What Not to Forget When Traveling Out of Country

One of my goals for the year was to attend one of the big crime fiction conferences. Since I had attended Left Coast Crime a few years back when it was in my home town of Phoenix, I decided to go with that.

As it turns out, this year's Left Coast Crime was being held in the beautiful city of Vancouver, British Columbia. Woohoo!

I'll admit, I'm not much of a world traveler. In fact, the last time I'd been outside of the United States was twenty years ago. But despite having turned into a bit of a homebody over the past couple of decades, I was excited about visiting our neighbor to the north.

And I was rather organized about it. I got my passport renewed in plenty of time. Hotel booked. Flights booked. Supershuttle booked. I'd called my bank and my cellphone carrier to let them know of my travel plans. I made a comprehensive list of things I needed to bring (including underwear and socks), and other things to do before I left. I was very organized.

All in all, I was looking forward to this little adventure.

Photo credit: simonlesleyphoto on Best Running  CC BY-ND

Sure, I was a wee bit nervous about getting through security. Kind of a crime fiction writer's dilemma. Secondary research can make one look suspicious, especially when you Google such topics as "the kill radius of one pound of C-4", "how to turn raw opium into heroin", and "how to defeat magnetic door locks."

Honestly, it's for research. Look! I have a concealed carry permit and a fingerprint card. I've already been checked out. To quote Eliza Doolittle, "I'm a good girl, I am."

But my concerns over being pulled into a room and questions by the TSA were unfounded, as it turns out. I wasn't on any "Do Not Fly" list. My passport wasn't flagged. In fact, I breezed right through security.

In fact, everything went great until I was in the air on my way to Calgary (where I would pick up a connecting flight to Vancouver.)

The flight attendant came down the aisle with the refreshment cart and asked if I'd like anything. I asked for a bag of granola bites and reached into my wallet to pull out my bank card. Which wasn't there.

Photo by johnhain

You know those scenes in movies where the walls start closing in? That's what it felt like. I was headed to Canada without my bank card. Let the panicking begin!

I dug through my bag and finally came up with a PayPal Mastercard. I paid for my snacks with it and the charge went through. Whew! So while in flight, I used the onboard WiFi to move some money from my regular bank account to the one that my PayPal account drew on since I had a zero PayPal balance.

I tried to breathe, but I was still a bit shaken up. Was that enough? Would I be okay?

When I reached Calgary, I got through customs okay and figured I better pull some cash out of the ATM before heading to my flight to Vancouver. I slipped in my card, tried to pull out a hundred dollars and...Transaction Declined. Resume panic attack!

I called PayPal. The customer service rep let me know I needed to authorize the card for use in Canada. I gave them all of the security responses and they authorized it. Great. I tried the ATM again. Transaction Declined. Crap!

The rep then explained I had a zero PayPal balance. I replied there was plenty of money in the bank account it drew on. He said he could transfer some money, but it would take three business days before it would be available. Ugh! Not helping!

Finally, I just said, "Screw it. In for a penny, in for a dollar. Or in this case, a loonie."

With the help of a friendly WestJet agent, I breezed through security and ran like an Olympic sprinter through the airport as they were announcing my name over the loudspeaker along with the words "Final Boarding Call."

Laurie Rockenbeck's Bound to Die

I just barely made it onboard my flight. Once in the air, I texted to my dear friend Laurie Rockenbeck, author of Bound to Die and Cleansed By Fire. She and I were going to be hosting a table at the Left Coast Crime banquet. Even as I sent her my panicky plea for help, a voice in my head was telling me I sounded like those FB scams where con artists pose as friends caught in a similar situation.

To let her know that my situation was legit, I included details about our books, previous interactions, and a very worried photo of myself on the plane. My biggest worry at the moment was how I was going to get from the Vancouver airport to the hotel. Did taxis in Vancouver take credit cards? And even if they did, would mine work?

Fortunately, Laurie responded, letting me know she was ready to help out in any way possible. It's so good to have friends.

When I arrived in Vancouver, I managed to grab a taxi. Yes, they did take credit cards. Whew!

While en route to the hotel, I called my wife and told her to send money from her PayPal account to mine. I also sent a panicked money request to a client that owed me a bit. She helped me out right away.

Bottom line, in the end, everything worked out. I was able to pay for what I needed to pay for. The conference was fabulous. I got to meet some friends who until then I'd only known via social media. I ate a lot of fabulous food. And everyone loved the panels I was on.

Me with Snopes's David Mikkelson

Me with Susanna Calkins, Julie L. Brown, and Lori Rader-Day

Me with Kellye Garrett

The moral of the story is twofold. First, when traveling, DON'T FORGET YOUR BANK CARD! Second, the Beatles were right. We do get by with a little help from our friends.

