Well, it's the first Friday in November. And, if you're reading this, you've managed to survive another Halloween (and the accompanying storm, if you're on the East Coast).
We've got just one more night of terror to come, this year: Election Eve.
That's right, come next Tuesday night -- no matter who wins -- polls indicate about half the nation will be upset about it, certain that we're entering a new era of a "long national nightmare." But, there's also something fun going on . And, that fun stuff involves not only elections, but also a real-life mystery of sorts.
Signs of the Times
Mysteries come in many shapes and sizes. So do political campaign signs.
Those signs seem to multiply like rabbits! Don't they? They sprout up just about everywhere -- at least around my town.
Here's a mystery for you: Which of these campaign signs isn't really campaigning for the candidate on the sign?
If you picked the sign below, you're right!
But, you may ask, if it's not campaigning for Mitt Romney, who or what is this sign campaigning for? And, Dixon Hill, how do you know it's not campaigning for Romney?
To answer the last question first, let me show you another sign put out by the same group. This sign clearly does not support Romney.
Now … to answer that first question, let's do a little investigating. Shall we?
Since a fairly recent Supreme Court decision, Political Action Committees (PACs) have been granted much freer range for advertisement associated with political campaigns. The PAC behind this sign is shown below.
Citizens for Sushi?
Who the heck are they? Are they really a Political Action Committee? Or are they something a little different? The Answer is BOTH
They're a real PAC, but the members are people in the restaurant industry. Very particular members, in fact. To see what I mean, let's take a closer look at part of that Obama sign. You see, the Stingray Sushi restaurant uses this logo -- complete with the anime girl -- on much of its advertisement.
Below is a shot of the Stingray Sushi restaurant, here in Scottsdale. See any signage similarities?
Stingray Sushi is a sushi bar for young, hip kids with lots of cash to drop. The owners have worked like crazy to promote their restaurant, using an anime girl -- the same one you see on the political signs -- on signs around town, for several years.
Scottsdale and most towns in The Valley, however, have very strict sign codes. There are almost no billboards in The Valley of The Sun. So, Stingray Sushi opted to plaster their signs on city buses and other locations that they could buy access to.
The problem is, that little anime gal sometimes gets a bit risque. Note the look on her face (and the use of her hand) to lend a slightly different meaning to the words "Mitt bit my sushi!" in the Romney ad.
She wound up being too risque for city buses in at least one instance -- resulting in the restaurant having to pull their ads.
What's a restaurant owner to do???
Well, in this case, they take advantage of a fairly recent Supreme Court Decision and create their own PAC. Then they go out and make signs supporting both candidates, and post them all over town.
This is a type of guerrilla marketing -- meaning that it's low-key, and relatively unregulated. It flies beneath the radar of most cities, because state law doesn't permit cities to mess with campaign signs. In fact, federal law is pretty strict about what you can do to limit campaign signage and advertisement, I believe (some of you feds might lend a correcting voice here, if needed). And, this permits companies like Stingray Sushi to make a little advertisement "hay" while the political "sun shines".
Maybe you don't think that's a sort of fun idea, but I do. I think it lends a bit of whimsy to a political season filled with scare tactics and negative advertisement, dumping virtual gallons of garbage into my living room every day.
And Stingray Sushi isn't the only business engaged in this practice. A few more local samples are pasted below.
These guys are giving away free gelato -- all you have to do is cast your text-vote!!
And, you might want to note: KJZZ is our local NPR station.
If you've been thinking this practice is "low brow" maybe this shot lends a different feeling to the idea.
So, have any of you seen examples of guerrilla marketing masquerading as campaign signs in your neighborhood? Let us all know -- in the comments section.
The weather is cooling, the leaves are falling and hopefully, the East coast is drying out from Sandy. We come to the time of year when we stop and catch our breath and remember our blessings and the reasons we give thanks near the end of every November in the United States. It's a perfect time to fall face-first into a novel or collection of short stories.
My subscriptions are up-to-date and I find happy surprises in my mailbox to help me fill a more slow-paced couple of weeks before the holidays pluck us into tizzies of wild living with parties, get-togethers and all those answers of "What do I give to people on my list?" questions. But before we delve into all that hustle and bustle, let's find something to take us away from it all ala Calgon for a bit of time we can call our own.
I am an avowed lover of short stories. In fact, my bookshelves are literally overflowing with collections of short works of fiction. When I first started writing, I was advised that short stories didn't sell as easily as novels and no one wanted anthologies of short works unless they were authored by someone with the background of a Stephen King or Joyce Carol Oates.
Let's be polite and just say they were partly wrong. I own several anthologies of short fiction (and my stories are included in a few, too) or writers who have yet to bust through to a mention in Forbes magazine. That doesn't mean the stories aren't just as good. Returning movie videos, I ran into a friend who was raving about a movie she'd just watched that neither of us had heard of before. It must have been straight-to-video, which used to mean second-rate. Now it seems to mean less than stellar backing. Marketing isn't everything for movies and books, but it does make a difference. Movies have a shot at gathering additional backing and promotion when they are presented at film festivals like Sundance and Cannes.
Books are judged somewhat by their covers, meaning not just the illustration, but also the name of the publisher promoting them. Short story collections are not always in high demand by publishers, unless -- yes, it's true -- they are authored by a brand name. That doesn't mean the stories aren't worth your time, and yes, money.
One of the best written short story collections I've read recently belong to our own John M. Floyd, published in CLOCKWORK. This isn't exactly a plea to buy his book. It's a head's up to alert those who don't already own a copy, you are missing out on some excellent reading.
But John's is not the only short story collection worth reading!
