In The Poisoned Pen’s recent newsletter, “News for You”, Barbara Peters, owner of the bookstore, said, “The magic of the bookstore is discovery.” With that in mind, I want to allow Abby Collette, author of A Deadly Inside Scoop, to talk about her research.

Abby L. Vandiver launched her new mystery series under the name Abby Collette. She’ll be talking about the series, and the first book, A Deadly Inside Scoop, in a virtual event on Facebook, Thursday, July 2 at 2 PM MST. You can order copies of A Deadly Inside Scoop through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2YosZTH

When I saw A Deadly Inside Scoop was set in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, I asked Vandiver if she was from Cleveland. Because I’m from Ohio, I recognized the city. Her answer is not in this post, so I’ll include it. “Yes! I’m from Cleveland. Grew up in East Cleveland and now live in South Euclid. I just thought it would be fun to write a book set at home. I hijacked the popcorn shop that sits over the falls and turned it into an ice cream parlor.”

Here’s the summary of A Deadly Inside Scoop.

This book kicks off a charming cozy mystery series set in an ice cream shop—with a fabulous cast of quirky characters.

Recent MBA grad Bronwyn Crewse has just taken over her family’s ice cream shop in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and she’s going back to basics. Win is renovating Crewse Creamery to restore its former glory, and filling the menu with delicious, homemade ice cream flavors—many from her grandmother’s original recipes. But unexpected construction delays mean she misses the summer season, and the shop has a literal cold opening: the day she opens her doors an early first snow descends on the village and keeps the customers away.

To make matters worse, that evening, Win finds a body in the snow, and it turns out the dead man was a grifter with an old feud with the Crewse family. Soon, Win’s father is implicated in his death. It’s not easy to juggle a new-to-her business while solving a crime, but Win is determined to do it. With the help of her quirky best friends and her tight-knit family, she’ll catch the ice cold killer before she has a meltdown…

*****

And, here’s the inside scoop on Abby Collette’s (Abby L. Vandiver) research methods.

Google It!

By Abby L. Vandiver

I google everything! I can’t watch a movie, have a telephone conversation or read a book without googling about whatever new information it has sent my way. I blame it on me being a lifelong learner. Every day I try to learn something new and don’t ever mind sharing what I’ve gleaned with others.

These googling sessions, however, don’t always do make me smarter. For me, it’s like on that movie Fifty First Dates, my long term memory in my old age is shot! Not long after my “research,” I lots of times can’t recall but a fraction of the things I’ve read. But that doesn’t stop me from trying to broaden my horizons. Which, I suppose is a good thing, with one exception—when I do research on how to commit murder.

I write murder mysteries—cozies to be exact. And in all my books I like to include a few facts with my fiction. Understanding what I write and being knowledgeable enough to write correctly say the manner of death for a character, is important not only to me, but to my readers. It makes my stories more believable and that much more fun. But can you just imagine what my computer’s browser history must look like? I’ve queried on things like:

What are quick acting poisons? How long does it take for antifreeze to kill a person? What are unusual ways to die? Is there a poison that isn’t traceable even after death?

Oh my!

I have truly worried what would happen if for some reason a branch of law enforcement had to search my computer. What would they think? How long would it take for them to “invite” me down to the station for a conversation.

How much trouble would I be in?

It would probably be easy enough to prove that I write books (even though everything I’ve researched hasn’t ended up in one). And I’m sure (I hope) there won’t be any dead bodies associated with me if my computer was confiscated so someone could comb through my hard drive, but I can tell you, I’d be pretty embarrassed.

I like coming up with unusual ways of death in my books, especially in my Logan Dickerson Cozy Mystery series. The main characters in the six-book series are an archaeologist and a nonagenarian Voodoo herbalist who has a knack for being able to call the cause of death before an autopsy can be done. In the first book, A Bed & Breakfast Bedlam, the victim, Gemma, dies from dry drowning. That took a lot of internet research.

And recently, I’ve piled on to my computer history with dozens of searches on how succinylcholine can kill for my new book, A Deadly Inside Scoop. Succinylcholine is a drug that paralyzes the entire body and asphyxiates the victim if left to work on its own. I think I may have spent an entire day following links on how it works, how it kills and where to get it from. I learned a lot about it, sure enough, and I’ve shared it (ahh, but if you want to find out about what I’ve learned, don’t worry, you won’t have to fill up your internet search history, all you’ll have to do is read my new book).