Thanks to my wife and all of my dear friends who made Left Coast Crime 2019 a wonderful experience. I can't wait to see you in San Diego next year.

---

As one of the only transgender authors in crime fiction, Dharma Kelleher brings a unique voice to the genre, specializing in gritty crime fiction with a feminist kick. She rides a motorcycle, picks locks, and has a dark past she’d rather forget.

She is the author of the Jinx Ballou bounty hunter series and the Shea Stevens outlaw biker series. You can learn more about Dharma and her work at https://dharmakelleher.com.

Research Without a Cause

by Thomas Pluck

Today I visited a neglected cemetery and the site of an assassination.
No reason.

Well, other than to satisfy my morbid curiosity. The cemetery is sometimes called the Mulatto Bend cemetery because it sits at the south end of the road with that name, in Port Allen, Louisiana, over the magnificent Huey Long bridge from Baton Rouge. It is also called the Benevolent Society Cemetery, and searching for either of those names will get you sent to the West Baton Rouge History museum, a ten minute drive away. So, don't use Google.

Last night I read the book Fragile Grounds: Louisiana's Endangered Cemeteries, by Jessica H. Schexnayder and Mary H. Manhein, which had been sitting on the night table in my mother-in-law's guest room, and learned that Slim Harpo was buried not far from where they lived. Maybe you don't know Slim Harpo, but he's most famous for the deliciously salacious blues tune "I'm a King Bee," which the Rolling Stones covered, but did not improve upon. The original is here, and Slim really slings the innuendo in it, and his nasal voice gets sweet as honey as the tune goes on. His other killer hits include "Rainin' in my Heart," "Got Love if You Want It," and "Shake Your Hips," which cement him as a blues king in my book. So I went to see where he was interred, and had a little adventure.

First, Google sent me to the museum, where I saw some wonderful restored Louisiana buildings, like a Creole Cottage, a shotgun shack, and so on. But no Slim. So I choogled and I Googled, and found an article by an LSU music historian who found Harpo's final resting place. Even after reading it, I made the same mistakes the author did, and took a right on Mulatto Bend Road and followed it past settling old shacks and rusty playgrounds and one dive called Leroy's Lounge, with the Lounge crossed out and reduced to Bar, maybe when Leroy tired of customers lounging around and not drinking. The cemetery is at the end of the road on the other side of the highway, so I had to race across traffic, right past the historical marker that Baton Rouge residents erected a few years back to honor the native musician.

At the end of the road I found the cemetery, and walked its length several times in the cold. The cold? What did you say, Tommy? You're in Louisiana! And yes, the state is under a five day cold snap that's got them under a hard freeze warning, and covered them with four inches of snow last week, during which residents delighted in sledding and making snowmen. And me without my peacoat! I walked until my hands were numb, eyeing the concrete sarcophagi, looking for James (Slim Harpo) Moore. I used Find a Grave to no avail. I read the LSU article closely, and followed his footsteps. He found a small section dedicated to the Allen family, and said he saw a tomb covered in harmonicas along the fence from that vantage point. When he visited, there was a sign saying that the eldest Allen was a straw boss on a plantation, but that sign is long gone.

But I found a few Allen headstones, and on tiptoe, spotted the only white tomb decorated with mementos. I had walked past it at least five times, but from the path, you can't see the engraved marker or the harmonicas. It was a little anticlimactic, but it got me to visit parts of town I'd never have found before, and Leroy's Bar will help my description of a similar place Jay Desmarteaux makes himself unwelcome in. And I haven't listened to Slim Harpo in ages, and now I have him on repeat. The cemetery itself is good story fodder as well, and I got a feel for the city I'm writing about. All because I wanted to give my respects to Slim Harpo.

After seeing the King Bee, I went to see the Kingfish. That's Huey Long, of the eponymous bridge. He commissioned the new Louisiana State Capitol Building, the tallest such state building in the United States, finished in seventeen months, but not soon enough for him to still be governor when they cut the ribbon. Pity, because he had a Governor's Elevator built that runs to the top of the 29 floor monstrosity, the Empire State Building of the South, as no one but myself ever called it. Mr Long was a populist politician who inspired the novel All the King's Men, and ran on the slogan "a chicken in every pot, and every man a king" ... until he was assassinated in the new capitol building, just outside the Governor's Elevator. Long shifted taxes from the working people to businesses and the oil barons, was impeached, but kept fighting until they murdered him. His legacy includes free schools, abolishing the poll tax, free school busing, charity hospitals, infrastructure, and of course some patronage, but anyone hated by rich men and the Klan can't be all bad.