Try just one and let me know if you agree short stories are fabulous.
Don't forget you can still enter our contest for a free copy of David Dean's book. Details are in his column, right below mine...
Before we get to the main topic of today's lecture, a brief musical interlude.
Michael P. Smith, one of my favorite songwriters, released a new CD last week, and what do you know? The very first track, "Accokeek," is perfect for a
mystery website on Halloween, involving both a murder and a ghost story. I found this concert recording of that
song on Youtube. Alas, the soundtrack is a bit fuzzy, but
it is worth the effort.
Now then. A happy, safe, and spooky Halloween to each and all. And speaking of spooks....
At the university where I work a lot of the students have been engaged in an activity called Humans versus Zombies which is, as near as I can tell, a, elaborate and humongous game of Tag.The players wear orange headbands or armbands depending on which team (species?) they are on, and race between points of safety.
Okay. Makes more sense then streaking, which was popular on campus when I was a wee laddie. So when I say I don't get it, I don't mean the game, I mean the current fascination with zombies.
The weird thing is that the world is dealing with, so to speak, two unrelated types of zombies. The first are the revived dead persons we think of as a piece of Haitian folklore/religion, but which apparently originated in Africa.
Novelist Zora Neale Hurston, doing anthropological research in Haiti in the 1930s, was apparently the first to suggest there might be a pharmacological explanation for zombies; i.e. drugs that simulate death and/or controlled their will.
But zombies had already staggered into popular culture. White Zombie, starring Bela Lugosi had appeared in 1931.
And it is in movies that the second wave of zombies arrived. George A Romero is credited (blamed?) for starting it with his 1968 hit The Night of the Living Dead. And the odd thing about this, of course, is that the movie never calls the stumbling brain-seekers zombies. But those are the ones that people have in mind when they use the term today.
People who think hard (maybe too hard) about society have suggested that we can learn something about the current world view by noticing which monsters are popular in a given time. For example, see the movies in the fifties in which the monsters are the productions of mutations caused by nuclear weapons. What were people worrying about then? You bet.
Or consider the rash of vampire movies in then 1980s when AIDS made contact with blood a terrifying issue.
So what does it say about our society today that a prominent monster is the mindless, undead, seeker of brains? Insert political joke here, I suppose.
And speaking of politics, our favorite federal government joined the zombie industry this year, with predictable results.
The illustration on the right is from a comic bookcreated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, using a character's dream of a zombie attack as an opportunity to explain how to prepare for an emergency.
I'm sure it seemed very cute and clever, but when, a few months later, some people were accused of doing nasty cannibalistic things the CDC was forced to issue a statement: "CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms).”
As I have said before, if a government author thinks he is being clever and hip, he is probably making a tragic error.
Let's go out with some more music. Do it Rockapella!...
Before we begin I have a very important announcement: We here at SleuthSayers love our readers, so we are going to offer a special treat. We authors are going to give away copies of our books (or similar goodies), one a month, starting now, and continuing until we run out of gifts or readers. This month's prize will be a paperback edition of my book, "The Thirteenth Child", signed by yours truly. All you have to do is email us at Velma(at)secretary(dot)net by midnight, November 3. The winner will be selected at random. Please put the word "Contest" in the subject line. Best of luck...and now back to our regularly scheduled blog.
Halloween has always been one of my favorite days on the calendar. It falls during one of the most beautiful times of the year, involves costumes, the chance of being frightened (and hopefully nothing more), running around at night, and at the end, actual rewards--candy! What's not to like? Of course, some of those enticements are more meaningful when you're a kid, but I guess the spooky charm of it all has never lost its appeal to me--or my wife, for that matter.
When I was a boy growing up in Georgia, I thought it was the next best thing to Christmas. During that long-ago time and in that far-away place, we kids were allowed to pretty much roam at will for blocks in every direction during the daylight hours. It was generally understood that grown-ups would keep an eye on you wherever you went, and certainly report to your parents any code-of-conduct violations they observed. At least this was what we believed and trusted in at the time. But even with this almost unfettered freedom, we seldom ventured beyond our own neighborhood. I think we had a "Beyond this be dragons," philosophy as children. Halloween night, however, all this changed, if only for a few brief hours.
Donning masks, that today would be laughably simple and unfrightening, we gathered into packs with our friends, snatched paper grocery sacks, or old pillow cases, from our moms' hands, and tore off into the darkness--even if it fell on a school night! Besides being a genuinely scary sensation, this roaming through the night, it was also a race with consequences. Every other kid in the known world was trying to get the last of the candy at the next house along your way! An intolerable possibility! When we would begin our scavenging, porch lights winked like a vast constellation across the city, but within a scant few hours, those same lights began to vanish, one by one, returning the world to its previous drab and unmagical state--they had run out of candy. Intolerable, indeed.
This inevitable consequence would force us to race from house-to-house, and eventually to leave our neighborhood for parts unknown. There was no need to discuss our direction of travel, as only one direction made true sense--east. To go west was to cross Hamilton Road and venture into a vast shanty town of mill-workers and their very tough kids. As these same kids were running roughshod over our own neighborhood, their sheer numbers and determination an unstoppable force, Gothic in both number and consequence--we flew east ahead of them. A neighborhood called "Winchester" was our bountiful target. I think they viewed us kids from "Lester's Meadows" in the same fearful light we did the trolls from "Bealwood"--Beal as in Beelzebub. But no matter, we were swift and artful, and returned to our homes laden with booty!
Dumping all the goodies onto the floor we would sort through the takings, setting aside treats that did not suit our particular palate. Then, using these as barter, we would engage in furious trading sessions--you would have thought we were young Wall Street brokers--hard-nosed and keenly avaricious. It was a great night!
