Pencils down

             Among the common laments of struggling writers is the problem of getting started.  Writing that first sentence, paragraph, chapter.  Personally, I like that part.  If all I had to do was start a project, my batting average would soar.  The difficulty for me is starting something good.  That’s a whole n’other kettle of fish.  And a consistent ravager of averages.

            There’s an opposite problem, which is knowing when to stop.  Both these issues are

dealt with by Issac Newton, who basically said getting something moving takes some effort, though stopping it can be even harder, or actually impossible, without the intervention of an opposing force. 

            Technically, the best treatment for this affliction is to have thought out the structure of your book in advance.  If you have a beginning, a middle and an end, presumably you’ll know when it’s time to stop.  This gets us into the tiresome debate over who’s a pantser and who’s an outliner.  If you believe the beleaguered panelists at a writers conference, we’re either one or the other.  Of course, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle, though when it comes to wrapping up a mystery novel, it’s pretty helpful to have a destination in mind as you’re writing along. 

Another trope of the writing commentariat is E.L. Doctrow’s bit, "Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”  That’s a lovely bit of poetry, but the most likely outcome of this approach is hitting a tree, or running over your next-door neighbor.  Employing a purely Doctrowian strategy, you might find yourself driving from Oxford, Mississippi to the Upper Peninsula, and not have a clue about how to find your way back.  If all that driving is a stand-in for work product, that means you‘ll be throwing out a lot of pages, and this I find

inexcusably wasteful.   I’m more in Reed Farrel Coleman’s camp, who says something like, “I know how to get started, and where I want to end up, and then I figure out how to get there along the way.”

There are believable reports from the conference stage of writers who find their plots revealing themselves as they write, with the finale popping into view at just the right moment, that is, when they’ve reached about 100 thousand words and everything suddenly makes a lot of sense.  I know this happens, and for some, it’s the only way it can happen, but I suspect their genius lies in the subconscious, which has been ably managing navigation while the driver is at the wheel wearing out her pants.

Newton did stipulate that the force needed to arrest motion is external, but this needn‘t apply to automobiles (which have brakes) or disciplined, experienced writers itching to write “Finis”.  Though in support of Newton’s proviso, we also have editors, armed with book contracts, underpinned by production costs and sales forecasts. I worked for a publisher once, and I got to say, “We love your book.  Please cut forty pages.”  I think this always made for a better novel, and importantly, one we could afford to print. 

Have you ever had a big chunk of writing get gobbled up by the computer, and been forced to recreate it all from scratch?  And then somehow come across the original pages?  In my case, the reincarnated version was always better, though some nice bits were invariably lost.  I copy these down and squirrel them away for future use.    

This might give you the idea that you can always improve your book if you have the time to constantly fiddle.  Though there’s a subset of the sin of overwriting, which is over rewriting.  In woodworking and car mechanics, two pursuits that have a lot in common with banging out novels, this is called “Fixing it till it breaks.”  It’s the delusion of perfectionists that refining will always elevate the product, not knowing when they’ve crossed into

sabotaging the messiness that actually creates something fresh and notable.  Whether inflicted by a heavy-handed editor, or ones internal arbiter, it amounts to a crime against art. It's not just about when to stop, but how you do it.

By far my favorite form of ending is one that really isn’t.  The reader thinks he’s idling around in a denouement, when all of a sudden he’s back in the soup.  Or a final twist pulls it all into a more satisfying conclusion (e.g. Presumed Innocent, my personal crime writing GOAT.)  James Cameron, undoubtedly inspired by Rasputin, built about five climaxes into the original Terminator, which my young son at the time renamed The Determinedator.  This technique is a lot of fun, but not that easy to pull off without seeming contrived.  I admire the writers who do.

Our most recent terrier, who died having outlived all his successors, always looked like he was eager to get on to the next thing.  He didn’t know what it was, but he was sure it was going to be great.  He might have been possessed by eternal optimism or just some fundamental drive; it wasn’t exactly joy, but certainly the sublime fulfillment that comes from never being entirely fulfilled. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mixing Urban Legends and Crime Stories

Coming up with anthology themes isn't always so easy. Ideally a good theme is at least a little different from what's already been done (unless readers are clamoring for more of a theme you've already used--hey, it happens). In our field, a theme also needs to work well with crimes/mysteries, of course. And most important, (at least for me), the theme should be fun. Something that will excite writers and readers.

When Donna Andrews, Marcia Talley, and I came up with what ended up being the theme of our newest anthology, we knew we'd hit the trifecta. Crime stories with graveyards, ghosts, and monsters--mixed in with human baddies? Yes, please! The result became Hooked on Urban Legends--and Murder! It was released last week by Wildside Press.

Urban legends easily lend themselves to being used by crime writers because so many urban legends involve creepy things. The Hook legend is a perfect example. You remember the tale, right? A guy and girl go parking, and while they're steaming up the car windows, a news alert comes on the radio. A deranged man with a stainless steel hook for a hand has escaped from the asylum for the criminally insane that is right in their town. The couple break apart. The guy floors it and drives the girl home. Because he's a gentleman, he gets out of the car, walks around to her side to open her door for her, only to find ... a bloody stainless steel hook hanging on the car door handle!

That classic story has crime built in. But not all of them do. The legend of the Phantom Hitchhiker is a good example. One variation is that a guy is driving down a dark foggy road at night when he spots a teenage girl walking. Knowing it's not safe for her to be out on a night like that, he offers to drive her home. She accepts. The next day, he realizes she left her jacket in his car, so he drives back to the girl's house to return the jacket. But when an old woman answers the door, her eyes widen. It turns out her daughter was wearing a jacket just like that on another foggy night thirty years ago--when the girl died in a car crash on the same road the driver found her on.

These types of spooky tales--stories people swear happened to a friend of a friend of a friend--are perfect starting points for coming up with crime stories. When we put out our call for stories, we told the authors they could riff off actual urban legends or come up with their own. In the end, we have an anthology with a good mix of each. 

