During the last week, I’ve gotten a handful of messages inviting me to choose. Facebook is alive with straightforward or coy or awkward suggestions about picking the winners. Saw a few on Twitter today. There are bracket charts for several competitions floating around right now. It’s the season.

March Madness, yes. Basketball? No, something different – writing competitions. Who do I like better, her or him? Next round, her or her? Theoretically, it’s for their books, but it feels more like a popularity contest at times. These are professionals, people I’ve met and shared drinks with in a lot of cases. They’re capable, sometimes even breathtakingly good, writers who have worked hard, polished their words, driven the kinks out of their plots until they were able to give us some pretty wonderful stories.

When I was outside this business, I chose to think that writing awards were given for excellence in the craft, period. I was pleased when a book I particularly liked won, and intrigued when one I’d never heard of was crowned. But, as always happens, you see a lot of what goes on behind the scenes the closer in you get. That’s the world.

I’m not griping – I’m happy to see anyone in the tribe get noticed. And, as any agent or editor will tell you, it’s a big boost to selling books. But I don’t like the bracket approach because, as in basketball, it demands a loser for every winner, and none of these authors is that. So I’m passing on the brackets game and will continue to pile up TBR books people are talking about, whether they’re written by charming or curmudgeonly authors. The way brackets work, all but a couple will be “losers.” Not my game.

NOTE: Next Friday, I’ll be at Left Coast Crime, the big authors and fans event that’s happening in Santa Fe this year. I’m pleased to be on a panel on Thursday afternoon talking about reasons to set crime fiction in that beautiful city (where part of ABSTRACT was set). I’ll take a break from the blog, but write about LCC when I return.

I noticed that a few of the young women focused their stares on the dark-haired cop who leaned against the side of a patrol car, and no wonder. His short-sleeved shirt showed off muscled arms and a flat stomach, and the square jaw, dark sunglasses and impassive expression on his face were right out of an action film. For me, the effect was ruined by the strong impression I had that he was posing and that he knew exactly how he looked.

So, who is this masked man? He stepped onto the page of my third Dani O’Rourke mystery this week, uninvited, and I don’t know who he is. Is he a villain? A fool? A bully? A new romantic interest? A hero?

Truth is, I don’t know. I’m currently letting him reveal himself in a new scene I’m writing, and, darn it, I still haven’t figured out what role he will play in the story. I must have conjured him for a reason so all I can do is keeping writing to see what my subconscious had in mind. I’ve heard enough other writers talk about this phenomenon to know I’m not weird- well, not weirder – than the rest of my tribe. But it’s unsettling and annoying.

So far, I don’t like the guy, but that may be my prejudice against individuals who flaunt their authority or their greater power. Will he turn out to defy my early reading of his macho behavior? All I can say today is stay tuned.

Torture, screams, agonized rolling around…No, I’m not talking about crime fiction but real life. Two kittens in their first heat, to be specific. It may not BE torture, but you could sure convince me. Women, remember junior high school, the nurse’s office, hot water bottles as you dealt with the confusion of your transition to fertility? That’s what these two poor little critters remind me of, wandering around with dazed expressions and a strong need to be fussed over.

I’m slightly tortured also. Try writing a scene in a mystery while one or the other – or both – moaning felines pace back and forth behind you on the chair or across the keyboard (F2! F4! F5! Num Lock!). The notes s3444444444444444w3333333e [that was the gray kitten in real time – no kidding] neatly laid out beside you skid off the surface, a kitten repeatedly rubs you under the chin, and they yell, yell, yell….

Writing is a lonely occupation, or it should be. To do it even moderately well, you have to slip into a character’s skin, into her environment, and away from the comfort of your own existence into a more dangerous place than most of us would choose to occupy. Writers have to convince themselves of this alternate universe before they can convince readers.

My universe for the past several days is both thoroughly grounded here and a kind of crazy dream, punctuated by screams, moaning, and yelling. I’m trying to look on the bright side: Maybe I’ll be able to use this someday in my fiction.

P.S. Anyone looking for one or two healthy, sweet kittens that will be spayed shortly?