Mind the Ax and Helmet

Last night at San Diego's Mysterious Galaxy, Ragtime met Medieval
Noir, as Jeri Westerson and I interviewed each other about the
characters and setting of The Ragtime Kid and Veil of Lies. We also got
into a good deal of exchange over the nuts and bolts of writing, showing
again that no two writers seem to go about it in anything like the same
way. It's always a pleasure to see Gretchen and Bob, friends and
readers, at MG

Today, we take a breather (if you can call navigating the LA freeways a
breather), visiting music box-collector friends Mike and Marilyn Ames,
and Robin Biggins. Tomorrow, I go to Venice.

Do I Really Look Like Jimmy Carter?

Here's Lesa Holstine, interviewing me yesterday at the Velma Teague
Library in Glendale, AZ. Afterward, one of the audience asked me
whether anyone had ever told me I look like Jimmy Carter. She insisted
I was nearly his double, and asked me to sign for her as Jimmy Carter.
So I did, with a tag line, "aka Larry Karp." The customer's always
right.
In the evening, at The Poisoned Pen, Barbara Peters led a spirited
and engaging discussion among fellow Poisoned Pen author Mike Bowen, the
audience, and me on The King of Ragtime and Mike's book, Shoot the
Lawyer Twice. Afterward, we all enjoyed Barbara's fabulous pumpkin
bread with rum-soaked raisins. (I got away with a loaf for the road).
While in Scottsdale, Myra and I had good, if brief visits with my
HS classmate Sue Todd and with Gene And Gloria Friedman, who introduced
Myra and me 51 years ago.
We're now on Route 8 (Myra's driving), on the way to Mysterious
Galaxy, San Diego, tonight.

On the Road Again

I see it's National Novel Writing Month - http://www.nanowrimo.org/ - but for me, it's Novel Promoting Month. For the next couple of weeks, I'll be going to independent bookshops from Scottsdale's The Poisoned Pen, through California, then winding up at the West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento. Follow me via the link at the right to my schedule.
I'll keep you posted from time to time via my trusty Sidekick.

This is where I write my books

 This is where I write my books, the white outbuilding, down the hill from our house, separated from the neighbor's house by a wall.  No phone, no other people in the room, nothing else going on there, no distractions outside.  No excuses not to write.

A Blast at Seattle Mystery Bookshop

     It's always a pleasure to start off events for a new book at Seattle Mystery Bookshop.  This is a quintessential independent mystery bookstore with the motto, "For mystery lovers who know what they want, and for those who haven't a clue."  They ain't whistlin' Dixie.
     For the debut signing of The King of Ragtime, I had a good time catching up with the old friends who showed up, and talking about mysteries to a bunch of new readers.
     Signed, dated copies of The King of Ragtime remain available (SMB, 117 Cherry St, Seattle; 206-587-5737, or staff@seattlemystery.com)

Take A Little Salt With Your Facts

     Many people say they never read fiction, because "it's not real. What's the point of it?" They'd rather spend their book time on history, "which really did happen."
     Is that a fact?
     John Stark, Scott Joplin's publisher for "Maple Leaf Rag," comes across in historical accounts as an honest and honorable man, blunt-spoken, hard-working, a pillar of society. But when I read in They All Played Ragtime (the widely- and rightly-acclaimed first comprehensive history of ragtime music) that Stark had married a New Orleans girl when he was 24 and she, 13, I had trouble representing Stark in The Ragtime Kid strictly according to history. Even allowing for the fact that the marriage took place in 1865, I couldn't help feeling there was a kink in Stark's nature no one had picked up on. So I decided to look further into the situation.
     In a 1915 military pension application, Stark stated his wife was 15 when he married her, and also that they were married in 1864 (contrary to every other document that's been uncovered), as opposed to 13, as reported in TAPR.
     John Stark's claim was supported by information on Sarah Ann Stark's death certificate, in which her son, Will, represented that his mother had been born on Oct 29, 1849. That would have made Sarah 15 at the time of her marriage.
     However, in an affidavit, sworn before a New Orleans Justice of the Peace on Feb 18, 1865, Mrs. Mary Casey gave consent to the marriage of Sarah Ann Casey, a minor of eighteen years, to John Stark. Another affidavit, signed the same day, before Justice of the Peace, M. Weisheimer (what a great name), bore affirmation by two witnesses that "they are well acquainted with John Stark and Sarah Ann Casey, and know them to be above the age of twenty-one."
     At that rate, I thought, the bride would have been menopausal by the time of the ceremony.
     But a copy from the New Orleans Birth Records Index stated that Sarah Ann Casey, daughter of William and Mary Eagan Casey, was born on Oct. 13, 1848. That would have made her 16-1/3 years old when she married Stark.
     Family recollections nearly a century after the event gave rise to the statement that Sarah Ann had been 13 at the time of her marriage. Stark's pension application was full of factual errors. Will Stark did not even know his maternal grandmother's name, and may never have known his mother's actual birth date. And the affidavits could well have been misrepresented to get around inconveniently-illegal youth on the part of the bride-to-be.
     So, once I decided to give the most credit to the Birth Records Index, which likely was filed reasonably soon after the baby's birth, the kink in my fictional John Stark vaporized.
     Not all history is carved in stone - and what is, we usually don't understand,anyway.

 

A Very Satisfying Writer's Moment

     It's always nice when a reader tells me s/he enjoyed one of my mysteries, but some compliments really stand out.
     A woman home-schooling her thirteen-year-old son told him to read the first part of The Ragtime Kid, then report to her on the use of language in the material. When the boy finished that portion of the book, though, he didn't want to go on to his next assignment because where he'd stopped, a group of bigots seemed to be getting the upper hand, and he couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen. His mother agreed. A while later, her son ran up to her, waving the book, and shouted, "All right! Those sons of bitches got exactly what they deserved."
I'll be grinning for a while.