Author Archives: Claire Hart-Palumbo

About Claire Hart-Palumbo

Former actress and theater director turned technical writer / instructional designer, has signed a three-book deal with Sibylline Press for her cozy mystery series, set in the Houston theater community. Loves Jane Austen, Noel Coward, cozy mysteries, SCBWI, and the beach.

Cultural References as Shorthand

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In one of my three critique groups, we came up against a common issue in all our writing—using cultural references that don’t work for everyone in your audience. By cultural references, I mean quotes or plot devices from movies, books, TV shows; popular actors or fictional characters; and popular slang.

A number of writing books suggest that using cultural references can be shorthand for communicating a lot about the character, situation, or place. The caution being that it not be too recent or too faddish. If you use the latest slang for your Middle Grade novel or the latest teen heartthrob in your YA novel, it will be dated by the time you get it to your agent, much less published.

A broad spectrum of people may recognize a reference to Jennifer Aniston in Friends, but a much narrower group will understand a reference to Luke Perry in 90210. My PBS-watching friends all quote Downton Abbey, but only a few would recognize quotes from the equally iconic Upstairs, Downstairs.

Sticking to the classics seems to trump the popular. A quote from Jane Austen or Hemingway is probably going to appeal to a wider audience than a quote from Harlan Coben or Janet Evanovich, no matter how many bestsellers they write. The same goes for classic movies, but be careful about assumed knowledge. One of our group is writing a book heavily steeped in Hollywood history and legend, with both real and fictional characters. We occasionally have to remind him that a quote without attribution either in dialog or POV commentary sails right over our heads and makes us feel ignorant. Not what you want your reader to experience.

I thought I was bulletproof when I likened the office of my heroine’s divorce attorney to Sam Spade’s office in The Maltese Falcon. One of the group, who is British-born of Indian descent innocently asked, “Is Maltese Falcon a song?” It served as a reminder that American popular culture is not globally recognized.

I was mystified when her main character acted on her desire to escape an abusive marriage and a life-threatening situation by going shopping with her husband’s credit cards. I didn’t see how it moved the action forward or solved her problem. She patiently explained that upper class women in Indian society were generally submissive and meek and this was seriously acting out. I immediately flashed to the hotelier mother in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I don’t know if either extreme is commonly true of Indian women these days, but I recognize that I am culturally illiterate when it comes to this part of our society and readership.

Paperless? Bah!

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Have you had to access a college transcript or expired license lately?

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The digital age has everyone putting more and more of their lives on their computer, in the cloud, or on an e-reader. I love the simplicity of email and digital submissions to agents. I get my tax refund electronically, and do most of my banking that way. Digital books have completely changed the publishing industry. But, it is very hard for me to make the total digital plunge. I like my digital devices, but give me the plump woody page and inky smell of a pristine new book any day.

I’ve kept paper files for too long. As a young actress doing temp work, a sage executive secretary (they still called them that then) taught me to make triplicate copies of everything and file them under different categories so I could always lay my hands on the information. She was way ahead of meta tagging.

The cloud scares me. It feels like smoke signals. A computer backup company I once subscribed to sent me a notice to pay them a ransom or allow them to destroy my files, without letting me see if they were important!

Back to transcripts. Some teaching applications require electronic copies of transcripts from every college you attended—just to get an interview. If they hire you, you pay to have certified copies sent directly from the university to the hiring school. Unfortunately, none of my three alma maters provide electronic copies. While each is different, the process seems to be:

Look up school website to get a phone number.
Call to get an ID to access online site.
Go online and order a transcript.
Pay online:
- To pay by credit card, pay extra.
- To save money, give them all the tiny numbers on the check they won’t let you use.
- To get it quick, pay through the nose or another orifice.
School creates a paper copy of your digitized (often lengthy) files.
School sends paper copy of the transcript by mail.
Drive the paper transcript to a copy store and make an electronic copy.
Put it on your thumb drive, or better yet email it to yourself.
Download the electronic copy to your computer.
Upload the electronic copy to the school application site.

Sometimes trying to save a little paper ends up costing a whole bunch of money.

Cleaning House & Updating CVs

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If I have a deer in the headlights expression it’s because I’ve been reminded of something important.

