Killing People is what I Do

 

“Why would you ever want to write about murder?” said the horrified relative.  “Why not write a nice little romance?”

Why indeed?

As I quickly added another relative to kill in my next book (you would be shocked how often that happens….) it occurred to me that there were many reasons to write about murder.

1.. It’s the challenge of creating the clever puzzle.  Plotting a mystery is like playing a chess game.  You always have to think several moves ahead.  Your reader is begging you to challenge them, and is working to beat you – meaning to guess the killer before your detective does - to the end.

2.  Plot is paramount.  Murder mysteries start with action – usually a murder.  Yes, characterization is important, and particularly motivation.  But murder is by nature an action, and thus something happens in the book you are writing.  And quite often, it happens again and again.

3.  It’s important.  This is murder, after all.  We’re not talking about a simple threat or theft.  A lot is at stake.  Murder is the final act.  The worst that can happen.  The end of it all.

 

4.  It’s a place to put all your darkest fantasies.  There are a few people I’ve wanted to kill in my life.  They did me wrong.  And while I do have a bit of a reputation for recklessness, I value my freedom more.  So what I can’t do in reality, I relish doing in fiction.

5.  Finally – it’s fun. This is the part I don’t say in mixed company (meaning non-writers and relatives.)  I can’t explain exactly why it’s fun – you’ll have to trust me on this part.  But plotting to do away with characters in highly original ways is a real power trip.  I’m smiling just thinking about it.

Of course, I can understand where some of the relative angst comes from.  In A PURSE TO DIE FOR, a gathering of relatives for a funeral results in the death of one or two. 

In THE GODDAUGHTER’S REVENGE, a cousin of Gina’s does her wrong.  So she does him back, in a particularly crafty and oh-so-satisfying way.

It was entirely accidental, that use of relatives.  Honest.  I wasn’t thinking of anyone in particular.

 Not much I wasn’t.

(You can follow Melodie at www.melodiecampbell.com.  Better still, buy her Goddaughter books.  It's an offer you can't refuse. Especially since her maiden name was 'Offer' - not kidding.)

Available at all the usual retail locations, including Amazon

Crime Tour of Phoenix Part 1

Uncle Sal's

Left Coast Crime will be convening at the Hyatt Regency of Phoenix, Arizona February 26th - 28th,2016.

Knowing that LCC attendees lurk on this blog, and suspecting some of them might like to take their own self-guided tour of the Phoenix historical crime scene, I've decided to post some articles this year that would lend themselves to just that use.

Starbuck's Location
"Office Max Center"
Corner of Osborn and Hayden roads
in Scottsdale

Across the parking lot from this unassuming Starbuck's where my son and daughter worked in high school, and less than a quarter mile from the house I grew up in, sits this place:

Uncle Sal's Italian Ristorante

Uncle Sal's Location
About 23 mins. from the Hyatt
according to Google Maps

At first glance, the contemporary cookie-cutter strip mall location and hole-in-the-wall frontage might indicate Uncle Sal's is one of those Italian restaurants run by somebody about as Italian as my Polish grandmother.

In truth, however, this is the place once owned by the wife of Salvatore "Sammy The Bull" Gravano, who billed her restaurant as: "The best kept secret in Scottsdale," Sammy the Bull loved to eat here, and it was frequented not only by members of his family, but -- reputedly -- also by drug dealers, underworld figures and the like.  (On several occasions, my mom and I enjoyed the pizza there, when I was home on leave from the army.)

Gravano had been given plastic surgery to alter his appearance, then he and his family moved to The Valley in 1995, as part of the witness protection program following the John Gotti trial.  The former member of the New York based Gambino family was rechristened "Jimmy Moran."  He opened a construction company called Marathon Development at 45th Street and University drive in Phoenix, where he employed 15 people and earned nearly a million dollars a year.  He also did business as Creative Pools, a pool installation company.

Gravano's Phx. Mug Shot

All of this came to an end in 2000, when Sammy the Bull, as well as his wife, son and daughter were arrested as part of a sting on organized drug dealing in The Valley.

Salvatore (then living as Jimmy Moran) reportedly provided consultation and cash to the drug-dealing arm of the "Devil Dogs" a Phoenix gang known for barking as they beat people up.  It was further reported that pool company and restaurant employees were involved in the dealing, and that drugs were being sold out of Uncle Sal's.  Salvatore was eventually convicted, and sentenced to 19 years in prison.

The Bar

The Patio

Uncle Sal's is still there, of course. And, if you'd like to go get a bite
to eat and look around the place, I think you'll enjoy your meal.  The bar is nice, and so is the food.  You can even eat on the patio.

Outdoor temperatures should be quite comfortable during the LCC period in February.

While the pasta is good here, the steak is my favorite.  The green bean side is excellent!


Dress is casual during the day, and business casual in the evening.  If you want to pull out the stops and dress to the nines, they'll love you for it!


Pricing is not bad either.  A single person can enjoy the steak in the photo to the right and some beer or wine and still get out the door for under fifty bucks.

According to his daughter, Gravano ate at Uncle Sal's regularly, often sneaking in the back and sometimes taking his food to go.  There are those who suspect his practice provided the catalyst for the opening of this second eatery, which shares the same kitchen with Uncle Sal's, and is known as: The Side Door.


If your wallet doesn't tend to be over-stuffed, and your culinary tastes run toward good beer, burgers and dogs (And perhaps you'd secretly like to get a feel for what it was like for Sammy the Bull to sneak in the back for his chow while the Feds were closing in!) then I suggest you walk around the north end of the building that houses Uncle Sal's and eat here.  They sell Vienna Beef hot dogs for only $4.00 each -- or, Chicago style for six bucks!  There is also a large selection of beer on tap or in bottles, as well as a large wine selection, and some higher-end food -- even ice cream!

