Chapter Member
Spotlight Profile
February 1999
Chapter MemberSpotlight Profile
February 1999
L.L. Thrasher --
Author,
Steering Committee member,
and PR Director
L.L. Thrasher is the pseudonym for Linda Baty, who when first the desire struck, wrote a private eye novel and hit a home run right out of the box. Her first book, Cat's Paw, Inc., is a delight. But success is not easy in this business and discouragement followed. However, Linda continued writing and has had two subsequent books published. Talent doesn't always guarantee an easy road. Despite a full time job, parental responsibilities, and her writing career, Linda stepped up and volunteered for the role of SinC-IC PR Director. A most time consuming job as prior PR Directors might attest. Anyone taking on SinC-IC PR is most definitely a hero in her own right. When asked for a selection of prose to kick off the interview, Linda chose not her own writing, but that of her children. How about that!
Written by Nathan Baty when he was eleven:
IC
These are wonderful. And their significance to you is?
Linda
I chose my children's writings because raising them is the only thing I've ever done that I don't wish I'd done differently. Nathan and Susan are aware of their potential; they have no fear of taking risks, of expressing their thoughts, their dreams, their fears. I grew up quite differently. Being able to overcome my own limitations to allow my children to fly free is the best thing I've ever done.
IC
What prompted your interest in SinC-IC?
Linda
I've been a member of the national organization since 1991, and was a member of the Chicago Chapter for a couple years, then joined the Ohio River Valley Chapter, which I still belong to although Kentucky is a bit of a commute from Oregon so I don't attend meetings. I belong to the Harriet Vane Chapter in Portland but my work schedule conflicts with the meetings, so when my husband gave me the Internet for a Christmas present a couple years ago, I immediately joined the Internet Chapter, which I'd read about in the national newsletter. It's perfect for me: a chapter that adapts itself to my schedule and requires no driving on dark, rainy nights.
IC
Who was your favorite grade school teacher and why?
Linda
I didn't have one. I have no fond memories of any teacher, from grade school through high school. I doubt that it was really the teachers' fault. Teachers intimidated me, scared me, and embarrassed me. Fortunately they also ignored me most of the time because I was quiet and did the work without any trouble. I was pretty much invisible, which suited me just fine. I didn't want to draw attention to myself and have the teacher notice that my shoes were falling apart or ask why I was squinting at the blackboard when I was already sitting in the front row. I seldom attended the same school for an entire year so it was easy to stay invisible.
IC
When you were ten years old what did you want to be when you grew up?
Linda
Someone else.
IC
Do you ever make grammatical mistakes and, if so, which one is your nemesis?
Linda
I certainly make my fair share of typos and careless errors and I would love to be able to rewrite Cat's Paw, Inc. and fix the punctuation, but most of the "mistakes" I make in writing are ones that are mistakes only to people who feel language shouldn't change, people who insist on "whom" when the result is a sentence that doesn't sound like contemporary American English, who believe it's wrong to end a sentence with a preposition. One nice thing about writing first person narratives is that the language is conversational rather than formal so you don't feel compelled to write stilted sentences in order to prove that you know the rules. I love the English language. I completed a minor in linguistics in college, and at one point considered making it my major, but it seemed too impractical. So I ended up with a degree in speech pathology, a field I worked in for five years before giving it up for full-time parenting.
IC
What types of books did you read for pleasure when you were a teenager?
Linda
Most of the books I read were from school libraries so the selection was pretty limited. I liked historical novels best, books about Elizabeth I or Mary, Queen of Scots, that sort of thing. The book I remember best is one I bought with money I earned babysitting when I was in junior high school. It was a paperback copy of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. It cost fifty cents, if I remember correctly -- that was two hours of babysitting back then -- and I kept it for at least twenty years, until it fell completely apart.
IC
What is your least favorite food?
Linda
Green olives. People tell me that's because I always forget to wrap a martini around them.
IC
How did Cat's Paw, Inc. come about?
