: Camille Minichino – The Real Me

Busy, busy

Filed Under : Personal, Uncategorized by Camille

Jun.8,2017

Do you know any busy people? Are you one of them?

Here’s my pet peeve (and by now you know it has nothing to do with physical pets): people who are busier than you, no matter what. They’re the people who can force you into exaggerating your own busyness just not to lose the busy battle. Or maybe I’m the only one who responds that way when someone tries to convince me that he’s the busiest person in the world (BPIW).

My father used to say: he’s the kind of guy, if you’ve got a bottle, he’s got a case.

I think that translates nicely into what I mean.

You can have 5 classes to teach, 4 deadlines to meet, and a marathon to run, but BIPW will best you every time. “I’m doing all that, AND I’m expected in New Zealand any minute,” he’ll say. To which I’m tempted to respond, “I just got back from there and I’m packing for Greenland.”

I never like myself when I get into that mode of claiming to be a BPIW. It makes me tense about my life and my projects. I’d rather take it easy and think how lucky I am to have many things to do, instead of trying to impress people with my to-do list. That’s what happened last week when a friend came for lunch and announced, “I can’t stay very long. I’m very busy.” No, I didn’t say, “Sorry to keep you from your busyness,” or whip out my own to-do list. But I wanted to.

I had a colleague once who was a BPIW and also a BMIW (busiest mother in the world.) If I came into the office with a new jacket, she’d moan about how she’d love a new jacket, but she had to feed her children. If I went to a movie, she’d complain that she hasn’t had time for a movie since her twins were born. The only way I got her to stop was to confront her with, “Gee, BMIW, you make me very happy I never had children. I’m so sorry you weren’t so lucky.”

Here’s a paraphrase of one of my favorite cartoons: God is on a cell phone, saying “I’m sorry, I can’t. I have to be everywhere.”

Now, that’s busy.

Comments

Top Scenic Views

Filed Under : Personal Favorites by Camille

Jun.1,2017

Recently, on TheLadyKillers, we were asked to post about SCENIC VIEWS.

No problem for me. I know that some people love mountains for themselves, but I think of them as raw material for buildings.

What is scenic for me has to involve human creativity — using the stuff of the universe to create something beautiful. A few examples:

The New York Public Library, home to 53.1 million items.

Grand Central Terminal.

From a room with a view: 42nd St.

As you see, like Woody Allen, I am 2 with nature.

Comments

A Special Architecture

Filed Under : Books, Miniatures by Camille

May.25,2017

A few weeks ago, I got a query from a blogger for the Eichler Network. (Yes, Eichler owners are networked.) He’d heard that the protagonist in my Miniature Mysteries, Gerry Porter, lived in an Eichler, and would I be willing to do an interview on how, why, etc. Eichler? Of course I would.

Briefly: When I planned the series based on a miniaturist who builds dollhouses, I thought she should have an architect for a husband, and she should live in a special kind of house. My good friend, author Margaret Hamilton, had just moved into an Eichler home a couple of miles from me. Perfect!

If you’ve never seen an Eichler, you’re in for a treat. The floor plan is built around this model, with variations, but the main feature is an atrium with plants of your choice and a skylight that can be rolled back to the open sky.

The phone interview with blogger David Weinstein resulted in this fun blog, complete with photos, where all questions are answered.

Comments

Doing a Nickel

Filed Under : Personal, crime by Camille

May.18,2017

Where nickels and dimes are spent.

It’s nothing new, but here I am again, confessing that in the ’70s, I did a nickel at a women’s prison in Massachusetts. (If you’re not a TV crime drama junkie like me, you may not know that “a nickel” means a 5-year sentence.)

I did the whole nickel, no parole. My accomplices served with me.

For 5 years, two other Sisters and I traveled from Boston to the outskirts of Massachusetts once a week, to bring college to selected inmates. Our crime, you might say, was the desire to teach—anyone, anywhere, anything.

Sister AC, a crackerjack English professor worked with the women to produce a newsletter. Sister JM, an art teacher, lugged supplies through the gray halls and led a drawing workshop. I taught math for GED prep.

Our students were mostly young women and mostly serving time for prostitution and/or drugs. They were in a medium-security prison, usually with sentences of a dime or less. Their stories are for another time. This is about their jailers.

