Showing posts with label Joseph D'Agnese. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joseph D'Agnese. Show all posts

16 February 2024

Drink On, Drinkers!


 

Available wherever fine anthologies are sold. (Booze not included.)


Some years ago, I had this brilliant idea for a novel that never came to fruition for reasons that will become painfully obvious. I was absolutely convinced that before I could write a word of this hot new project, I needed to read a 400-page biography on the life of the political cartoonist Thomas Nast. We’ve all been there, am I right?

In that book was a reference to Nast’s favorite New York watering hole, Pfaff’s, a coffeehouse/cafe/bar that was popular with a burgeoning class of colorful artists, writers, and theater folks in Greenwich Village in the mid-19th century. Its heyday would have been the 1850s and 1860s.

In its lifetime, Pfaff’s had at least three different incarnations. Two locations—on Broadway near Bleecker Street—were situated in the neighborhood where I had worked for Scholastic back in the day. In my mind’s eye I could picture those old buildings with little effort. But I probably wouldn’t have done much with my newfound knowledge if it weren’t for synchronicity.

You know how you read about some obscure thing and it begins popping up everywhere you look? As months turned to years, whenever a piece about Pfaff’s appeared, I’d tuck that fresh article away on my hard drive.

Pfaff’s worked its magic on me. For a time, it was a rathskeller with vaulted-brick ceilings located under a busy hotel. (See images here and here.) Giant hogshead beer barrels. A gas lamp chandelier. Foreign-language newspapers on every table. It was an epicenter for America’s blooming literary and artistic culture. The round table before there was ever an Algonquin.

It was also New York’s first gay-friendly establishment, where male and female same-sex couples could hang out in a darkened vault in the back without fear of judgment. Patrons declaimed poetry, argued politics, drank heavily, and pleaded with Mr. Pfaff to let them ride the tab till their next payday. He often acquiesced, because thanks to these beautiful loons, Pfaff’s had become famous coast to coast.

Early on, I had the barest ghost of a story idea. Nast hung out here. So did Edwin Booth. But by far the most famous Pfaff’s regular was Walt Whitman, who left behind one unfinished poem about the joint. (One line of that poem inspired the title of this post.)

Cool, I thought, there’s a murder at Pfaff’s, and Whitman and Nast team up to solve it. Easy-peasy.

But I couldn’t possibly start writing based on such a flimsy premise, could I?

I am on the record as a serial over-researcher, knowing that my process often teeters close to obsession. I usually research until everything I read starts to sound repetitive. Then I know it is time to stop. This ritual is propelled by a fear that I will get something wrong, and incur the wrath of those who know better. This grew out of my years in journalism, when there might have been serious repercussions for getting a fact or assertion wrong. An old journalism professor of mine offered this advice on research: “You’ll never become an expert on a new topic. But with enough reporting, you can become a semi-expert.”

Fiction often doesn’t demand that level of research, but old habits die hard. This time around, however, there were signs that I had grown weary of my own shtick. I had just investigated the heck out of Manhattan in the days of the Dutch (1625 to 1660) and New York during the protest era (1960s) for two other fiction projects. I’d written an 1890s New York crime short, and a 1970s Serpico-like crime fantasy short, both of which were pubbed in AHMM. Thanks to that Nast book, I knew a ton about the artist, but I didn’t know if I could spare the time to “become a semi-expert” on Whitman. Indeed, I doubted such a thing was even possible.

Then came a call for submissions. Our editors challenged us to write a short crime story involving…a bar. If this was not fate knocking, I didn’t know what was. Thankfully, I had plenty of time to procras—er, I mean embark on a sensible course of research. The pandemic was still raging, and I wasn’t going anywhere.

I cracked open my Pfaff’s file. To whet my appetite, I read two long scholarly papers, and browsed a Pfaff’s-dedicated website maintained by Lehigh University. (Yes, Pfaff’s is that well known and revered.) I perused articles about an NYU professor who guides people on Whitman tours. It appears that one Pfaff’s location still exists. The current renters of the space sometimes allow Whitman geeks to parade through the basement so long as visitors are careful not to disturb the boxes of merchandise destined for their Korean grocery upstairs.

I had not read Whitman since high school. I bought two modern volumes, The Portable Walt Whitman and The Collected Poems. Digging into those introductions and hearing his voice in my head again gave me one of my story’s conceits. I would presume to write bad poetry in Whitman’s style, only to have my fictional character reject them as they came to his mind. Among other things, I learned that he loved walking the city, as anyone who adores that island does. Like any good flatfoot, he would have known his nabe like the back of his hand.

I supplemented the literary research by reviewing some of his letters and photos at The Walt Whitman Archive, and a couple of decent articles about his relationships. It broke my heart to learn that at the end of his life, knowing that his papers would be scrutinized upon his death, he edited his journals, changing the pronouns of some of his lovers from him to her. I read one piece about the playful cross-dressing that most likely went on at Pfaff’s, which planted the seed for my plot. I found a long, shocking article that claimed that many of the encounters Whitman described in his encoded, private notebook involved males of an age that would greatly concern us today. (Before you judge Walt, consider the relative ages of Mr. and Mrs. Poe; he age 26, she age 13 when wed.)

I was not qualified to assess those claims. I needed just enough details to write a detective story. I shifted to assembling my prosaic details. What sort of food did Charles Ignatius Pfaff offer his patrons? (Slabs of roast beef, German pancakes, Frankfurter wurst, raw clams and oysters, salt herring with black bread, and so on.) What sorts of drinks? (Fancy European tipples, of course, along with the delightful new style of beverage immigrant German brewers had gifted their new American neighbors: lager.) I researched old Hoboken-New York-Brooklyn ferry lines, the old NYPD Tombs building, New York’s horse-drawn transit systems, the first Bellevue Hospital, and the protocols for visiting early city morgues, 

I talked to a doctor about how one might successfully stab an obese man in the back. I researched how early physicians diagnosed various forms of cancer. I re-read a book by the historian Harold Holzer on Abraham Lincoln’s famous February 1860 speech at Cooper Union, because that (nonfiction) book was set in the very same neighborhood at about the same time as my proposed story. Holzer’s descriptions of Lower Broadway were incredibly helpful.

At the end of all this, our modern pandemic was still raging, I had 45 pages of copious, pencil-written notes, and had not written a single word of my story.

Instead of freeing me up, my much-vaunted “process” failed me. I was now terrified to write this thing, for all the wrong reasons. I am not a poet. I am not a historian. I am not a literary scholar. I am not gay. I was just a guy who loved beer and old New York bars.

