Merry Christmas to All!

 ...with waves from Canada...

Movies at a Theater

Eve Fisher's SleuthSayers posting on December 16th – My Brain on Old Movies – triggered my mind to remember the first movies I saw at a theater. As a kid, my first love was movies over books and stories and I remember so many.

The first movie I remember seeing in a theater was 1959's Journey to the Center of the Earth with James Mason, Arlene Dahl and Pat Boone. Saw it at the Saenger Theater on Canal Street, New Orleans. My Aunt Lucy and her boyfriend, later to be my Uncle Milton, took me on the streetcar where they deposited me at the Saenger while they went across the street to the Orpheum to watch Ben Hur, which they thought an eight year old like me would find boring. Journey was shorter than Ben Hur so I watched the movie twice. Loved it. Still do.

The next movie I remember seeing at a theater was 1960's The Lost World with Claude Rains, David Hedison, Jill St. John, Michael Rennie and Fernando Lamas. Followed by the re-release of 1953's The War of the Worlds with Gene Barry and Ann Robinson.

Somewhere along in there, I saw some Disney movies at the theater – Sleeping Beauty, Dumbo, Song of the South (Lord help me).

I also mentioned in a previous post how as an army brat, I lived in Italy (my father was stationed in Verona) and saw most of the movies released between 1961 and 1963 at the post theater.

Later, in high school my taste changed and I went to theaters to see Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up, Dr. Zhivago, The Graduate. As a young adult, I moved on to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Romeo and Juliet (1968 Franco Zeffirelli version with Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting).

When I became a writer, those early movies inspired me to write science-fiction stories and I wrote terrible SF stories until I learned how to write. Have to point to Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Lost World as inspirations for many of my SF adventure stories set on a fictional planet inhabited by dinosaur-like creatures. Some of those stories ended up in Asimov's, Tomorrow Science Fiction Magazine, Gorezone, Infinity Plus,  Oceans of the Mind, the premier issue of Plasma Frequency, Cricket children's magazine, and anthologies like Adventure and Star Noir. Many of stories are available in my collection Backwash of the Milky Way.

Other movies spurred me to write mysteries, western stories, historical fiction, children's fiction, mainstream fiction, suspense, fantasy, horror, romance, erotica, humor, and even a religious story. Always proud of my story which appeared in Messenger of the Sacred Heart as well as my stories which appeared in Cavalier, Juggs, Hustler's Busty Beauties, Playgirl and about a dozen Mammoth Books of New Erotica.

A Walk on the Wild Side with Capucine, Laurence Harvey and a 25-year old Jane Fonda and the scandalous Brititte Bardot movie And God Created Woman as well as other Bardot movies inspired my erotica.

from And God Created Woman (1956)

directed by Roger Vadim

starring Brigitte Bardot

Don't know about y'all but today's movies are so bad, it's hard to be inspired by any of them, except for the occasional movie without explosions, karate, guns, excessive violence, gore, insipid dialogue, cliched characters, excessive CGI and more explosions.

That's all for now.

www.oneildenoux.com 

It's Better to Travel (Or IS It?)

With apologies to Swing Out Sister...

 It is better to travel well than to arrive.

       – Siddhartha Guatama (The Buddha)

This story has a happy ending. Going to say this up front, because it will be important to remember while you read the following.

Funny story: this past Summer no less than TEN people I know took vacations in Hawaii. My wife, son and I had taken a vacation there three years ago, pre-COVID, during one of the hottest Julys on record.

So rather than join the Summer Vacation exodus, we decided to delay gratification, and book something for Winter Break. We got a smokin' deal on a hotel on Wailea Bay, booked it, and began dreaming of a week-long respite from a dreary Puget Sound December.

And then August rolled around, and my day-gig started up again. Full return to school, no remote learning options in my district.

A colleague who sat next to me during the first day of staff meetings upon our return tested positive later that SAME DAY for COVID. She wound up having to isolate and quarantine for the next two weeks. She had just returned from a week at her time-share.

In Maui.

We tried not to consider this a bad omen.

Somewhere around this time the State of Hawaii clamped back down hard on COVID travel restrictions. We heard from a variety of sources (including the owner of my wife's favorite coffee stand) that the paperwork involved in just getting to Hawaii had become many-layered, complex, and confusing.

