My Love Affair with Vintage Cars

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It's something of a truism: characters drive cars their authors wish they had. (Lee Child excepted - I don't imagine he yearns to own a Greyhound bus.) I confess, my lead character drove an iconic sports car, the Shelby, because I was stuck in a Goldfish-crackers-encrusted minivan. But in the case of our own Edith Maxwell/ Maddie Day, her heroine, Cece Barton, has the cars Edith had. Prepare to be drop-dead envious...

 

 

Julia, thank you so much for hosting me on the front blog! Thanks for helping me celebrate Deadly Crush, my second Cece Barton mystery, which releases next Tuesday. In the series, Cece manages a wine bar in Colinas, a lovely little (fictional) historic town in the scenic wine-producing Alexander Valley about ninety minutes north of San Francisco. And she drives a 1966 Mustang convertible she calls Blue.

 

It’s a contemporary novel, so why is she driving such an old vehicle? I’m so glad you asked.

 

In general, cars in California last longer because they don’t have the stress of driving over ice heaves and rust-inducing salt on the roads. I have a friend in Berkely who still owns her 1966 red Mustang convertible.

I can’t find the photo of my young sons sitting in Mel’s Mustang after a visit to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, but they loved the experience.

 

As I might have mentioned in comments to a post here before, I wrote a proposal some years ago for a cozy mystery series set in California centered on auto mechanic Josie Jarvin, who owns and runs JJ Automotive. Josie only works on analog cars – vehicles made before about 1980, when computers made their way into the engine compartment. My editor didn’t go for it, but Josie is now Cece’s mechanic for her Mustang, and I’m delighted to have Josie play a starring role in this new book.

 

You might also reasonably ask why I’m so interested in cars of the 1960s and 70s. Don’t we all have a fondness for the cars we first learned to drive and first owned? Well, that’s my era. Growing up in southern California, you couldn’t get anywhere farther than a couple of miles away without an automobile. I got my driver’s license on my sixteenth birthday and never looked back.

 

 

 After the 1954 Dodge station wagon and the 1964 Rambler station wagon, my family had two 1967 VW bugs, one baby blue, one white. My father taught me to drive in the white one, practicing in the parking lot of the Santa Anita race track when it was empty.

 

Perhaps more important, I worked full time at a Mobil gas station on Pacific Coast Highway (aka Route 1) in Newport Beach after I graduated from UC Irvine with a BA in linguistics. I know, it’s not the usual path to becoming a mechanic. 

 

 

Analog cars were all there were. At age 21, I started out pumping gas and changing tires part time at my friend’s father’s station. Customers ranged from movie stars (I pumped Buddy Ebsen’s gas) to nude drivers. By the time I left, I was an official State of California headlight adjuster and smog device certifier, I could tune up American and foreign engines, and I’d tested third out of a hundred applicants (all the rest male) to be an Orange County heavy equipment mechanic.

 

Our shop looked a lot like Emory Automotive, the family-run place in Amesbury I take my car to now, which makes me happier than I can say!

 

 

Alas, love lured me away from the area to live in Japan. I did keep working on my own cars when I got back, including pulling the engine on my VW during graduate school in Indiana, with the help of major tools at the student-run car co-op. Anybody else use the Compleat Idiot’s Guide by John Muir?

 

 

Alas again, cars got too complicated for me to work on, and so did my life. Now we have two hybrid Priuses in the driveway (VERY complicated to work on except for simple oil changes, and I’m past that), and a few weeks ago I traded in my more than a decade-old little Prius C for a 2022 hybrid plug-in model, which I love.

 

 

 But I’m always heartened to see people maintaining and driving their analog vehicles, and I love the Rust and Relics auto shop in my neighboring city of Newburyport, which we drive by on the way to catch the train into Boston.

 I guess the love of old cars runs in the family. Last summer, my younger brother David drove his 1965 Rover out from California, a car our grandfather Richard Flaherty bought new. When I was a baby auto mechanic fifty years ago, I used to teach Davey things automotive. Not anymore!

 

David Maxwell investigates an odd noise...

