November Twenty Second

    Sometimes I have to think long and hard to come up with a theme for Tuesdays.  Not so today.  Today is November 22nd.  That alone should be enough, but this year Stephen King has weighed in to make the task even easier.

    I would hazard a guess that anyone much over 50 – and some quite a bit younger – brood their way through this day each year.   We remember where we were when we heard.  We ruminate over “what if” scenarios.  Today is a day haunted by the memories of grainy black and white photos, horrors on the front pages of newspapers.  It’s a day to puzzle over how things could have gone that terribly wrong.

     Certainly, if you are of an age, it’s a day when you remember where you were back in 1963, what you were doing when Walter Cronkite, in shirt sleeves, announced to a stunned nation what had happened in Dallas.  There are other days like this – 9/11 is one – when a watershed was crossed, when the world tilted a little on its axis and then never again spun quite the same.  Those days, thankfully, are few.  But that is one of the reasons that we brood each year when they roll around.

     On the rock of our obsession with this date Stephen King has built his new novel, 11/22/63.  A very different writer, Laura Ingalls Wilder, once wrote that there is never a great loss without a little gain, and that is true here.  Out of this day, which shall always be dark, we have gained a fine novel from Stephen King, a novel that explores the “what ifs” that have haunted us for the past 48 years.

    Let’s take a deep breath and, at least for a while, step back from today’s date and focus for a while more generally on the amazing Mr. King.  By my count, since breaking into the publishing world in 1974 with Carrie, Stephen King has published 61 books – mostly novels, but also short story collections and nonfiction volumes. 

     The first Stephen King book for me was The Shining.  I bought it back in 1978 after hearing the paperback edition advertised on the radio.  I read about 100 pages the first night, and then found myself completely unable to concentrate at  work the next day because all I could think about was the story.  That night I stayed up until the small hours of the morning and finished the book.  I had to do this in order to get my life back – that is how intense the story was for me. 

    Since that day in 1978 I have read everything that Stephen King has written.  Yep, every one of those 61 books.  But while I am a stalwart Stephen King fan I am also an inveterate critic.  Like many readers, and probably like most teachers, I tend to grade books as I read them.  To my mind King has offered up some solid “A’s”, including The Shining, The Stand (particularly the longer uncut version published in 1990), It and the Gunslinger series.  My entirely subjective grading system also awards some “A-‘s,” including, among others, Firestarter, Pet Sematary, Carrie, and Salem’s Lot.  But recent works by King, aside from the later Gunslinger volumes, I generally relegate to no better than the “B” range, and there are some that for me fall below that line.  Tommyknockers, gets a C-, as does Insomnia and Cell. 

The Colorado Kid (sorry about that, Stephen) is lucky to get a D.   I mean, really – a “fair play” mystery plot where the crime is never solved?  In an afterword to The Colorado Kid, King wrote that people will either love the ending or hate it. "I think for many people, there'll be no middle ground on this one . . . .”  Well, that’s right – there wasn’t one for me!

    Others may compile the grade list differently, but from my perspective (since, after all, it is my list) one of the obvious conclusions is that, with the exception of the later Gunslinger volumes, King’s best books, at least my personal favorites, are generally found among his earlier works.  I am not the only one who has speculated that in recent years King may have been just a bit burned out. Ttake a look, for example, at the parody of King that was on Family Guy a few years back.   Perhaps this is because King used his best ideas, the ones that really grabbed him, early on, and then just ran out of really great ones.  When this happens to many of us who are, or who aspire to be, writers we experience writers’ block.  We produce nothing.  Not so, with King, however.  By all observation the man is the energizer bunny of authors.  He keeps going, and going, and going.  When his publisher ordered him to slow down, telling him that he could not continue to write at the pace of more than one book per year, King famously invented Richard Bachman and used that alter ego to drop another seven books into the book stores.  But while the work ethic is admirable, the process has, as discussed above, produced some lesser gems.

    The purpose of the foregoing digression?  Well, I guess it's two-fold.  First, not every Stephen King book is great.  And second, I hand out "A's" pretty sparingly.  12/22/63, however, gets a solid "A."

     So now lets return to today, November 22, and to King’s latest novel.  I have not finished 11/22/63 as of this writing.  This is because I am savoring it, parceling it out in measured doses, like Christmas candies.  All criticism is subjective, but to my mind 11/22/63 is the kind of King novel that we have not seen in years.  There is nothing "phoned in" here, nor is the story a forced effort by King to write "a Stephen King book."   In fact, there is very little that is supernatural about this story.  11/22/63 reads almost like it wrote itself, its premise is a stampede, and King, like the rest of us, is bouncing along trying to do whatever he can to control those horses.   Such mad rides are the best rides.

    And why is this?  Why does this book work so well?  I suspect that it is because once King came up with the premise of 11/22/63 it was a story that he had to tell.  What a difference it makes when the force driving the narrative is one that has completely grabbed the author's imagination.  When that happens writing will not be forced, it will flow on its own.  King's premise of a protagonist presented with an opportunity to go back in time, to live from 1958 through 1963 and to then attempt to right the horrific wrong of November 22 obviously resonated for the author in a way that other story ideas just did not.  King works hard in  his novels to make the characters live and breathe, but the result can  sometimes come  across as a bit forced.  Not so with those who populate 11/22/63.  They invariably ring true, and I suspect that this is so simply because, the story itself must have become so  real to King as he wrote it that character development flowed naturally.  I suspect Stephen King was as carried away writing this book as his readers will be reading it. 

The back cover of 11/22/63

    In his column last Friday my colleague Dixon Hill wrote an incisive and poignant article on happy endings.  And as Dixon concluded, happy endings generally are not Stephen King’s forte.  I have already noted that I have yet to finish  11/22/63, so I do not know how happy or unhappy the ending ultimately will prove to be.  And, of course, even if I did know the nature of that ending I would not share it here – no spoilers from me!

     But it is not a spoiler to reproduce the back cover of the novel.  And from that back cover one must conclude that, at least as to November 22, 1963, Stephen King, like the rest of us, has spent a good deal of time thinking about the possibility of a happier ending.

     The possibility of putting a better end to November 22,  a day that left us all older though not necessarily wiser, was in any event the apparent spark that inspired a great read from Mr. King. Hearkening back to Laura Ingalls Wilder's advice, we might as well be thankful for that small gain, even though it has sprung from our greater loss.

Criminals and Protesters

What's all the big deal about the Occupy Wall Street protesters? What do they want? Do they expect the rich to give them part of their money? Take from the rich and give to the poor, really? Most of us are happy when someone makes a mint. We don't want their money. Especially the money they earned by working for it. Are they asking for a hand-out? After hearing some congressmen and other people who say they are in the 1% tell the protesters on national television to "get a job." I realize they have no clue. They have erroneously decided most of these protesters are homeless/hippie/college-age or teens who just want to protest.

Maybe so, and since I'm not out in the midst of these folks, I can't say for sure. I've read and heard that stealing food, leaving horrible unsanitary areas and sexual assaults have taken place in the tent cities, and that's just all wrong. But seeing the 84 year old woman who got pepper-sprayed in the face and the marine who got the skull fracture and the peaceful sitting protesters out in CA getting pepper sprayed in the face, by police who've been ordered to disband these peaceful demonstrations. I have a feeling there are a lot of people who feel that something is terribly wrong on Wall Street and in congress. I understand cities already in debt racking up even more debt to try and keep things peaceful. The police are given orders even though they don't always agree. Yet some policemen get totally out of hand. I saw and even personally know some college students who've been protesting, I have read about teachers, police officer, military personnel, people out of work for months, union workers, and even plain ordinary folks joining the protest. Tonight many artists and musicians are joining in with the LA protesters after the AMA awards.

Most of the protesters out there are trying to make Wall Street fund managers and politicians wake up and do what needs to be done to fix some grievous wrongs. However, I don't hold out much hope they will.

