Christmas Miracle Movies

Trying to come up with a post for Christmas wasn’t easy. It's such a joyful time for a huge population. You know, pushing and shoving to reach the Filene’s gift that is just perfect for your Uncle Billy Bob or for your Grandmother Ella Daye. For some people, including myself, Christmas can be somewhat depressing. Bah. Humbug.
However, I didn’t want to post a somber or sad article for this December 25th, 2017. Instead, I turned to two storie from childhood, The Littlest Angel by Charles Tazewell and The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Anderson. I found both on YouTube in Animation and Leigh helped me posted them.

It seems the early versions of The Littlest Angel weren’t well preserved. Either the pictures faded or the sound track deteriorated, or both. This one seems the least damaged.

The Little Match Girl has even more editions, a few as early as 1902, 1914, 1928, and 1937. I first saw the 1954 version, one of the least faithful to the original story, although the narrator sounds like Vincent Price. There are beautiful versions from many countries, politically slanted versions, a peculiar Legos WW-II stop-action and a Disney release. Disney’s ending is cleverly shaped so that it seems uplifting to children, but an aware adult can read it differently.

Look at the sublime special effects of the 1902 version. Charming!

Leigh selected this beautiful Vietnamese rendition.

Please everyone have a Merry and a Happy and prosperous 2018.

A Holiday Gift Puzzle

by R.T. Lawton

In the old days, or at least about a decade and a half ago, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine used to publish a column in which the reader was presented with a logic puzzle. After I finally figured out how the logic puzzle worked, I wrote a story in my Twin Brothers Bail Bond series where the characters used that same type of logic to solve the story puzzle. The reader got a chance to solve the puzzle before the story characters did. So, in honor of that past tradition, here's part of the story, and your own Happy Holidays logic puzzle for you to solve. Don't worry, hints are provided in the story to guide you through the logic process to find which person is the designated hitman.

"Yes sir," said Theodore, the bail agent. "it seems by the descriptions I was given, that we have one man with short, curly red hair, one blond male with a crew cut, one with medium brown hair and a man with black hair. Their names are Erikson, Zanos, Harris and Robertson. Their occupations, again in no particular order, seem to be a Stock Broker, a Car Salesman and an Insurance Salesman. The fourth is unknown and therefore obviously our Contract Killer, but I don't know which of these men has which occupation."

"I really hope you have more than that for me to go on," replied the proprietor.

"Well, there are a few more items of information that might help:
   1) the man with the unknown occupation, beat Zanos at golf a couple of days ago.
   2) Harris and the Car Salesman play poker once a week with the brown-haired man and the black-          haired man.
   3) Erikson and the Insurance Salesman dislike the brown-haired man.
   4) The Stock Broker has red hair.
and that's all I managed to get. The gift shop girl and the maids talked for free, but I had to cough up twenty bucks apiece to the others before they'd tell me anything. A bunch of crooks is what they are."

"Hush for a minute, I'm thinking."

The proprietor gazed off into the dark recesses of the inner sanctum's high ceiling. As the clock on the wall ticked off the minutes, he slowly began to stroke the silky sides of his long, black Bandito mustache. In time, he spoke.

"From what your interviews tell me, we know that Harris is not the Car Salesman and has neither brown nor black hair. Also that Erikson is not the Insurance Salesman and does not have brown hair. But, we do know the Stock Broker has red hair. And we know that Zanos is not the Contract Killer. The rest is a matter of logical thinking, thus we know that the color of the hair of the Car Salesman is..."

At this point, Theodore rubbed the tips of his pudgy, almost webbed fingers over the top of his bald head.

"Excuse me, sir. I kept up with you until you got to the logical thinking part, but I can't do this stuff in my head the way you do. Is there, perhaps.....an easier method?"

The proprietor removed paper and pen from the top drawer of his desk. Rapidly, he prepared a grid, which he then pushed across the desk to Theodore, along with a pen.

"Study this, then you fill in the blank spaces with an "O" for a positive and an "X" for a negative fact."

Theodore stared at the chart.

                    red   blond   black   brown    Stock Broker   Car Salesman   Insurance Salesman   Killer

Erikson                                          X                                                                        X

Zanos                                                                                                                                                X

Harris                                X         X                                             X

Robertson
_________________________________________________________________________________

Stk Brkr        O

Car Sales                            X         X

Ins Sales                                         X

Killer


"Okay, sir, I understand where the facts are on the chart, but can you give me a little boost on the logical thinking part?"