Overhead View of Strip Mall with Uncle Sal's and Side Door

This photo is taken looking west.

Osborn Rd. is on the right side of the photo, while Hayden Rd. runs across the bottom.  The building at the lower left is Starbucks.  The large main building is Office Max and Big Five sporting goods.

The small square building, which -- as you can see on the schematic below -- is not quite connected to the Office Max bldg., is where you'll find Uncle Sal's.  It's in the lower left (south-east) corner of that small square building.

If you walk around the north (photo-right) side of this building, you will find The Side Door at the west (photo-top) end of it, facing out to the north.

Do not be confused by the bank building (lower right).

Fastest way there from the Hyatt Regency Phoenix

• Take Monroe to 4th Street. 
• Turn LEFT to head NORTH on 4th Street, being sure to BEAR LEFT just past Garfield St.  
• 4th Street will then become the north-bound lane of 3rd Street.  
• STAY IN THE RIGHT LANE at this point.  
• TURN RIGHT onto the HOV on-ramp for I-10 East (also known as 101 East).  
• Follow the 101 East until you exit (off to right) onto 202 North.  
• (Note: 202 Exit is to the right side of the 101, but you want the LEFT lane of the RIGHT-SIDE EXIT lanes -- 2nd or third lane from the right side of freeway.  If you bear all the way to the right, you will end up on the 202 South.  If this happens, exit ASAP and get back onto the 202 North)
• Follow 202 North and take Indian School Rd. exit.  
• At the base of the off-ramp, TURN LEFT onto Indian School.
• TURN RIGHT onto Hayden Rd.  
• Uncle Sal's is in Office Max strip mall on the corner of Hayden and Osborn, a half-mile ahead of you, on the left.

Having Fun Being Bad

I have, like so many people, been watching House of Cards via Netflix DVDs.  The first season was hypnotic.  The second season not so much.  I may not watch the third season.  Why? It's real simple: Nobody seems to be having any fun. Not the President, not his wife, not the staff, not the Secret Service guys, and especially not Francis and Clare Underwood.  I mean, what's the point of pursuing power by any means, if you're not going to have a good time screwing everyone over?  Even the sex romps are grim. More on that later.

Think about prime-time TV these days.  Who's enjoying the game on Game of Thrones?  Did Walter White ever kick back and watch trash TV on Breaking Bad?  I experienced the world of Mad Men, and the people I remember had a lot more fun drinking and screwing than Draper and pals ever did. Do The Americans ever just go fishing? Wayward Pines is so dark you can't see the road, much less the actors.  Every plot is convoluted, everybody is up to their necks in conspiracies, everyone is always plotting their next move, and everyone is soooo serious...

But that isn't the way the real world works.  People go fishing.  They relax.  They get hooked on Candy Crush or Triple Town.  They binge-watch anything they can.  Joseph Stalin liked cowboy movies, Charlie Chaplin, Georgian wine, and billiards.  The man knew how to relax.  So did others: Mao Zedong was a master calligrapher and a fairly decent poet. He also really enjoyed women. Hitler loved listening to Putzi Hanfstaengl play piano, and apparently had a fondness for dogs.  Osama bin Laden wrote love letters in between calls for jihad. Napoleon loved Josephine and cheating at cards. In other words, in the real world, even totalitarian monsters take a break once in a while and have a good time.

Meanwhile, Francis Underwood even gave up ribs.  (And considering how solemn everyone was before and after, that three-way didn't do much to loosen anyone up.)

Nathaniel Parker as Harold Skimpole
in the 2005 BBC production of
"Bleak House"

I miss the villains of yesteryear.  Count Fosco, hugely fat, delighting in pastry, the endless cigarettes his wife hand rolls for him, great glasses of sugar water, and playing with his tiny little mice while he works [successfully] to have Lady Glyde declared dead after he imprisons her in a madhouse.  And all despite his deep admiration, love, passion, for her sister, Marian Halcombe. Now there's a villain who is not only ruthless - read The Woman in White and see - but knows how to have fun while doing it.  Or there's Harold Skimpole, the middle-aged "child" who cannot understand why people are so cruel and harsh as to not supply him with his daily needs, gratis, so that he can live like the charming butterfly he is, while betraying everyone in Bleak House in the worst possible way.  (He is the reason that the child street-sweeper Jo dies.)  You want to kill him, but he's certainly having a great time.  Of course, Dickens really knew how to write hand-rubbing, chuckling, glint-in-the-eye villains:  Ebenezer Scrooge, the Marquis St. Evremonde, Fagin, and that ultimate hypocrite, Josiah Bounderby.

Or, on screen:

• Henry Fonda's Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West,
• Basil Rathbone's Andre Trochard in We're No Angels, 
• Lionel Barrymore's Harry F. Potter in It's A Wonderful Life, 
• Peter Ustinov's Nero in Quo Vadis, and, of course, 
• Charlton Heston's Richelieu in The Three Musketeers/The Four Musketeers.
• The late, great Christopher Lee in The Man With the Golden Gun.

Now granted, there was a lot of over-acting in these - Henry Fonda and Charlton Heston were obviously having the time of their lives as they FINALLY got to play the villain!  But I think there's a lot of over-underacting today.  It's the latest style:  very self-controlled, laser-serious, apparently clinically depressed villains who don't take pleasure in anything, even power once they get it (if they ever do). But if you go back a few decades, and you find villains who smirked, sneered, sauntered, and basically acted like Bette Davis in The Little Foxes.


