In Pod We Trust

 I enjoy podcasts, a fact that I have written about before.  I want to tell you about some of my recent discoveries, related to our field of study.

Empire City.   Chenjerai Kumanyika takes us on a tour of the history of the New York City Police Department from the days of slave-catchers to the trial of Eric Adams.  Spoiler alert: His thesis is that there aren't just a few bad apples but the whole barrel is rotten.  9 parts.

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wonder. Fantasy writer Katherine Rundell looks at the history and purposes of children's literature.  It's full of fascinating reflections on the writing process and writers. "It's easier to trust a writer who writes good food. They are a person who has  paid attention to the world." Did you know that J.R.R. Tolkien intentionally made his lectures difficult to listen to, in the hopes that his students would drop out and he could go back to writing? 5 parts.

 Underfoot in Show Business.  Helene Hanff is best remembered for 84 Charing Cross Road, her book about a 20-year correspondence with a London bookseller.  It was made into a movie.  But before that she wrote Underfoot in Show Business, about her attempt to become a Broadway playwright. The BBC recently dramatized it and it's all charming but I point it out here mostly because she talks about breaking into television - by writing for The Adventures of Ellery Queen.  

The Blackburn Files.  The BBC created this lighthearted private eye series in the 1980s.  It is northern England at the time that Thatcher is closing down the coal mines.  Stephen Blackburn is a young ex-pitman who lives with his mother and takes over a PI business.  The result is comic, sometimes slipping into farce, usually because of our hero's ability to misunderstand people.  (When his intern/secretary mentions Nietzsche he replies "Gesundheit.") 5 parts.

Main Justice.  This award-winning podcast is hosted  by Andrew Weissmann, and Mary McCord, both former high-ranking DOJ attorneys, now legal commentators for MSNBC.  The show began as Prosecuting Donald Trump but following his re-election the focus shifted to analyzing the actions of the Justice Department.  Fascinating and infuriating stuff.

The Mystery Hour.  Have we mentioned this one on the blog before?  Prize-winning podcaster Rabia Chaudry grew up on Alfred Hitchcock's and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines and each week she reads a story from one of those fine journals aloud. Among those whose works have been honored here are R.T. Lawton, Joseph S. Walker,  and myself. There are probably more SleuthSayers in here but one flaw in this podcast is that Chaudry only lists titles. You have to listen to find out who the author is.  Maybe some kind soul will create an index?

Taxonomy of the Modern Mystery Story.  Big-brained Canadian Malcolm Gladwell is a fan of our genre and  wants to understand it.  He is especially interested in the link between detective stories and our view of real-life cops.

It's Black and White

The Cliburn Competition has Fort Worth feeling artsy.

For those who missed my city's numerous press releases, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is a quadrennial event that showcases the future of classical pianists. The world’s top 18–30-year-old pianists gather in my city and perform before live and worldwide streaming audiences.

One of the unique aspects of the Cliburn competition is that the organizers house the visiting pianists in local homes during the event. Many neighborhoods have a competitor staying in them. While you don't necessarily see them when you're out walking the dog, you know they're there. (Every host family is loaned a Steinway grand piano, the same instrument used in the Cliburn, so that the competitors can practice.) Rover and his companion human might hear some next-level music through the window of a house down the street. The Russian/Israeli pianist becomes our neighborhood competitor. Most of us are homers and we're cheering for our local kid.

I tend to drop the arts into one big bucket, a different bucket from my sports bucket or my business bucket. Although I recognize the differences between the creative arts, I typically see writers, painters, musicians, and filmmakers as kindred spirits. Like fiction writers, these other art practitioners harness their creative energies to make fresh and new things. We all use our talents to entertain and to comment, directly or indirectly, on the world around us. When we are at our best, we unite people across a spectrum of humanity.

I've been forced to rethink my position on concert pianists. I might need to move them to my athletic bucket.

