Love and Gunpowder

by R.T. Lawton

One of the problems with working an informant is they continue to live their life on the streets, which seems to include brushes with violence, strong emotions, various crimes and the constant need to hustle. One man's possession becomes another man's hustle to get some of it.

As my informant Thomas saw it, Desdemona was his personal property. He loved her in his own way, but she had flirty eyes which sometimes made him uneasy. Lately, he had suspicions that his cousin Junior Obregon had been poaching on his personal property behind his back. Not a good thing. If nothing else, this quickly became a matter of respect. A man's reputation on the street could make it easier to hustle, or it could serve him up for ridicule and scorn.

Thomas wasn't having this. A confrontation with the love of his life during the early morning hours soon led to outraged denials, screaming, shouting and perhaps a backhand or two. This is part of the violence and strong emotions I mentioned earlier. In any event, Desdemona ended up being unceremoniously deposited into the trunk of Thomas' Cadillac. Her continued unladylike verbiage and pounding on the inside of the trunk lid was to no avail. Thomas merely paused for a smoke while contemplating his next move. Deciding that things might get a little dicey, he checked the cylinders of his .38 revolver to ensure it was fully loaded. Then, flicking his cigarette into the street, he got behind the wheel of his Cadillac and put it in gear.

During the long drive over to Junior's domicile on this warm summer morning, the volume of noise from the trunk gradually declined. Thomas took this as Desdemona finally recognizing the extent of her sins and perhaps even repenting a little for her indiscretions. However, regardless of any potential turnaround of the heart on Desdemona's part, Thomas still had a job to do.

Upon parking in front of Junior's one-story, wood-frame house, Thomas got out of his vehicle and walked to the rear. He lovingly patted the Cadillac's trunk lid and tried to reassure Desdemona that everything would soon be all right. He was about to rectify their situation. She made a response, but evidently the heat and bumpy ride had worn her down because her words were muffled enough that Thomas took them as nothing more than the beginnings of contrition.

Up the sidewalk and onto the cement front porch, Thomas tried the screen door handle. Locked. Damn. With his left hand, he rang the doorbell and alternatively pounded on the door frame. His .38 revolver was kept conveniently out of sight behind his right hip.

From inside the house, Junior, not being used to getting up at this early hour of late morning, staggered out of the back bedroom and into the the living room. Due to the summer heat, he was clad only in his best pair of black, silk, boxer shorts. Junior's idea of a fashion statement. While Junior's left hand rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, his right hand, being the cautious fellow that he was, concealed his faithful old Owlhead .32 pistol behind his right thigh. Discretely, he stopped on his side of the door with about ten feet distance between them.

"Cuz," said Thomas.

"Cuz," replied Junior.

The words which then followed are not fit to print in this public forum.

Having finished his part of the verbal discussion, Thomas brought  his .38 out of hiding and proceeded to blow three holes through the screen.

A little slower, but not to be outdone, Junior brought his Owlhead out of hiding and blew two holes through the screen in the opposite direction.

At this point, Junior noticed he had recently developed a few leaks in his torso. Deciding that a rest might do him some good, he lay down on the floor and curled up in a more comfortable position to accommodate his new circumstances.

For his part, Thomas also felt a sudden tiredness. He leaned his back against the door frame and slid down until his butt hit the cement porch. With three bullets still remaining in his .38, he had the urge to spend them in the direction of his cousin's reclined body, except that for some reason his gun arm had acquired an ache in the shoulder and no longer operated as it should.

Sounds of intense screaming and renewed pounding emanating from the Cadillac trunk now attracted Thomas' full attention. He turned his head in Desdemona's direction and sought to sooth her worries, however some foreign object seemed to be lodged in his throat. His voice box no longer worked for the time being.

In the silence that followed, except for the hysterical rantings of a woman imprisoned in a Cadillac trunk, neighbors came out of their bullet-proof hiding spots and prudently called the po-leece to handle this situation.

Miraculously, unlike many Hollywood movie shootings, no one died even though all five bullets were on target at short range.