Or you can always go back to the original:  Ian Richardson as Francis Urquhart in the original, UK House of Cards, who was ruthless, deadly, witty, with a smile like a silver-haired Puck.  "You might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment."  Watching Richardson's Francis, I always felt that, while he'd definitely sold his soul to the devil, he got full price for it. (And it was a hell of a lot more than one shared cigarette a night...)  And he enjoyed everything he got.

Still available on Netflix, here's a preview of Francis Urquhart's best monologues to whet your appetite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRNNhcQutTQ

Opening bottles and books

She was the most interesting thing that barroom had seen in a long time.

Well, I had only been there an hour, but the look on the bartender's face told me had been waiting for a woman who looked like that for  a whole lot longer.  Maybe his whole life.

Her clothes were a little skimpy for March.  Nothing to shock the church ladies, if such existed in Portland, Oregon these days, but enough to get a man's attention.  I happened to be a man.

The only thing that spoiled her appearance was the thirty degree tilt to her frame that came from the heavy vinyl sack over one bare shoulder.  Since it said LEFT COAST CRIME I deduced that it was full of new mystery novels.She shifted the bag onto the floor and climbed onto a stool a few seats away from me.  The bartender came up with an eagerness he had not shown when I ordered my white wine.

"Martini," she said.

"Gin or vodka?" asked the barman.  He had a face like a burlap sack full of grapefruits.

"Steve," she replied.

He frowned -- much shifting of citrus- - and went down the aisle, presumably to consult his drinkology manual.

After a moment she turned my direction and gave me a careful lookover.  A more thorough one than the subject deserved, really.

She smiled and batted her long eyelashes.  Then she said: "Starting on the day Charlotte Mayhew murdered her husband -- October 23, 1985 -- she became very suspicious of cats."

I don't have the equipment to bat my eyelashes but I can blink.  I did so.  "Excuse me?"

"I said, 'Starting on the day...'"

"I heard you.  But why did you say it?"

The bartender had arrived with a drink - whether it was a Steve Martini I am not prepared to say.  She gave him a smile which threatened to turn him into a puddle on the duckboards.

"It is the opening line of a story by Jane Haddam," she explained.  "Crazy Cat Ladies."

"I remember," I said.  "I read it in Ellery Queen last month.  But why say it now?"

She turned that smile on me.  "It's a great opening line, isn't it?"

I nodded.

"I had an insight when I read it.  It occurred to me that an opening line is like a pickup line."

"How do you figure?"

"They have the same purpose, don't they?  To attract someone's attention.  Pique the curiosity.  Convince someone to spend some time with you.  In other words, to seduce."

At the other end of his dog run,  the bartender dropped something. It tinkled.

"I never thought of it that way," I admitted.  "So you're a mystery fan?"

"Death is my beat."

 "Michael Connelly.  The Poet."

She shrugged.  Her shoulders, specifically.  "It's one of the great romances, isn't it?  The writer and the reader?'

"Older than that," I said.  "The storyteller and the listener."

She nodded enthusiastically.  "But it's usually a fling, right?  Even the best book doesn't keep us forever."

"I suppose not.  But just like a love affair, one can change your life, and stick in your memory all your days."

She gave me her sleepy grin.  "You're a romantic."

"I'm too much of  a realist not to be."

A frown.  "What does that mean, exactly?"

"Beats me, but it sounds good."  I did a quick drag through the shallow river of my memory.  "I saw her entrance.  It would have been hard to miss."

Her eyebrows rose.  "Why, how sweet!  Lawrence Block, isn't it?"

I nodded.  "Eight million Ways To Die."

She finished her drink.  "Wanna go somewhere and discuss literature?"

I shook my head.  "I'm meeting my wife in a few minutes."

She sighed.  "Happy families are all alike."

"Anna Karenina," I said.  "Not mystery fiction."

"When I drink I get promiscuous."  The bartender was staring at her.  "In my reading, I mean.  Stout, please."

He nodded.  "Pale or dark?"

"Rex," we said together.

"Enjoy the rest of the conference," she told me as I paid my bill.

"You too--" I frowned.  "Your name isn't Velma, by any chance?"

She shook her head.  "Call me Ishmael."

"No, I don't think I will."

Note: In searching for more openers to put in here I discovered that Fran Rizer had had the same insight as my mysterious friend. 

WeeGee in the Public Eye

“My name is Weegee. I’m the world’s greatest photographer…”

If Raymond Chandler’s streets were mean, Weegee’s were meaner and they were real. “To me a photograph is a page from life,” he said, “and that being the case, it must be real.” And they were, sometimes too real, showing the underside of the city, the dark side of the American Dream with a hot jazz soundtrack playing hard in the background.

Most of us in the crime writing community are familiar with Weegee, Arthur Fellig. He was an immigrant to the US, who became known for his stark and dark photos of crimes scenes in the 1930s and 40s. That’s not all he photographed, but that’s what he’s mostly remembered for.

Starting off as a darkroom tech, by 1935 he was a freelance photographer. He didn’t wait for stories to come to him, he went out and found them. Of his start, he said “In my particular case I didn't wait 'til somebody gave me a job or something, I went and created a job for myself—freelance photographer. And what I did, anybody else can do. What I did simply was this: I went down to Manhattan Police Headquarters and for two years I worked without a police card or any kind of credentials. When a story came over a police teletype, I would go to it. The idea was I sold the pictures to the newspapers. And naturally, I picked a story that meant something.”