All the authors' names are listed on the back cover, but in case you can't read them clearly, they are: Donna Andrews, Ellen Byerrum, Ginny Fite, Barb Goffman (yes, me), Shari Held, Kathryn Holland, Smita Harish Jain, Meghan Lewis, Jane Limprecht, Alan Orloff, Pat Remick, KM Rockwood, Daphne Silver, Shannon Taft, Marcia Talley, Robin Templeton, and fellow SleuthSayer Joseph S. Walker. 

The back cover

My story in the book is "Into the Woods." I riffed off the Bigfoot legend, though my fabled creature is a foxsquatch--an eight-foot-tall vulpine creature that supposedly lives in the woods. Women and girls are his favorite meals, which is why this town forbids females from ever going into the forest. But one day, two rogue librarians sneak into the woods ...

Four of the authors with stories in the book have crafted essays that Art Taylor is running on his First Two Pages blog. Two weeks ago, he ran an essay by Pat Remick about the opening to her story "Screaming Jenny," based on a real urban legend set in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Last week, he ran an essay by Shannon Taft about the beginning of her story "The Cave Man," which is a legend she built from scratch. Another essay should be running today and the last one, next Tuesday. You can find them on Art's blog here: https://arttaylorwriter.com/the-first-two-pages/.

The book is available in ebook and trade paperback formats from lots of online bookstores, including indie bookshop.org. 

Donna, Marcia, and I are going to be hosting a Zoom one weekday evening in October with as many of the anthology authors as can make it. The authors will talk about their stories and maybe offer tips for writing short stories too. The event is still in the planning stages. I'll share more details when I post again in three weeks. 

In the meanwhile, enjoy Spooky Season--and make sure to always check your backseat before getting into a car. You never know when a deranged killer will be hiding back there ... waiting for you. 

AI Slop Slop Slop

Doing research so you don't have to, I've been taking a look at some of the AI Slop that's out there, and… it's worse than you think. And they're charging out the whazoo for it.

For example, on Facebook - FACEBOOK (!) - there's a series of "alpha werewolf shapeshifters romances". Tropes: Heroine - special, graced, chosen, white werewolf. An emotional / brutal betrayal and/or sexual excerpt. Then

"Click to read this spicy bestseller."

And if you click, and I highly recommend that you don't, basically it's the story of a pack of misogynistic alpha werewolves who proceed to reject, lock up, beat up, torture, throw out, kidnap back, etc. the heroine until she finally escapes and is found by someone who recognizes she's the future hope of the world (although she's never told that because plot reasons): and then it all starts over again, because...  The exact same plot, same dialog, same everything... only the alpha's name changes. And this same chapter, same story, shows up under at least a dozen different hosts, so many, that it's almost impossible to block all of them, though I am getting close.  Also, they charge by the chapter. WHAT a waste of money.

This is AI slop at its least fine, tarted up with… well, not tarted up at all.

This same marketing formula for human alpha romance novels is spreading all over Facebook too, whether "Blood Mafia" or "Billionaire Bosses" or "Dominant Dukes", etc. Think Harlequin or Mills & Boon, etc. but more graphic (and I'm not talking comics).    

Now it is true that romance novels have always leaned towards the alpha male.  Go look on Kindle, which provides cover illustrations - classic Shirtless Silks & Satins cover (often with a hint - or more than a hint of B&D).  There you can see alpha dukes (why are they always dukes? There have never been that many dukes in the history of England!), or Scottish lairds (extremely popular right now, probably because of Outlander), the (hellion / orphan / widow / heiress) he weds (or not) because (insert trope here), their fraught relationship until… 

"Click to read this spicy bestseller".

BTW, how long have millionaire / billionaire cowboys been trending?   

And on Kindle, of course, there's many the author who (?) posts a new book every week, if not more, more than any human being could ever write in that short a time. Romance, Westerns, Mysteries, Thrillers, Spies, Sci-Fi...

And it's all AI Slop.

Now, it's not slop because it has a formula. We all know there's a formula. Murder mysteries have to have a murder, clues, and someone has to solve the damn thing. Romance has to have a couple who meet, and then it's either friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, or instant love & a villain's getting in their way. Thrillers have constant suspense, twists and turns, and (generally) a villain who always manages to get away with everything until the very last minute. Etc.

No, it's not that it has a formula, the giveaway is that it has the SAME DAMN FORMULA in every single book: often the same stilted dialogue, and so many typos and irrational, unnecessary jumps in time/space - all mixed together as if there's an AI blender whirring our brains to mush, and all ignored as if they hadn't happened.

Thank God for delete buttons.

More satisfying than reading the damn stuff.

And before you think it's all the sex that gets me angry - I love a good smutty book.  I have quite a few.* And I think more of today's young men should read them,  because they might learn a few tricks.  

*If you'd like my list of hot authors, send a message via Velda either at the bar on the corner or in the dark alley behind it, and I'll get back to you. 

No, it's not the sex, what I HATE is misogyny & sexual assault & rape passed off as "spicy".  It's not. Not in my world. 

And there's a lot of it in AI slop, which makes we wonder if the algorithm used to produce it is from the Tate Bros, or Mad Men, or any other current alpha male influencer, especially those who are apparently promoting pheromone maxxing.  No showers, no brushing teeth, no wiping?  Dudes, you're never gonna get a date.  Except with your alpha male influencer, and he charges money.

Anyway, back in the early 1970s I read and enjoyed, God forgive me, Dan Jenkins' Semi-Tough, a satirical novel about the NFL which was full of raunch, n-words, racism, sex, drugs, and some stories that were damn funny. Twenty years later, I threw it on the give away pile and got rid of it. I literally hadn't noticed before how misogynistic and racist the book is. As an incredibly accurate review from Goodreads says:

"Shake Tiller and Billy Clyde Puckett - and Shake’s girlfriend, Barbara Jane Bookman. Barb is the daughter of the richest man back in Fort Worth, Texas. She's described – by both guys – as almost perfect, sexy, beautiful, flawless body, smart, and always knows how to be “one of the guys”. Barb, the ultimate fantasy girlfriend, who never sleeps with anyone but Shake, but is always cool with everything the boys do, whether getting blow-jobs in a bathtub by a hired hooker or drinking themselves silly or spending the pre-Superbowl night at a party where there’s drinks, drugs, and endless girls, and of course Barb never worries about get STDs or anything like that. Just cool with the guys. And in the end, after putting up with all Shake's adolescent crap, she's still dumped by Shake, who literally leaves her to Billy Clyde."

