Radical Equations by Robert Spiller

Cover of Robert Spiller's Mystery Novel, Radical Equations

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Interview with Robert Spiller, Member of my Academic Mysteries Panel at Malice Domestic 24, April 29, 2012.
When did you begin writing? Why?
I'd always wanted to be a writer – grade school, high school (poetry and short stories), college (Creative Writing Major for two semesters, until I switched over to Mathematics), and even when I was a middle school teacher. The tipping point came when my second marriage evaporated. I took to the road on my bicycle and eventually went for a three week bike ride into the Four Corners area of southern Colorado to grieve. I brought along five spiral notebooks and wrote what amounted to my first novel. This Sci-fi masterpiece would win second place at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference Contest…but unfortunately would never see the light of day. Well, not yet.

When and why did you begin writing mysteries?
After two failed attempts at writing the Sci-fi Novel of the Century, I took a long look at where I was teaching (on the plains of Colorado) and at a fellow teacher (an amazing woman with a truly remarkable memory and more dogs than a person should have) and decided the world was ready for Bonnie Pinkwater, my female math teacher sleuth.

Thus was born The Witch of Agnesi, the first Bonnie Pinkwater novel. This would be picked up by Medallion Press in the Spring of 2005. What followed were four more East Plains mysteries (the latest Radical Equations was released in e-book form in December 2011).

Are you writing a series or a stand-alone? Explain your basic idea for your series.
The Bonnie Pinkwater mystery series: The Witch of Agnesi, A Calculated Demise, Irrational Numbers, and Radical Equations (I am working on the fifth Napier's Bones) features a widowed high school math teacher, who uses her knowledge of Mathematics and expertise in historical mathematicians to solve murders in the small Colorado town of East Plains. Each novel features a particular mathematician (usually with a weird story) that provides Bonnie with the AHA moment needed to solve the crimes.

Tell us about your journey to publication with this book.

In 2005 I had sent out well over a hundred queries and submissions of The Witch of Agnesi to agents and publishers. One day I actually got twelve rejections filling my mailbox. In May of that year I was at my middle school involved in an activity that was akin to herding cats, Eighth-grade Continuation. What this is, is the first cousin of graduation, with the ceremony celebrating Eighth graders' move from middle school to high school. I was on the auditorium stage with over two hundred excited thirteen year olds, when a secretary came into the auditorium with a slip of paper for me.

I was on the wrong side of the hoard of students, so the message had to be handed off from student-to-student. Eventually, I got to read that the CEO of Medallion Press was on the line in the office. I would sign the contract two weeks later.

Why did you choose to write about the topic, community, issues you chose?

The small Colorado town of Ellicott, where I'd worked for 18 years, seemed the perfect model for East Plains, the setting for the Bonnie Pinkwater novels—old time ranchers, survivalists, witches, and just a slew of unique folks. The main issue I deal with is mathematics, or the history of same. It's long been a passion of mine and thus became a passion of Bonnie. Thus I get to include a puzzle or a bit of history along with an entertaining mystery.

How have you found it to be published? Share that experience

I get off on holding my book in my hand (I really relish the smell of it). When I was a teacher it was such a rush to look out over my classroom and see my book underneath desks. I love the promotion aspects: the signings, the radio bits, the interviews and reviews, the pieces in the local newspapers.

Lately, I've jumped into social media. In fact I just received an invitation from Pinterest this morning. Yesterday I was on a panel at the main branch of Colorado Spring's Library. All in all, I think it's a kick in the butt.
　
Do you have comments from readers or reviewers you’d like to share?

Truth is, letters from fans are my favorite part of being an author. When folks buy my book at a signing I tell them they are making a contract with me to write me and tell me what they think of the read. Almost all do and some have become friends. My favorite review was an unfavorable one posted in Goodreads. I'll clean it up for your readers.
"A f***ing boring little math book."

What other books have you published and where, when?
 Besides the Bonnie Pinkwater mysteries I have no other novels published. When I was nineteen I had two poems published but that was an entire lifetime ago.

Do you have a work in progress now? Is it part of a series?

Actually, I'm working on three projects at the moment. Napier's Bones the fifth Bonnie Pinkwater mystery. A horror piece: a love affair between two psychopaths (this one gives me nightmares). And another Sci-fi novel akin to the first novel I wrote all those years ago (old habits die hard).