Weegee often beat the cops to the scene of the crime. He worked out of his office, uh, his trunk. He estimated that he shot 5,000 pictures of murders in the 1930s and ’40s. In our narcissistic age, we tend to think that crime and viciousness is unique to our era as we watch the local news and see the ‘if it bleeds it leads’ stories stacked up, one on top of the other. And we ask, what’s wrong with society today? But maybe it’s not society, but people. After all, ancient Rome had gladiator fights and it’s speculated that the Mayans and Aztecs played a ball game using human heads as the ball. So there’s really nothing new under the sun. That said, I wonder what his dreams were like.



Weegee and Film Noir:

There seems to be some disagreement among the cognoscenti about whether or not Weegee’s photos influenced the noir look in films. Everyone acknowledges that much of that look came from European refugees fleeing Hitler, who came from a German expressionism background. But even if

Weegee didn’t directly influence film noir, take a look at some of his pix and see the symbiotic relationship between them.

The photos that Weegee is best known for are stark, high-contrast black and white pictures taken with a bright flash, often of the seedier side of life. Everything from murder and other crime scenes, to gangsters, nightclubs, hookers.

There is often a sense of menace, sometimes overt, sometimes more subtle. And the angle of the shots adds to the unsettling effect. And he didn’t only point his camera at the subject at hand, but turned it around for the reverse angle of those watching from the sidelines, or composed shots to see those watchers in the background of some grisly scene.

His images often look like stills from the sets of film noir movies.
 
Eventually Weegee and film noir came together. Producer Mark Hellinger, inspired by Weegee’s book Naked City, bought the rights and recreated Weegee’s style in the film The Naked City. Weegee also worked as a consultant on the film and had a small part in it. His work also influenced Stanley Kubrick and The Man with a Camera TV series. And Joe Pesci’s character of Bernzy in The Public Eye is a direct rip off of Weegee, as the producers couldn’t obtain the rights to his story.

Weegee was the inspiration for Bob Winger, the main character in my short story Poison Heart, found in the 2010 Deadly Ink collection. Winger’s a burned out, pissed off, fed up crime photog, who winds up staging crime scene photos, inspired by Weegee, and passes them off as the real thing...until things totally spin out of control. (Deadly Ink 2010 Anthology)

“When you find yourself beginning to feel a bond between yourself and the people you photograph, when you laugh and cry with their laughter and tears, you will know you are on the right track.”

—Weegee                                    

***Note: As far as I can tell, all of the pictures/photos in this article are “free to share and use” according to Bing’s license search feature.

***

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Converting a Reluctant Reader: My Mother

“I never read fiction,” my mother used to say, as a point of pride. When I was a kid, she would glance at my library books and say, “Why are you reading that? You already read it!”

After I won second place in Writers of the Future, my first big milestone, I signed one of my complimentary copies to my parents, thanking them for their (ahem) support. “Do you want it back?” said my mother, a few weeks later. “We already read it!”

“No, thanks,” I said annoyed. My then-boyfriend, now-husband, Matt, always encouraged me to write. My parents didn’t care. You know how writers joke, “I only sold two copies, and one of them was to my mom”? I’m like, You’re lucky your mom reads. Good on ya.

My parents & my newborn son: better than a book!

My mother did occasionally come to my book readings and/or buy a copy. She lives in Ottawa (about 1.5 hours’ drive away from me), or she’d come more often. I suspected that she shoved the books in a corner, or gave them away, but was grateful for her presence. As you may know, it’s a challenge to get people out.

But a few years ago, after while taking the bus, she got so bored that she started reading one of my anthologies, Indian Country Noir. “It was good!” she said, sounding astonished.

I think she also read The Dragon and the Stars, which won the Aurora Award in 2011, but I didn’t hear anything for four years.

Not until Tuesday, when she attended the ChiZine Reading Series and marched right up to the book table. “I have to support my daughter,” she said, and bought WOLF ICE and NOTORIOUS D.O.C.

Would I have given the books to my mother? Of course. But I also think she really wants to support me. As in sustain me, help lift me up. And since I’ve come to realize that success depends not just on financial vagaries, but psychological toughness, I accepted. I’m not to proud to accept charity from my mom (or Patreon from my fans).

Then on Friday, I spotted WOLF ICE not only splayed open on her bed, but halfway finished.

“It’s so good. I can’t put it down,” she told me and Matt. “It’s actually bad, because I wanted to do the gardening on Thursday, and I never got out, and on Friday, it rained, so I didn’t get anything done. How much is TERMINALLY ILL? The next time I come, I’ll buy that one.”

Wow. A compliment from my mom. I’ll take that over gardening any day.

How about you? How does your family react to your writing and your passions? Did they encourage you, or tell you to knuckle down and study the times table instead? How has that changed over time? And how do you support your children, if you have any?

I have to admit that when my son announced he wanted to be a police officer, I gulped.

Ransom

by Leigh Lundin

Today’s article will be a short two minutes —or— two hours long— if you wish to take the whole trip.

John Floyd and I’ve mentioned that Mel Gibson has returned to making movies and we’ve enjoyed a couple of his recent films. He seems to have begun a rehabilitation as a man and an actor. While many feel Gibson has not paid for his sins, he's kept his head down and his nose to the grindstone. People love it when a lost soul finds their way back on track and into our minds and hearts, and it would be good if he manages to dig his way out of the hole he dug himself into.

While not thinking of Gibson at all, I found myself reading about a 1954 United States Steel Hour teleplay “Fearful Decision”. It spawned a loosely based 1956 film, Ransom! starring Glenn Ford. That spawned a loosely based 1996 film, Ransom, starring Gary Sinise and our friend, ta-da… Mel Gibson. The central thread of the plots centers upon fathers forced to deal with the kidnappers of their sons, making tough decisions condemned by others, but with method to their madness.