Linda
I was in my thirties when I married and had children. I made a decision to stay home while the kids were young and it was during that time that I became a fan of mysteries. I'm not suggesting that spending twenty-four hours a day in the company of children makes you develop a taste for murder, really I'm not. It's just that I found mysteries were fast-paced and easy to read, and I could concentrate on them while the kids were watching Mr. Rogers change his shoes. Every once in a while I read a mystery that was so bad I'd think "I could do better than this." After a few years of telling myself that, I went to the Goodwill store and bought a little manual typewriter for ten dollars and started writing. Cat's Paw, Inc. was the first fiction I ever wrote, if you don't count one truly awful children's book written in very bad rhyme. I also had a little fantasy back then that if I could get a book published I wouldn't have to cope with going back to work. Dream on! In the last ten years I've been a grocery bagger, assistant director of a day care center, library clerk/typist, teacher's aide, school secretary, and now I'm the Youth Services Librarian at a small public library.
IC
Did you spend much time on the streets of Portland observing the underlife to come up with such a charming and vulnerable character as Nikki in Cat's Paw, Inc.?
Linda
No, Nikki is completely a figment of my imagination. I moved from Oregon to Illinois shortly after I started the book, so first-hand research was a bit difficult. I hadn't lived in Portland, but in smaller towns in the area, and my visits to Portland were mostly to take the kids to the zoo or a museum. I also lived for a couple years in Pendleton, which is in eastern Oregon where Zachariah Smith's home town, Mackie, is located. Mackie is a fictional town, which is really handy because if I need a forest at the edge of town, I just create one.
IC
Did Zachariah O'Brien Smith spring full blown as we see him in Cat's Paw, Inc. or did he evolve as you thought about and began writing the book?
Linda
Zachariah became less of a tough guy as the book progressed so I had to do some rewriting of the parts I'd written first. I think I tried too hard to make him sound like other male private eyes in books I'd read. Eventually I just let him sound like himself, and that worked out much better. Writing Cat's Paw, Inc. is how I learned to write fiction. I had never taken a writing class -- still haven't, as a matter of fact -- and really had no idea what I was doing. After I started working on the book, I went to a library and found out there are actually books and magazines that discuss the writing process and I checked them out and learned about point of view and transitions and internal dialogue and all kinds of other fascinating things that I had never heard of before.
IC
Some say that one should answer all questions, end all puzzles, by the end of a book. In Cat's Paw, Inc. you left one question unanswered. Much like life. I've two questions: do you remember what that puzzle is (without giving it away, here) and has anyone asked for an answer?
Linda
You must mean the April situation. No one has ever asked me for the answer, but I have been asked many times for reassurance that I'm going to explain it someday. If things had worked out differently, there would be five or six books in the series by now, and I'm sure the question would have been answered. I actually have two different scenarios in mind, and I'm not sure which one I'll use, but I plan to make up my mind in time for the fourth book in the series.
IC
You wrote Charlie's Bones after Cat's Paw, Inc. I see that you now have a follow-on to Cat's Paw, Inc. namely Dogsbody, Inc. due soon. Why the intervening book? Was it an oddity of the publishing world or planned that way?
Linda
I love that: "an oddity of the publishing world." Yes, I'd say that's what it was. I finished the book that's now titled Dogsbody, Inc. less than a year after Cat's Paw, Inc. was published. The publisher had been interested in a sequel but then they reorganized and cut their mystery line completely. Two agents gave up on it and I didn't have any better luck when I submitted it myself. Finally Write Way bought it after buying Charlie's Bones.
IC
Charlie's Bones protagonist is a female, whereas Cat's Paw, Inc. (and Dogsbody, Inc.) has a male protagonist. Both are in first person. Did you have any difficulty switching point of view?
Linda
No, my characters pretty much just pop up in my mind and, to me at least, the main characters have very strong voices. All I have to do is listen to them. I actually find the Zachariah Smith books easier to write. That's partly because I have to deal with that pesky ghost in the Lizbet Lange series, but also because Lizbet is so much younger than I am that I have to watch it or she starts developing middle-aged attitudes. I did make a conscious decision not to have her use a lot of current slang, which might have made her sound more like a member of Generation X but would also date the books rapidly. Instead, her speech is just casual and chatty and I think it works well.
