Spotlight Profile
September 2001
This month we meet Bengta Boydstrom ... if we can find her. Ah ... there she is, hiding her light under a bushel.
Our member in September's Spotlight ditched her Manhattan lifestyle recently for the rural life in upstate New York, a return to her roots. She has time now to write, to hug a tree if she wants to, and to tilt at bulldozers.
Bengta's alter ego and boon companion in all this is Robin Beynac, the feisty protagonist in Death by a Dam Site. The novel is funny and thoughtful, with Robin trying to prevent wetlands destruction while confronting her past at her high school class reunion.
The Spotlight, please, for Bengta Boydstrom, who learned discipline from ballet and timing from vaudeville, and whose mystery mentor was Chris Steinbrunner.
IC
Bengta, is there a quotation you'd like to share, something with special meaning to you?
BB
The most meaningful phrase is one that I heard a ballet teacher use about the time that I was starting my first novel, and that is, "Quitters make way for Winners." I had never heard it before, but I guess it is quite popular in dance circles. Basically, it means "If you want to give up, fine, there is always someone waiting to take your place."
It was important to me because, until that point, I had been very undisciplined in my personal writing. At work, I was a whiz with a declarative sentence and could knock out 30-second spots or press releases in lightning speed, but I would start stories or outline novels, and just drop them.
I wasn't comfortable in a narrative mode at the time. I didn't recognize that it would be a skill that I'd have to develop, or that developing it would require much practice, exercises, writing and rewriting. Seeing how dancers worked to perfect a single hand movement helped me improve my fiction writing.
IC
You've said that Chris Steinbrunner, who was active in Mystery Writers of America and had just received the Edgar for The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, gave you a book on mystery writing.
Would you elaborate on that, for those who aren't familiar with Chris Steinbrunner, and tell us how the friendship came about? What time period are we talking about?
BB
I joined Channel 9 in New York as publicity manager in 1971. Chris Steinbrunner was manager of program services. His job involved pulling together the program schedule and my job involved getting it to TV Guide on time. Consequently, I spent much of my week hounding Chris to meet their deadline.
Once the schedule was done, we would celebrate with white wine in the bar around the corner. At the time, Chris was on the board of directors for Mystery Writers of America, and editor of their newsletter, The Third Degree, so he had a lot of distractions. With Otto Penzler of Ellery Queen Magazine, he was editor-in-chief of The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, a huge volume -- now out of print, I believe -- for which they each received an Edgar.
Chris was an amazing person, with a master's degree in the sociology of popular art. He had devoted his life to the detective story, while I had grown up on a farm with a Victorian father, and had not even been allowed to read Nancy Drew, so this was a new world to me.
One day, crossing Times Square, I thought I spotted a friend from high school, who had vanished after graduation. When I mentioned it and said that I wanted to write a novel about her disappearance, Chris gave me a copy of Writing Suspense and Mystery Fiction, published by The Writer, Inc. The copyright is 1977, so it must have just come out.
It was my first mystery textbook, and, until he passed away from complications related to diabetes, Chris was one of my most encouraging supporters. I believe MWA has a more recent similar book, and I think I have a copy, but my house has hidden it.
I've attended numerous fiction seminars, workshops and courses, but my favorite and most helpful book is Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King. It also has wicked George Booth cartoons, with situations that every writer will recognize!
IC
You worked on a radio talk show and were vice president of promotion at WOR-TV in New York. Tell us about it.
BB
My stint at the Martha Deane radio show lasted about two months. She was a broadcast pioneer, in her seventies, and I was twenty-eight and in a different world. This was after Metromedia and before my archeological dig in England.
The worst part is, that at the same time I was offered a promotion job at Putnam Publishing, and if I'd taken that my whole life would probably have been different. I zigged when I should have zagged. I did get to turn down Len Deighton for an author interview. He was over from England and staying at the YMCA, and very disappointed, but went on to more fame than Martha Deane ever enjoyed.
I had a quasi-nervous breakdown, went back to temping, went to England in July 1971, returned, and my old boss called the next morning (with me still on Brit time) and offered me the WOR job. Being broke, I took it, thinking it might last a week and pay the rent. Instead, I stayed there eleven years.
IC
Back up for a minute. What's this about a dig in England? How did you make the leap from a farm in upstate New York to a dig in England?
BB
I got into college because I had great Latin grades. I had great Latin grades because I fell in love with the Ancient Gauls, hated Caesar and the Romans, and translated like mad to find out what the story was -- especially, when Caesar crossed the Channel and engaged -- drumroll -- the Ancient Britons!