I’d seen the 1996 film and thought it brilliant. Frankly I’d forgotten Gibson was in it and it was nice to reconnect. If you haven’t seen Ransom, the plot is superb. It’s so well done, SleuthSayers is bringing it to you here.

This is the full film which you can stream to your television or watch on your computer. I highly recommend it.

Shorts and Shortcuts

by John M. Floyd

When I first purchased a smartphone several years ago I was stunned by all the things I was able to do, in addition to trivial tasks like making/receiving telephone calls. All of a sudden I could text, e-mail, Google, check the weather, watch the stock market, leave myself reminders, listen to music, and use my phone as a flashlight, calculator, compass, level, alarm clock, stopwatch, GPS device, calendar, radio, camera, and video recorder. I could also use these functions to become (even more of) a pain in the ass to friends, family, and total strangers, but I try to minimize that.

Because of all these "extras," my mobile phone became an item not only of necessity but of great convenience. And I love finding out about new iPhone apps and shortcuts.

Which brings me to my topic for today. My home computer, which happens to be an iMac (I finally leaped out of Windows several years ago and fled screaming to the Apple orchard), is used partly for e-mail, Netflix, Facebook, Web surfing, and such--but I use it mostly for my writing. For creating and submitting stories and cover letters, and for all the associated research, printing, copying, and recordkeeping.

There are, of course, some shortcuts to all that stuff as well.

Bear with me. Much of what follows is basic, and consists of hints and tips about computers, writing, manuscripts, etc., that you probably already know. But they're also things that have been extremely helpful to me as a writer. (And remember, all you novelists, I write mostly short stories--that's me up there waving to you from the cheap seats--so the submission tips are geared toward shorts.)

Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Copy/Cut/Paste using the keyboard: Crtl-C, Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V. Many of my author friends still choose to click on these buttons in the Word toolbar, but to me it's much faster and easier to do it via the keyboard shortcuts. (For the Mac, the Command key is used instead of Ctrl.)

2. Use the mouse to enlarge documents and images. In most applications, you can hold down the Control key and use the mouse "wheel" to zoom in and out, thus making text easier to read and photos easier to see. Sometimes you can also double-click the mouse to enlarge the image, as in Google Maps.

3. Replace italics with underlining, and vice versa. Some markets (AHMM is one) prefer underlining instead of italics, in their submissions. If you have a completed manuscript that includes italics, it's nice to be able to change all italicized text to underlined text at one swoop. This can be done by following these instructions: Open "Find and Replace," click in the "Find What" box, click on "Format" in the dropdown menu, then click "Font" and choose "Italic" and click OK. Then click in the "Replace With" box, and (under Format/Font) choose a single underline under "Underline Style" and click OK. Then click "Replace All," and it's done. To change it back again, reverse the operation.

4. "Find" using the keyboard: Ctrl-F. I need to locate words and phrases so often, I prefer using keys rather than the mouse and the toolbar. (Again, Apple users should substitute the Command key for Ctrl.) Another keyboard shortcut I use a lot is Ctrl-A to "Select All."

5. Turn off Grammar Check. If you want the Word police to be constantly blowing their whistles and shouting, that's up to you. To me, the grammar-checking feature is frustrating at best and maddening at worst. As a writer of fiction, I happily fragment sentences, splice commas, split infinitives, combine uncombinable words, and make up others (like uncombinable), and I don't want my computer telling me not to. (Did I just end that sentence with a preposition . . . ?)

6. Save items in your "Reading List." Reading List is a separate part of the Safari web browser's bookmarking feature that allows you to save articles/information that you might want to come back to and read later. Unlike regular bookmarking, this makes the content available even when you're offline. Entries are intended to be temporary rather than permanent, and are easily deleted.

7. Replace straight quotes with curly quotes. As anyone who's converted Courier to TNR knows, it's difficult to find and change all the straight-up-and-down apostrophes and quotation marks in a manuscript to proper "curved" apostrophes and quotes. A quick way to do it is to just pull up "Find and Replace" and key a single quotation mark into both the "Find What" box and the "Replace With" box and click "Replace All." Then do the same with double quotation marks. When finished, all apostrophes, single quotes, and double quotes should now be corrected.

8. Turn off widows and orphans. This sounds cruel, right? What I mean is turn off the suppression of widows and orphans. If widow/orphan control is left activated, you'll wind up with some manuscript pages that have way too much blank space left at the bottom. It doesn't matter one whit to me whether there might be a single ending line of a paragraph at the top of a page or a single beginning line of a paragraph at the bottom of a page. I think a consistent appearance is far more important.

9. Insert a # (or similar character) as part of your scene breaks. All that's really required to signal a scene break is an extra double-space, and for years that's exactly how I indicated one. Then I had a bad experience: an editor printed my accepted story without including one of those scene breaks. He just left it out completely and continued the story without any break there at all. Since then, I have always double-spaced once, then typed a centered character or group of characters (#, *, ***, etc.), and then double-spaced once more. My book publisher prefers three asterisks, I prefer the #.

10. Highlight using the arrow keys. Sometimes it's difficult to properly highlight certain text with just the mouse. If ever you need to be exact, and (for example) highlight everything up to a particular character but not including that character, you can always fine-tune by holding down the Shift key while pressing the right- or left-arrow key.

