in English for three years and everything else I could find on the people in this fascinating, war-torn country. In my third Dave Mason mystery I am driving to Riverside, some hundred plus miles away, to talk to a cop about Kurds living in Turkey.

 And it’s just background because both books take place in Santa Monica.

 I marvel at Christopher Meek’s book, Love at Absolute Zero http://christophermeeks.weebly.com We met and started talking at the Ventura County Book fair and traded books when buyers were few. I was hooked within a few pages, couldn’t wait to finish it. One of those.

 Christopher Meeks is an English professor at Santa Monica College, not a physicist writing what he knows. You wouldn’t know that reading this book. Large dollops of quantum physics appear in digestible and even enjoyable hunks.

Meeks insisted he knew nothing about physics but he had an idea and he learned what he needed to convince the reader he was a scientific naïf  who sets out to find his soul mate using the scientific method, within three days.

What would a storyteller do nowadays without the Internet where you can read about your idea in ever-widening circles? And when are you simply procrastinating the writing by contacting yet one more expert?

 I was rooting for everybody at the end of Love at Absolute Zero, though resistant to the idea that the hero greatly damages his scientific career for love. 

 But people do that, don’t they?

  An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.  Niels Bohr

I value what you have to say and invite you to comment. Please share your views with me and other readers below. Thanks, Mar.

• Donna White Glaser: The Enemy Within

I read Donna White Glaser’s The Enemy We Know with great pleasure.  The cover with its bloody knife stood out, particularly the circle with A Letty Whittaker Mystery and the words 12 Step within the triangle, within the circle.  Any Twelve-Stepper, and there are millions, recognize the symbol of the Anonymous programs.

Letty Whittaker, and her creator, are psychotherapists working in a counseling clinic in northern Wisconsin. The reader roots for Letty from the beginning.  She’s new in sobriety and she’s raw, and maybe not thinking straight.  The murder in her clinic falls too close for comfort and pushes her into amateur sleuth situations where both her safety and her sobriety are threatened. Suspense mounts and then explodes.

The depictions of AA life, the way the clinic functions and the therapists interact, feels satisfyingly authentic.  Yes, they do take confidentiality seriously–and that’s a real handicap for Letty as she pursues the killer.

The last quarter of the book was a little long as Letty questions herself and her logic–and illogic–in figuring out the murders.  Nonetheless, when you like the character and you’re caught up in the story, maybe it’s not a bad thing to linger a bit and not race to the finish.

 Julie  Dolcemaschio – Testarossa

Julie’s debut mystery takes place in Venice, California, a place close to my heart.  She writes very convincingly about the politics of the LAPD and the relationships between partners. Also, for a hard-boiled mystery she writes a good, sexy romance.

• Susan Goldstein:  Hollywood Forever

Susan lets you know she’s a Beverly Hills divorce attorney and very good at it. I believe her. We met at the Left Coast Crime Conference in Santa Fe this year and have become friends.  I liked Hollywood Forever a lot. The story pulls you right along with the spoiled and pampered lead character who comes into her own solving a murder that casts a shadow over her. It’s lighter than the other two I’ve mentioned, and funny, but it’s never fluffy.

Then in the dark of a moonless night vandals destroyed the Shrine of the Five Maidens as it was now called. The circle of stones where the ashes of long-gone pets were intermingled was scattered far and wide. A sign was left days later: Fundamentalist Christian Taliban We Know Who You Are. Then a secular tract was nailed to a pine on the trail  leading up to the Shrine . Then came a religious tract nailed up on another tree by an unknown. The desecration of the trees continued. Then came piles of teetering stones like cairns set in the middle of the path. This was followed by 5s painted on the trees farther up the mountain, perhaps in commemoration of the Five Maidens.

***

Speculation runs rampant with volleys of accusations making the rounds on private email lists with vitriolic and emotional content. This is a small enough village that everyone knows everyone and what faction they belong to. The local weekly began printing Letters to the Editor decrying this villainy. It was said that witchcraft was taking place at the Shrine. The Christians as a bloc wisely did not respond publicly. The Forest Service denied any involvement. Then came a specific accusation against an environmentalist who had expressed the personal opinion, who knows where, that the Shrine was just a “bunch of junk.” This was vociferously rebutted in the stream of Letters to the Editor that followed. A national environmental organization was one of the accused perpetrators.