In A Deadly Inside Scoop, my amateur sleuth, Win, solves murders with her friends and family while working in her family’s ice cream shop. You can read all about how succinylcholine is a sure-fire recipe for death and then follow the recipes at the end of the book to make yummy, smooth ice cream (another fruitful internet search). Ice cream and murder, what a match!

I have considered erasing my search history, only to find in one of my “google hunts” that law enforcement can even retrieve things that have been deleted from your hard drive. Oh my  . .

Many of you might not recognize Laurie Loewenstein’s name. Her debut mystery, Death of a Rainmaker: A Dust Bowl Mystery was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Awards, Fiction. A friend who normally doesn’t read historical mysteries even recommends this one. You can find Loewenstein’s mystery, and the other books she recommends in the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Laurie Loewenstein, a fifth generation Midwesterner, is a descendent of farmers, butchers and salesmen. She grew up in central and western Ohio. She has a BA and MA in history. Loewenstein was a reporter, feature and obituary writer for several small daily newspapers. In her fifties, she returned to college for an MA in Creative Writing. Her first novel, Unmentionables (2014), was selected as a Midwest Connections pick and received a starred review from the Library Journal. Her current book, Death of a Rainmaker (2018), is the first of a mystery series set in the 1930s Dust Bowl.

Loewenstein is an instructor at Wilkes University’s Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing where she co-teaches Research for Writers and coordinates the Writing Resource Center.

*****

Distractions

            Across the way, my fourth-grade classmates were whipping around the playground, filling the air with the sounds of creaking swings, jump-rope chants and laughter. Our house was one street away, with an expanse of a community garden separating us, from George Washington Elementary. If I stood up from the blanket my mother had spread in our backyard, I could see the kids whooping it up during recess. I was quarantined for a week with a case of scarlet fever. There was a warning taped to our door. This was the early 1960s and although the development of antibiotics meant that scarlet fever was no longer the threat it had once been, remnants of the former public health regulations remained. At this point in my convalesce I was no longer confined to bed. I felt fine, in fact. And a week later I was back in Mrs. Foster’s classroom.   

Those afternoons spent on the blanket with a glass of Kool-Aid and a book, occasionally glancing at my pals from afar, remain very fond memories especially now, during the current pandemic. So far I remain healthy and so not quarantined but am rather what my dad would call “hunkered down.” A liminal state. I see people, talk and interact with them but from afar through Zoom, through masks, through doorways.

            I would like to think that the books I read on that blanket were from the Three Investigators series, my favorite mysteries at that time. Three boys solving cases from a secret office deep within a scrapyard. Much cooler than Nancy Drew.

During this current time of quiet, I am reading Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light.

It is the third of her trilogy on Thomas Cromwell and just as good. However, at 784 pages, it has been a challenge to muster the extended focus needed during these unsettled times. So while Cromwell and I continue our journey, I have also danced with a bunch of old and new mysteries. Right now I am in the early pages of my first Ross McDonald, The Underground Man.

Here are some others I have found distraction and comfort in:

The Quaker, Liam McIlvanney

            This police procedural, which won the 2018 McIlvanney Prize for the Scottish Crime Book of the Year, is a stunner. It is set in 1960s Glasgow which is atmospherically drawn. The story involves the murder of three women, each snatched from the same nightclub by a serial killer known as The Quaker. The asthmatic DI Duncan McCormack, who is determined to solve the cases, is drawn with depth. “It was the usual shabby [police] office, with its jumble of scuffed desks and unmatched chairs and olive drab filing cabinets, but for McCormack such rooms could be magical places. Mysteries were solved here. Murderers redeemed. Lives that had been turned upside down could sometimes, with work and skill and the needful visitation of luck—be righted.” But luck isn’t on McCormack’s side. Until it is. Superb writing, terrific characters, an unexpected ending. What more could a reader ask?

The Night Bell, Inger Ash Wolfe

Although this is a kick-ass mystery, it is the protagonist, Detective Hazel Micallef of Port Dunas, Ontario, who pulls me into this series. Hazel’s life these last few years has not been easy. Hazel is 64. Not long ago she had back surgery and, as a result, had to live briefly in the basement of her ex-husband’s house while he and his second cohabited upstairs.  She becomes addicted to pain killers. Her 88-year old mother, Emily, lives with her.

