23 June 2016

Gods and Demi-Gods


Ever since the Orlando shooting, I've seen a lot more memes about how America doesn't need more laws, it needs to turn back to God.  But America has turned completely to its gods, which are money and power.  We sacrifice human beings on their altars every day, and guns are one of the ways we do it.  We swallow the deaths of 20 children, 50 people, a mass shooting every day, without a qualm because we know our gods are righteous and just and POWERFUL.  Money and power require these (and other) human sacrifices, because otherwise we would not realize how powerful - and false - these gods are.  Their worship is mediated through their denominations, (the modern, international corporations), their priesthood (lobbyists and politicians), and their demi-gods (celebrities and millionaires/billionaires).
  • The first thing to understand is that when money and power are gods, ALL corporations must make constant profits:  the latest economic doctrine - "maximizing shareholder value" - says that a corporation has no purpose but to make profits for its shareholders.  This means that employer/employee loyalty and customer service/satisfaction are both irrelevant.  Pensions and/or health benefits can and must be cut whenever it's expedient to the bottom line.  Jobs must be outsourced to the lowest bidder, taxes must be avoided by offshoring whenever possible, nationalism/patriotism is a 20th century concept (i.e., ridiculous) and the fact that unemployed people do not buy much is ignored.  The honest truth is the United States is no longer the preferred customer of most corporations, including Coca-Cola:  China is king.  
  • When money and power are gods, everything must be privatized, i.e., put into the hands of corporations.  At the same time, the corporations are no longer national, they are global, in order to maximize shareholder value (see above).  Government - on any level - is an impediment to profit, so it must be made as small and neutralized as possible, except when needed to help the corporations (see below).  
    • NOTE:  I am constantly amazed at how, in one of the most successful propaganda campaigns in history, our government (a democracy, where the government is "we, the people") has become more dangerous in many people's eyes than corporations such as Monsanto, R. J. Reynolds, Dow Chemical, and Smith & Wesson.  At least with government, I can vote the bastards out: corporations, can't even be sued any more (see Legal Restrictions below).
        President Eisenhower Portrait 1959.tif
    • Corporate profits must be maintained, at all costs, including military.  Eisenhower recognized the beginnings of this in his Military Industrial Complex Speech.  Since the end of the Cold War, there has almost always been an economic rather than political reason why troops are sent where they are, why outrage is expressed over certain international incidents and not over others.  (This is why, for example, the entire international community joined the United States to invade Iraq in 1990-91's First Gulf War, a/k/a the 710 War, but everyone stood on the sidelines and watched as 800,000 people were slaughtered in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.)  And many aspects of war - supplies, security, etc. - are now routinely privatized to corporations which make a hefty profit with almost no oversight, including Bechtel (which was accused of  war profiteering), Halliburton, and Blackwater (which was brought before Congress in 2007 for "employee misdeeds," among other things).  
        • NOTE: In the run-up to the Iraq war, Halliburton was awarded a $7 billion contract for which 'unusually' only Halliburton was allowed to bid (Wikipedia - Halliburton)  It might not have hurt that Dick Cheney had been Chairman and CEO from 1995-2000.    
    • The gun manufacturers and armament industries must make constant profits, which means sales must be constant, and so the NRA preaches the complete and total ownership of any firearm of any kind by anyone at any time.  (Soon coming to your neighborhood:  personal flamethrowers!  Sadly, I'm not kidding.)  That's why each new shooting must be propagandized in whatever way that will increase sales:
    1. there are crazy people out there with guns, buy more guns now;
    2. the terrorists are coming to kill you, buy more guns now;
    3. the government is coming to take away your guns, buy more on guns now.
    • Also, to ensure constant profits for the weapons industry, our entertainment and news media must be saturated with ever-increasing levels of threats and violence both to keep the fear and anxiety at suitable levels and - very important, very underestimated - product placement. (Remember that every prop / weapon / outfit / drink you see on Criminal Minds, James Bond, the Bourne Identities, etc., is there in order to sell one to you.)  