So when I moved to New York City and saw an ad for Archaeology magazine, I subscribed. This was in 1971, and there was information on digs. I am 1/8th Cornish, and the dig in Cornwall was an Iron Age Hillfort (King Arthur!), so I wrote and they accepted me as a volunteer.
The dig was sponsored by The Cornwall Archeological Society (CAS) and run as a training camp for students by a nearby university. Most of the finds turned out to be Neolithic and contemporary with early Stonehenge. I love stone circles, and have taken study tours with Aubrey Burl, an amusing and noted British expert and author.
I have sketched an outline for a third Robin Beynac novel set in the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland, for completion somewhere down the road. I would love to do historical fiction, but -- especially in the Iron Age and Neolithic -- the reality is better than anything that I could create, though I love the Cave Bear Clan books, which are Old Stone Age.
IC
You've said that your family lived in isolation on a dirt road, depending on a battery-powered radio for companionship, and that your Brooklyn-born mother taught you to read. How did she teach you?
BB
She read to me -- Shy Little Kitten, Lively Little Rabbit -- Golden Books -- and also used my sister's official school copies of See Spot Run, Go, Jane, Go and so forth.
IC
Do you remember the first book you ever read?
BB
The Ugly Duckling -- were they trying to tell me something? (Laughing) Later, I was allowed the Bobbsey Twins books, but not Nancy Drew, who I was led to believe was a bad influence. I did think I'd grow up to marry Bert Bobbsey, and we'd have triplets, and I could write about their adventures. It seemed a good plan.
IC
Do you remember any favorite radio programs from those days?
BB
Don MacNeil's The Breakfast Club, Arthur Godfrey, Helen Trent, Our Gal Sunday, Art Linkletter, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, Straight Arrow, Sky King, and my fav: Sgt. Preston of the Northwest Mounties! I guess as adult men, they weren't considered the bad influence that Nancy Drew, someone I could identify with, might have been. I had the complete Sgt. Preston fort from the back of the cereal boxes. My mom used to listen to Suspense at night, and I'd get too scared, and she'd have to quit in the middle of the show.
IC
Death by a Dam Site came close to winning a National Writers Club award. Did you get feedback from the judges?
BB
The National Writers Club did send the tally/judging sheets for Dam Site. One judge, who loved the scenic descriptions, gave me the maximum 10 for that category, and a total of 9.4. The other judge felt there was too much scenery and gave that category a 3, with an 8.2 overall. The only manuscript with an 8.9 got into the final round, and Dam Site was out by a tenth of a point. A handwritten note on the tally sheet said that if the side margins were a half-inch wider, Dam Site would have been the grand prize-winner.
IC
Where did the "dam" idea come from?
BB
Despite living in the city, I was still very much a country girl, so when I read an article about plans to bulldoze Caesar Creek near New Burlington, Ohio and the way it disrupted people's lives I was very moved.
The plot grew when I saw a report about the Tocks Island Dam on the Delaware River in New Jersey and read about Brumley Gap, Virginia, where residents were trying to stop the flooding of their valley by a hydropower company. Still later, I learned how the Seneca were unable to prevent the loss of their sacred grounds during construction of the Allegheny Reservoir.
Despite collecting all this material, the impact still hadn't hit me personally. Then, when my father retired from farming, he sold a large section of our farm to another dairyman. At the time, he could have sold it for building lots and made more money, but he thought he was preserving it.Instead, the new owner, being very modern, cut down all of the hedgerows and a beautiful century-old sugar maple-lined country lane to make one giant treeless field.
Coming home at Mother's Day that year and seeing the acres upon acres of raw mud for the first time was like being kicked in the stomach. My father was heartbroken, but it was too late, and he could do nothing but watch the destruction. That for me, made the feeling real.
IC
Who were your role models when you began writing mysteries?
BB
I adore Tony Hillerman, and wanted to do for the northern woodlands and eastern Indians what he has done for the desert southwest and Navajo. My real model, however, was G is for Gumshoe, which I think is Sue Grafton's best. It combines suspense and romance with outrageous humor. For example, when the noise in the room next door is keeping Kinsey awake, she ties her bra over her head like earmuffs. I'm sure the idea of using a motel as Robin Beynac's home base came from there.
IC
How did Thomas Hardy, a classical writer, come into it?