The fact that banking and financial institutions were bailed-out with taxpayer money, then the boards of those institutions gave themselves and most of their top management people huge bonuses. When called upon to explain, these corporate Greedy-Gus CEOs never explained. Not one of them has ever been sent to jail for malfeasance or mismanagement of funds or even called on the carpet. Not one of them ever paid back any bail-out monies that I know about or have heard.

Seems as if I recall a huge outcry when the bail-outs were given to the large auto companies but I've heard more than one of these companies has paid money back to the US Government. The banking and brokerage institutions who haven't paid any money back are criminals. To me that's the same as defaulting on a loan. These are same characters got our economy into this mess in the first place.

Okay, having said that, let me digress to why I write crime fiction. Throughout many years of living, I've seen, read and heard of many, many miscarriages of justice. In fact, a recent case happened here in Austin just last month. A man convicted of killing his wife twenty-five years ago was found to be totally innocent. He spent twenty-five years in prison knowing a killer was out there someplace, having gotten away with murder. The man was recently released but his life has been destroyed and his daughter's life destroyed because the man was falsely convicted of killing her mother. Imagine the sorrow his own mother and father went through. The only good part of the story is that last week they finally arrested the person who DNA shows is alledged to be the real killer. It's believed that he killed another woman two years after the first initial murder in the same manner.

In my stories and books the criminal is somehow caught and punished. He or she is put in jail or is killed The criminal get his "just desserts." Harsh justice? I think not. In real life there seldom is satisfaction when a crime is committed. Sometimes the criminal is caught and put on trial, but gets off by a technical error. or an inept prosecutor and inept jury. There is no justice. No satisfaction. Sometimes in one of my stories, I write the criminal gets a psychological punishment...having to live the rest of their life thinking of what they have done.

Real life is full of these huge miscarriages of justice. This echoes back to Dixon's blog the other day. Happy endings. People who read crime fiction want the bad guys/gals caught and punished. They want a criminal to suffer for their crimes. Writers of crime fiction usually write a happy ending. Maybe not every time but enough times to keep readers coming back. This is why I think crime fiction is so popular. If you keep track of the best sellers, the list generally has many books of mystery or crime fiction.

The Occupy Wall-Street protesters just want the criminals punished and these huge companies to STOP giving away money that was not really theirs to begin with, it came from the people. Why weren't those bonuses used to create news jobs? Why not restore a little faith in our society? Why allow criminals to get away with their crimes?

We writers of crime fiction must continue seeking truth and justice and let the bad guys be punished. If all else fails we may have to join the protesters.

Wellerness

“	A world renounced romantic comedy author, Susan Elizabeth Phillips runs the game in the romance genre. Phillips is one of the biggest women’s fiction stars soaring onto the New York Times bestseller list with Dream a Little Dream. She’s the only four-time recipient of Romance Writers of America’s prestigious Favorite Book of the Year Award.	”

Pickwick and Weller

My editor, writer, friend Sharon has a quick eye for writing goofs and spotted the above from BookPerk.com. Pity the world renounced one of her favorite writers, who's actually a five-time recipient of RWA’s Favorite Book of the Year Award.

I've been receiving silliness and word play in my eMail, which I'll share with readers. Along with many writers, I enjoy word play, a devil's playground for an idle mind.

Wellerisms

Once earlier, I discussed spoonerisms, but today I'll mention wellerisms, derived from Charles Dickens's first novel, The Pickwick Papers (1836-1837). Samuel Pickwick's man's man Weller was sort of a cockney Sancho Panza to his employer's Don Quixote. Sam Weller and his father Tony became known for pithy remarks and proverbs. By 1839, the popular valet had become a sensation resulting in Weller merchandise, puzzles, joke books, and even bootleg copies of his stories.

Wellerisms center around a quotation, a cliché, or sometimes a proverb, misapplied with humorous effect. Examples of wellerisms include:

• "It comes back to me now," said the prisoner, spitting into the wind.
• "Remarkable," said the teacher, trying out her new dry-erase board.
• "We'll have to rehearse that," said the undertaker as the body tumbled from the coffin.
• "So I see," said the blind carpenter as he picked up his hammer and saw.
• "Is this a hearing?" asked the deaf juror judgmentally.

Tom Swift, Jr.

The once popular adverbial Tom Swifties are a variant of wellerisms. For example:

• "Let's dig up that body," said Tom gravely.
• "I bet you have no diamonds, clubs, or spades," said Tom heartlessly.
• "This tastes bad, Herb," said Tom sagely.

More Play and Burning Questions

• What disease did cured ham actually have?
• Why do actors appear in a movie but on TV?
• Why is 'bra' singular and 'panties' plural?
• How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?
• Why does a round pizza come in a square box?
• Do the alphabet song and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have the same tune?
• Why did you just try singing the two songs above?
• Why do you have to 'put your two cents in', but it's only a 'penny for your thoughts'? Where's that extra penny going?
• Once you're in heaven, do you get stuck wearing the clothes you were buried in for eternity?
• How is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on luggage?
• Why is it that people say they 'slept like a baby' when babies wake up like every two hours?
• Did they cry, spit, and scream?
• Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?
• Why do doctors leave the room while you change? They're going to see you naked anyway.
• Why do toasters have a setting that burns toast to a horrible crisp, which no decent human being would eat?
• If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why is there a stupid song about him?

  

  Sam Weller

• If the professor on Gilligan's Island can make a radio out of a coconut, why can't he fix a hole in a boat?
• Why does Goofy stand erect while Pluto remains on all fours? They're both dogs.
• If Wile E. Coyote had enough money to buy all that Acme junk, why didn't he just buy dinner?
• Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?
• If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, what is baby oil made from?
• If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
• Why do they call it an asteroid when it's outside the hemisphere, but call it a hemorrhoid when it's in your bottom?
• Why do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are going dead?
• Why do banks charge a fee for insufficient funds when they know you don't have enough money?
• Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?
• Why do they use sterilized needles for execution by lethal injection?
• Why does Superman stop bullets with his chest, but ducks when you throw a revolver at him?
• Why did Kamikaze pilots wear helmets?
• Whose idea was it to put 'S's in the word 'lisps'?
• Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized?
• Why do people keep running over a string a dozen times with their vacuum cleaner, reach down, pick it up, examine it, then put it down to give the vacuum one more chance?
• Why can't men open plastic bags in the vegetable section of grocery stores?
• How do those dead bugs get into enclosed light fixtures?
• Why is it whenever you attempt to catch something that's falling off the table, you manage to knock something else over?
• In winter why do we try to keep the house as warm as it was in summer when we complained about the heat?
• How come you never hear father-in-law jokes?

Ingrid Bergman said, "A kiss is a lovely trick, designed by nature, to stop speech when words become superfluous." Before y'all tell me to kiss off, I'll stop speaking.

Executive Protection

Elizabeth Zelvin

At a recent dinner meeting of the New York chapter of Mystery Writers of America, the speakers were the founders of an outfit called Management Resources Ltd of New York. A temp agency? Nope. Human resources consultants? Nope again. Robert H. Rahn, a retired NYPD lieutenant and homicide detective, and Kim Anklin, also a retired cop with a background in crime and intelligence analysis, gave their private investigation firm a bland name because their corporate clients didn’t want the information that they’d hired PIs to spread all over the company. They’re not completely undercover, though: their website is http://www.nysleuth.com/.

While Management Resources is a full-service investigations firm, they came to MWA to talk about one of their specialties, executive protection. That’s motorcades and bodyguards and everything the Secret Service does for the President and A-list visiting heads of state. Lesser lights—such as the numerous members of the Saudi royal family—as well as celebrity actors and athletes—make do with private firms like this one. The amount of protection that they get (from a single bodyguard to an eight-person team or from a single car to a mini-motorcade of four) depends on both the level of threat and the client’s budget.

