JOHN BURDETT Exclusive Interview Parts 1 & 2

JOHN BURDETT

ELAINE ASH: Your profession was lawyering, originally, but when did you start writing? What was your very first attempt at fiction, and what happened after that?

JOHN BURDETT: I never really wanted to be a lawyer, I only ever wanted to write, but I found myself without a job and without prospects after I graduated with a degree in English and American literature. Times were very tough in the UK in the ’70s and in any event I was too young and too undisciplined to spend a couple of years in an attic trying to write my masterpiece. So I signed on at the College of Law in Chancery Lane, London, for a law course that would qualify me as a barrister. Naturally, the course took all my time and mental energy, and after that I was absorbed in learning my new trade. It was quite interesting, I spent a lot of time representing low-lifes in magistrates’ courts, with a few big fraud and other cases. All the time I was thinking I would use it all one day in a novel. Then my life changed when I got a job in Hong Kong as legal counsel to the colonial government there. I spent 4 years in the Attorney General’s chambers, then went private where it was possible to make real money. Finally, I had enough dough to follow my dream: I retired and wrote a novel.

ELAINE ASH: During those early days did you despair at having to depart from what looked like the correct path to being a writer? In retrospect, the path seemed to actually strengthen you in the background necessary to write authentically, but you mustn’t have known that at the time. Were there any key people who helped/influenced you that you’d like to mention?

JOHN BURDETT: I was in deep despair about many things. You have to imagine the UK then in the sort of psychic space Greece is in now. It was not as bad as Greece today, but there was a very similar feeling of claustrophobia, of a totally stagnant system like a quicksand from which it seemed impossible to escape. In addition, I’d been trying to write since I was about twelve – naturally I assumed I would be a worldwide success by age 16. I loathed everything I wrote though – looking back I was trying far too hard – to try hard without the discipline of stepping back and letting go is just as bad as not trying at all. Going into law seemed like a form of death, literally an annihilation of everything I had been up to then. So it was, but I had not yet experienced the healing side of the universe. The extreme discipline of law, especially with regard to precise use of language, and the exposure to senior lawyers of the highest mental power – I mean, real prodigies of astonishing brilliance – that started to shape me from within. When I finally started to write again, about a decade later, I found that I had in fact retained the old passion for narrative, but now it was much more adult, harder, sharper, with a deeper appreciation of the true power of language.

BELOW: John’s first novel is reviewed.

ELAINE ASH: How did the whole Buddhist aspect of Sonchai’s character make its

BUDDHA HAND – photo credit DREAMSTIME

way into the books? Are you a practitioner of meditation yourself or is everything in there due to diligent research?

JOHN BURDETT: Although I am a child of the sixties, I had never given much thought to Buddhism before I started to write the Sonchai books. I’d allowed myself to be fascinated by everything else – all kinds of mysticism and most of my friends were either with Rashneesh or Meher Baba, but the Buddhism that came to the UK in the 70′s was a very pathetic, populist kind of religion taken up by mediocrities who wanted to wear saffron and walk around with shallow smiles on their faces. It was only when I studied it in order to get into the head of my main character that I began to find how utterly radical it is, what an amazing penetration into the nature of life. It was not any kind of light on the road to Damascus – it was far more subtle and penetrating. Little by little I had to admit that this was the most accurate description of reality I’d ever come across. I was hooked and it has change my life and my character. My companion today is a Buddhist to her marrow, and I cannot imagine living with someone who is not following the path.

PART TWO

ELAINE ASH: You mention “the discipline of stepping back and letting go…” When I started writing experimental short stories, I took on an assumed name, “Anonymous-9.” When I was freed from the assumptions of my name (gender, culture, expectations) I couldn’t believe what came on paper. This is what your statement means to me personally, but can you explain a little more what you mean by “the discipline of stepping back and letting go?”