You know how it helps to pick up after yourself as you go along, so cleaning day doesn’t become so overwhelming. I thought maintaining my resume as a technical writer was a necessary evil. But I haven’t updated my teaching curriculum vitae in awhile. What a pain!

Some of you may know that I taught at Lone Star College on two campuses for over fifteen years. I let my adjunct classes go when my mother was diagnosed with bone cancer. It was just one too many things to concentrate on and I felt I wasn’t giving my students my full attention. I’ve talked to Ron Jones replacement at CyFair campus (who seems very nice) about starting to teach a class again. Unfortunately, after two years my records in their system have ‘gone away’. So I have to do the whole application process again.

I love teaching, but I’d forgotten what an arduous process this can be. Still it’s a good idea to periodically go in and update my records of past jobs and theater work in one comprehensive place. So I’ll try to think of this as a periodic ‘cleaning house’, and resolve to regularly maintain the darn thing.

I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said you should “do one thing that scares you every day.”

Onward and upward!

Reading Louise Penney’s ‘A Great Reckoning’

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As you know, when not writing you need to be reading. I try to read the spectrum of mystery fiction. But I have my favorites. This weekend I got to read the much anticipated twelfth book in Louise …

Source: Reading Louise Penney’s ‘A Great Reckoning’

Reading Louise Penney’s ‘A Great Reckoning’

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On back-order for several months, it arrived as I left for Bouchercon, where I picked up three bags of books to read. But this one stayed at the top of my pile.

Fans will know that Armand Gamache is the former Chief Inspector of the Homicide division for the Sûreté du Québec. Having almost died cleaning up the corruption in the famed police force, he has retired to the sleepy village of Three Pines, which figures greatly in most of the books. Seemingly recovered but bearing the scars, both mental and physical, he passes up grandiose positions to become the new Commander of the Sûreté Academy. It is the last bastion of the evil and decay that almost overwhelmed the division. In what seems an act of insanity, he brings two of his fiercest enemies onto the faculty. The struggle for hearts and minds inevitably leads to a murder and the investigation that targets him as a suspect gradually peels away layers of scandal that shock even Gamache.

Penney skillfully intertwines the central story with a historical thread, following a mysterious map through twists and turns worthy of Dan Brown. But, as always, it is the finely, almost poetically-drawn characters and the rich heritage of Québec that holds us riveted, not the tightly structured plot.

If you are a novice to this fabulous Canadian author, sprint to your nearest used bookstore to find the first book of the series, Still Life. It is not always available at your local box store. Begin at the beginning and follow the twists and turns of the progressive relationships between the varied and wonderful cast of her books. No one stands still; they all grow and evolve, and make terribly human mistakes. My only small disappointment in this book was that Clara, the resident artist of Three Pines played so small a role.

Fans of Louise Penney will know that the release of the last two books were somewhat delayed by the onset and increasingly devastating dementia of her husband, Michael. That she can still write such beautiful prose while coping with this is extraordinary. It is especially poignant since many of Gamache’s most endearing qualities are those she based on her beloved husband.

Cue the Murder

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The door slapped shut in my face. The bus lumbered forward, belching its obnoxious toxic diesel fumes. Picking up the pace, I banged on the door, but the driver flogged the bus through the first three gears. I caught a glimpse of his slight smile in the rear view mirror as it picked up speed. My vintage Samsonite case chose that moment to break at the hinge.

Public transportation really sucked! I worked five jobs and had a schedule like a stack of Mah Jong tiles—pull one out and the whole pile crashes. Being dependent on Metro left no margin for error in my life. Especially, when I’d just learned I was being laid off of job number three.

I teetered on the edge of tears, but I was too furious and too out of breath. Bent over double, a projection of the Milky Way danced across the back of my eyelids. I thought I might throw up.

A compact sedan turned off Kirby and pulled up to the curb beside me. The electric window glided down with a mechanical whisper. I looked into grey-blue eyes and the concerned face of a blondish man in his late thirties or early forties. “Are you OK? Do you need a lift?”

I’m not the naïve kid that moved to Houston from the sticks. I know better than to get into a strange car. But his was a nice face. Not beautiful, not rugged, but really nice.

And I was really pissed. Continue reading →