Emily's Ghost — A Classic Spectral Story

Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Shirley Jackson, H.P. Lovecraft, Oliver Onions, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde … Paranormal fans will recognize names of classic horror writers. One other should appear on this list, an author better known for her cosy Callie Parrish novels. That writer crafted one of the finest stories of ectoplasmic– or any other– genre. SleuthSayers is proud to bring you the first US publication of a modern gothic tale from our friend and colleague, Fran Rizer.

— Leigh

Emily’s Ghost
by Fran Rizer
(12 Dec 1944 – 24 Dec 2019)

I sit silently as Drew drives our red Porsche along the rutted dirt road. It’s been three days since he spoke to me this time. Seventy-two hours of quiet. An eternity of longing to hear him say my name – “Emily.” I hated that word until I met Drew. The people in South Carolina’s low country drop the “i” and it comes out Emm-lee.

The first time I ever saw Drew, I’d gone to put flowers on Grandma’s grave. He was in the Beaufort churchyard sketching moss-covered trees and magnolias. I stood behind him and watched as he created a whole world out of just a few pencil strokes. After several moments, he turned and looked at me with unwavering blue eyes. The man took my breath.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Sometimes I’m flippant, downright sarcastic. Got an attitude. It’s a wonder I didn’t answer, “What’s it to you?” Instead I replied, “I’m Emily.”

“Emily as in Emily Dickinson?” he asked, and I laughed with pure pleasure. He’d pronounced my name with three delicate syllables. It sounded positively delicious when Drew said it.

“Yes,” I answered, “but I don’t make up poetry. I try to write stories.”

“Why try? Why don’t you just write them?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m not too good at it yet.”

“You can be if you want to be,” Drew said, and I believed him.

***

Andrew Wyeth, Sea Fog

That’s how it began. Before long, we were spending most of our time together. Lots of days sitting side by side in churchyards or marshes. Me writing my little tales on a yellow legal pad while Drew sketched or painted.

“What are you writing?” Drew asked.

“A story to send to a magazine. I need to see my words in print. I want people to read what I write.”

“Where did you get the idea?”

“I made it up. It’s about a boy and girl falling in love and seeing a ghost.”

“Oh,” Drew said and went back to drawing.

When it rained hard and we couldn’t sit outside, we escaped into Drew’s battered old van. He kept a collection of Andrew Wyeth prints there. During bad weather and at night, Drew showed them to me.

“I want to paint like Wyeth!” he exclaimed. His eyes lit up like he was on fire inside. “When Wyeth paints fog and wind, you can feel them! Just look at this print. It’s called ‘Sea Fog.’ You can see the mist beginning to drift, to wisp away. You can feel the breeze tease your shirt in ‘Wind from the Sea.’ That’s how I’m going to paint!”

I didn’t have any books of my own, just the ones I checked out from the library. I’d hold up my favorite collections of short stories – ‘Skeleton Crew’ by Stephen King or one of Edgar Allan Poe’s and say, “Someday I’m going to write like this – mysteries and about ghosts and spooky things.”

“But, Emily, you’ve never been through any of that. Write about the life you’ve lived, people like the ones you know.”

I tossed my head to swing my hair back. “Don’t tell me what to do!” I snapped at him.

Andrew Wyeth, Christina’s World

Drew turned away from me and looked at his Wyeth prints again. He loved them all, but his favorite painting was “Christina’s World.” Everyone’s seen the picture of a young woman in a field of grass looking up toward a clapboard house and barn on top of a knoll. The girl’s wearing a pink dress, and her position looks strange. It’s as though she’s crawling, but her body seems twisted.

“That’s Christina Olson,” Drew explained. “She was crippled from childhood. Wyeth painted her and that farm for almost thirty years.” The picture has a haunting quality. Drew said, “It merges a feeling of loss and a sense of fulfillment at the same time.” At first, I thought that was ridiculously impossible, but now it makes sense.

When Drew decided we should live together, I told him that wasn’t how my Mama raised me, so we got married. Drew started selling paintings, and I mailed some of my stories off to magazines. I cried a lot the first year. Every time the mailman delivered a rejection letter, I sobbed. Mama always scolded me, “Don’t carry on so!” and I’d wail even louder.

My husband comforted me. He held me in his arms and gently brushed the hair away from my eyes. He kept telling me, “Quit worrying about writing proper by some teacher’s rules and making up supernatural stories about vampires and witches. Your stories about ghosts and murders sound too manufactured, too made up. Keep your stories real. Write those funny things you’ve told me about your relatives and low-country people, and put them on paper the same way you tell them.” I sniffled when he added, “And you can stop studying the dictionary to learn bigger words. Convey those yarns in your own vocabulary.”

I argued with him. “No magazine or book is gonna publish those stories,” I whined. “I want to write about the paranormal.”

Usually I go on and do things my own way when people try to tell me what to do, but I got turned down every time I sent out a manuscript. I finally decided to try Drew’s suggestions. I wrote an old family anecdote of how my grandparents always killed a couple of chickens for Thanksgiving because they didn’t raise turkeys and couldn’t afford to buy one. Finally the year came when they bought a big bird from the store – a Tom, the biggest frozen turkey available. Grandma put it on the back porch to thaw. When she went back to check on the bird, she found their big ole cat named Tom chowin’ down on that Tom turkey. Grandma used to say, “If Grandpa’d had his way, we’d of had roasted Tom cat for Thanksgiving that year.” I mailed the story off to a regional magazine.

You could’ve heard me hollering in the next county when the mail man brought an envelope with a check inside. When I followed Drew’s advice and wrote the stories like I told them, checks and contracts kept coming instead of rejections. Drew told me what to write and sometimes tried to tell me how to write. He’d brush my bangs out of my eyes and say, “Don’t you think it’s time you started writing on a computer instead of with a pencil?” I didn’t switch to writing on the computer, but I did use the Dell he bought me to type up my stories after I wrote them on the yellow pads.

My work was even reviewed in newspapers and a couple of magazines. That was good. The bad thing was that they called me “folksy” and referred to me as a young literary Grandma Moses – like writing and painting are comparable!

Drew refused to see why that made me mad. He said, “You should be happy and proud,” but I tried to explain that all I’d done was follow his directions. I felt like it was his accomplishment, not mine. He was an artist! Where’d he get off telling me how to write?

Paintings kept selling, too. We were as excited as kids on the last day of school when he had his first show at an art gallery in Charleston. Drew said, “I can’t wear paint-splattered jeans, and bought himself a new outfit with a sports jacket.