Okay, so I've taken some artistic license in the telling, however it's not as dry as reading the police report. Thomas' exploits entertained me for a couple more years before I lost him, but I have to say that his voice was considerably deeper than earlier and his speech more difficult to understand.

Ah, young lovers, what can you say? There's nothing like romance and gunpowder to make for a dramatic event in one's life. Maybe I should have saved this one for Valentine's Day.

In Search of Lost Books

A while back, a friend of mine was going through treatment, and I read the 20 questions they give you to see if you're an alcoholic.  I looked up at the end and said, "Well, if you replace the word alcohol with books, that's me."  I am a bookaholic.  I get up planning what I'm going to read that day.  I have books in every room, and a stack of books by every chair that I claim as mine.  I read new books, re-read old favorites, and I am still searching for a few books that I read as a child but either can't find or never did find out what they were. Proust can have his madeleines; I have books.
When I was a little girl, in first, maybe second grade, in Escondido, California, our teacher read a Western aloud to us.  I’ve been trying to find it ever since.  Our teacher was Hispanic, with lustrous black hair and eyes.  Her voice read steadily, with meaning and accents in all the right places.  It was about a cowboy who came down into what was then northern Mexico, and today is Southern California:  the Salinas Valley, perhaps, or Escondido, or one of many other valleys. 

He came down over the hills, I remember.  The description of the brown hills, that look so bare from a distance, but are covered with tall grass, yucca, sage, short cactus, poppies, and all the plants of the chaparral, the description was perfect.  They were the same hills behind our house, once you went over the main hill, the one on which a thin ribbon of a one-street suburb rose to lemon and orange groves, which in turn gave way to avocado groves, which in turn broke open under the blue sky to a mansion on a hill, a mansion with fir trees, a pool, and a view.  Those belonged to the grove's owners, and they also had peacocks, which wandered, crying in the afternoon for love or rain as the clouds piled high and purple behind the dark glossy green of the avocado trees. 

I walked my way through the groves, avoiding the mansion – they didn’t like trespassers, even or especially not children – and emerged on the crest of rolling hills that went on forever.  Scrubby, brown, endless; mottled with color, blazing with poppies – I don’t remember the cowboy’s name, but I knew where he had been, and could hardly wait to see where he would go.

He ended up with a Spanish wife, another woman with lustrous black hair and eyes, whose voice was accented and soft.  They had a son, and I still remember the scene where they decided what to name him.  They chose his first name, which I have totally forgotten.  What I do remember was when his wife said that only one name wouldn't do.  You named a child after everyone who was important to you:  grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, best friends, and acquaintances.  But our cowboy was all alone, and I think what impressed me was that it was the first time he realized how alone he was, because I felt much the same.  He could only think of one friend, Joe.  “d’Joe” she said, pronouncing the “j” as “h”…  And it became the son's middle name. 

I remember that.  And no more.  I asked the teacher, at the end of the year, what the name of the book was – and she couldn’t remember.  But I’ve wanted to read the rest of that book for a very long time.  I want to know what the rest of his - their - journey was.  Maybe some day I'll find it.  If it rings a bell with anybody, please let me know. 

Imaginary Friends

by Robert Lopresti 

It has been an interesting summer, in many ways, but not least because I have been listening to a lot of fascinating conversations between people who, technically, don't exist.

I suppose that means that I am either in the middle of a first draft, or having a psychotic breakdown.  I think it's the former  but, hey, if it was the latter would I know?

I have written before about the fact that I started writing a novel last month and I hope you pardon me if I go back to the same old topic.  They say that writing a novel only teaches you to write that novel, and  I see the wisdom in that.  This book is coming a little different than my past efforts.  Mostly the characters are so damned lively.

I have heard thousands of writers talk about characters who come alive and develop minds and wills of  their own.  I have always said that doesn't happen to me, but this time it has come close.

Take Ray Ray, for instance.  I have mentioned him before.  He literally popped up from nowhere because I needed a delivery boy to make a chapter longer.  But the little rat seems to be trying to take over the book.  It makes a nice change from a lot of characters in the past who have seemed desperate to get out of my stories.