Some days were scarier than others—not because of the inmates, but because of the administrators. I can still picture the female warden who ran the place. Her wardrobe was less colorful than the prisoners’ uniforms; her manner more dour. She did everything she could to discourage us and to let us know we were Nothing But a Nuisance to her and her guards. They had to bother inspecting our bags, unlocking the gates, unlocking the classroom, ushering the students to the room. And then reverse the process 3 hours later.

I remember one day, let’s say it was a Tuesday. We arrived as usual, after about an hour’s drive, ready to be searched, growled at, grudgingly admitted.

“Nuh-uh,” the guard said. “No classes today.”

“Why not?”

He gave us a duh gesture. “Today’s a holiday. It’s the 4^th of July.”

Of course we knew that, but figured our students probably wouldn’t be with the free people, sitting by the Charles River watching fireworks while the Boston Pops belted out the 1812 Overture.

“The students are here, right?” Sister AC, the senior member asked.

“Yeah, they’re here.”

“And it’s Tuesday,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Class day,” Sister JM said, hoisting her art supplies onto the inspection table.

“You people are a nuisance,” the guard said.

We smiled and went to work.

We learned a lot during our nickel. Enough to convince us to go straight.

Comments

Who doesn’t love a Yogi quote?

Filed Under : Personal, Personal Favorites by Camille

May.11,2017

I love to celebrate birthdays, even when I’ve never met the person.

YOGI BERRA’S birthday is this week (May 12, 1925- September 22, 2015). I’m not a baseball fan, but I used to be. In case I haven’t mentioned it often enough: one of my first publications was in a baseball magazine, the story of my devastation when the Braves left Boston in the early 1950’s, the first major league team to leave its hometown.

I have a soft spot in my heart for all the old Braves — remember “Spahn, Sain, and pray for rain” — but also for the Yankees, just because they’re New York. And who has more brilliant quotes than that famous Yankee, Yogi Berra:

• You can observe a lot just by watching.

• When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

• You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.

• It was impossible to get a conversation going; everybody was talking too much.

• A nickel isn’t worth a dime today.

• Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.

• Do you mean now? (When asked for the time.)

• You give 100 % in the first half of the game, and if that isn’t enough, in the second half you give what’s left.

• I always thought that record would stand until it was broken.”

• If the fans don’t come out to the ball park, you can’t stop them.

I know I should have shortened this list, but, to quote Yogi:

I didn’t really say everything I said.

Comments

Cinco de Mayo

Filed Under : Personal, Writing by Camille

May.4,2017

Tomorrow, May 5, is Cinco de Mayo. I realize all I’ve done here is translate the date into Spanish, but the date has a special place in my writing heart.

In my first book, The Hydrogen Murder (1997), I have my protagonist say the following:

Besides the changing seasons, another thing about the east coast that I’d missed were holidays like Patriot’s Day on April 19 and Bunker Hill Day on June 17. Berkeley parking meters called October 12 ‘Indigenous Peoples Day,’ and California residents in general emphasized a different set of holidays, like Mexican Independence Day on May 5, and Admission Day on September 9.

It’s changed in later editions – how many of you know why?

DUH. Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day. Mexican Independence Day is on September 16. I found this out the hard way – from a professor at a college in Mexico City. The woman was not too pleasant about it, and who could blame her? Just like a gringa, she wrote in an email, and I could almost hear the disgust in her voice.

I wonder what the parallel would be for the United States. Calling the Battle of Gettysburg (1863) “American Independence Day?”

I learned my lesson and have never made the “Mexican Independence Day” error again, even though I don’t know anyone who celebrates on September 16.

If you don’t know, Cinco de Mayo is observed to commemorate the Mexican Army’s unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862.

So much harder to write on a cake; no wonder I made a mistake.

Comments

Travels with Camille

Filed Under : Books, Personal by Camille

Apr.27,2017

Revere Beach, where it all began

If scheduling works out, I’ll be in Bethesda, MD when you’re reading this. Maryland is on my short list of places I’m willing to travel to.

I’ve never been a traveler. I was nearly 40 years old when I first traveled west of the Hudson River. I’ve never wanted to go somewhere just to go there, or just to see something different. I’m one of those Yankees who believes everything anyone needs by way of art, science, and culture is on the Eastern seaboard, in the triumvirate of Boston-NYC-Washington DC. Maybe a little side trip to Philadelphia. That’s enough concentrated diversity, not to mention weather, to satisfy me.

But eventually work and other issues sent me traveling around the country.