He gave me money for a dress, but he didn’t like anything I picked out. Finally, Drew bought a dress and brought it home. I tried it on, and Drew said it was “perfect.” I couldn’t see wearing black anywhere except to a funeral, but he just laughed and said, “It’s a classic, your first little black dress.” He gave me a necklace to wear with it. Not dime store beads, jewelry store pearls!

We moved out of my Mama’s house and rented a place of our own. Most of that time was happy for me and I think for Drew, too. I still liked to go with him when he went out sketching, and even then, he listened when I talked about stories I wanted to write.

Sometimes I’d take along a book like Ghosts of South Carolina and read instead of writing. I learned about dozens of apparitions in our state, and when I told Drew about the phantom hitchhiker on the Sumter Highway or the Gray Ghost on the coast who warns of hurricanes, he listened. We even went together to Edisto Island and visited a crypt that was said to be haunted and a tree that is rumored to have a pirate specter guarding treasure buried beneath it. Drew was the most patient man I’d ever known and never complained about me babbling on or wanting to sit and wait to see if a spirit would appear.

Before long, we started making real money selling his pictures and my stories. I have to confess my ghost stories didn’t sell, but the simple low- country ones did. That’s when Drew decided he wanted to move back to Maine. “There’s nothing wrong with painting swamps and marshes!” I screamed, but he ignored me.

Drew told folks I won that skirmish because we moved upstate, which was a lot closer to my home place than Maine. So far as I was concerned, I’d lost anyway. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to move to Maine. I didn’t want to move anywhere away from the coast of South Carolina!

The Greenville Museum of Art is home of an impressive permanent collection of Andrew Wyeth’s work. When CNN told us Wyeth had died at age ninety-two, Drew insisted we make a road trip from Beaufort to see the exhibit. He stood in awe before each piece. “Why are you staring like that?” I asked. “I don’t see one bit of difference between this stuff and your prints.”

“These are the real thing. It’s like being in the presence of a lifelong hero.” Tears welled in his eyes. “I always planned to travel to meet the man someday, but I waited too long. All I can do is visit his work.”

I looked at my watch. “It’s past lunchtime,” I said. “Let’s go find a restaurant.”

Drew shook his head and looked at me with disbelief, but I kept complaining about how hungry I was, so we finally left. In my opinion, it was a long ride for nothing. I had no idea that useless day trip would be a major part of deciding where we’d live. A week later, Drew disappeared for several days. When he came back, he said “we’d” bought a three-story clapboard house on a hill a little north of Greenville. I screamed and hollered, but we moved there anyway.

The studio he contracted to have built looked like a farm shed. The new garage in the back was a fake barn, and Drew scolded me when I didn’t park in it. By the time I’d followed around the road that circled our hill to the one driveway that led up to the house, I wasn’t in the mood to continue around our home to park in the barn.

“Always park inside and close the doors,” he said. “New vans and sports cars around our home don’t fit the picture!”

Andrew Wyeth, Witching Hour

Drew cut down the beautiful old trees around the house and had wheat planted in the stark, bare fields. Our farmhouse was exactly like a picture postcard of “Christina’s World” without Christina. Sometimes I thought Drew would be happy if I were crippled like she was. Maybe then he’d paint me. In all our years together, he’d never drawn or painted my likeness. He claimed he didn’t do portraits, and I never saw people in his work, but it still made me mad. He always told me what to do – write this way, stand that way. I told him, “If I was good enough for you when you met me, I’m good enough for you now, because I’m not gonna change!”

His answer was usually a muttered, “Most folks grow up eventually.”

***

Then the quiet times came. I call them quiet times, but the silence is one-sided. Drew stops talking to me, but I continue speaking to him. When I wake up in the morning and hear the birds singing outside and see the sunshine kaleidoscoping patterns on the walls through the lace curtains, I always lean over to kiss Drew and tell him about whatever I plan to write that day. Most times, he listens and then kisses me, too, but when he’s having a quiet time, he turns his back to me.

Drew doesn’t answer when I call him for breakfast during a quiet time. He comes into the kitchen and sits down at the big, round oak table. He eats whatever I’ve cooked for him with no comments about whether he likes it or not. Doesn’t seem to matter if it’s chicken-fried steak, eggs with cheese and scratch biscuits or simply grits with bologna gravy. Never says a word to me during quiet times. Just eats, then gets up and goes to his studio or climbs in his shiny new van and drives away for the day.

I wonder if he’s out sketching and painting or if he’s gone to the museum to “visit” his beloved Andrew Wyeth paintings.

Water colors of dilapidated, falling down barns have been selling like McDonald’s quarter-pounders. Drew’s even painted some old crypts and graveyards around Greenville, and those pictures have been pulling in big money, too. I don’t think it’s fair that he tells me not to write about ghosts or graves and things like that, but he does those cemetery paintings. When I stomp my feet and tell him how I feel, he ignores me.

Lately, it seems we’re having quiet times more than ever. I’d think he’d be happy that he’s successful, but who can tell? He never complains about anything, so how do I know whether he’s angry, disappointed, or just sad? He looks at me different, too. He narrows his eyes, and the intensity of his art is in those blue slits. Those cold, blue eyes freeze me so bad I just shiver.

***

Now we’re riding in the Porsche with the top down. He hasn’t said a word all the way back from an art show at some high-falutin’ gallery in Atlanta. Actually, it’s been three days since Drew spoke to me. The longest quiet time was almost two weeks. I wonder how many days and nights this one will last. What caused it? Most times he doesn’t seem to notice me at all anymore, but the night of the opening reception, he kept glaring at me. During the first hour, he told me to stand up straight so many times that I got mad and left. I went out and sat in the car.

Thank heaven we’re almost home. I look ahead and see our lonely house sitting atop the bare hill surrounded by fields of wheat that look like dried grass. A delicate breeze whispers a warning through the wheat, but I ignore it.

“A lot of your work at that show was those cemetery pictures,” I say, “but you always tell me that my mystery and ghost stories aren’t as good as the stories about my family and folks living on the coast. I don’t think that’s fair.” He stays silent. “Why don’t you paint people?” I demand.

Drew doesn’t say anything, just keeps driving.

“It’s taking forever to get there,” I say. “You should have a drive cut from the house down to the road on this side instead of having to ride all around the hill before we get to the turn-off. I’m so tired of everything having to look like the Olson farm.”