This was all vastly different from the true origins of All Hallows, or its earlier incarnation of Samhain. Samhain was an observance by the ancient Celts of Gaul and Britain commemorating the loss of the sun with the coming winter and celebrating its eventual return in the spring. Perhaps because of that descending darkness, this was also the night that the dead returned to walk among the living. Encounters with the dead were not generally considered a good thing, as it could signify that your own time amongst the living was at an end. As if this was not a frightening enough situation, the Celtic priests (Druids as they were called), made this a night of human sacrifice, piling prisoners-of war, criminals, and other undesirables, into a wicker framework designed to resemble a giant man, and setting them ablaze. By the light of this titanic, and gruesome, torch, everyone feasted and danced the night away. I often suspected the kids from Bealwood had similar plans for me and my friends. Even Julius Caesar, not known as a squeamish man, was affronted by this practice, which apparently he witnessed during his invasion of Britain in 54 BC. In a righteous fury he had thousands put to the sword--much better; more civilized certainly. When one pines for "the good old days" one should be specific...and careful.
With the coming of Christianity, and the adoption of the cross by various Irish, Scottish, and British (not to be confused with English) kings, things began to change--but not quickly. Old habits die hard as they say, and the Celtic belief that Halloween was a night when the spirits of the dead walked amongst the living, just would not die a natural death. Not wishing to alienate these new Christians, the Holy Roman Church did something smart--they just co-opted the occasion. Making the day after Samhain a church feast (Holy Day) to celebrate the unknown saints--All Saints (as opposed to a specific saint), the evening prior became All Hallows Eve, or in the vernacular of the day, Hallow e'en.
"It Is Dawn; We Go"
It only took a millennium or so, for the terror of Samhain to be tamed into the costumed trick-or-treating we know today. Treats were often left to propitiate wandering spirits, as well as ancient gods and monsters, and certainly my friends and I were often labeled little monsters even when out of costume. Failure to play by the appropriate rules would lead to tricks being practiced on the un-believers. A just arrangement, in my opinion. Costumes of demons and ghosts incorporated some of the darker elements of the earlier pagan practice; being also useful in avoiding identification as regards the aforementioned tricks, and therefore practical, as well.
So, from dark and bloody beginnings, children now cavort through the evening in the service of their sweet-tooth, their costumes giving them a sense of anonymity, and therefore, freedom, even as their parents trail mere paces behind ( a concession to a different, and once again, darker time). The night is filled with laughter, and not screams, or at least not ones as fearful as Caesar must have heard issuing from within the wicker man. The dark side is held at bay, even on the eve of its commemoration, and I, for one, am not sorry. Happy Halloween!
EXCERPT FROM Mother Hubbard Has A CORPSE IN THE CUPBOARD
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Anyone who’s read a Callie Parrish
Mystery knows I’ve never written a thirteenth chapter. I’m not superstitious, but I, Calamine Lotion
Parrish, have not and will not write a Chapter Thirteen.It started with my first book when I thought
about buildings with no thirteenth floor and why that might be.
When
I was a child and went to Charleston or Columbia with Daddy, we rode in
elevators, and he let me press the buttons. I didn’t realize there was no floor called the thirteenth.I thought they just left out the number
between twelve and fourteen because there was something evil associated with thirteen.I believed
the thirteenth floor existed, but it must have been a place of secrets.That fascination with hidden doings behind
closed doors and the slight fear triggered by those thoughts probably account for
my enjoying horror stories along with the mysteries I’ve loved since my first Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew books.
This
time, I have a really good reason for being scared of thirteen and refusing to write a Chapter Thirteen. I just finished reading The Thirteenth Child by David Dean.I’m telling you: When I got to
the last fifty pages of that book and what happened on Halloween, I wet my panties.I’m not kidding.Problem was where I was reading.In bed.I was snuggled all cozy under the blankets reading when my bladder protested being full of Diet Coke, and I
was too scared to get up and go to the
bathroom by myself.
Big Boy
All
one hundred and forty pounds of my full-grown dog Big Boy slept like a puppy on
the rug beside the bed, but by the time I woke him up to go with me, it was too
late.Of course, then I had to go to the
bathroom for a shower, to the kitchen to put the wet things in the clothes
washer, and to the linen closet for dry sheets. After we did all that, Big Boy wanted to potty, so I took him
outside.He thought we’d go for a walk,
too, but I only let him hide behind the oak tree and do his girl-dog squat to tee tee like he
always does.Made him come right back
into the house. Feeling a little guilty
about refusing to walk him, I gave Big Boy a banana Moon Pie. His vet doesn't like for me to feed him my favorite--chocolate--so I have to keep two boxes in the cabinet at all times.
I’m
not telling anyone why David Dean chose The
Thirteenth Child as the title of his book.Let ‘em read it, and find out for themselves.I will say it was a good decision, and I’m
going to visit that book again.I might read it
in the bathtub next time so that I won’t have so far to go if it scares the—oops!I’d better not go there.
NOTE FROM FRAN RIZER: Thanks to Callie for blogging for me this week. I thought with Halloween upon us, it would be nice to hear what she thought of David Dean's new book, but please excuse her references to bodily functions. I try to control Callie, but she says and does as she pleases. There's a great Halloween scene in The Thirteenth Child. Check it out, but you might want to read near the bathroom. .
She came into my office like a gal out in the woods in one of those sexy movies, smiled at me, flowed across the room with fluidity of hot molasses, sank into the big leather chair opposite my desk, and crossed her legs slowly, gracefully, gently, as though taking care not to bruise any smooth, tender flesh.