The proprietor sadly shook his head.

"Theodore, if you know that the Stock Broker has red hair, then you can place an 'X' in that row under "blond', 'black' and 'brown.' Those are negative facts. Go ahead and mark those in. Now, reading down the brown column, you see that the Stock Broker, the Car Salesman and the Insurance Salesman all have negative X's in their rows, therefore the Killer has brown hair. Put an 'O' in his row. You can figure out the rest."

Five minutes later, Theodore put down his pen.

"Okay, boss, I worked it out that the Car Salesman had blond hair and the Insurance Salesman had black hair, but I'm not sure where to go from here."

CAN YOU WORK IT OUT FROM HERE ?
(if not, then keep reading)

"Now it is a matter of simple elimination," said the proprietor. "Take Harris for example, his row has several blanks You know by those blanks that he can have red or blond hair and he can be the Stock Broker, the Insurance Salesman or the Contract Killer, but blond hair only goes with the Car Salesman as you determined earlier. Thus you eliminate the 'blond' in that row and you now know that that Harris has to be the Stock Broker, the only one with red hair. Keep working on it."

Ten minutes later, after several cross-outs, much scratching of his head and a few "Oh's", Theodore quietly laid down his pen. A self-satisfied smile radiated from his round, lumpy face.

"I figured out who the Contract Killer is. He's....."

DID YOU FIGURE IT OUT ?
(the answer is below)


"Ah, the Contract Killer is Mr. Robertson."

Happy Holidays from our house to yours !!!

Writing Comic Crime, and the Rule of WORST THING

by Melodie Campbell (Bad Girl)

Leading up to New Year’s, here’s a short list of THINGS I HAVE LEARNED IN LIFE:

1. Men called Raoul are to be avoided. Especially when you are married.
2. Coffee can solve a lot of problems, but it doesn’t help you sleep.
3. It is a really bad idea to make financial decisions after finishing an entire bottle of cheap wine. (Okay, even expensive wine.)
4. If it sounds like a stupid idea, it probably is.
5. Never EVER go easy on your protagonist. In fact, invoke the rule of WORST THING.

My name is Melodie Campbell and I write comedies. I came by this honestly, in an attempt to avoid being serious. Most of my life, I have tried to avoid being serious. (Which is why I was a dismal failure as a bank manager. That’s another blog – yup, a comedy. But I digress…)

So far, it’s worked. THE GODDAUGHTER’S REVENGE is one of thirteen non-serious books by this author.

But here’s a secret: writing non-serious is serious hard work.

HOW DO WE DO IT?

Comedy writers take a situation, and ask themselves ‘what’s the worst thing that could happen now?’ And then, ‘what’s the funniest?’

In THE GODDAUGHTER’S REVENGE, Gina discovers that her weasel cousin Carmine has switched real gems for fakes while he was babysitting her jewelry store. The lousy rat! Now, some of her best clients are walking around with fake rings on their fingers. Her rep is seriously on the line if anyone finds out. What’s a girl to do?

Mastermind a bunch of burglaries to steal back the fakes, of course. She is the reluctant Goddaughter of the local mob boss, after all.

So let’s invoke the rule of Worst Thing. What’s the worst thing that could happen to Gina when she breaks into houses? She could get caught by the cops. Or shot as an intruder. But that would end the story pretty quick, and we don’t want that.

Also, I don’t want ‘worst thing’ all the time. This is a comedy. We need a balance of pathos and bathos. So what’s the funniest thing that could happen?

All the burglaries could go wrong. That’s our worst thing. And the WAY they go wrong is the comedy.

Houses aren’t empty when they should be. Her accomplice is a manic critic of interior design. Everyone in Steeltown is following the antics of “their very own Pink Panthers” in the local newspaper. The more Gina tries to be invisible, the more they become a sensation!

Worse and worse. Funnier, and hopefully, funnier. And that’s my rule of ‘best thing.’

Hope your 2018 is the best year ever.

Melodie Campbell has been called "the Carol Burnett of Crime" by industry reviewers who obviously are slightly demented themselves. You can get her books from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, and pretty well anywhere.

Money for Nothing

by Thomas Pluck

Anonymous said...
Money, money money. If you don't enjoy writing for its own sake or to entertain others, then you'd be better off pumping gas in your spare time. Stop thinking of it as a profession and insulting pubs that don't pay enough. Most of them do it out of love and lose money every month, so those that pay anything at all should be commended. Whether a publication pays nothing or several hundred dollars, it is still just a token and won't pay your bills. 