Drew keeps driving, his white-knuckled fingers clenched tight against the steering wheel. His eyes stare straight ahead, and his jaw works – flex and release, flex and release.

“Hurry up!” I say, “I need to use the bathroom!”

Unexpectedly, Drew turns off the road before we reach our long driveway. We’re hurtling across the field, headed toward the house.

“Stop!” I yell at him. “You’re going too fast!”

Drew slams his foot on the accelerator. The low undercarriage of the Porsche drags against the plowed furrows of the field shearing off wheat and flinging it into the air. The car lurches to a stop. Drew stomps the accelerator even harder. Tires spin, and dust flies up all around us. Slowly, he turns in his seat and faces me. For the first time in my whole life, I know real fear. My heart thunders in my chest. A scream rises in my throat, but I choke it down, and no sound escapes me. Drew stares at my face with a fixed expression. His features are unfathomable. Insanity or evil? I can’t distinguish. His eyes squint, and I recognize the emotion.

Only one word describes his look: loathing. The man I love despises me. Suddenly, I know this. I don’t have to think about it. There’s no doubt. The man I love hates me! I fling my car door open, get out, and run toward the house.

Drew jumps from the Porsche and follows me. I stumble over a rock and gasp as the breath whooshes out of me. Just as I hit the ground in a sprawl, he grabs me.

***

Do you know what a space break is? It’s one of those double spaces to show that time has passed in a story. I have a space break in my life. One minute I’m tumbling to the ground with Drew clutching me. The next thing I know, I’m standing on the little front porch of our house. I have no idea how I got to the steps, no memory of climbing the hill.

Drew is right in front of me. He goes in and leaves the door wide open. I’m standing on the small stoop. I lean against the doorframe for a moment before following him into the front hall. He paces around inside the house, from room to room, up the stairs, down the stairs, pausing to gaze at each framed Andrew Wyeth print on the walls. He stops and pats his favorite chair just like Grandpa used to pet his favorite hound dog.

Drew walks toward me, and I shout, “Talk to me! Stop this foolish silence! I’m tired of being ignored.”

The look on Drew’s face chills me, and I shiver. His sad eyes seem to see right past me. There’s no expression at all. Suddenly I realize that I’m screaming. “Drew,” I lower my voice almost to a whisper, “We have to do something to save our marriage.” He ignores me. “I’m not putting up with any more of this!” The words leap from my mouth, growing louder and louder. Before I know it, I’m yelling again. “I said I can’t go on this way!” When Drew reaches the door, I move directly in front of him, blocking his way. Drew steps right through me!

Now I know. I finally comprehend. An epiphany. Lights flash on abruptly in my mind. Drew murdered me! Killed me right out there in the field of wheat on the slope of the Christina’s World we live in, though I don’t guess I really live here anymore. I’m experiencing a real murder and ghost, but what good will that do me since I’m the ghost myself?

For the rest of Drew’s life, I will haunt him. I loved him. I loved him more than any woman ought to care about a man. That’s how low-country females are. Why am I using past tense? I still love Drew. I love the way he used to hold me and whisper, “I died for Beauty—but was scarce adjusted in the Tomb when one who died for Truth was lain in an adjoining room.” That’s from Emily Dickinson. I know the words don’t sound romantic, but when Drew said it very softly with his lips barely brushing against my ear, it was incredibly sweet and sexy. He hasn’t done that in a long time.

Drew exits through the open front door. I shadow right on his heels, but he doesn’t see me; I’m dead. I follow him as he crosses the porch and starts down the hill to the field. Is he going for the car? I don’t think he’s planning to bury me – he didn’t get the shovel. Why did he go around gazing at everything in such a final, sorrowful way like he was saying goodbye? Will he drive away to Maine before my body is discovered?

Now we’re near where it happened. I can see the wheat flattened in a spot about thirty feet from the Porsche. Drew reaches the area before I do. He stands there, solemnly looking down. What’s he feeling? Is he overwhelmed with grief, or is he glad to be rid of me?

As I plod the final few feet to stand by Drew, horror greater than I’ve ever known floods over me. I’m scared to see my body. Terrified to stand beside the man I love as he stares at my corpse on the ground. I tremble. I’m afraid to see myself in death. Will I look like a bloody, twisted Christina? Even now, I want to be attractive for Drew, so pretty that he’ll regret what he did. I want him to cry for me, miss me, love me! I wish he would say something, but then, he doesn’t know my ghost is standing right by him. Besides, he’s not talking to me these days, anyway.

I look down. The body lies motionless. The head is bloodied, and a wet, crimson-stained rock, the weapon of destruction, lies close by. This simple stone has ended all chances of saving our marriage.

The corpse is not me.

My beloved Drew lies dead at my feet. I look at my hands and see his blood. Then I scream and scream as the phantasm standing beside me drifts away like fog in a fine Andrew Wyeth painting.

≡ 30 ≡

More about Fran…

Día de los Muertos Vivientes

Today's essay serves one purpose only, to lay the foundation for our 1^st of November's Día de los Muertos / Day of the Dead article and persuade you to catch the most brilliant ghost story of our time. And, unbelieveably, it’s free. You may remember one of our authors whose life was cut short.  Allow us to reintroduce…

Fran Rizer
(12 Dec 1944 – 24 Dec 2019)

Andrew Wyeth: Ghosts

On a Christmas eve nearly seven years ago, our colleague Fran Rizer left us a gift, which we share today. Harking back to the golden age of horror, it’s one of the finest classic paranormal stories ever written. So why haven’t you heard of it?

It was published not in the US, but in a short-lived Canadian publication, Ficta Fabula. Rather than try to shop an already published story, Fran placed it in our SleuthSayers queue. Following damage to its MS Word file and to capture most recent publication edits, she turned to me for help.

We copied text from the publication’s PDF, which turned out a mess, suffering breaks at the end of every line instead of every paragraph. Italics and bolds disappeared. Little could be automated, paragraph by paragraph, it had to be reassembled by hand. She never anticipated it would take so long, nor that she wouldn’t be present for publication. Shaking off the ghost of Fran’s hand, so to speak, took a while, but the result is one of the most artfully ingenious stories you’ll likely read.

Fran and I became friends at an MWA gathering where she was giddy her first novel had been accepted for publication. Some thought her excitement was unseemly, but why not? We began to chat, partly about wrting, partly about everything. She liked to say after retirement she could move to Florida and quietly fade away, or live out her dream to write.