… is how Hollywood PI Shell Scott, the sole owner of Shelton Scott Investigations, describes the lady who enters his office in “The Guilty Pleasure,” the first story in Richard S. Prather’s The Shell Scott Sampler. The lady turns out not to be a bimbo or floozy or dame or babe or gal, but a very rich, respectful lady asking for help.
Richard S. Prather (1921-2007) introduced readers to his hardboiled detective, Shell Scott, in the 1950s. I don’t remember when I began reading his stories, but it was about the time I also discovered Hammett and Chandler. I liked his novels and stories best because “he also saw the banana peel on the sidewalk. And then he dispatched his Hollywood private eye...to take a little walk” (thrillingdetective.com). It is the banana peel on the sidewalk that separates Shell Scott from the other hardboiled PIs. He doesn’t take life too seriously. Like all hardboiled detectives, He uses his fist, gun, and intuition to solve crimes and catch criminals. Though he’s always thinking about sleeping with which ever woman comes his way, he is no sexist.
“Eye Witness: Richard S. Prather: 1921-2007” an article by Kevin Burton Smith in Mystery Scene Magazine (No. 99, 2007) reminded me of how much I enjoyed the Prather stories. After reading the article, I exhumed from one of the boxes of books where they were buriedthe four books of Prather’s that hadn’t been lost in my move from California back home to Tennessee and put them in my to-be-reread box. I didn’t think of him again until I started reading Stephen King. They have nothing in common, except both are writers, and I can’t explain why reading King reminded me of Prather.
To revive my interest in this non-iconic writer, I reread the five stories in The Shell Scott Sampler. The best story is “The Guilty Pleasure” in which Lydia wants Shell to find out what the little thing she found under her bed is. No spoiler here, so I’m not saying what it was. Okay, I know some of you will guess.
The worst story is “The Cautious Killers” in which Shell has to find out who shot at him and why as he and his date and another couple exited a restaurant. Too much descriptive baggage surrounds an acceptable plot. More telling than showing, especially the descriptions of the women, which slows the action. I thought maybe Prather was writing to increase the payment for the story, you know, a penny or two per word. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the story.
Shell seems more familiar to me than Hammett's Continental Op or Chandler’s Marlowe, so much so that I feel comfortable referring to him by his first name. Of all the hardboiled PIs, Shell is the one I would rather have drink with in a bar in Hollywood as I listened to his stories about his cases, provided I could keep his attention from straying every time a beautiful woman walked into the bar.
Warning to all writers of murder mysteries: do not plan any murders on Halloween. I have it on good authority that the victim will come back to haunt you. This authority also warned me not to use my computer on Halloween because the gremlins that cause so much frustration– frozen hard drives, lost files, missing fonts, etc.– become zombies and vampires and werewolves and attack the user– namely me.
Like most of my writer friends, I enjoy reading different genres. In fact I read books and stories in almost all genres, except maybe romance novels--and now and then I even like a good love story. As for authors, my favorites run from Bradbury to King to McMurtry to Cormac McCarthy, with a lot of offbeat writers in between. One of my absolute favorites will probably always be Nelson DeMille--I love his novels and his style--and only a couple of years ago I discovered another great author, someone most crime/suspense readers have known about for a long time: Lee Child.
For some reason I didn't start reading his Jack Reacher series at the beginning. I started with the twelfth installment, a novel called Nothing to Lose. But after that one I was hooked. I went on to seek out and devour every Reacher novel I could find (no Child left behind?), and I only recently finished the latest, A Wanted Man. Unlike any other series I can recall, this one had not a single misfire; I enjoyed every one of these books. Yes, some were better than others--I consider The Killing Floor, The Enemy, Die Trying, and The Hard Way to be among his best--but all of them are darn good. Apparently a lot of readers agree.
If you don't know Jack . . .
Reacher is one of those rare characters that both men and women seem to like. He's a former West Point grad and Army major who has since lost most of his respect for authority and conformity, and has a strict personal code of honor that sometimes reminds me of Robert B. Parker protagonists like Spenser and Jesse Stone. Reacher is tough, smart, and resourceful; he owns nothing but a foldable toothbrush, an ATM card, and whatever clothes he happens to be wearing at the moment; he has no attachments, no home, no car, not even a driver's license; and he travels mainly via bus or hitchhiking. Maybe that's why he's so appealing--he's nothing like the rest of us. He also doesn't talk much. One of the few criticisms I've heard of Child's writing style is that the sentence "Reacher said nothing" happens too often. But, hey, Reacher often does say nothing.
The only drawback I've found to the series is that the titles usually aren't related at all to the content, which means I sometimes can't remember what title goes with what adventure. And in the grand scheme of things, that ain't much to complain about.
Child psychology
The author, I'm told, is a native of England and a former television director--and I would guess that his background in TV probably influenced the entertainment value of his novels. His books are always smooth, fast reads; there's a lot of action and excitement, and very few slow spots. That's exactly what most TV productions strive for (although they don't always deliver), and is a perfect illustration of one of Elmore Leonard's famous Ten Rules of Writing: leave out the parts that people skip.
I think the best thing about Child's writing is that the stories themselves are fascinating, with plot reversals throughout. I once heard that the creators of Cheers chose a Boston bar as its setting because in a neighborhood tavern different people would be coming in and going out all the time, thus there would always be stories available. I would suggest that Lee Child made Reacher a drifter so that he could have limitless opportunities to run into interesting situations.