JOHN BURDETT: ‘Stepping back and letting go’ makes me think of painters. If you look at videos of Picasso at work, you see all the time he steps back, relaxes for a split second, then resumes. In fact, he almost certainly borrowed the technique from Cezanne, who was known to find inspiration in minute alterations in the position of

PAUL CEZANNE’S Still Life with Skull 1895-1900 Oil on canvas, The Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA

his head that allowed him to ‘see’ the mountain or the still life in their full individuation. It was exactly this that I was no good at – anxiety froze me for decades. However, there is more to it than that. Since I discovered Buddhist meditation, I realized that this technique has very profound repercussions if we allow it to work on us. All sorts of mental – and I do believe physical – ailments may be diminished if we learn to do it not merely to achieve a goal but to give our minds space for natural evolution. Even that, though, does not do justice to the application of ‘letting go’ on a more spiritual level. Indeed, if one studies the Buddhist science of the mind called abhidharma, you find that this condition of ‘emptiness’ is actually nothing less than nirvana itself. We have such spacy ideas about that ‘N’ word, we often don’t realise that we all experience it all the time, unfortunately for such minute periods – much less  than a second – we are unaware. The truth is that without it we could not function at all, because we would be permanently stuck on all the crowd of thoughts and emotions that swarm through our brains throughout waking consciousness.

ELAINE ASH: Can you comment on the state of the crime novel today?

JOHN BURDETT

JOHN BURDETT: For me the crime novel starts with Macbeth – although you could go all the way back to Satyricon. It comes to us via Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment) and others of the 19th century (parts of Oliver Twist owe a lot to the crime genre), via Conan Doyle who trivialises it a bit, but we don’t mind because the character of Holmes is so spell binding. From there it crosses the Atlantic to Chandler, thence to the great modern masterpiece of Gorky Park by Cruz Smith. Looked at in this way, the genre is as much about the perversion of human will, character, corrupt cops, atmosphere and immersion in the underworld, as it is about plot. Modern day purists who think crime fiction is simply clever plotting with wooden characters have it wrong – for me such writing is a pale and inferior caricature of the great original idea.

ELAINE ASH: With your literary level of craft, it seems like you could have chosen any genre. Why murder mystery?

When I was a stressed-out lawyer, murder mystery was all my attention span could tolerate. After I retired I figured there must be an awful lot of people in that same state, people who loved literature, but needed something that would nail them to the chair (or the seat in business class) to stop their minds racing on career problems.

ELAINE ASH: So it seems you looked at the market and made a calculated decision about which genre might give you the best opening for a market? Rather than what you naturally gravitated to?

JOHN BURDETT: Well, I had spent more than a decade in Hong Kong at that time – the world center of capitalism – but nothing is really that simple. I had come to admire the crime novel as a form, and I found that my mind naturally expressed itself that way. You may have got the wrong impression, I may be a compulsive book worm and sound a little high brow, but you only have to read my books to realise  there’s an authentically sleazy side to me – I most admire the poetry of gifted crooks and gangsters in the French tradition like Genet (who spent a chunk of his life in jail) and Villon (who was hanged). I have much to be grateful to detective fiction for – it allows me to let rip without inhibition – I cannot think of any other genre that would offer that kind of freedom.

THANK YOU SO MUCH, JOHN BURDETT!

Photo credit for Buddha Hand image HERE:

VISIT JOHN BURDETT and his wondrous books HERE.

The Passing of David J. Kane

DAVID with his best friend of over 60 years, devoted wife YETTA.

Gloria Killian’s Long Fight for Freedom

BETH MARTIN BROWN, Board Member of Gloria’s non-profit organization ACTION COMMITTEE for WOMEN in PRISON.

ACTION COMMITTEE for WOMEN in PRISON

ORDER FULL CIRCLE FROM AMAZON (hard cover or Kindle)

BRIX in Sunset Beach, CA. The friendliest, tastiest little winebar and eatery on the West Coast!

http://brixsunsetbeach.com/

Gloria will speak at the next Sisters in Crime LA meeting on July 8th. More info HERE.

Story by ELAINE ASH

John Burdett, Gloria Killian and the ADA California Scam

GLORIA KILLIAN – WRONGFULLY IMPRISONED

Should the DEATH PENALTY Die in California?

MY FAVORITE “PROPOSITION LADY” isn‘t who you might think. She’s the gal who hangs outside my local post office soliciting signatures to qualify propositions for upcoming State elections. She receives pay for the signatures she gathers. Recently I greeted her with the usual, “What’s new?!” and she presented me with a petition to abolish the Death Penalty. As I read it, standing in the glare of the midday sun in front of the post office, I experienced an epiphany. After 45-plus years, I suddenly no longer “believed” in the death penalty.