    • NOTE 1:  If you don't believe that violence in media has any effect on people's behavior, then why do corporations spend billions on advertising?  If the constant barrage of news feeds, hour-long TV show, binge-watching television shows, and movies, or unlimited video games has no effect on our minds and behavior, then why should corporations pay billions for a 30-second ad spot?  Why do politicians and super-PACs do the same?  Are they all stupid?  
    • NOTE 2:  If you don't believe that violence in media has increased, watch an episode of Gunsmoke on RetroTV some time, and note how seldom Matt Dillon (or even the bad guys) used a gun.  Some day count the number of weapons on display in previews during the morning news.  (The average child will see 8,000 murders on television before finishing elementary school:  Link).  
    • NOTE 3:  The quantity of violence not only has increased, but, as the public becomes more jaded, it has become more and more perverse.  On the news, "When it bleeds, it leads!"  Literally.  As for entertainment, in the 1980s, Law and Order SVU was considered fairly hard-core, with story-lines of children being abused and murdered, women and children being raped, tortured, etc.  Not any more. Criminal Minds, Dexter, Hannibal, and other shows upped the ante with on-screen cannibalism, eye-gougings, etc.  On "Game of Thrones" human beings are being castrated and flayed alive.  Live, to-the-death gladiatorial contests cannot be far behind.  (But it's all in jest, they but do poison in jest, no harm in the world...)
    When money and power are gods, and corporations are their high priests, it has real world consequences.  And one of those is that the poor - collectively and individually - are sinners, and must be punished by any means at the disposal of the powerful.  The results are:

    Propaganda:  The poor are "losers", "moochers", "lazy", "worthless", "stupid".  Social Security and Medicare - both fully taxpayer funded, i.e., paid by us - are called "entitlements", which implies that they haven't been earned, but are something we moochers wrongly feel "entitled" to. (Damn straight I feel "entitled" to Social Security - I paid into it for 40 years!)

    Political restrictions:  Between gerrymandering, voting restrictions, and Citizens United, the powerful have done an excellent job of ensuring that the votes/interests/representation of the working class and poor are rendered irrelevant to the political process.  My own congresspeople - John Thune, Mike Rounds, and Kristi Noem - respond to my e-mails and letters with form letters.  I don't have the money to make them hear me.

    Legal restrictions:
    • Our right to sue corporations is being stripped away from us by "mandatory arbitration clauses" put in place by most health insurance plans, dealership or franchise agreements, billing agreements (think credit cards), and many, many, many other corporate contracts.  These deny the right of the consumer, employee, or contractee to sue in favor of arbitration before an arbiter of the corporation's choosing, at your expense (think $200-$300 an hour).  See Public Citizen Access - Mandatory Arbitration Clauses.    
    • Gag orders have become common as part of settlements with large corporations.  See Fracking gag order.  
    • If you are poor and arrested, even if you are found innocent, in many states and counties, you will be charged with court costs, fines, and fees for your (hopefully short) stay in jail.  In some counties, you will be charged for a public defender, despite the Miranda Law's assurance that one will be provided for you.  
    • The prison system - which has been privatized in many states - must make constant profits, and their contracts require full prisons, no matter what the level of crime actually is.  Therefore any laws which decriminalize any drugs must be fought.  Also, addiction, mental illness, and mental disability have been unofficially criminalized, because there's not enough money for state or federal mental health facilities and private mental health facilities are only for those with excellent health insurance.  
    When money and power are gods, human life has no meaning and really doesn't matter other than as just another sound bite to convince us that we are righteous, we are the best, we are exceptional, and everything's fine. But the real purpose of life under these gods is to make money and consume goods, nothing else. Allegiance must be mindless, generated by carefully crafted sound-bites.  Mental processes must be carefully controlled, so that no one ever considers that there might more to life than making money, shopping, sports, and/or the latest entertainment craze.

    1984first.jpgBut fear counts above all.  No one must ever question why - living in the richest, most privileged, most free society on earth, the "home of the free and the brave" - why they are so afraid, all the time, everywhere.  And, why is the object of fear constantly changing?  In Orwell's "1984" Oceania always at war, but the enemy kept switching from Eurasia to Eastasia.  In my lifetime I have watched the enemy - the one who will destroy us at all costs - change from Communism to the Evil Empire (Soviet Russia)/China to Japan to the Axis of Evil (Iran/Iraq/North Korea) to Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden to Radical Islamic Terrorism, with a few stops along the way at black ghettos, hippies, drugs, black gangs, urban thugs, illegal immigrants, illegal immigrant children, legal refugees, and anyone wearing a turban.  Not to mention polio, HIV, SARS, H1N1, Ebola, and Zika viruses.
    • NOTE:  So far, we're still here.  
    But let's not think about that.  Above all, let's not think about either of the following facts:
    • Money and power are abstractions, fictions, a belief system rather than a reality, to which we sacrifice real human beings, not to mention real air, real water, real food, real life, daily.  
    • No matter how much money and power is worshiped, acquired, accumulated, fought for, praised, and sacrificed to, life will never be 100% safe, and 100% of all people will all still die naked and alone.  Including the wealthiest of the 1%.  The gods of money and power, the church of the corporation, the priests of politicians and lobbyists, the demi-gods of celebrity will not save any of us from that fate.  
    This is the truth about the gods that America has chosen.  Like any pagan deities, they require regular human sacrifice.  And they are getting it.




