Five Random Questions with KAREN OLSON

Karen Olson is the Shamus-nominated author of the Annie Seymour series, set in New Haven, and the Las Vegas-based Tattoo Shop Mysteries, featuring tattoo artist Brett Kavanaugh. She is my friend, and agreed to answer Five Random Questions while I get ready for company this weekend. Before I go, though, happy birthday to my twin sister Kathy, who will always be four minutes older than I am.

1. Why is pizza such a big deal in New Haven, and what's the issue?

There is no pizza better anywhere than New Haven. Here we've got what we call the Trifecta: Sally's, Pepe's, and Modern. I personally prefer Sally's, which has a thinner crust than the others. And it's the sauce that makes it, sweet and tangy all at the same time. The great thing about Sally's is that the pizza comes out on big cookie sheets, they give you a pile of paper napkins and some silverware and that's it. You just dive in. I prefer the white clam pie, but the sausage is outstanding, too. They do have a tuna pie on the menu but I don't know of anyone who's ever ordered it. It just sounds too weird.

2. If you could be reincarnated as an animal, what kind of animal would you want to be?

I would love to come back as one of my own cats. They've got the life: sleeping all day, getting fed regularly, people to play with when they choose.

3. What is your favorite thing to do in Las Vegas?

Since I've only been to Vegas for six days total in my whole life (two days the first time, four days the second, several years later), there are things in Vegas that I haven't seen that I'd like to. Like the Star Trek museum, or the Liberace museum, or the place where they dump all the old neon resort/casino signs. I do love to wander the resorts because everything's so over the top. The Venetian is just crazy, with the Renaissance dancers and the canal and the gondolas.

4. What as-seen-on-TV product do you secretly covet?

The Snuggie. Don't tell my family. I make fun of it, but I tend to be on the chilly side most of the time and would love to wrap that thing around me.

5. Which one of Henry VIII's wives would you most want to have dinner with?

This one is a tough one, because there are questions I'd like to ask each of them. Catherine of Aragon: Did you really never have sex with your first husband, Henry's brother? Anne Boleyn: Any truth to the rumors you have a sixth finger? Jane Seymour: You're not as innocent as you seem, right? Anne of Cleves: You played your cards right and became Henry's "sister." Did you plan that or did it just evolve into something that saved your neck? Catherine Howard: How stupid can one girl be?

But I think I'd want to have dinner with Catherine Parr, who outlived the man and then married the man she truly loved (although he was a cad and went after Elizabeth, so there's no accounting for taste). Catherine Parr was actually published, very unusual for a woman of her time. She was very outspoken about her religion, but didn't have any of Anne Boleyn's antagonism. She was incredibly intelligent, although most of Henry's wives were. It was interesting how he chose women who were smarter than he was. Except, of course for Catherine Howard. But she was a kid.

Thanks, Karen! You can visit Karen online at the First Offenders blog. Buy The Missing Ink from The Mystery Bookstore, and look for the second Tattoo Shop mystery, Pretty in Ink, in stores next spring!

Five Things You Should and Shouldn't Say to Authors

I thought about saving this post until next April, for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, but I'll forget about it between now and then. With Sarah Palin currently on book tour, I have a feeling many people will be turning out to book events who have never been to one before. That's a good thing; anything that gets people into bookstores is a good thing.

Before I go all negative, here are five things that every author loves to hear. These should be pretty self-explanatory:

1. "I can't wait to read this book."

2. "You look so much younger in person than you do in your author photo."

3. "We're reading you in my book club."

4. "I've given copies of your last book to all my friends."

5. "I had to buy this in hardcover because I couldn't stand to wait for the paperback."

And these are things you should restrain yourself from saying:

1. "Write faster!" You think this is flattering, but it just makes an author anxious. Non-celebrity authors write as fast as they can, because they make their money by writing. Most authors don't control their publication schedules, and feel that they're writing too fast as it is (to meet impossible deadlines), or that they aren't being published on a schedule that allows them to support themselves. This is particularly painful for authors who don't currently have a book contract; they may have half-a-dozen unsold manuscripts in their desk, which they would love to publish if only someone would make them an offer.

2. "Everyone tells me I should write a book." A variation of this is "I've always wanted to write a book." It's not rocket science. The average book is between 75,000 and 140,000 words. If you write 1,000 words a day, you can write a first draft in three months — and then spend as long as it takes to edit it and polish it and find an agent and a publisher. The fact that you haven't done this means that you don't really want to write a book, and it belittles the effort of the people who have. That's not to say that you aren't a fine doctor, lawyer, teacher, accountant, raconteur, whatever; it's just to say that you aren't an author. Unless you are, but I'm getting to that.