The hallway where he was gunned down is pocked with bullet holes, as his bodyguards fired 60 rounds into the assassin, who was killed on the spot. Long died two days later. The bullet holes are patched except for one in a column, which you can see here. Today Louisiana is back to being "business friendly."

I didn't get quite as much inspiration visiting the capitol building, but from the observation deck I got a wonderful view of the city, and noticed that the park around Huey Long's statue looks like an ornate symbol of power meant to keep him imprisoned... so maybe there is a story in there, somewhere. When I got home, my mother-in-law told me that her husband's uncle Owen had been in that hallway when Huey Long was gunned down and saw it all. I wish I'd gotten to meet him. This family's steeped in Louisiana history. My wife's memaw saw Bonnie & Clyde's corpses paraded through town after they were ambushed. Her cousin was one of the sheriffs who killed them. I wrote about that for Criminal Element.

So the point of this is, get out of the house and do frivolous things, especially if you haven't been writing as much as you'd like. I've been averaging 500-1500 words a day for the past two and a half months, taking some breaks here and there, but steadily chunking along with Riff Raff, Jay Desmarteaux #2. I'm enjoying it, but I recharge every once in a while by getting out and doing things, whether it's shopping, stopping in Bowie's Outfitters to buy a knife for no reason, or visiting a bluesman's grave. Some people can write inside a cell using only their imagination. I won't do that until I have to.

Give it Up

by Holly West

I'm willing to bet that most of us have, if not actual written bucket lists, a running mental tab of items we'd like to accomplish in our lives. For a long time, writing and getting a novel published was at the top of my list. Now that I've done that, I realize that particular goal is kind of never-ending--I'm always writing, trying to better myself.

But there are other items on my list which I've pretty much conceded defeat to. I know that goes against the principles of positive thinking, but let's be honest here--I'm never gonna be a size two or win American Idol. Sometimes you have to give up goals and be okay with it so you can move on to the ones that are actually important to you.

So in that spirit, I thought I'd share a few of the items on my personal list that are unlikely to ever be accomplished.

Realistically, I will never:

1) Learn a foreign language

The closest I will ever come is my rudimentary Spanish skills acquired in high school. Hey, that was enough to get my husband and I by in Peru, so I figure it's enough. Still, I cling to the idea that someday I'll be fluent in Spanish--I'm just not willing to put in the work to make that happen, Rosetta Stone's full immersion learning system be damned.

And speaking of Peru, I have something else to add to this list: Much as I'd love one, I will probably never have a baby goat.

2) Learn to play the guitar

I've wanted to play the guitar since I was a kid. When I left for college, I sold my flute, which I'd played since the fifth grade, so I could buy myself a guitar. I carted that damned thing around all through my twenties, thirties, and into my forties, only giving it away when we moved into our current house three years ago. In all those years, I never learned to play it, or the second one I acquired along the way. Now, the only guitar I own (yes, at one point I had three unplayed guitars) is the one my Grandpa used to play. It's displayed in the entryway of my home.

3) Visit Africa (Except Maybe Egypt)

I've always said I wanted to go on a safari someday. But honestly, I'm not that great a traveler (the picture of me with the goat above notwithstanding). I don't like to fly and I refuse to be away from home longer than ten days because I hate leaving my dog, Stella. Like so many things in my life, I love having traveled, but while I'm actually doing it I'm a little bit anxious and missing home by day three. With so many other locations in the world I'd rather see, I'm officially crossing Africa (and that safari) off the list.

4) Be a graphic/web designer

When I quit my job fifteen years ago, it was with the understanding that I'd work from home as a web designer. While it's true I designed a few websites (to my knowledge, none of those designs survive), I never learned the skill set to do it properly or efficiently. The same goes for graphic design.

But for some reason I've always considered myself the graphic/web designer type. I can't quite give up that ghost. A couple of weeks ago I told my husband I was thinking about taking some design courses online with the goal of eventually earning some extra money. His response: "Who's gonna hire you?"

So.... yeah.

5) Learn how to dress myself stylishly.

Obviously, I know how to dress myself. I just don't know how to dress myself. All those magazine articles about dressing for your body-type (I'm an apple, if it wasn't obvious), using accessories to make a statement, using classic pieces to build your wardrobe.... I'm still clueless. It's not that I don't try, I just lack the fashion gene. It's time I admit that and move on.

Now, my friends, it's your turn. Tell me what Bucket List goals you're ready to give up in order to make room for the important ones?