When a client hires them for protection during, say, a three-day visit to New York, the firm starts by getting a detailed schedule and sending out an advance team of two or three operatives to analyze, measure, map, and if possible photograph the details of every venue the client expects to visit, especially the approaches: the principal, as the subject is called, is most vulnerable when entering and leaving the venue. The team that protects the principal during the visit is thoroughly briefed beforehand. Unscheduled stops are strongly discouraged, though if the principal insists, the team adapts. As someone pointed out during the Q&A, the kitchen where Bobby Kennedy was shot was an unscheduled stop.

According to Rahn, the way protection teams work changed significantly as a result of the shooting of President Reagan. When it happened, only one bodyguard got the President into a car and away from the scene, while all the others converged on the shooter. Nowadays, it’s the opposite. In Reagan’s case, the bullet seemed to have breezed under his armpit, leaving no apparent wound. The car was headed back to the hotel when a bloody froth at the mouth, which the protector luckily recognized as indicating a collapsed lung, sent them to the hospital instead.

 After explaining how it works, Rahn called on eight volunteers, including me, to perform a demonstration. I had the right front position in the formation, which made me the person who would tackle the attacker, if trouble came from the right. All the rest would converge on the principal, whose safety is the team’s priority. (Principals who want them to walk the dog and pick up their laundry—actors are the worst offenders--get nipped in the bud.) Rahn admitted that he and his staff, all retired law enforcement, have had to unlearn their instinct to go after the guy with the gun. What impressed me as a participant was how broad the range I had to keep my eye on was, even though I had to cover only one quadrant of the space around the principal.

The National Arts Club, an immense old mansion on Gramercy Park with multiple approaches to every room and plenty of shadows and hiding places, made a great demonstration venue. Waiters and bartenders came and went. (On a job, they would have been investigated in advance.) At one point during the role play, a door on the left opened unexpectedly, and a brand new staff person appeared—fortunately not packing a gun.

Everybody agreed that the audience had more questions for the speakers than at any other talk in recent memory. I’m always interested in whether novels, movies, and TV get it right. I was interested to learn that there’s no personal contact whatever with the principal, except to direct him (“Come this way, sir.”) or respond to requests (“He’s a friend, let him through.”). In other words, Kevin Costner definitely should not have slept with Whitney Houston.

Do people change?

There are two kinds of people: those who believe that people never really change and those who believe they do. Fiction writers may fall into either category, and their fiction reflects their take on this crucial aspect of human nature.

Mystery and crime fiction has some beloved characters whose attraction is partly in their eternal sameness. Sherlock Holmes will always baffle Watson, smoke his pipe, and play his violin. Miss Marple will always knit and find an analogy to crime in village life. Stephanie Plum will always manage to blow up a car and never decide between her two boyfriends. Jack Reacher will always leave town once the crisis is past and never wash his underwear.

I’ve been rereading Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver books, written between the 1930s and the 1950s. I have forty-two of them (not all Miss Silvers, but in the same universe), and they’ve been high on my list of comfort reads for many years. Miss Silver never changes. She dresses like an Edwardian or even Victorian governess, projects a powerful sense of security and understanding, and sees through people “as if the human race were glass-fronted.” In every book, she’s described in unvarying terms. It’s soothing, although no modern series author would dare do the same. Miss Silver’s world is unchanging too. Even after the War, girls are good or bad, sensible or silly. Upper class characters may be autocratic, villainous, or filled with integrity, but no housemaid ever turns out to be intelligent.

Novels allow plenty of room for the growth of their characters. In fact, whole bodies of literature—the quest novel, the coming of age novel—focus on the protagonist’s personal growth. The mystery series expands the potential for growth far beyond the range of a single novel. Most of my perennial favorites are about characters who change. Dorothy L. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey evolves from a silly ass about town not very different from Bertie Wooster, except for his nose for crime, to a complex individual with remarkable intelligence, integrity, and sensitivity. In fact, I believe Sayers invented the three-dimensional, feeling mystery character—the very kind of character Lord Peter encourages Harriet Vane to write in Gaudy Night. It could be argued that the depth of Sayers’s writing, rather than Lord Peter himself, is what changed. But Harriet herself changes over the course of the series from a brittle, fearful woman who distrusts herself and men to a self-confident woman with no doubts about her abilities of mind or heart.

As a therapist as well as a writer, I’ve bet my career—both of them—on the belief that people can and do change. My series protagonist, recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler, begins to change—fundamentally, radically, and none too willingly—from the moment he gets sober. My deepest motive for writing Death Will Get You Sober was to translate the powerful, transformative process of recovery from real life, where I’d seen it many times, to fiction. At that level, I continued Bruce’s story as a series because for recovering alcoholics, not drinking is just the beginning.

So what about short stories? Are they spacious enough to show the process of change? I’ve written four short stories about Bruce, and I’d say that each of them catches him at a particular moment in his evolution. In “Death Will Clean Your Closet,” he’s doing housework for the first time in years when he finds a body. Later, he goes to sleep on a park bench, commenting that it’s the first time he’s done that sober, and wakes up with the solution to the murder. In “Death Will Tie Your Kangaroo Down,” he has to talk a houseguest out of leaving beer in his refrigerator, “where it looked dangerously at home.” In the later stories, he’s simply sober, using his clear head and his knowledge of recovery to figure out whodunit.

Happy Endings

It's been a long week.

My wife is actually much prettier than she appears in this photograph. However, she graciously consented to letting me post it, and we had a lot of fun taking it -- largely because she has a great sense of humor.

How she can manage to smile, though, I'm not quite sure.

What I do know is that she's not only pretty. She's also pretty tough--after all, this is a woman who drove a fuel truck at the front of the invasion body, during the first Gulf War, so that the tanks could catch up to her to refuel after fighting their way through the front lines.

A few weeks ago, my wife learned she had Basal Cell skin cancer on one side of her nose, up near the bridge. This week she went in and had it removed. The next day, she went back under the knife to have them take a skin graft from her eyelid, which they grafted to the area they'd removed from her nose.

When I brought her home, the old lady across the street gave me a look that said, "We'll get you one of these days, you wife beater!" I wasn't surprised. The same woman once knocked on my door -- magazine in hand -- to tell me: "I read your story in Ellery Queen." Then she gave me a look that clearly said, "And we're not about to tolerate any of your murderous shenanigans in this neighborhood– so mind your P's and Q's!" After which, she marched home, where I strongly suspect she added the magazine to an evidence file she's compiling about me.

Seeing my wife undergo such trauma ...
. . . actually has me thinking about happy endings.

And I don't mean, just the "Thank God he lived!" sort of happy ending. I'm talking about overall all-around happy endings -- the good guys not only win; they live happily ever after.

I once read an essay by the great Dean Koontz, in which he said he often got zinged by literary writers because his stories usually have happy endings. He went on to wonder why so many literary stories have unhappy conclusions.

For some reason, I tend to read quite a bit of what's termed "literary" writing myself, and I have to agree; happy endings seem to be pretty scarce in that crowd. I'm not exactly sure why.

What I do know is that happy endings -- of the believable sort -- seem very challenging to write. Koontz also mentioned this. And, judging from essays written by many contemporary literary writers, the idea of a happy ending not being believable may actually be at the root of their scarcity. There seems to be a belief that happy endings just aren't believable.

I think they're wrong.

I've read things with very believable happy endings. So, to my way of thinking: While believable happy endings are tough to pull off; they're not always impossible to accomplish. (Sometimes, however, I think the best bet is to aim for what I've come to think of as a Positive Ending. But, more on that some other time, perhaps.)

I tried to figure out a better way to illustrate what I'm talking about, but somehow keep coming back to the idea of comparing and contrasting my view of the difference between early Stephen King novels and a Dean Koontz novel.