            Emily is a hoot. If she has the TV on, it’s tuned to a movie. “[Emily] liked strong female leads and the unbreakable men. Steve McQueen, Jane Fonda…There’d come a moment in any movie when she’d say, “˜Here comes the hammer.’ If Hazel was watching with her, she’d add, “˜I love it when the hammer comes.'”

            The Night Bell, the fourth in the Micallef series, is set in motion when the bones of several murdered children are unearthed during construction on a new housing development which was formerly the site of a county foster home. Now several residents of the new housing division are being killed, too.

The Slade House, David Mitchell

            This haunted house story is as creepy as all get out. I do not usually read this type of book, but when I stumble on a first class shivery tale, it sticks with me—like forever. I’m thinking here of Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger and Ray Bradbury’s short story, “The Homecoming.”

The address of Slade House is somewhere in London. The story begins in 1979 and continues in nine-year intervals until 2015. In the opening scene Nathan, an abnormal young boy, accompanies his mother to a musical soiree at Slade House. They travel down a cold and clammy alley where Nathan finds a dead cat. “It’s grey like dust on the moon. I know it’s dead because it’s as still as a dropped bag and because big flies are drinking from its eyes.” They enter through a heavy iron door and into a lush garden. Ahead is the house—”old, blocky, stern and gray and half smothered by fiery ivy and not at all like the houses on Westwood Road.” None of this ends well for Nathan, his mother and the others. But I won’t go on. I’m still standing at the heavy iron door and have decided not to travel further. I don’t want to spoil the eerie fun for any of you readers.

*****

Here’s Laurie Loewenstein’s Death of a Rainmaker.

Finalist for the 2019 Oklahoma Book Awards, Fiction

“The murder investigation allows Loewenstein to probe into the lives of proud people who would never expose their troubles to strangers. People like John Hodge, the town’s most respected lawyer, who knocks his wife around, and kindhearted Etha Jennings, who surreptitiously delivers home-cooked meals to the hobo camp outside town because one of the young Civilian Conservation Corps workers reminds her of her dead son. Loewenstein’s sensitive treatment of these dark days in the Dust Bowl era offers little humor but a whole lot of compassion.”
—New York Times Book Review

“This striking historical mystery…is brooding and gritty and graced with authenticity.”
—NPR, A Best Book of 2018

“The Depression and a 240-day-long dry spell drive the desperate townspeople of Vermillion, OK, to hire a rainmaker, but he’s murdered, leaving sheriff Temple Jennings to investigate. Loewenstein’s terrific historical mystery wears its history lightly and its humanity beautifully. The first in a series, it’s a realistic, expertly drawn novel with characters you’ll come to love.”
—Library Journal, A Best Book of 2018

“The plot is compelling, the character development effective and the setting carefully and accurately designed…I have lived in the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma; I know about wind and dust…Combining a well created plot with an accurate, albeit imagined, setting and characters that ‘speak’ clearly off of the page makeDeath of a Rainmaker a pleasant adventure in reading.”
—The Oklahoman

“Set in an Oklahoma small town during the Great Depression, this launch of a promising new series is as vivid as the stark photographs of Dorothea Lange.”
—South Florida, One of Oline Cogdill’s Best Mystery Novels of 2018

“After a visiting con artist is murdered during a dust storm, a small-town sheriff and his wife pursue justice in 1930s Oklahoma. A vivid evocation of life during the Dust Bowl; you might need a glass of water at hand while reading Loewenstein’s novel.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Editor’s Pick

“Laurie Loewenstein’s new mystery novel…expertly evokes the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression…Loewenstein’s novel sometimes reads like a combination of a Western and a mystery. But that genre mishmash works.”
—Washington City Paper

“The plot is solid inDeath of a Rainmaker, but what makes Loewenstein’s novel so outstanding is the cast of characters she has assembled…Death of a Rainmaker is a suburb book, one that sets the reader right down amid some of the hardest times our country has faced, and lets us feel those hopeful farmers’ despair as they witness their dreams turning to dust.”
—Mystery Scene Magazine

When a rainmaker is bludgeoned to death in the pitch-blackness of a colossal dust storm, small-town sheriff Temple Jennings shoulders yet another burden in the hard times of the 1930s Dust Bowl. The killing only magnifies Temple’s ongoing troubles: a formidable opponent in the upcoming election, the repugnant burden of enforcing farm foreclosures, and his wife’s lingering grief over the loss of their eight-year-old son.