It occurred to me in a flash that most death-row inmates in California (unlike Texas) die of old age after decades of appeals (and appeals on their last appeal). I began to ponder the expense of maintaining prisoners who are clearly not going to be executed by the state. Then I wondered how many defendants were free or convicted of lesser charges because well-intentioned citizens were reluctant to sentence a defendant to the big “D”—regardless of how deserving of the defendant was of the punishment. With a little research I discovered all my questions had readily available answers.

OF ALL THE STATE PRISONS IN CALIFORNIA for men and women, San Quentin is the only one with a Death Row—a sterile version of Dante’s Hell. The gray granite walls, quarried and built by inmates over 150 years ago, match the hard cement floors. In the winter the cold fog rolls in under the Golden Gate Bridge with a bone chilling dampness which underscores the numbness of life without human contact.  There’s no intimacy, no love, not even human conversation. Being sandwiched between San Francisco Bay and the cold Pacific Ocean, summers are only slightly warmer with an occasional spell of unbearably hot, humid heat.

The monotonous routine of clanging steel cell doors is periodically pierced by the anguished shouts of mentally tortured lives waiting to be extinguished. The only semblance of civilization is kept alive by the tenuous hope for survival that clings to news of the last appeal and plotting the next appeal.

There’s a caste system on Death Row. In reality, there are three of them. About 75 condemned inmates are housed in the original area built in 1934. This relatively quiet cell block is called North-Segregation. It’s for inmates who “play well with others” and are not disciplinary problems. About 450 condemned live in East Block, a falling down, dilapidated, leaky rabbit pen built in 1927. It’s an old fashioned 5-story cage housed in a block building. The incessant din of chatter, shrieks, and metal on metal clanging is a mind-numbing, 24 hour reality—a special hell. The cells house those who have murdered their victims in the most gruesome ways. Most are violent, mentally ill behavior problems that “don’t play well with others.”

Last, and deservedly least of the three Death Rows, is the infamous, cynically named Adjustment Center. This is where the worst of the “badasses” are warehoused. They are under heavy guard and total isolation. They are “allowed” to exercise in 8 by 10-foot cages under constant supervision by armed guards. Richard Allen Davis, the man who kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas in Petaluma in 1993 is housed here. He’s been assaulted and spat upon by other inmates at least three times. Not so much because he killed a child, but because most inmates blame him for the three-strikes law. Given the chance, any inmate would kill him.

Richard Ramirez, our own home-grown Satan dubbed the “Night Stalker” also resides in the Adjustment Center. This is where he receives fan mail from adoring women. He’s best known by prison officials for exposing himself to children in the prisoner’s visiting area.

But even in this twisted civilization, moral distinctions exist. In 1992, as Robert Alton Harris was led away to execution, his fellow inmates jeered him about eating the unfinished hamburgers of his young murder victims, and taunted him with cries of “Baby Killer.”

OLD AGE SEEMS TO BE THE GREATEST THREAT to life here these days. Recently, Dennis Lawley, age 69, died of natural causes. He was convicted in 1989. Frank Manuel Abilez, age 53, died also of natural causes. He was convicted of sodomizing and strangling his mother to death in 1997.

California currently hosts 722 inmates on death row. Since 1978, 76 inmates died of natural causes or suicide while 14 were executed. In that same span of years California spent $14 billion dollars maintaining these folks as inmates. Do the math. We spent $285 million dollars per execution. This does not include the expense of post-conviction prosecution and defense attorneys pegged by the ACLU at $85,000 per death-row inmate per year. There are no death row inmates wealthy enough to pay their own legal fees so California taxpayers pick up the bill. In total, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice 2009 pegs the tab at $137 million. Comparatively, permanent imprisonment of all those on Death Row would cost only $11 million. It seems a mini-industry has emerged from California’s broken capital punishment system. (Ironically, suicide on death row is hard to pull off. Residents are on what would otherwise be called “suicide watch.”)

If the death sentences of  722 death-row inmates were commuted to permanent imprisonment without possibility of parole, the State of California’s annual savings would be at least $191,620,000. We would spend $126,000,000 less in annual maintenance as “general population prisoners” and another $65,620,000 less in post-conviction appeal costs.