Basically, Barbara Jane Bookman was the 1973 version of Gillian Flynn's "Cool Girl" (Gone Girl) (LINK). Making women be perfect or else for over 50 years.

BTW, once streaming became possible, my husband and I watched some old 1960s and 1970s movies, and wondered what the hell we'd seen in them.

Examples:

A Woman Under the Influence – considered John Cassavetes' directorial masterpiece, where both the husband (Peter Falk) and the wife (Gena Rowlands) are insanely heavy drinkers and fighters, but she's the one put into a mental hospital. By him.  

Five Easy Pieces, in which every single woman in the movie (except for the two lesbians headed to Alaska) is for nothing but sex, and even then the guy's a jerk about it. For that matter, same with the movie M.A.S.H. – all the nurses are for sex, and the scene where "Hot Lips" Houlihan, showering, is exposed naked, wet, and crawling on the floor of the shower to the entire camp is probably one of the least funny, most humiliating moments in movies I've ever seen.  

It is not, however, the most violent towards women. That is still reserved, imho, for 1973's The Long Goodbye (starring Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe), because of the scene where the bastard Marty smashes a coke bottle in the face of his beautiful mistress, "the most important woman in the world to me" and says, "Now, that's someone I love! And you I don't even like! You got an assignment, cheapie: find my money!" Worse, later Marlowe's back at Marty's, and there she is, black eyes beneath the bandages – still with Marty. I think that's the most shocking act of violence that's ever been filmed, because nothing happens to Marty. Even Philip Marlow just walks away, and she just sucks it up and stays.

Things got better, of course. All sorts of wonderful movies have been made with and about women who can hold their own: Three Women, Fried Green Tomatoes, The Hunger Games, The English Patient, Arrival, Nomadland, etc.

And The Return, which is the reason I don't need to see The Odyssey: the whole last chapter done by Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche as Odysseus and Penelope, directed by Uberto Pasolini. Amazing. Hypnotic. Available for streaming.

But the AI Slop has got to stop.

---

If You Don't Know Your Burro from a Burrow

For today's post, I'm updating and expanding a column I wrote for the Criminal Brief mystery blog many moons ago. If you never saw that post I'm not surprised, and if you did see it and still don't remember it, I don't blame you. I barely remember it myself, and I wrote it. But some of the points it illustrated seem to be as applicable to our writing and to our use of language now as they were back then, and I look forward to seeing what you might think of them. So here goes:

Two guys are sitting in a tavern, sipping their beers. One says to the other, "See that girl at the end of the bar? I think I'll ask her for a date."

The second guy takes a look and says, "Forget it. She won't be interested."

"How do you know?"

"Because she's a lesbian."

"So?" the first guy says. "It won't matter. Watch this."

He stands, struts over to the young lady, leans on the bar, and says, "Hi, darlin'. How are things in Beirut?"

Yes, I know, it's an old joke, and dumb too. But I think, as mentioned above, it makes a point. The point is,  most of us don't have very good vocabularies.

With the assistance of several books and articles on the subject, I have attempted to list a few word-choice and style mistakes we writers often make--and how to avoid them. Among my references are Lapsing Into a Comma and The Elephants of Style by Bill Walsh, "Words That Wound" from the now-defunct Byline Magazine, and Woe Is I by Patricia T. O'Conner.

NOTE: Some of the following are firm rules, and some are informed opinions. Others are my own opinions, which are usually uninformed. As an example, I have writer friends who insist that T-shirts should be tee shirts, or just tees; I don't agree, but I do think it's good to hear and consider others writers' and readers' observations on that and on other matters of word usage. I ain't no grammar policeman, but I do know people who is.

Continuous/continual -- Continuous means without interruption. Continual means frequently or often repeated. The entire film was made up of one continuous scene. The bill died after continual objections. 

Historic/historical -- Historic means something that's famous or important. Historical just means something that happened in the past. My book launches were historical events; the Apollo launches were historic events.

Hone in/home in -- You can hone your knife or your skills, but you can't hone in on something. The investigator homed in on the fact that Judy was in town the night of the murder. Think homing beacons.

Till -- The word till is an informal version of until, not a contraction ('til), and is perfectly acceptable. We'll stay here till you get back.

Minuscule -- Spelling hint: When something's minuscule, it's minus (lacking) size.

May/might -- Sometimes they mean the same thing. Often, though, may involves permission and might involves possibility. Jimmy may go to the movies (his mom's allowing him to). Jimmy might go to the movies (he hasn't decided).

Data and media -- These are collective nouns, and should be treated as singular. The data is conclusive. The media has arrived. Bill Walsh of The Washington Post said writers who use them as plurals are educated but misguided, and Patricia O'Conner noted that data seems to have gone the way of agenda, opera, and insignia--technically plural words than have become singular nouns. By the way, as an old IBMer I prefer the pronunciation dayta instead of datta. But that's just me.

Ringer/wringer -- I've recently seen many writers refer to someone under pressure as being "put through a ringer." I think that should be wringer, because I think the expression refers to a squeezing device like the wringers on old-timey washing machines. I think of a ringer as either a lookalike, a secret substitute into a competition, or the guy who pulls the bell rope. Same thing applies to wracking/racking my mind for an answer. I vote for the w.

Toward/towards -- They mean the same thing. Toward is preferred in American English, towards in British English. So I lean toward toward. 

Hung/hanged -- Unless capital punishment is involved, hung is the correct past tense of hang. Anyone who thinks otherwise should be hanged. Where are the grammar cops when you need 'em?

Flammable/inflammable -- They mean exactly the same thing. Both describe something that can easily catch fire and burn quickly.