I should have embraced those credentials and run with them. But no. I had just come across a book specifically about Whitman’s place in the bohemian world. Essay after essay written by People In The Know. In other words, academics. Oh cool, I thought. Maybe these experts could teach a wannabe semi-expert what he needed to know.

Skimming even just a few pages of that text convinced me to stop this bullsh*t already and write the damn story. It dawned on me that I had absorbed so much Pfaffian history that I could write the story blind. And I would need to, because that tome made my eyes bleed.

All of which to say, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bled” is now out in Murder, Neat: A SleuthSayers Anthology. Go forth and read it lustily. It pairs well with a cool lager, pork schnitzel, and a robust German mustard. And yes, I probably left too much of my research on its pages, but you know what? Totally cool with it.

Let me assure you that I’ve long since recovered from my dubious labors, and am happily collecting material for two other historical “shorts.” One set during the American Revolutionary War, the other in Renaissance Italy.

Mark my words: I have resolved to never over-research again. In fact, I’m pretty confident that I’ll have both of these pieces wrapped in time for the 2068 SleuthSayers anthology. Go SLEUTHS!



See you next time!

Joe

26 January 2024

The Successful Writer’s Guide to a Guilt- and Success-Free New Year!


 


You're a winner, dude!

Photo by Japheth Mast on Unsplash


If you’re me (and I sincerely hope you’re not) the New Year is already weighing you down. Maybe you openly drafted some resolutions back in December that you hoped would sharpen and expand your writing career and author business. Maybe you merely dispatched a fervent wish heavenward to the Muse, asking for guidance as you prepared for a fresh twelve months. But here it is, the third week of January, and the fragile ladder to success you’d hoped to build is wobbling.

Frankly, it’s all just too much work, isn’t it? How are you supposed to write and edit the stories that move you, while holding down a “real” job, spending time with ones you love, wresting joy from this moment on earth, while still appeasing the Gods of Ceaseless Book Promotion?

Fear not, dear scribes! I spent a stupid amount of time between November and December scouring the internet for advice on the writing craft and its necessary evil, “business.” I delved into the state of book marketing, social-media-ing, and all the rest. I attended webinars, watched courses, absorbed podcasts, and connected with movers and shakers in the burgeoning new world of Author-Care Professionals. Here’s what I learned.

Be sure you follow every one of these pieces of advice. Your career depends on it.

It would seem logical that since humans write, and all humans are different, that everyone would have a different writing pace and working style. Don’t believe the hype! If you want to succeed in the writing racket, you must not only murder your darlings but also Unlearn Your Fuzzies. That is, the molly-coddling thoughts of working at a pace that’s “right” for you. Tough love, writers: There is no right for you. There is only one way—the Successful Way.

In the hot new world of churn-and-burn publishing, if you are not writing at least 10,000 words a day, you’re destined for failure. Stop listening to the fancy-pants bestsellers who say that they write 1,500 words in the morning, before ingesting a light lunch, brewing a mug of mint tea, and turning their attention to fan mail, tending to their author brand, and blah blah blah. They can play that game, because they’re tools of the man. The rest of us can’t. Luckily, several excellent books can teach you what you need to know. Maybe you start small, writing only 5,000 words a day before ramping up to 10,000. After consuming those reasonably priced ebooks, sign up for each author’s $797 course that will school you on the hot new world of “Rapid Release.” Some courses cost a little more, some a little less, but ones ending with 9 and 7 are the best.

Need help? Hire a developmental editor, accountability mentor, and a coach. You need all three on your “support team.” The best are aligned with quasi-academic institutions you may never have heard of, but all have placed at least one short story at prestigious publications. (“Prestigious” = markets paying in copies only.) Developmental editors charge $3,000 to assess your novel, mentors $3,000 to $5000 to be on-call annually, and coaches $100 an hour for virtual sessions. Beware professionals who quote round figures. Coaches who charge $197 an hour, for example, are the best.

Fearful of overspending? Get over it. What’s your career worth? Besides, you can use Assfirm or Blarna to pay it off in sixty-seven easy payments. Every dime is tax deductible. Take your credit card out of its holster, because you’re gonna need it.

If you’re launching a book, don’t just announce it on on Facepants, Twerper, and Instapork! Who are you, Grandma? Sign up for Megadon, Shreads, and BlueEarth, and DisChump as well. If you want followers to lay actual eyeballs on your announcements, you must pay to play! For as little as $2,797 or even $3,797, you can book an exciting package that will see you and your book feted by up to 30 blogs, and Instapork and DikTok channels. Your book has not lived until a 16-year-old influencer has sung its praises. I’m not going to say you’re a loser if you resist this new class of social media titans, but I just did!

Oh, and by the way, regarding your writing? Feel free to open with the weather! Research shows that Elmore Leonard’s books have never been celebrated by DikTok influencers. Nor did he ever plumb the lucrative reverse-harem romance, or dinosaur/werewolf erotica markets. Look where those missteps got him! Feel free to write entire books about the weather! The hot new thing in spicy romance is Nimbus-Cumulus-Stratus ménage à trois fiction!

True fact: Facepants and Junglezon have both recently debuted the exciting new world of AI-driven online marketing. No longer will you need to a) dream up clever copy, and b) hire a “human” designer to create book promo ads, and c) rack up stock image agency fees. Simply upload the entire text of your book to Facepants, and a legion of helpful bots will ingest your prose, generate clever ad copy—with images!—and populate their respective sites with instant ads touting your tome. Entrust these helpful corporate entities with your credit card digits and you’re good to go. They will spend your money in the most prudent way possible, or the bot’s name isn’t Bleep-Bleep-Ka-ching!

You know all those people who signed up for your newsletter six years ago, expecting you to write them once in a blue moon when you had a book out? Scrape those suckers off your boots, and get with the program—the hot new newsletter program, Gobstack, that is—and start spitting out newsletters three times a week. Enable the Monetize-The-Crap-Out-of-This function, and soon your adoring followers will have you rolling in sweet, sweet cash! The more you noodge, you more you earn!

Since Junglezon bought the ever-popular book site Goodbleeds, you can now offer book giveaways to your adoring potential readers. Upon payment of a very reasonable $599, your new book will be free to a select number of readers. (At press time, developers are trying hard to lower that price to $597 to align with the market.)

You will need some additional software to make your literary dreams come true. Sign up for your own website store, Flickstarter campaign, and AI art generation-cum-AI-cowriting software. Use the latter to craft sales copy, outline plots, and dream up ideas for future books—only. No one is suggesting that you use such things to write your own stories! That would be unethical.