As the sheriff and his young deputy investigate the murder, their suspicions focus on a teenager, Carmine, serving with the Civilian Conservation Corps. The deputy, himself a former CCCer, struggles with remaining loyal to the corps while pursuing his own aspirations as a lawman.

When the investigation closes in on Carmine, Temple’s wife, Etha, quickly becomes convinced of his innocence and sets out to prove it. But Etha’s own probe soon reveals a darker web of secrets, which imperil Temple’s chances of reelection and cause the husband and wife to confront their long-standing differences about the nature of grief.

J.A. Jance is a popular author in Arizona and at The Poisoned Pen. She appears regularly there, but it was a little different for her to do a virtual event for her latest book, Credible Threat. You can still order a signed copy through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2YMoWzi

Here’s the description of Credible Threat.

Ali Reynolds and her team at High Noon Enterprises must race against the clock to save an archbishop who faces mysterious death threats in yet another “incredible” (Suspense Magazine) installment of J.A. Jance’s New York Times bestselling series.

Years after her son’s fatal overdose, grieving mother Rachel Higgins learns that his addiction may have grown out of damage suffered at the hands of a pedophile priest while he was in high school. Looking for vengeance, she targets the Catholic Church’s most visible local figure, Archbishop Francis Gillespie. When the archbishop begins receiving anonymous threats, local police dismiss them, saying they’re not credible. So he turns to his friends, Ali Reynolds and her husband, B. Simpson.

With B. out of the country on a cybersecurity emergency, it’s up to Ali to track down the source of the threats. When a shooter assassinates the archbishop’s driver and leaves the priest himself severely injured, Ali forms an uneasy alliance with a Phoenix homicide cop in hopes of preventing another attack. But Ali doesn’t realize that the killer has become not only more unhinged but also more determined to take out his or her target.

*****

You can watch the virtual event with J.A. Jance here.

Linda Castillo’s new Kate Burkholder novel, Outsider, will be released July 7. The Poisoned Pen will be able to give you a sneak preview with the virtual event the night before, July 6, 7-8 PM MST on Facebook Live. You can catch the conversation with Castillo and Barbara Peters, owner of the bookstore. All of the details about the event are here. https://bit.ly/2CrZCHH

If you’d like to pre-order a signed copy, you can order Outsider, or Castillo’s other books, through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2TDPi4M

Here’s the summary of Outsider.

Linda Castillo follows her instant New York Times bestseller, Shamed, with Outsider, an electrifying thriller about a woman on the run hiding among the Amish.

While enjoying a sleigh ride with his children, Amish widower Adam Lengacher discovers a car stuck in a snowdrift and an unconscious woman inside. He calls upon Chief of Police Kate Burkholder for help, and she is surprised to recognize the driver: fellow cop and her former friend, Gina Colorosa.

Years before, Kate and Gina were best friends at the police academy and patrol officers in Columbus, but time and distance have taken them down two very different paths. Now, Gina reveals a shocking story of betrayal and revenge that has forced her to run for her life. She’s desperate for protection, and the only person she can trust is Kate—but can Kate trust her? Or will Gina’s dark past put them all in danger?

As a blizzard bears down on Painters Mill, Kate helps Gina go into hiding on Adam’s farm. While the tough-skinned Gina struggles to adjust to the Amish lifestyle, Kate and state agent John Tomasetti delve into the incident that caused Gina to flee. But as Kate gets closer to the truth, a killer lies in wait. When violence strikes, she must confront a devastating truth that changes everything she thought she knew not only about friendship, but the institution to which she’s devoted her life.

*****

It may seem a little early to remind you of this virtual event. However, Criminal Element just did an interesting post about the Kate Burkholder series, under the heading, Book Series Binge: Linda Castillo’s Introduction to Sworn to Silence. Sworn to Silence is the first in the Kate Burkholder series. You can find the article here. https://bit.ly/2Nahuc7

Interested in a little more? Linda Castillo recently wrote a guest post for “Distractions” here on this blog. https://bit.ly/2TLmaZs

Mike Maden’s new Jack Ryan, Jr. novel, Tom Clancy: Firing Point, appears on The New York Time‘s Bestseller list on June 28. Now’s the time to order a signed copy of the book through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3ef9W3r

Here’s the summary of Tom Clancy: Firing Point.

Jack Ryan, Jr. is out to avenge the murder of an old friend, but the vein of evil he’s tapped into may run too deep for him to handle in the latest electric entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.