Invite -- This is a verb that shouldn't be used as a noun. You didn't receive an invite to Jane's party; you received an invitation to Jane's party.

Winch/wench -- A winch is a mechanical device used for pulling/lifting. A wench is an old-fashioned and insulting term for a woman, often in a tavern. I've seen this misused many times in beginners' manuscripts. 

Fellowship and dialogue -- These are among those nouns that should not be used as verbs. We'll fellowship at the church at seven p.m. Should we dialogue about that? No, you shouldn't. By the way, I'm also not wild about using impact as a verb. Our weatherman said we might be impacted by rain today. If it were an asteroid I might agree, but rain? As I've mentioned before, we have a lot of doctors and nurses in our family, and to me, anyone who's impacted is having some serious bathroom issues. (Picture that the next time a news anchor mentions it.)

Accommodate -- Spelling hint: It's big enough to accommodate two c's and two m's.

Ensure/insure -- The way I remember this is, use insure if money or finance is involved. If not, ensure that you use ensure.

Imply/infer -- A speaker implies; a listener infers.

Into/in to -- You get into your car and drive in to your office. If you drive into your office, it's time for new brakes, or new glasses. 

Peaked my interest -- Should be piqued my interest.

For all intensive purposes -- Should be for all intents and purposes.

Give them free reign -- Should be give them free rein. I suspect this misuse is because the word reign involves a king or a ruler.

With baited breath -- Should be with bated breath. Unless you've eaten a can of worms.

T-shirt/tee shirt -- T-shirt is correct. Hint: When it's spread out, it looks like the letter T.

Nauseated/nauseous -- Nauseated means you're sick. Nauseous means you're making me sick. Consider this before telling someone your wife is nauseous.

Momentarily -- It means for a moment. It doesn't mean soon. When he saw Judy, he hesitated momentarily. But if the pilot says, "We'll be in the air momentarily," get off the plane and take a bus.

When choosing whether to use a or an, the pronunciation of the following word--not the spelling--is what matters most. An hour and a half. A European vacation. Please include an SASE.

Convince/persuade -- Convince involves thought; persuade involves action. She convinced him she was right. He persuaded her to drive him home.

All right/alright -- All right is the preferred and accepted usage. Just remember, alright is not all right. 

Ironic -- A tornado during your wedding ceremony might be tragic, but it's not ironic. Getting run over by a Budweiser truck on your way to an AA meeting is ironic.

Fewer/less -- I'm sure you know this already, but fewer involves units, less involves amounts. I have fewer bills and fewer coins in my pocket, so I have less cash in my pocket.

Articles, prepositions, and conjunctions used in the titles of books, movies, etc., are usually capitalized if they contain four or more letters. Wait Until Dark, From Russia With Love, The Night Before Christmas. But I go back and forth on this one, when the preposition is only four words. Sometimes I use Gone With the Wind and sometimes Gone with the Wind.

Between/among -- We all know the rule here--but between can also be used for three or more units when talking about physical relationships. Sand gets between your toes, not among them (even if you have more than two toes).

Everyday/every day -- Everyday is an adjective, period. You don't get out of bed everyday. You get out of bed every day, and put on your everyday shoes.

Blond/blonde -- I've always agreed with Michael Bracken's submission guidelines on this one: Blond is an adjective, blonde is a noun. The blonde has blond hair. 

Straitjacket and straitlaced -- There's no gh in either one. Strait comes from the Latin strictus, which means constricted or tight. Think Strait of Hormuz.

Ingenious/ingenuous -- Ingenious means brilliant (it has the pronunciation of the word genius built in). Ingenuous means candid or innocently open (ingenue is a word for an inexperienced girl). 

Loath/loathe -- Loath is an adjective meaning unwilling. Loathe is a verb meaning dislike. I am loath to tell you how much I loathe the misuse of these words.

Comprise/compose -- Comprise means to include, and compose means to make up. According to The Elements of Style, a zoo comprises animals, but animals compose a zoo. 

If you're adding ed or ing or er to a verb, double a single final consonant only if the accent is on the final syllable. Canceled, traveled, patrolled, controlled. Words like transferred and kidnapped are exceptions because (I assume) they might otherwise be mispronounced. This is another of those rules that I sometimes obey and sometimes ignore, depending on which way the wind happens to be blowing at the time. I know, for instance, that either traveled or travelled is acceptable.

Some words, like irregardless, utilize, orientate, preplanning, preregister, and preventative, probably shouldn't be used at all. I'm fairly certain anyone who speaks or writes the word utilize just wants to sound more intelligent than he is, because use always means exactly the same thing as utilize, and is four letters and two syllables shorter. And I love this quote from The Elephants of Style regarding the phrase per se: "It means 'in itself.' But beware: Even when used correctly, it identifies the speaker or writer as a geeky, pretentious high-school student." And don't even get me started on OVERuse. I'm sick and tired of overused words and phrases like breaking news, stunning video, due diligence, deep dive, journey, amazing, paradigm, chapter, awesome, synergy, and, yes, impacted.

What are your thoughts on all this? Do you agree with any of them? Disagree? Do they make you either nauseated or nauseous? Can you think of other words/phrases often misused or overused?

I'll close with a wise note from The UPI Stylebook: "A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. As a writer you are expected to know the difference."

 

 

As time goes by

I made the mistake of going back to read some of my favorite hard science fiction novels, most of which had been published in the late 20th century.  Brilliant, inventive works as they are, the writers got some of the science wrong.  Not their fault, the updated information had yet to be discovered.  Sadly, some of the undergirding plot lines depended on these false predictions, which caused the books to fall apart faster than a reflecting pool renovation.

The dangers of anachronisms lurk within literature as a whole, though not usually with the dire consequences of forecasting an event that hasn’t yet taken place.  Much of the absurd quibbling over the Odessey movie revolves around controversial moral and social updates, though the basic scaffolding remains intact and easily accessible by our tender 21^st century sensibilities. This is largely true of most of the historical novels I’ve read, mysteries and otherwise, a credit to the authors’ disciplined research.   

