Faces in the Crowd

I was startled yesterday to find that PICASA, the program I use to manage my pictures, had decided on its own initiative to go through all my pictures and single out the faces. I don't normally take a lot of pictures of people -- except maybe at a mystery convention, so I was surprised to see that PICASA had managed to find well over a thousand. They included all sorts of faces  from all sorts of photos -- a romance novel cover, African fabric with a picture of Obama on it, a votive candle, a tile in my kitchen, a photograph on the wall of a restaurant in Indianapolis, two photographs that were in the background of a larger shot, and of course any number of real people.

So I felt compelled to do something with all these faces. And here they are.

There are several mystery authors represented including a good looking guy who's a NYT Bestseller, a southern-fried lawyer, a NY substance abuse counselor, and a perky little Canadian.

Friends and family are there, a couple of women who were in a quilting class I once taught, and more than one face I have no idea about.

More mystery authors, more family, a book cover face, a mystery man or two, and one dog. Recognize anyone?

I can't wait to see what PICASA does next. I wish it would go organize my pantry.

Southern Voices

I've got the South on my mind . . . the southern states of the USA, that is . . . and I wonder . . .

What do you think of when you think about the South? . . .

A shy pink camellia?

Sweet iced tea with lemon and mint?

Good old boys enjoying the evening on the front porch?

The seductive scent of a creamy magnolia?

A great Live Oak, hung with Spanish moss and spreading its leafy arms across a small town square?


Or maybe tractor caps, proclaiming long-held loyalties?

All this is on my mind because I've just received my panel assignment for Bouchercon - "SOUTHERN VOICES: What's special about Southern mysteries?"

The panel is composed of Cathy Pickens, (who writes a down home series about upstate South Carolina,) Deborah Sharp (setting: the part of Florida natives call the real Florida,) T. Lynn Ocean (coastal Carolina, Wilmington,) A. Scott Pearson (Memphis, TN,) and me.

That's a lot of different Souths. I'm trying to figure out what the commonalities are -- not gators, nor old plantations, nor log cabins, nor Elvis. Well, maybe Elvis. Maybe biscuits and gravy.

But special? What's a key element in Southern fiction -- in Southern mysteries? I have some vague, half-formulated ideas having to do with the Scots-Irish and story-telling and maybe even a tad of alienation resulting from the Late Unpleasantness, as John's Aunt Barbara called the Civil War.

So I'm asking, do you think there's anything special about Southern mysteries or Southern fiction in general?

(Let's hope so -- it'll be a long, awkward fifty-five minute panel otherwise.)

Help me out here, folks! And for those of you blog readers in other countries, I'd be really interested to know if you have any notion of the American South as being any different from the rest of the US -- any stereotypes, etc.