You’re wondering why I’m telling you all this? These are the issues that eat up my time as a writer of mystery novels set in Santa Monica, California–nowhere near where I now live. I have no idea who desecrated the Five Maidens Shrine. I thought it was weird, peculiar, and wonderful.

There is no way I can stay out of the controversy that is whipping around. I read every email, gossip at the post office, and go to private meetings where this is the topic. I know there are writers who can get keys moving on keyboard no matter what. I heard Jane Yolen at a conference once say: “I tell my children. Don’t bother me unless there are broken bones protruding or hemorrhaging.”

How I wish I could do that as a writer, but I can’t.

* Details have been obscured because feeling is still intense.

I’m still thinking about going to the Occupy LA venture last weekend with my friend Mindy Moffat. After a long drive down from the mountains, we parked at the North Hollywood subway station, and seven or eight stops later we got off near Los Angeles City Hall.

On the subway were other riders heading to City Hall as well. A native American in full regalia chatted in the corner with a surfer dude carrying a skate board. Wearing a bandana that read 99% over curly white hair, a chatty old guy my age said he was stopping off to meet friends and continue down. A Nordic-looking blonde struck up conversation with Mindy who was inking in my sign. One side read Political Deadlock Allows Corporate Greed: The other side read Paying Taxes is a Patriotic Duty.

I realize not paying any taxes whatsoever is the popular view, and I got a few sniffs from passersby as we left the station and followed the crowd. Just as we stood at a corner waiting to cross, a  march filed up the street towards us and we joined in. I wish now I could remember the chants.

The old wedding-cake City Hall building with the central spire loomed over what felt like a big party until we got close enough to read the signs and hear the chants and the drums. At City Hall the encampment of brightly-colored tents came into view–hundreds of them. It came to me suddenly that people were living here. Living a little better than the homeless on the street, but not much.

We were swept along by the crowd towards a wiry, young black man wearing a beret and a red and black T-shirt. Remember that photo of Che Guevera? The chant went on and on. But nobody got up to sustain his momentum by making a fiery speech. The crowd drifted away.

Behind me was a young family, the bearded father carrying a little girl on his shoulders, mama with a toddler by the hand. All kinds of people: two young girls with a lot of chest and belly showing danced with hula hoops spinning around them. There was a lot of beautiful young flesh showing. I went looking as mainstream as I could wearing scarves and big garden hat. Then it turned out there were a lot of people who looked like me, but the crowd was mostly young people.

There were so many tents of all colors erected in the sizeable block around City Hall that there was little walking space between them. My friend and I wandered through, past earnest little circles like college seminars  discussing globalization, capitalism and other weighty topics. Past a lending library, donation booth, and lists to sign up for sanitation detail, food, clean up. This part was organized and the PortaPotties were clean. Later there was a mike set up on the steps of City Hall and one after another speakers and musicians came forward. No program. Just people getting some outrage off their chest. The loosey-goosey organization, which probably belies fervent debate behind the scenes, wants it to look formless for now. Hard to understand that though.

People smiled at each other with good will for no good reason at all. The only violence was being jostled in the crowd or poked in the back by a sign. It took me back to long-ago protests: tie-dye, headbands, the smell of patchouli. Outrage demonstrated peacefully.

Occupy LA seems to have struck a deal with the left-leaning mayor to be left alone. We’ll see. The protest grows every day and how long can this last? The police chatted with protestors and lounged around patrol cars and motorcycles. They’ve been hit in the pocketbook too.

Granted there were some hard-eyed cops among them that might have liked to bust heads.

Robert Crais and Toronto fan, Janet Costello

For more coverage and photos of the conference see ashedit.wordpress.com

See also http://www.spinetinglermag.com/ 2011/09/26/more-bouchercon-2011/

Everyone in the mystery and thriller world goes to Bouchercon, named after Anthony Bouchercon the first literary critic to raise mystery fiction to literary status.

Everyone is there to network as well as hear established authors and see what’s new. I went to talk about my debut mystery, No Dice.

The greats and the near greats were there as panel members, bantering with one another, answering questions from the moderators and the audience. During the half-hour break between panels the crowds hustled to the hospitality room for coffee, all too few pastries, and more conversation about the turbulence in the publishing world.

The panel rooms and the corridors of the hotel buzzed with networking conversations and the bar in the evening was lively. Mystery writers are storytellers and good talkers. Get a few drinks in them and things get boisterous. Get John Lutz and Harlen Cobden together.