While on vacation in Barcelona, Jack Ryan, Jr. is surprised to run into an old friend at a small café. A first, Renee Moore seems surprised to see Jack, but then she just seems irritated and distracted. After making plans to meet later, Jack leaves, only to miss the opportunity to ever speak to Renee again, as the café is destroyed minutes later by a suicide bomber. A desperate Jack plunges back into the ruins to save his friend, but it’s too late. As she dies in his arms, she utters one word, “Sammler.”

When the police show up they are initially suspicious of Jack until they are called off by a member of the Spanish Intelligence Service. This mysterious sequence of events sends the young Campus operative on an unrelenting search to find out the reason behind Renee’s death. Along the way, he discovers that his old friend had secrets of her own—and some of them may have gotten her killed.

Jack has never backed down from a challenge, but some prey may be too big for one man.

*****

If you’re a fan of the Tom Clancy franchise, you’ll want to watch the virtual event with Mike Maden and Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen. Maden talks about coming into the franchise and the difference between the Jack Ryan, Sr. and Jack Ryan, Jr. books. It’s a fascinating discussion.

This current Hot Book of the Week is one of the selections for The Library of Congress Crime Classics, published by Sourcebooks/Poisoned Pen Press. C.W. Grafton, Sue Grafton’s father, is the author of The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope. You might be interested in ordering a copy of the book. https://bit.ly/3hAwjTb

Here’s the description of The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope.

Is this lawyer digging his way to the truth, or digging his own grave?

Short, chubby, and awkward with members of the opposite sex, Gil Henry is the youngest partner in a small law firm, not a hard-boiled sleuth. So when an attractive young woman named Ruth McClure walks into his office and asks him to investigate the value of the stock she inherited from her father, he thinks nothing of it—until someone makes an attempt on his life.

Soon Gil is inadvertently embroiled in scandal, subterfuge, and murder. He’s beaten, shot, and stabbed, as his colleagues and enemies try to stop him from seeing the case through to the end. Surrounded by adversaries, he teams up with Ruth and her secretive brother to find answers to the questions someone desperately wants to keep him from asking.

In this portrait of America on the eve of America’s entry into World War II, C.W. Grafton—himself a lawyer and the father of prolific mystery writer Sue Grafton—pens an award-winning mystery that combines humor and the hard-boiled style and will keep readers guessing until its thrilling conclusion.

*****

Leslie Klinger, editor of The Library of Congress Crime Classics series, recently talked about the book and the line with Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen.

How many virtual book releases have you attended since the Covid-19 shutdown? Laurie R. King’s virtual release of the sixteenth Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes novel, Riviera Gold, took place this week via The Poisoned Pen. You can order a signed copy of the book through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2yDn27l

Here’s the summary of Riviera Gold.

Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes turn the Riviera upside down to crack their most captivating case yet in the New York Times bestselling series that Lee Child called “the most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today.”

It’s summertime on the Riviera, and the Jazz Age has come to France’s once-sleepy beaches. From their music-filled terraces, American expatriates gaze along the coastline at the lights of Monte Carlo, where fortunes are won, lost, stolen, and sometimes hidden away. When Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes arrive, they find their partnership pulled between youthful pleasures and old sins, hot sun and cool jazz, new affections and enduring loyalties.

Russell falls into easy friendship with an enthralling American couple, Sara and Gerald Murphy, whose golden life on the Riviera has begun to attract famous writers and artists—and some of the scoundrels linked with Monte Carlo’s underworld. The Murphy set will go on to inspire everyone from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Pablo Picasso, but in this summer of 1925, their importance for Russell lies in one of their circle’s recent additions: the Holmeses’ former housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson, who hasn’t been seen since she fled England under a cloud of false murder accusations.

When a beautiful young man is found dead in Mrs. Hudson’s front room, she becomes the prime suspect in yet another murder. Russell is certain of Mrs. Hudson’s innocence; Holmes is not. But the old woman’s colorful past has been a source of tension between them before, and now the dangerous players who control Monte Carlo’s gilded casinos may stop at nothing to keep the pair away from what Mrs. Hudson’s youthful history could bring to light.

The Riviera is a place where treasure can be false, where love can destroy, and where life, as Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes will discover, can be cheap—even when it is made of solid gold.

*****

Even if you missed the live conversation between Laurie R. King and Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, you can still catch it here.