(A shout-out here to Jim Benn’s Billy Boyle WWII mysteries, focusing on an era I’ve taken an interest in, which never disappoint, or have me reaching for Wikipedia.)    

When the question arises at writers conferences on how to deal with the assault of advanced technology, in particular the ease with which you can now instantly harvest information about nearly everything without leaving your parents’ basement, some authors breezily say they just set their books before all that happened. 

However, if you chose to start the timeline even a couple decades in the past, you better be on your toes.  You might say, yeah, but I was there!  To which I’d reply, how’s that long term memory working?  Brain scientists will tell you not as good as you think.  Never has the term “trust but verify” been more true.  Nor the value of border collie-like fact checkers of greater value.

One thing’s for sure.  It’s a lot more interesting to follow Phillip Marlowe – as he drives around in his jalopy, intrudes on people’s privacy, drops dimes into payphones and hectors reliable sources in the LAPD or Los Angeles Times – then to describe a lonely guy tapping out commands to Gemini or ChatGPT.

            If there ever was an existential threat to the business of murder mysteries, this is it.  Having your hero hook up with a tech nerd helps – I’ve got one myself – though this has now become such a tired trope, I wish I hadn’t succumbed to the temptation.  On some TV shows, the humans in the operation are reduced to performing the few tasks left to them, such as punching bad guys in the face, or appreciating a nice sunset.  It’s worse when equally clever geeks are on either side of the good vs. evil divide, trying to out-tech each other.  Why not just have Hera and Athena duke it out with lightning bolts, like they did in the old days?  At least the pretense of human agency is not an issue. 

Science fiction, ever resilient despite the risks, has some solutions.  In one book, alien bacteria have eaten all the insulation around electronic conductors, collapsing the whole edifice.  In another, there’s a super cyberintellience, but it turns out it likes to lie, just for fun.  Alien lifeforms are often good for mixing it up, especially when the author has the sense to grace the other worlders with entirely different sets of urges and motivations.   

Chaos Theory (interestingly named, since it actually delineates order within seemingly chaotic dynamic systems) features the state of phase transition, such as the frenzied condition of liquid H2O right before it turns into steam.  We’re living in such a thing ourselves, caught between past experience and the hurtling uncertainties of the future.

             A friend of mine, a retired stockbroker, has a healthy catalog of aphorisms that helped guide his career.  One of my favorites is, “People have a tendency to extrapolate current circumstances indefinitely into the future.”  Science would agree this is entirely fallacious, since the only constant in the universe is that everything has a cycle, that current circumstances will always change, you just don’t know exactly how.  There is no Steady State, even though Einstein once tried to prove there was, an effort he later abandoned, somewhat sheepishly. 

Perhaps the most reliable constant informing literature is that people are infinitely complex, and that love, vulnerability and death play havoc with every being’s emotional and intellectual composition.  The human factors may vary with the sociology of the era, but the fundamental things apply.

Maybe not forever, but for now, that’s good enough. 

Angry Joe Writes A Letter

 

Months ago, my wife and I were invited to a community fundraiser event that would take place sometime this fall. At the beginning, the emails were somewhat vague because the people organizing it were just feeling everyone out. If they could get a group of writers to commit, would we consider attending to this quasi-literary, quasi-fundraiser thingie for a good cause?

We said yes.

Throughout the summer, emails came and went. The list of local writers grew. Fine. Great. That’s what happens. I stopped paying attention because while the emails were always wordy, actual details were sparse. At some point, a local bookstore agreed to send a staffer to sell the books of any writers attending this event. The evening had morphed into a book event and community fundraiser. I had never heard of such a thing.

About a week ago, a pair of emails arrived that struck me as incoherent. In the same graf, organizers asked writers to bring copies of their own books to give as gifts to VIP donors. And they reminded us that the bookstore would be on hand to sell copies as well.

Well, thought I, which was it?

If the bookstore will be on site, why would I need to bring my books? The way I saw it, there are too many ways such a thing can go south.

1. Writer A brings three books. Writer B brings 50. These “offerings,” if I may so describe them, would be lopsided.
2. Just because an author wrote a book does not mean that someone they are schmoozing with wants to take home a copy of said author’s book.
3. Unwanted gifts suck.
4. Not everyone is a reader.
5. Even if a person is a heavy reader, their tastes are bound to differ from the next guy. Offering a book to someone who has no intention of reading it falls into creepy, unwanted gift territory. It also makes writers look desperate.
6. Writers may indeed have their books lying around their homes. But chances are they paid something for them, and hope to sell them or offer them to someone who will appreciate it.

By the time I reached this point, I was angry. (Yes, folks—it happens.) Naturally, I sat down to write an email. Boy, was it satisfying. Spleen vented, I knew immediately that I also would never send that letter.

Because I’m chicken? No—because I am like Abraham Lincoln.

I know it’s a stretch, but work with me here.

All his life Lincoln had a practice where, if someone pissed him off, he’d write a letter to get those feelings off his chest. Then he’d stick the letter in a drawer and never send it. He called them “hot” letters.

His most famous hot letter was one he wrote in 1863 to Major General Meade right after Gettysburg. It was, you recall, a terrible, three-day battle that left 50,000 dead. About the same number of casualties on each side, but the battle was still considered a victory for the Union. Its conclusion came when troops under the command of Robert E. Lee retreated. Meade could have pursued them, crushed them, and taken prisoners. But he and his men were exhausted, and he declined to take that action.

In the letter Lincoln wrote but never sent, he said:

“…[M]y dear general, I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee’s escape-- He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with … our other late successes, have ended the war-- As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not safely attack Lee last Monday, how can you possibly do so South of the river, when you can take with you very few more [than] two thirds of the force you then had in hand? It would be unreasonable to expect, and I do not expect you can now effect much. Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasurably because of it--

“I beg you will not consider this a prosecution, or persecution of yourself-- As you had learned that I was dissatisfied, I have thought it best to kindly tell you why.”

I think we can all agree that if this is Lincoln when he was angry, maybe his practice of writing hot letters in the course of his life had served him well.

