I fell down the rabbit hole yesterday and it’s all Elaine Petrocelli’s fault. Well, perhaps that’s not quite fair, but it does explain why someone like me who can go months without noticing that short shorts are back in style, Lady Gaga is real, or that the iPhone is no longer the hot new thing is reeling with disbelief today.

August 26, The Huffington Post: “Heidi Montag sat down exclusively with Life & Style to tell-all about her plastic surgery regrets, revealing that she wants her outrageous G implants removed…More than nine months after she went under the knife on Nov. 20, Heidi says she is still in severe pain and her body has not gotten used to the over the top boob job.…Besides being unable to hug her four dogs or wear anything but custom-made clothing, “I’m obsessed with fitness but it’s impossible to work out with these boobs,” she says. “It’s heartbreaking. I can’t live an everyday life….”

There’s a picture if you’re interested (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/25/heidi-montags-breast-impl_n_693671.html). They are, indeed, very large boobs. Apparently, they are not the only parts of Heidi Montag that have been rearranged. A raft of story headlines below this post deals with previous Heidi Montag plastic surgery adventures. It may be worth noting that Ms. Montag issued a press release about the unhappy state of her anatomy. I have no idea who she is other than the possessor of super-sized surgical implants.

The Heidi Montag stories, videos, and photos are stacked with other top news stories and photos. You know, like who’s leaving Fox News, a scandal (or maybe just a faux pas) involving Miss Philippines, the excellent curviness of a pretty young singer (although it isn’t her singing the “article” is about, which you can probably figure out from the fact that the photo is so large you have to scroll to get the full effect), and an op-ed titled – and, no, I’m not making this up – “The Moral Landscape: Thinking About Human Values in Universal Terms.”

Into what Landscape have I fallen? Is this the Land of the Mad Hatter and his (her) Tea Party? Is it a joke? Is my confusion merely the result of having lived in a New York Times-NPR-Greg Palast bubble for too long? How did I miss the full impact of the degradation of professional journalism until, following a link on the wonderful, literate Book Passage book store site that promised to bring me to book blogs by Elaine Petrocelli, I bumped into Ms. Montag’s twin problems?

I’m not a cultural loss. I loved M.I.A.’s first album, I think Michelle Obama is fantastic, fist bump and all, and there’s creativity galore on YouTube and even cooler sites (see www.stumbleupon.com). I admire strong opinion even when I disagree, as long as it makes sense and respects its audience. But this brief exposure to What’s Hot, What’s News leaves me wondering who will be left to deal with real problems a couple generations from now – and with what reasoning skills. And I worry, too, about who is hugging Ms. Montag’s dogs.

Had dinner the other night with my writing group and an author we admire greatly – Judy Greber, who writes mysteries (and a terrific short book on how to write mysteries) as Gillian Roberts, and other works of fiction under her own name. The conversation rolled around to the mystery at the heart of all mysteries – why would someone kill another human being? For us law-abiding, gentle folk, getting under the skin and behind the eyeballs of a person who is about to kill or who has just killed can be a daunting part of the writing process.

Do murderers signal their intent? Sure, if they’re carrying weapons openly and shouting, “You’re dead, dude!” at the victim. But what about that nice man who offers to help you carry your groceries, or the teenager who has a crush on your daughter, or the compassionate-seeming nurse at the local hospital? Who knew? Usually, the neighbors say, “But he [she] was such a lovely, quiet person…”

How do professional profilers come up with their descriptions of killers when all they have is the evidence left behind at the tragic scene? How do we fiction writers bring enough verisimilitude into our novels to keep readers engaged?

One of our group, who is writing wonderful, fresh paranormals, offered one answer: THE GIFT OF FEAR, by Gavin De Becker, is a new, non-fiction book on what survivors of violent, murderous attacks can teach us about violence, how to recognize the signals of a would-be killer (and, presumably, what to do about it).

Judy offered a second: THE MURDER ROOM: THE HEIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES GATHER TO SOLVE THEE WORLD’S MOST PERPLEXING COLD CASES, another new book, this one by Michael Capuzzo, is just as it says – using detecting skills to reconstruct the situation and action of a crime scene and to deduce from that who did the deed.

Both books are on my must-have list because I – like you, I am sure – must venture into the realm of my darkest imagination to embrace the mind and heart of a killer. It’s not territory I enjoy inhabiting, even for a short time. But it does have one upside: I’m so happy when I can emerge into the sunlight again.

There’s something about a first book – a debut, they call it in the biz. You work on it secretly, unwilling to verbalize your dream at first, then perhaps sidling into a writing class without meeting the eyes of people in the room, then reading aloud – how awful and awkward it sounds the first time.

Months, maybe years, later something not so bad emerges from the cocoon you’ve spun around your computer keyboard and you try it out on a few friends. They don’t hem and haw when you ask for feedback, so, emboldened, you ask a real writer (aka published) to read a bit of it. You hear nothing for weeks, by which time you’ve abandoned all delusions about becoming a writer, flayed yourself repeatedly for being a fool, and come to dread checking your email for a message from the writer. “Sorry, but you really should find another line of work. Yours truly, Best Selling Author” it will say.