You’ll want to check out the upcoming schedule of The Poisoned Pen’s Virtual Events. Do you know if you can’t catch them live on Facebook when they happen that you can watch them on The Pen’s YouTube Channel at your convenience? It would be great if you subscribed to the channel. https://bit.ly/3fp7I1K

Check the Virtual Events for your favorite authors, and then check the Web Store for signed copies of their books. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Let’s switch things up a little bit today. John Charles from The Poisoned Pen recently talked with two authors about their current books, Kate Carlisle and Jill Orr. Kate Carlisle’s latest book is The Grim Reader, and Orr’s new one is The Full Scoop. You can order signed copies of the books through the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Instead of a video, today we have a podcast of the event with the two authors. You can listen to the conversation here. https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-yuvpw-dfce6c

Here are the summaries of the books.

San Francisco book-restoration expert Brooklyn Wainwright was hoping for a fun, relaxing weekend at a local book fair, but a murderer made other plans in the latest in this New York Times bestselling series.

Brooklyn and her new hunky husband, Derek, are excited to be guests at Dharma’s first annual Book Festival. The entire town is involved and Brooklyn’s mom Rebecca is taking charge. In addition to all of her other event related duties, she’s got Brooklyn doing rare book appraisals and is also staging Little Women, the musical to delight the festival goers. If that wasn’t enough, she and Meg—Derek’s mom—will have a booth where they read palms and tarot cards.

Brooklyn couldn’t be prouder of her mom’s do-it-all attitude so when a greedy local businessman who seems intent on destroying Dharma starts harassing Rebecca, Brooklyn is ready to take him down. Rebecca is able to hold her own with the nasty jerk until one of her fellow festival committee members is brutally murdered and the money for the festival seems to have vanished into thin air. 

Things get even more personal when one of Brooklyn’s nearest and dearest is nearly run down in cold blood. Brooklyn and Derek go into attack mode and the pressure is on to catch a spineless killer before they find themselves skipping the festival for a funeral.

Reeling after tragedy hits close to home, young journalist Riley Ellison becomes obsessed with uncovering the secret that led to her grandfather’s murder years before and that just took another life in Tuttle Corner. Her desperate search for answers leads her down a dark path, both personally and professionally, as she struggles with how far she’s willing to go to get answers. Just as she finally discovers the truth, she’s forced to choose between exacting justice and protecting the people she loves most. With pressure coming in from all sides, Riley has to look deep within to decide if she can let go of the past in order to hold on to the future.

Dennis Palumbo, author of the Daniel Rinaldi thrillers, is a writer. But, he is also a licensed psychotherapist whose clients are in the creative fields. Because authors have been writing “Distraction” pieces here for two months, and Dennis will have an upcoming one, he thought readers might be interested in this piece. He gave permission to use the piece, “When Your Only Weapon is Inaction”. It’s an interview that appeared in “Connect” for Writers Guild of America West.

When Your Only Weapon Is Inaction

Writer Dennis Palumbo gives quarantined writers permission and perspective amid COVID-19.

With the COVID-19 pandemic in its third month in the US, Connect spoke to psychotherapist Dennis Palumbo about recurring themes in his therapy practice with writers who are under extended stay-at-home orders and grappling with an entertainment industry on indefinite pause.

For three decades, Palumbo has been a licensed psychotherapist for working writers and others in creative fields. To the therapy setting Palumbo brings his own experience as a sitcom writer, screenwriter, and, more recently, crime novelist (2018’s Head Wounds is the fifth installment in his Daniel Rinaldi series). Palumbo’s non-fiction book Writing from the Inside Out (2000) was an adaptation and expansion of his regular columns for Written By.

You’re both a therapist for other writers and a writer yourself. So how is your writing going?

Dennis Palumbo: I’m a little more desultory because, like anyone else, I feel some of the stress of the uncertainty of this. Plus, you know, dealing with deliveries and putting on my mask and gloves when I go to get the mail. It’s certainly having an effect on my patients. My own writing is going ok. I have patients who are writing up a storm and I have patients who can’t focus for more than ten minutes. Because they’re thinking about the pandemic, and especially if they have young children they’re doing home schooling or trying to keep them entertained. Plus, there’s the omnipresent media. I have patients who just cannot stop watching CNN. As this thing has gone on and on, one of the first things I’m recommending to people is to very much curtail their watching of the news.