That comment was left (anonymously, of course) on my last post about crime fiction markets compared to SF/F and Lit genres that have a more robust selection of venues that pay. Now, I was not insulting non-paying markets. I briefly ran Flash Fiction Friday, which you could count as a non-paying market of a sort. Some of my first publications were at Flash Fiction Offensive, Shotgun Honey, and Beat to a Pulp. They still publish great content. But let's talk about this. Other genres have has this conversation. If you want to limit your artists to those who don't need to get paid for it, it changes the art you'll get. I only know a few writers without day jobs, partners or family who support them, or retirees. I'm a writer with a day job. It allows me to write whatever I want because getting paid for it doesn't matter. I also love my day job, but I wouldn't do it for the love of it, if they suddenly said the well was dry. I'd find an employer who respected me enough to pay me for my work.

Funny how no-one ever says you should fix cars, work in a bank, write software, drive a truck, repair roofs, manage funds, or flip burgers without being paid for your efforts. Why do writers hear this so often? Especially from markets declining to pay them.

— Bridget McKenna (@BridgetMcKenna) December 20, 2017

And there's that. I love Robert Parker's admonishment about writer's block-- "there's no such thing as plumber's block" -- and there's something to be said about art being work. We don't like calling art work, but all the bullshit--and that's what it is--about suffering for art and not getting paid came from the patronage system before it, where artists weren't truly free to do what they wanted. If they insulted the patron, the money got cut off. The artists who were free to starve on their moral high ground, but no one told them to do it. Unlike today.

I've heard the "write for the love of the art" argument from thieves who don't want to pay for e-books before, but not someone who sounds like an editor. I did not insult the editors I interviewed, whether they paid for work or not.  If you felt snubbed or targeted, it wasn't intentional. If you want to "do it for the love" that's fine, but don't tell other people to do it. I didn't say "don't submit to non-paying markets."

"Stop thinking of it as a profession." Speak for yourself. Everyone wants someone else to work for free. Not everyone can afford to. Go tell your mechanic to work for the love and tell me where you find the wrench.

The counter argument to this is well, I need my car but I don't need books. Apparently we do. Stories are important, or we would have done away with them, don't you think?

James Thurber Strikes Again

Although technically, this is by James Thurber.  And has an odd connection to a very famous Christmas poem - see if you can spot it!

IF GRANT HAD BEEN DRINKING AT APPOMATTOX -James Thurber

("Scribner's" magazine is publishing a series of three articles: "If Booth Had Missed Lincoln," "If Lee Had Won the Battle of Gettysburg," and "If Napoleon Had Escaped to America." This is the fourth.)
The morning of the ninth of April, 1865, dawned beautifully. General Meade was up with the first streaks of crimson in the sky. General Hooker and General Burnside were up and had breakfasted, by a quarter after eight. The day continued beautiful. It drew on. toward eleven o'clock. General Ulysses S. Grant was still not up. He was asleep in his famous old navy hammock, swung high above the floor of his headquarters' bedroom. Headquarters was distressingly disarranged: papers were strewn on the floor; confidential notes from spies scurried here and there in the breeze from an open window; the dregs of an overturned bottle of wine flowed pinkly across an important military map.

Corporal Shultz, of the Sixty-fifth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, aide to General Grant, came into the outer room, looked around him, and sighed. He entered the bedroom and shook the General's hammock roughly. General Ulysses S. Grant opened one eye.

"Pardon, sir," said Corporal Shultz, "but this is the day of surrender. You ought to be up, sir."

"Don't swing me," said Grant, sharply, for his aide was making the hammock sway gently. "I feel terrible," he added, and he turned over and closed his eye again.

"General Lee will be here any minute now," said the Corporal firmly, swinging the hammock again.

"Will you cut that out?" roared Grant. "D'ya want to make me sick, or what?" Shultz clicked his heels and saluted. "What's he coming here for?" asked the General.

"This is the day of surrender, sir," said Shultz. Grant grunted bitterly.

"Three hundred and fifty generals in the Northern armies," said Grant, "and he has to come to me about this. What time is it?". "You're the Commander-in-Chief, that's why," said Corporal Shultz. "It's eleven twenty, sir."