    22 June 2016

    Writers League of Texas Agents & Editors Conference


    by Jan Grape and Velma



    22 June 2016



    Footnotes


    In This Issue
    2016 Agents & Editors Conference
    2016 Summer Writing Retreat
    Quick Links
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    After the 4th!
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    Our next Texas Writes event will takes place at the Marathon Public Library on Saturday, July 16 at 1:00 pm.
    We're just starting to schedule our next round of events. The 2016/2017 schedule, available on the Texas Writes page on our website, will be updated as we add new libraries.


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    2016 marks the Writers' League of Texas' 35th Anniversary. 


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    Details on the various membership levels and associated benefits can be found HERE.

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    2016 Agents & Editors Conference

    Countdown to the Conference:
    THREE DAYS TO GO!

    It's not too late to join us this weekend in Austin.
    Friday, Saturday, Sunday

    June 24-26, 2016
    Hyatt Regency Austin


    The boxes are packed. The tote bags are stuffed. And the weekend ahead promises to be pretty amazing. In just three days, the Writers' League of Texas' 23rd Annual Agents & Editors Conference kicks off -- and we can't wait.

    If you've been waiting to purchase your ticket to this year's event, the time is now and we do have a few spots left. You can find the full conference program on our website, including the weekend's schedule (Friday through Sunday), bios and photos of our visiting faculty, information on preparing for the many networking opportunities, details about the Hyatt and dining & entertainment options nearby, and the full list of our panelists, presenters, keynoters, moderators, exhibitors, and more.

    We've also made available on Soundcloud our podcast of last week's June Third Thursday discussion, "Practice Makes Pitch Perfect." Whether you're planning to attend the conference (or another event) or you're looking to improve your query letter, we hope you'll listen to the recording (featuring a former literary agent and current publishing sales director) and take away some tips and tricks for both in-person and written pitches. LISTEN HERE


     
    See you in Austin on June 24! 
    And remember that we're here for you and happy to answer any and all questions ahead of time, so please do reach out. 





    2016 Summer Writing Retreat

    2016 Summer Writing Retreat: 
    Seats Are Still Available!

     

    Ever want to get away from it all and spend a week immersed in your
    craft, taking in a truly breathtaking setting, and meeting fellow
    writers?

    Here's your chance with the Writers' League of Texas 10th Annual Summer Writing Retreat at Sul Ross State University in scenic Alpine, deep in the heart of West Texas.
    Kicking off with an orientation the evening of Sunday, July 17, five classes are taught simultaneously by five terrific instructors, Monday, July 18 through Friday, July 22.

    For additional information about this one-of-a-kind event, CLICK HERE. Seats are still available in two of the five classes!   


    ONLY 4 SEATS REMAINING!

    Writers who attend this class will come away with a clear sense of the distinct elements of effective storytelling to focus on for a revision as well as a definitive map for tackling the process and meaningful strategies to get (and stay) unstuck. Read a Q&A with Charlotte Gullick here, and visit the class page for more information and to sign up for her class.

    Charlotte Gullick
    is Chair of the Creative Writing Department at Austin Community College. A first-generation college graduate, she received her AA from Santa Rosa Junior College, a BA in Literature/Creative Writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a MA in English/Creative Writing from the University of California, Davis. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the Institute of American Indian Arts in May
    2016.

    Charlotte's first novel, By Way of Water, was chosen by Jayne Anne Phillips as the Grand Prize winner of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards Program, and a special author's edition was reissued by the Santa Fe Writers Project in November of 2013. Charlotte's other awards include a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship for Fiction, a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship for Poetry, a MacDowell Colony Residency, Faculty of Year from College of the Redwoods as well as the Evergreen State College 2012 Teacher Excellence Award.


    ONLY 1 SEAT REMAINING! 

    With a winning combination of morning instruction & discussion and afternoon writing assignments, as well as personalized feedback from the instructor, this course will give you the basic tools to write lengthy, narrative-driven stories that are moreabout attitude than objectivity, more about getting at the heart of a story than just the facts. Visit the class page for more info and to sign up for this class.

