Sex, drugs, and Mr. Peanut

“I swear! There’s an entire series of these, and this guy sells millions. There’s one about sexy sentient donuts.”

For better or for worse, last weekend I was made aware of the existence of the literary oeuvre of Chuck Tingle, whose series of creatively-titled, gay erotica about topical issues includes such gems as Feeling the Bern in My Butt. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the premise of Gay T-Rex Law Firm. My mental deflowering took place when a few writers and I were winding down after a day at the Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival, which, to be extremely clear, is a fun, family-friendly writing festival, and not in any way associated with butts or dinosaurs or dinosaur butts. The agent of my corruption was USA Today-bestselling romance novelist Kimberly Lang. Lang was  lamenting the lack of quality control in publishing, and we were feeling simultaneously aghast and impressed by the success of people like Tingle, who churn out books like a Kardashian sister churns out pouty-lipped selfies.

Lang has been in the publishing biz for almost ten years, and her own books range from sweet to steamy. She had some profound (and hilarious) insights into the writing of genre books that really got me thinking about my own work. I’ve sometimes pushed the boundaries of conventional cozy mysteries. My books are sometimes a little more open about addressing uncomfortable issues like racism and domestic violence than cozy mysteries typically are. And the humor can sometimes be sharper than it is sweet. I’ll definitely be keeping all these issues in mind as I start working in earnest on book four in the Mount Moriah series.

Lest you think that Suffolk only involved serious conversations about the craft of writing peppered with digressions into the landscape of, um, creative erotica, let me reassure you that there was also some drug taking. I’ve written before about my reliance on prescription drugs to manage my public speaking anxiety. Suffolk was a pretty intense schedule for me, with a reading, a panel discussion, and an hour-long workshop where I was the one and only presenter. One of my fellow writers saw me popping a beta blocker, and I ended up evangelizing the merits of pharmaceutical-induced calm. I think I converted at least three people to drug-takers and also discovered that one very famous author relies on meds to quell her terror at public appearances. This person is in fact so famous that she might have lawyers who wouldn’t like me mentioning her name in the context of drug-taking, so I won’t!

I’ll close this dispatch from Suffolk with a quirky bit of trivia–Suffolk, Virginia is home to the beloved Mr. Peanut. As a child, I thought that Mr. Peanut was the same character as Rich Uncle Pennybags, the cartoon figure who fronts the Monopoly board game. I genuinely only recently realized that they were different. The fact that one is an anthropomorphic peanut probably should’ve been my first clue. Well, now that I’ve had a full education in the history and lore of the Planters mascot, I’m not likely to make that mistake again. But it’s possible that some folks in Suffolk might have mistaken me for Mr. P. After all, we were wearing the same dress.