With all these new author tools, you’re sure to succeed. But we understand that you may occasionally need a daily break between your first crop of 6,000 words and the second. By all means, step outside, stretch, and smell a freaking rose. Just make sure to snap a photo of that bud, and Instapork it as soon as you get back to the cockpit.

***

Joseph D’Agnese is a writer who occasionally writes fiction. If you squint real hard, the foregoing sorta could be.

josephdagnese.com


05 January 2024

Sherlock lives, and lives forever!



Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

A military man returns home wounded from the war in Afghanistan. Desperate for lodgings but short on funds, he meets with a potential roomie slumming in a chem lab at St. Bart’s. They hit it off, despite that the fact that the guy gleefully pricks his own fingers to get blood for an experiment.

Turns out, this eccentric oddball solves crimes for a living. Blood, you might say, is his business. He invites his wounded roomie to accompany him to the scene of his newest case. An individual has been slaughtered in an abandoned building, the word RACHE scrawled on the wall—

You’re thinking, dude, I so know this story.

But you don’t, because this is not the story by Conan Doyle. It’s the story by Neil Gaiman, which means that the word RACHE isn’t scrawled on the wall in scarlet, but in a hideous green ichor.

I wish I could remember when and where I’d first read that Gaiman had written two short stories in the Sherlock Holmes universe. Whoever mentioned it did so obliquely. I’m not exactly a fan of Gaiman’s work. I read one novel of his that was not to my taste, but I did enjoy the Sandman graphic novel series. But I am a Holmes geek, so I had to investigate further. Doing so turned into an interesting reminder of the seemingly endless adaptability of short stories.

The first Gaiman story, “A Study in Emerald,” is set in an alternate Holmesian universe, melding Conan Doyle with H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythology. It first appeared in a 2003 anthology of Holmes/Lovecraft mashups, Shadows Over Baker Street (Del Rey/Ballantine). Unfortunately, I can’t say more about the plot without spoiling it for you. What I can say is that the story crystalized for me that the more a reader knows about the Canon, the more pleasure they’ll derive from a great pastiche or parody. Each little reference—to a Persian slipper, say, or the letters VR or the name Jabez—brings a smile to the face of someone who holds that world dear. I shouldn’t have been surprised by Gaiman’s grasp of Holmes, knowing what he pulled off with Sandman, but I was.


The graphic novel in hardcover.


Some years later, Gaiman went out and did it again with another story, “The Case of Death and Honey,” which first appeared in the 2011 anthology A Study in Sherlock, edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie Klinger (Poisoned Pen Press). This story claims to be the final chapter of Sir Arthur’s “The Adventure of the Creeping Man,” the wacky tale of a university professor who starts exhibiting simian characteristics.

In Gaiman’s tale, Mycroft has died, Watson is ailing, and the elderly Holmes journeys to China in search of an elusive subspecies of bee raised by an Asian apiarist who is likewise getting on in years. I won’t say more about this one either, but suffice to say that the story belongs solidly in the realm of science fiction and fantasy. But so did Conan Doyle’s “Creeping Man”!

A quick look at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (here and here) informs us that each of these Gaiman stories has been reprinted a bajillion times, either in Gaiman’s own collections, or in “best of” anthologies and “weird” detective anthologies, so you won’t have trouble finding them. “Emerald” alone has been pubbed in foreign anthologies, been spun out as a game, a graphic novel, and a story-specific audiobook. A small boutique publisher brought out three gorgeous editions of “Death and Honey,” at three different price points, with or without an accompanying edition of the original “Creeping Man.” Depending on the rare book dealer you buy from, you can easily spend between $500 to $800 on the Gaiman-signed volume, if goatskin binding and gold-leaf edging are your thing.

Now, yes, you could look at all this and say, well, sure, we’re talking about Gaiman, a worldwide bestseller, so of course two short stories of his would engender this sort of treatment. And you’d have a point. But I’m constantly reminded that the short stories of lesser-known or downright unknown authors can inspire better-known works of pop culture. Every year at Thanksgiving, my wife and I watch a minor Holly Hunter film called Home for the Holidays, based on a short story by Chris Radant. Mary Orr’s story in a 1946 issue of Cosmopolitan was the basis for the Oscar-winning movie All About Eve. The 2016 Amy Adams science-fiction film Arrival, which I love, was derived from a short story by Ted Chiang, a nonfiction writer and SFF short story specialist.

Hoping to inspire myself, I read one or two short stories a day between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day 2024. I was often left thinking how many of them were so rich that they could easily serve as the source material for entire movies or stage productions. (I was especially charmed by the shorts and novellas of Connie Willis, contained in her collection, A Lot Like Christmas. )

Click to download PDF.


Getting back to the Canon, since tomorrow is Sherlock’s birthday, I might mention that the two Gaiman stories I discussed are apparently so beloved by fans that you can easily find and read them online for free. If you’re the sort of Irregular scamp who respects copyright, however, I’d suggest you download the free pdf of “Emerald” that Gaiman makes available on his website. It’s designed to look like an old Victorian newspaper, and the price is just right if you’re jonesing for a January Holmes fix.

Happy New Year!

See you in three weeks...

Joe





15 December 2023

All I Want for Christmas Is This Post on Your Author Website


One of my pet peeves is a question that pops up often at this time of year: Where can I get your books? Granted, publishing is an opaque business, but I don’t think people ask the same sort of question when they are contemplating the purchase of automobile tires or mayonnaise.

Often, the question is framed as if the asker is genuinely concerned about my financial welfare: “What’s the best place to buy your books?” they’ll ask, implying that they want me to get the best bang for their buck.

This one, I sort of understand, and appreciate. “Well,” the only correct response is, “if you buy my book at the local bookstore, I’ll get ten bucks more than if you bought it online.”

Only writers laugh at that one.

Once, at a book event in a historic gift shop, a dimwitted paterfamilias suddenly announced: “Oh! You guys are the authors of the book!” Folks, he said this minutes after my wife and I signed and inscribed a book to his entire family, at the request of his two kids. Dad was standing there the whole time, beaming but apparently oblivious to what was happening.

I wanted to say: Sir, do you routinely let strangers scrawl their names on your purchases? If so, break out your automobile tires and mayonnaise jars right now because I’d be happy to Sharpie the heck out of them for you!

All this to say that when it comes to books, you cannot assume civilians know a damn thing. Which is why, when Denise and I first moved to this town, we made friends with booksellers at the local bookstore, and then promptly inserted a paragraph on the contact pages of our websites saying that if anyone wanted autographed copies of our books that they should contact that store. We gave them the link, the 800-number, and explicit instructions for ordering. In other words, we made it stupidly simple. You have to.