    Michael Hall graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1979. Before joining Texas Monthly in 1997, he was an associate editor of Third Coast magazine and the managing editor of the Austin Chronicle.
    He won a Texas Gavel Award in 2003 for his story about capital punishment, "Death Isn't Fair," which was also nominated for a National Magazine Award. Hall's stories have appeared in the
    Best American Magazine Writing, the Best American Sportswriting, the Best American Nonrequired Reading, and Da Capo Best Music Writing. He has also written for Trouser Press, The New York Times, Men's Journal, and the Austin American-Statesman






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    21 June 2016

    Sweet Dreams and Armpits


    A is for…


    I'll start off with the second part of the title first.
    When I get a trauma case, my priorities are ABC, or C-ABC

    C-spine (some experts put this first, so we don't forget to immobilize the cervical spine)

    Airway: is the patient talking? Bleeding? Suffering from a burn that will close off the airway?

    Breathing: now check the lungs and chest. Look at the respiratory rate and oxygenation.

    Circulation: is s/he bleeding anywhere? How are the blood pressure and heart rate?

    D is for disability, which means a neurological exam. Pupils, reflexes, and strength if the patient will cooperate.

    Dr. Scott Weingart, an emergency physician intensivist based in New York, emphasizes E for Exposure in penetrating trauma. You need to find the entry and exit points so the patient doesn’t bleed out from a bullet wound in the back while you’re messing around with a chest tube in the front.

    So even before establishing airway, if the patient is maintaining an airway and has no blunt injuries, Dr. Weingart inspects “every square centimetre” of the patient’s skin, including the axillae, the back, the gluteal folds and the perineum, including lifting up the scrotum in a male patient. A much catchier mnemonic, proposed by Dr. Robert Orman, an emergency physician in Portland, Oregon, is: “armpits, back, butt cheeks and sack.”

    With thanks to Leigh Lundin for pointing out that I had forgotten to post, and to the Medical Post for originally printing this clinical pearl.

    Sweet Dreams

    And now for a happy dance: one of my writing dreams has come true. When I looked at Rob Lopresti's column, I recognized the Forensics book cover by Val McDermid.

    Why? Because it was chosen as one of CBC's best crime books of the season--along with my own Stockholm Syndrome.

    Kris Rusch has said that you should make sure you set writing goals, which are within your control, as well as dreams, which are pies in the sky.

    Well, I've been wanting to get on CBC's The Next Chapter for years. So I updated my list of writing dreams and goals here.

    Goal: unlocked!

    Of course, I have approximately 2 million other unrealized goals, but it's a start. How about you? What are your writing goals and dreams?

    Signing out so I can get some sleep before my ER shift tomorrow. I hope I won't need to use my C-ABCDE mnemonic, but you never know what'll happen.

    Peace.

    20 June 2016

    Memoirs Are Made of This


    I've taught classes on writing the mystery for several years now, off and on, and feel I know the genre well. Recently I was asked to teach a writing class to a group of seniors, but, unfortunately, mystery was not the focal point of this group. Mostly the participants wanted to write memoirs – something I know next to nothing about.

    I like make-believe. Fiction. Making up a story and telling it. I've been doing that since I learned to talk, much to my parents' dismay. But I did manage to entertain my captive babysitting charges a great deal with my abilities – such as they were. But memoirs? That's a whole 'nuther ball of wax.

    I tried for several sessions to translate what I actually knew about writing into something these participants could use. And I did – to some degree. Then one day, as the class was winding down, we started talking about experiences we've had in our lives, and I told a couple of stories. One of the women looked at me and grinned. “You should write a memoir,” she said.

    Well, I may not go that far, but there were a couple of things I thought I should probably put in writing, just for my grand kids, and maybe even their grand kids. Because I was witness to some world events that will still be part of history when those further away grand kids are up and running.

    I remember in high school reading a book entitled something like “When FDR Died,' and asking my mother where she was when that happened. This was history from before I was born, and I wanted to know. And she could tell me every detail of her day and where she was when she heard the paperboy's cry.