"Don't be crazy," said Grant. "Lincoln is the Commander-in-Chief. Nobody in the history of the world ever surrendered before lunch. Doesn't he know that an army surrenders on its stomach?" He pulled a blanket up over his head and settled himself again.

"The generals of the Confederacy will be here any minute now," said the Corporal. "You really ought to be up, sir." Grant stretched his arms above his head and yawned. "All right, all right," he said. He rose to a sitting position and stared about the room. "This place looks awful," he growled. "You must have had quite a time of it last night, sir," ventured Shultz. "Yeh," said General Grant, looking around for his clothes. "I was wrassling some general. Some general with a beard."

Shultz helped the commander of the Northern armies in the field to find his clothes. "Where's my other sock?" demanded Grant. Shultz began to look around for it. The General walked uncertainly to a table and poured a drink from a bottle. "I don't think it wise to drink, sir," said Shultz. Nev' mind about me," said Grant, helping himself to a second, "I can take it or let it alone. Didn' ya ever hear the story about the fella went to. Lincoln to complain about me drinking too much? 'So-and-So says Grant drinks too much,' this fella said. 'So-and-So is a fool,' said Lincoln. So this fella went to What's-His-Name and told him what Lincoln said and he came roarin' to Lincoln about it. 'Did you tell So-and-So was a fool?' he said. 'No,' said Lincoln, 'I thought he knew it.'" The'General smiled, reminiscently, and had another drink. ""That's how I stand with Lincoln," he said, proudly,
The soft thudding sound of horses' hooves came through the open window. Shultz hurriedly walked over and looked out. "Hoof steps," said Grant, with a curious chortle. "It is General Lee and his staff," said Shultz. "Show him in," said the General, taking another drink. "And see what the boys in the back room will have." Shultz walked smartly over to the door, opened it, saluted, and stood aside.
General Lee, dignified against the blue of the April sky, magnificent in his dress uniform, stood for a moment framed in the doorway. He walked in, followed by his staff. They bowed, and stood silent. General Grant stared at them. He only had one boot on and his jacket was unbuttoned.

"I know who you are," said Grant.'You're Robert Browning, the poet." "This is General Robert E. Lee," said one of his staff, coldly. "Oh," said Grant. "I thought he was Robert Browning. He certainly looks like Robert Browning. There was a poet for you. Lee: Browning. Did ya ever read 'How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix'? 'Up Derek, to saddle, up Derek, away; up Dunder, up Blitzen, up, Prancer, up Dancer, up Bouncer, up Vixen, up -'".

"Shall we proceed at once to the matter in hand?" asked General Lee, his eyes disdainfully taking in the disordered room. "Some of the boys was wrassling here last night," explained Grant. "I threw Sherman, or some general a whole lot like Sherman. It was pretty dark." He handed a bottle of Scotch to the commanding officer of the Southern armies, who stood holding it, in amazement and discomfiture. "Get a glass, somebody," said Grant, .looking straight at General Longstreet. "Didn't I meet you at Cold Harbor?" he asked. General Longstreet did not answer.

"I should like to have this over with as soon as possible," said Lee. Grant looked vaguely at Shultz, who walked up close to him , frowning. "The surrender, sir, the surrender," said Corporal Shultz in a whisper. "Oh sure, sure," said Grant. He took another drink. "All right," he said. "Here we go."

Slowly, sadly, he unbuckled his sword. Then he handed it to the astonished Lee. "There you are. General," said Grant. "We dam' near licked you. If I'd been feeling better we would of licked you."

Thanks to:  http://shortstories.co.in/if-grant-had-been-drinking-at-appomattox/

My friends, enjoy, two videos of this classic:
One, the Drunk-A-Vox recording of If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox aloud (and how appropriate that is!);
Two, a video production of the same, directed by David Bowler, starring Dave Forshtay:  You Tube Version
The 1946 movie version of Twas the Night Before Christmas!

And a Merry Christmas to All!!!!

Canadian Comments

Driven mad by/at Bouchercon 2017

As I said last week, I had a lovely time at Bouchercon in Toronto last month.  As usual at this kind of event, I copied down the words of wisdom that flowed from the mouths of my fellow scribes like stormwater over a levee.  Or some better simile.

I have provided a collection for your enlightenment.  If I quote you and you think I got it wrong (or just want to deny everything) let me know and I will be happy to make the correction.

Regrettably, the customs officials at the border confiscated the context for all these quotations, so you are on your own in that regard.  Here goes.