Why without possibility of parole? The reason is to avoid parole-review farces like the recurring circus of Charles Manson and his acolytes. Because Chief Justice Rose Bird overturned the death penalty during her ten-year tenure, when Manson et al were on trial, this bloody mass murderer and his accomplices are eligible for review every few years. The gruesome nightmare gets revisited in the press, puts the families through agony all over again, and arguably glorifies Manson’s celebrity.

Bird was later removed from office by California voters—too late for the families of Sharon Tate and her unborn child, Jay Sebring, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, Steven Parent, Abigail Folger and Wojciech Frykowski.

BECAUSE OF THE BURGEONING DEATH ROW POPULATION, California must soon build a new Death Row facility at a cost estimated well above $250 million. The cost of building new maximum security facilities for an equal number of inmates is estimated at $175 million. There’s a quick, one-time savings of $75 million. There’s also the more subtle savings in interest on the state bonds that would be created to pay for construction. These savings would go on for years, as would the lower costs of maintaining much simpler facilities. It becomes the proverbial gift that keeps on giving.

These savings wouldn’t bail California out of its current deficit nightmare, but if retained in the state prison system, the savings would stop the transfer of state prisoners to local county jails. Many counties are having their own budget problems which are exacerbated by having to accommodate scores of “extra guests” with very little extra funding.

THE CURRENT DEATH ROW POPULATION of 722 could easily merge within the existing state prisons, totaling tens of thousands of prisoners. There are similar percentages of mentally unstable inmates in both groups and all prisons. Facilities to accommodate the hardest to handle of both groups already exist within the three highest security prisons—Pelican Bay State Prison, Corcoran State Prison, and California Correctional Institute at Tehachapi. Although already over-crowded, the three prisons have a total population of slightly under 7,000. There are 30-plus more facilities to ease the burden.

California can no longer afford the luxury of pretending to keep 772 prisoners for executions that will never happen, at an expense that is almost as murky and complex as the national defense budget.  It’s all at the taxpayer’s expense.

That’s why I no longer support the Death Penalty in California.  For the first 45 years of my life I wasn’t swayed by moral and ethical issues set forth by different religious and advocacy groups for abolition of the ultimate punishment. I’m still not. It’s just that I can no longer afford the Death Penalty in California.

Thomas Burney graduated from Boston University in 1968 with a BS in
Journalism and entered three years of military service. After seeing how journalism was handled in Vietnam, he swore off the profession for life and gained honest work in real estate development and the oil industry. In 1978 he became an entrepreneur  and retired after 25 years to small business consulting, volunteerism and leisure.  This is his first political editorial since the Vietnam war ended.

PHOTOS: Elaine Ash

THRILLER SCHOOL Kills ‘Em in California

SARAH WILLIAMS (right) accepts flowers from a grateful crime writer in Ventura, California

One of the lively, hand-on workshops at Thriller School led by STEVE BOWMAN, author WHEN THE EAGLE SCREAMS, with a forward by WILLAM COLBY, former CIA Director. (Yes, that CIA)                                                .                          .     Photo credit: QUINN CLOONEY

Social media dynamo CHANTAL COOKE had me scrambling for notes during her Facebook/ Twitter tutorials and much more. Find Chantal at http://www.thebookbooster.com Twitter: @ChantalCooke

PATTI McCORMAC, veteran crime reporter, gave us the scoop on real homicide reporting, plus the truth versus “the story.” Take note of the beautiful inlaid door behind Patti, just one of the PIERPONT INN’s architectural details in Ventura, California.

BOMBS AWAY! A big thank you to Ed Nordskog, foremost bomb and arson expert,who tipped me onto THRILLER SCHOOL. Ed kicked off TS with a talk and here he is pictured with his own book TORCHERED MINDS.

Class of ’12. (Left to right) JUDY LEIBOWITZ, SARAH WILLIAMS, DAVID STANSFIELD author ONE LAST GREAT WICKEDNESS, ELIZABETH CARROLL author KILLING IN TIME, QUINN CLOONEY, BILL EDDY. Front: CHERRY YATES

FOR MORE INFORMATION about SARAH WILLIAMS and THRILLER SCHOOL CLICK HERE. The site will be updated soon about the November School.