    And so I thought maybe my grand kids might like to know that their grandmother was standing in the road that led out of Love Field Airport in Dallas and was close enough to touch President Kennedy on the day he died. Actually, I did try to touch him, but a secret service man looked at me and I backed off quickly. My mother had taken my older brother and I out of school and the three of us stood there, not knowing we were about to become a part of one of history's darkest hours. I remember going back to school. I'd missed lunch with my class and had to go eat alone. When I got back to home room, a boy came over and told me the president had been shot. Knowing he knew where I'd been and why I was late, I just told him it was a really sick joke and to leave me alone. Some of the other kids came up and tried to tell me the same thing – I shooed them away, getting madder and madder at such a stupid and mean joke. Then my teacher came to my desk, squatted down, took my hand and convinced me that it was true. It was my first experience with the death of a person I felt I knew and knew I admired greatly. I still have the slip of paper the school secretary gave my mother to get me out of class. It has the date on it and as for the reason, it simply states, “President.”
    Many, many years later, my grown daughter was in a car wreck on I-35 from Austin to San Antonio during a bad rainstorm. Her little Toyota Celica was T-boned by an over-sized Ford F-150. Her head cracked the driver's side window. Basically she wasn't physically hurt so much as emotionally wrecked. She couldn't get back on the freeway and, since her job was half-way between Austin and San Antonio and the only way to get there was on I-35, she lost her job. I thought she needed a vacation. And to get her mind off of the trauma, I decided the two of us would fly to Las Vegas. We boarded a plane at nine a.m. on September 11, 2001. Not a good way to get over a trauma, you say? Agreed.

    We, of course, didn't know what had happened until we landed. There were little clues – like all the flight attendants disappearing into the cockpit for longer than seemed reasonable, and the fact that the people who were taking this plane on to Los Angeles were told to deplane ASAP. When we got into the airport, I noticed they were playing the old films of the bombing at the World Trade Center. When I asked a man standing there why, I found out those weren't old films. The long and short of it was we were stuck in Las Vegas for five days, away from home and family, horrified, in mourning, scared of what could happen next, and unable to get out as all planes were grounded and all rental cars were gone. Finally I was able to get a rental car and we left all the seemingly inappropriate bells and whistles, drunken laughter, and revelry, my daughter and I singing “Leaving Las Vegas” at the tops of our lungs as we vacated that city. It was a long drive back to Austin, but in some ways a cathartic one. Driving through the dessert with no traffic and watching the changing of the colors from midday to midnight was soothing on the soul. But that didn't stop us from jumping out of the car when we got to the Texas state line and singing “The Eyes of Texas”, again at the top of our lungs. (Which is not a pleasant thing since I can't carry a tune in a bucket – even with a wheel barrow attached.) Getting home to where my husband and her father awaited us was the best part of the trip. But I think being so close to real disaster helped my daughter put things in perspective. She never got her Toyota Celica back – it was totaled – but she got a new car and eventually got a new job, and, yes, has been able to drive on I-35 since then. It was a bonding experience for mother and daughter, one we'll always share, and one her kids and their kids need to know about.

    Okay, maybe not memoirs, but I think I'll write this stuff down.

    19 June 2016

    Unbreakable


    Orlando, FL
    by Leigh Lundin

    Saturday, six in the morning. My original article was queued to publish at midnight, but ignoring three tragic events in Orlando doesn’t seem right. I'll talk about one of those events today.

    I happened to be out of town when the tragedies hit. Thanks to today’s global news, friends in South Africa sent me links in the early morning hours before my own news feed picked up the shootings. Other out-of-state friends sent condolences as television news lit up with the sun and the death count grew: perhaps more than a dozen killed, then twenty, then forty-something, and finally an even fifty.

    Crossed Swords

    Parliament House
    My first thought when I heard a gay club was attacked was of The Parliament House, a huge night club and resort complex two blocks south of my offices and not far from GLAD, the Gay-Lesbian Alliance. At the moment, The Parliament House’s marquee reads “We are Pulse– Unbreakable.

    My typing fingers try to attach the word ‘notorious’ to Parliament House, the adjective most used by acquaintances, but it occurs to me that it’s probably not notorious to its patrons. An establishment running that strong for more than four decades obviously has something going for it.

    The carnage is inconceivable. One shocked resident reported losing seven friends at the Pulse, another more than two dozen. Losing one friend is awful but losing seven or twenty-seven?

    A picture emerges not of a religious attack but of a gay hate crime or likely a gay self-hate crime. Reports conflict whether the shooter appeared on gay dating sites, but locals say Mateen, the perpetrator, attended gay clubs in Orlando. Those in the know say Mateen was troubled but not fanatically religious nor had contact with Daesh/ISIS. Police think he donned the mantle of ISIL to gain additional notoriety and as a way of justifying his crime.

    Crossed Paths

    In writing this, I’ve repeatedly cut out paragraphs that inevitably lead to political positions, but during 9/11, I had my own little encounter with Islam. At the time of the World Trade Center attack, I happened to be renting to a Saudi Arabian tenant. He wore traditional dress and he had a couple of other Muslim friends. They shared shawarma with me, perfectly seasoned, a kind of sandwich I hadn’t had in years.