And then there is the computer nerd.  My book contains gtwo opposing groups and I knew that at some point the computer nerd was going to change sides.  Problem was, I had no idea what his motive would be for doing so.

But last week I was biking home one day, thinking about the fact that one of my major characters was due to die of natural causes.  It seemed like such a waste.  After all, this is a crime novel.   Why not have somebody kill the dude, seeing as he was about to die anyway?

And as I pedaled I realized who would want the fella dead, but this guy wouldn't do the killing himself.  Immediately another actor arrived on the stage in my skull, the hired killer, and she is as close as I have come to  that experience of having a character argue with me.  Techically she argued with the guy who hired her, refusing to fall into certain cliches of her profession.   Her employer had to respond by calling in his computer nerd --

And then I started laughing so hard I had to stop my bike.  I grabbed my notebook and started writing  brief outline for four more chapters.  Now I knew why the nerd changed sides.

So, like I said, it's been an interesting summer.  I assume at some point the inspiration will dry up and it will be a matter of grinding out the words.  Who knows whether the novel will ever get finished, much less published?    But it's a wild ride what it lasts...

Oscar Wilde and Gore Vidal

    On the last day of November, 1900, Oscar Wilde gazed up from his deathbed at the walls of the dingy hotel room in Paris that was to be his last refuge and reportedly muttered “either that wall paper goes, or I go.”  He then died.  One hundred and twelve years later, on the last day of July, 2012, Gore Vidal, a man described as the twentieth century answer to Oscar Wilde, died in his bed in Hollywood, California.  There are many common threads shared by these men of different centuries.   Each was a celebrated author of novels, mysteries, and plays.  But each was also known, perhaps even more so, for their celebrated caustic wits.  And each grappled throughout their respective lives with their own complicated sexuality.

Oscar Wilde

Gore Vidal

    Wilde and Vidal were each blessed with the privileges that come with having been born into aristocracy.  Oscar Wilde’s parents were Dublin intellectuals, Sir William Wilde and his wife, the poet Jane Francesca Wilde.  Oscar Wilde was raised with the assistance of a French governess, and later studied the classics at Trinity College, Dublin, and at Magdalene College at Cambridge.  Gore Vidal’s lineage was just as august, but seeped in the aristocracy of the New World.  Vidal’s father, James Lucas Vidal, served as Commerce Secretary under Franklin D. Roosevelt and then went on, in partnership with Amelia Earhart, to found Eastern Air Lines, Northeast Air Lines and TWA.  (If you have seen the 2009 movie Amelia you may have noted a young Gore Vidal, portrayed by William Cuddy.)  Gore Vidal’s mother, Nina Gore, was the daughter of a former Oklahoma Senator and later, after divorcing Vidal’s father, was the wife of Louis Auchincloss, who was later to become the stepfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.  And like Wilde, Vidal’s education was robust – he attended Sidwell Friends School and St. Albans in Washington, D.C., and then Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.  Unlike Wilde, Vidal did not attend college, but instead enlisted in the Navy and served as a warrant officer in the Pacific during World War II.

    Both Wilde and Vidal also shared what can only be described as complicated sexual identities.  Wilde was married for a number of years to Constance Lloyd, a wealthy London heiress, and they had two children, Cyril and Vyvyan.  The marriage crumbled, however, soon after Wilde became enamored of Alfred Douglas, a brilliant but incorrigibly fey Oxford graduate and frequenter of the London gay nightlife community.  The ensuing flamboyant relationship between Wilde and Douglas soon became a cause célèbre in London.  Wilde, unlike Vidal, had the bad fortune to be borne into a less forgiving era.  The relationship in any event infuriated Douglas’ straight laced (even for Victorian times) father the Marquess of Queensberry, who on February 18, 1895 left a calling card for Wilde at his London club, the Albemarle.  The incorrectly spelled message said simply:  "For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite"

The Marquess of Queensberry
(in all his rabid glory)

   While Wilde had embraced Douglas he could not bring himself to embrace his own sexuality, and his response was an outraged denial.  In short order Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensberry for libel.  There was, to say the least, ample evidence that Wilde was, indeed, homosexual and, no surprise, the Marquess of Queensberry was acquitted.  The acquittal rendered Wilde liable for the defense of the case, which ruined him financially.  But even worse, it provided the basis for Wilde’s own conviction for sodomy, his incarceration in London, the collapse of his health, and (doubtless) his death in that cheap Paris hotel room in November of 1900.