On top of that, we had TSA-Pre memberships that were about to expire, and we needed to either renew them or upgrade to an even more exclusive pre-screening service, CLEAR. We opted for the latter. 

Around this time COVID boosters became available for people in our age group, so my wife and I signed up for the booster. While we were waiting for our appointments for that, the under-12 vaccine became available for children, and we signed our son up for that, as well.

With all of the above combined with the level of documentation in quintuplicate required by the State of Hawaii, it turned out to be something of a logistical nightmare.

It started with CLEAR.

We provided all of the documentation required for our application, paid all of our fees, with a single final step remaining: a trip to the airport, where we would have our retinas and fingerprints scanned at one of the CLEAR kiosks. Required time, approximately ten minutes apiece.

If. Only.

We went to the airport. We found a CLEAR kiosk. We attempted to finalize the process ourselves. No dice.

Just as we began to look around for help, a young lady wearing a CLEAR badge hustled up to us, appearing seemingly out of nowhere, and breathlessly asked whether we needed help. Relieved, we said we did, and laid out for her what we needed to accomplish.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, "I can help with that! Please wait right here! I will be right back!" And with that she high-tailed it through a rail gate with the CLEAR logo prominently displayed on it.

We did as we were told and waited. Right there. On that spot.

And waited.

And waited.

And....

After at least twenty minutes of this type of waiting, we came to the conclusion that this enthusiastic young CLEAR employee and had somehow gotten side-tracked. Maybe she was new? Maybe she got lost?

So we chanced passing through the rail gate with the CLEAR logo so prominently displayed, and after a fairly lengthy trek down easily a quarter of the terminal, we came upon another CLEAR employee, this one with an impressive man-bun which threatened to eclipse the CLEAR ID tag he wore.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said in a tone that bore not the slightest whiff of apology, "we can't process your applications here. You have to go," he pointed vaguely back in the direction whence we had come, "down to the next kiosk and Gate Whatever..." and  then without another word he went back to being completely unhelpful.

After retracing our steps and traversing half of the terminal, we came to the aforementioned kiosk and found a very helpful employee, who quickly set about helping us get our CLEAR memberships finalized.

HUZZAH!

Total time spent running around the airport on this "ten minutes, tops" errand? An hour-and-a-half.

With the above accomplished, we got our boosters, got our son vaccinated as soon as was remotely possible, and settled in to upload all of our vaccination documentation to CLEAR. That proved a breeze. All that was left was to go through the  State of Hawaii's online travel tracking service ("Hawaii Safe Travels") and provide exactly the same documentation we had provided to CLEAR. Over and over and over again. And that doesn't include the number of times the site crashed and we were required to start over from scratch.

It took about six hours of submitting, swearing, sweating and more submitting followed by ever more swearing, to get all of our documentation uploaded.

*phew!*

Fast-forward to the day of our flight (middle of last week) - we arrived at the baggage check for our airline (name redacted to protect the guilty). After a fairly substantial wait in line to check our baggage, we finally got to the front of the line, and were waited on by the single most unhelpful gentleman I have ever encountered in the hospitality industry, anywhere. 

We checked our bags, provided all of our documentation, including vaccination credentials, booster credentials, the whole nine yards. The entire time this "gentleman" spoke to us in a soft, warm, sunny, "ALOHA" voice, asking for this, and then this, and then that, and then this, and then that, never flagging, never sounding the least bit officious or tendentious in his tone.

But the wringer he put us through insisting we provide everything short of a pint of blood or our first-born (he was there with us, but no way were we giving him up!)? Breath-taking. All the while he continued to sound delighted in a way so consistent it would have been the envy of any game show host anywhere, ever.

And then we hit "The Snag."

"You don't have your son's vaccination information uploaded to the Hawaii Safe Travels site," the "gentleman" exclaimed gleefully.

"We didn't think we were required to," my wife said. "The website was unclear on that. Plus, we have CLEAR, and CLEAR says it's not required for travelers under age 18."

"Safe Travels Hawaii requires it," said Mr. Gleeful. 

My wife presented our son's vaccination information. Mr. Happy shook his head, his smile wide. "No-no-no-so-sorry. It must be uploaded to the site." And with that he dismissed us out of line because, and I quote: "That takes a while."