IC
Charlie's Bones has been described as a "supernatural mystery" inasmuch as the twenty-three year old protagonist, within whose backyard Charlie Bilbo's bones are found, is enlisted by his ghost to resolve his 1969 murder. Combining supernatural with mystery some may have thought a risky venture. Yet Charlie's Bones has been successful, going into a third printing. Did you think it risky when you began?
Linda
I didn't consider risk at all because I wrote it with no real expectation of selling it. It had been years since Cat's Paw, Inc. was published and I hadn't been able to sell the second book in that series, or anything else, not even a short story. I actually stopped writing fiction and started working on two nonfiction books with a co-author. Neither has sold yet but I haven't given up on them. I missed writing fiction though. One day I sat down and wrote a paragraph and I liked Lizbet's voice so I wrote a little more. Charlie was just supposed to be the name of a dead man whose murder Lizbet would solve. But on the second page Charlie suddenly said, "Hello, Lizbet" and there I was, stuck with a ghost. I was having fun so I just kept going. It wasn't an easy sell, though. Charlie's Bones was rejected by quite a few publishers before I had the good fortune to contact Dorrie O'Brien of Write Way about an unrelated matter. I figured it never hurts to ask, so I mentioned Charlie's Bones to her and she agreed to take a look at it, and then she bought it -- almost six years after my first mystery was published.
IC
You've had many differing job experiences. Telephone operator, postal clerk, police dispatcher, etc. Tell us the most memorable aspects of these jobs.
Linda
First, you should know we're talking about the olden days -- 1964 to 1972 was when I had those jobs, and I can't imagine how you even know about them. Oh, I remember, it's on the back cover of Cat's Paw, Inc., isn't it? The only memorable thing about being a telephone operator is that my older sister and I both worked for the telephone company in San Jose, California, and in about 1966 she was asked to resign because she showed up at work one day wearing culottes -- a divided skirt. That was too close to pants for the people in charge. She refused to sign the resignation papers and threatened to file a grievance with the union. She kept her job.Postal clerk was a tedious job, but it paid better than the phone company. I sorted letters into cubbyholes. I quit because I was being transferred to the graveyard shift and I didn't have a car and there was no bus service to get me to work at midnight. I was young and thought I'd get another job right away. Wrong! I ended up unemployed for almost a year and survived by doing odd jobs -- picking walnuts, picking apricots, painting houses, washing moldy refrigerators for a repairman. I tell my children things like this and they look at me like I'm crazy.
Police dispatcher -- now there's a memorable job. I can still repeat verbatim the radio transmissions from a few hot chases and armed robberies in progress. Very stressful job, but there was seldom a dull moment. I did it for almost four years. I quit in order to complete my fifth year of college, which I needed for a teaching certificate. In reality, it was my ninth year of college since it took me eight years to get a bachelor's degree.
IC
You also write essays and short stories. The essay, "The Blink of an Eye" at your web site, is most powerful in that it is as if one is experiencing the incident with the writer. She is the center: seeing, hearing, and thinking. It sounds true. Is it?
Linda
Oh, yes, it's completely autobiographical. Believe it or not, I'm still driving that '86 Nissan. It happened on Fort Knox, Kentucky, in 1993. I was on the way to a store with my daughter, Susan, who was eleven years old then. I wrote the essay because I couldn't stop thinking about the incident, not as it really happened but as it might have happened. I kept imagining worst-case scenarios, all of them involving the maiming or death of my daughter -- a self-induced nightmare, the sort of baseless dread many parents experience. I found that writing about it exorcised the demon; once I set it down on paper I could let it go. I never planned to try to publish it, I just wrote it for myself, but a few months ago I decided to put it on my webpage. You're the first person who has ever mentioned it.
IC
A story I won't soon forget is "Sacrifice" (Murderous Intent Mystery Magazine, Summer/Fall 1998). Was it your first short story?
Linda
It wasn't the first one I wrote, but it's the only one I've sold. My short stories tend to be too long for most publications. I rewrote "Sacrifice" a dozen times at least, cutting it each time. I really haven't written many short stories. I tend to start them and never finish. Short stories are, well, short, so I figure out how they're going to end pretty quick and I lose interest. I have the same problem with novels. I really have to force myself to write the last fifty or so pages. By then I know everything that's going to happen and writing it down just seems boring. Since I don't plot in advance, I never really know exactly what's going to happen. That's what I like most about writing fiction -- discovering what happens next.
