Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 12, 1992 TAG: 9203120129
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-8 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER
DATELINE: SHAWSVILLE LENGTH: Long
McCrumb has become a one-woman book factory. She has been turning out at least a novel a year since 1984; the two current ones bring the number to 10.
"Zombies of the Gene Pool" came out in February and "The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter" should be hitting bookstores before the end of March.
Both are hardcovers, but five publishing houses bid on paperback rights to "Daughter" at a two-day auction last month before it went to New American Library for $85,000.
That is flattering to McCrumb and opens the possibility that "Daughter" may be the novel that brings her national recognition. But she is not waiting to see what happens and is already at work on the next book in one of the three series she is juggling.
Her advice to would-be writers: Finish that first book, and don't even bother with revisions until it's done.
"The first one was the hardest one for me," she said, and the one on which most potential writers get hung up, polishing that first chapter for years.
"And I'm still of that 19th century school of fiction that says if you write a book something must happen in the book. I'm just dedicated to plot," she said.
She published her first novel midway through graduate school at Virginia Tech. The university, while never named, provides a setting that is easily recognizeable here and there among her books.
When she churned out her Edgar Award-winning "Bimbos of the Death Sun" on a borrowed computer in the six weeks set by the publisher in 1987, she also was working full-time five days a week in Tech's Appalachian Studies Department, teaching two night classes, and was three months pregnant with the first of her three children.
"Zombies" is its sequel with the same lead characters - Jay Omega, an engineering professor at a Tech-like university, and Marion Farley, his significant other who is on the English faculty there.
The first book had Jay publishing a serious science-fiction novel, only to have its publisher stick the less-than-serious "Bimbos" title on it - something he is living down in the second book.
In "Bimbos," he and Marion found themselves trying to figure out who killed the guest of honor at a fantasy convention based on Technicon, the annual "con" put on by Tech's sci-fi group.
In "Zombies," instead of young con-goers, they are dealing with older people who started as youthful fans and now have reached various levels of recognition in the sci-fi field.
McCrumb drew on her knowledge of sci-fi and fantasy cons for the first book but researched the sequel for four years, she said. She read autobiographies by major writers in the field about their days as young fans as well as many "fanzines" loaned to her by collectors.
Many of the materials were furnished by Abingdon collector and sci-fi scholar Curtis Phillips, whose reward was to have his name pinned on one of the characters in the book.
McCrumb also is writing what she calls her "ballad" series, with titles from ballads and stories reflecting aspects of Appalachian culture.
"Daughter," which emphasizes ecology along with its mystery, is the second of those books. The first was "If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O," which brought her a Pulitzer nomination in 1990.
Her longest-running series involves the continuing adventures of Elizabeth MacPherson, an amateur sleuth who never really solves anything but somehow finds herself the catalyst for reaching solutions to murder mysteries.
McCrumb is completing work on the seventh, "MacPherson's Lament," and hopes to finish it before starting a book tour to publicize "Daughter" so she can leave her lap-top computer at home. Much of her later writing has been done on that computer during such tours. McCrumb is not one to waste time.
The other Elizabeth books go from "Sick of Shadows" in 1984 to "Missing Susan," in which an inept hit man keeps doing just that, in 1991.
Meanwhile, she has had short stories in such mystery collections as "Mr. President, Private Eye," "Mummy Stories" and "Mistletoe Mysteries."
All it took was someone telling her she was ready to turn professional.
That was writer Gurney Norman at a writing workshop in Elkins, W.Va., less than 10 years ago. By then, McCrumb had won the 1983 Sherwood Anderson Short Story Award in a writing contest held annually in Smyth County and had placed a few short stories in regional publications.
The North Carolina native had been working on her novel off and on for eight years while working as a teacher and newspaper reporter before meeting her husband-to-be, environmental engineer David McCrumb, and moving to the New River Valley in the early 1980s.
She went to the University of North Carolina in the 1960s and got the idea for the book shortly after she graduated. It's about a young woman doing a painting by a lake and putting something in it which, if seen by anyone else, would solve a murder.
"Except that I didn't know what was in the picture," she said. "So that slowed me up for a few years."
She later found that both she and Buchanan County native Lee Smith based their respective books, "Sick of Shadows" and "Family Linen," on the same real-life incident although they took it in different directions.
Norman told her that the acceptances of her short stories had established enough credentials for her to finish her novel and send it off.
"I just needed someone whose opinion I respected to tell me I was ready," she said.
She met another aspiring writer at that workshop who told her he had a friend at Blacksburg who had published a mystery novel and could give her some pointers.
"So the best advice I got there was to go home and meet Nick O'Donohoe, who was then in the English department at Virginia Tech."
O'Donohoe, who no longer is at Tech, has published a series of novels featuring private eye Nathan Phillips and, more recently, a sci-fi book with Shakespearian characters.
McCrumb no longer works at Tech, either, having opted for full-time writing. She and David moved to Shawsville about a year ago.
She was still living in Winston-Salem, N.C., in 1982 when a friend suggested that the two of them spend the July 4 weekend at a sci-fi convention at the Blacksburg Econo-Lodge.
She had no idea that absorbing the activities around her at this and other cons would provide her with the ammunition for "Bimbos," her first non-Elizabeth book.
While at that one, she met a couple planning to get married on the courthouse steps in Fincastle. They were dressed as Batman and Catwoman, and the wedding guests were dressed as other comic book characters.
"And I thought: `Batman's wedding; this cannot be missed.' " So she made a return trip to Virginia for the wedding of Rick and Marianne Knobloch.
That was when she was invited by another aspiring writer to join him and his roommate for dinner. The roommate turned out to be her future husband.
"We actually talked about `Sick of Shadows' that first night, and he was coming up with all these technical observations, like, `Well, what kind of paint was she using?' " McCrumb said. " `Because if they're going to throw that painting into the lake, wouldn't the paint run?' . . . He was coming up with technical things I never thought of."
by CNB