At this time of year, it is wise to remind yourself that you are marketing your books not to readers but to buyers. Many of the books bought during the holidays will never be read by those buyers; they are intended for other people entirely. Thanks to a shadow career as a ghostwriter, I have witnessed business people who have not cracked a book since The Catcher in the Rye buying stacks of signed business books to dole out to their compatriots, thinking it makes them look smart. Non-reading grandparents routinely snap up books for their grandchildren, regardless of the season. 

So, thanks to that paragraph on our website, the local booksellers at Malaprop’s will occasionally shoot us an email if they get an order, and we have grown accustomed to stopping by the store to sign/inscribe when running errands. Predictably, Denise is summoned far more often than I do. I get maybe two or three requests a year, but that’s still cool. Those sales live forever in the store’s system, gently reminding the store that my books are worth keeping in stock.


Simple instructions on our websites have also helped short-circuit the creepy thing that was happening, where strangers would mail a book to our home asking my wife to sign and return it. (I need not comment that privacy does not exist; you know that already.)

Another idiot shipped one of my wife’s books—in an Amazon box—to our local bookstore, with a note asking her to sign and send it back. This triggered a hilarious phone call from the Hungarian-born founder of this legendary indie store, which has been in business 41 years. “Come pick up this disgusting box,” she said in her thick accent, “before I vomit on it!” When we arrived at the store, we found that she had draped a paper bag over the box, neatly hiding the Amazon logo.

Now the note on Denise’s contact page says that any books shipped this way—to our home or the store—will be donated to charity. People must follow the rules.

Some years ago, I spotted another clever book-signing post that we have since stolen and made our own. John Scalzi, the bestselling SFF author, posts an annual message on his blog—believed to be the world’s oldest—with instructions for getting his books for the holidays. He urges fans to order his books from his local bookstore, Jan & Mary’s Book Center, in Troy, Ohio. Chuck Wendig, another well-known author, has started doing the same thing in his own wacky way, sending buyers to the indie store near him in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

Study the language in their posts, and maybe also have a look at mine. You’ll notice that I avoid the word “signed” in favor of “autographed.” I do that because, given my experience with Doofus Dad (mentioned above) and others on the road, I think some buyers need things spelled out much more explicitly. I’ve also noticed that some buyers don’t quite understand what “inscribing” a book means. I stole the word “personalized” from Scalzi, but I still go to lengths to describe what that means. (See No. 2 in my instructions.)


Every year, I duplicate the same holidays blog post I’ve been using for nearly a decade, tweak the language slightly, and repost it. (During Covid, the language reflected the bookstore’s contactless ordering policies.) Beyond that, the most important information to give readers is the drop-dead order date.

This year, for example, the store told me that for books in stock, they could have orders gift-wrapped and shipped to U.S. addresses with a guaranteed Christmas arrival if the person ordered by December 14th, and we signed no later than 11 a.m. the following day. If the store did not have the book in stock, they preferred people order by December 7th.

Unfortunately, unless the indie bookstore’s website robustly reflects their inventory, the person calling or placing an online order won’t necessarily see if the book they want is in stock. Which is why it’s important to stress in your blog post that people a) pick up the damn phone, and b) order as early as possible. My post goes up on the website as early as possible in November, and lives on the front page of my site until January 2, when it’s replaced with a link to the non-holiday how-to-get-my books instructions.

Having said all that, I know that some of you will regard this effort as futile. This wouldn’t work for me, you’re thinking, for reasons such as:

  • I’m not a well-known writer. 
  • No one cares about my books. 
  • There isn’t a bookstore for 50 miles in every compass direction of my home. 
  • Or there is, and the crank who runs the place hates me because my books are self-pubbed or whatever.
I totally get it. I used to think along these lines, and still do in trying moments. But these days I regard these sort of posts as the easiest marketing I can do. It costs nothing to post this note on your site, and you never know how it’s going to play out.


I continue to be surprised by how such a simple effort helps my cause. One Christmas a buyer ordered a dozen signed copies of my children’s book. I was flabbergasted and asked the booksellers for the person’s name, thinking it must be a friend or colleague. The bookseller who took the order over the phone told me that the buyer was a former librarian. That, and the woman’s out-of-state address, was all we knew. No matter. I have since built a shrine to this obviously perspicacious stranger in my basement.

If you cannot envision a similar relationship with a store in your area, you could try…

  • Offering signed bookplates in exchange for a SASE. (The authors of Freakonomics did this via their website years ago, so now I do it too.) 
  • Selling signed books directly to readers via your website. That typically boils down to a PayPal link, and you driving to the post office to ship orders.
  • Selling signed books and other merchandise via a Shopify store. (This is the hot new thing everyone’s talking about in the indie-pub world.) It boils down to a website that practically runs itself, taking orders, printing books and other merch, and shipping it out without requiring any effort on your part after you’ve set it up. (You would probably not have the ability to offer signed, inscribed books this way unless you have really nailed your game.)

In the two days it took me to write and tinker with the post you are reading, another buyer—a professor who teaches screenwriting—ordered 10 copies of our personal finance book to gift to students of hers graduating in December. I can’t imagine why she would want signed copies, but who am I to argue?

On that note, I’ll share the following: At the arts school in North Carolina that my wife attended in her youth, a professor famously told his students—aspiring musicians, actors, dancers—that the world was filled with benevolent, often wealthy people who have money to spend on the arts. Your job, he told them, was to help them spend that money on your work. The first rule, he counseled, was educating them. He meant learning to write grants, but I have since come to see it differently.

Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to You All.

Notes: 

  • To create the images in the holiday post on my website, I used Book Brush, which is a paid service. You could easily use Canva, Adobe, or whatever design software you like. 
  • To create the one-page list of all my books, I used Books2Read, which is completely free and created by some very nice author-loving people in Oklahoma.
  • As long as we are celebrating imagination and creativity, I might mention that the images in this post are photos I took of displays of the winners of the annual Gingerbread competition held at the Omni Grove Park Inn in my town. Everything you see is theoretically edible.
See you in three weeks!

Joe
josephdagnese.com


24 November 2023

The Holiday for Math Geeks Hidden in November


Yesterday was Thanksgiving in the United States. But if you happen to be an American mathematician, yesterday was more than just turkey and families. It was Fibonacci Day, so named because the month and date—in American notation, anyway—expressed the first four digits in the famous number sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3. (Oh, to have been alive on 11/23/58!) To talk about that, I’m repurposing an article I wrote years ago for a website that has since gone dark.