She sometimes phoned in the middle of the night to chat about nothing in particular. Fran was warm, witty, and wildly inappropriate. She entered her teens in the latter 1950s and I imagine young Fran was a trip and a handful. Even in her 70s, she was an incorrigible flirt. She loved men and could read XY chromosomes as readily as a Vanity Fair article. She had an uncanny knack of peering into the mind, perhaps learned from years of classroom experience and knowing herself. It wasn’t a bad thing.

Fran admired Mickey Spillane, loved bluegrass banjo, enjoyed cooking, and she appreciated American fine art. She claimed she watched sports for one reason only, to gaze upon players’, erm, male Sitzfleisch, that is to say derrières, tochus, hindaments, bums, buns, butts, booty patooties– you get the idea. That was Fran, unapologetic.

She also suffered great tragedy. Linda, Fran’s cousin, best friend, neighbor, and organizer of Fran’s Callie Parrish fan club, was brutally murdered in a home invasion. Fran swore she’d never write again. In our wee hour chats, I quietly listened. Slowly she returned to the notion of her writing again. That took a year. Her fourth novel wasn’t the same, but she’d taken the step. Over time, Fran once again found her footing.

Fran died on a Christmas Eve, her wonderful story suspended in the æther of the otherworld. For a long time, it occupied a pending spot in SleuthSayers files. Earlier this year, I readied it for the Halloween season as a holiday gift.

I cannot emphasize how much I admire this many layered story. You’ll discover why I illustrated today’s article with the Wyeth painting above. Take a moment on El Día de Muertos, the 1^st of November, to read her brilliant tale, Emily’s Ghost.

— Leigh

Propositions

I once attended a book talk/signing by a true crime writer at a southern bed and breakfast in a beautiful old two-story, white columned house in Columbia, SC. Sitting around in the elegant parlor, the ladies chatted about literature and artsy things. Luncheon was served on pre-war (that's the Civil War) china in the formal dining room before the writer began her talk. I've read her books. They are all well-written, and, no, I won't name her because of what I'm about to tell you.

I was listening, but not totally attentive because I was off on one of my "What if?" daydreams that frequently turn into scenes in my books.

She said, "I listened at him, and he told me all about the murder."

Listened AT him? I sat up straighter and listened TO her more attentively. How could a professionally published author commit such a faux pas? I don't remember another word she said. My mind wandered to the Preposition Proposition. (Bet you thought that title was headed elsewhere, but would you really have read this far if my heading were "Prepositions?")

Back when I taught English, I dealt with parts of speech including prepositions. By definition, a preposition is, "______________________."

Prepositions are one of the few ______________________. I asked my students to memorize. Most of them could name ______________________.

How about you? How many prepositions can you list? (Do it now before you read to the bottom of this blog.)

Okay, prepositions are a part of speech; they show relationships; and their usage varies in different regions. The writer/speaker turned out to be from South Carolina's lowcountry (not a typo; it's written as a closed compound.) In that area, people listen AT instead of TO.

Proper Preposition Usage.

Pages and pages of instructions on proper usage left me with a few that stand out. Different?

The rule is that things are different FROM each other, not different THAN.

One that always puzzles me is standing ON line opposed to IN line. In the United States South, students and shoppers stand IN line, but on the news, lots of people stand ON line. Of course, nowadays almost everyone is online, but I don't think it has anything to do with waiting AT the cafeteria or to go INTO the movies.

My nosey self read her books again. Nobody listened AT anything. I decided her proofreader had edited some of the lowcountry colloquilisms from her work.

How many prepositions did you list? Here's my list. No, I didn't write it from memory. I looked it up in a fourth-grade grammar book.

• about • above • around • at

• by • for • from • in

• into • of • off • on

• out • over • to • under

Until we meet again… take care of YOU!

---

I met Fran at my first and thus far only MWA gathering in New York. A new author and a new member, she announced a publishing contract for her first Callie Parrish cosy. After retirement from teaching, Fran faced a choice of moving to Florida to die or starting her dream career of writing.

We became friends and occasionally chatted late at night. She was an incorrigible flirt (yes, worse than I am) and hitting her 70s didn’t slow her down.

Fran’s cousin and best friend since childhood was Linda. They’d double-dated, served as each other’s bridesmaids, and were neighbors in Columbia, South Carolina. Linda organized Callie events and underpinned the Callie fan club.

Then Linda was murdered.

During a home invasion, a robber became a killer.

Fran was devastated. She stopped writing. She stopped interacting.

We chatted every few weeks. I knew she had more writing in her and began to encourage her. I offered her a slot on Criminal Brief if she wanted to announce coming out of retirement.

It took a year, but to my pleasant surprise, Fran accepted. Not only did she announce her unretirement, she grabbed that forum to tell the world her darkest secret, that Linda was a victim of a terrible homicide.

Fran herself died on Christmas Eve two years ago. She left nearly a dozen unfinished articles in SleuthSayers development queue. Most are fragmentary, one is semi-complete but an editing mess, but she’d marked this one ready to go. Her death was such a sore spot, we held it until now. {Rob butts in to say: the three blank spots in this piece were gaps she clearly intended to fill in later.  We lave left them as she did.]  Here is Fran with grammar advice followed by her signature wrapup…

Until we meet again… take care of YOU.

— Leigh

Sign Here, Please

Fran Rizer was one of the original SleuthSayers, going all the way back to our origin in 2011.  She went on sabbatical from our little asylum a few years ago, making occasional guest appearances since then, and she passed away last Christmas.  I think this is the first time we have mentioned that event here, so I apologize for our tardiness.

Fran was a proud South Carolinian.  She took up the pen after twenty-five years of teaching.  She is best known for her Callie Parrish mystery series, about a "mortuary cosmetologist."  She was a winner of the Porter Fleming Fiction Award, and a nominee for the Agatha.  Fran also wrote country music!  

Thanks are due to Barb Goffman who was kind enough to point out that this piece was waiting in the SleuthSayers wings and we are delighted to run it. There is one more that will show up at an appropriate time.

— Robert Lopresti

SIGN HERE, PLEASE 

A favorite online dictionary defines "autograph" as "a signature, especially that of a celebrity written as a memento for an admirer." Now, I am far from a celebrity even if a lady did run up to me in Target one day excitedly asking, "Are you Fran Rizer?" For a moment I was afraid she was about to serve me with legal papers of some kind. Then she said, "I read your books," which turned it into a pleasant encounter.