11. Copy/paste a manuscript into the body of an e-mail. If a market requires submission of a manuscript as a part of the e-mail rather than as an attachment, it can be hard to paste the story directly in to the body of the e-mail without goofing up the spacing and formatting. Here's a good way to do that without risk: Save the manuscript first as a plain-text (.txt) file in your Word program, then close it and open it again, and then paste it into your e-mail. It will now be formatted correctly. NOTE: Saving an ordinary (TNR, .doc) manuscript in plain-text will automatically convert everything to Courier 10-point font whether you want it to or not, and will lose any special features like italics and underlining. (You'll see this only after you close the file and open it again.) Emphasized text can still be indicated, however, by typing an underscore (_) immediately before and after any text (letter, word, phrase, whatever) that should've been italicized or underlined. By the way, it never hurts to e-mail the submission to yourself first, to check out the formatting, before e-mailing it to the publication.

12. Write your story title on the inside flap of your SASE. Most short-story submissions are now made electronically, thank goodness--but some markets still require snailmailed submissions. And if you wind up doing something called multiple submissions (subbing another story or two to them before you've heard back from the first), there's something you should know. If they reject one of your submissions and the rejection letter doesn't say which story was rejected (believe me, that happens), then you have a problem. Solution: When you submit a story, lightly hand-print the title of the story in pencil on the inside flap of its accompanying SASE. Then, if you receive a rejection letter, you can look inside the SASE flap and see which story got the axe--and submit it elsewhere.

Those are just a few timesavers and stress-relievers that come to mind--I'm sure I'll think of more as soon as this column is posted. And, again, I realize that a lot of this is preaching to the choir.

Please let me know of any other handy tricks-of-the-trade you might've discovered. I would especially like to find out how to determine, beforehand, whether whatever story I'm submitting will be accepted or rejected.

Dream on, right?

The Third Deadly Sin

For twenty years, Giuseppe Nicoli Civella had ruled his Kansas City fiefdom with a firm and steady hand. Even the local FBI considered him to be a cunning, capable leader and a competent crime boss, but his mafia family was about to open a treasure chest of wealth only to find it would give free rein to the monster of greed within their organization. That lure of power and easy money soon put the Civella crime family on a downhill slide.
The main war zone opened up in the River Quay area as contestants to this conflict lined up into two main groups: the old guys (Made Men) versus the Young Turks (family associates not yet admitted to the inner circle). As the Made Men closest to Nick Civella saw it, they had the privilege of first rights on anything involving power and money, and they had no intention of letting anyone else in on the potential flow of money. From the Young Turks point of view, they thought they should be let in on the action, especially if it was a project they started, and the old guys should quit holding them down. In the end, it came down to two groups of dangerous men competing for two valuable prizes the old guys wanted only for themselves.

During the 1850's, the River Quay (originally known as Westport Landing) was where river boats landed merchandise for sale and exchange in the Kansas City area. By 1970, it consisted mostly of old warehouses no longer used for the river trade. However, city businessman Marion Trozzolo started visualizing this old section of town as a fine place for trendy restaurants, bars, boutiques and art galleries. In 1972, Fred Harvey Bonadonna, son of mobster David Bonadonna, acquired a lot from Trozzolo and set up a restaurant named Poor Freddie's. When mob boss Nick Civella came around for a visit, Freddie made the mistake of bragging about the restaurant's earnings. This story soon reached the ears of a couple of Civella's henchmen, Joe Cammisano and Paul "Paulie the Pig" Scola, who had previously thought the River Quay area was a waste of resources. But, now that Bonadonna was making big money, these two wanted in. Bonadonna opposed them.

At the same time, the Spero brothers, Mike, Nick, Joe and Carl (associates of the family), were seen as challengers to the old system. Nick Spero was thought to be trying to gain too much power in the local Teamsters Union where the Made Guys already had their own programs in play. The decision was made that Nick Spero had to go. In April 1973, Nick Spero was found in the trunk of his Cadillac convertible. He'd been shot twice with a .38. The three surviving Spero brothers blamed the killing on underlings of mafia boss Nick Civella and  his brother Corky (the underboss).

By October 1973, Paulie the Pig managed to get a foothold in the River Quay with his restaurant Delaware Daddy's in direct competition to Freddie's place. His pal, Joe Cammisano, tried to establish strippers and the trade that went with them. Bonadonna feared the area would become a red light district and continued his opposition. Cammisano became angry with this problem of access to the area. Finally, in 1975, Joe opened up Uncle Joe's Tavern. More bars followed and an x-rated movie theater opened its doors. The Cammisano brothers, Joe and William, also tried to take over the lucrative parking lots owned by the Bonadonna's in the River Quay district.

Eventually, Nick Civella sent William "Willie the Rat" Cammisano (a future KC godfather) to tax Poor Freddie's and attempt a full takeover. On July 22, 1976, David Bonadonna (father to Freddie and part owner of the restaurant) was found in the trunk of his Cadillac which was parked on a Kansas City street. Freddie fingered Willie the Rat as the killer and later testified in federal court against him and the local mafia. After Johnny Broccato turned up in the trunk of his car, it was starting to look like the killer had a fetish for Cadillac trunks.

The war continued. Come May 16, 1978, the three surviving Spero brothers were in the Virginian Tavern on Admiral Street in the River Quay district. Mike and Joe were sitting in a booth and Carl was up to the bar, when three masked men with weapons walked in. Bullets flew. Mike was killed and Joe was wounded. Carl exited via a rear door, but got shot-gunned in the back and ended up paralyzed and in a wheelchair. In a subsequent letter to authorities, Joe identified the shooters as three of Civella's henchmen. Not taking the shootings too well, Joe crafted a home-made bomb that October and placed it under the car of one of the henchmen. Unfortunately for Joe, the FBI interfered, retrieved the bomb and got Joe a prison sentence. There's no indication that the saved henchman ever thanked the FBI for their diligent services in preventing this violent crime.

