a giant in the shadows

“Perhaps you’ve heard of [Margaret] ‘Maggie’ Millar. She’s a literary suspense author who, at the onset of World War II, explored female characters as they battled the daily accretions of frustrated ambition and blocked power, often while trying to keep a grip on their own sanity.
     Later, in the 1960s, Maggie’s perspective expanded, and she delved into the mores and corruptions of a stratified society that resembles our own today. She dissected the delusions of the Golden State at a time when the rest of the country still believed in the eternal sunshine of the Edenic kind. The people who lived in this paradise, and lived in Millar’s fiction, often reached far beyond their financial or moral means, playing dangerous games that pitted loved ones against each other. Sometimes, these people escaped the law, but they always wound up serving some sort of life sentence.
     Maggie, who spent much of her life in Santa Barbara, ranks among the best fiction writers of the late 20th century. She was a master of character, a genius of plot twists, and a superb stylist. It’s rare to find those three talents in one literary package, yet, over the course of a 55-year-long career, Maggie maintained her high standards throughout her 27 books, short stories, half a dozen screenplays, poems, radio stories, and one touching memoir. Plus, she did it while struggling to raise a child, keep a house, and deal with a husband who later became more famous than she.
     Perhaps you’ve heard of Ken Millar. He wrote under the pseudonym of Ross Macdonald and created the Lew Archer detective series, which paid homage to the hard-boiled detective masters Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler, and he eventually joined them in that genre’s pantheon of men.
     Maggie was never included in that group, which annoyed her greatly.”
 — Los Angeles Review of Books
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"The cruelest lies are often told in silence."

“Beekeeper Albert Honig was finishing breakfast when he heard the bees along the utility wires. Following the agitated noise to his estranged neighbors’ house, he found the Bee Ladies, Claire and Hilda Straussman, bound and dead on the floor and bees swarming down their chimney….

     Telling the Bees is more than nominally a mystery, but [Peggy] Hesketh is also conducting an exploration into a now-vanished southern California world of almond, citrus, and walnut groves, where people knew their neighbors, but politeness meant not disturbing the surface to see the horror underneath.
     After the murders, Albert finds himself haunted by a quote from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: '“The cruelest lies are often told in silence."... And kept in darkness, I should like to add.'
     The investigation is headed up by the highly competent, sardonic Detective Grayson, who musters a startling amount of patience in the face of Albert’s arcane facts about apiaries. More than dithering, Albert uses his tangents to conceal facts about the Straussmans in an effort to protect the reputation of the dead.
     Not having a double murder to solve, this reader couldn’t get enough of the mixture of folklore and science. The title comes from the folk custom of 'telling the bees' when their keeper has died. In a sign of how out of joint the time has become, no one tells the Bee Ladies’ hives that their mistress is gone."
— Yvonne Zip, The Christian Science Monitor
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The word is out... about Robert Rotenberg

Join us on Sunday, May 26, 2013 (1 to 4 P.M.) at the Elora Centre for the Arts, 75 Melville Street, Elora for a relaxing yet thought-provoking afternoon of readings by Sonia Day, Terry Fallis, Carrie Snyder, Andrew Westoll, Ailsa Kay and Robert Rotenberg.
     For $20.00 (includes Reception) you get to enjoy readings by six of Canada's finest authors; a Q&A session; a "Schmooze-fest" replete with wine & appetizers… and BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS (Get them signed by the author[s].) courtesy of Roxanne's Reflections.

From: The Star

"I really can’t remember a time when I wasn’t thinking of stories, then writing them. When I was seven my oldest brother got a portable typewriter for his Bar Mitzvah. I was transfixed by it. I’d sneak into his room and use it. And I read everything on the bookshelves of my two very smart older siblings. When I was 15, I sent a short story to the New Yorker. (I kept the rejection letter, on their letterhead no less, for years.) I wrote my first film script the next year."

— Robert Rotenberg, robertrotenberg.com
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"After graduating from law school in Toronto, Robert Rotenberg became the managing editor of Passion, the English-speaking magazine of Paris. He then returned to publish and edit his own magazine, T.O. The Magazine of Toronto.
     Eighteen years ago he opened his own law practice and is today one of Toronto’s top criminal lawyers, defending, as he likes to say 'everything from murder to shoplifting.'
     Rotenberg lives in Toronto with his wife, television news producer Vaune Davis, [and] their three children."
— Simon & Schuster
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"Rotenberg's first novel, Old City Hall, was set in Toronto, and as the name suggests, features pivotal scenes in the city's historic Old City Hall. It was shortlisted for The Crime Writers Association John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award at the 2009 Crime Thriller Awards. Since then he has published The Guilty Plea (2011), and Stray Bullets (2012).

     His new book Stranglehold will be released in May, [just in time to be featured at the Elora Writers' Festival.]"

— Wikipedia

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Easy On the Adverbs; Hard On the Bad Guys

"In an essay that appeared in The New York Times in 2001, 'Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle,' Elmore Leonard listed his 10 rules of writing. The final one — No. 11, actually — the 'most important rule . . . that sums up the 10,' is 'If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.'
     It’s a terrific rule. In fact, I liked it so much that I passed it on to a creative-writing class I once taught. However, there’s more to it, which I didn’t pass on: 'Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the ­narrative.'
     Jazzy prose that occasionally lets go of 'proper usage' is Leonard’s trademark. He’s a stylist of forward motion, placing narrative acceleration above inconveniences like pronouns and helping verbs. While this creates in most readers a heightened sense of excitement, newcomers may find the transition from complete sentences daunting; it may take a little time to accept Leonard’s prose before you allow it to do its work on you. I’ll admit to having to make such an adjustment when beginning Raylan. At the same time, I’m also a novelist who lives in fear of my copy editor; being such a coward, I can’t help respecting Leonard’s grammatical bravery."
— Olen Steinhauer, The New York Times
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