    I needed to make repairs, involving drills and saws. When it came time for prayers, they welcomed me to continue, but I couldn’t– I hadn’t been taught that way. I asked if I might observe and afterward, they explained the significance of small gestures such as angels on the shoulders.

    After the 9/11 attackers were identified as Muslim, my tenant was afraid to stay. Although I made it clear he was in good standing with me, he flew home to Riyadh. His being a Muslim wasn't a source of conflict but of communication. He was a good man, a kind person. He gave me a parting gift; I can’t think of another tenant who’s done that. But he was right– some fools would have made his life difficult if not dangerous.

    A Case in Point

    Downtown Disney Springs
    A few months following 9/11, I was called to jury duty in a criminal trial. An Iranian student was accused of assaulting a girl at Downtown Disney, the entertainment complex originally called The Village, then the West Side, and now Disney Springs. The local State Attorney’s office, apparently considering the case a slam dunk, assigned not just their B-team, but recruits who looked fresh out of college.

    The prosecution put on the cop who took the report and made the arrest, then a friend of the victim who said she kind of, sort of witnessed the incident, and finally the victim herself, a striking blonde who proved reluctant in the extreme to testify.

    While stopping short of admitting she and the accused were dating, she said they’d had an argument. She’d slapped him and drinks were spilled or thrown in faces. Then presumably he slapped her. No, no.

    The defense paraded a number of friends as witnesses who saw and heard nothing, but of course they couldn’t prove a negative. The notion of an alcoholic-fueled spat by clandestine lovers couldn’t be avoided, the proverbial elephant in the room.

    We, the jury, identified two problems with the case. First, the alleged victim initiated the incident and struck him first. That troubled us. But we noticed something the lawyers hadn’t. In demonstrations, the witness and victim indicated the boy had slapped her with his right hand, but we noticed he wrote left-handed. Everyone we knew punched and slapped with their dominant hand, not their weaker one. This wasn’t merely a potential crime, but an unresolved mystery.

    We, a jury of three men and nine women, found the accused not guilty.

    The prosecution was stunned. They had everything going for them– a pretty blonde victim, a dark, dangerous-looking Muslim kid, and a predominantly female panel in a post-9/11 atmosphere — yet they lost. Prosecutors asked the judge to poll the jury. When we stood by our decision, they asked the judge to individually question the jurors.

    We knew we didn’t have all the answers, but I was proud of us Floridians that day. We showed that in a pained and angry atmosphere, an American jury could still be fair without regard to origin or religion.

    Today, I’m happy to say the local take is striving to be fair as well. Friends and neighbors of the victims don’t believe Islam played a rôle, and that mention of ISIS was either misdirection or mere gilding of the deadly lily. Mateen's father simply says he committed a crime against humanity.

    One word echoes not just in Orlando but with honorable people everywhere that goodness remains… unbreakable.

    18 June 2016

    That's a Mystery to ME


    There are several questions that always seem to come up, at conferences, classes, meetings, signings, and wherever else writers get together with readers or other writers. You know the ones I mean. Should fiction be outlined? Do you edit as you go? Which is more important, plot or character? Where do you get your ideas? Do you assign yourself a page/word quota? Do you write in a certain location, or at a certain time of day?

    And one that I hear really often: What, exactly, IS a mystery?

    What is it indeed? Does it have to be a whodunit? Must it include a murder? Must it always feature a detective? It's one of those arguments that could be called, well, mysterious.

    Criminal activity

    To me, the answer is clear. I agree with Otto Penzler, the man who founded Mysterious Press, owns the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, and has for the past nineteen years edited the annual Best American Mystery Stories anthology. Otto says, in every introduction to B.A.M.S., that he considers a mystery to be "any work of fiction in which a crime, or the threat of a crime, is central to the theme or the plot."

    NOTE: In looking over the Amazon reviews for The Best American Mystery Stories 2015, I notice that several reviewers said they didn't like it because it included stories that weren't mysteries. My response would be that they didn't read the intro. It doesn't leave much room for doubt.

    Why is such a definition important? Does it even matter? I think it does. It's important because writers need to know what they've written in order to know where to submit it. If a magazine (or anthology) editor or a book publisher or agent says he or she is looking for mystery stories/novels, then you/I/we need to know what to send and what not to send. And, again, Otto's definition seems logical. I think mysteries can be whodunits, howdunits, whydunits, etc. (Much has been said at this blog recently about the TV series Columbo, and while I think all of us would classify those episodes as mysteries, none of them were whodunits. All were howcatchems.)