3. "Would you read/blurb my book?" I have been at book events where complete strangers handed authors manuscripts or self-published books. This embarrasses most authors, because every new author owes a great deal to established writers who helped them along the way. No decent human being wants to say no to a request for help, but this is not the way to ask. If you really want an established author to read and critique your work, sign up for a writing workshop. Not only is it an honest way to get help, it's an introduction to the world you want to be part of.

4. "You need to go on one of those talk shows," a.k.a. "The Oprah Question." Yes, once in a great while, an author shows up on "Oprah" or "Ellen" or "The Craig Ferguson Show." Glenn Beck has become known for featuring thriller authors on his shows. But the percentage of authors invited to be on television is tiny — and, except for Oprah's book club, it's not at all clear that being on TV helps sell books. (As far as that goes, no one really knows what makes a book sell, except for word-of-mouth, which might as well be magic; and what is Oprah's book club but word-of-Oprah's mouth?)

5. "Why aren't your books more like [insert big-name author's name here]?" Authors can and do compromise to make their books more commercial, and only the most idealistic insist on pure artistic integrity; as one friend of mine says, he writes the kind of books he writes so that he can write more books. That said, you wouldn't ask a tennis player why she wasn't a marathon runner, and you wouldn't ask a French chef why he didn't cook Asian food. If someone writes romances, it's because that's what she likes and what she's good at. It's not reasonable to ask why she's not writing science fiction.

A few authors are regular visitors here; anybody want to comment on other things you want to hear or not hear from readers?

Five Great Celebrity Memoirs

Yesterday I met a friend from another country for coffee at the Augusta Barnes & Noble. "Are you going to buy the Sarah Palin book?" I asked, and got a look as if I'd suggested that we go out and smash some church windows.

"I'm serious," I said. "It's an instant party. Buy the book, put it on your coffee table and have people over for holiday drinks, and you can have dramatic readings." My friend was not persuaded, but if my apartment were set up for entertaining, I'd buy the book (at Sam's Club, deeply discounted) for that reason alone. I might buy it anyway, and bring it to my sister's for Thanksgiving.

Bad celebrity memoirs are always entertaining, but a good celebrity memoir is something really special: a history not only of the individual, but of a specific moment in cultural history. I'm not embarrassed to say that I've read a lot of celebrity memoirs. These are five of my favorites. Leave your own suggestions in the comments section.

1. Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography. Great creative genius comes with a terrifying self-absorption and a certain level of megalomania, and both are on display in Charlie Chaplin's memoir. Self-absorption doesn't equal self-awareness, though, and much of what I found so compelling about this book was how little Chaplin seemed to understand about himself and what drove him. What he did understand was the terrible loneliness that came with seeing things other people couldn't see, and wanting more than other people wanted. I am not especially fond of Chaplin's films, but the book is essential reading for anyone who works with auteurs.

2. Sammy Davis Jr. with Burt Boyar and Jane Boyar, Yes I Can. A great celebrity memoir is as much about subtext as it is about what's on the page, and Yes I Can is a fascinating exercise in how to place the mirrors. I read it alongside Wil Haygood's excellent biography, In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis Jr., which offers a very different perspective on some of the stories Sammy tells.

3. Dominick Dunne, The Way We Lived Then. Less a memoir than a personal scrapbook with long captions, The Way We Lived Then is an exquisite time capsule of Mad Men-era Hollywood. Dunne, a recovering alcoholic, is clear-eyed and fearless in his description of how he systematically wrecked his life, and pulls no punches in describing the rich and famous.

4. Anne Heche, Call Me Crazy. She must have thought that title would head off the criticism; instead, it just makes her an easier target. My friend Maeve and I listened to this on audiotape during a drive to Yosemite for Thanksgiving several years ago. We were so mesmerized we missed our exit, and drove an hour out of our way before we realized what we had done. Anne Heche presents herself as a survivor of a bizarre upbringing whose later behaviors were all justified by her early experiences. She seems unaware of or unwilling to admit any damage she might have done herself, although the revelation she describes having while on LSD (that she was a pile of human excrement) suggests that some scrap of conscience survives.

5. Shelley Winters, Shelley, Also Known as Shirley. By the time I was old enough to be aware of her, Shelley Winters had become something of a parody of herself: middle-aged, blowsy, doing guest spots on game shows and talk shows and TV mystery series. But in the 1940s and '50s, she was hot — she was beautiful and smart and electric, she was a terrific actress, and she knew everybody (and slept with most of them). Shelley, Also Known as Shirley is a frank, funny confessional and score-settler by a woman who knows exactly who she is, and apologizes for nothing.

Five Great Queens

On this date in 1533, Elizabeth I ascended to the throne of England. Her 45-year reign was a golden age in British history, a new height of intellectual, military and economic success. To mark the occasion, five other women who ruled with absolute authority.