So there we stood in the middle of the terminal, struggling to get our son's vaccination documentation uploaded using my wife's phone. A good fifteen minutes later we got it uploaded, received confirmation, and my wife went back to Mr. Sunshine, where he confirmed we had uploaded our son's information, and then said, "Ohhhhh you have CLEAR!" His smile widened as though he had just won the lottery. "You're all good. Just go to the CLEAR kiosk in front of your gate and you are ready to go. Mahalo!" 

We left him in our wake convinced he would have delivered the news, "You've been poisoned and have thirty minutes to live!" in exactly that same tone.

Once we'd traversed half the terminal to get to the same CLEAR kiosk where we'd waited so long for help a few weeks, previous, a CLEAR employee greeted us, checked our names on her list, and informed us that with the level of CLEAR we had, we could go through TSA Pre, which was a whole other level of CLEAR, and way easier to get through.

She sent us back the way we'd come. "It's just around the corner to your right," she said.

Sure.

It turned out to be about a hundred feet past where Mr. Happy-Happy-Joy-Joy was still loudly plaguing would-be passengers in that gleeful tone of his. 

He hadn't bothered to tell us.

He just let us waste time heading in exactly the opposite direction.

TSA-Pre was, as always, great. Quick, professional, no-nonsense. Worth every nickel. The CLEAR employee who greeted us and squired us through TSA-Pre was like the employee who helped us finalize our memberships: just great. Knowledgeable, professional, courteous and helpful.

And then we got to the gate.

No sooner had we seated ourselves to await boarding, than I got called to the gate. 

Yep.

Turned out I was all set. But the airline officials needed to confirm my wife's ID. And then they looked at our son's vaccination information, and sent us to a second desk, where yet another airline official who informed us that because our son's second vaccination had come less than two weeks prior to our flight, and we had not gotten him a COVID test within the previous 72 hours, it was possible that he might need to quarantine for two weeks upon arrival in the Aloha State.

My wife and I looked at each other. Then she turned and said slowly and clearly to this airline official the exact same words she had used repeatedly with Mr. Cheer-and-Sunshine: "We have CLEAR. On the CLEAR website it states that we didn't need to register the information of any children under 18. And it said nothing about testing."

This time it worked the first time. The response: "Oh, you have CLEAR? Let me talk to my supervisor." Three minutes later: "You are all good to go."

Just in time to board.

Is it any wonder THIS happened:

Less than one minute later....

Hey! Don't judge me!

I said to my wife as we settled in for take-off, "I feel like Hawaii really made us earn a trip there this year!" 

She agreed.

But like I said, this story does have a happy ending! See below. Best vacation we've had as a family. 

Worth all the considerable trouble!

Just remember: if you're planning a trip to Hawaii, get started early on all that paperwork!

Happy Holidays, and see you in two weeks!

The Iron Lung

Elvis got his polio shot on a Sunday night in October, 1956, backstage at CBS Studio 50, right before he went on the Ed Sullivan show.  On the right is NYC Public Health Commissioner Leona Baumgartner, and the guy with the needle is Assistant Commissioner Harold Fuerst.  The enormously influential Daily Mirror columnist Walter Winchell had suggested the Salk vaccine might be as deadly as the disease itself, but in the six months after Elvis was seen getting the shot, U.S. vaccination levels shot up to 80 per cent.

In the early 1950’s, there was a spike in U.S. polio cases, and a surge of quiet hysteria.  It was a little like the fear of nuclear war, and as a kid, I remember confusing the two in my mind.  My mom warned me not to grab the brass door handles at the Woolworth’s in Harvard Square, and we didn’t get to go to Brigham’s afterwards for ice cream.  Polio was an invisible adversary, cold to the touch, and it was everywhere. 

The approval of the vaccine in ‘55 put Jonas Salk on the cover of TIME.  He was a national hero.  The oral vaccine developed by Albert Sabin came along a couple of years later, and the Americas have been polio-free for almost thirty years.  There have been outbreaks in Southwest Asia, but nowhere is it epidemic anymore. 

There was, mind, a dedicated growth industry in anxiety back when.  The aforementioned atomic holocaust, along with fringe nuttiness - fluoridation of the public water supply being a Commie plot, for example – but polio inspired an actual sub-genre.  Stories featuring the iron lung became a staple, all with roughly similar conventions.