If you belong to Sisters in Crime, and/or the Guppies, has that been helpful? How?

I do belong to SinC, but I'm a new member. I'm hoping to get acquainted with other members at conferences this summer, especially Malice. I've volunteered to work a table or in the book room for the organization.

What benefit to you has it been to go to mystery conferences like Malice Domestic?

This is my first Malice, but I hope to meet a new family of readers, hobnob with other authors, make connections, and make literary friends. Also I get to learn from folks a whole bunch more successful than I am.

What else would like to say about your books, the next one in your series?

I'll talk about Napier's Bones, due out this November. First of all, the term itself is a child's toy, a centuries-old device for teaching children their multiplication tables. You can buy them on Amazon. This novel is set eight months after Radical Equations, where the high school was destroyed by a tornado (when I worked in Ellicott, our school was actually wiped out by a twister).

Bonnie and her science teacher/lover Armen Callahan are watching the field, next to the newly renovated school, being leveled for a baseball field. A thirty year old corpse is unearthed. This shocking discovery sends Bonnie nosing into a decades old murder.
　
Thank you Judy. I loved your questions and had the best time answering them.

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Robert Spiller is the author of the Bonnie Pinkwater mystery series. His teacher sleuth uses Mathematics and her knowlege of historic mathematicians to solve murders in the small Colorado town of East Plains.  Radical Equations, the fourth installment in the series, is scheduled for release in early March.  Robert recently retired from 35 years of teaching Mathematics and lives in Colorado Springs with his amazing and wonderfully patient wife, Barbara.

　　

　

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Gene's Wall

Gene's mosaic art on the wall of his garage in Durham

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Gene’s Wall

I first met Gene when he joined a First Person writing course in the Durham Library in 1991. We read journals and autobiographies, and then did writing exercises related to the readings. Gene repaired heating and air conditioning units for a living, and he wrote in his diary when he had breaks.

Later he was in a number of poetry classes and became quite a good poet. We also became friends. I liked his directness, his honesty. He said what he thought, as do I.

By 2003-5 when he spent some Peace Corps time in Honduras, he was writing excellent poetry.

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BANANAS

I saw his bent frame
walking toward the Mercado,
across his shoulders
a large pole with
huge bunches of bananas
hanging from each side.
Images rippled
through my mind
like corrugated sheet metal
used for roofing
in the third world.
I thought he was a troubadour
carrying many fascinating
odes encased with
a protective outer skin,
waiting for a chance
to recite.

***

A little earlier than that, he also began working in metal sculpture. I have an iron flower made from old railway nails in my flower garden. I also have a stepping stone made of concrete with an iron design in the center. He did dancers, faces, a dragon that held his mailbox in its mouth, and many iron flowers, often using rebar. You can see them at his house in Durham.

A few years ago he began to work with mosaics. Last year, after many months, he finished a beautiful design of yellow and red flowers on the front wall of his garage. But it was the next wall mosaic that told me he was truly gifted, truly original. I’ve tried to describe this wall of undulating lines with large round shapes rising.

***

We have the beauty of your art, which
reminds me of the sea, and the bubbles
rising, the underside of the waves catching
light.

***

[It was] like an ocean, like
the solemn, purposeful, ecstatic motion of
the waves and bubbles of joy lifting themselves...
You’ve caught incoming waves
in stone, with tiles, broken and whole, with
mirror fragments catching the light.

***

I’m so happy to see the artist Gene happy in his art, working still as a repairman, but in the evenings and on weekends, working on his walls and plotting new ones.

Wisdom about Love and Art

March daffodils on my dining table

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Not all of my favorite books are by authors well-known today, but they’ve stuck with me for years. If you are artistically inclined, give yourself a treat and read Gulley Jimson’s perspective in Joyce Cary’s The Horse’s Mouth. I saw it first as a movie, at age thirty, in Berkeley, 1967. Alec Guinness played Jimson. It is one of the funniest and saddest books I’ve ever read. Here are some of my favorite parts.

Quotes from Joyce Cary’s The Horse’s Mouth.