Val McDermid and Colin Cotterill signing books

The booksellers rooms, two ballrooms probably, is too tempting. All the mysteries and thrillers from the past are there to chose from. You see a book by a new author you just heard on a panel who writes your favorite setting and genre. You must buy it. And there’s another. And another. And graphic novels. And audiobooks. Long lines formed at the UPS store at the hotel with buyers shipping stacks of books home.

Not just writers, newbies and bestsellers go to Bouchercon; it’s librarians and booksellers, publishers, agents and editors, and bloggers. Fans came clear across the country to sit in on an interview with Robert Crais or Val McDermid. The Sisters-in-Crime session was a highlight for me.

Your guess is as good as anyone else’s about what directions publishing is headed, including the editors, publishers, and agents who spoke. Nobody knows.

Surprisingly, there were only a handful of panelists who had self-published, if that many, which led to a rather elitist view from those who had been taken up by traditional publishers. That will surely change.

For a long time I’ve been collecting “stupid criminal stories”, but Derek topped them all. I just never meet AHs (figure it out) who shoot somebody in the face and think they don’t die.

A group of us at the California Crime Writers’ Conference in June 2011 heard him give a 4-hour presentation on Interview and Interrogation techniques and were spellbound. We wanted more and he dished it up for us.

Pacifico was funny, serious, thoughtful and thought-provoking. As a law enforcement trainer he’s travelled the country teaching the same material to cops. He’s worked Homicide Detail as well as all the other facets of police work and now is a Sergeant with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office.

He liked us because we wanted to learn and didn’t sit there, arms crossed, giving off testosterone fumes, and the attitude of “Yeah, dude, go ahead. Teach me something I don’t know.” He was honest and forth-coming about what really lies behind the crime scene tape.

We liked him because he’s just plain likeable. From video clips we saw he’s got a line of jokey, rapport-building bullshit with criminals in the interrogation room that got him a lot of confessions. I can see why.

The case studies were particularly interesting because they provided a reconstruction of what first just looked like confusion–and probably was.

We learned how tedious it is to string a scene showing bullet trajectories, interpret blood spatter, collect insects, and sift the dirt from a gravesite. It’s not nearly as exciting as it is on TV, where a crime scene is “done” in 30 minutes instead of 36 hours.

He’s talking about setting up a conference of some length just for crime writers bringing in experts he teaches and works with. Where? To be decided.

I can’t wait.

Cal EPA and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control has hit Chemical Waste Management with yet another fine, this time for $400,000 and an order to purchase $600,000 worth of new equipment to properly test the hazardous substances they’re processing.

Have they taken down their website? I can’t find it. If I were running the place, I’d be hiding my head in shame.

Chemical Waste manages a massive hazardous substances landfill three-and-a half miles from Kettleman City and over the years of operation has been fined innumerable times, most recently in December 2010 for $300,000. Fines add up to more than $2m already and now this.

The order has come down  to purchase a new lab and learn how to use it. Since 2005, the equipment had not been calibrated properly so readings of the toxicity of the materials they handled were what Chem Waste said they were. “Testing mistakes”  they call it.”

Routine inspectors appeared not to notice the readings were out of whack for at least five years. But pressure from Greenaction and a local group brought to bear on the EPA finally required a response.

Since May 2010 Chem Waste has been required to use an outside lab for at least two years, so that officials and concerned people who live in nearby Kettleman City will have an idea of what’s really going on there.

“The investigation found records indicating the facility disposed of waste that did not fully meet standards for treatment prior to disposal. In addition, the facility disposed of hazardous waste leachate from the landfill without assuring the leachate met treatment standards.”

Leachate is the liquid produced in a landfill from the decomposition of waste within the landfill. Really, really icky, nasty stuff, to use a scientific term, after its run through layers of hazardous material.

I quote from the report: “There is no evidence to suggest that the landfill’s violations posed any danger to nearby communities or workers at the facility.”

That just took my breath away. There have been a cluster of birth defects in babies born in nearby Kettleman City, 11 in fact over a recent 3-year period.  A recent report states that another baby has just been born to heighten the apprehension that accompanies each new pregnancy.

Remember that Chem Waste has also applied for a permit to almost double the size of the facility. How would you vote on that, I ask you? You trust them?

The vote is coming up. Stay tuned.