I'm not trying to denigrate anyone, here. King is a great writer; there's no question about that. And, there's nothing wrong with what he writes. The reason I chose him is because: (a) he's a writer that is fairly well accepted by the 'literary' crowd and (b) both King and Koontz write scary stories, which makes it easier to highlight the differences I want to discuss.

To me, reading a King novel is like being led by a scary, freakazoid, guy down rickety cellar steps, into a pitch-black basement. The steps wobble and creak as you descend, while other things slither and bump down below. Cob webs stick your face, and unseen fingers seem to take glancing grasps at your clothing. You reach the bottom, and he leads you on, deeper into the darkness, something cold and wet wrapping itself around your ankle as you walk. And then, he leaves you there!

Again: I'm not saying there's anything wrong with King's writing. The guy knows what he's doing. It's really scary stuff, and he couches it in visceral terms that seem to reach out off the pages and tear at your soul. And, he uses a lot of literary mechanisms while he does it. In fact, he's so good at it, I sometimes find myself sucked down into a two-week depression after reading one of his novels. Whether you think that's good or bad, I don't think you can help but admit--that's damn good writing!

But . . .

. . . it's hardly a happy ending.

Now, contrast this to the way I perceive Koontz's writing. You start out being led down the same cellar steps by the same scary, freakazoid guy. The stairs still creak and groan, the icy fingers grasp at your clothes, and when you get to the bottom something cold wraps itself around your ankle. And still, the freakazoid leads you on, deeper into the darkness. But, when he reaches the point where the other guy abandoned you, this guy makes you keep walking.

One step in the darkness. Two steps in the darkness. WHAM! Storm cellar doors you didn't know were there suddenly burst open in front of you! A shaft of sunlight stabs your eyes. And, now, he leads you up the steps and out those storm doors into a beautiful garden--golden sunlight bathing the grass and leaves, butterflies darting among the bushes. And suddenly you realize: You know this garden. Because it's your backyard!

You've walked in your backyard a hundred times, but it's never looked like this before. The grass is greener, trees seem stronger; the soil seems to be bursting with fertility! You've never seen it like this before, because, you had to make that trip through the dark cellar first. Only after making that trek trough the terror, could you come upon your garden from the vantage point which would reveal its full beauty to you.

Presto!

It seems to me, the best Happy Endings aren't the ones where we just sigh and giggle because the two lovers have finally found each other, or the ones where we wipe a hand across our brow and say, "WHEW! He made it!" I think the best Happy Endings are when we can see that a character or characters have been changed in a positive way by their experiences in the storyline. (And that often means traumatizing them -- sometimes more than just a little.) And, that change in themselves is what now gives them the chance to live Happily Ever After. Or at least, more happily than they used to. And -- guess what? -- it can even be believable.

Which is why my wife's recent operations have me thinking of happy endings.

You see: Because of the trauma she's had to endure this week, she's now cancer-free. And, this means, She and I have the chance to continue our own little "Happily Ever After . . ." right along with our kids.

See you in two weeks!
--Dix

Good Writing Sells

My friend, Travis Erwin, had his first-ever book signing this past weekend. The novel, The Feedstore Chronicles, is not the type of fiction he usually writes, but is a funny, can't-put-it-down, quick read. Travis describes himself as "a native Texan, a humorist, a devout carnivore unafraid to write or read a good love story."

A stereotypical-looking big ol' boy (he's past six feet tall) and refuses to eat vegetables (unless you count fried okra), Travis is a real friend when you need one. Instead of sitting in front of a computer, he looks like all he does is watch football (he is a Saints fan!). He has a beautiful wife, two rambunctious, good-looking sons and is a true enigma to me as he usually writes women's fiction.

Now if that last bit didn't stop you in your tracks, not much will. This is what I find interesting in what we're told as writers particularly about what will and what won't sell in the mystery market. When I began writing in earnest, writer's conference after writer's conference speakers directed us not to write serial killer stories as they wouldn't sell since the market was swollen with those kind of submissions. Well, serial killer stories continued to sell and show up on the bookstands, in the movies and on television on a regular basis.

We were told our characters had to be believable. A protagonist or even a sidekick that fell into the description of Travis Erwin would not be believeable to most editors. Heck, if I didn't know him so well, I'd agree.

My take on all this is that it is good writing that sells. If the story idea seems overdone -- as in the case of yet another story about teenagers and vampires -- well, that depends on the author drawing the readership in with a good tale.

Travis said his story is based on compilations of some people he'd met through the years and experiences that actually happened when he worked as a teenager in a feedstore. I think most writers use their personal history to create characters that ring true to the reading public. If we read about a detective who shares some of our own qualities, quirks or behavios, then the story is more plausible. I also enjoy when the hero isn't quite as heroic or "proper."

When Nero Wolfe consumes breakfast in bed while wearing silk pajamas, I know he understands the fine art of dining that most rushing about in the Fast Food World has never experienced. Dining with nero Wolfe is recalling a time when everything wasn't quite so hurried and long before grunge became commonplace in eateries. Unfortunately, "dressing for dinner" is regulated for a few times during the year in my own life, so I appreciate it when a writer arranges such an occasion in his own stories.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not all fussy all the time with my characters either. Sometimes the best fun is when characters do something that wouldn't pass muster with the politically correct crowd. There's something about a tough guy in detective novels that lures me into spending time with them. I adore Mike Hammer's hardboilded persona, even when he flies into a rage. Maybe it's because no matter how much we have benefited from the feminist movement in the workplace, a girl likes to know a man would and could protect her if needed. This doesn't mean I'm not above wanting the heroine to be able to take care of herself aka Stephanie Plum or Kinsey Millhone. I don't know many who like a wimpy woman these days in literature -- or in person. I want my heroine to be able to handle the bad guys all on her own and if she saves someone else while doing it, that's even better.

Sometimes I like to settle back with a good story that will make me laugh out loud. The Feedstore Chronicles fits into this category. Who doesn't need to lean back, kick off their shoes and just enjoy a fun story once in awhile? Thanks Travis for allowing me to do just that yesterday. You made me blush just a little, and that's probably a good thing, too.

Shhhh!

I just read a very good mystery novel, which I don't  recommend you read.  This is not because of my natural perversity, but because I want to save you from the unnatural perversity of starting a series at the end.  Farewell, Miss Zukas is the  last volume in a series, and the reason for that is one reason I am bringing up the book at all.  It gives us a chance to discuss some of the trends in the publishing world.  I do hope I convince you to look up the early books in the series, which are available at least electronically.

First of all, full disclosure.  The author, Jo  Dereske, is a friend of mine and a fellow librarian. (In fact, this book contains a brief mention of "Rob, the mystery writer."  He sounds like a fascinating character and I wish we had heard more about him.)

The heroine of these books is Wilhelmina Zukas, a librarian who works at the public library in Bellehaven, Washington.  And here we get into an endless series of inside jokes;  Jo and I both live in Bellingham, Washington, which Bellehaven resembles to a remarkable degree.  (She has pointed out the many benefits of fictionalizing her setting; for example, eliminating a mall she doesn't like.)

So what is Helma Zukas like?  Smart, introverted, private, small, neat...the word repressed comes to mind.  Clearly Dereske was playing with the stereotype of the librarian. (Most people in the field love Miss Zukas.)   

You see, Helma is far too complex and interesting to see as a mere stereotype.  Quiet and introverted, yes.  But meek?  Never.  In almost every book she stuns quarrelers into silence with her “silver dime voice.”  In one novel she destroys library records so that the police can’t violate the privacy of a book borrower.  (And if that seems a far-fetched series of events consider this  which happened in the same county that contains Bellingham.)  

So Helma is a force to be reckoned with.  Now, consider her best friend since fifth grade, Ruth Winthrop.  Ruth is an artist.  She is tall (and wears heels to emphasize it).  She is also loud, brassy, dresses in wild colors and is as easy with men as Helma is not.  Although these two opposites would gladly take a bullet for each other, they can't stand to be iin the same room for more than an hour.  Dereske has received many emails from women asking "How do you know about me and my best friend?"