It’s a slippery slope between staying informed and getting lost in it all.“One of the problems that is endemic to this situation is, we have an enemy, this virus, and the weapon we use against the enemy is inaction, just sitting in your house. I think that’s very hard on the psyche.”

Palumbo: Check it in the morning and then check it in the evening to make sure there hasn’t been an alien invasion or something. Other than that, I think one of the problems that is endemic to this situation is, we have an enemy, this virus, and the weapon we use against the enemy is inaction, just sitting in your house. I think that’s very hard on the psyche. We have a fight-or-flight mechanism. When someone throws a rock at you, you pick up a rock and throw it back, or else you run away. And we can’t run away, we have to stay in the house, and we can’t fight it. So I think our cortisol levels are always being elevated because we’re in a state where there’s no tool we can use against the virus, other than staying put. I think the body doesn’t like that. The psyche certainly doesn’t like it. So no matter how busy you are, either with your children or with your writing, this sense of impotence contributes to depression and anxiety. And then you add to that, there’s no end date. Most people don’t like uncertainty. One of the real problems with the quarantine is the uncertainty.

So much of anxiety is typically about what you invent in your mind, but COVID-19 is a very real external crisis. How does this affect the tenor and substance of your practice?

Palumbo: It’s sort of like a background hum that’s always there even if you’re not talking about it. The way most therapy sessions go, the first ten minutes the person talks about how they’re dealing with the pandemic, they had a good week, a bad week. But even if we then go into other issues after that, this is always there. People say, “Oh, well, if your patients are writers they’re all used to being alone in a house.” Well, 60% of them write for television, so they’re used to going to rooms, number one. And number two, they still want to be able to go out and have coffee or lunch with a friend. So it’s a palpable thing that invades everyone’s consciousness all the time.

And writers are like antenna. The raw materials of a writer’s life is their feelings and their ideas, and the meanings they give to their feelings and ideas. If it’s permeated by something from the outside, then you’re really going to be sensitive to it. The uncertainty around when the quarantine will end, as well as what life will look like in the future, exacerbates a person’s inclination toward either depression or anxiety. One of the hallmarks of depression is the belief that nothing you do will make you feel any better, and how you’re feeling now is how you’re always going to feel. Because there’s no end in sight, it reinforces those two aspects of depression.

So it’s ok to spend the entire session talking about the pandemic?

Palumbo: That 50 minutes belongs to you. A lot of people worry that their careers are going to get sputtered out and maybe not come back again. It’s the same fears that writers always have in a strike, particularly people who had something that was going. Look at the people whose pilots didn’t get made. You go from the elation of getting a pilot script greenlit to production, to a pandemic hits and no one’s making a pilot.

You mentioned that some of your patients are writing up a storm, and some aren’t. What about the added stress and guilt of, “Oh, I should be writing more right now.”

Palumbo: For many, many years in my practice, almost to a person, every writer says, “Boy if I had the time, I would write my personal novel, or that spec screenplay about Elizabeth the First.” Now they have the time, and nobody’s writing it. It just runs the gamut. There are people, like I said, who are writing up a storm. Some of them have to because they’re working in animation, and animation is rolling right along. But for other people, they’re having a hard time focusing.

I’m a therapist, not a writing coach. Whenever someone has an issue with their writing, whether it’s blocks or procrastination or a story point, to me it’s inexorably bound up in whatever their personal issues are. It’s much more important to look at the underlying issues, the meaning you give it.

What about practical advice in terms of creative work right now?

Palumbo: I do think you should have a structure. You should create a fake structure. The other thing is, and it’s really hard, but to stay in the present. Just do what you need to do on a Wednesday. I think if you start saying, “But I wonder, are we going to be able to leave our homes in September, I wonder if my kid’s school is going to open in September, I wonder when production’s going to start, what if it doesn’t start till January?” All that catastrophizing the future does is create anxiety. And I often suggest to my patients that, your feelings don’t predict the future. You can feel like, oh my god this is never going to end, but that doesn’t mean it’s never going to end. You can feel like, oh this is going to just put a nail in the coffin of my career. That’s a feeling. It predicts nothing. And in my 30 years of practice, I’ve had so many people sit on that couch and tell me, “Well, my career is over.” And two years later they have a show on the air.

None of our feelings predict anything. They’re just data on what it feels like to be us in that moment.

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Dennis Palumbo’s books are available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2C4TMvz