Gardens. Adam’s work. You have to make the bloody things and pile up the rocks and keep the roses in beds. But you don’t get the thorns in your tender parts, by accident–you get them in your fingers, on purpose, and like it, because a garden as old Randypole Blake would say, is a spiritual being.... It happens every day. The old old story. Boys and girls fall in love, that is, they are driven mad and go blind and deaf and see each other not as human animals with comic noses and bandy legs and voices like frogs, but as angels so full of shining goodness that like hollow turnips with candles put into them, they seem miracles of beauty. And the next minute the candles shoot out sparks and burn their eyes. And they seem to each other like devils, full of spite and cruelty And they will drive each other mad unless they have grown some imagination. Even enough to laugh....

Imagination, understanding. To see behind the turnips, to enter into each other’s minds...love doesn’t grow on trees like apples in Eden–it’s something you have to make. And you must use your imagination to make it, too, just like anything else. It’s all work, work. The curse of Adam. But if he doesn’t work, he doesn’t get anything, even love. He just tumbles about in hell and bashes himself and burns himself and stabs himself. The fallen man–nobody’s going to look after him. The poor bastard is free–a free and responsible citizen. The fall into freedom...

Yes, free to cut his bloody throat if he likes, or understand the bloody world, if he likes, and cook his breakfast with hell-fire, if he likes, and construct for himself a little heaven of his own, if he likes, all complete with a pig-faced angels and every spiritual pleasure, including the joys of love; or also, of course, he can build himself a little hell full of pig-faced devils and all material miseries including the joys of love and enjoy in it such tortures of the damned that he will want to burn himself alive a hundred times a day, but won’t be able to do it because he knows it will give such extreme pleasure to all his friends...

Yes, I said, the fall into freedom, into the real world among the everlasting forms, the solid. Solid as the visions of the ancient man.

P. 196-8

To forgive is wisdom, to forget is genius. And easier. Because it’s true. It’s a new world every heart beat. P. 251.

You can’t expect them to like a picture like that. It’s dangerous. It’s an act of aggression. It’s really equivalent to going into a man’s garden and putting dynamite under his wife. Or trying to kidnap his children. Many a man has lost his children like that–on account of some picture which has carried them away. No, if there’s a plot, it’s a fair and reasonable plot, and I won’t have you abusing my friends, even if they are enemies.

When you’re as old as I am, you’ll take my tip: BE FRIENDS WITH YOUR FRIENDS. It may not be prudent, and it is often difficult. But it is better for the liver, lights, and kidneys. After all friendship has one great advantage; if you don’t like your friends, you can always avoid them, and they won’t mind. Not if there is really good feeling on both sides. P. 323 ["lights" are the lungs]

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Then a childhood favorite. I wrote this about it for the February Sisters in Crime Guppy Newsletter, First Draft.

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My mother read me The Secret Garden when I was nine. How I loved it–I think now because it was a story of transformation. Both children, crabby Mary, who landed with her reclusive uncle at Misselthwaite manor, and Colin, who was a spoiled invalid, change dramatically. The agent of change was Dickon, the healthy boy, who lived nearby and was at ease with growing things and wild creatures. Dickon’s mother gave good advice to all parents: "Children should neither have nothing of what they want nor everything they want."

Mary and Colin meet, and Mary finds a neglected, walled garden. With Dickon’s help, she resurrects it and then brings Colin there. By the end Mary is happy and Colin can walk.

I loved the change and how it was wrought. Dickon declares the seeming dead roses were "wick." Alive! Everything difficult and depressing slowly turns joyful and triumphant. This theme is through all my writing. Partly because of this book, I came to believe that even seemingly hopeless situations could be transformed.

As a young reader, I was hooked by their difficulties and thoroughly relished the gradual transformation of the children and the garden. My mysteries give me the same opportunity to take the reader through suffering and doubt to resolution and hope. The book may also be why I’m a small farmer.

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The actual words of Dickon, from The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett: "Mother says as the two worst things that can happen to a child is never to have his own way or always to have it. She doesn’t know which is the worst." P. 139

Killer Frost Pre-Sales

Cover of Killer Frost by Judy Hogan

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KILLER FROST PRE-SALES
 It’s possible now to buy, in advance, a copy of my first mystery novel, Killer Frost, actually in print from Mainly Murder Press in Connecticut, Sept. 1, 2012. The advance sales will make it possible for me to order copies at 40% discount, and then I can pay for my bookmarks and some other early expenses. I’m aiming to have 120 pre-sales! Then I can order 200 books.