    By contrast, Vidal led his life in a far more open and less judgmental time.  He, too, reportedly was involved with a number of women – Vidal, for example, was engaged to Joanne Woodward just before her marriage to Paul Newman – but his longtime companion was Howard Austen, who died in 2003, and his essays and novels – notably The City and the Pilar and Myra Breckenridge are rife with homosexual themes.  And while Vidal never stooped to denial (the catalyst to Wilde’s downfall), this is not to say that he did not stoop to litigation.  The analog to Wilde’s libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry was Vidal’s 1969 court battle with William F. Buckley.

William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal

    The feud between the two began, for all intent and purpose, in 1968 when ABC News decided to pair Buckley and Vidal for contrasting views on the Democratic convention in Chicago.  The pair had debated before, but by the penultimate Chicago broadcast – as the Democrats’ convention was descending into anarchy and ruin, and riots spread throughout Chicago, any hope of civility between Vidal and Buckley also washed out with the tide.  A report of the climactic exchange that took place on the broadcast, preserved in the archives of the University of Pittsburg, provides as follows:

[B]efore long the men began exchanging words that one simply didn’t hear on TV at that time. Vidal called Buckley a "pro-crypto-Nazi," a modest slip of the tongue, he later said, because he was searching for the word "fascist" and it just didn't come out. Inflamed by the word "Nazi" and the whole tenor of the discussion, Buckley snapped back: "Now listen, you queer,” he said, “stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.”

    That ended the face-to-face appearances of the two:  the last ABC "debate" featured Vidal and Buckley in separate rooms.  But the feud continued in various published articles authored by the two and culminated in a libel suit, brought initially by Buckley, charging that Vidal had defamed him by referring to him as “anti-black and anti-Semitic.”  Vidal counter-sued alleging that Buckley libeled him by describing his novel Myra Breckenridge as “pornography.”  Both cases were dismissed, although pursuant to a settlement agreement, damages were paid by Buckley.

    The difference between the 1800s and the Twentieth Century was significant for Vidal.  While Wilde, for all of his intellect, was nonetheless forced into denial, even in the face of his own open behavior, Vidal had the option to more freely embrace who he was.  It is true that earlier in the 1950s homosexual themes in Vidal's novel The City and the Pillar affected his ability to sell books.  Indeed, that is why his series of three detective novels written at that time – Death before Bedtime, Death in the Fifth Position and Death Likes it Hot were written under the pseudonym Edgar Box.  But by the late 1960s sexual orientation had become less of a public concern and Vidal’s litigation with Buckley, and his flamboyance, if anything, simply increased his notoriety.  Regarding his sexual preferences Vidal openly wrote “[t]here is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.”  Gore Vidal frequently described his role in life as “Gentleman bitch.”

    In any event, and as mentioned at the outset, both Wilde and Vidal are known, and will continue to be known, for their caustic wit.  So let’s end with a salute to that.

Oscar Wilde:

• A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.

• A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

• A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

• A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

• Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

• All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

• All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

• Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

• America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

• America has been discovered often before Columbus, but it was always hushed up.

• An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.

• A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen above him.  

• Biography lends to death a new terror.

• Anyone who lives within his means suffers from a lack of imagination.

• I think God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.

• One should always play fairly when one holds the winning cards.

And, Gore Vidal:

• A good deed never goes unpunished.

• All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.

• A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.

• Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.

• Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.

• Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.

• It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

• One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.

• Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.

• The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.

• There is no human problem that could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.

• Always a godfather, never a God.  

Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal

    One of my favorite Gore Vidal stories involves another television appearance, this time on Dick Cavett’s ABC show in 1971  Vidal was scheduled to appear with Norman Mailer, and while the two were in the green room, prior to their introductions, an argument erupted.  Vidal had recently published a not-so-glowing critique of Mailer’s latest work.  Mailer groused about the critique and an exchange of words ultimately culminated in Mailer decking Vidal.  Bloodied, and lying on the floor, Vidal reportedly looked up, raised one eyebrow and said, “Once again we find Mr. Mailer at a loss for words.”

Olympics Withdrawal

As I write this I am recording the closing ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics from London. Nooooo, I'm not ready for it to be over. What will I do every day now? What to do every evening. No swimming, no gymnastics, no track and field, no beach volleyball. It's not fair. I'm not ready.

Just when NBC gets us all revved up and excited and hooked then they take it away. Dang, all I can see that I can do is read. But I'm out of books to be read. I could play Words with Friends on my telephone, but I seem to get beat regularly by almost everyone. I could write, but dang, I've almost forgotten how to do that. I mean it took me two days to come up with this idea and I'm not sure it's exciting enough. How could they do this to me?

I've watched NBC every day, every night. Cheered for USA, USA, USA. And Go! Leo! Go! Okay, I can guess I'd better tell all y'all (that's the plural of y'all, right Deborah?) why I'm rooting for Leo. Leo Manzana is the young man from Marble Falls, TX who ran the 1500 meters in the 2008 Olympics and got caught behind some big guys and couldn't get out. Leo broke all the high school records and won a scholarship to University of Texas and then broke NCAA records. This year, 2012, he made the Olympics again. He made it to the final heat just by the skin of his teeth. And the final was run at 3:15 pm on Tuesday, August 7th. A local bar and grille in downtown Marble Falls held a "race watch party." Strangely enough I decided to go and watch. I just thought it would be more fun to watch with a group of local people. So I got ready and went. When I got inside R Bar & Grille, I spotted a friend, Ann who happened to have a table and an empty chair. I sat down. Someone had hooked up their computer to an NBC live feed to one of the TVs on the wall.

I ordered a big glass of iced tea and a snack and got ready to watch. The clock rolled around to 3:15, the runners took their places and the gun sounded to send them off. Leo took off and seemingly as usual got behind some of the big guys. Everyone was yelling, GO! LEO! GO! The bell rang for the final stretch to the finish line...Leo had moved up a little and was in 10th place. Suddenly he was on the outside running his heart out. He passed everyone except the leader and he WON SILVER!! It was so exciting. And it absolutely was fun to watch with my friend Ann and a group of strangers. All of us were thrilled that our hometown hero had won a medal.

Leo is quoted in today's (Sunday) Austin newspaper: "My legs just felt like they were bricks, but something inside me said keep going, keep going, keep pushing, keep pushing."

One of my other friends, singer songwriter, john Arthur martinez, wrote a song several years ago for Leo. The song is titled, "Dare to Dream Out Loud." You see, Leo was born in Mexico. His parents moved to Texas when Leo was four. When he first came out for track in school he was running in a pair of old boots because he didn't know nor could he afford track shoes. But the coach could see Leo was fast and he had heart. And Leo had a dream. A dream to go to the Olympics. A dream to win a medal for the USA. And Leo Manzano didn't give up. His family didn't give up. They made a better life for their family. They became citizens of the USA because they dared to dream.

A dream is all many of us have. A dream to write. A dream to be published. A dream to succeed.
Dare to Dream. But remember as you dream you must also work towards that goal. I'm going to miss watching the summer Olympics. Every single athlete who made it there had a dream, but they also worked like crazy for four or eight or twelve years. For some their dream came true.

Leo's dream came true and so can yours.

Congratulations to Leo Manzano, winner of the Silver Medal in the 1500 meter run in the 2012 Olympics in London.

Flash Fiction– Throw in the Towel?

As I mentioned before, John Floyd and R.T. Lawton not only routinely cram mysteries into less than 700 words, but John is a master of flash fiction, which I attempted a few months ago in A Night Out.

Brace yourself; I'm taking another stab at it. In thinking about the wisdom of writing another flash fiction, I was tempted to title it Throwing in the Towel, but I'll let you decide if I picked a better title.