One morning, the you’ve-got-mail ping makes you jump. It’s her, B.S.A. “Not bad,” B.S.A. writes. “Get rid of her overly cute dog, then let me see the whole thing.” Your heart swells. The world is a new place, B.S.A. is the kindest, most thoughtful person in this new world, and it will be easy to get rid of the dog and whip the book into shape.

Three months later, the damn dog is gone, but so is the life of the book. You know B.S.A. has forgotten your name, never mind the dog’s. The book is a mess, you can see that now, starting well but slumping in the middle, and limping at the end. And it’s grown. You keep adding words, paragraphs, pages in a frantic attempt to get it moving again. In the back of your head, you worry that B.S.A. is telling her friends about the flake who never even got back to her. In desperation one day, you cut the whole first chapter, which has become a concrete block tied around your tale.

Something happens. “Oh,” you say, puzzled at first, then afraid to breathe. “This is where my story starts.” The rhythm that made writing a joy at first returns. Giddy with the music of your prose, you slash wildly at the dead wood, let your characters run loose, catch their distinctive voices again, and look up to find you spent eight hours hunched over the computer and you’re hungry.

Riding a wave of conviction about your work, you email the new version to B.S.A. with a charming note thanking her and apologizing for the delay. A month passes, but you’re busy working on a new idea for a story. When she emails back, you’re not surprised. “Love the new draft. It needs some polishing but when you’ve gone through it once more, gotten rid of the typos and stuff like that, I’ll mention you to my agent and you can send him a query. Congrats! Oh, and I love the new dog. Such a mangy, sweet beast. I want to take him home with me!”

The rest follows. Maybe you have to query 10 agents, maybe 20, maybe more. But eventually, one gets back to you to say she loves the book and wants to represent you. You probably say yes without doing more due diligence. Getting your book in print is the thing. Let the future take care of itself because now you can let yourself dream about the day your first book appears in print, cover art blazing, at the bookstore where you’ve shopped for years. The publicity you get – and it may be miniscule – describes you as a promising debut author.

This is it. This is the dream come to life. This is the pinnacle. Well, at least until you resolve the problems in the second manuscript your agent and publisher are waiting for, and which, you tell your writer friends, is much stronger than your debut book. Yes, you say, laughing, there’s a dog in it – a real character.

A couple of months ago, I was invited to be a guest blogger on the “crazyforbooks” site. Jennifer asked me how I went about writing my debut mystery. I thought I’d post a version here in case you missed it. If you’re a reader (bless you!), this is a glimpse behind the curtain. If you’re a writer, help yourself to the ideas other, generous authors shared with me. But remember: Every writer gets to set her or his own rules.

1. Write what you know unless you love, love, love research. I chose to put my protagonist in a professional setting I knew: fundraising for a non-profit organization. She works at the fictional Devor Museum, which bears a passing resemblance to two of San Francisco’s real museums of art and antiquities. Had I chosen to write a tale of 18^th century England, I would have had tons of work to do before I felt comfortable writing a single word, and I think I would have been nervous about getting something wrong.

2. Write what you love. There’s always a lot of talk about writing what’s selling, but as any agent, editor, or author will tell you, you’re just chasing trends that may shift quickly and leave you stranded. It’s also true that passion, curiosity, and delight show in writing. I wrote about the contemporary art world, which fascinates me, and about the intersecting social circles of people who have considerable wealth and those who want some of that treasure. I hope readers catch my enthusiasm and sense of humor about those dynamics.

3. Write every day – almost. Waiting for lightning to strike, as those of us on the LadyKillers blog have discussed, is a tricky and frustrating way to approach the craft. There’s no substitute for what someone called “butt in chair” every day, or at least on a frequent, regular, no-excuses schedule. I did what you’re never supposed to do – quit my day job – because I found I wasn’t able to develop a strong writing habit, given the demands of my job (which were a lot like Dani O’Rourke’s.) Finished the draft in five months.

4. Finish. It’s related to #3 but not quite the same thing. A successful author of a long-running series once told me, as I was complaining about my slow progress, to “just finish the book, Susan. Pretend there’s no back button on your keyboard.” What she meant was that we often spend too much time trying to perfect the first several chapters – rewriting, polishing – not realizing that our agent or editor may say, “the action that grabbed me starts in chapter three, so drop the first chapters.” The single most important thing you can do as a writer is finish the book! Plenty of time for tweaking later.

5. Celebrate. A few thousand words. Finishing the first draft or last. Finding an agent. Selling the book. Seeing it in print. I’d been told many times by fellow members of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime that this is as important as any rule related to being a writer. Wow- 75,000 words, a whole book! Break out the chocolate chip cookies! Finding the agent of my dreams – meet family for dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant! After every pause to celebrate, I’m right back at the keyboard, polishing the next book in the series, remembering the happy times as a way to make it through revisions.