I’m launching the book September 22, on the fall equinox, Saturday, 3-7 P.M. at my Hoganvillaea Farm, in Moncure, NC. If you’re nearby, you’re invited. I will provide some basics, but it’s pot luck, so bring a contribution, food, and or drinks. Even champagne, If you’re feeling especially celebratory. This is how to launch a book on a budget.

The paperback will cost: $15.95; the Nook and Kindle versions, $2.99 (order on line)

To order your copy from me now, to be picked up at launch or mailed:

Send $20 (covers postage and sales tax)
or $17 (to pick up) to Judy Hogan
PO Box 253
Moncure, NC 27559-0253

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So: you see the cover above.

Here’s the plot:

When Penny Weaver agrees to teach freshmen composition at historically black St. Francis College, her teaching and relationship skills, not to mention her detective instincts, are more challenged than they’ve ever been. She falls in love with her boss, Oscar, who is very passionate about saving their students from ending up in prison because of how ill-prepared for college they are. When the Provost is killed, Oscar is the primary suspect, because of his anger at the Provost for not firing the History professor who traded sex for an A with Penny’s student Merilee. Penny’s detective friend and her husband, Kenneth, are investigating and ask her help, but because Oscar is confiding in her and she’s convinced he’s innocent, she doesn’t want to help them. She tries to throw suspicion on the abusive History Professor and the Vice President for Financial Affairs, formerly in prison for embezzlement.

After a spirited convocation speech on truth-telling, Penny’s students lead a protest about Merilee’s abuse, bad food, filthy dorms, but the President undercuts them by threatening to take away student scholarships. Penny struggles with her conflict: she loves her husband, but she can’t deny she loves Oscar.

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Here are the comments from pre-publication reviews:

A charming puzzler of a traditional mystery, this classic academic mystery debut is a pageturner populated with layered, interesting characters. My hat is off to Judy Hogan on a stellar debut. I look forward to the further adventures of Professor Penny Weaver at St. Francis college!
–Julia Spencer-Fleming, New York Times Bestselling Author of One Was A Soldier.

Killer Frost deserved to be short-listed for the Malice Domestic prize. It is a fine first effort. I think we’ll be hearing more from Judy Hogan and her protagonist, Penny Weaver.
–Louise Penny, New York Times Bestselling Author of the Three Pines mysteries and winner of four Agathas.

Judy Hogan’s debut novel set in the world of academia gives us a hint of what we might expect from this author in the future. Her insight into what’s happening to today’s youth, her concerns and her empathy are directly reflected in her characters–be they good guys or bad.
–Kaye Barley, Blog Master at
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meanderingsandmuses.com

Cookies for Christmas, a Holiday, or a Rainy Day

Grandson, seven years old.

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Christmas or Holiday Cookies, or A Rainy Day Activity
 The cookie recipes come from Joy of Cooking, but the icing came from Mother. I changed the gingerbread one to make it healthier. It’s great for small children, as they can model it. I have done these recipes, first with my children, since Amy was five, and then with my grandchildren, since they were two or three years old. If they can model clay, they can do this. I remember Amy’s twins, age two and a half, sitting in front of the oven while the cookies baked. Children are very entranced by sprinkles. So when the cookies are cool, frost them and then use decorative sprinkles, colored sugars, etc. If you use the egg white brushed on before baking, use the colored sugars. Both recipes I usually double and store in refrigerator for awhile first.

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Gingerbread Men
Preheat oven to 350 (when you’re about ten minutes from baking)
Blend until creamy:
1/4 cup butter or shortening
½ cup brown or white sugar (or some of both to make up ½ cup)
Beat in:
½ cup of dark molasses (I have used both cane and black strap–unsulphured)
Sift:
1-1/2 cups all purpose flour (or new Super Sprout organic flour from Lindley Mills–whole wheat, sprouted and milled to a fine flour. You may be able to get it through a coop; in Chatham, you can buy it from the mill in Snow Camp area.)
1/4 cup of soy flour
Resift with:
1 teaspoon soda
1/4 teaspoon cloves
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon salt
Mix with:
1-1/4 cup whole rye or wholewheat (organic).
Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture in about 3 parts, alternately with 1/4 cup of water, if you roll the dough, or 1/3 cup water if you model the dough.
Bake on greased cookie sheets. Watch carefully–depending on thickness, 8-15 minutes.