FIND CHANTAL COOKE at www.thebookbooster.com

Elaine Ash writes and photographs for Ashedit, her news blog about books and writers. Elaine is a book editor and an award-winning author under the name Anonymous-9. She is published by Blasted Heath. www.anonymous-9.com www.elaineash.com

Does Paul Brazill ever Get Serious??

ELAINE ASH

Elaine: What amazes me is the fact that you’re everywhere. In a few short years you’ve built this amazing profile online, your stories are here there and everywhere, and you even attracted all these writers to give you stories for an anthology. How do you do it???

Paul: Sitting on you arse and messing about on the internet isn’t exactly the most demanding of tasks, Elaine!

Elaine: Very funny, now let’s get serious. Lots of writers are burning their brain cells up trying to figure this stuff out.

Paul: I use Facebook most because it links me to the widest range of people — family, old school mates, friends from the music days, musical heroes, models, people who work in film, journalists, film critics, artists, people I’ve worked with, people I’ve boozed with … There’s a greater variety of banter there.

I’ll link to my own stuff – loads, sometimes! But I NEVER ask someone to buy my stuff or write a good review or ‘like’ it on Amazon.

I have blog, You Would Say That Wouldn’t You? I write reviews/ recommendations of books. I have guest bloggers. I do interviews. Hopefully all interesting. I promote my own stuff and other people’s.

I write a column for Pulp Metal Magazine, review for Mean Streets and have started doing stuff for Sabotage Times. I’m also on Twitter, Goodreads, pinterest, Linkedin and still at My Space. There’s a couple of others that I don’t use that much, like Crimespace. But I just pass through them.

Elaine: How did you get started online?

Paul: At the end of 2008, for the first time in my life, I lived somewhere with internet access. I met some writers on line, most notably Keith Rawson. Great bloke that he is, he pointed me in the direction of some online crimezines like Powder Burn Flash and Thuglit. This opened up a new world to me. I also found out about other up-and-coming writers such as Nick Quantrill and Cormac Brown. I got to know them and much badinage and ‘ladinage’ ensued.

Elaine: What’s your approach?

Paul: I think it should be natural. Don’t force it. If you like being online in public great, do it. If you don’t feel comfortable then limit it. Or maybe not at all. Do it in a way that suits you.

I don’t do ‘discussion’ boards, for example, because I’m not into discussing things in any detail. I don’t do opinionated blog posts because I doubt I could  back up any of my – few- opinions and don’t really listen to other peoples anyway. I’m not from the world of ‘debates.’ But someone like Ade McKinty does that really well. It’s his style. It’s part of him. He’s clever enough and funny enough for you to enjoy what he writes.Other people can come off as pompous knob-heads!

BELOW: An excerpt from DRUNK ON THE MOON anthology, edited by Paul Brazill

He felt The City around him like a caul. It held the past in its clenched fist like the promise of identity, like a map of history, and Roman headed towards its dark and silent heart, his footsteps clacking on the paving stones.

Getting High On Daisy by Richard Godwin

AVAILABLE HERE

“I didn’t want to think about the alternatives because I couldn’t see any way out of this now but down; about two hundred feet onto rock hard concrete. And all I could hear in my mind were my dad’s words, over and over again, ‘There are no short cuts son.”

No Shortcuts by Howard Linskey from True Brit Grit

“Amongst the dogshit and the used johnnies. Slimy, wet and bloated up, Bob’s rebirth was from water thick with plastic bags and shopping trolleys, scattered newspapers and flyers floating like scum.”

The Catch and the Fall by Luke Block, from True Brit Grit.

AVAILABLE HERE

LAZARBALL by David Ayres and Darren Jacobs

DARREN JACOBS, author LAZARBALL

DAVE AYRES, author LAZARBALL

GET LAZARBALL HERE

Thriller School California, May 11–13th, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR THRILLER SCHOOL WEB SITE

Thriller School California: Held in Ventura, the conference runs over 3 days, taking delegates through the hard facts of true-life crime, the skills and insider secrets of well-known crime fiction writers, and effective advice on the best publishing route for you from agents and specialist crime fiction publishers.

 As well as special guest speakers, leaders in their criminalist fields, there are workshops and planning sessions so writers can get “hot ideas” down on the page.

 FIND OUT MORE HERE

BELOW: Thriller School’s micro-course video #1. More on YouTube.