An explanation.  One in five paralytic polio cases develop respiratory symptoms.  The virus affects the upper cervical vertebrae, and paralyzes the diaphragm.  You can’t breathe on your own; you’re kept alive on a ventilator.  In the 1950’s, they used a negative-pressure ventilator called an iron lung.  It was a coffin-sized metal tube, and your entire body went into it.  Only your head stuck out.  The vacuum created by negative pressure inside sucks your chest up, and your lungs draw in air. 

On an episode of Alfred Hitchcock, Brian Keith is in an iron lung, and his wife plans to pull the plug.  The question is how he can possibly outwit her when he’s flat on his back and immobilized, and there’s no way he can call for help.  There’s a delicious twist I didn’t see coming.

The iron lung is an obvious metaphor, but it’s also physical, the helplessness cruelly literal.  It’s interesting to me that certain tropes are so much a product of their particular time.  In this instance, representing the Cold War: we’re in the grip of overwhelming, mechanical forces, and struggle like ants.

There are clear echoes, or reflections, in the present day.

  One difference, however, is that we don’t have individual influencers as unifying as Elvis.  We’ve lost consensus.  We apparently can’t agree on a shared reality.  One thing you can say for polio.  It scared the shit out of enough of us to tip the scales.

Winter Tilt

     First, the science. 

    The winter solstice occurs when either of the Earth's poles reaches its maximum tilt away from the Sun. Both the North and South Poles have a winter solstice. For those of us living north of the equator, ours occurs today, December 21st. We experience the shortest period of daylight and the longest night of the year. The North Pole exists in twenty-four-hour darkness. Although the weather continues to get colder, the days grow incrementally longer from this point forward until we reach the summer solstice, and the cycle repeats. 

    The winter solstice is not the full day but rather a moment. Here in Fort Worth, that maximum tilt will occur at 11:59 CST. 

    Since prehistory, the day has been celebrated across the world with festivals and rituals to mark the death and rebirth of the sun. Across cultures, diverse peoples have recognized beginnings and endings on this date. 

    In keeping with that theme, I've made note of a few firsts and lasts.

    In 1620, the Pilgrims left the Mayflower and came ashore in Plymouth Bay on this date. None of the arriving settlers noted exactly where they first stepped onto the new world. In 1741, Thomas Faunce, a 94-year old man who claimed to have learned of the exact spot from his father, an early settler, established the site of the landing to be Plymouth Rock. The mythology began from there. 

    In 1891, on this date, the first game of basketball was played. James Naismith wrote the original rules to give his students exercise during the cold winter months. That initial contest had two teams of nine players. The equipment consisted of a soccer ball and two peach baskets. With a made shot, the janitor had to drag a ladder onto the court and empty the basket. Later innovators cut a hole in the bottom of the baskets. The final score, 1-0. No player received a shoe contract. 

    Crossword puzzles began on this date. The first "word cross" game was printed in the New York World in 1913. The civic minded editor, Arthur Wynne had to fill a level space in his newspaper. The original puzzle had 32 clues and was shaped like a diamond. Much like Plymouth Rock, there is a bit of fact and mythology there. Word puzzles have existed for as long as we have had language. (Can you find a sentence with two one-word palindromes in this paragraph?)

    Elvis Presley met President Richard Nixon in the Oval Office on this date in 1970. The meeting marked the beginning of Elvis' important work with the federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. 

    Admittedly, this one is a little forced in a blog about beginnings but the tale is too much fun not to include. 

    Vernon Presley, Elvis' father, apparently chastised Elvis for spending too much on Christmas presents (including 32 handguns and 10 Mercedes Benz automobiles.) Elvis left Memphis in a huff and ultimately flew to D.C. On the plane, he wrote a letter to President Nixon, offering his services to the president and the nation. All he wanted in exchange was the badge of a federal officer. (He already had a collection of local police badges.) Elvis' driver delivered him to the gates of the White House where the King deposited the letter. 