    Consider this: If a character spends an entire story or novel trying to murder someone and is stopped just before doing it (The Day of the Jackal, maybe?) does that story or novel fall into the mystery category? Sure it does. A crime--the threat of a crime, in this case--is central to the plot. And I can think of a few mysteries aired on Alfred Hitchcock Presents that didn't even involve a crime. One example is Man From the South, featuring Steve McQueen and adapted from the short story of the same name by Roald Dahl, and another is Breakdown, starring Joseph Cotten as a paralyzed accident victim whose rescuers believe he's dead. Some of you might've seen those, and if you did you'll remember that they were more suspenseful than mysterious.

    I'll take Stephen King for 100, Alex

    Another thing that always seems to surface in a discussion like this is the fact that some literary authors and publishers look down their noses at the mystery genre and mystery writers. At least two successful crime writers have told me there are certain upscale independent bookstores that aren't terribly receptive to having them come there to sign. The store owners allow it, because--uppity or not--bookstores must make a profit, and successful genre authors usually sell more books than successful literary authors. But there's still a bias. It's been said that Stephen King was for years accused of writing nothing but commercial/popular/genre fiction, until the publication of "The Man in the Black Suit" in The New Yorker and his pseudo-literary novel Bag of Bones. After that, critics began acknowledging that his work is occasionally (in their words) meaningful and profound.

    To get back to the subject of this column, though, I also find it interesting that King, who is of course best known for horror fiction, won a well-deserved Edgar Award last year for the novel Mr. Mercedes and another Edgar this year for his short story "Obits." Neither of them fit into some folks' idea of a mystery. The novel was more of a suspense/thriller, and "Obits" was firmly entombed in the spooky/otherwordly/paranormal category. My point is that the Edgar is awarded by Mystery Writers of America, and that in itself means those two works should be considered to be--among other things--mysteries.

    Check the label

    I remember something Rob Lopresti said to me years ago, on this "what is a mystery?" topic. He said "Definitions tend to be more useful for starting arguments that for ending them." In fact, with all this talk of which cubbyhole to put what in, I'm reminded of a poem I once wrote (and sold, believe it or not), called "A Short Career." Like all my poetry, it tends to be more silly than useful, but I think this one happens to (accidentally) illustrate a point:

    Eddie knew that a detective wears an
    Overcoat and hat,
    But he lost his pipe and magnifying
    Glass, so that was that.

    What Eddie didn't understand is that very few things in this life are simple and elementary, my dear Watson. Sometimes the prettiest colors are those that are blended, or at least mixed-and-matched. I think mystery is a broad category, and--IMHO--hybrids are welcome.

    It's probably worth mentioning that Elmore Leonard--who was once recognized as a Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America--was always quick to point out that he'd never in his life written a traditional mystery. His stories and novels were about crime and deception, not detection. Even so, the best place to find his work is in the MYSTERY section of the bookstore.

    Final Jeopardy question:

    What's your take, on this particular argument? Do you think books and stories that lean more toward "suspense" or "thriller" should always be so labeled, or at least identified as a subgenre of "mystery"? Or do you agree that the inclusion of a crime qualifies any such story to be called a mystery?

    Investigative minds want to know.

    17 June 2016

    Comicon Results


    By Dixon Hill

     ComicCon results from two weeks ago:
     "Zombie's one -- Human's zero!"

    That, at least, is the way our nurse claimed that the X-ray tech reported the results of my wife's foot exam two Saturdays ago.  Those of you who read my last post, know that my son attended ComicCon in Phoenix.  But, what I didn't tell you is that my wife, Madeleine, went with him on Saturday because I had to work.

    The first thing they did, upon entering, was scramble up to the top floor of the Phoenix Convention Center to the Zombie fighting exhibit, in which patrons pay a buck to be issued a cap gun and make their way through a cloth maze populated by folks dressed as zombies, who in-turn growl, lunge, grab at, and sometimes lightly grasp said patrons as they pass.  Want to make the zombie quit attacking you, shoot it in the head with your cap gun.

    My wife understood the rules -- All but one!


    You have to shoot a zombie in the HEAD, because that's the seat of the creature's malfunctioning brain.  My wife blazed away at the zombies, who mostly fell down -- except for one female of he species, who kept coming back for more.  When she snatched at Madeleine's foot, my wife stepped back and turned in the same instant.