I myself have never told someone that I was “immeasurably distressed.” I have never been that, um, measured about anything. That’s why, in certain circles, I have earned the nickname Angry Joe.

I encountered my first hot letter as a kid, though I did not know it at the time. Working on a school project on the life of Benjamin Franklin, I came across this doozy, dated July 5, 1775, about three months after Lexington and Concord:

Mr. [William] Strahan:

You are a Member of Parliament, and one of that Majority which has doomed my Country to Destruction. You have begun to burn our Towns, and murder our People. Look upon your hands! They are stained with the Blood of your Relations! You and I were long Friends; You are now my Enemy, and I am, Yours

B Franklin

I was in eighth grade when I came across that letter in a book. I loved it so much, I committed it to memory.

As with Lincoln, Franklin never sent his letter to Strahan, though he shared it with others as a way of letting his feelings be known and exorcising his rage.

Going on the assumption that this might well work for me, here’s the email I didn’t send.

Dear J—,

We haven’t met, so forgive me if this sounds rude. It is unclear to me why the writers invited to this fundraiser are being asked to bring copies of their books as “donations” for the major donors.

According to the link you shared, VIP donors are those who can afford to donate $500 to $3,500 per person to the cause. If this is a night to celebrate local writers—and considering the local bookstore will be on-site with books for sale—I am sure the VIPs can inspect and purchase whatever they like. Given what the VIPs will have paid to attend, our books are a steal at only $15 to $30 a copy.

Unless, of course, this is actually an evening where local professionals are gathering to offer their services for free to everyone in attendance.

If that is the case, then count me in!

If there is a physician offering free medical consultations, I have an elbow that needs looking at. If attorneys are offering free legal advice, I’ll take that too. And I am happy to accept any interest-free loans local business owners wish to extend.

Please understand that when you ask a writer to give something for free, you are implicitly devaluing their work and reducing them to the status of an organ grinder’s monkey.

Here is a link to one of the greats, Harlan Ellison, explaining this simple concept.

I said good day, sir. 

Cordially, 

Joe D’Agnese

And yes, SleuthSayers, I will attend the event. But I’ll arrive empty-handed.

* * * 

See you next time!

Joe

josephdagnese.com

You Are Entitled to Read My Story

 

I am pleased as punch to report that the September/October issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine features "Was That So Hard?" my 45th story there.  And since my first appearance in that august journal was in 1981 I can boast an average of exactly one story a year.  (We won't discuss how many years I submitted stories there before they bought one.)

The idea for this story came from Not Always Right, a website I have mentioned before. People anonymously submit reports on horrible customers.  I enjoy the site so much I use it as a reward: I won't touch it until I have written my quota for the day. It is a huge time sink but I have pulled three short stories out of it. 

"Shanks Has Reservations" (Black Cat Weekly #158) was inspired by a genuine scam that happened in a hotel. "Shanks Gets Lost" came from many tales of customers being rude to fast food clerks. (Black Cat #193) 

And now "Was That So Hard?" was inspired by many reports on rude customers, mostly in grocery stores.  (The title is something an entitled customer says, or more likely sneers, after some underpaid employee goes miles out of their way to be helpful.)  My protagonist is in charge of a high-end grocery store which, just before closing time, is invaded by a mob of the rudest, most entitled customers you could dream up.  Naturally there is a crime involved.

Finally, I want to examine a word I have used twice in this little piece: entitled.  When did it change its meaning? It used to mean that someone has the right to do something.  Now I hear it more often being used to mean that someone feels they have that right.

I checked Oxford English Dictionary and found that they traced that meaning back to Robert Coles' Privileged Ones, published in 1977.

 It is a matter of feeling 'entitled.' A child who has been told repeatedly that all he or she needs to do is try hard does not feel inclined to allow himself or herself much skeptical self-examination.

Took a few decades to get into the mainstream but now we're stuck with the new meaning and, worse, the people it refers to.  

I hope my story makes you feel a little better about it.

Whoa, Look at THAT!

So far this summer, I've spent a lot of time on the computer, especially when it's hot as blazes outside, and at least some of it's been productive. I've written and submitted a lot of stories and SleuthSayers posts, I've done some research for future stories, I've read and sent a bazillion emails, etc. But I have also wasted a lot of time. I'm good at wasting time.

My most recent time-waster is watching (believe it or not) movie reactions on YouTube. Yep, you heard me right: movie reactions. Google calls it "feature creators recording themselves watching and responding to films for the first time." There are many sites dedicated to this, like Cinebinge, Totally Whatever, Cinepals, The Reel Rejects, etc.--I think my favorite might be Popcorn in Bed--and, depending on the movie they're covering, they can be a lot of fun. Instead of choosing from a list of what movies each site offers, I usually search for phrases like "Jurassic Park reactions," "Godfather reactions," "Galaxy Quest reactions," and so forth.

The way it works is, you watch parts of a movie alongside one or two viewers, whose faces are shown as the movie plays, and you can see the reactions they have to certain things in the film. Often, and especially if they're filmmakers themselves, they'll make comments about what they're seeing, and that can be interesting too. 

I need to explain something, here. I'm one of those people who has always enjoyed going again with others--friends, family, whoever--to see a movie that I myself have already seen and liked. I remember going to the theater for Forrest Gump four times in the months after it was first realeased in the mid-'90s--once by myself, and the next three times with each of our kids--all of them were teenagers then. I got a real kick out of watching their reactions and finding out what they thought of it. Same thing if I'm streaming a film at home on TV or playing it on DVD with, say, one of our children or grandchildren. I get almost as much fun out of watching their faces as I do from watching the movie. I've probably shown the grandkids all of my favorites, at least those that are child-friendly, and I have many favorites.

So why am I telling you all this, in a mystery-blog post? Here's the thing. I have discovered that these viewer-reaction videos on YouTube aren't just fun: they can be informative to me as a storyteller. I won't say they teach me a lot that I don't already know, but they do confirm for me which parts of the story are the most important and interesting and moving to the viewer. And believe me, the viewers' reactions cover the whole gamut--surprise, concentration, fear, sorrow, suspense, delight, sometimes even tears or cheering out loud. And, again, you can see exactly what it is in the story that's making them feel that way. Plus, it's entertaining.