Towards the end, you had to admit that Civella's group had a flair for irony. In June 1980, a  bomb, later alleged to be a booby-trap, exploded in a storage shed while Joe Spero was inside. The blast put him out through the shed wall and into eternity. Four and a half years later, as brother Carl was entering his cousin's car lot, a nail bomb went off. It wiped out Carl and his wheelchair. That wrapped up any future opposition from the Spero brothers. By this time,mob boss Nick Civella had already passed on from natural causes, so this last action was merely unfinished business. It was left to Corky Civella, as the new boss, to oversee the declining fortunes of the Civella crime family. Seemed the feds had lots of indictments waiting for several family members, to include those going down for the casino skimming charges in Las Vegas.

As for the River Quay area, bombings of several taverns and businesses, plus the shootings and intra-family strife turned the district into a desolate area for the public to avoid. The wealth was gone for now and there were few players left standing.

Is Cincinnati Reenacting The Wire?

Police and politics have been in the news here in Cincinnati in recent weeks. We've been spared the latest round of shootings followed by riots that seems to have overtaken other cities. (Twice in the case of Cleveland, just four hours north of here.) But other problems have arisen.

Our police chief is a man named Jeffery Blackwell, who came to the Queen City from Columbus. Blackwell was named near the end of the previous mayor's term. Three weeks ago, it became news that the Chief would resign after two years on the job, then changed his mind. Despite denials from Blackwell, Mayor John Cranley, and other officials, stories of discord between city hall and the police department are rampant. Then this week, in the wake of a rash of shootings in the Avondale neighborhood, the city demanded Blackwell come up with a 90-day plan to reduce violence. I've seen this before.

It was a recurring theme on The Wire.

To recap, David Simon's Baltimore had a police department hamstrung by senior officers jockeying for position to become the next commissioner. Division captains and lieutenants found themselves terrorized by promotion-minded assistant chiefs at "comstat" meetings, where they had to explain why the crime rate was so high and what they planned to do about it. Never mind that the criminals causing all the trouble had to cooperate. Many of the plans and the personnel moves were tied to politics. Watching the news, I can't help but notice that so are the real-life moves in Cincinnati.

For starters, the increased crime in Avondale, while horrifying, belies a crime rate lower than in past years. There have been increased shootings on the West Side as well, but they make the news as individual incidents, not as a sudden spike in gun crime in one part of the city. But Avondale is two neighborhoods away from downtown and Over-the-Rhine, far enough out to spare the business district and the gentrifying neighborhood to the north of it, but close enough to the stadium to spook city leaders. Why are they spooked?

The All Star Game is coming in a couple of weeks. And so, with the local stations harping on Avondale's rise in shootings, city leaders have turned to that time-tested means of looking like they're on the job: Tell the police to do something, dammit. So Chief Blackwell was given a week to solve a problem that has been building since last year.

Sound like The Wire?

Then we have the hostility between city hall and the CPD. Chief Blackwell replaced James Craig, who left to take over the police department in his native Detroit. However, Blackwell started shortly before the last mayoral election, which means Mayor Cranley did not have a hand in choosing the chief. The current city manager also did not have a hand in the decision. One has to wonder if the administration's need to put its stamp on the police department is outweighing the need for stable leadership in the CPD.

That is speculation, of course, but every time Chief Blackwell, Mayor Cranley, or some council member opens their mouth now, I can't help but think back to Mayors Royce and Carcetti ripping some hapless commissioner a new one on The Wire. Cincinnati does not have all of Baltimore 's problems. If anything, we manage our police-race relation issues better than cities that looked at us funny during the 2001 riots. But when politicians fall all over themselves on the eve of a major sporting event, I can't help but wonder if life is imitating art. It wouldn't surprise me. Some of the cops and criminals depicted on The Wire were also writers and actors on the show.

Heavy Breathing

Warning: NSFW

About a third of the way into writing VIPER, my Cold War novella - which is about the antiwar movement in Berlin in the 1970's, a KGB deception, and a love affair, among other things - I realized I had to do a SEX SCENE. I'd boxed myself in, there was no way around it. It couldn't happen off-stage, you had to see these people doing the horizontal mambo. Otherwise, the story wouldn't make any sense.

Now, let's face it, this can be a deeply embarrassing prospect. How many writers do you know who've done it convincingly? With the possible exception of D.H. Lawrence, my own feeling is that women are better at erotic material than men. Harold Robbins? Gimme a break. Or maybe Norman Mailer, THE TIME OF HER TIME? You might as well just call a plumber, since it's all about leaky pipes.

Twist Phelan has what amounts almost to a comedy routine, talking about writing sex. She says, you avoid at all costs an overwrought euphemism, 'the scepter of love,' for instance. On the other hand, you should steer clear of clinical description - you don't actually have to use the word 'cock.' If you manhandle, so to speak, a turn of phrase like, 'she took me in her lips,' the astute reader can probably imagine she's not hanging onto a subway strap. Less, at least in this situation, is probably more.

I like the way Deb Coonts deals this particular card, and she deals it from the bottom of the deck. Near the end of LUCKY CATCH, there's a really hot scene. First of all, she sneaks it up on you. You're not ready for it at all. You're going, like whoa! Secondly, she doesn't cheat your expectations. She goes all the way. And last but not least, she defuses it afterwards with a laugh line. Who'd expect you could make sex funny? Then again, why is it always taken so seriously, or in books, anyway? C'mon. We're supposed to be enjoying it.

Craig Johnson tells a story. Somewhere around the third Longmire book, he puts two major characters in bed together. Of course, this has consequences, but the point is that Craig gets them in and out of the sack in maybe three sentences. ("Which shows you how much of a pussy I am," he says.) Down the road, he's at a reading, and he's taking questions, and a woman raises her hand, and says, we need to talk about that sex scene. Craig says okay. She says, it went on forever. 