 

It’s been great fun bringing a bit of those memories into this new story. I hope you love Deadly Crush as much as I loved writing it. As a side note, if you aren’t caught up on the first book in the series, Murder Uncorked came out in paperback last month, and I hear it’s a hot seller at Barnes & Noble. Check out Blue on the cover!

 

 Readers: What pre-1980 car do you know and love? What was your first drive? Anybody still own an analog vehicle? I’d love to give away a copy of the new book to one of you!

 

The beginning of a new year for Cece Barton, widowed single mom and recent L.A. transplant north, means green hillsides, flowing streams from winter rains, pruned vineyards—and a murder to solve. She's shocked when she gets a call from her mechanic, Josie, that she’s found her ex-husband crushed to death beneath the lift in her automotive shop.

 

Cece convinces Josie to call the police, even though Josie is terrified. Electrician Karl was an abusive husband, was threatening her, and she has no alibi. Josie’s future is on the line, and maybe her own, so Cece starts her own investigation. With a bouquet of motives and unanswered questions, Cece is going to need the help of her twin, Allie, who owns a nearby B & B, as she dives into Karl’s past—before the killer catches up with her, and the lights go out for good . . .

 

 

Maddie Day pens the Country Store Mysteries, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, and the Cece Barton Mysteries. As Agatha Award-winning author Edith Maxwell, she writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and short crime fiction. Day/Maxwell lives with her beau and their cat Martin north of Boston, where she writes, gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook. Find her at EdithMaxwell.com, wickedauthors.com, Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen, and on social media:

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I Am Already Over AI

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It started out innocently enough, wit a few articles about this new "Artificial Intelligence" thing and a few more articles wherein pundits predicted we'd all be living in the Terminator Universe soon, crushed under the chrome-plated jackboot of our robot overlords. 

 

But it turns out AI is far, far more annoying than killer machines.

 

Everywhere I turn, another company is eager to thrust it's AI chatbot/ tools/ research aids upon me. It started when I realized every time I logged in to my health insurance website, this annoying little seal pops up and asks me what I'm doing on every. Single. Page. And you can't get rid of it! The first thing everyone did back in the day was toss Microsoft's Clippy in the trash, what makes you think we want another version?

 

Then, of course, I had Google decide, in its infinite wisdom, that I needed "AI summaries" of every search I made. I cannot convey to you how deeply irritating I find this. It's like being forced to watch someone acting out their kink in public. My friend, I know there are people who like licking boots, but I don't need to clap eyes on it. And I know there are people who want instant information from untrustworthy, error-prone Large Language Models, but I want to click on websites and judge the information myself.

 

Recently, my professorial Zoom account "upgraded," and I was confronted with a slightly changed dashboard (vexing, but not worth more than an eyeroll) and a new title: I was no longer using Zoom, but Zoom Workplace. What the heck is Zoom Workplace, you ask? According to the company, it "brings communication, employee engagement, spaces, and productivity solutions together on a single platform with Zoom AI Companion capabilities woven throughout."

 

 

Really Zoom? I know I'm getting old, but do I look like I need a companion? I'm using your product to lecture college students, they're engaged because I can flunk them, not because I'm using AI to do God-knows what.

The newest unpleasant surprise came when I logged into Freepik, an otherwise great site for finding license-free pictures. You search using various terms, they show you many, many pictures meeting your needs, and you download one or more. Fast, easy, user-friendly.

 

This time, when I selected a photo for downloading, a new screen popped up. Did I want to use AI to edit the picture? "Hmm," I thought. Or maybe said. I talk out loud a lot when I'm alone with the dogs. "I wonder if I could crop this guy out of an otherwise good image?"

 

Reader, I could not. The pinnacle of computing, the application that uses as much electricity as a small country and consumes an average of 550,000 gallons of water per day, per data center? Could stretch the photo side-to-side or up-and-down. And if you're thinking, as I did, "Hey, I can do that with MS Paint, a program first released in 1985," well, I guess you're not looking forward to the future. Or something.

 

I'm starting to feel like a diner in a restaurant that's bought way, way too much spinach and eggs. No matter what I ask for, the waiter keeps offering quiche. It doesn't seem as if these "improvements" have anything to do with, you know, what customers and users actually need.