The author’s ability to connect to her audience is relevant to my point and we will get back to it, but here is an example: I once heard Dereske read a portion in which Miss Zukas filing some cards in alphabetical order and Dereske got quite rapturous about the meditation-like peace that comes with  alphabetizing.  I don’t know how many of the audience were librarians but I heard any number of guilty giggles from people who had experienced that same pleasure.

Helma is supported (or more usually, hindered) by a large collection of associates, like the  young children’s librarian Glory Shandy,  who is always ready with constructive criticism  about Helma’s appearance.  (When someone gives Helma an unwanted  free visit to a beauty consultant Glory enthuses "He's probably very good at disguising mature skin.")  

But the two most important supporting characters are what you might call a couple of soulmates of Miss Z.  Police Chief Wayne Gallant came to town just after a nasty divorce, which means Helma has a crush on the only person around as nervous about relationships as herself.  And Helma reluctantly takes in (but never talks to or touches) a stray animal who becomes known as Boy Cat Zukas, because that’s what the vet calls him.  Boy Cat is as standoffish as his owner and they seem made for each other.

The first eleven books were published by Avon, which then chose not to renew the contract.  Dereske has no complaints; she understands that the economy forced the decision, and she was willing to call the series over.

But remember what I said about Jo's relationship with her readers?  They were insistent that  the saga needed an ending.  After holding discussions with  some mainstream publishers, she decided to self-publish.  And that brings us to Farewell, Miss Zukas,  which winds up most of the strings of the story and brings our heroine to a happy ending.

And speaking of happy endings, you can see this story as depressing  (good authors are losing publishers left and right) or positive (authors are taking control of their destiny).  But in the spirit of natural perversity I am going to end with a favorite passage from the very beginning of Miss Zukas And The Island Murders

.

On [Miss Zukas'] desk blotter lay a week-old newspaper article listing ten books a local group, calling themselves Save Your Kids, demanded be withdrawn from the library collection.  Two of the books, including Madonna's SEX, weren't even owned by the library, although twenty-three patrons had requested them since the article appeared....

Eve pointed to the Save Your Kids article on Helma's desk and stuck out her lower lip.  "Why ban Little Red Riding Hood?  What did SHE ever do?"

"I believe it was the wolf who did it," Helma said.  "But don't worry, she's safe.  Fortunately, the Constitution's still in effect."

If you like funny mysteries with quirky characters, you can't do much better than to take a trip to Bellehaven.

Greetings From The Jersey Shore

The title of this posting should give you a clue as to where I live, though I fear it may also induce acute nausea in those of you who have been exposed to the reality television version of this area.  It can get bad here during the heady summer months, but perhaps not that bad.  In any event, there are those of us who find the Shore (not beach or coast or seaside) a very fine place to live.  It also gave me a career, after the army, of rounding up and knuckling down on the hi-jinks and high spirits of such as the "Jersey Shore" crowd when they crossed the line.  This could be satisfying.
I didn't start out to be policeman; it just worked out that way.  In fact, I'm not even from the Garden State, but from that very close relative somewhat to the south, Georgia.  However, the die was cast when I met and married my own Jersey Girl, who could not be less like... Pookie, is it?  Honestly...Pookie?  I ask ya?  Had that unlikely scenario occurred; instead of writing this today I would probably be serving a very long sentence in a very small room.  However, I struck lucky, and Robin and I have been together for most of our lives.  But it was she that got me here.

For nearly seven years I dragged her and the kids across the states and over to Europe as part of my stint in the army.  For those of you who have spent any time in the military with a family, you'll know what I mean when I say it was hard...very hard.  So with the kids still young we made the decision to get out and I further agreed to her wish to be close to her parents.  It seemed the least I could do. 

But even that I couldn't quite get right--I couldn't find work in the area where her parents lived and we were fast running out of money!  A friend of mine who lived  in South Jersey (the natives make a very big deal about the distinction between north and south here) called me and invited me to visit and look for work at the 'Shore'.  I did, and walked into a job as a cop.  I say walked in, but in reality I competed against a pool of several hundred (mostly locals) and came out as one of two who were sent on to the Police Academy.  It was a miracle--the last of my army paychecks had just run out and we were saved!  And it was more of a miracle than I even realized at the time.  I found I loved police work and that I had somehow landed in just the right place for me and my family.  We even bought a house (a very tiny house, but a house); life was getting good.

The police profession treated me well, and Robin went on to get a full time position as a kindergarten teacher, where she still is.  To this day I have little kids run up to me, point, and say, "You're Mrs. Dean's husband!"  Like that's some big deal.  Before my retirement I would point at my badge and answer, "Oh yeah, well I'm also the police chief around here!"  This usually elicited a second and more emphatic exclamation of, "You're Mrs. Dean's husband!"  Alright already...I get it...don't you have parents?

Somewhere along the road I was taking some college courses and found myself in an arts appreciation class (mandatory, don't you know) and my final project was to produce a work of art.  "Art?" says I.  "I can't draw."  "What can you do?" says the professor with a small challenging smile.  He had seen my kind before.  "Uh..." thinking hard...thinking very hard.  "Maybe I could write something," I offer.  His expression shifted over to one of subtle doubt.  "Okay," says he.  I did, and produced my first story.  Not surprisingly, it was about a patrolman at the Jersey Shore, and in this tale, one attempting to apprehend a particularly violent burglar.  I drew the details from a case I had worked.  The prof liked it and said I should submit it to a magazine, which I did, and "The See-Through Man" (1990) became my first published story with Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and also the beginning of a long and satisfying relationship with that august publication...except for the fact that sometimes my stories are turned down.  I don't like to say 'rejected' because that sounds so unsatisfying.  But I don't want to dwell on that here...maybe later...in a more tearful posting (bring hankies).

So now I am retired, and find myself joining the assembled company of SleuthSayers and friends.  Some of the staff writers here I have had the privilege and pleasure of meeting through Criminal Brief; others I have met while out and about in our small world.  I hope to provide some useful service by my scribblings, if only to amuse you ("What...I amuse you?") or at the very least, not to embarrass myself or others.  But if I don't manage it, just turn the page (figuratively in this case) and move on, as this is the judgement and sentencing that all writers must bear if they fail to keep up their end of the bargain.



So with that, "I'll catch youse later (as they say around here)."

My Name Is Fran And....

by Fran Rizer

My name is Fran, and I write... cozies?

I didn't start out that way, and I didn't flounder around with other subgenres then decide to have protagonists "trip" over clues while I rounded up recipes and knitting patterns for them.

Actually, I do know how to knit. My knitting experience goes back to my divorce. I thought it would be appropriate for me to knit an afghan. My friend Linda taught me to knit. When I completed a twelve-inch square, I decided that wasn't for me. She taught me to crochet. I did about three granny squares and decided I'd rather go dancing. I buy my quilts and afghans ready-made, and I still love dancing.

All that dancing led me into managing and booking country and rock bands, who usually start playing at nine and finish around 2:00 am. I moved from that to blues bands who, in our neck of the woods, start anywhere between 11:00 pm and midnight and play 'til they're too wasted to play anymore. When that grew tiring, I moved to bluegrass. Most grassers are in the Waffle House long before midnight.

I've written and sold articles to magazines since I was seventeen. Among my sales were

articles such as "Shower the Bride without Soaking Your Budget" to the other extreme of "How to Field Dress a Deer," (first thing I wrote under a male pseudonym and written totally by research as I don't hunt) but what I really loved was doing articles about performers and venues. These included "Hillbilly Dust," which was my first feature published in Bluegrass Unlimited before I learned that grassers don't like the term "hillbilly." I'd swiped the title from an Emmy Lou Harris quote about "feeling the hillbilly dust." Though there were additional articles about venues, most were about singer/songwriters like my good friend Randall Hylton.

