It’s Not About You

Austin Mystery Writers

While attending Malice Domestic in Bethesda, MD last month, I overheard a small group of authors gathered in the hotel bar discussing the issue of whether family members or friends thought a character was actually a portrayal of them. It seemed each had a story to share. One author’s sister felt a character was based on her. The author, however, stated the two–the sister and the character in question–had very little in common. The sister had picked up on one particular behavior and, from that point, assumed the entire character was based on her. It caused a bit of a family kerfuffle.

A quick online query about the topic will reveal many writers discussing how someone–a loved one, a friend, a colleague– believes a character is based on her and is unhappy about it, even when the author assures her it just isn’t so.

That’s not to say that certain…

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From Play to Publication Panel

June 2015

HOTSHOTS! Sisters in Crime Heart of Texas monthly newsletter

Minerva Koenig on June 14

Mystery writer Minerva Koenig will discuss gender roles in crime fiction at 2:15 p.m. at the Sisters in Crime: Heart of Texas chapter meeting on Sunday, June 14 at the Yarborough branch of the Austin Public Library, 2200 Hancock Drive.

Her first novel was Nine Days.

“She’s short, round, and pushing forty, but Julia Kalas is a damned good criminal. For seventeen years she renovated historic California buildings as a laundry front for her husband’s illegal arms business. Then the Aryan Brotherhood made her a widow, and witness protection shipped her off to the tiny town of Azula, Texas. Also known as the Middle of Nowhere.”

Ms. Koenig’s second novel is the soon-to-available South of Nowhere.

“The dead body stuffed into the upstairs closet at Julia Kalas’ fixer-upper ranch house has been there too long to be related to her short-lived WITSEC past…

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Wine-Dark Sea or Purple Ocean?

Austin Mystery Writers

By Gale Albright

Are translators poets? In the séance of life, are they the disembodied spirits who speak not beyond the grave, but beyond the language barrier?

I’ve always had a problem reading translated works. The problem being I wouldn’t read them. I figured I just wouldn’t get anything worth while. To coin a phrase, I thought everything would be lost in translation.

I was wrong.

To begin with, think how much knowledge, beauty, and experience I was missing. If Europeans followed my example, I assume no German or Frenchman would have ever heard of Shakespeare. They would say “Who’s Hamlet?”

See, I was so wrong.

Without talented, inspired translator Robert Fitzgerald, how could we thrill to phrases such as “rosy-fingered dawn” or the “wine-dark sea” in Homer’s Odyssey?

Someone else might have said “the ocean which has a purple shade somewhat like Chianti,” or the “sun rose with…

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