IC
Where did you go when you were upset as a child? Did you have a "secret place"?
Linda
My secret place was in my mind. I had a very active imagination and made up stories in my head all the time, and not just as a child. I used to wonder if maybe I was crazy because I was always making up complex daydreams -- always about someone else, never myself -- and I went into great detail, working out elaborate backgrounds and plots. I was in my middle forties before I realized that I wasn't crazy, I was a writer. At least I think that's true.
IC
If you had been born a man how would your life have differed?
Linda
I have two sisters and originally had three brothers, although only two are living now. I've always thought that our similarities are far more striking than our differences. So if I had been born male but from the same gene pool I don't really think my life would have differed much, other than in rather superficial ways. After high school I probably would have gone into construction work or joined the service like my brothers did, rather than becoming a telephone operator, but I think we experienced similar limitations and had similar opportunities. I think our options were determined less by gender than by economics. We came from a poor family in which education beyond high school wasn't considered an option. My younger sister is finally going to college -- in her forties -- but until she started I was the only one of my generation -- meaning my siblings and more than two dozen cousins -- who ever went to college, and who ever had a job that would be called "professional".
IC
If you were Alice, and fell down the Rabbit Hole, what would you do?
Linda
I suspect if it happened today I'd panic. Doesn't say much about my spirit of adventure, does it? But who would take care of my children while I was gone? Their father would, of course, and quite capably, and Nathan and Susan would be quick to point out that they aren't children anymore, they're teenagers, for Pete's sake, but I'd still be worried about them while I was down in the rabbit hole. If it had happened when I was a child, I'd probably have been glad to go, although I doubt that I'd have had the courage Alice did. She talked back to the caterpillar and stood up to the Queen of Hearts. I couldn't have done that.
IC
You are now the SinC-IC PR Director. Have your views changed any now that you are on the inside looking out?
Linda
I have much more appreciation for what the behind-the-scenes people do and the tremendous amount of time and energy they put into it. Volunteers are hard to come by even when you're dealing face-to-face, and I think it's even harder in cyberspace. I agreed to take on the PR job when Barbara Paul asked me because I felt a little guilty about being in the chapter and not helping out at all. It's very time-consuming, and like everyone else I don't have much spare time. It has taken me a while just to figure out who's who and what I'm expected to do, but there are some good people helping out and I think we'll end up with a good PR program.
IC
What's your favorite stuffed animal?
Linda
My daughter's teddy bear, Cuddles. She's had him for fifteen years and he's always good for a hug.
IC
Who was your hero when you were a child?
Linda
I wasn't a very deep thinker as a child. My heroes were probably Mighty Mouse and Superman -- George Reeves in the old black-and-white TV series. If I'd been asked this question at school, I'd have gone with a safe answer: Abraham Lincoln or Helen Keller, someone like that.
IC
Who is your hero now?
Linda
It's hard to find heroes among the current crop of famous people, I think because we know too much about them. True heroes need a bit of mystique, they need to be larger than life. Will Rogers said it best: "Heroing is one of the shortest-lived professions there is." Among the people I've known personally, my brother Gregory is one I'd call a hero. By the time he was thirty he had lost his sight, his kidneys, and one leg, but he never lost his sense of humor. He died when he was thirty-eight.
IC
Three doors are before you. You must open one of them. The doors are colored, respectively, blue, red, and green. Which one would you open and why?
Linda
Uh-oh. This sounds like one of those questions that's going to reveal the deepest, darkest recesses of my psyche. Let's see, red is rage, green is jealously, blue is depression. I refuse to admit to any of them. I'd open the blue door because it's such a pretty color.
IC
What thought would you like to leave with our visitors?
Linda
To the readers, bless you. To the booksellers and librarians, thank you. To the writers, keep those good books coming. To all my Siblings in Crime, thanks for providing the best support system a writer could ask for.
L. L. Thrasher was interviewed during the month of January 1999 by Louise Guardino.
L.L. Thrasher Louise Guardino
Read an earlier Spotlight Profile.