In 1996, I was floundering with a children’s picture book manuscript on the life of the medieval mathematician Leonardo of Pisa (~1170-1250), better known as Fibonacci.

Leonardo helped convert Europe from the Roman numerals I-II-III to the Hindu-Arabic numerals 1-2-3, and introduced the west to the world’s most important nonentity: zero. Without it, we’d have no concept of place value. He is best known for a word problem about multiplying rabbits, and the number pattern derived from it called the Fibonacci Sequence.
 

Fibonacci, as drawn by New Yorker cartoonist John O'Brien

My dilemma was two-fold: First, the real Leonardo never knew that Fibonacci numbers occur in nature. Later mathematicians and scientists made that association.

Either I wrote about Fibonacci or I wrote about the Sequence. I had trouble unifying the two because it didn’t happen that way.

Second, facts on Leonardo’s life are sparse: He grew up in Pisa, sailed to Algeria to keep his merchant father’s accounts, and later traveled the then-known world studying mathematics. A few of his math tomes have survived, but they tell us little of his personal life. To write a picture book about him, one ought to know what made him tick.

What, I wondered, drives a person to chase numbers across the world?

Statue of Leonardo in Pisa today. 

I was intrigued by Leonardo’s Latin nickname, Bigollus. A funny name could make a good book title, but I couldn’t find an authoritative translation. The Fibonacci Association offered an expert. I dreaded making that call. I’m not a mathematician. Indeed, who was I to write such a book?

Herta Taussig Freitag, a professor emeritus of mathematics, took the call in Virginia. She had a thick German accent, and proved to be a delightful, friendly, patient person who was tickled to be speaking with a (then) editor of a math magazine for children.

She had wanted to become a teacher of mathematics since age 12. (As a girl in her native Austria, she had once written in her diary, “I don’t want just to be a teacher of mathematics. I want to be a good teacher of mathematics.”)

We had a long chat, and she assured me that I was grappling with a genuine mystery. No one was satisfied with the translation of Fibonacci’s nickname. It could mean “wanderer,” “daydreamer,” or “absent-minded.” The words seemed in line with modern stereotypes of academics. In modern Italian, a bighellone is a loafer, a slouch, loiterer, dawdler, or gadabout. You get the idea.

When we concluded our call, I promised to send her copies of our magazine. Days after the magazine arrived at her home, a note from the professor arrived in my mail, penned in exquisite calligraphy. “As I have said over the phone,” it read in part, “I feel like praising you and thanking you for doing such valuable service to our Goddess Mathesis!”

The note cheered me. Mathesis is a Greek word meaning knowledge or science, but Freitag and her colleagues had elevated that word to the status of a feminine divine creature said to inspire math scholars.

The math muse inspired me now: What if Fibonacci knew the secret of his famous numbers all along? What if this book was in fact his sly manifesto written only for children?

I’ve never told anyone the secret of my numbers, he could say, but now I’ve told you.

Having Fibonacci speak directly to the reader could make the book playful. Kids—not to mention a certain octogenarian academic—might like it. The manuscript came together nicely, and a year or so later, Holt offered to publish it. I called it Blockhead. An illustrator got to work on the sketches. I phoned the professor to tell her the news. It had been a while since our first talk, and her fragile voice spoke volumes. I rang off, apologizing for disturbing her. She and I never spoke again. She died in 2000 at the age of 91.

Soon after, the book became a problem project, dragging on for years with little progress. Finally, the illustrator quit, forcing us to start from scratch. John O’Brien, a marvelous illustrator, musician, Jersey boy, and a longtime New Yorker cartoonist, took the job. All told, the book took fourteen years to reach bookstores. I was frustrated and angry, but now consider myself fortunate. I had time to polish the prose, understand my hero, and learn about the woman who brought Mathesis to my doorstep.

Professor Freitag had earned a degree in mathematics in Austria, but fled her homeland after Hitler’s invasion in 1938. For six years, she put her dream of teaching on hold while working as a domestic in England, angling for a visa to the USA. She finally came by freighter. She earned her PhD at Columbia University at age 45. She built the math department at Hollins University in Roanoke, and for decades inspired young women. She published papers well into her last decade, gave a “last lecture” for 20 years, and never missed a meeting of the Fibonacci Association, which is devoted to the analysis of those famous numbers. Just how much do these people love the Fibonacci Sequence? Well, let’s just say that their quarterly magazine chose to celebrate not Freitag’s 90th birthday, but her 89th, since 89 is a Fibonacci number.

The color photo of her (top right) of this page was taken in Lucca, Italy, during a conference at Leonardo’s hometown, Pisa.

How can I complain about a book’s long genesis? Imagine leaving your home forever, and putting your dream career on hold for six years while you worked as a maid, restaurant server, or governess? How many of us would have given up? Yet she clung to her passion.

With time I came to understand him through her. A young boy boards a medieval ship and sets sail on a journey to a faraway land. A young woman steps on a freighter bound for New York with only $10 in her purse. I picture them both and know they are plying the seas toward something only they can hear: the ancient call of Mathesis.

I am older now and tend to view Mathesis in the original Greek sense—knowledge, science, learning, mental discipline—and I cling stubbornly to the hope that she speaks to us all. With luck, she strikes young and old alike. Hand a book to a child and you never know what will enchant them. With her voice in their ears, some kids chase math, others art, still others music, rocks, dance, nuclear physics, whatever.

She goes by various names, but she is the same goddess.

* * * 


On that note: If you are thinking about giving to a good cause this season, please consider buying a book for a child. One of our own, crime writer Duane Swierczynski, lost his daughter Evie to cancer in 2018. The Team Evie Foundation holds an annual book drive to benefit the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Five indie bookstores (and Amazon) maintain wish lists of titles approved by the hospital, which you can buy direct from the store websites. (One of the indies can only handle in-person orders.) Survey the list of stores and books at the Team Evie events page. The drive closes December 4th.

I wish my American colleagues a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. 

See you in three weeks!

Joe




03 November 2023

Three Indigenous Mysteries for Kids


From Rez Detectives

This past summer, my wife and I visited nearby Cherokee, North Carolina, for that city’s annual 4th of July powwow, billed as one of this continent’s largest gatherings for Native American singing, dancing, and drumming competitions. We’ve gone before, because the event is spectacular on its own, and because the history of the region—best experienced in the museum, craft co-op, living village, and long-running stage show—is fascinating.