The writers' group I frequented kept telling me, "You've been published a lot, but fiction is different. It's a hard nut to crack." So I got cracking, wrote my first fiction story, "Positive Proof," and entered it into the Augusta, Georgia, Festival of Arts Fiction Contest. I won $500 and an invitation to read it at the awards contest. That was fun, but I never even tried to sell it, just went back to magazine articles.

Life is full of things that aren't necessarily what they seem. My next fiction was a horror story which I took to a writers' conference at St. Simon's Island, Georgia. Most of the writers there were spiritual, and they had lots of categories that dealt with inspirational material. The only place to put my story was in Miscellaneous which was described as "any story that doesn't fit into the other categories." At the awards dinner, they announced that I'd won, and on my way up from where I was sitting between two gentlemen who'd placed in inspirational, they announced that it was the first time anyone had submitted erotica! I still don't see how anyone could count that story as erotica because if I wrote erotica, it would be a lot more erotic than that story was. The first short story I had published in a magazine was "Emily's Ghost Story," which was printed in the summer, 2011, issue of Pages of Stories.

My friends read cozies, but I'd always been more into hard mystery and potboiler (not a derogatory term to me) mysteries. I met Gwen Hunter and Tamar Myers, both of whom are delightful writer/ladies and began reading their books. During that time, Callie Parrish birthed herself in my brain, and I decided to write a book about her. When I asked what constituted a cozy, I was told: (1) No more than two murders in the story; characters can find bodies, but don't describe the killings (2) No overt sex; shut the bedroom door (3) No profanity and (4) Don't kill off any old ladies or pets.

With those instructions, I wrote A Tisket, a Tasket, a Fancy Stolen Casket and simultaneously queried five agents. My first choice took the book and sold three of the series to Berkley Prime Crime.

Some folks believe all cozies are destined to be mass market paperbacks. I know many who're published first as hardback. When I signed with Berkley, my agent asked if I wanted to go for a hardback contract. Being an old Beatles fan, all I wanted was to be a paperback writer, and that's still what I want though my grandson is happy that all four Callies are on Nook and Kindle.

Now, about those recipes. There are no recipes in my books, but I do put them on my webpage. Why? Because I want to. A lot of my friends read and collect recipe books. I don't because I'm one of those "pinch of this, pinch of that" cooks, and when I want a specific recipe, I go to the Internet, but if recipes are fun for me and my readers, why not? (There are

also Moon Pies available at my signings.)

Callie set out to be cozies, so you can imagine my surprise when Berkley released them as Mainstream Mystery.

Can you see what's wrong? I write horror, and it's labeled erotica. I write cozies, and they're labeled Mainstream Mystery. I have a serial killer thriller coming out under a pseudonym, but who knows how it'll be classified?

Help! Is there a twelve-step program for those of us who aren't living in the sixties trying to find ourselves but for those of us who don't know where we're going or what we're writing?

Now, for the Question of the Day, which is directly related not to mystery in general, but to the Callie Parrish stories. Callie eats Moon Pies. (I sent a case of Moon Pies to my first New York editor. She'd never heard of them, but she said everyone enjoyed them.) Only one answer to this question: In what city did Moon Pies originate? (Clue: They're still made there.)

First person to answer correctly wins. Winner will be announced tonight with instructions how to claim the prize.

Until we meet again...take care of YOU.

Twin Peaks

by Leigh Lundin


Last week, Richard Santos, who blogs on Paperclip People, posted on Criminal Element a terrific article about Twin Peaks. That brought back a flood of memories as if remembering an old lover.

I have a complex love-hate relationship with Twin Peaks. After the series ended, I felt annoyed and cheated. Along with any number of deep-sixed series like Nowhere Man, Firefly, and Jake 2.0, it reflected in my not watching Lost, refusing to vest in a series that might head south.

David Lynch

David Lynch is, well, a flawed genius, which I think is way cooler than ordinary genius. His works are never dull (although Eraserhead takes more wine and corn chips than most folks can consume).

The influence of Blue Velvet on Twin Peaks is clear, from the actors and musicians to the dark plot, and arguably it influenced Dune. Twin Peaks' music is hypnotic and seductive. If Angelo Badalamenti never writes another note, he'll be remembered for that haunting score. The Ipcress File and the Twin Peaks CDs are among the soundtracks worth listening to.

Cherry Jubilee

The characterization is brilliant and draws viewers like few other programs. The plot intrigued but the characters made you feel like a part of the town populated with people you cared about. I'm not sure how Lynch accomplished it, but that magic should be taught in writing classes.

Lynch created characters who were believably quirky, not unlike small town denizens I grew up with. Viewers love Sheriff Harry S Truman, Agent Dale Cooper, Laura and her cousin Maddie, James Hurley, and Audrey Horne. (I confess my brain short-circuited when Audrey tied a cherry stem (and me) in knots.)

A Spooky Turn

But the plot… Recently, my friend Ryan Freeman gave me David Lynch's works on DVD, which allowed me a more careful dissection of Twin Peaks. I disagree with Michael Giltz– the problem wasn't that the mystery was solved, but that it wasn't resolved. For months, avid viewers took copious notes and compared conclusions, so the who and the how came off as contrived. After the reveal of Laura's murderer, one reviewer wrote that writers must have been stunned when the series was picked up for a second season, because they hadn't plotted a logical dénouement. ("What? There's a second season? Oh, no!") Post-series critics differ in debates, but I lean toward those who feel Twin Peaks fell back upon paranormal deus ex machina.

In a similar way, I found myself disappointed by the movie The Forgotten about a distraught mother who wonders why others can move on after the death of her son but she can't. It exhibited the same feel of a film that lost its way, as if a writer had a brilliant seed for a story but didn't know how to wrap it up. If you're going to write a paranormal story, then let the reader know that's what it is, but don't blame the dénouement on psychic phenomenon and expect us to applaud.

Fire Walk

Possibly producers felt that way too, coming out with the dark and sexy Fire Walk with Me film to tie up the myriad loose ends, but many critics treated it harshly. USA Today wrote "Except for a brief episode in which singer Chris Isaak and Kiefer Sutherland make like an FBI Rocky and Bullwinkle, this is a morbidly joyless affair. You'll feel as drained as one of Cooper's mugs of joe watching homecoming queen Laura drown in a whirlpool of sex and drugs." Ouch, that's cruel. Rotten Tomatoes treated it a bit better, scoring 62%/78%.

Quibbling aside, whether one feels love, hate, annoyance, or disgust with Twin Peaks, almost no one feels indifferent, and that's a tribute to the skills of David Lynch. He made us care, which is what writers want to accomplish. If only a little dust from Twin Peaks falls upon our works, we benefit from that seminal television program.

Clare-ification

Our Women of Mystery bosom buddy, Clare Toohey, drew readers' attention to CNN's Katie McLaughlin's article about Psych's tribute to Twin Peaks, in the town of Dual Spires, where Douglas Fir is mayor and Julee Cruise sings Psych's theme. That episode is now on my must-watch list.

When the Grammar Cops Comma Calling

by John M. Floyd

Consider the following two statements:

1. The frustrated mother says, "Eat that cereal, period."

2. The frustrated writing instructor says, "Use that serial comma."

In my opinion, both are good advice.

A serial comma, for those who don't already know this, is the comma before a coordinating conjunction (and, or, etc.) that precedes the final item in list of three or more items. Example: the comma after Dick in every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Some writers always use it and some never use it, and I know a few who go back and forth. Personally, I like the serial comma, for one reason: it can prevent misunderstanding.

Here's what I mean. A writer friend suggested this sentence to me the other day, as an example:

Attendees at the event included two hookers, Diane Sawyer, and Barbara Walters. That's pretty clear. It refers to four people.

Now consider what happens when you leave out the serial comma:

Attendees at the event included two hookers, Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters. That's pretty clear too, except that it now seems to refer to only two people. I doubt Diane and Barbara would be pleased with that version.