WORKSHOPPING AT THRILLER SCHOOL

GUIDED PLANNING SESSION

Vancouver Writers Mixer by Melanie Sherman

MELANIE SHERMAN

Seriously, the thought of a professional editor looking at my writing makes my mouth go as dry as the Atacama Desert in South America, and then you could squeeze a whole tube of Burt’s Bees Pink Blossom lip balm into the cracks in my parched lips, but when I was invited to write a post on Ashedit, I rose to the challenge.  Okay, so that isn’t entirely true.  I turned her down. Then I tried to foist off other writer friends on her in an effort to remain comfortably anonymous.

As you can see, I lost the battle.  So with shaky fingers, I type this post.

CAROLYN J. ROSE

My assignment was to write an article on our Vancouver Writers Mixer.  I should point out we are not talking about the exotic city located in an allied country, but the little town located in a corner of Washington State.  The Vancouver Writers Mixer was started by author, Carolyn J. Rose, after she taught a “Novel Writing Boot-Camp” class through the community education program.  When the six week class was over, we whined, sniveled, clung to her ankles as she dragged us across the dark parking lot, and told her we couldn’t live without her weekly critiques of our work.  “Start your own critique group,” she said.

We released her ankles, and asked, “How?”

SMEDLEY, aide de camp at COVER-TO-COVER BOOKS

Ms. Rose enlisted the aid of Cover-to-Cover Books, a local bookstore in the heart of Vancouver, and secured the first Saturday of the month, inviting writers to get together and talk, form critique groups, and eat cookies.  Ms. Rose gave a little talk on writing and the evening was so successful, it became a monthly event, with anywhere from 10 to 50 attending.

Writers arrive early to order a latte or mocha, drape a jacket over a chair in the back, to see the projector image on the wall above the bookcases, and have time to browse through the store.  Mel Sanders, the owner of Cover-to-Cover, knows many writers personally and will sometimes have a book or two set aside which may aid research for a current work-in-progress.

Saturday, our guest speaker was Carol Doane.  For the past year, she has been the general manager of a start-up community website, COUV.COM. “It is a bumpy ride,” Carol said.  “News media is changing and we don’t know where it is going.  For one hundred years, Vancouver’s newspaper, The Columbian, was our only steady source of local news.”  Portland papers and television stations may touch on Vancouver, but are not dedicated to us.  But now we have multiple online news sources, including online newspapers, online business journals, local entertainment websites and thousands of area bloggers for colorful commentary.

Carol went on to say that to write for a start-up community website, it needs to be edgy, quick, include photos, audio, video, and great writing.  Not “milquetoast” writing if you want to win page views.

The dynamic CAROL DOANE of COUV.com in action

“You need to connect with your audience,” she said.  “Sometimes the connection is good, and sometimes you get comments like the one I got on an article about the proposal for new electrical transmission towers.  The commenter asked for my dismissal, and for me to apologize to the entire community.”

MEL SANDERS of Cover-to-Cover Books rescues caffeine-starved writers from computer slump. Thank you, Mel!

In Carol’s defense, I read that post and was not offended in the least, but my guess is whichever slant you give an article, the opposing side will take offense.

Today, COUV.COM is looking for local contributors.  Tomorrow, who knows?  A start-up in this arena is volatile.  But if you are thinking of submitting stories for a start-up online news site, value your work.  Ask for compensation, even if it is only a couple of tickets to the local theater, unless you merely want a byline to build your platform, that is.

“To write regularly for a start-up, you need discipline, and you need to meet deadlines.  Most of all, you need to write, write, write. But,” she warns, “my fiction writing has suffered since I’ve been putting all my energy into writing news.”

I guess that would be like a person who works in an ice cream store, who no longer has any desire for a milkshake.

Melanie Sherman has been writing for years, against her better judgement.  In 2009 she won second place in the mainstream category of the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association’s Literary Contest for her historical fiction, The Pirates’ Reckoning, but only after her critique group badgered her into entering.  She is currently working on No Mans Land, another historical fiction, and Say Cheese Before You Die, a contemporary fiction outlined on her blog, “Meanderings of Melanie Sherman.”  Her dream is be able to claim fabulous trips “for research purposes” as an expense on her income tax.

"The last word" on a sweatshirt spotted at the writers mixer.