Craig gives this a long beat, and then he asks her, well, how many times did you read it?

Which brings us back to VIPER. The novella is 17K words. The sex scene takes up two pages, so I lapped Craig. Then again, those two pages took me something like three or four days to write. I was sweating bullets. It was as though I'd set myself a hurdle. Writers do this, of course. You sometimes trick yourself, and set something up, and then you have to do it. (For example, the dive sequence in "Cover of Darkness." That's basically the whole story, and because you're underwater, there's no dialogue. It's all physical action, it's nothing but description. Try it some time - you'd be surprised how hard it is.) Anyway, by the time I got done, I was completely exhausted. I'd been having sex for four days. But the end result works. It's not a complete embarrassment. How many times did I read it aloud to myself? It seemed to go on forever. 

Here's the thing, though. The real point of the scene is that these two people are invested in each other. If it doesn't have emotional resonance, it's just plumbing. And that was the tricky part. The grappling, the earthiness, showing skin, all of that is to no purpose, if you're just waving it around in a warm room. The money shot was making their physical hunger count for something. Martina tells herself afterward, I surrendered, this was rescue. And if I haven't convinced you of that, it's a dry hump.

What it comes down to is purpose. Why do you need it in the story? Anybody in their right mind would turn and run. Unless you're into whips and chains. Let's be honest. Doing it is terrific. It's consuming, It lights you on fire. But trying to convey that sensation is like pushing water uphill with a rake. In this case, it was utterly necessary. Do you have to ask, would I do it again? Bring on the whips and chains. I'm putty in your hands.

Building the Brand

by Janice Law 

I went to a mystery writers’ convention this past weekend. A nice event, well run, full of mystery fans and valiant souls willing to present their heart’s blood – i.e. manuscripts and query letters – to the scrutiny of big city agents and editors. Everyone was pleasant, but, sad to say, the event marked a passage in my life. Sitting listening to people busy with Instagram, Smashwords, Kindle, and Pinterest, all in the interests of building their brand, I felt myself slipping from being a woman of a certain age to a certified old fart.

There is no doubt over the years I’ve been a writer that the publishing business has changed for better and for worse simultaneously. Feeling grumpy, I wondered when some of these so very with-it literary entrepreneurs actually have time to write – or as much to the point, think of something new.

But then I considered that branding and self-promotion have always been part of the literary game, at least for some writers. Certain of our predecessors would have been naturals for Twitter. Think of Papa Hemingway at the Seville bull ring with iPhone in hand. He was made for the tech.

And consider the Fitzgerald’s, the gayest of the gay celebs of the roaring twenties. Selfies, anyone? If F. Scott would maybe have reservations (he wanted to keep everything for his readers, including Zelda’s diaries), I think she would have enjoyed snapping those bathtubs full of gin and folks kicking up their heels doing the Charleston.

Across the water, we have Colette and wouldn’t she have enjoyed posting her cats’ pix on Pinterest? Not to mention a shot or two of the lover of the moment. George Sand, one of the great galley slaves of nineteenth century prose, would surely have had enough energy for blogging, as would that master of the serial novel, Charles Dickens, who reveled in responses from his many fans.

Earlier times had their own blatant forms of self-promotion. Whitman wrote positive reviews of Leaves of Grass when sufficient praise wasn’t forthcoming, and the eighteenth century Scot, James Boswell, was also known to ghost a glowing review when his prose required one.

Boswell, indeed, should probably be enshrined for his extraordinary literary selfies: the wonderful early London Journal and his monumental biography of Dr. Samuel Johnston. But though tolerant of his assiduous biographer, the creator of the English dictionary would not, I think, have indulged in blogging or tweeting, declaring famously that “none but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”
Shakespeare, the greatest poet of all, might have had a different tack. Although raised to literary divinity in the centuries since he strode the boards and scribbled up the greatest plays in our language, Shakespeare was very much the entrepreneur and hard-headed businessman. If a blog would bring more patrons to the Globe, I suspect he would have churned out the copy and posted it everywhere.

But do these brand-conscious eminences reconcile me to the new world of catering to reader curiosity and sharing my inner thoughts with my Facebook “friends”? Not really. I must confess I prefer to think of those whose “brand,” if we have to use the term, grew naturally. I find it hard to imagine what the withdrawn and eccentric Emily Bronte would have tweeted. Walked on the moor with Keeper? (her mastiff)? Storm brewing over the hills? Great idea for an irresistible anti-hero? Not very likely.

Jane Austen, though a sociable person, devoted to family and friends, would be even less likely to share her thoughts with the world or to update strangers with accounts of local whist parties, carriage rides, and balls. Ladies simply did not wish to be known in such a way, although the Divine Jane was as fond of literary advances and royalty payments as any other writer.

And what about our own American recluse, Emily Dickinson? Though her short poems are certainly tweet length, and she claimed that they were “her letter to the world,” I don’t think we could expect any great revelations from the Belle of Amherst, who also wrote that “my wars are laid away in books.” Passion, regrets, losses, sorrows, angers she had in plenty, and tweet-able phrases, too, but she did not spend her emotions so easily or carelessly. Rather she distilled them into the poems that still perplex and fascinate today.

So although money is good and a recognizable brand can be profitable, I’m not convinced that the assiduous tending of an image is a wholly good thing. It is all too easy to be type-cast in this world, and I suspect that it is also easy to diffuse one’s ideas and energy into catering to fans and indulging in a writerly form of busyness instead of focusing on the hard work of writing.