Here's another example:

Every morning I have orange juice, bacon and eggs and toast.

There's nothing wrong with that, but the writer is probably thinking of three separate "items" rather than four. A serial comma after eggs would clarify the sentence--and the extra pause would probably change the way it sounds when spoken.

The clarity issue doesn't come up often. In The road was hot, dry and dusty, leaving out the serial comma doesn't hurt the sentence or our understanding of it. To be truthful, I'm one of those people who use too many commas anyway--I've been trying to cut back a bit. Unneeded commas tend to slow things down, and we all want sentences to flow well and sound right. But I can't help myself: I like serial commas.

What's the official position? Both The Chicago Manual of Style and Strunk and White's The Elements of Style say the serial comma should be standard usage, but I believe the AP Stylebook discourages it. This goes along with the fact that writers of fiction and most nonfiction seem to favor the serial comma but journalists don't. It's my understanding that the British, by the way, almost never use it.

But the serial comma remains an interesting subject, if only because of the fact that it is optional. I never object when my writing students don't use it in the class stories that I critique and edit. I just tell them the advantages and disadvantages and let them make up their own minds. I myself will continue to use it, though, because that way I don't ever have to worry about whether there's a clarity problem in one of my sentences. (Or at least a clarity problem caused by the lack of a comma.) As my fellow southerner Forrest Gump would say, that's one less thang.

So . . . what will you do, if the Punctuation Police start banging on your door at three in the morning? When they whip out a manuscript page and point a flashlight at it, will you confess to being a user or an abstainer? Or maybe a commakaze?

Seriously, what do you think of serial commas? Are you for or against?

As I implied in a recent column, different strokes for different folks. Or, in the much wiser words of Kinky Friedman, "Beauty is in the eyes of the beer holder."

Remembering

You are probably related to a military veteran, or at least know one. With today being designated as our national Veteran's Day (Canada refers to it as Rememberance Day), please take time to support your troops in whatever manner you see fit, and to also honor the memory of those gone past. These people have protected your freedom over the centuries and stood sentry on your walls, wherever those walls may have been. Regardless of how you personally feel about any given war, know that it is not the soldier who makes the decision to go off to battle, it is the politicians that send him. The soldier merely does his duty and goes as our leaders have ordered.
Summer of '67

For me, it's been a little over 44 years since I went in-country at Pleiku up in the Central Highlands, then caught a two-engine, tail-ramp aircraft to fly about 80 kilometers east to Camp Radcliffe at a place called Ankhe. My duffel bag was my seat (they didn't worry about seat belts) and my orders in hand were my ticket to fly.

There in the camp, I'd wake up in morning, crawl out of my sleeping bag, wander bleary-eyed from my three-man, wood-constructed hooch, with an aluminum basin in hand and head for the overhead 55 gallon drums that supplied water for our showers, hoping I didn't have to shave in cold water again.


(Photgraph used by permission of Ray Smith at Ray's Map Room. http://rjsmith.com/Images/cav_patch.jpg Visit it some time and click on designated spots to get a photo or short history for that location.

The Patch

Engineers had gone up on Hon Cong Mountain where we had a ground surveillance radar site and poured a slab of concrete. They then proceeded to paint the 1st Air Mobile Cavalry patch in black and yellow on that cement slab. I suspect the theory behind putting it high up on the mountain was that the Cav wanted to mark its territory, much the same as men have done for centuries.

Most of us camped down below had the same black and yellow patch sewn on the left shoulder of our jungle fatigues. Camouflage insignia had not yet come into fashionable army wear, but being as we had no wish to come to the attention of enemy snipers by wearing bright colors, most of us soon used a ball point pen to darken the cavalry yellow.

We weren't the first ones to this party

In the Spring of 1954, the French were heavily engaged in the struggle for Dien Bien Phu, a French fort also built in a valley surrounded by mountains. Their theory was to lure the Viet Minh into a fixed battle rather than hit and run guerrilla tactics. Unfortunately, there was a flaw in the plan and it did not go well. Seems the Viet Minh had found a way to put artillery on the surrounding mountains in order to bombard the French at will. Their fort was soon isolated from the outside world and collapsed.

Days afterward, Groupment Mobile 100, which had been stationed in the Pleiku-Ankhe area to guard the Central Highlands, was ordered to withdraw from their positions in Ankhe as being indefensible. Fifteen kilometers west of the Ankhe airfield, the Viet Minh 803rd Regiment ambushed the French Task Force in a series of running fights along Highway 19. Later, the VM 108th Regiment joined in to spring its own ambush on the French column. Survivors of the Group managed to withdraw to fortifications at Pleiku, but their unit ceased to exist as a fighting formation. Those members killed in the ambush were later buried in the French Military Cemetery not far away on the crest of Mang Yang Pass. Legend has it they were buried upright with their faces to the west, toward France.








(1967 photo of the French graves taken from a Huey by Jim Bracewell, 229th Avn Bn, used by permission of Dave "Davo" Holdorf, 15th Artillery Battalion. http://www.landscaper.net/images/FrGravesMY.jpg

After the fall of Saigon in 1975, the Vietnamese Communists allegedly removed all the white headstones in order to erase reminders of French and American presence in the south.

The Fallen

In the old days, a fallen soldier was usually buried in the area close to where he died. No doubt the French still honor those fallen soldiers laid to rest at Mang Yang Pass, they just no longer have a monument in that location. In more modern times, under the concept of Leave No Man Behind, our fallen servicemen and women are brought back to the States, rather than buried in military cemeteries on foreign soil, such as ours were in France, where many WWII veterans were laid to rest during those war years.

Of Love and Death

My opening salvo in the courtship of my wife, Kiti, was my Take-A-Veteran-To-Lunch Scam. Eventually, it worked.

In more recent years, I informed Kiti that I would like to buried in the veteran's cemetery up in the Black Hills of South Dakota where we used to live. Seems the VA has a policy where the first to go spouse can be placed at the seven foot level and the last to go can be placed just above the other. One name goes on one side of the headstone and the other name goes on the other side. That's our government in its efficiency towards space allocation.

In any case, I happened to mention in passing that whether I go first or last, I'd still like to be on top. Don't know if that's a guy thing or a matter of competiveness.

The Problem

Kiti has an independent spirit. I can live with that and rather enjoy it. But, the rank she held in her Army Reserve Unit is one pay grade higher than my active duty one. With the life I've lived, I really didn't think I'd last this long, but if I want to be the one on top, I believe I'd best try to last a whole lot longer than originally anticipated. Otherwise, she just may pull rank on me. Son of a gun.

Aahh, as we used to say in The Nam, "No sweat, man. Ain't no thing."

Hey, time to go put the flag out on the front of the house before my morning coffee.

Stay well.

And for those of you who've been, "WELCOME HOME."

All the Beautiful Girls are Murdered

"The more things change," wrote a French journalist, "the more they stay the same." I have been thinking about Jean Baptiste Alfonse Kerr's epigram in connection with the mystery genre.
Certainly nothing much changes in the visual arts; styles and subjects and attitudes simply come in and out of fashion. There is no progress. Who would say that any drawing since has surpassed the animal sketches of the cave painters of Lascaux or that metalwork has improved on the Chinese bronzes or the sculptures of Benin? Rather work runs from one extreme to the other in size, in technique, in delicacy of sentiment.

But surely our own favorite genre has seen changes, and changes for the better? Isn't there greater variety? Isn't the level of writing far superior to the old pulps? Aren't the characters more complex? And aren't women writers, in particular, a good deal more welcome than when a reputable paperback house told my agent that they "already had their woman writer"?