This none-too-deep thought should have occurred to me before. The competitors, after all, are performing another composer's work. But each of them is creating. The Dallas Morning News's review of Vitaly Starikov's performance (our local guy) noted that [i]n addition to fastidious attention to dynamic and coloristic nuances, he demonstrated the magic that can come of stretching and contracting rhythms, lingering over melodic high points and poignant harmonies.”

As a non-musician, I don't pretend to understand everything in that sentence. My takeaway is that Vitaly is doing more than hitting the notes Chopin scribbled down. He is creating.

Painters might scrape away and paint over. Writers can Find and Replace. We get the ability to edit our work. Not so with the piano benches at the Cliburn.

There is a hair-breadths difference between a great and a good performance, between an advancing recital and a return flight home. The immediacy of performance art made it seem more akin to athletes.

The local college baseball team's season ended abruptly in the NCAA tournament. In the moment, the excellent season melted away. Pitchers missed the strike zone or alternately found too much of it. Accomplished hitters missed the ball at critical times. Well-practiced skills that had been honed throughout the season failed under the pressure of the NCAA tournament. Both baseball and piano competitions were co-occurring. It was hard not to see the parallel.

But on the other hand, ball players are competing directly against their opponent. The pianists were playing their best, hoping that their individual efforts would be judged among the best. And that seems comparable to our efforts. When I craft a story for submission to an anthology, I’m not really competing against Rob Lopresti or the other submitters. I’m submitting my best work and hoping it's deemed worthy of inclusion. If Rob's ends up in and mine out, I don't see it as a competition between us.

But maybe we should. Consider this modest proposal. The next time Michael Bracken assembles an anthology, perhaps rather than submitting our 12-point Times New Roman, double-spaced work, we could read it to a live-streaming audience. As Michael judges, Stacy Woodson might offer hushed-voice commentary and insider analysis.

                "He confused ‘blond’ and ‘blonde.’ That could be a fatal error. Michael feels very strongly about blondes."

                "Clearly, to stay under the word limit, she elected to tell rather than show," Stacy offered disapprovingly.

As we read, submitters might close our eyes, sway back and forth, and occasionally throw our heads back for emphasis, like the piano competitors. The anticipation might build through quarter, semi, and final rounds with eliminations along the way. The downside, of course, is that having heard the selected stories read three times, no one may want to buy the anthology. 

And that's a problem. I might need to keep thinking through this concept. But Vitaly is about to play a Mozart piano concerto backed by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra as part of the semi-finals. I've got a live stream to watch.

Until next time.

Being alone and together.

      Writers are some of my favorite people. Along with tradespeople and musicians. When I was first published, I knew nothing about the mystery subculture, but once introduced, I was very pleasantly surprised that it was rich, supportive, collegial and far-flung. After about twenty years in the mystery writing game, I can attest that hanging out in this community is just as rewarding as publishing the books and short stories that grant me entry.

      You wouldn’t think that people who spend so much time in a room by themselves, and living all day inside their heads, would be very good at social interaction. But it turns out that writers can be the most cordial of companions. They have liberal views regarding a drink or two, which doesn’t hurt. It’s also because writers are thinkers, people who know a lot about a lot of things, and it’s fun for them to exchange deep, wide-ranging and arcane information.

      Of course, there’s also our shared experience. All affinity groups exist because of this. Whether you drive Harleys or run extreme marathons (I do neither, nor ever wanted to). It’s easy to conceive of writers locked up all day in their writing rooms, emerging around cocktail hour to trade bits on how the day went and their expectations for tomorrow’s production.

      But I think more importantly, writers are people who trade in human emotion. They’re by definition empathic and all tangled up in the intrigue and confusion of human existence. It’s only natural that we’d want to hash things out with people engaged in the same endeavor. Woodworkers and musicians are the same way. When we get together, there’s a shorthand in the conversation, since everyone knows what everyone else is talking about. As the stories circle the table, we naturally fill in the unsaid parts.