"Welcome to our country.  We don't have any crime here." - Cathy Ace

"I had to cut 65,000 words before I could start editing." - Robin Yocum

"When you are carrying a gun you act differently." - Jeff Siger

"I was a hermit so bathing was optional." - Donna Andrews

"If you want to write you sit down and write.  There's no plumber's block." - Alan Orloff

"Howard Engel invented the softboiled private eye." - Peter Robinson

"If there are stories you love, read them out loud." - Angel Luis Colón

"You can't write  a  thriller very effectively in England because you just go round and round." - Steph Broadribb

"It's not the ideal year to be the American Guest of Honour, but we do what we can." - Megan Abbott

"A lot of people ask if  I alienate readers by putting social issues in my books.  I say, that depends on whether you consider being Black a social issue.  I just consider it my skin."  - Danny Gardner

"I think of this as the fourth book in the Promise Falls trilogy, which suggests I can't count or don't understand the concept." - Linwood Barclay

"Welcome to the fashion faux paus hour.  Next up we have some bracelets from Indonesia." - Gary Phillips

"In a short story the destination is the destination." - James Lincoln Warren

"For all this to happen is like cooking dinner for your family and getting the James Beard Award.  It does not compute." -Joe Ide

"In Scotland we have an unarmed police force.  Well, no firearms.  Just batons and sarcasm." - Caro Ramsay

"We're professional failures and amateur successes." - Angel  Luis Colón

"I don' t like to write in public."  - Gary Phillips

"I'm confused.  My detective doesn't carry a handbag." - Brian Thiem

"Give your reader a reason to want to know what you're telling them." - Janet Hutchings

"There is no healing without humor." - Jess Lourey

"I grew up telling stories because I'm half Irish.  You could not come to the dinner table without a story." - Twist Phelan

"Instead of being Encyclopedia Brown I was Encyclopedia Black."  -Danny Gardner

"I'm having lunch with my editor.  I love saying that." -Robert Lopresti

"I'm going to write a book of English erotica.  It's called Fifty Shades of Beige." - Zoe Sharp

"No pressure.  It's just our careers." - Hank Phillippi Ryan

"When I was a girl my parents felt I experienced things too intently, so they got me to read The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, so I would find out what happens to girls who experience life too intently." - Sarah Paretsky

"I am an author and a lawyer, which is like a black belt in lying." - Reese Hirsch

"IQ is Sherlock in the hood.  Thank you for your time." - Joe Ide

"They changed all my H-O-N-O-R-S  to H-O-N-O-U-R-S."  -  David Maganya

"There is subtle humour in War and Peace, but it's Russian humor, so we don't get it."  -Donna Andrews

"I like it that if there are two things you don't want to do, you can choose which one you want to do least." - Jess Lourey

"I want to write a book called Water Finds A Way.  It's a manual for plumbers." -Karin Salvalaggio

"When you're standing in line to get local currency and the man in front of you thanks the ATM he's not odd, he's Canadian."  -Twist Phelan

"The idea of  a story is that you tell a series of lies that tell some kind of truth." - Johnny Shaw

Go for the Gold

by Barb Goffman

When I was in college, a roommate was excited to come home one spring day to find me eating matzo ball soup. She asked if she could have some. She loved trying new ethnic foods. Having grown up Jewish, matzo ball soup didn't seem so ethnic to me, but I was happy to oblige.

As we head into the final days of Hanukkah this week, I thought of my old roommate, and I realized that perhaps this is a good time to bring a little ethnicity to readers, in this case, in the form of a favorite legal mystery series of mine starring a Jewish protagonist named Rachel Gold.

Rachel is an attorney at a law firm in Chicago when the series begins. A few books in, Rachel and her best friend, Benny, move to St. Louis, and the series continues there. Rachel is hard-working, smart, and a delight to read about. Author Michael A. Kahn also gives readers a nice look into the ways Judaism can play a role in everyday life, both through Rachel's personal life and her law firm work.

I know there are a lot of mysteries with Jewish protagonists, but this ten-book series is my favorite among them. The first book in the collection is called Grave Designs. I think Kahn started out with a different publisher (maybe more than one along the way), but now, all his books appear to be available through his current publisher, Poisoned Pen Press. You can also find a short story or two of his out there about Rachel Gold. They all come with my recommendation.

Please feel free to share your favorite "ethnic" mystery protagonist in the comments. And happy holidays and happy new year to you all.