WhiteWash by Leigh Lundin Bubbles was a slippery one. She tried to soft-soap me, but I strangled her in the bathtub, no trace, no prints, no evidence. Me, I hate wet work, but the cops, they said it was a clean kill.

Beaches

by Elizabeth Zelvin

Among the lessons I learned at my mother’s knee is this one: the ocean is better than the bay; a lake is better than a pool. I grew up spending as much of every summer as I could on the world-class beaches of

Long Island, including Jones Beach, which was an easy drive from where we lived in Queens, and Hampton Bays, which was not at that time considered one of The Hamptons, since its year-round population was working-class conservative and its summer people, at least the ones we knew, were a small band of “progressives,” many of them teachers like my aunt who had a house there. The big social event of the season was always a Labor Day party to benefit the latest leftist martyrs, the Something Seven or the Something Ten. But let’s talk about the beach.

The modest little house my husband and I were lucky enough to snap up during a “soft” period for real estate in 1990—having rented unwittingly to a trio of drug dealers who set the neighborhood on its ear, the local businessman who owned it was glad to get rid of it—is only seven miles from one of the superb beaches maintained by the Town of East Hampton, which stretches from Bridgehampton to Montauk.

At low tide, you can walk for miles along the beach if you’re so inclined. If you want less wind, you can lie back against the pillowy dunes—not ON or IN the dunes, please: every spike of beach grass was lovingly planted by the hands of environmentalists, and the humps of sand have only recently recovered their full roundness after being sheared off by a hurricane nine or ten years ago. Or, as I do, you can choose a front row seat, where a cool breeze is always available, even on the hottest day, and if you don’t watch out, a curl of wave on the incoming tide may swamp your beach towel and carry your sandals off to Spain.

My mother, who if asked, “How was your vacation?” would respond by enumerating the swims she’d had, taught me not just to observe but to revel in the fact that the ocean is always different. At least that’s true of the Atlantic off Long Island.

My mother always maintained that there’s nothing like the morning swim. When I was a kid, we’d stay at the beach all day, “earning” our lunch by leaping and diving through the waves (“Over!” “Under!”) in that icy morning water. Now, between adult responsibilities and the hole in the ozone, I seldom get to the beach before 3 PM. But I still miss that morning swim.

It’s not just a matter of the weather: bright and clear one day, hazy and humid the next, overcast on the third day, with a storm rolling in overnight.

Even if the skies stay blue, flat silky seas on which it’s easy to swim laps (without having to turn every sixteen strokes as you would in a pool) can be replaced by rearing “seahorses” of foam and crashing breakers. In 1995 I spent several days on the campus of the University of California at San Diego for a conference, and I was amazed by the way the turquoise waters of the Pacific in La Jolla remained consistent over time. If I went to the same spot near the jetty every day, I could jump the same gentle rollers day after day after day. It was nice for a change, and La Jolla itself is probably one of the most beautiful places in America. But I’m an East Coast girl, and I like an ocean to surprise me.

Who Framed Pot Boiler??

A while back, here on SS, there was a bit of a question concerning the meaning of the term potboiler.  Was it a term you wanted applied to your story, or not.

I found this interesting, because I've long been of two minds about the word potboiler.  On the one hand, I knew it could be pejorative. But, on the other, I seem to recall seeing it used in descriptive praise for some suspense works.

So, I began to wonder: Does potboiler have two meanings?  Or only one?  And, what is -- or are -- the word's defining terms?

To begin my search, I pulled my old friend, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, from atop the pile of books littering my desk.  This wonderfully humongous tome, which my daughter uses to press flowers (and I sometimes use as a doorstop, since I bought it at a garage sale for five bucks!), was published in 1996, and defines potboiler as "a mediocre work of literature or art produced merely for financial gain."

Calling something mediocre is not terribly complementary, but that was in 1996.  English is far from a dead language.  It continues to morph and grow into new forms, sometimes adding definitions or nuances to previously familiar words and phrases, as usage changes over time.  So, I checked out some contemporary definitions in online dictionaries.