This is NOT what you think. I'm never bored during a
signing. This was made while waiting for a book
festival signing to open the doors and begin. When
there are customers around, it's best to have a
more pleasant demeanor.

For my purposes today, "autograph" will be limited to writing one's name in a book written by that person. When my first book was released, a friend advised me that I would have to do signings, which, according to him, would frequently mean hanging out behind a table in a book store and being ignored.

It hasn't worked out that way. To me, signings provide an opportunity to meet and visit with readers, not only of my books, but also others. Some folks get personal during those visits. A reader in Asheville, NC, took off her socks and shoes to show me how straight her toes are since her bunion surgery. We're now friends on FaceBook.

Several years ago, educational Core Curriculums stopped including the teaching of cursive handwriting. "It's no longer needed," they said.  "Everything is done electronically these days," they said. "Use that time to teach keyboarding or other electronic skills," they said. To former elementary teachers and probably to most people my age, this was distressing. I also wondered how much time the people who made that decision had spent in the classroom.
Many teachers disagreed with those decision-makers.  I acknowledge that most people write fewer checks these days. They pay for things with computers, plastic, and their telephones. A lot of communication is electronic and can be signed electronically.  There are, however, times when a real signature is needed.  My first thought is for a driver's license or a marriage license. Come to think of it, divorce papers require signatures, also. Anyone who has had a spouse who refused to sign those papers can testify to that.

I'm pleased to announce that many states and school districts reversed that decision in 2019. Cursive writing is again to be taught in elementary classes beginning in the 2019-2020 school year.. 

Cursive alphabet as taught in elementary schools.

Authors are generally handed a book or magazine to autograph. Those in other arts have been known to sign a wider variety of items. Many stories tell of rock stars who have signed their female fans' body parts. Occasionally those fans will have the signature tattooed before it's allowed to be washed away. Athletes sign equipment like footballs.  Musicians will sign instruments such as guitars, sometimes for a fan to keep, often to be auctioned.

As a child, my dad took Mom and me to many musical performances. At age ten, I had autographs from Ray Charles and Patsy Cline as well as numerous other country artists.  I threw them away when I decided I was too "grown-up" to do that. I didn't realize that an autograph is a way of preserving a special moment or event, a way of gaining pleasure from owning something of a person that is admired, but it might also be worth money.  Several of the ones I had would command good-sized payments from collectors.

Harper Lee's signature on a first edition of To Kill a
Mockingbird is probably worth even more now.

The autograph of a famous author can be worth a lot. Value is determined by several factors including rarity, such as the few existing signatures of William Shakespeare. One of the more recent ones is Harper Lee. She did not like to sign books which makes some of hers even more valuable. In 2016, a first edition copy of  To Kill a Mockingbird, with Lee's signature sold for twenty-seven thousand dollars.

A lot of modern writers almost scribble their autographs. (Perhaps they never learned cursive either.) Two that attracted my attention for their embellished style are:

and 

Note that Fitzgerald signed his "Sincerely." Charles Schultz generally added a little cartoon sketch beside his autograph. Most of my readers want their names personalized with the signature though I keep telling them that if I'm ever in the news for any reason, signature alone is more valuable.  I tend to write something like, "Reader's name, Welcome to Callie's world, Fran Rizer." My stand-alones are usually signed with "Reader's name, Enjoy! Fran Rizer."

I've never had the nerve (or the inclination really) to follow what Tamar Myers (author of the Belgian Congo and the Den of Antiquity series as well as Penn-Dutch Magdalena series) advised me:  "If they buy a paperback, sign it with "Best wishes;" if they buy a hardback, sign it, "Your friend"; if they buy a complete set, sign it "You were wonderful last night." In the event you don't know Tamar, she as funny in person as her character Magdalena.

How about you?  Is your signature legible? What do you usually write?  What's the funniest or most interesting anecdote from your signings?

Until we meet again, please take care of… YOU.

Measuring Success as a Writer

Reprinted from March 27, 2019, FaceBook:

This is how I feel today, not how I look. First, much appreciation to the staff at Lexington Hospital, especially the Critical Care Unit. They took excellent care of me, always with smiles and patience. Special shout-out to Megan and Jeanna who devoted hours to removing the clotted blood from my hair instead of shaving my head.

As always, I am grateful for my sons and grandson for their never- ending attention and love, both at the hospital and now that I'm home. Thanks to all of you for your FB messages, phone calls, and visits. Now, what happened?

I stepped out onto the elevated rear porch/deck to enjoy a bit of sunshine. The next thing I knew I was lying face-down at the foot of the steps, unable to rise and gushing blood from both front and back of my head. My son found me. I don't remember the fall, but the evidence includes massive black bruises and contusions covering my body from broken toe to the sixteen stitches in my head as well as several cracked ribs.

My family and I have tried to figure out what caused the fall. There was nothing on the deck to cause me to trip. One suggestion was that I was trying to twirk and tweeked instead. Ridiculous! I'm too old for twirking. (But I bet I could if I tried though.)

Second idea was that I thought I could fly, but I gave up adult beverages years ago.

We finally figured out that I was abducted from the deck by little gray men with big eyes who whisked me up to their space craft. They treated me well, but when they tried to return me to the deck, they missed, causing me to fall down the steps.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Recovery from that fall resulted in depression. When my neurosurgeon told me the way to live long was, "Don't fall," I laughed. After being told that I almost bled out and that I coded twice in the hospital, I spent too much time realizing that no one lives forever and I'm growing older every day. (Imagine that!) He's the same doctor who once greeted me, "Hello, Fran, I've got good news for you: We've both lived too long to die young." I pondered the significance of my life.

While I still wallowed, a FB message arrived in May inviting me to be interviewed on SCETV (South Carolina Educational Television) by Dr. Stephanie Frazier, VP of Education, SCETV, for Teacher Appreciation Week. I hadn't seen Stephanie since I taught her fifth grade at Bradley Elementary School, Columbia, SC, thirty years ago. I was honored that she named me "favorite educator."

Dr. Stephanie Frazier and Fran Rizer in SCETV studio, May,
2019. This was my first outing except to doctors' offices after
my fall and hospitalization. Stephanie is holding one of my
books,which I took her as a "hostess gift." Since then, I've
followed Stephanie on FB. I love seeing the accomplished
lady and the celebration of her recent big-four-oh birthday.

Fifth-grader Stephanie Frazier and Fran Rizer
on the playground in the late eighties.