It is also excruciatingly sad. The U.S. federal government forcibly removed 11,000 Cherokee from the American Southeast in the 1830s, consigning them to the notorious Trail of Tears and the so-called Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. Many Cherokee resisted that government order, hiding in the nearby mountains. Their descendants, and others who returned, comprise what is known today as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (ECBI).

The times we’ve visited the Qualla Boundary, the Cherokee land trust, we always stop in at Talking Leaves Bookstore, which exclusively features books and other media devoted to many indigenous cultures. The mystery section prominently displays, for example, the works of Tony and Anne Hillerman. The store also carries some DVDs of TV series such as Dark Winds, based on Hillerman’s series in Navajo country, and Reservation Dogs, about Muscogee Nation teens mourning the loss of a friend and grappling with life in rural Oklahoma.

The latter got me thinking: are there mysteries for kids that feature indigenous characters? There are quite a few, yes. I picked up three, which I thought I’d share with you today as we start Native American Heritage Month here in the United States. Let’s see what we’ve got.



The Rez Detectives: Justice Served Cold, text by Steven Paul Rudd, Tvli Jacob, illustrations by M.K. Perker. (Literati Press Comic & Novels, $12.99).

In the gentlest of the three books—a hardcover comic book—fifth grader Tasembo wakes on a hot summer day craving a delicious ice cream cone. When the ice cream truck doesn’t show up, all the kids in this Choctaw neighborhood are naturally concerned. Turns out, all the vendor’s stock has been stolen! Determined to crack the case, Tasembo teams with the smartest girl in his class, the sweetly nerdy Nuseka, who sports a lab coat and totes forensics equipment in a suitcase. 

Nuseka collects footprints with plaster molds, dusts for prints, and sets traps to collect both from suspects. Along the way, we learn interesting tidbits about reservation life, tribal councils, and the kids’ attitudes about them. When Tasembo comments that the ice cream man has a stellar record for punctuality, Nuseka quips, “Maybe he overslept. Indian time finally caught up with him.” When Nuseka lapses into pig latin to avoid sharing a secret with others, Tasembo replies: “Are you speaking Kiowa or something?” 

The characters directly address the fact that many Native Americans are lactose intolerant. (Eighty percent of African Americans and Natives are.) They speculate that the theft is the work of the Kowi Anuk Asha, little people who dwell in the forest. Alas, the culprit proves to be all too human. 

A very fun story with charming illustrations. Author Judd (Kiowa/Choctaw) is a clothing designer, writer, and visual artist; his collaborator Jacob (Choctaw) is a producer, director, and clinical professor of psychiatry. Intended for readers aged 10-13, grades 4-6, though I think it could skew younger.




The Case of Windy Lake, by Michael Hutchinson (The Mighty Muskrats Mystery Series, Second Story Press, $10.95). 

When an elderly white archeologist goes missing while doing some routine work for a local mining company on the lands of the Windy Lake First Nation in Canada, four young cousins known as the Mighty Muskrats team up to find the poor fellow before he expires in the harsh wilderness. 

This series is five books strong at this point, and Hutchinson (Misipawistik Cree, Treaty 5 territory) says he was inspired by the old Three Investigators series attributed to Alfred Hitchcock but written by Robert Arthur Jr. and a team of ghostwriters. 

That said, The Mighty Muskrats plots are strongly influenced by Hutchinson’s work as an investigative journalist. In this volume, we witness a community struggling with a classic dilemma: do they preserve the old ways and their land, or allow a despoiling mining company to bring much-needed jobs to the region? The cousins—Atim, Sam, Chickadee, and Otter—display a warm, loving relationship with each other and with others in their nation. Their uncle is a tribal cop. Their Grandpa is a wise respected Elder. Their older cousin is an angry activist. A larger cast of uncles, aunties, council Elders, and older cousins and sibs chime with offhand comments that turn out to be vital clues. Everyone is skeptical of the motives of Anglo archeologists, rapacious corporations, and the Canadian government. 

In this case, the kids’ deductions hinge upon an understanding of the behavior of local birds of prey, the rise and fall of lake water levels due to the nearby hydro dam, and modern meteorology. Readers will come away with a powerful understanding of many concepts dear to this community, among them the value of vision quests: “Once you see the world beyond your needs, it becomes easier to see your dreams and how you can contribute.” A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection. Ages 9-12, grades 4-7.




Firekeeper’s Daughter, by Angeline Boulley (Firekeeper’s Daughter series, Macmillan, $14.99). 

Eighteen-year-old Daunis is a young woman living near Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, who dreams of going off to college to become a doctor. She’s forced to put her dreams on hold when her grandma suffers a stroke. Born out of wedlock to a white mom from a wealthy family, and an Ojibwe hockey player dad, she has always felt like she doesn’t quite fit in. When Daunis witnesses a murder, the FBI compels her to go undercover to smash a drug ring that is devastating the community. Now she’s really caught between two worlds. 

Author Boulley (Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa) labored 10 years on the book, while raising her kids, enduring a divorce, and serving as the director of the Office of Indian Education at the U.S. Department of Education in DC. She told one interviewer that she often wrote scenes while sitting in the stands at her kids’ hockey games.

Unusual for a debut novel, the book hit No. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller list upon release, and racked up a slew of starred reviews and awards. Reese Witherspoon picked it for her book club, the Obamas are producing a Netflix series based on the title. The second book is set in the same region, and features some of the same characters. (I have not read that one.)

Tell me: when was the last time you’ve seen a book garner more than 12,000 Amazon or 135,000 Goodreads ratings, largely glowing? That said, this is a doorstopper—nearly 500 pages—and filled with all the things that frighten witless adults about YA books: sex, drugs, crime, language, you name it. Ages 14-18, grades 10-12.

I’m sorry to say that these only scratch the surface of what’s available out there in the genre. If you know of other titles, please share them. 


From Rez Detectives

See you in three weeks!

Joe

13 October 2023

Eating My Words


 

Not accepted as a form of payment anywhere in the world.


I have told this story in various ways over the years, and it always makes people chuckle. So here I go again.

When I was freelancing years ago for The New York Times, I calculated that they were paying me under 50 cents a word for the twice-monthly, 750-1,000-word columns I wrote for the Sunday New Jersey section. 

I know that short story writers are accustomed to payment rates under 10 cents a word, but in the realm of journalism you tend to get paid better. Not far better, mind you; just better. Most writers know that there’s not much money in freelancing for newspapers, especially ones like the Times. Still, every month I could count on $1,000 income from this gig alone. And it was fun. I wrote about “destinations,” places to go and things to do in ye Olde Garden State.




One day my editor called with a weird proposition. They were running short, under-300-word reviews of local restaurants, and he wondered if I could contribute a few. I asked about payment.