Mirriam-Webster online dictionary defines potboiler in much the same way, except that it replaces the word 'mediocre' with the phrase 'usually inferior', which would seem to make this definition even more derogatory than my Webster's.

The definition under Dictionary.com precisely matched that of my old Webster's, while The Oxford Dictionaries Online defined potboiler as "a book, painting, or recording produced merely to make the writer or artist a living by catering to popular taste."

The idea here is that potboiler refers to some type of food that can be tossed in a pot and left to boil – such as a stew that might feed a person for several days if properly maintained.  Thus, a potboiler piece is something an author writes so s/he can buy food, thus avoiding starvation when later writing something higher brow.  Lewis Carroll may have used the term, in just this manner, when writing a letter to A.B. Frost in 1880.

But, I was still left wondering about my recollection of seeing potboiler used as praise on some book jackets. Googling the term potboiler, however, eventually led me to an Amazon webpage entitled: Books: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense – Potboiler  

Surely, I thought, Amazon wouldn't categorize any of its stock as being mediocre.  And, indeed, the books listed didn't look all that mediocre.  They included several rather well-known or popular mysteries. Among them: Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary Wolf, the cult sensation that was loosely translated into the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Now, this list matched up with my previous impression: that potboiler could also refer to a suspense novel wit a plot bubbling under constant tension -- like a stew pot with the lid securely fastened, though left on HIGH.  A sort of pressure-cooker plotline, in which tension keeps building until the id blows off near the end.

One online retailer, however, can hardly be counted as a trend when it comes to altering the lexicon. So, as I often do when faced with a problem ...

I headed for the cigar store.

What happened there?  

I'll tell you in two weeks!

--Dix

P.S. Two weeks ago, I told you about the dust storms around here.  Here are pics my wife took.  These are pretty small storms, this year.  But, it gives the uninitiated an idea.

Daydream Believers



Yes, I am a daydream believer. (And I dare anyone born in the latter part of the last century not to mentally humming right about now. (Missing your smile and sweet voice, Davy Jones!) But, it's about more than a song's lyrics and melody. Daydreams lead to interesting ideas.

Daydreamers may incite teachers to insist their students stop and pay attention to their instruction, but for most of us, daydreaming transports us to other places and times and relieves many  boring moments in our lives.

For a writer, daydreams inspire many stories yet to written.

While night dreams may also lead to plot ideas or characters, for me those sometimes head into darker places. I have written those stories, too, but I appreciate where daydreams take flight. The initial trip to Daydream Land may be innocent enough, but often leads me to an intricate plotline that turns sinister.

Daydreaming has led me to ask What if? Why? and How?

They've led me to wonderful dark thoughts that transpired into Noir storylines. Admittedly, I have an affinity for hardboiled detectives, so those day trips to my imagination brought fun to write short stories where I get to plack (my mother's made-up word when she was a kid that was an abbreviation for "play like") as a hardened private eye chasing down a bad guy that was really bad.

Some of my personal recent daydreams include:

• What if I'd been in a bank where a robbery was about to take place?
• What if I were in that movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado?
• What if I were on a campus that had a sudden lockdown?
• What if I were stuck in an elevator? Which person would I want to be in there with and how long would be to long?
• If I had just one author to read the rest of my life, which would I choose?
• What is worth most: good looks, money or brains? (Thinking Marilyn Monroe, Bill Gates or Einstein)
• If I had to live in cartoon land, what characters would I most enjoy sharing my time?
• If I had my choice of mentors, which would be best suited for me?
• If I could meet with a fictional character for coffee, who would be most interesting?
• What super power would I most like to posess?

Do you live part time in fantasy land, too? Maybe we'll meet up in a daydream or two! What fun that would be!


John Buchan: The Power House

Hey folks!  Rob here to tell you we are pleased as can be to welcome a new blogger to the second Wednesday of the month slot.  David Edgerley Gates lives in New Mexico and has had a ton of stories published in Alfred Hitchcock's and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines.  His work has been  nominated for both the Edgar and Shamus Awards.  He is probably best known for his "noir westerns" about Placido Geist.  We look forward to hearing from David for many months to come...


by David Edgerley Gates

John Buchan is probably most celebrated and best remembered for THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS, and more for the Hitchcock picture, not the novel itself.  (It’s a good movie, even if Hitchcock changed the ending of the book.)