Ollie Atkins, chief White House photographer at the time. See ARC record.,
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    Egil "Bud" Krogh, H. R. Haldeman, and a host of others who later became infamous during the Watergate scandal received the letter and arranged the meeting. Presidential aides escorted Elvis, dressed in purple velvet and an oversized gold belt buckle into the Oval Office for his meeting. Nixon's infamous taping system had not been installed yet. As a result, history did not record the conversation between the two men, but Elvis got his badge. 

    Photos taken at the meeting are the most requested pictures in the history of the National Archives. 

    There are endings also. December 21st, 1872 marked the conclusion of Phileas Fogg's fictional around the world adventure. In Jules Verne's novel Around the World in 80 Days, the gentleman returned to London after circumnavigating the globe on this date. Fogg and his valet set off in response to a challenge lad dawn at Fogg's club. Spoiler alert: Fogg won the wager and collected ₤20,000. 

    Not on this date--In 1889, the American journalist, Nellie Bly, completed the feat described in the novel. She circled the globe in 72 days. 

    The biggest of all possible finishes, the end of the world was forecast for December 21st, 2012. Doomsday prophets based their predictions on an interpretation of the Mayan calendar. Mesoamerican scholars at the time reported that the interpretation failed to appreciate the nuances of the Grand Cycle of the Mayan's Long Count calendar, and possibly some problems converting the Mayan calendar into the correct Gregorian date. Oops. 

    December 21st is marked with beginnings and endings. My tenure with SleuthSayers began early in 2021. I've seen some of my stories come to print and had others accepted for future publication. Okay, a few stories had abrupt endings this year as well, but I like to focus on the positive. 

    I wish each of you the very best this holiday season and in the year to come. 

    Stay safe and healthy. 

    Until next time. 

 

Looking Back

Between the lockdown and various health issues, I lost track of time for most of 2021 (although I have managed to finish my Christmas shopping. Wrapping? Um, no way), so let's try to put the clock back on the wall.

2020 was a blur. I had a mis-diagnosed stroke (I told them is was only a pinched nerve!) in January, then got my second cancer diagnosis in March, only days before the lockdown commenced. Between heavy meds, stress, and lockdown agoraphobia, I could no longer concentrate on complex projects like planning a novel anymore and turned exclusively to short stories. I wrote over a dozen in the last six months of 2020. Before then, I never produced more than four or five in one year. 

I published four stories, two of which I'd written years before and finally found submission calls that they matched.

Now 2021, very good and very bad, swinging like Poe's pendulum. The cancer, apparently vanquished through chemo and surgery the previous summer, staged an encore in March. Doctors, including one of my former students, inserted a stent in my kidney and started me on immunotherapy treatments every three weeks in April. They've worked, and I generally feel pretty good. No diet restrictions, I can drive  to the health club two or three times a week in a futile effort to restore my rippling six-pack abs, and I can still play guitar badly and piano even worse. Age, the family arthritis, and getting needles stuck in both arms every three weeks make music and typing harder, but I can still do them. The worst part of the year was saying good-bye to Ernie, our Maine Coon, who lost his four-year battle to kidney disease and left us in June. 

The sunny side:

This year, I wrote eleven new short stories and self-published Alma Murder, an early version of the book that eventually evolved into Blood on the Tracks about 70 rejections later. Five short stories appeared, and I sold seven others, a new career high.

Two will appear in Spring 2022, maybe within days of each other. The new MWA anthology Crime Hits Home, edited by SJ Rozan, will feature one of them. SleuthSayers' own Michael Bracken edited the other.

The rest will appear over the next year or so, but I don't have definite release dates. Fourteen submissions are still active, and I suspect that two or three have been accepted even though I don't have official word from the markets. 

I helped judge the Derringer Awards last year and will do it again this year. The best way to learn to write good stories is to read good stories, and I read a lot of them. I only judge flash fiction because I never write that short, but it's good training in what you can leave out of a story. It also means that if I stumble on a useful idea, I have to treat it very differently anyway.

The most positive change this year is that two different editors approached me about submitting work for an upcoming anthology. One was because of a Sleuthsayers blog I wrote earlier this year. Talk about an ego boost. I'm doing research on two other stories, too. If those stories don't sell to the anthologies, they're flexible enough that I can send them to other markets, too. Always a good thing. 

Am I getting rich (Cue uproarious laughter)? Of course not. But I'm getting somewhere, and that beats the alternative.