All true. And yet Monsieur Kerr's cynical remark has lingered in the back of my mind, since reading one of Jo Nesbø's well written, well plotted, and frankly sadistic mysteries: Snowman. I don't want to lay all the blame on this in-many-ways excellent writer. Other novelists and recent television shows have all had a high body count of pretty young women, not to mention the rabid coverage given to the murders and disappearances of certain members of the female population. Hint: it helps to be blonde, middle class, and attractive.

No, Snowman was only the tipping point, with a variety of attractive women tortured to death in the sort of queasy-making detail once reserved for martyrdoms and high church décor. The fact that each had been adulterous reminded me of an article that was the latest thing back when I was an undergrad. Someone had gotten his (or much less probably) her scholarly bones for an essay on the "good-bad" girl.

She was, according to the author, and I'm in no position to dispute him, something new on the literary scene. A female character who was not solely defined as virgin, wife, or whore, but who could, to a modest extent, live "like a man" and still be an accepted member of society.

And yes, indeed, she has blossomed, as a glance at any of our female detectives, police investigators, or other protagonists will show. Change, indeed. But the preference for female victims, indeed for multiple female victims, has not altered. In fact, the trend away from what P.D. James referred to as "body in the library" stories has only allowed plots to move from the frivolous rococo to the blood and gore baroque.

Crimes are as ingenious as anything Agatha Christie ever cooked up, but done realistically with labeled body parts and blood spatter patterns and all the scientific grand guignol effects of forensic medicine. Add to all this the preference for young, sexy, and beautiful victims, and it doesn't take a Freud to sense a deep seated cultural pattern. Beautiful women are still threatening as well as desirable, and sexual activity for women in still problematical.

Indeed, for any female denizen of the mystery universe, my advice is to dress down and look homely, as it appears to be beauty, rather than the gang membership, seedy neighborhoods or bad company, that, in real life, puts one in harm's way.

Years ago, I was at a program where Mary Higgins Clark noted the eternal popularity of 'the woman in jeopardy' theme, and in the interests of full disclosure I am currently enjoying Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, a classic of the type. Just the same, it is fortunate that the female characters of mystery novels have escaped from being just damsels in distress to participate in all sorts of adventures. Things do change.

But woman as victim is still very much with us. Perhaps as a reaction to the real changes in society, and even in genre fiction, one of the bastions of conservatism, female victims meet worse and gaudier fates than ever before, and, I suspect, in greater numbers.

Things change, yes, indeed, but as the wonderfully named Jean Baptiste Alfonse Kerr observed, sometimes underneath they remain the same.

Digitally Yours

by Neil Schofield

I am a child of the digital age. Or at least the digital age grew up around and alongside me. But, alas, I never grew up with it. I remain but a tiny, tiny child.

And when I read a few weeks ago that a third of British children under ten have a mobile phone, a sixth have a laptop and a twelfth have a social network account, the horrid dimensions of my infantilism became clear.

Witness, I thank you, the unedifying porridge I made of my first attempt to contribute to this blog.

All can be summed up in a Groucho Marx line, as can so many things in life:

Groucho: (reading a document) Why, a five-year-old child would understand this. (beat) Someone run out and find me a five-year-old child, I can't make head nor tail of it.

As a non-grown-up in this vertiginously adult world, what I am doing now is typing, not writing. I still feel it is cheating to stare at a screen on which the pixies are forming my words. (I know, I know, everyone calls them pixels, but I know The Truth. They are the pixies, and they are fractious, fickle little blighters whom it is best not to vex lest evil befall.)

'Digital' to me means you do it with your fingers. Writing is something you do with a pencil and a piece of paper.
When long ago I began writing scripts for cash money, up there on the Writers' Floor we wrote in pencil (or pen - the rules were not set in stone) on an A4 pad, and our scripts were typed  by a proper typist called Camilla. When changes had to me made because the Suits demanded it, cut and paste meant precisely that. Camilla typed out the offending passages, cut them out and pasted them into the master script. Consequently, copies of the script sometimes contained pages on which sections of dialogue were ver so slightly skewed with lines round them like a bad collage. (Mind you, I've nothing against collage. Picasso dabbled in it, during what I believe is now known as his Glue period. And even Ernest Hemingway once famously said: "When I hear the word collage, I reach for my gum.")

Our first computer, a DEC I think, was, in fact, a room. Its capacity was shared with Accounts, so that very often production of a script would be held back because Accounts were doing big sums. I suppose that the capacity of all that wheezing, throbbing metalware was a tiny fraction of that of the tiny machine on which I work now. And we were frightened of it. We called it HAL.
(Incidentally, here's a thing. Arthur C. Clarke was a cunning bloke. If you take the name HAL and take a step forward in the alphabet for each letter, what do you get? All right, everybody knew that.)

It wasn't until the 90's that I was brought face to face with the computer as a personal tool. But I still held on to my yellow HB pencil and my spiral-bound notebook. I still do. All my published stories were written first by hand. Some of my happiest hours have been spent unfurling the Big Parasol, furling a cigarette (yes I know, Dixon, I would have been useless in the US Special Forces) pouring out a Little Something and settling down with pencil and notebook to see what my wandering brain will drag in. I never know what it will be - my brain has a mind of its own.
I've still got my notebooks from ten years ago. And it amazes me that these spiderish scrawls ever found their way into print. Among all the stuttering and stammering and crossings-out and balloons and arrows, there are little notes. Sometimes a one-word plot idea, sometimes just a title. I've  got some knock-out titles. Titles for which the story never turned up, but might one day, who knows?
Life down here among the pencilleros will forever be associated with the wonderful taste of cellulose and the gritty feel of graphite betwen my teeth. Apart from anything else, an HB pencil smells good. And by golly, mother, it tastes good too. What's more, an HB pencil doesn't stare moronically at you and deny, hand on its traitorous little heart, that you ever, ever wrote a story called 'Detour'. Faced with that mulish stupidity, even the old Yorkshire trick of weeping and pleading  cuts no ice. I've tried it.

Once I have done my typing, it still isn't finished. I have this thing about reading a wodge of typescript. I can read it and understand it, but I can't take it in as a whole. I have a problem in comparing and contrasting this scene with that scene ten pages before. At the end I know whether it works or not. But that isn't the whole story. Is everything working well down in the bowels of the thing? Because, you understand, for me, never mind your novels, every single story is an aircraft carrier.
What I have to do is the following: physically lay out the story page by page on the dining-table. (If it's a novella, which has happened once or twice, I have to pull out both leaves of the table. What I am going to do when the Book is licked into shape is anyone's guess. Mimi might have a word or two to say about a forty-foot refectory table sticking out into the garden through a hole roughly hacked through the wall. But I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.)
When it's all laid out, I sit high up on the back of a chair and look down on the whole work. Like that, I can see everything. I can see what works and what doesn't. I have been known to talk during this bit: "You must be mad. That bit doesn't belong there. It's too early." or: "That bit's too long and lumpy. Why don't you break it up with some back story from that bit over there."
People who walk in during this process usually make an excuse and go hurriedly about their business.

After that I have to edit, using the hated C&P. But even then, it isn't finished. I put it in an envelope and place it on the table by the door. There it sits, sometimes for a week or more, until I know I am really happy with that last line, or until Mimi threatens to put it into the recycling bag. Nobody ever reads my stories except me and the editor. Mimi doesn't read English very well, and because I'm bad at oral storytelling, trying to tell and explain a story to her is like trying to explain the leg-before-wicket rule to a young owl.
So, all in all, writing chez nous is a bit of a cottage industry. I keep expecting tourist groups from Osaka and Wichita Falls to wander through and take photographs. I also feel that, at the same time, Mimi should be stitching together little linen bags of lavender, or fashioning litle pottery animals. I haven't suggested this : I may be mad, but I'm not yet suicidal.

My fervent hope is, that perhaps, just perhaps, contributing to Sleuthsayers is going to force me to join the grown-ups.
But, to prove that I am on the way to becoming a Big Person, I have to get this piece on the blog. This may take some time. First I have to run out and find a five-year-old child.