      My wife often points out that I’m drawn to solitary pursuits. This is certainly true of writing and woodworking. Music is a bit different, since you need a group to really experience the enterprise. Though you also have put in alone time practicing and ruminating over your part in the performance, which only those inclined to spend hours by themselves can achieve. So it’s a bit of both.

      Tradespeople also belong to an ensemble. I might frame and trim out the house, but others have to sheetrock the walls, run the wiring, install HVAC and plumbing, lay the tile and counter tops – and we have to work as an efficient, orchestrated team to pull it all off.

      Advertising, another thing I did, is also a lot like this. You start out a project together, setting goals and blocking out objectives. Then the copywriter (me) and the art director would go off together and make stuff up. This is the equivalent of a writers room on a TV series. We’d both batt around ideas, write headlines, come up with visuals – contriving a bunch of creative options. Then we’d return to our individual work stations and do our solitary thing – writing copy, doing layouts, sampling visuals, etc.

      Then all the other elements of the agency – account managers, media buyers, production, finance, who had also been strategizing together, then laboring alone over their specialties, would join us to pitch the client our ideas.

      I love this ebb and flow between individual and collective effort. For me, it’s life best lived.

      Writing about writing is a little like dancing about architecture. There’s no way you can fully describe the experience. So maybe that’s why writers like to hang around with other writers. You don’t have to explain to them what you’re going through, because they already know.

      Writing is hard and impervious to easy explanation, but that’s okay. You just have to order another round of drinks and relax for a little bit before going back and doing it again.

Prep School

Most of us develop our sense of grammar and vocabulary listening to others, be it good grammar or spellings or not. Our language skills aren’t necessarily based upon intelligence, but a product of our environment. If we’re fortunate, persistent, and surround ourselves with bright people, we correct grammar and expand our vocabulary, presupposing an awareness. John Clayton, the Viscount Greystoke, a student of Mangani comes to mind. Okay, he’s fictional, but you understand.

I needed to up my game. For far too long, I’ve wondered about the difference between toward and towards, while and whilst, amid and amidst. Curiosity often strikes when I’m in the middle of writing and not wanting to interrupt myself at the risk of my ADD losing the narrative thread. By the time I finish, I’ve quite forgotten my mental note until the next time.

amid/amidst

among/amongst

beside/besides

toward/towards

while/whilst

But I finally looked them up, prepositions with optional ’S’s. That led to a myriad of adjectives and adverbs ending in ‘-ward(s)’: inward/inwards, upward/upwards, aft/aftwards, etc. Almost always, -ward(s) implies direction, e.g, looking inward, tossing skyward, sliding downward– any which may bear a discretionary S. Unsurprisingly, a number of terms come from marine navigation and others from biology. A partial list includes:

afterward/s

backward/s

bucalward/s

coastward/s

distalward/s

dorsalward/s

downward/s

earthward/s

eastward/s

elseward/s

forward/s

frontward/s

heavenward/s

henceforward/s

homeward/s

inward/s

landward/s

leeward/s

lingualward/s

mesialward/s

moonward/s

netherward/s

northeastward/s

northward/s

northwestward/s

onward/s

outward/s

polarward/s

rearward/s

rightward/s

seaward/s

starward/s

sunward/s

shoreward/s

sideward/s

skyward/s

stemward/s

southeastward/s

southward/s

southwestward/s

sternward/s

straightforward/s

sunward/s

thenceforward/s

toward/s

upward/s

vanward/s

ventralward/s

westward/s

windward/s

With or without an S, meaning is almost always the same. Variants may have stylistic implications, often in the ear of the beholder. ‘Amongst’ might seem old-fashioned, ‘whilst’ might sound classy, ‘toward’ more North American whereas ‘towards’ more British– or not. Context is important.

What are your thoughts?

In the mortal words recorded on Theodore Cleaver’s birth certificate, JuneWard!