So, Merry Christmas, happy Channukah, Kwanzaa, and new year. Oh, and a belated happy birthday to Keith Richards.

Elf's Lament

When folks think of a romantic Christmas, some think of Barenaked Ladies. And Sarah McLachlan.

Wait, we’re not talking bare, naked ladies, although I fondly recall a holiday season with Bubbles LaFerne… Well, never mind.

We’re discussing the Ontario retro pop rock band that isn’t bare, isn’t naked, and isn’t ladies. They’re also damn smart lyricists.

You probably know then from one or more hits such as ‘One Week’, which has a higher rapid-fire word count (600) than some short stories. Founders Ed Robertson and Steven Page also wrote ‘The History of Everything’, the theme song of The Big Bang Theory, and the Grinch theme.

Beyond clever, clever wordsmithing, the group likes to collaborate. In 2004, they released a Christmas album, Barenaked for the Holidays, which reminds me that Bubbles… Sorry, pay no attention. It’s been a long pandemic.

The collection includes Christmas and Chanukah songs, traditional and some newly written by BNL’s Page, Robertson, Kevin Hearn, and the Creeggan brothers. Here is a collaboration with Sarah McLachlan practicing ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ / ‘We Three Kings’.

Did I mention Barenaked Ladies wrote and performed ‘Green Christmas’, the 2000 soundtrack for How the Grinch Stole Christmas?

At the time, Michael Bublé was relatively unknown, but the crooner (pictured below) joined Barenaked to sing a Robertson/Page tune, ‘Elf’s Lament’.

Listen, class, for the third Christmas in a row, we’re living under threat of the COVID pandemic. As Eve Fisher and others have pointed out, people haven’t stopped dying, but we’ve grown weary… and careless.

Canadians have taken the coronavirus seriously, mourning a total of 30,000 deaths. In contrast, Florida with ⁵/₉^th the population of Canada, has more than doubled Canada’s total. America has surpassed 828 000 deaths out of 52-million known cases. Professionals believe the majority could have been saved with mandatory masks and vaccinations.

Like Thanksgiving and Christmas last year, it’s looking to be a forlorn Christmas, friends still in lockdown, no decorations… Wait… incoming text message… Bubbles LaFerne… Hey! Like Santa, she’s flying into town and she’s vaccinated! (Humming a brand new song, ‘Baby, it’s warm inside…’)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Peeves and Preferences

  

Today's column is about the written word, but hang on: the first part is about pronunciation. 

One of my quirks is, I don't watch network TV except for the news. What I do watch are movies on DVD and Netflix and Amazon Prime. That's probably because of my age; I wish I could say it's because I'm too intelligent to get into these current reality shows and sitcoms, etc.--but that's not true, because you should see some of the movies I watch. My wife just rolls her eyes.

My point is, I do watch the nightly news and during those broadcasts I've found myself thinking about the way anchors and reporters pronounce certain words. My favorite is data. There are two different ways to say it: dayta and datta. As an IBM retiree, I pronounce it dayta--and while I realize either way is right, datta remains one of my pet peeves. Another funny word is short-lived. Almost every weatherman says short-livved, with a short i as in give. I prefer a long i, because it's describing something that has a short life. But I've given up on that one, since no one else in this solar system seems to agree with me. Other words that mean the same thing but can be pronounced two different ways: gala, vase, electoral, either, neither, caramel, etc. And while we're on this, how do you pronounce omicron? Oh or ah? I'm leaning toward oh.

Enough pronunciation. Something all of us can relate to is the way we spell certain words, in our writing. Most spelling is either correct or incorrect, period, but some words can have more than one acceptable spelling. I'm talking about variant spellings here, not regional spellings like neighbor/neighbour or archaic spellings like jail/gaol.

So . . . I've come up with some of those, as follows. Again, all of them can be spelled either way, usually without incurring an editor's wrath, but what I'd like you to do is consider which way you would choose to spell them in a story or novel. I've even included a few variant phrases, at the end.

NOTE 1: Some of these do involve regional spellings, usually American vs. British, but I've tried to avoid the truly obvious ones like center/centre, color/colour, etc. Also, not that it matters, for each one I've put my preference first.