    Her reward?  The zombie gave up, and the fifth metatarsal (the long bone in the foot behind the pinky toe) on Mad's right foot went POP!  A spiral fracture, which the doctor said is sometimes called, "The dancer's break," due to the rotating back step that often proves the catalyst.  My wife, whom I first met while we both members of the  101st Airborne Division, then proceeded to accompany my son through the rest of that day's Comicon, a task that necessitates walking for (quite literally -- in the true sense of the word) miles.

    She proved a sensation at the hospital that evening, however.  Nurses and orderlies kept sneeking in to ask, "Is it true?  You broke your foot fighting zombies?  How AWESOME!"

    "You're a celebrity," I told her.

    "We're getting old."  She shook her head.  "They aren't excited about the zombies.  It's the idea that an old lady broke her foot while fighting zombies.  That's what they find awesome."

    "Oh, that's not true," I replied.

    "Yes it is.  And we are getting old."
    Our sons, Joe (with beard) and Quentin (red shirt,cowboy hat)
    appear on the evening news, in a story about Comicon.

    "Your not old!  You're not even fifty, honey!"

    She rolled her eyes.  "You're killing me here.  You're killing me."

    Maybe I should have said, "...not even forty...."

    Both of my feet still work, so duty calls.

    I'll see you again in two weeks!
    --Dixon



             


    16 June 2016

    The Mysterious Sources of Ideas


    by Janice Law


    I guess that the most frequent question writers get, along with recommendations for agents or publishers, is “Where do your ideas come from?”

    In response, one waggish author is supposed to have replied that he ordered them wholesale.
    Would that were true! A few lucky souls seem to produce an unending stream of good and marketable ideas. Consider the great 19th century great galley slaves of literature like George Sand, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope or Honore de Balzac. Nearer to hand, there’s our own Joyce Carol Oates or any of the thriller writers who, with a stable of helpers, adorn the best seller lists month after month. Clearly they rarely have to beg the Muse for ideas, and they write The End only to start afresh at Chapter One.

    But I suspect that most writers are beset sooner or later with fears that another story, novel, article, or blog will not be forthcoming. Then it’s the writer’s turn to ask where ideas come from and how they can be persuaded to appear regularly.

     After forty years, I still have no definitive answer, but I do know some of the conditions that encourage inspiration. First, ideas in writing or painting, and I would guess the other arts as well, come from work. The genesis of art (or even pulp fiction) is the ultimate chicken and egg conundrum. Amateurs who say, I’d love to write but I don’t have any ideas, have it backwards. Writing produces ideas, which, in turn, produces writing.

    Perhaps the writing that primes the pump, so to speak, need not be the final product. I’m always surprised at the massive volumes of famous writers’ correspondence. When did they have time to write those hundreds, sometimes thousands, of letters? And we’re not talking emails, either, but long screeds – and in pen and ink, too. Others wrote not just letters but kept journals or wrote reviews and columns and left memoirs. I suspect such productivity fed the novels, plays and stories, even as it took time from the main work.

    Though crucial, writing itself is not enough. Books, the daily papers, and certain true crime TV shows have been useful for me. My newest novel, Homeward Dove, grew from a couple inches of print years ago in the London Telegraph. The Countess came from a couple pages in a children’s book about spies, while The Night Bus owed its inspiration to an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.

    But while the public works overtime for the crime writer, material and the practice of writing have to be combined with a certain sort of observational alertness. An example from my own career: at one point, I was doing features of a vaguely business nature for a local paper, things like  considering the then new proliferation of office greenery or explaining where stale bread went. I did this for a while and never had a problem with seeing publishable angles. Then the gig stopped. I don’t think I’ve had a single idea for a similar story since.

    The reason, I suspect, is that composition requires another ingredient, and that is the enlistment of the subconscious, both in daylight hours to notice things and after working hours, to bring the unexpected together. Maybe clever people who can plot out a whole novel do not need this assistance, but I do, and I often find myself on the verge of sleep giving orders to whatever neurons are in charge: finish the scene at the bridge; resolve the conflict between Fletcher and the Leader, or simply, next five pages, please. Works for me.

    After many years of writing, I have clearly semi-trained my subconscious. This is not to say all its ideas are brilliant or that the solution is always waiting for me the next morning. But the mysterious appearance of solutions does emphasize inspiration’s dependence on habit, on observation, and on work. The Muse, it turns out, has to be courted. Writing, writing, writing turns out to be the required offering for this capricious deity.