Nancy Bartholomew

…were so low to the ground." This was unbelievable. "And some of them had cigarettes in them. Put that in the book. That's not right!" I said, okay.

Then they got totally swept up in the whole aura of the thing. Ben came up, and he bowed and said, "May I take this dance, Momma?"

There were all these professional ballroom dancers around, and I do not dance. But I said, "Sure." We went out to the floor, and he extended my arm out and put his arm around my waist and proceeds in his little eight-year-old way to dance me around. It cleared the floor, because everybody's going, "Ooooh."

Adam's not going to be outdone, but he's too cool. So he walks over to me. "May I take this dance?" I said, yes. We walk out on the floor, and like a teenager he puts his arms around my waist, buries his head in my chest and freezes. He just stands there.

I said, "You know it's okay to move."

He said [in a whisper], "Nevermind. I'm fine."

It has been an interesting growing up time for those two.

Crescent Blues: Are your boys mystery readers?

Nancy Bartholomew: They are diehard Harry Potter fans. They disappeared for days when the last book came out. Otherwise, if it's not Nickelodeon Magazine, it's hard to get them to read, but they have to for school. Of course, now they read with the jaundiced eye of a critiquer. "There's not a good hook in this, Mom." I walked in on Adam the other day, and he said, "The characterization in this book is fabulous."

Ben's English class asked me to speak to them. They thought my job was great, because I got to write in my pajamas. But they were all going, "How's this for a hook? How's this for a hook?" Their teacher's been teaching them about hooks.

Crescent Blues: Did you take any writing classes, or did you just sit down and do it?

Nancy Bartholomew: In my undergraduate work, I double-majored in creative writing and psychology. That was fun. I took a mystery writing/adult continuing education class in Atlanta, and that was fun too. But what helped the most was Writer's Digest magazine. I really read that. I got Donald Maass's book, The Career Novelist, and memorized that. Then I listened very hard to the stories of other writers who told me what did and did not work. I also joined a critique group that was very helpful.

Crescent Blues: Does humor naturally go hand in hand with mayhem for you?

Nancy Bartholomew: Yes. I don't know why. I'm a scaredy cat. I do not like to be scared. I can't watch violence in movies or on the TV. It upsets me, because I feel all of it. Sierra is such a wiseacre. I just keep seeing all these funny things that happen. I guess they just go hand in hand. I can't separate them out. I've tried, and the result is just boring.

Crescent Blues: How do you get from mayhem, madness and the "Babes in Black" panel to judging the Edgar Awards for young adult mysteries?

Nancy Bartholomew: That isn't so big a stretch. In fact, I've found out I'm a very juvenile writer, because so many of these writers write so beautifully.

I thought it would be good, because my kids have been begging me to write a young adult book. Adam told me it's my duty, so that he will have something to pass on to his children. I asked him, "What about Sierra?"

He said, "No, you've got to write the stories you told us when you were putting us to bed every night."

"But I don't remember them." (There was this period where I was telling them a different story every night.)

He said, "You have to write that too. I don't care if you don't remember them. You're just going to have to write a new one."

Reading young adult mysteries has been very educational, not only for my adult writing, but especially for thinking about writing a young adult book. And to read what's out there. In Ben's class, they're making him read all the Caldecott Medal writers. To me, that's the same as reading all the Oprah Winfrey book selections, because these kids are totally depressed when they get finished reading these books. They're heavy-duty books. I want kids to learn that reading is also a fun adventure. A lot of the writers in the running for the Edgar Awards for Young Adult Mysteries are writing fun adventures. They are books I can turn my kids on to, and the writing is excellent.

Nancy Bartholomew: Angelina Donatelli was born like Sierra. Maggie -- I had to go into labor a while for Maggie. But Angelina Donatelli jumped up fully formed, and she jumped up at a writing conference. I was teaching at a writing conference, and they said it would be rustic. It would be up in the mountains. No TV, no radio, no newspapers, no phone in your room.

I thought, "Not a problem. I'll just hook up and be on-line." Well, not if there's no phone in your room. So I get up there. I get in my room, and I try to plug in. By the third day, I'm like every junkie I've ever seen in withdrawal. I was evil. I was so mean. By fourth day, I thought, "Oh, I'm going to die."