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Sugar Cookies
In Joy of Cooking, they are called Sand Tarts, but they’re much better than regular sugar cookies.

Sift:
1-1/4 cups of sugar
Beat until soft:
3/4 cups of butter (1-1/2 sticks)
Add sugar gradually. Blend these ingredients until very soft and creamy.
Beat in:
1 egg
1 egg yolk (save the white for brushing some cookies and then adding colored sugar)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
Sift before measuring:
3 cups all-purpose flour (you might try the Super Sprout, but I haven’t yet)
Resift with 1/4 teaspoon of salt.
Stir the flour gradually into the butter mixture until the ingredients are well blended. Chill the dough for several hours.
Preheat oven to 400.
Roll the dough until very thin. Bake on greased tins about 5-8 minutes, depending on thickness.

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Lemon Butter Frosting (Icing)
Cream 1 stick butter until soft
Add alternately:
1 pound of powdered, confectioners’ sugar, from sifter
2-3 Tablespoons of lemon juice (sometimes one lemon–fresh is best, but you can add a little of the bottled lemon juice if most of it is fresh)
1 tablespoon of grated lemon rind.
You add a little sugar, then a little juice, and get it to a creamy, spreadable but not too soft consistency.

For variation, you can use orange juice and grated orange rind, or 1 teaspoon of vanilla and milk for liquid, e.g., for chocolate cake.

Let the cookies cool completely; then frost and decorate. If you want to make Valentine’s or Easter cookies, etc., the children can draw valentines, bunnies, etc., and then use a knife to cut around the shapes on the dough. They’re fun to make, and they taste good, too.

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Granddaughter, age 9.

Marcia Herman's Sipping My Garden

Cover image of Marcia Herman's Sipping My Garden.

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My book, Sipping My Garden, was a labor of love—for the herbs, for delicious drinks, for lovely illustrations, and for gardening and gardeners. This is how it all began—my sweet affair with sipping my garden… The preface tells the story of how I met my friend in Provence and what I learned from her about her plant gathering, drying, and making of herbal teas. For many years as a child she had watched her grandmother gather and dry herbs and blend them into delicious mélanges and now I was to learn to share this across the ocean in America. Except for the occasional cup of peppermint tea, I realized for herbal teas we all bought those boxes with names like Zinger, Bed-time, and Peach Peppermint instead of sipping our own gardens.

So, I began researching the herbs and perfecting an easy, foolproof, and quick way to make herbal teas from plants that many gardeners already have growing. There are chapters on the method of making the teas (tisanes strictly speaking since these are herbal decoctions), plant lists, recipes, resources, and what to do if you don’t have a garden. The book is beautifully illustrated by a local artist, Emma Scurnick, and one from the west coast, Nan Feagin.

A sample recipe:  Peppermint-Lemon Grass Tea

¼ cup dried peppermint leaves
A heaping tablespoonful of dried Lemon grass
Pinch of green tea
Two stevia leaves if a little sweetening is wanted

This, as well as any other recipe with dried leaves, may also be made with fresh herbs using larger amounts.

Place in teapot or stainless steel cooking pot and pour 6 cups of near boiling water over the herbs. Let steep 30 minutes to several hours. Strain and pour into a pitcher and enjoy hot or cold all day.

Thank you, Marcia E Herman
Chatham County, NC

www.seedpodpress.com. It retails for $16.95. It makes a great gift book. Maybe for Valentine's Day!  In Chatham County the book is also available at Chatham Marketplace, New Horizons Trading Company, Lyn Morrow Pottery, and Cooper Mays Pottery.

How to order:

Sipping My Garden may be ordered from

This is a pitcher of rosemary, sage, and green tea, one of the recipes in Marcia's book.

Bio:Marcia E. Herman is a lifelong gardener and lover of herbs who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. In addition to a full time career in pediatrics and public health, she has studied the science and lore of herbs for many years and assisted with the establishment of the Medicinal Garden in the Mercer Reeves Hubbard Herb Garden at the NC Botanical Gardens. Marcia lives in Pittsboro, NC, in hearing distance of the Haw River.