1. Hatshepsut, Pharoah of Egypt. The historical records are sketchy, but she reigned for almost 22 years, from approximately 1479 BCE to 1458 BCE. She brought peace and prosperity to Egypt, restoring international trade and sponsoring building projects that survive to this day. She married her half-brother, Thutmose II, and had one daughter by him, Neferure. Hatshepsut became regent for Thutmose's son by a concubine, Thutmose III, but ruled as de facto pharoah until her death. Among other things, she is credited with importing the first frankincense trees to Egypt.

2. Isabella, Queen of Castile. With her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon (who was also her second cousin), she united Spain and ruled half the known world between 1474 and 1504. A fervent Catholic, she oversaw the conquest of Granada and, later, the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain. (In historical terms, "great" does not always equal "good.") She granted — on his fourth or fifth request — Christopher Columbus' petition to follow a western route to the Indies. She sponsored the Inquisition, and placed her five surviving children (a sixth died in infancy) on thrones around Europe.

3. Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia. She was Sophie Auguste Frederike von Anhalt-Zerbst, a German princess, when she went to Russia at the age of 14. She converted to Russian Orthodoxy and took the name Yekaterina before she married her second cousin, Peter, heir to the Russian throne. Peter's reign lasted less than seven months; rumors that he was retarded or syphilitic were probably propaganda, but he was unacceptably pro-Prussian, and the Imperial Russian Guard deposed him in favor of his wife. Catherine ruled for 34 years (1762–1796), expanding and consolidating Russian power and modernizing the Russian economy and political system. As far as social reforms went, she talked a better game than she played; the term "Potemkin village" dates to her reign, describing reforms that happened only for show. But she did preside over the beginning of the Russian enlightenment, an unprecedented era of creativity in literature, painting and especially opera. She died of a stroke; the rumor about the horse came from her resentful, long-persecuted son and heir, Paul.

4. Victoria, Queen of England and Empress of India.
England's longest-reigning monarch (1837–1901), she was the living symbol of an empire where the sun never set. Having nine children did not keep her from taking an active role in government, presiding over military campaigns that conquered most of the world and an industrial revolution that transformed the British economy for good. The death of her husband, Prince Albert, in 1861 changed her; she never came out of mourning, and if she wasn't amused, that was why.

5. Tzu-Hsi, Empress of China. She was a low-ranking concubine to Emperor Hsien-Feng, but she bore his only son, and served as regent after the Emperor died. As Dowager Empress of China, she ruled with absolute authority from 1861 to 1908, refusing to give up power even when her son, Tung Chih, came of age. Tung Chih died of venereal disease at the age of 20, and the concubine who was pregnant with his child died under mysterious circumstances. Tzu-Hsi opened China to the West, which ultimately led to the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. It's not clear whose side Tzu-Hsi was on in the Boxer Rebellion, but she managed to hang on to power after Western armies intervened to suppress the rebellion. She began to make reforms and promised a constitution and representative government, but died before putting those in place. Her heir, her three-year-old nephew Pu Yi, was China's last Emperor.

Five Things I Know How to Make Without a Recipe

One of the few things I don't like about my current lifestyle is how little cooking I do. I like to cook, but it's no fun to cook only for myself, and my apartment is not set up for entertaining. I'm looking forward to heading south for Thanksgiving, where I can get in the way while my sisters cook, and maybe chop some stuff up myself.

I've been too distracted to do much cooking lately, anyway. Last week I tried to do some baking for Gaslight's performances of Rabbit Hole; I forgot an essential step of a recipe I know by heart, and wound up with a pan of burnt shortbread covered with burnt chocolate. It came out of the pan in one big charred slab, and Dizzy was sad to see it go.

Here are five things I know how to make without consulting a cookbook:

1. The four basic sauces. For the record, they are Béchamel, Veloute, Brown and Hollandaise, and they all involve creating an emulsion of liquids and fats, with or without flour to bind them. My mother was no good at gravy, and decided when I was very young that the gravy would be my responsibility; years of trial and error have taught me that all sauces are just a matter of patience and paying attention. Some years this is harder for me than others, which is why the Thanksgiving gravy has sometimes had lumps.

2. Spaghetti sauce. If you can't figure out how to make a basic spaghetti sauce without looking it up, you have no taste buds.

3. Toffee bars. This was what I was trying to make last week. I got the original recipe from the Silver Palate Cookbook, but it's so easy I no longer need to look it up. However, the chocolate chips don't go on top of the shortbread until five minutes before the pan comes out of the oven. Just so you know.

4. Creamed spinach. See #1, above. Actually, this is cheating; once you can make the four basic sauces, you can make an almost unlimited number of things without having to consult a cookbook. I just like creamed spinach. It's important to squeeze all the water out of the spinach after you cook it, and before you add the sauce.