Short (?) subjects
As a movie lover, I must say a few words about the upcoming and long-awaited film adaptation of Child's novel One Shot, called (believe it or not) Jack Reacher. I was a bit surprised by the casting of Tom Cruise in the lead role, mainly because Reacher's size--six-five and 200+ pounds--is, in the novels, a big factor in what he can accomplish and the impression he makes on the other characters. I don't doubt for a minute Cruise's star power or his acting ability, but from a physical standpoint he does seem an odd choice. (Russell Crowe isn't a giant either, but it seems to me he would've made a perfect Reacher.) Having said that, I do understand that Child himself approved of the casting decision, and that helps dispel some of my doubts. I suspect that I'll wind up enjoying the movie.
Something else that's close to my heart is short stories. There are now two shorts starring Jack Reacher: "Second Son" and "Deep Down." Both are available on Kindle, and I heard that the paperback version of The Affair contains a copy of "Second Son." Apparently there is also one more Child short story featuring Reacher, although not as the main character: "James Penney's New Identity." I look forward to reading all three.
Reaching Reacher readers
Have any of you read Lee Child? If so, do you like his work? Which book in the series is your favorite? Your least favorite? Are you familiar only with his novels, like me, or have you read his short stories as well? What do you think of the Reacher character? If you were producing the new movie, who would you choose for the part?
For those of you who haven't read the novels, here they are, in order of publication:
According to the old story written by Mary Shelley in the early 1800's, Dr. Victor Frankenstein stitched several body parts together in order to make his creation a whole being. Then to give it life in his laboratory, he jolted it with bolts of lightning on one dark and stormy night. At that pivotal moment (in the movies) as his creation began to stir, he cried out, "It's alive." How great to see one's creation live.
Hey, it's five days to Halloween and I needed a theme, so hang in here.
I, for one, don't have a laboratory, only a study where I write. However, I have on separate occasions, in the not too long ago, taken two very dead short stories into my study and laid their little rejected carcasses out for autopsy in the dead of night. After much contemplation, and perhaps a jolt of Jack Daniels (sorry, but that's as close as I can get to white lightning in furtherance of this Frankenstein analogy), I went to work on resurrecting their possibilities.
The first corpse was a reject from Woman's World magazine. Because of the strict structure for these 700 word mini-mysteries, a second paying market is rather difficult to find for these creations. I poked it here, prodded it there, and tried to slide a whole new skeleton underneath the flesh of the story, but it just wasn't working. In the end, I left the old skeleton in place for the structure, massaged the body a little and spruced up the outside for appearance's sake. I then, surprise, surprise, sold it to an editor named Dindy at a little known market, Swimming Kangaroo, for the grand sum of $25. Yeah, I know, $25 is quite a come down from the $500 that Woman's World pays, but at least this was better than having the little monster running around loose in inventory. Amazingly, this editor liked the WW structure, plus I would now be published internationally. Think Dindy. Think Swimming Kangaroo. Had to be Australia. Right? I was gonna be an internationally published author! Time to get out the bubbly.
And then the check came. Turns out the return address was in Texas. So much for the international part. Even so, I was preparing to send Dindy another one of these resurrected mini creatures, when Swimming Kangaroo evidently lost a stroke (or had one) and went under.
My next attempt at bringing life to the recently deceased came when Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine rejected one of my standalone stories. It was one which Rob had critiqued approximately nine months earlier and had made some good suggested changes. I thought we had it made after my 2011 re-write, but nope, here it came back in a body bag during the middle of February 2012. It may have been cold outside, but the timing for the deceased' toe-tagging and autopsy turned out to be quite fortuitous.
A few months before, when the call for submissions to the 2013 MWA anthology came out, I had not been able to brainstorm any ideas for the anthology's theme of something mysterious in a box. And then at the last moment, right here on the autopsy table in front of me was laid out a corpse named "The Delivery." Oddly enough, it was about something mysterious in a box, a story written long before MWA's call for submissions. Kismet was obviously knocking at my door. Who was I not to answer?
I gave my dead creation another jolt. It stirred, so I packed it up along with five of its clones and shipped them back to New York City just before deadline. And waited. And waited. And waited, just like any anxious mad scientist would whose creation had gone off to the Big City.
At last, notice arrived back through the ether. My creation had been accepted. It was then that I knew for sure and cried to the heavens, "It lives, it lives!"
Coming to a book store near you, the Mystery Writers of America anthology The Mystery Box, April 2013.
Victorians loved a good mystery. Quite a few Victorian authors used murder, theft, financial malfeasance, and investigations as a major plot device. Certainly Charles Dickens did in Edwin Drood, Bleak House, and Martin Chuzzlewit. More unexpectedly, Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton, revolves around a murder mystery, as does Charlotte Yonge's The Trial. But today I would like to give special attention to Anthony Trollope, that unbelievably prolific author, who for some reason has long been labelled a "serious", even dull author. All I can say is that he had a wicked sense of humor, and understood - and wrote about - women better than any other Victorian author I've ever read. Granted, his novels were the opposite of fanciful, set in the realities of middle-class and upper-middle-class Victorian life. Yet he used a lot of sensational material, including murder, arson, forgery (Orley Farm), theft, bigamy, and illegitimacy. He did the most realistic portrait of a working prostitute (as a major character!) in The Vicar of Bullhampton that I've ever run across in Victorian literature. So where did he get his reputation for respectability? I have no idea...