I'm sure this is obvious, but the things that create the biggest reactions are the sad scenes, funny scenes, dangerous or intense scenes, twists, reveals, etc. You can also tell, immediately, at what point the viewer begins to like the hero/heroine, or dislike the villain. You can see the value of a gripping opening, a sympathetic character, an action scene, a mid-story reversal, a slam-bang ending, a satisfying end to a character arc. The kinds of things that might be instructive and helpful to a writer.

I've always felt that the one most important thing a story must do is make the reader feel something--whatever emotion it is--and the more intense these feelings are, the better your story/movie/novel is going to be. And, even though I know I'm belaboring the point, these YouTube videos allow you to see it firsthand, in the viewers' faces, along with the reasons for those reactions.

So that's my pitch. Have you ever bothered to watch one of those videos? (I didn't even know, until a few weeks ago, that they existed.) If you haven't seen them and want to give it try, just think of a movie you enjoyed, search for it in YouTube along with the word "reactions," and take a look. They're silly but they're addictive. 

As for justification, I'll tell you the same thing I say to my wife when she walks in with frowns and eyerolls and says Good grief, what are you watching in here? I tell her it's research. I'm learning something.

Hey, it sounds good to me.

When Writing Historical Fiction: It's Better to Travel

(It's mid-August and I am enblow deep in end-of-summer projects. Haven't forgotten my promised follow up installment on celluloid Hammett. Will have that for your next go-round. In the interim this is a repost from a while back. Still useful. Hope you enjoy! - B.T.)

[Elmore] Leonard was originally no more a man of the West than was the Ohio-born dentist Zane Grey. While a kid in Detroit, Westerns enthralled him as they did most people in the 1930s and 40s. When he grew interested in writing during college Western fiction seemed a promising genre he could work in part-time. Unlike many writers then selling Western tales to pulps, though, Leonard insisted on accuracy, and kept a ledger of his research over the years, later crediting his longtime subscription to Arizona Highways Magazine for many of his authentic descriptions. All had to be genuinei: the guns, Apache terms and clothing; the frontier knives, card games, liquor, and especially the horses.

— Nathan Ward, from "Elmore Leonard's Gritty Westerns," in Crime Reads

It's certainly never a bad idea to follow the writing advice of the great Elmore Leonard. His Ten Rules For Writing are rightly famous as terrific advice for any writer of fiction. 

The Great Elmore Leonard

In those instances where Leonard's advice isn't readily available, it never hurts to follow his example, if at all possible. Take the one in the quote above from Nathan Ward's Crime Reads article on Leonard. For years Leonard apparently leaned heavily on the content of Arizona Highways magazine.

It's a fine notion. Now, don't get me wrong: it's always better to travel. There is no substitute for actually going to and spending time in the place you're writing about. But, if you're writing about someplace and you can't afford to go, read travel writers. For that matter, even if you can afford the investment in both time and treasure to visit the region where your work is set, read travel writers. No one can help you get a feel for a certain place like people who make their livings helping their readers get a feel for a certain place.

Take William Dalrymple. The British-born-and-raised son of a Scottish baronet, Dalrymple these days is best known for his recent run of riveting books on the history of the subcontinent: India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Dalrymple is a terrific writer and a first-rate historian who splits his time between a farm just outside Delhi, in India and a summer home in London.

William Dalrymple

But before he began to make a name for himself with books such as White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India, The Last Mughal: the Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857, Return of a King: the Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-1842, and The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence and the Pillage of An Empire, Dalrymple began his writing career as a travel writer, taking readers on a tour through the Eastern Mediterranean and the Holy Land (From the Holy Mountain: a Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East), and of course, chronicling the early days of his life-long love affair with India. With his first book In Xanadu: a Quest, published in 1989, Dalrymple chronicles his modern retracing of the journey of Marco Polo from Jerusalem in the summer palace of Kublai Khan in China. But it was with his second book, 1994's City of Djinns: a Year in Delhi, a memoir of his first visit to the city which has had such a tremendous impact on his adult life, that Dalrymple really began to make his mark.

And there is so much to this memoir which can be of use to the writer reading about the city. Here's an early excerpt laying out his introduction to Delhi and to India:

I was only seventeen. After ten years at school in a remote valley in the moors of North Yorkshire, I had quite suddenly found myself in India, in Delhi. From the very beginning I was mesmerized by the great capital, so totally unlike anything I had ever seen before. Delhi, it seemed at first, was full of riches and horrors: it was a labyrinth, a city of palaces, an open gutter, filtered light through a filigree lattice, a landscape of domes, an anarchy, a press of people, a choke of fumes, a whiff of spices. Moreover the city—so I soon discovered—possessed a bottomless seam of stories: tales receding far beyond history, deep into the cavernous chambers of myth and legend. Friends would moan about the touts on Janpath and head off to the beaches in Goa, but for me Delhi always exerted a stronger spell. I lingered on, and soon found a job in a home for destitutes in the far north of the city. The nuns gave me a room overlooking a municipal rubbish dump. In the morning I would look out to see the sad regiment of rag-pickers trawling the stinking berms of refuse; overhead, under a copper sky, vultures circled the thermals forming patterns like fragments of glass in a kaleidoscope. In the afternoons, after I had swept the compound and the inmates were safely asleep, I used to slip out and explore. I would take a rickshaw into the innards of the Old City and pass through the narrowing funnel of gullies and lanes, alleys and cul de sacs, feeling the houses close in around me.

Now, I ask you. Can this guy set a scene, or what? Really helpful for drinking in the flavors, colors, scents and sounds of what on the face of it comes across as a truly unforgettable place. Really not a bad guide if you're interested in writing about modern-day India.

But what if, like me, you're a writer of historical fiction?

In Leonard's case, as stated above, he exploited a modern magazine to help give him local flavor not just for another region of the country, but for that region in another era. No mean feat. It's a testament to Leonard's talent, coupled with his singular vision that he was able to "world build" (to borrow a phrase from our friends who write speculative fiction) using these building blocks for his foundation.