The interview was fun and lifted my spirits. Stephanie said that among other things, she learned to "write well and present with confidence" from me. She reminded me of the monologue I wrote for her to audition for the middle school drama program in our district. Although my magazine features had been published before, "Modern Shakespeare," written specifically for Stephanie led to my first published book: Familiar Faces & Curious Characters, a collection of monologues for intermediate students.

What does all of the above have to do with my success as a writer? Please keep reading. We'll get there.

As some of you know, I've been reading Len Levinson's books recently. Stephanie made me think of Levinson's words in his My So-Called Literary Career:

It all began in 1946 when I was 11, Fifth Grade, John Hannigan Grammar School, New Bedford, Massachusetts. A teacher named Miss Ribeiro asked students to write essays of our choosing. Some kids wrote about baking cookies with mommy, fishing excursions to Cuttyhunk with dad, or bus to Boston to watch the Red Sox play the Yankees at Fenway Park, etc.

But my mommy died when I was four, and dear old Dad never took me anywhere. So Little Lenny Levinson penned a science fiction epic about an imaginary trip to the planet Pluto, probably influenced by Buck Rogers, perhaps expressing subliminal desires to escape my somewhat Dickensian childhood.

As I wrote, the classroom seemed to vanish. I sat at the control panel of a sleek, silver space ship hurtling past suns, moons and blazing constellations. While writing, I experienced something I can only describe today as an out-of-body, ecstatic hallucination, evidently the pure joy of self-expression.

Levinson's written works inspire me to write whatever I want
and not worry about staying in one genre. His life inspires
me to stop worrying about my age and enjoy living. He's 85
years old, and here he is hitting on an even older lady (The
Lost Pleiade by Randolph Rogers at the Art Institute of
Chicago). The lady was created in 1874; this photo was
made August 8, 2019. I can't help wondering if Len is
whispering sweet nothings or perhaps asking,
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

I returned to earth, handed in the essay, and expected the usual decent grade. A few days
later Miss Ribeiro praised me in front of the class and read the essay aloud, first time I'd been singled out for excellence. Maybe I'll be
a writer when I grow up, I thought.

As time passed, it seemed an impractical choice. Everyone said I’d starve to death. I decided to prepare for a realistic career, but couldn’t determine exactly what it was.


Levinson took that realistic career path until he was thirty-five years old and decided to become a full-time author. He went on to have major publishers release eighty-six novels, mostly in the high adventure category, about cops, cowboys, soldiers, spies, cab drivers, race car drivers, or ordinary individuals seeking justice in an unjust world. The photo caption explains how his books provide me with what I need as I continue the physical therapy, medications, and life-style changes for the heart attack that put me at the foot of the stairs.

I could talk about Levinson's work indefinitely, but the point today is not really about Len, nor about me and Stephanie. It's about Miss Ribeiro. Would any of those almost a hundred books exist today if Miss Ribeiro had not planted that writer's seedling with her praise for Little Lenny? We never know what influence our spoken words may have on someone. What are writings except spoken words on paper (or, in today's world, an electronic device)?

If you're ever a little depressed by a rejection letter or the size of a royalty check, measure your writing success the way I measure mine. As writers, we appreciate fan letters. "I love Callie" is always good for me to hear, but one of the best came from a lady in Tokyo who wrote me that after that horrific tsunami in 2011, during which she lost relatives, one of my Callie Parrish books was the first thing to make her smile and laugh again.

Success as a writer? It doesn't get any better than that! My measure of success is determined by this question: Have I written anything that has made a difference in a person's life, even if it's only that my words entertained the reader when that person needed the friends that books can be?

Until we meet again, please take care of … YOU!

Man of Many Names and Faces

by Fran Rizer

A person who is two-faced and has used an alias many times sounds sketchy. Why would I want to interview him and introduce him to SleuthSayer readers?

Let's call this fellow "Lenny." Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, he left home at eighteen, spent some time in Miami, and then joined the U.S. Army. After completing his service, Lenny attended Michigan State University and earned a degree in Social Science. He wound up in a place he still loves--New York City.

Nineteen-year-old Lenny in Miami.

In 1970, Lenny began working as a press agent for Solters and Sabinson, a show biz publicity agency near Times Square. Solters and Sabinson's clients included big-time names such as Frank Sinatra and The Beatles. At age thirty-five, Lenny made a giant leap by quitting his PR job and becoming a full-time writer without a "day job." During the following years, Lenny had eighty-three (you read that right--eighty-three!) novels released by major publishers--all under pen names.

Photo by Ray Block in his photography
studio. The hat, gun, and unlit cigarette are
all props, creating an image indicative of
what Lenny was writing at the time.

Some of Lenny's books include:  The Apache War Series, six as Frank Burleson; The Pecos Kid Series, six as Frank Bodine; The Rat Bastards Series, sixteen as John Mackie; The Sergeant Series, nine as Gordon Davis, as well as other series and standalones -- all published under pen names.

Now in his eighties, the man of many names and faces refers to himself as "the crazy old dude."  In the past twelve months, this dude's published novels have increased to eighty-six, and many previous works are now available as e-books.

Throughout his career, Lenny was acclaimed under twenty-two pseudonyms as an excellent writer who takes his readers through adventures with such characters as cops, cowboys and soldiers. What's different about these three new books?

They're released under Lenny's real name.

The three new books released recently are: Cobra Woman, Web of Doom, and Grip of Death.  I reviewed Cobra Woman and Web of Doom on Amazon.  When I told Levinson I planned to read the re-release of The Last Buffoon next, he said that I might not like it because it's "raunchy, really raunchy." I replied that a review I'd found said, "The Last Buffoon" is the funniest thing I've ever read." Guess what Len Levinson book I'm now reading.

Levinson says, "That's me during my
younger days, standing in a trash barrel in
Washington Square Park, Greenwich Village, New York City."
Photo by S. H. Linden, around 1971.

Photo of Len Levinson standing beside a portrait of himself

 by Ari Roussimoff. Yes, Roussimoff  painted Levinson with

two sets of eyes. Levinson and Roussimoff were neighbors

in the Hell's Kitchen section of New York. To see more of

Roussimoff's work, check him out at roussimoff.com.

Researching Len Levinson, I learned a lot about him even before I began asking him questions.Some of the things he loves are evident.  In addition to people (he has grandchildren), it's obvious that Len Levinson loves New York City, art museums, beautiful women, and music. He's a familiar figure at blues festivals in the Chicago area--probably the only bopping dude in his eighties.