On the fifth day, Angelina said, "Listen, you've been going so fast you have not listened to me, and I talk faster than anybody you've ever known. So you better write this down real fast." And she starts off with this whole thing about this Pepto-pink Winnebago. I don't know who she is. I don't know where she's going. I don't know why she has this thing. I don't even know it's stolen until she told me. This is awful. And it gets worse! I'm reeling.

Angelina just left her husband. He's had all these affairs, and now he has sired a child with ears as big as Dumbo's. This is not nice. Then she starts hallucinating on me, and I go, "No, you cannot do this." She's hallucinating herself when she was 18, because she's having this total mid-life crisis. All Angelina wants to do is have her mid-life crisis in peace, but the other woman manages to get herself knocked off, and it looks like Angelina did it.

Nancy Bartholomew

Angelina's got the stolen Winnebago®, and the Mob's after her, because her brother-in-law Vito does not believe that blood is thicker than water. "In-law" is water, and he's going to take her out anyway. It's just one thing after another with Angelina.

Crescent Blues: When do you think Angelina's story will be ready for prime time?

Nancy Bartholomew: I had a hundred pages yesterday. Today, I have 15, because I changed the plot line, and in order to do that I had to go back. But now I know her better, and I also know some of the other characters who want to be in this book with her. All these characters in Las Vegas want to be in this book. Angelina's in Philly, and I don't know how we're going to get out to Las Vegas. I have no plot.

Crescent Blues: Isn't Bouchercon going to be in Las Vegas in two years?

Nancy Bartholomew: Is it?

Crescent Blues: Yes.

Nancy Bartholomew: I will be there. I have these police officers that are also truckers in their off-duty time, and they convinced me that I need to research cross-country trucking, because it would be very interesting. I'm like, okay. And they said, "No. We mean you have to ride. You can go on a short run."

I said, okay.

"We don't think we can have you back in time to pick up your kids after school, but we think we can have you back by four. We'll leave at six."

"This means I'll have to be in a truck all day."

"It'll be fun. We'll talk about turkey hunting."

I'm sure that will be in this book somewhere.

Crescent Blues: Are you working on any new books for Sierra and Maggie, or are you concentrating on Angelina?

Nancy Bartholomew: I'm concentrating on Angelina, and I'm waiting to see how the numbers look for the other characters. That will be very much a factor, because Sierra and Maggie are mid-series. Harper-Collins and Avon Books merged, and they cut Maggie. So she'll have to find another house if she's going to continue. But a lot of people want her to continue, including some smaller publishing houses. I'll have to think about whether I want to do that or let Angelina come out and try her wings for a while, then go back to Maggie.

Crescent Blues: Anything else you'd like to add? Anything you feel we should've covered but we didn't?

Nancy Bartholomew: Other than my bra size, I think we covered everything.

Crescent Blues: Oh, I haven't been half as bad as I could've been. We didn't go into Downingtown.

Nancy Bartholomew: No, we didn't. But funny thing about Downingtown -- one of my girlfriends in Greensboro has been single for a long time. Finally, she launched her barge. "You know, I think I want to meet somebody," she said. "I just don't meet anybody around here."

So I said, "Why don't we do a personal ad for you in Yahoo. You don't have to meet the people who answer if you don't want to." Do you know, of all the men in the universe of Greensboro that I found for her, I hooked her up with a guy from Downingtown who was my babysitter's best friend? Whoa! Now that's a little eerie.

Crescent Blues: I'd like to read that in a story.

Nancy Bartholomew: Publishing a book is so good for your ego. You know all those guys who didn't want to date me in high school? I've heard from every damn one of them, and they all have such a different picture of me now. "You were the girl I most respected." "You were the pretty one."

You know he didn't. He dated Betsy. She was my best friend. Hey!

Click here to learn more about Nancy Bartholomew.

Jean Marie Ward In addition to editing Crescent Blues, Jean Marie Ward writes for a number of Web-based and print magazines, including Science Fiction Weekly. She is the author of Illumina: the Art of Jean Pierre Targete (Paper Tiger) and several short stories, including "Most Dead Bodies in a Confined Space" in Strange Pleasures 2 (Prime Books). Her first novel, With Nine You Get Vanyr, written with Teri Smith, was published by Samhain Publishing in 2007.