Here goes:

axe/ax

whiskey/whisky

okay/OK

mike/mic (as in microphone)

toward/towards

theater/theatre

woolen/woollen

racket/racquet (as in tennis)

sulfur/sulphur

T-shirt/tee-shirt

barbecue/barbeque

queasy/queasey

wintry/wintery

lit/lighted

installment/instalment

likable/likeable

wrack/rack (as in your brain)

fulfill/fulfil

mustache/moustache

donut/doughnut

dialogue/dialog

jibe/gibe

hurray/hooray

curtsey/curtsy

amok/amuck

counselor/counsellor

flier/flyer (as in pilot)

linchpin/lynchpin

omelet/omelette

dreamed/dreamt

leaped/leapt

dove/dived

disc/disk -- At IBM, storage devices were disks; things frisbeelike or slipped were discs.

advisor/adviser

traveling/travelling

among/amongst

amid/amidst

yogurt/yoghurt

collectible/collectable -- I think of this as deserves to be collected vs. is able to be collected 

crawfish/crayfish

hippie/hippy

adrenaline/adrenalin

forgo/forego

duffle/duffel

speak English/speak in English

can not/cannot

I couldn't care less/I could care less

for example/for instance

NOTE 2: I believe there's a rule about traveling/travelling, cancel/cancelling, controling/controlling, etc.: If the accent is on the second syllable, double the final consonant; if the accent is on the first syllable, don't double the final consonant. So traveling, canceling, and controlling would be correct. I think.

Some of these spellings are up in the air (fliers/flyers?), and I often change my mind about them. I can remember several times when I used duffel bags in one story and duffle bags in another. Same goes for adrenaline/adrenalin, barbecue/barbeque, queasy/queasey, theater/theatre, dialogue/dialog, installment/instalment, mustache/moustache, hurray/hooray, and a few others. I seem to go back and forth.

What's your opinion? Do you think some of these that I've called variant really aren't? What are your preferences--or peeves, if you feel strongly enough about them? Can you supply other variant words or phrases I've missed?

Now . . . I think I need a donut.

Annual Tradition: A Very Tom Waits Christmas

 Every year, since about 2006 or so, I've always posted a riff on Tom Waits around Christmas time, supposedly from the point of view of one of the reindeer. I've posted it here at least once, and since next Friday is Christmas Eve...

Well, here we are.

A VERY TOM WAITS CHRISTMAS

By Jim Winter

I pulled on Santa’s sleigh
Christmas Eve was dark, and the snow fell like cocaine off some politician’s coffee table
Rudolph looked to the sky. He had a shiny nose, but it was from too much vodka
He said, “Boys, it’s gonna be a rough one this year.”

I pulled on Santa’s sleigh
The elves scrambled to pack up the last of the lumps of coal for deserving suburban brats
And a bottle of Jamie for some forgotten soul whose wife just left him
Santa’s like that. He’s been there.
Oh, he still loves Mrs. Claus, a spent piece of used sleigh trash who
Makes good vodka martnis, knows when to keep her mouth shut
But it’s the lonlieness, the lonliness only Santa knows

I pulled on Santa’s sleigh
And the workshop reeks of too much peppermint
The candy canes all have the names of prostitutes
And Santa stands there, breathing in the lonliness
The lonliness that creeps out of the main house
And out through the stables
Sometimes it follows the big guy down the chimneys
Wraps itself around your tannenbaum and sleeps in your hat

I pulled on Santa’s sleigh
We all line up for the annual ride
I’m behind Vixen, who’s showin’ her age these days
She has a certain tiredness that comes with being the only girl on the team
Ah, there’s nothing wrong with her a hundred dollars wouldn’t fix
She’s got a tear drop tattooed under her eye now, one for every year Dancer’s away

I pulled on Santa’s sleigh and
I asked myself, “That elf. What’s he building in there?”
He has no elf friends, no elf children
What’s he building in there?
He doesn’t make toys like the other elves
I heard he used to work for Halliburton,
And he’s got an ex-wife in someplace called Santa Claus, Pennsylvania
But what’s he building in there?
We got a right to know.

I pulled on Santa’s sleigh
And we’re off
Off into the night
Watching the world burn below
All chimney red and Halloween orange

I’ve seen it all
I’ve seen it all
Every Christmas Eve, I’ve seen it all
There’s nothing sadder than landing on a roof in a town with no cheer.