So sure, you can (and should) definitely use your imagination to fill in the cracks. There is certainly no substitute for imagination in the fiction writer's tool kit. That said, you need more than one tool in order to get the job of writing fiction done. I've often felt like our "tool kit" as fiction writers should be more aptly called a "tool warehouse." And of course, another way to use travel writing as one of those tools, to help get the feel for a city or street, or region or state or county or what-have-you during a bygone time is to go and find travel writing from the time in which your work-in-progress is set.

I have a writer friend whose current work-in-progress is set during World War II. One of his major characters has a back-story in which he lived in Germany during the 1930s, in the run-up to the war. I referred him to A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube, the first volume in a superb three-volume memoir of a trip on foot across Europe, from Holland all the way to Turkey by travel writer, war-time British commando (the account of his part in a successful kidnapping of a German general in Crete is not to be missed), bon vivant, and (some say) one of Ian Fleming's models for his literary creation James Bond, Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Leigh Fermor set out for Constantinople (Istanbul) in December of 1933, less than a year after Adolf Hitler and the Nazis had come to power. His narrative is replete with rich details about German life during that period, laying out how the Nazis had both a heavy and in some ways, a negligible impact on the country they would eventually drive to absolute ruin. Here is Leigh Fermor's initial impression of Cologne, the first major German city he visited:

After a first faraway glimpse, the two famous steeples grew taller and taller as the miles that separated us fell away. At last they commanded the cloudy plain as the spires of a cathedral should, vanishing when the outskirts of the city interposed themselves, and then, as I gazed at the crowding saints of the three Gothic doorways, sailing up into the evening again at close range. Beyond them indoors, although it was already too dark to see the colours of the glass, I knew I was inside the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe. Except for the little constellation of tapers in the shadows of a side-chapel, everything was dim. Women knelt interspersed with nuns and the murmured second half of the Gegrüsset seist Du, Maria rose in answering chorus to the priest’s initial solo; a discreet clatter of beads kept tally of the accumulating prayers. In churches with open spires like Cologne, one could understand how congregations thought their orisons had a better start than prayers under a dome where the syllables might flutter round for hours. With steeples they follow the uprush of lancets and make an immediate break for it. Tinsel and stars flashed in all the shops and banners saying Fröhliche Weihnacht! were suspended across the streets. Clogged villagers and women in fleece-lined rubber boots slipped about the icy pavements with exclamatory greetings and small screams, spilling their armfuls of parcels. The snow heaped up wherever it could and the sharp air and the lights gave the town an authentic Christmas card feeling. It was the real thing at last! Christmas was only five days away. Renaissance doors pierced walls of ancient brick, upper storeys jutted in salients of carved timber and glass, triangles of crow-steps outlined the steep gables, and eagles and lions and swans swung from convoluted iron brackets along a maze of lanes. As each quarter struck, the saint-encrusted towers challenged each other through the snow and the rivalry of those heavy bells left the air shaking. Beyond the Cathedral and directly beneath the flying-buttresses of the apse, a street dropped sharply to the quays. Tramp steamers and tugs and barges and fair-sized ships lay at anchor under the spans of the bridges, and cafés and bars were raucous with music. I had been toying with the idea, if I could make the right friends, of cadging a lift on a barge and sailing upstream in style for a bit.

Again, this is quite a scene the writer is setting! So much good material, such a solid feel for the place. Leigh Fermor wrote the memoir some forty years after the trip, based on large part on the deep and thorough entries he made in his journal as an eighteen year-old looking for adventure in a rapidly changing world. And then he goes on to talk about his attempt to "make friends" in that timeless way young people have from time immemorial: he went to a bar:

I made friends all right. It was impossible not to. The first place was a haunt of seamen and bargees shod in tall sea-boots rolled down to the knee, with felt linings and thick wooden soles. They were throwing schnapps down their throats at a brisk rate. Each swig was followed by a chaser of beer, and I started doing the same. The girls who drifted in and out were pretty but a rough lot and there was one bulky terror, bursting out of a sailor’s jersey and wearing a bargeman’s cap askew on a nest of candy-floss hair, called Maggi—which was short for Magda—who greeted every newcomer with a cry of “Hallo, Bubi!” and a sharp, cunningly twisted and very painful pinch on the cheek. I liked the place, especially after several schnapps, and I was soon firm friends with two beaming bargemen whose Low German speech, even sober, would have been blurred beyond the most expert linguist’s grasp. They were called Uli and Peter. “Don’t keep on saying Sie,” Uli insisted, with a troubled brow and an unsteadily admonishing forefinger: “Say Du.” This advance from the plural to the greater intimacy of the singular was then celebrated by drinking Brüderschaft. Glasses in hand, with our right arms crooked through the other two with the complexity of the three Graces on a Parisian public fountain, we drank in unison. Then we reversed the process with our left arms, preparatory to ending with a triune embrace on both cheeks, a manoeuvre as elaborate as being knighted or invested with the Golden Fleece. The first half of the ceremony went without a hitch, but a loss of balance in the second, while our forearms were still interlocked, landed the three of us in the sawdust in a sottish heap. Later, in the fickle fashion of the very drunk, they lurched away into the night, leaving their newly-created brother dancing with a girl who had joined our unsteady group: my hobnail boots could do no more damage to her shiny dancing shoes, I thought, than the seaboots that were clumping all round us. She was very pretty except for two missing front teeth. They had been knocked out in a brawl the week before, she told me.

And that's just a taste. Leigh Fermor's three volumes here truly form a treasure trove: a window into a long-vanished world, and a feel for both the time itself and the timeless humanity of its cast of thousands. Well worth a read whether you're writing something set in Middle Europe during the 1930s, are a student of human nature, history, great writing, or (most likely) some combination of all of the above. 

Patrick Leigh Fermor (Right) in Crete, 1943

And that's all for now. Tune in next time when I I wrap up our tour through Cinema’s many adaptations of the work of Dashiell Hallett.

See you in two weeks!