And who doesn’t have this kind of travel story: sleeping on the linoleum at Chicago’s O’Hare in the middle of a blizzard; being stuck in the smoking section (years ago) as if there really is a difference between yes- and no- when you’re all in a cabin 30000+ feet up; inspecting a nuclear power plant in a town where “good restaurant” means a choice of vending machines in the lobby of a motel with a number in its name, the kind of establishment where you sleep with your clothes on and your purse under your pillow.

Luggage lost, luggage stolen. (Picture hand across brow here): I’ve seen it all.

I wonder why I’ve never given any of my characters a bad travel experience—except for one fender bender in New York City. Maybe because I think every reader would be able to say: I’ve been there, and I can top that.

In fact, my characters have hardly traveled at all—another one of the ways authors insert themselves into characters without being aware of it.

It took four books to get Gloria Lamerino of the Periodic Table series out of Revere, Massachusetts. It took eight books for Geraldine Porter of the Miniature Mysteries to leave fictional Lincoln Point, California. Sophie Knowles of the Professor Sophie Knowles mysteries stayed put in Massachusetts through all four books, as does Cassie Miller of the Postmistress series. (Jaunts to New Hampshire hardly count as travel.)

In theory, it would be very interesting to put a character in a different locale from their original setting. We’d get a chance to see what happens to her in a new environment, how she reacts to things she’s not used to: unfamiliar weather and culture, the idiosyncrasies of regional language.

Come to think of it, I’d love to see how the coastal Gloria would fare in Montana, how Geraldine would do in Nebraska, how Sophie would adapt to Texas, how Cassie might enjoy the US Postal Museum in Washington DC.

I’m talking myself into a whirlwind tour with my protagonists. What kind of luggage will they have, how will they dress?

It will work, as long as I don’t have to go with them.

Comments

“It’s a Puzzlement,” Yul Brynner, c. 1956

Filed Under : Personal by Camille

Apr.20,2017

A favorite piece of costume jewelry

Yes, another puzzle blog. This time with droodles.

Here are a couple of my favorites, so you may have seen them on my other blogs.

An easy one: ORSEMAN

And a little more tricky one: GESG, GSEG, GGES

And really tricky: O ER T O

I’ve been a puzzler (some say, I’ve been “puzzling,” and that may also be true) all my life. It started with math, where every day’s homework was a puzzle. For algebra: If one train leaves a station in Chicago going 30 miles an hour, and another train . . . For geometry or trig: Given two sides of a triangle …

I loved those problems, which to me were just games and puzzles. And I wrote a series in which the protagonist creates puzzles for a magazine.

We often hear that mysteries are like jigsaw puzzles, that writers and readers enjoy putting the pieces together, ending up with a satisfying solution, much like turning 1500 jagged pieces into a reproduction of Monet’s Water Lilies.

In a way. But mysteries have to be more challenging than that. It’s too easy when all the pieces are piled up with one brisk dump from the box, and what’s required is simply to sort them and fit them together to match the picture on the cover of the box.

In a good “whodunit” mystery, there are many sets of clues that unfold: some are hidden in plain sight, some are subtly presented, some not; some are within the character profiles and arcs, the setting, or the plot. These mysteries are solved not by simply putting a given number of known pieces together, but by first sorting out the pieces that matter from the ones that don’t. Maybe there are a couple of red herrings; maybe there are no herrings of any color.

I’ve seen jigsaw puzzles where the manufacturer has deliberately included extra pieces that don’t belong in the scene. Similarly, there are the crossword puzzles that are diagramless. No black squares give us the word length; we have to figure that out ourselves.

Those puzzles are more like the great mysteries, where the clue is that the dog did not bark or the answer has been in the letter on the mantel all along.

Sometimes I worry that I’m wasting time with the morning acrostic, or the Sunday NY Times crossword.

Is it enriching my life that I’ve learned a new word (predacious: predatory, plundering) or factoid (molasses is an ingredient of rum)?

I take my response from no less a puzzle figure than Erno Rubik (b. 1944), sculptor, architect, and inventor of the Rubik’s cube (patent, 1975). He has this to say: “The problems of puzzles are very near the problems of life, our whole life is solving puzzles.”

Some of us get more practice than others.

All this talk about puzzles. Let’s do one more. A cryptoquote:

B SZ MYU MA CVMFU EVM CVBYW JBWU YMNUJ, CVSC VRZSYBCL EBJJ HXSE ZMXU TMMH CVSY UOBJ AXMZ YUE HBFPMOUXBUF. – ZSXBU PRXBU

Of course, there will be a drawing. Send answer to camille.minichino@gmail.com

Comments