Anyway, some of my favorite novels, which revolve around crime, are: The Eustace Diamonds: Lizzie Eustace, is a very shady Lady; she marries a baronet for his money and gets it all when he dies of consumption very early in the novel, including a fabulous diamond necklace that is the bone of contention between her and her husband's attorneys. They say it's an heirloom, and belongs to the estate; she says possession is ALL of the law, and it's hers. When the necklace is stolen, everybody is under suspicion, and the repercussions of the investigation range from the tragic to the hilarious. (One of the great subplots of this, by the way, is Lizzie's suitors - a wealthy baronet's widow, no matter how scheming, is going to be sought after. There's the Corsair, Lord George de Bruce Carruthers; Lord Fawn, who is only one minim of intelligence above Bertie Wooster; and her cousin, Frank Greystock, the standard strong-jawed Victorian hero; and the Reverend Emilius, the Victorian equivalent of a televangelist. Don't count on knowing who will end up with whom...)
In the sequel, Phineas Redux, a hero from another novel, Phineas Finn, returns and is accused of murdering political rival Bonteen by bludgeoning him to death on a dark night (and you thought politics was dangerous today...). But Lizzie Eustace is back (how I love that character!), and has parked herself with the victim's widow, where they condole and support each other until Lizzie's current husband turns out to be one of the other major suspects...
Moving from murder to high finance, there's The Way We Live Now, which is all about stock manipulation (mostly stock in railroads in Patagonia and elsewhere, all mythical, but the London pounds are real) by the masterly dastardly Augustus Melmotte. Everyone is up to their neck in financial malfeasance, life is sweet, profits are high, and no one can understand what's wrong with it- until the whole thing comes crashing down. This was made into (imho) an excellent PBS miniseries with a scenery-chewing David Suchet as Melmotte (which must have been a nice change for him after the tight-buttoned Poirot).
Besides crime, women, hunting, and politics, Trollope did madness and obsession frighteningly well:
The Reverend Josiah Crawley in The Last Chronicle of Barset.
A recurring character in the Barchester novels, Crawley is desperately
poor, fiendishly proud, with a wife and children who are always on the
verge of starvation, and for whom he will accept nothing in the way of
charity. In this novel, Crawley is accused of theft - and as the
investigation goes on, he comes to believe that he may well have done
it.
But Crawley has nothing on Louis Trevelyan in He Knew He Was Right who becomes so jealous of his wife - on such extremely insufficient grounds that Othello seems fairly reasonable - that he takes their baby away and flees to the continent. Nor on Frank Kennedy, whose descent into madness is charted over two novels, Phineas Finn and Phineas Redux. By the end of them, Mr. Kennedy has become a religious monomaniac who demands that his wife return simply so they can suffer together - and who tries to kill Phineas in the name of God and morality. And, just to prove that Trollope was no sexist, there is Mrs. O'Hara in An Eye for An Eye, who, when the dastardly Fred Neville seduces and does not marry her daughter, pushes him off a cliff. (Yes, she goes insane afterwards, but personally I think she was just trying to avoid a hanging.)
So, for those of you who are looking for some old-fashioned crime and punishment and madness, check out Anthony Trollope - available in paperback and on Kindle.
NOTES:
We are, God willing and the creek don't rise, on a cruise as this is published, so forgive me if I haven't
responded in a couple of weeks to any postings!
Links to novels on one of the many sites offering free Trollope eBooks have been included.
I walked up to the counter in the public library. "Excuse me. Did anyone turn in a thumb drive yesterday?"
"Several," said the clerk. "What color was it?"
"White. Well, more of a cream."
She nodded and sorted through a box behind the counter. "One of these?" There were five, almost identical.
I gave them a careful look-see. "That's the one!"
She handed it to me. I said thanks and took it back to my seat. I plugged the flash drive into my laptop and started scrolling through the files. Based on their titles the drive's previous owner had had a great interest in knitting and cake recipes. Not much of a speller either.
In 1967 I enrolled as a freshman at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and moved into a dormitory on 19th Street between E and F Streets. Like a lot of new residents of the District my new-found college friends and I took joy in roaming this fascinating city whenever we had the chance.
One night in October, around midnight, following a late night walk, we found ourselves behind a colonial mansion two blocks away from my dorm. The mansion had been converted to offices, and behind it were park benches. We sat down gazing up at the three story building and after several minutes we noticed something decidedly eerie. Someone dressed in a white gown was walking through the building and up and down the winding stair case that connected the three floors carrying a lighted candle. We watched, transfixed, for several minutes, until suddenly the figure disappeared.
This was long before the age of the internet and instant knowledge gratification. So when we decided to look further into the history of the building we did so by hitting the university library the next morning. The house we had sat behind, and watched as that candle moved from window to window, was (and is) Octagon House, the headquarters of the American Institute of Architects and, more importantly for our purposes, purportedly one of the most haunted houses in Washington D.C.
Octagon House was built by Colonel John Taylor in 1801 and served as a temporary White House for James and Dolley Madison following the sacking of Washington D.C. and the partial burning of the White House by the British in the war of 1812. It was in Octagon house that President Madison eventually signed the Treaty of Ghent, finally ending that war. And the ghosts that reportedly reside in the house? Well, according to legend the most prominent of the spirits are the two daughters of Colonel Taylor, each of whom separately met their deaths falling down the circular stair case that is the architectural centerpiece of the building. But also, over the years, a gambler reportedly shot to death on the third floor of the house, a British soldier, and various slaves, who lived in shacks behind the house, have all been observed in the dark of night frequenting the building.
It’s a funny thing with ghost stories. Ask me if I believe in ghosts and I will say “no.” Ask me if I have seen any and I’ll look a bit embarrassed and say “perhaps yes.” And I wouldn’t be referring only to those candles.
My mother died in 2010, and thereafter my brother and his wife rehabbed her St. Louis house for sale. When we visited St. Louis that Christmas we went by the house to examine the miracles they had wrought. As I was getting ready to leave through the front door I turned around and there was my mother, standing next to me and putting on her coat. She smiled, I blinked, and then she was gone.