Levinson's FaceBook pages feature pictures of

him "bopping" at numerous festivals.

A real Man of Many Names and Faces -- the real face of my friend
 Lenny, AKA Len Levinson in 2019.

Until we meet again, please take care of … YOU!

Not Named

by Fran Rizer                                                                


"To Kill or Not to Kill" was the intended title of this column. The topic was how to end a series since I'd just launched the eighth Callie Parrish mystery. thinking it might be Callie's final adventure.

Ring Around the Rosie, A SKULL FULL
OF POSIES is the eighth Callie Parrish
mystery, and I planned it to be the last.
Guests each received a new bookmark,
modeled on the right by a reader at the
the book signing.

I took the long way home from the launch and something happened that changed my mind about what to write.  I passed a familiar house.

This house was flipped back in 2010, but it's changed hands frequently since then. How much do the current residents know about the place?  Property values are based on more than location and physical condition. Real estate can be stigmatized by such things as phenomena stigma, public stigma, and murder/suicide stigma. This house would be classified as stigmatized.

Phenomena stigma refers to property "known to be haunted."  One famous case about this is Stambovsky v. Ackley.  Stambovsky sued Ackley because he bought property without knowing it had been featured in magazines as haunted.  He claimed this decreased the value and made the sale fraudulent.  The final decision in that case didn't determine the validity of the haunting, but the court did void the contract and refund Stambovsky's down payment.

749 15th Street, Boulder, Colorado, was 755 until 2001 when
owners requested a change of address from how it was known
when Jon Bonet Ramsey died there in 1996. The house has
changed hands frequently since the six-year-old's murder.

Murder/suicide stigma refers to property with decreased value because a murder or suicide has occurred there.  Milliken v. Jacono dealt with Milliken paying full value to Jacono for a house Jacono had bought far below market value because it had been the scene of a gruesome murder/suicide.  Randall Bell, a consultant on this case, had been involved in marketing the condo where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were killed as well as the Ramsey home where Jon Bonet died.

Jacono claimed Milliken should have researched the property before he bought it.  Milliken claimed he'd been cheated.  The court determined it would be impossible to determine the degree of loss of value from a murder or suicide in a home. Would it be greater based on the degree of violence of the murder? Would an ax killing decrease value more than a poisoning? They ruled in favor of Jacono. essentially "buyer beware." Perhaps prospective buyers should have structures inspected for termites and call Ghost Busters. Since then, many states now have laws requiring sellers to reveal murder/suicide property stigmas.

Known as the "Amityville Horror" house, the street number of
this house was also changed by new owners, but the place is
too well known for a different address to matter. It also goes
up for sale frequently.

To me, the house on Long Island where a man killed his parents and four siblings claiming "voices in the house" told him to do it, would be a case of both phenomena stigma and murder stigma, but when the situation is so well-known, there's a special name for it: public stigma.  Made famous as the Amityville Horror, this house is the perfect example of public stigmatized property in which the stigma is widely known. Another example is the home of the Menendez brothers.

In The Invention of Murder, Judith Flanders says, "Crime, especially murder, is very pleasant to think about in the abstract . . . to know that murder is possible, just not here." Flanders spends 555 pages telling how people in the 1800s satisfied their fascination with murder through serialized handbills, tours of murder sites (both real and simulated), and stage plays. That fascination remains.  It's evidenced in books, movies, and television shows from Murder She Wrote through How it Really Happened to Forensic Files (where insomniacs can watch murder after murder all night long.)

I've been reading murder mysteries since childhood, but in 2009 my lifelong best friend was brutally beaten to death during an in-home invasion.  Her death brought the harsh, painful realization that murder in reality is far different from fiction or even true crime books. I was asked after her death if I would write about her homicide. The answer was and remains an emphatic "NO!" When I discussed this SleuthSayers column with a friend, he asked, "Would you live in a stigmatized home?"

10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon near Beverly Hills,California, was so
stigmatized by the murders of Sharon Tate and four others by the Manson Family
in 1969 that it was completely demolished in 1994. Years later, David Oman
bought adjacent land and built a new house 150 feet from where this one had
been. He claimed the Manson victims haunted his new house and made a
movie about it in 2011.   

After my friend's death, I helped her daughter with the house.  That's when I learned that law enforcement officers don't tidy up after themselves.  I cleaned the black fingerprint powder off my friend's headboard and other furniture. Could I live in her house?  I wouldn't want to because it would be a constant reminder of the sadness of her loss.  Would I live in another stigmatized home?  I don't really know.

Thoughts of stigmatized property rose from passing my friend's house on the way home from my most recent launch.  Suddenly Callie popped into my mind with an idea for a ninth Callie Parrish mystery. It will involve stigmatized property but will not be about my friend or her home. I'll probably be back in a year or so to tell you about it.

How about you?  Would you live in a stigmatized house?

Until we meet again, please take care of … YOU!

Just Sitting Around

by Jan Grape

The other day I was just sitting around thinking about what to write for this blog. Nothing much came to mind immediately. But as luck would have it, sitting here finally gave me an idea. I'd ask some writers where they write. Do they have an office? Do they write at the dinning room table? Do they go to an actual office they rent in order to give themselves the atmosphere and the feel of a business. They need the business work place to feel the magic happen.

Through the magic of Facebook, I was able to find out how and where some writers work.

Fran Rizer, one of our Sleuthsayer family and writer the Callie Parrish books says: While I don't have an actual office, I do have a designated small room. I don't own a desk either. My computer and printer sit on an ornately carved Chinese table with a marble top. It came with a matching chair, but I use a standard roll-around office chair with arms, The table is beautiful when you can see it, which isn't often because it's usually cluttered with print-outs for proofing.

Bill Crider, who writes book in every genre but, probably best known for his Clearview, Texas Sheriff Dan Rhodes, (and for the 3 VBKs [very bad kittens] he rescued from a storm drain a little over a year ago and who have a huge following on Facebook and who were never really bad just little kittens.) Bill's upcoming Sheriff is titled, Dead To Begin With, due out in August, from Minotaur Books.

Yes, I have a office. When Judy was alive, she kept the door shut so visitors couldn't see inside. I keep it shut now because I don't want the cats to wander in and disappear. That gives you some idea of its condition. It was designed to be a small fourth bedroom, and it now holds bookshelves on three walls, some of them floor to ceiling crammed with thousands of old paperbacks. I have two computers, a printer, two scanners, an old TV set, a desk and various other items. There's not a lot of room to move around. Naturally, I love it.