BB
Hardy is my favorite author, and I love the way he uses description. More people who read Return of the Native in college remember the brooding atmosphere of Egdon Heath, than the fact Eustacia Vye and Wildeve die violent deaths.I started using The Woodlanders to get a feel for deep forest, but then Tess of the D'Urbervilles seemed to fit my theme as well. In going back to her childhood roots, Robin Beynac is the return of the native.
IC
Are you working on the second book in the series now? How about future plans?
BB
The positive response to Dam Site has encouraged me to return to Bad Faith, also occasionally called Head Above Water, which is also a Robin Beynac mystery. I wrote it at the urging of my agent, who disliked it so much that she dumped me and tossed out my other two manuscripts, leaving me to reprint 630 pages on a balky daisy wheel printer!
It was written in 1995, so it is a bit dated, but looking at it for the first time in five years, I think that I can revise it. It is set in London in November around Guy Fawkes day, but I don't want to say too much more about the plot at this time.
I also have a musical play based on the Courtship of Myles Standish that I have been working on for years and may complete eventually, and I have tons of research for fictional biographies of several women artists that I want so much to complete. Some days it is one big combined story and other days it is a trilogy, but mostly, at this point, it is a handful of notes and a dusty stack of mostly out-of-print books.
I also have a third Robin Beynac mystery outlined that takes place in the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland, and had it in mind to do one in the painted cave area of France, where the marvelous village of Beynac actually is, but I don't have a plot/theme for that one yet.
The main thing is that I finally have time, so all I need to do is pull together my focus. At last, I've reached an age where I don't have to divide my inspiration and energy between writing and career, so I am optimistic.
I love print-on-demand publishing, enjoy Internet book discussions, adore online book stores. Regardless of what happens with my own books, I feel that a global revolution is in progress. I'm thrilled that I was here not only to see it, but also to be on the front line.
IC
Have we overlooked anything dear to your heart? It's your turn -- you're in the Spotlight!
BB
Dressed only in a bushel and carrying a candle? Something has occurred to me. It is the tribute I would include in all the Tony, Emmy, Oscar, Edgar, Anthony, Obie speeches that I'll never get to make.
If I had to chose one person who influenced me most, it would be Robert L. Sinclair, a drama professor at Geneseo State (now part of State University of New York or SUNY). All the good qualities to be found in Death by a Dam Site's Preston Astley, and absolutely none of the bad, are echoes of Pop, as he was called.
More importantly, the need for and the methods of showing motivation on stage are very helpful in creating fiction. To me, motivation is what moves mysteries.
He also taught us the rules of timing: One looks like an accident, Two doesn't build enough anticipation, Three will always get the biggest laugh or generate the most surprise, and Four is once too many. The anticipation is dissipated, as with people who kill a joke by dragging it out.
IC
Hold on for a minute.Two does or does not build antcipation? Can you 'splain that to us, Lucy?
BB
The operative word is ENOUGH. Two builds, but not enough for real impact. This was a big technique in vaudeville. Compare the laugh value:
- A guy slips on a banana peel, ha, ha.
- A guy walks by the banana peel, misses it, comes back, steps on it, and falls. Some extra guffaws.
- A guy walks by the banana peel, misses it. Some giggles. The audience then sees him coming back, anticipates his fall, extra guffaws. But he misses it again. Suddenly something happens, he turns, and boom -- he falls, and they roar.
One and Two will work to a lesser degree, but the biggest sin is Four, because you lose the edge you built up. However, Four can be thrown into an act that has done two or three stunts (the guys who did silly carpentry on the Ed Sullivan Show, if you ever caught their act), because now the audience expects a boom on Three, and it doesn't happen ... then, on Four -- bam! -- the paint falls off the ladder onto his head.
Red Skelton (and Lucy!) used this a lot. In some of the big action films today, you can see where there is a small explosion or happening, then a bigger one or a false alarm, and then the big bang.
I belong to the Humorous Novel Community online, and the biggest problem that some authors have is that either they throw away their "pratfall" on One or Two, or they stretch the story until the original point is lost. Bing, Bang, BOOM. That's the secret.
Perhaps the best skill Pop Sinclair gave us was forcing us to be observant. In stage design, he would make us describe the wall behind us without looking around. Or have us sketch familiar buildings in town, then go there and compare the drawing to the real thing, noting what we had overlooked.
Knowing him was a real To Sir, With Love education. Sadly, he died before we could clone him. He truly was one of a kind.
IC
And so the lights go down, the stage is once more dark and empty. Our thanks to Bengta for lighting it up for us even so briefly!
This interview was conducted during the month of August 2001 for SinC-IC
by Pat Browning.
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