“We used to pay about $50 each,” he said, “but now we have these coupons for pie.”

I’ve had hearing issues my whole life, and wear hearing aids. So I often second-guess myself and ask people to restate what they just said. (Not a bad practice for a reporter.) My editor explained that a fancy bakery near the newspaper had given them these vouchers and that they were using them as a way to thank people. An extra bonus, so to speak, to make up for the low $50 payment.




Or that’s how I heard it.

Of course, I misheard. Actually, instead of paying $50, these coupons were the only form of payment I was to receive.

There’s so much wrong with this picture. For starters, to write a decent restaurant review—even a capsule review—you still have to eat at the place. Ideally, you would eat there more than once, with guests each time. That’s how the pros do it; you bring as many appetites as possible so you can try different dishes. But by their action, my editors were basically saying that since they were unable to reimburse reporters for these meals, they were offering them dessert instead.



Like any brainless freelancer, I said yes and started working these capsule reviews into my reporting/writing schedule. I’d eat at a place incognito, then phone later to speak to a chef, manager, or owner if I had any questions about ingredients, menu items, or the restaurant’s history. If anyone asked, I’d say I was writing a review for the Times. It was true. They didn’t need to know that it was for the New Jersey section of the paper, how short they were, or the absurd writer compensation.

I did a bunch of these reviews. And because I had misheard the editor, believing the pie thing to be a joke or perhaps an extra thank-you, I actually invoiced them $50, plus expenses, for each review. They always paid. But after each one, I’d get a coupon in the mail for a free pie at the fancy bakery.



I had a stack of these coupons and collected a few hundred dollars before accounting caught on and my poor editor called, embarrassed, to explain the situation. I forget how we remedied the overpayment. I’m guessing they recovered the article fees from my later assignments, but let me keep the expense money. (They were always generous on expenses, covering meals, phone calls, and mileage for other stories I wrote for them.)

I redeemed the pie coupons infrequently, I must say. The pie shop was in an inconvenient location in Midtown that I rarely visited. The one time I called to claim a bunch of pies for a party I was about to attend, the baker-in-chief told me that I could only get two free pies at any one time with those coupons. To make things worse, the pies were a little on the small side. Stereotypical Manhattan meal pricing. Delicious, but minuscule.

It remains one of the strangest ways I’ve ever been paid for my work. And for a little while, perhaps a summer or so, I liked to think of myself as being the hit of parties when I showed up with two boxes of free pie and a story of professional debasement and exploitation to boot.

Now let us pray at the Church of Uncle Harlan. Apologies in advance if his language offends you. If it does, how dare you call yourself a writer? Get to a bar this very minute and practice cussing between rounds. I know you have it in you!



To which I would add, the writer must be paid in currency, not pie.




* * * 

See you in three weeks!

Joe

22 September 2023

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the My-Time


A man named Karl who lived in Germany in the 19th Century was a jack-of-all-trades. A skinner at a local slaughterhouse. A dog catcher. A tax collector at a time when one literally went door to door collecting cash payments. And a night watchman. Anything to make ends meet.

Karl (left) with friends, canine and human.

Karl needed to keep himself and the town’s funds safe as he strolled or patrolled the streets of the burgeoning industrial city of Apolda in Thuringia. Since Karl and his buddies loved dogs, and often frequented the city’s annual “dog market,” he hit upon the idea of breeding himself an animal to accompany him on his rounds. A four-footed security guard who would stick by his side and keep strangers at bay. A dog bred not for the field but for city streets. When Karl died in 1894, his canine-loving friends perfected that breed, which they named in honor of their departed friend, Karl Friedrich Louis Dobermann.*

Cut to Summer 2019. I am standing at the edges of a decimated vegetable garden in North Carolina. Just as our veggies reach perfection, they become a banquet for the neighborhood’s rabbits and wild turkeys. The chief culprit is a groundhog who resides under our shed. Some days, I spot the plump marauder sunning itself in the yard. The effrontery! One day, I spot two.

“It’s a female!” I tell my wife. “She just had babies!”

Judging from the number of groundhogs we spotted over the ensuing years, Lady Whistle-Pig was popular with the gents.

One day, after surveying another truncated zucchini plant and chomped tomatoes, my wife announced, “We need a dog!” 

I resisted. What do parents always tell their kids before bringing that puppy home? It’s a big responsibility. I wasn’t sure I wanted that. Except for the garden, I had perfected the art of sedentary living and marriage to my keyboard. A dog would wreck that.

Weeks passed, and Denise refined her requirements. We needed a smart dog. “I’m not going to have a stupid dog,” she said adamantly.

Two friends of hers had each recently gotten German shepherds, which appear prominently on lists of the world’s smartest breeds. These lists vary slightly, depending on who’s drawing them up. Anthropocentric to a fault, humans equate canine intelligence with trainability. The border collie is always No. 1, the standard poodle No. 2, the German shepherd No. 3. Also popular are golden retrievers (N0. 4) and Labrador retrievers (No. 7). The Australian cattle dog always makes the list too, around No. 10. Damn smart dogs, the Aussies.

A friend of ours—a canine and equine artist—dissuaded us from the German shepherd. “Do you like the idea of cleaning up rolling tumbleweeds of fur around your house?” he asked.

We didn’t.

He recommended a Dobie. As a former vet tech, he believed Herr Dobermann’s breed ticked three basic boxes: They were among the Top 10 intelligent breeds, usually ranking at No.5. They were less unpredictably bitey than shepherds. They shed minuscule amounts of eyelash-sized hair. And as an artist well versed in canine anatomy he regarded them as drop-dead gorgeous.

I grew up in a family with dogs; a golden retriever and later a mutt. Like Archie Goodwin, I had formed the erroneous impression that all dogs loved me. It never occurred to me to ask someone, “Is your dog friendly?” before approaching them.

In short, I was an idiot, and remained so until the day a neighbor’s Rottweiler took me for a snack. As the dog’s jaws clamped on my wrist—I still have the scar—two thoughts occurred to me in quick succession:
  1. Gee, he’s strong enough to crush my wrist.
  2. Huh—I probably should be wary of dogs.
Getting a Doberman to protect one’s vegetables seemed like overkill. Any yapping canine would do. During the pandemic, I surfed the web to research Dobermans, which in my uninformed view were just as fearsome as the pooch that bit me.