 

Instead, I'm getting the sense that various CEOs, dazzled by the bullshit sales pitches, spent lots 'o money buying tickets on the AI train. In this metaphor, dear readers, we are tied to the tracks as the locomotive chugs toward us.

 

 

 

So, how do you feel about the plethora of AI assistants showing up online? Are you a fan? Or do you, like me, just want to scream, "Save me, Dudley Do-Right! Save me!"

Rhys shares Pub Day for We Three Queens.

 RHYS BOWEN:  The problem with writing three books a year is that there always seems to be a new publication day to think about.  Today I'm flying to Phoenix to do an event at the Poisoned Pen in Scottdale then on to Houston to Murder by the Book. These are two of my favorite stores and ones that have been so supportive to me over the years.  

When I started writing mysteries, back in the stone age, there were hundreds of independent bookstores across the country, a good many of them were mystery bookstores. For my first mystery novel I visited every mystery bookstore in the Bay Area. There were several including my beloved M is for Mystery in San Mateo. Every time a new book came out I had plenty of places to sign.  

I should point out that when my first book was published it had a print run of 2500, hardcover copies. This means that not a lot of people are going to know about me. So I reckoned I had to attract readers one at a time. I spoke to any bookclub or book group that wanted me. I visited every bookstore that would have me.  John retired about that time (1997) and we drove across the country 3 times, using a different route and visiting every bookstore along the way. I met lovely people and was asked back to do events at many of them. One great experience was the Savoy bookstore in Wichita KS. I met them years ago when nobody had heard of me.  Probably signed ten copies. On my last real big booktour right before Covid I did an event there and there were over 100 people. Everyone crammed in and standing at the back. What a thrill!

                          

My first event at Aunt Agatha's in Ann Arbor consisted of me, Robin Agnew the owner and a Welsh woman. My last event they rented an outside venue. One time they made lovely wedding invitations for Four Weddings and a Funeral. I was even invited to do an event on Mackinaw Island where Robin's family owns the iconic hotel. I'm so sad that they closed. Many fond memories.

As I write this piece I realize there are too many stores to mention them all. McIntyres in North Carolina with their belted cows. They were a favorite. And the annual mystery festival at MysteryLovers in Oakmont PA. The first time I did that I saw this long line waiting to get a book signed by me. I thought I had died and turned into Sue Grafton! I still see Kathy Harig and her Mystery Loves Company as she is the bookseller at Malice. I once did a lovely event on an old steam train in Madison WI through the bookstore there. I say lovely event but it was hard to talk with no mike and the carriage rocking side to side.

                                         

So many of these stores are gone now, and booktours have shrunk since Covid. It's so easy and convenient to do events via Zoom. The one I am doing today at the Poisoned Pen (one of the stores that still flourishes and in fact has become more successful thanks to Zoom) it also broadcasts live on Facebook and on Youtube. I find myself speaking to an audience of 2000 instead of maybe 50 or 60. 

It's funny but when I started to write this piece I didn't intend it to be a stroll down memory lane about bookstores, but we are coming up to Small Business Saturday and if everyone can buy a book at a local bookstore we can keep them in business! Not necessarily mine but I'd love to tell you about it briefly:

   WE THREE QUEENS is Royal Spyness book number 18! Georgie has survived for a long time, hasn't she? not only survived but flourished. Now she lives in a grand house and enjoys a peaceful life... until her husband Darcy is asked to do the new king a favor. He wants to marry Mrs. Simpson. Can Darcy and Georgie hide her out with them until the news breaks? Golly, as Georgie would say. This in inconvenience and stress enough but then Sir Hubert, the house owner, announces that a movie will be shot at the house. The story of Henry VIII and two of his queens.  So now there is chaos, difficult people all around, a kidnapping and a murder. Will Georgie ever get a quiet life? And who is the third queen? I'll leave you to find out.

And just let me say that this is a perfect escape read for trying times. What are your favorite escape reads? I'll sign a hardcover copy for one of today's commenters. And see some of you at the Poisoned Pen or online tonight, right?