Coming to these books from the perspective of a seasoned writer, I found a whole new joy in the terse prose and a whole new dismay in the blatant sexism, racism, and homophobia. I expanded my hardboiled deep dive to include Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey, Val McDermid, and Elmore Leonard. (I was completely chuffed to discover among the acknowledgements that I’d had editors in common with both McDermid and Leonard.)
This was not the genre where I wanted to hang out long-term as a writer, but I couldn’t resist the challenges presented by this sort of procedural fiction: structural knots, moral ambiguity, gritty dialogue. It struck me as the perfect vehicle for sending up old school isms and skewering literary snootiness. Developing Smartie’s style for the Smack Wilder novels is the most fun I’ve ever had on paper.
Revisiting the manuscript in preparation for this 10th Anniversary Edition, I laughed out loud, and I hope readers will too. This gimlet-eyed view of the writing process and publishing industry is true, in spirit, to my experience as a writer, especially the portrayal of Smartie’s critique group, The Quilters.
My own critique group, The Midwives, five dedicated professional writers, met every other Friday evening in the suburbs of Houston. Colleen Thompson, our unofficial high priestess, is a successful romantic suspense novelist who wrote The Salt Maiden, The Off Season, Fatal Error, and many others. Barbara Taylor Sissel has written several crime-centered family dramas including Evidence of Life, Faultlines, and Tell No One. Thieme Bittick, who wrote as TJ Bennett, is the author of fantasy novels The Legacy, The Promise, and Dark Angel. Wanda Dion had been successfully published as a YA author and was looking to spread her wings in a darker direction.
Being in The Midwives was one of the greatest experiences of my personal and professional life. These fabulously funny, intelligent, well read, compassionate, and talented women worked hard and upheld high craft standards. There was no jealousy or competitiveness, because we all understood that book writers don’t compete with each other; they compete with television, Facebook, and other time-sucks that prevent people from reading. What I learned from them about writing, publishing, mothering, and life could fill another book.
We always began with half an hour of lively conversation, during which we allowed one snack and one snack only: Chex Mix. Long before I joined the group, they’d decided that fussing over hostess duties was not a good use of a writer’s time. We all showed up with five hard copies of our weekly pages and read in a round robin: each author would read her ten pages aloud without interruption while the rest of us took notes, then we’d discuss for fifteen or twenty minutes. We were staunchly supportive of each other’s work, but no punches were pulled. No gratuitous praise was offered in the spirit of “being nice,” because we all knew that it’s not nice to be lied to and sent out bare-assed into an unforgiving publishing ethos. When The Midwives told me, “This is working,” I knew it was solid. When something wasn’t working, I could rely on them to speak the truth in a loving, helpful context.
Colleen, whose husband was a fireman, was especially sharp when it came to all things first responder. Like me, she’s a research fiend, and we shared a few rollicking research road trips, driving through a herd of buffalo in Yellowstone Park, trudging across the West Texas desert to view the Marfa Lights, and wandering the eerie murals in an old resort where Nazi brass had been housed as prisoners of war. These are adventures I couldn’t have shared with anyone but other than a fellow writer nerd—someone who really gets the wealth of inspiration that happens when you smell the inside of a toolbox or examine the texture of a taco shell.
After seven intensely productive, joyful years, Bobbi moved to the Hill Country, I relocated to the beach in Washington State, and the critique group drifted apart. We remain lifelong friends, and that powerful critique model informs the work I do now, mentoring and nurturing small groups of writers at Westport Lighthouse Writers Retreat. We Midwives celebrated each other’s successes and cried for each other’s heartaches. We believed in each other’s talent and forgave each other’s foibles, because, at the end of the day, we were five women who loved each other.
The greatest blessing I could hope for any writer is to find such a tribe.
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