  

Buchan was an interesting guy, who served in the Boer War and was actually a spy, later, in the First World War.  He was ambitious in politics, but too liberal for the Tories, and too conservative for Winston Churchill---like Churchill, he was mothballed between the wars---and eventually wound up Governor-General of Canada, a more or less ceremonial post.  He died in 1940.  

Aside from THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS, he wrote some three dozen novels, some of them thrillers, many of them historical romance.  His titles were terrific, THE BLANKET OF THE DARK, THE GAP IN THE CURTAIN, A PRINCE OF THE CAPTIVITY, a book I always thought to be about Lawrence of Arabia.  

He wrote them fast and loose.  He called them penny-dreadfuls, or ‘shockers,’ and they were, depending overmuch on coincidence and accident, but they have enormous momentum, and on occasion genuine emotional power: the scene in MR. STANDFAST, for example, when Hannay encounters the Kaiser himself on a train platform, and sees the man, weighted down by his responsibility for this cruel folly.  Buchan understood the primary job of a storyteller, don’t spin your wheels.

THE POWER HOUSE was published in 1916, a few years into the war.  The character of the villain is almost certainly influenced by Nietzsche, as is, we might well imagine, Professor Moriarty.  Conan Doyle and Buchan, as well as Kipling, another extremely invested writer, in the sense of believing deeply in the social fabric, although Kipling was by far the better craftsman, were conservatives of an older order, keepers of the flame. 

THE POWER HOUSE could be seen as a parable, but I don’t believe Buchan meant it that way.  A century later, a century that saw Hitler and Stalin, delusional maniacs who murdered millions of their own people, and many others, the book is still frightening in its prescience.  Buchan’s frame of reference, though, is different from ours.  We know the slaughter of the Great War, the Holocaust, or the genocides of Africa and the Balkan wars, so we look at a novel like THE POWER HOUSE, or PRESTER JOHN, through a lens of historical irony.  Buchan was in ignorance of the horrific future.  But he saw it in its lineaments.  THE POWER HOUSE is Hitler, unfortunately not strangled in birth, Yeats' rough and slouching beast.  Buchan had the gift, or curse, of foresight.  Cassandra, unheeded. 

    

THE POWER HOUSE, essentially, is about a guy who doesn’t think the rules apply to him.  This basic model of the sociopath is a character Buchan anticipated well before Hannibal Lecter, but one we’ve come to know.  Buchan, and Conan Doyle, got in on the ground floor.  Fu Manchu, or Dr. Mabuse, came on stage later, and they were avatars of an evil that could already be seen, off-stage.  The genius of THE POWER HOUSE lies in imagination.  The brute force of reality caught up with it.  Buchan saw the Fascists and Nazism lying in wait, tinder waiting for a match.  He was a voice in the wilderness. 

John Buchan, or Arthur Conan Doyle, or Rudyard Kipling, might in all justice be called apologists for British imperialism.  I don’t think, however, that they countenanced a philosophy that led to the death camps.  Yes, the Boer War, which was a slippery slope, with the British the first to embrace internment of non-combatant women and children.  Buchan was there, one of Milner’s acolytes.  Perhaps it suggested something else to him, that this way lies madness.  And it did. 

Much of Buchan’s work dates badly, because he’s essentially a 19^th-century guy, with a late-Victorian cultural and emotional mindset.  There’s little graphic violence in his stories, and of course no sex at all.  But the men of his generation came to be marked by the Great War, with its unthinkable slaughters, Ypres, the Somme, Verdun, the introduction of tank warfare, the use of poison gas.  There were inspiring heroics, but at horrific human cost.   

The world that came after, as Paul Fussell points out, was very different, different in both temperament and imagination.  The key to THE POWER HOUSE is that Buchan foresees not the horrors to come, or even their political foundations, but the fertility of an individual capacity for evil, the earth from which the dragon’s teeth would spring.