Comments on the back cover:

This delightful book will be sought by all converts to the locovore movement. I’m glad for the book’s suggestion to consult local references about what herbs will grow in any given area.　 And if growers and herb enthusiasts will follow the simplified plant identifications and precautions, then they will find the pleasures of teas harvested from their own gardens.　 It doesn’t get any more local than that! 　Al Cooke, Extension Agent, Horticulture, Chatham County Center, N.C. Cooperative Extension

 The plant kingdom provides us with so much--shade and color, changing seasons, endlessly varied forms in the shapes of leaves, and fragrance, not to mention the basis of our food supply.　 That plant diversity harbors another secret: plants are a virtual library of interesting compounds, many that evolved with the animal kingdom and so are able to interact with animal physiologies, including our own.　 Marcia E. Herman’s writing, in an easy-to-read way, shows how this chemical diversity furnishes us with a great array of teas and gently leads us into its emotional, medicinal, and aesthetic pleasures.　 This lovely book will open your passion for these delights.　 Dr. Peter S. White, Director of the North Carolina Botanical Garden, Chapel Hill

 Marcia rightly looks to herbal teas for leisure and pleasure. I think of herb teas as the best of medicines. Leisure and pleasure are good medicine, and phytochemicals are good medicines. Here’s to your health, sipping your garden teas.　　James A. Duke, PhD, Author of The Green Pharmacy (Rodale 1997) and distinguished alumnus, University of North Carolina,　 Chapel Hill (1948-61) thegreenfarmacygarden.com

Marcia Herman, happy herb gardener and herb tea expert.

Review: Current Affairs by Lane Stone

Cover photo of Current Affairs:  A Tiara Investigations Mystery

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Review: Current Affairs: A Tiara Investigations Mystery. Lane Stone. Mainly Murder Press, 2011. Trade paperback: $15.95. ISBN: 978-0-9836823-2-5. 237 pp.

What strikes me most about the debut mystery, Current Affairs, is its humor. A few pages in, and I was laughing out loud. Remember those early Evanovich mysteries? Here is Leigh Reed, a new voice, a Southern Belle voice, who doesn’t take her Georgia Beauty Queen status or her relatively affluent lifestyle very seriously. Leigh and her two best friends, also former state beauty queens, Tara Brown and Victoria Blair, have formed Tiara Investigations. Their cases consist mainly of helping married women document their husbands’ infidelity. They have not yet told their husbands.

They interview prospective clients at their favorite restaurant, the Cracker Barrel, usually over the breakfast specials. Their fees are reasonable, and often it takes only an hour of their time, once the wife has alerted them, to follow the "cheating, lying, sneaking" lovers, take a few photos, and later give them to the wife.

They use three throw-away cameras, to make sure they get those photos, and are usually accompanied by their three standard Schnauzer dogs, which provide protection in case they get in over their heads, which they soon do, when the husband they are to follow, is shot dead in front of their eyes, and another husband they’d nailed as fooling around is the investigating officer. He, and many other characters in this book, are regularly overwhelmed by their unpredictably zany behavior, dogs or no dogs.

Another paradoxical and so human aspect of this new mystery series is that Leigh is protesting the Iraq War, and her husband, The General, whom she loves passionately, is busy fighting that war. This is a great book for breaking stereotypes, and for fun, but it has a serious side as the Tiara women, hunting for the killer of their client’s husband (she loved him), invade the high-tech world of military weapons research and development.

Here’s a book without a dull moment but with a bone-deep honesty that draws you in to identify with characters willing to be fully themselves, outrageous behavior being their natural mode.

Look for the next Tiara Investigations, hopefully coming soon.

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Author website: lanestonebooks.com

Order from mainlymurderpress.com, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Ingram.

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Lane Stone lives in Sugar Hill, GA and Alexandria, VA. When not writing, she’s enjoying characteristic baby boomer pursuits: hiking in various countries and playing golf. Her volunteer work includes raising money for women political candidates.  She’s a proud member of both the Chesapeake and Atlanta chapters of Sisters in Crime.

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Lane Stone, author