Elizabeth Zelvin’s first mystery, Death Will Get You Sober, is coming from St. Martin’s in April 2008. She is a member of the blog Poe’s Deadly Daughters and is also a therapist who practices online at LZcybershrink. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing her for several years, and her name is in the acknowledgments of my first published novel, Till the Cows Come Home, with thanks for her careful reading of a draft. Welcome to the L’il Blog, Liz!

Back in the early days of television, world-class comedian Jack Benny had a shtik that played on the ongoing joke that cast Benny as a real skinflint who couldn’t bear to part with a dime. In the routine, a highwayman or robber held the comedian up at gunpoint with the classic demand: “Your money or your life!”

Long pause. Jack Benny was a master of timing. Finally, the robber repeats impatiently, “Your money or your life!” Benny: “I’m thinking!”

When I asked Judy Clemens, who invited me to write a piece for the Little Blog of Murder, what I should write about, she said, “Anything from writing to your grandkids.”
Thinking it over, I realized that these two focal points of my life are hard to choose between. I have two adorable granddaughters, Katie and Danica. Would I jump in front of a train to save them? Probably. Would I jump in front of a train to save my manuscript? No. What if it was the only copy of a completed manuscript that had just been accepted by a publisher? Hmmm. I’m thinking!

Last night I had a terrible dream. I dreamed that I was just about to leave for Europe on vacation when I got a phone call from an editor who’d been on the brink of taking my novel to say he’d decided against it. In the dream, I had no other options for getting published, no other manuscripts, no other markets to try. I woke up depressed.

I could have seen my granddaughters this week. They live in New Jersey, and I recently accompanied them and their mom to a class called Music Together. I was happy to drive from eastern Long Island to New York City and then to Jersey to spend quality time with them. Katie, the older one, is 3, and she really gets into it. I was thrilled to be invited again. But I put it off. I’ve been grappling with an exceptionally slippery manuscript all summer, and every day it’s not just me and my laptop and four walls with a view of my garden, I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it. Some days the writing simply has to come first. So I wrote 1,700 words this morning—not necessarily great words or even keepers. But it’s the first draft, for which my mantra is, “Just keep telling the story.” And now I feel better. And I’m going to go now and wash off all the shells I’ve collected to give to Katie when we sing “she sells sea shells by the seashore” in a couple of weeks.