5. Potato-cheese soup. I love potato-cheese soup so much that I pretty much lived on it for a year or two right out of college, because it's cheap to make and it keeps well. I haven't made it in years. Might be time to pull the soup pot out again.

What are the "go-to" recipes that you know by heart?

Five Random Songs

Last night's opening of Doubt went well, thank goodness, and this morning I'm kind of a wreck; not because I was out late last night (I wasn't) or because I had much to drink (I didn't), but because I feel like a spring that was coiled too tightly and is now unlooped on the floor.

I have about nine hours to coil the spring back up for tonight's performance, so plan to spend the day on things that will annoy Sister Aloysius, including self-indulgences like whining and writing with ballpoint pens. In fact, I've already done some of both this morning.

Five performances of Doubt remain; you can book tickets here.

1. "The Enemy Guns," DeVotchKa. This album (How it Ends) was a gift from the fabulous Jennifer Jordan, and is in constant rotation on my iTunes playlist. It's a unique sound that combines guitars, accordion, bouzouki and a wide range of percussion instruments with something that might be a wind instrument or might be a theremin, I can't tell.

2. "Firecracker," Ryan Adams. A young man's song: "Everyone wants to go on forever/I just want to burn up hard and bright."

3. "Drawn in the Dark," X. I forgot all about this track when I was making my list of scary songs. Hmm. It's a cool, spooky song with a great, menacing bass line, off Hey Zeus!

4. "Matinee Idyll (129)," Split Enz. What makes this sound — jangly piano, horns, violin, mandolin — so undeniably mid-'70s?

5. "Koka Kola," The Clash. I too take my advice from the advertising world. Or at least from Don Draper.

Special Guest Blog: Five Ways to Save the Environment from Juan of MUNDO JAZZ

From the Mundo Jazz website: "What can one say about a band whose songs convey the dangers of environmental degradation, the importance of racial harmony and the inherent evils of capitalism with subtlety and intelligence? One can say they are called Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Mundo Jazz, however, preach peace, love and understanding with all the subtlety of a brick hitting butter, through their ridiculously catchy songs, awful dancing and thunderously crass philosophizing." Mundo Jazz's lead singer, Juan Pablo Colon, has graciously agreed to guest-blog for me today, as I'm on deadline and getting ready for tonight's opening of DOUBT at Aqua City Actors Theatre in Waterville.

Brother and Sister,

Today is my honour to be ask by answergirl (is real name Cler) to write five things to save the enviroment. So, I start by explaining the enviroment. The enviroment is like a forest in Brazil, full of indios and snakes and flying frogs. If these frogs and so on die, who cares? Nobody like frogs, you say. Maybe you say my brother Luis touch a frog once and get a rash. Well I tell you, if those frog dies, then the ozone that we breath will be gone forever, so tell your kids — don't be a ass and stop destroying the enviroment. Here is some ways you can help:

1. Open your heart, open your fridge. Global warming is real! Get used to it mister Bush! You are a asshole. If we all take the door off the refrigerator is going to cool the amosphere sinificantly and probably solve the problem.

2. Stop the Chaos! According to Chaos theory (science) if a butterfly is flab his wing in the rainforest, it cause a tornado in Texas. So lets save Texas, kill as many butterfiles as possible before they get the chance. Texas has a lot of problems but they have a right to survive as well and shouldn't just get tornadoed because of these fluttering fiends of the skies. And we do not disrespect Texas for being fat and stupid people with a cowboy hat who eat burger all the time.

3. DO you really nead to use your car? Stop drivin around all the place fatty. If you walk every wear you will stop pumping gas into the air and also not look like somebody put pants on a zeppelin. You should ALWAYS buy a hybrid if possible (example a Mercedes/Benz) and only have one car unless you need two one for gigs and such and one for drivin around lookin good that is part of the job description of a musician.

4. Use energy bulbs in your lights. This will have the added bonas that you can see what you are doing at night.

5. That's all for now.

6. OK wait I thought of another. No, it's gone.

7. Oh yeah: Don't waist water. Water is a precious resauce, it comes from rivers and the sea. If we keep using water at the rate you are doing now, soon the sea will be gone and the fish will crawl onto land and evolve into dinosores again and look what happen last time. All sorts of shit will kick off. People will be running from tyranosaurus and the one with the three horns – unless it eat plants, but still is probably dangerous. Just by virchew of size, is enormous, about the size of three football stadiums (soccer not american football I don't know about this size you are asking the wrong guy) they will not be able to get the earth back online and then we all escape in a jip, but some is get eaten on the way.

I commend to you the future is in your hands!

X Peace! J*U*A*N

Um . . . thanks, Juan! If you're in the UK, you can catch Mundo Jazz live in concert between now and the end of the year; check out the tour schedule here. Those in other parts of the world can still experience the wonders of Mundo Jazz through podcasting. Juan says, "Fight capitalism — but not with guns!"