Several years earlier my elder son Devon worked for the summer in my wife’s hometown of Vincennes, Indiana. He stayed with my wife’s sister and husband, who lived in a beautiful old Sears house, lovingly restored, in the heart of town. The house is also, purportedly, haunted – an elderly lady is frequently seen walking through the rooms. One evening Devon had the house to himself – my in-laws having left it in his care while they lit out on a camping trip. Devon, lonely and perhaps a bit nervous, called us long distance that evening. In the midst of the conversation he screamed. “What happened?” we yelled into the mouthpiece of our phone. It took several seconds for Devon to compose himself. He had sensed something behind him, and when he turned there was a huge face leering at him several inches away. The face, it turned out, was on a balloon. The balloon, in turn, had been left downstairs in the dining room – a leftover reminder from my sister-in-law’s birthday. The balloon had (somehow) floated through the dining room, down a short hall and then up the back “servants" staircase,” coming to rest right behind Devon as he spoke on the upstairs phone.
So. A simple explanation. The balloon was carried by air currents, no doubt fueled by the air conditioner returns, through the house and then up the back stairs. But why, one wonders, did it stop right behind Devon? And why with the face turned just so?
The episodes recounted above share a thread common to most "ghostly" encounters – the evidence of the ghost itself comes down to wisps and shreds. It’s all potentially explainable – over active imaginations, stimulation brought on by atmospherics, coincidences that align just so. Actual evidence of a haunting is pretty hard to come by.
But not always. The day that this article posts we are in Bardstown, Kentucky -- en route to a family reunion back in Vincennes. There is a stretch of road in Kentucky, just outside of Bardstown in the midst of the Bourbon Trail that has long been reported to be haunted. As cars come around an “s” turn in the road a flickering figure can, at times, be discerned hovering in front of the car. Eventually, in an attempt to prove that something really is out there, some local amateur paranormal investigators set up a camera on a hillside overlooking the road. The camera recorded many cars rounding the curve for days, and showed nothing. Nothing that is until the clip below was filmed. Watch very carefully, paying close attention to the area right in front of that car as it rounds the turns.
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Okay. Deep breath. Gotcha, didn’t I? (Yet another example of framing the pitch!) By the way, that road isn't even in Kentucky.
Having moved, I would hope unexpectedly, to the realm of ghost fiction, let us tarry there a while. Like many, there is nothing I like better than a good ghost story. American ghost stories tend to follow the British model, which is really a bit rigid. In "Some Remarks on Ghost Stories" (1929), the British ghost story writer M.R. James identified five key features of the classical English ghost story,:
• The pretense of truth
• "A pleasing terror"
• No gratuitous bloodshed or sex
• No "explanation of the machinery"
• Setting: "those of the writer's (and reader's) own day"
The video clip I think manages to hit every one of those notes.
There is something about a well-turned ghost story that hooks me pretty easily. Particularly at this time of year, when the pumpkins ripen and the evening winds begin chilling the woods. Some personal favorites that you might want to try as Halloween approaches are these:
The Shining, by Stephen King This is King’s third book, published in 1977, and his first bestseller. The ghost is in many respects The Overlook Hotel, where the story takes place. If you want to opt for a filmed version, try for the 1997 television miniseries – much superior, in my view, to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation. Even if you have already read The Shining this is a great time to re-visit the story -- after 36 years a sequel, Doctor Sleep, is in the works and due out in time for next Halloween.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson One of the few novels written by the queen of short story horror fiction. Terror is built superbly around ghosts that are never seen and a group of innocents, each with some background in the paranormal, who are assembled in the name-sake house by a scientist intent on providing proof of the existence of ghosts in a paranormal experiment that goes horribly wrong.
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Shetterfield. This gothic treasure intertwines the ghost stories of a famous and reclusive ghost story author, the mystery of her long-lost thirteenth ghost story, and the secret aspects of the her life.
Her Fearful Symmetry: A Novel by Audrey Niffenegger When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her London apartment to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina. The two American sisters move to England and become enthralled with life after death. The title is from a William Blake poem -- need we say more? This novel was not particularly well received (the author previously did better with The Time Traveler's Wife.) Perhaps this one pushed the envelope just a bit too far. A real horror story. Not for the faint of heart! The Thirteenth Child by David Dean I admit that I haven’t yet finished this new volume by my Tuesday partner in crime – I was waylaid from fiction the last two weeks as I prepared to teach an annual class at the University of Denver – but I am far enough in to recommend the tale wholeheartedly. What’s not to like about a mystery involving three centuries of disappearances and a terrifying boy who appears only between dusk and dawn—a creature that lures children from their homes for his own dark purposes?
I've mentioned many times that I'm technology challenged. After talking to many writer friends through the years, I've discovered that I'm not alone. I learned to use a computer back in the early80s. Yep, the first computer I owned was a Kaypro. It was only a word processing and it used a large 5 1/4 inch floppy disk. The computer and the printer cost around thirty-eight hundred dollars. Yeah, really.
The next computer I had was a PC called a Comp-u-Add, I think it was around 1985 or so. It still mainly was only word-processing. If it did anything else I don't remember. I may have been able to used AOL then but not really sure. I bought my first desktop from Dell. Things were becoming more sophisticated. This computer used a 3.5 in diskette. By this time, I'm using AOL, and goodness AOL was all the big rage.