I learned that Karl’s breed are the only dogs created for personal protection. He and his friends believed that they were breeding “police-soldier dogs.” In World War II, the breed became a dog of choice for the Germans and the U.S. Marines. The latter used them as cave explorers, messengers, scouts, and bomb-sniffers. Twenty-five dogs, mostly Dobies, lost their lives on Guam, where a regal statue of a reclining Doberman stands in the U.S. war dog cemetery there. (More on this story in a future post.) They served as police dogs, too, until police forces moved on to breeds like German shepherds and the Belgian Malinois.

Doberman fanciers and police dog handlers love to pontificate on the reasons for that shift. Dobies have short coats, they say, so they aren’t great for outdoor police work in cold or hot weather. Taping their ears so they grow into the “correct” position is time-consuming. The dogs are too independent. They take too long to mature. Their bite style—bite and shred—makes them undesirable compared to shepherds, who bite and hold a suspect until they can be formally arrested.

On forums frequented by police dog handlers, people insist Euro-dobies are tougher animals. The European Dobermann is bigger and beefier. The American is more gracile. In their zeal to breed a safe family pet, goes the argument, Americans have winnowed the dogs’ natural aggression out of them. Breeders have created animals for show, not street work as originally intended. The American dogs were Little Lord Fauntleroys compared to der Dobermannpinscher.

Which sounded fine to me. It comforted me to see videos of American Dobermans patiently enduring the hugs of human toddlers, babysitting infants in swings, playing in kiddie pools, and serving as therapy and seeing-eye dogs.

Okay, I told Denise, let’s try to get a sit with some breeders. But that became impossible in 2020, when breeders halted their programs for fear that their animals would contract Covid-19 from prospective adopters, or vice versa. I gave up trying. It seemed like a pain in my tailless rump.

So when Denise revisited the dog issue again last summer, I told her we should select a rescue dog from the local shelter. Getting the eyelash-shedding dog of her dreams was unlikely to ever happen. Breeders required you to submit an application to judge your suitability. Did we have a yard that was completely fenced? (No.) Did we have experience taping Doberman ears? (No.) Had we thoroughly researched the dog ordinances in our municipality? (Um, what?) Sheesh.

“It’s way too complicated,” I said.

In early June 2022, we were sitting outdoors, again surveying our trampled garden. Denise peeked at the web on her phone for about three minutes, dialed a number, and in a matter of minutes was speaking with a lovely woman in South Carolina—three hours from our home—who had recently helped her champion female bring nine puppies into the world.

I am at heart a pessimist. If it was that easy to find a puppy, there had to be some catch. You don’t just pick a breeder off the web, I informed her, though that’s exactly what I had attempted to do in 2020. Turns out, she had unknowingly picked the oldest continuing Doberman kennel in the United States. A breeder whose late founder is mentioned lovingly in most textbooks on the breed. When the nine-pup litter was old enough to accept visitors, we drove south, and fell in love with one of the males. The kennel took a deposit, and promised to begin using with him the name we planned to bestow upon him.

I also learned that once in the kennel’s history, one of their dogs achieved fame prancing through the plotlines of this (fictional) detective’s adventures.

Hillerman will always be Simon Brimmer to me.


Well, shoot, I thought, I needed to break out my stash of Hawaiian shirts, and start growing a luxurious mustache. However, I wasn’t sure about sticking my ample keister into a pair of 70s-style short-shorts. But I had time to drop some weight; we would not be getting the dog for another six weeks.

While waiting, I dove back into the research. The breed was known for docked tails and cropped ears, to better reduce handholds for criminals. Ironically, in the 1980s European kennel clubs banned the practice of surgically altering dogs of any breed. They now regarded the practice as cruel and inhumane. Naturally, the erect ears and short tails remain the breed standard in the United States.

Hearing this, my own ears perked up. I had watched numerous videos on how to insert and wrap posts in my future puppy’s ears until his cartilage grew to support them in the customary position. We’d need to do this every five days, for 10 months at minimum. It looked daunting, fiddly, and prone to error.

We shot a note to the breeders. Please, oh pretty please, could we have our dog intact? The floppy ears issued at birth were perfectly fine with us. We never intended to show the dog. We just wanted him to protect our damn tomatoes.

Sorry, said they, the ears are already done. We cannot sell a dog that does not conform to the breed standard.

I haven’t talked much about this publicly, but during this period my doctors gave me a troubling medical diagnosis. Luckily, the cancer was eminently treatable. But I would be shuttling daily to two different facilities for treatment. Did we really want the responsibility of a puppy as I endured chemo-radiation? Should we forfeit our deposit and walk away?

We couldn’t abandon this face.


When I was sick and wasting away, I’d wake from an unplanned nap to find the little guy asleep on my belly. When I woke mornings dreading the day, the only thing that got me out of bed was the thought that we had to walk the dog.

Months have passed, and the world looks different. I have grown accustomed to people stopping to say, “Sir, you have a very pretty dog.” (For some reason, it’s always hefty Southern gentlemen who use this phraseology.) I’m in remission, healthier, and stronger. I’ve gained back some of the forty-five pounds I lost, but constant walks and puppy training sessions have kept excess poundage at bay. I know the trails in the woods behind my house far better than I ever did before, and walk about 10 miles more a week than I ever have. My cholesterol’s dropped. Even my eyesight is better.**

Without hesitation I can say that this animal has saved my life.

Still, it’s challenging living with an 80-pound lap dog who doesn’t know his own strength. True to Herr Dobermann’s vision, the dog follows me everywhere—except when on a leash. He chases fish and tadpoles in the pond below the house, even though he’s too heavy to swim gracefully. He detests the rain, and won’t deign to walk in it. He peers curiously at passing hawks, crows, airplanes, but growls at the occasional Chinook helicopter. After each morning’s walk, he insists upon sitting perfectly erect in the front yard, head swiveling to check the perimeter of the entire neighborhood.

The groundhog under the shed is long gone. I must have missed the moving truck. Rabbits, turkeys, feral cats, and squirrels do not tarry long within our fenceline.

But since Mother Nature is a prankster, we have new problem.

The dog’s new favorite thing? Tearing up and scattering tomato plants to the four winds. Who can blame him? It’s the best fun ever.


* * *

* In Europe, kennel clubs retain two N’s when referring to the breed; in the U.S., it’s one N. The Europeans also reject the term pinscher, which means terrier, as inaccurate; Americans continue to use it.

** I know this sounds incoherent at first glance. But conditions such as ocular hypertension are apparently reduced by something called exercise. Never tried it until now.

Query: If anyone knows of dog handlers who have worked with the breed in law enforcement or military settings, kindly get in touch. I’m collecting interviews for a future nonfiction project.

See you in three weeks!

Joe