Manning Wolfe, an Austin, Texas lawyer, and author of Dollar Signs, a legal mystery set in Austin says: Interesting you should ask about my office because I just re-did my space. We had Bill's mother's 1920's art deco dining room table in storage that I now use for my desk. I use both a desk top and a laptop. My picture window faces out to the patio and into the woods, I love it.


I also heard from Harlan Coben,  New York Times Best-selling Author of thirty mysteries and thrillers. Most recent out is Home and upcoming is Don't Let Go, due in late September from Dutton.
He says he doesn't have a work space, that he writes where ever he happens to be sitting. Outside, at the kitchen table, on an airplane, in a hotel room.

Brendan DuBois writes: Once at Bouchceron, I heard Sue Grafton say something to the effect that she's most happiest in her office. The same is true for me. It's my time machine, my dream machine, my own place where I can write, dream, and curse. I write on trips, I write on planes and trains, but my office is my special place. It has books, mementoes, and lots of memories. Oh, and lots of clutter! In its previous life, it was a teenage girl's bedroom before me and the missus moved in. We repainted it and now it's mine, with desk, filing cabinet, and lots of books and book cases.


Myself: I have an office, with a desk and a roll-around office chair with arms. Much like Fran described. However, I just couldn't be comfortable in there so I write sitting in my living room sofa using my laptop.

Now I'd like to hear from all of you. Tell me where and how the magic happens at your house or do you have to leave and go to an office?

Family

  Family Fortnight +   Following the International Day of Families on the 15^th of May, we bring you another article in a series about mystery writers’ view on families. Here’s Fran’s take on the family of her original character, Callie Parrish. Settle back and enjoy!

by Callie Parrish

When Leigh Lundin invited Fran Rizer to participate in Sleuth-sayers' celebration of families, she encouraged her older son, who is in law enforcement, to write the blog. He has a great fiction voice and has been published, but he declined. She consulted her younger son, who after teaching in Japan for years, returned state-side and now works in a nationally acclaimed library. He specializes in children's literature. Turned down again, Rizer asked her teenaged grandson. He replied, "Aw, G-Mama, just use the essay I did before."

What to do? Rizer considered writing about a true crime family like Ma Barker's brood, the James brothers, or any one of numerous others she Googled. In the end, she got busy, and like she's done most of the time since 2007 when the first of eight cozyesque mysteries about me was published, she shoved the writing off on me.

I'm Callie Parrish. After graduating from USC in Columbia, South Carolina, I married and was teaching kindergarten when my then husband did what he did that made me divorce him. He is NO longer part of my family. Robert Frost wrote, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." I came home to St. Mary, on the coast of South Carolina, where I was raised. (I know "reared" is the correct word, but we southerners don't always speak proper English.) Didn't take long living with my redneck father and most of my five older brothers, who also move back home between relationships and jobs, to convince me to get my own place.

My mother died giving birth to me, which is why I'm called Callie. Daddy got drunk, really drunk, after my mother died. When he filled out the papers, he tried to think feminine, which he equated to pink. He couldn't think of anything that color except the stuff folks put on poison oak rash. He named me Calamine Lotion Parrish, which is bad enough. Thank heaven he didn't think of Pepto Bismol.

Role playing at a book signing--left to right: Callie Parrish,
Fran Rizer, Jane Baker.

After my divorce, I realized I was tired of five-year-olds who wouldn't lie still for naptime. Back home, I used the SC Cosmetologist License I earned in high school voc ed to work at Middleton's Mortuary as a cosmetician (Funeraleze for cosmetologist). I like my work because my clients don't get up and run around, nor need to tee tee every five minutes.

Okay, so that's my immediate family--Daddy and five brothers, but to me, my family is much bigger. My bosses, Odell and Otis Middleton, are no longer identical as they were at birth. When they began losing hair, Otis got hair plugs; Odell shaved his head. Otis is a vegetarian who put a tanning bed in the prep room at the funeral home
--not for the dearly departed, but for his personal use. Odell is addicted to barbecue and weighs about forty pounds more than his twin. They treat me so well that I consider them family, also.

Jane Baker has been my best friend since ninth grade when she came back to St. Mary from boarding school. Some folks say Jane is visually challenged, but I call a spade a flippin' shovel. Jane is blind. She works as Roxanne, whom Jane describes as a "phone fantasy actress." What this means is she spends her nights on a 900 line to support herself without depending on anyone for transportation to and from a job. My other best friend, a gorgeous Gullah lady named Rizzie Profit, owns G-Three, which stands for Gastric Gullah Grill. Rizzie has a teenaged brother named Tyrone. I count Jane, Rizzie, Ty, and even Roxanne, as family, too.

To be truthful, and I try to be (most of the time), I used to be a little green-eyed about Jane and Rizzie. Both are better endowed than I am. Inflatable bras and padded fanny panties solve that problem for me.

I don't have any children (yet), but I do have a fur-baby, if you can call any animal his size a baby. That's him with me in my author photo above. When my brother's girlfriend gave me a puppy, I had no idea how large Great Dane dogs grow. Like Topsy, Big Boy just grew and grew and grew. He's an important part of my family, and it terrifies me when he's kidnapped in Ring Around the Rosie, A SKULL FULL OF POSIES, scheduled for publication in September, 2017.

Thank you for letting me introduce you to the most important people in my life. I consider all of them family. To paraphrase my favorite quotation about families: "Family are the people who love you when you're least lovable." The people I've told you about have definitely shown me love over the years, frequently when I probably didn't deserve it.

My employers are Otis and Odell Middleton, but Fran Rizer bosses all of us around. She told me to close with this true anecdote.

An adopted child asked his mother, "Do you love my sister more than me? She's your biological child, and blood is thicker than water."

The mom replied, "I love you both, and love is thicker than blood."

Fran Rizer with two friends who are like family to her.
Left is Richard D. Laudenslager, her collaborator on
SOUTHERN SWAMPS AND RUINS. Right is Gene
Holdway, her "partner in rhyme," with whom she
co-writes music. No, Rizer is not a "little person."
Her writing partners are both over six feet, three.

Until we meet again, take care of … YOU!

---

In addition to the Callie Parrish mystery series, Rizer's published works include KUDZU RIVER (a southern serial killer thriller), SOUTHERN SWAMPS AND RUINS (a collection of haunting tales in collaboration with Richard D. Laudenslager), and THE HORROR OF JULIE BATES.



PS - Happy birthday today, Rick.