I also had a fax machine and had a dedicated phone line. I hate to think of how much I'm spent over the years for computers and electronic equipment. And could only utilize a small amount of intelligence these things could do. I remember also buying a Dell laptop along about then. The operating system was DOS. I took my laptop with me when I went to visit my daughter in Nashville, TN. My grandson, Riley was 5 years old and he and I played a few games on the laptop. A short time later, I'm back in TX, Riley's father was given a laptop at his sales job but there was no manual given out that day. My son-in-law got home and turned on the computer and couldn't do anything to make it start-up. He tried several things he thought might work but nothing did. Riley (age 5) sat watching his dad and finally said, "Nana always types 'dosshell' first." His skeptical father totally frustrated finally typed DOSSHELL and his computer came to life.
So at this point you'd think I was a computer expert...NOT. I could use Word Perfect processing program but about all I could do was type my stories, cut and paste. I learned to integrate addresses and work the mail program. Other writer friends still thought that was fantastic because they couldn't do that. I was able to write several short stories on the computer. That was a big step up from typing them on an electronic IBM Selectric typewriter.
I wrote my first book on my Dell laptop and Desktop. I could go back and forth, copying them onto the diskettes and keep them up to date. I made several back-up copies of everything and learned from a writer friend in CO to keep a copy in the freezer. If your house burned, chances were that diskette would survive. We all worried that we'd somehow lose our work. Computers crashed and things got lost and what would we do if that happened?
We were in New Mexico volunteering as camp hosts for Bureau of Land Management (BLM) down in the very bottom of the Rio Grande Gorge when I bought my second Dell laptop. This was probably 2001. It was delivered in Taos at the main BLM office and we were 16 miles away. As soon I we could we drove into down and I was so excited to have a new laptop. Laptops were the way to go when you lived in a 31 ft. Fifth Wheel RV. No room for a desk or desktop.
By now I could get online and transfer a file to the publisher and they could send it back with suggestions for changes but the final copy editing was still done and printed up in hard copy and paper. When you sent a final manuscript in back in earlier years, you sent a hard copy and a diskette.
So being able to send a mss online was seemingly high tech and in reality it was at that time.
Flash forward to current time. I still haven't learned much about computer operations...as Rob and Leigh can testify. I had so much trouble trying to get my blog article written and up and online that Rob finally wrote some step by step instructions for me and I have to use them every time. Here are my recent technology challenges.
There's a lady I heard about in ME who will format your books into the correct files so they can be uploaded to Nook and Kindle. I know there are people all over the place who do this, but she was recommended by a writer friend so I contacted her. She wrote me back saying she could do it and began spouting off technological things for me to do. I wrote back saying...wait, please. I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm very technology challenged. She wrote back saying, no problem. I've hand-held many first-timers, but we'll get it done.
First, I had to find a copy of my first book, written on my first laptop. Call me crazy but I still have all three of my old laptops. I looked on my second oldest and couldn't find the 1st book. I did find the second one and after a few tries managed to copy the file to a flash drive. Put the flash drive in the proper slot on my current desk top, copied to desktop and sent it to Pam. Whew...that wasn' too bad.
Next she wrote saying we needed to come up with covers for the books. I had sent actual copies of both books. I more or less had designed the cover for the 1st book published in 2001 and the publisher did a variation of that cover for the 2nd one published in 2005. In between years Five Star published a collection of my short stories (Found Dead In Texas). So I'm frantically searching for jpegs of the covers and can find pictures of the covers on these old laptops but they were in PDF not jpeg. I had at least learned a few years what a jpeg was but not how to produce one or anything.
While trying to find a copy of my first book (and she said Word Perfect was okay) I found it, but the oldest laptop would not take a flash drive. I got an e-mail from Pam saying she had the hard copies of my books and the file I had sent to her only had 16 chapters and the book had 21 chapters. I thought I had sent my final file to her...but NO, wasn't so. While still searching for the first book and have no idea how to get it off the old laptop. I came up with the idea of taking the laptop to a computer store (not a big box store, a small help place) who said they could convert the copied diskette file to a flash drive. I take it in and learn that this file is only 16 chapters. Back on the way home I realized that I had only saved the 21 file chapter file to the computer not to the diskette. (See how challenged I am.)
Back home again, I discover the correct 21 chapter file on the 2nd laptop and the also full file of the whole mss for the first book which I thought was not on this 2nd laptop (again challenged.) I have no idea how I missed it the first time. I had been sure both books were on the 2nd laptop when I began this process (challenged again). Believe it or not, I got the files to Pam, and her son was able to scan the book covers into something that can be used and things are finally looking up. I'm currently proof-reading the 2nd book because it was the first file she had ready. And actually finding typos in the book not the file. So will try to get those corrected so the e-books will be in better shape all around.
You who are computer knowledgeable folks are probably laughing by now. I don't blame you. My friend Pam is hand-holding me. Some of the notes she writes she's dumbed down (the best she can) the technical words and phrases so I can understand. Otherwise I have to write back and say...I have no idea what you're talking about.
I am about as dumb as a horned toad when it comes to technology. But I am still learning. My story and I'm sticking to it.
Straight from my eMailbox last week I mentioned a few reasons why women
contend men are happy beasts. Naturally, scientists have developed a
test to determine guynicity and naturally SleuthSayers proudly brings it to you.
How to Score: Give one point for every time you picked answer 'c'. A real guy would score at least 10 on this test. In fact, a real
guy would score at least 15, because he would receive the special
five-point bonus for getting the tasteless dead pedophile in the bar joke.
Citizens for Sushi?
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I've mentioned many times that I'm technology challenged. After talking to many writer friends through the years, I've discovered that I'm not alone. I learned to use a computer back in the early80s. Yep, the first computer I owned was a 