My Brain on Old Movies

Notes from my brain as I rewatched Otto Preminger's Laura:

My God, look how young Vincent Price was in 1944. This was nine years before he began his career in horror movies. Otherwise he'd never have gotten the 4 year gig on radio as The Saint.  But I have to say when I was young I read my way through a stack of Charteris' The Saint novels, and Price's was certainly not the voice I ever imagined for that British swash-buckler.  (You can listen to the episodes  HERE.)  Meanwhile, Price's Shelby is tall and soft and definitely a gigolo, which makes the idea that Gene Tierney's [breathtakingly beautiful] Laura would fall for him a real problem. Judith Anderson's Ann Treadwell (Laura's aunt) is more understandable, although I think they should have had Agnes Moorehead reprise her role as Emily Hawkins in Since You Went Away. She would have eaten Shelby alive, purring the whole time.

Musing: Agnes Moorehead is the main reason to watch Since You Went Away, because I find the movie pretty saccharine, not to mention trite, melodramatic, and I get tired of watching Claudette Colbert only being filmed from one angle. Oh, and I keep waiting for Jane to run into one of the posts as she runs after Bill's departing train. They spoofed that in some movie, but I can't remember which one.

BTW, Dana Andrews (Detective McPherson) and Gene Tierney had real chemistry.  I looked it up, and they ended up doing 5 movies together - Tobacco Road, Belle Starr, Laura, The Iron Curtain, and Where The Sidewalk Ends. BTW, my favorite Dana Andrews movie is The Best Years of Our Lives.

And my favorite comment about him comes from Radio Days, where all the kids are down at the Rockaway shore and talking about their favorite actresses:

Young Joe's Friend #1: My favorite is Rita Hayworth.

Young Joe's Friend #2: I like Betty Grable.

Young Joe's Friend #3: I like Dana Andrews.

Young Joe's Friend #2: Are you kidding? Dana Andrews is a man.

Young Joe's Friend #3: She is? (IMDB)

And I'm always happy to see Clifton Webb. 

He alternated between character actor and leads, nominated 3 times for an Academy Award - Laura, Sitting Pretty, and The Razor's Edge - and deservedly won it for The Razor's Edge (and if you've never seen it, watch it - Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney are the leads.)  He also played Frank Galbraith in Cheaper by the Dozen (with Myrna Loy as his wife), and his character, Mr. Belvedere (in Sitting Pretty and Mr. Belvedere Goes to College) was the model for Mr. Peabody in my favorite cartoon series of all time, Rocky & Bullwinkle.  

Excuse me while I wallow in nostalgia:  Mr. Peabody, Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties, Boris Badenov, Natasha & Fearless Leader, Fractured Fairytales, Aesop & Son, Bullwinkle's Corner & Mr. Know-It-All...  

And Myrna Loy was also Frederic March's loyal wife in The Best Years of Our Lives, which brings us back to Dana Andrews, and back to Gene Tierney:

Very beautiful, with great range. Watch Laura, and then watch her Oscar nominated performance in Leave Her to Heaven and The Razor's Edge. Great success, interrupted more than once by tragedy.  Manic-depressive before anyone knew what that really was, and the shock treatments made her lose much of her memory.  And of course, hers was the source of the tragedy in Agatha Christie's The Mirror Crack'd:  her daughter, Daria, was born deaf and mentally disabled, because a fan broke a rubella quarantine and infected the pregnant Tierney while she volunteered at the Hollywood Canteen.

EDITORIAL INTRUSION:  GET YOUR DAMN VACCINATION OR STAY HOME!!!!

YOUR ACTIONS DO HAVE EFFING CONSEQUENCES!!!

Otto Preminger was a great director. Here are the ones (besides Laura) that I remember watching a long, long time ago:

The Man With the Golden Arm 
Bonjour Tristesse
Anatomy of a Murder
Exodus
Advise and Consent
Bunny Lake is Missing (this one will twist your head off)
Hurry Sundown (Michael Caine in one of his many appalling American accents, but otherwise, like all of these, very educational for a young girl/teen in the 1960s…)

Oh, and can anyone point me to where I can find a maid like Bessie Clary, Fidelia (Since You Went Away), Matilda (The Bishop's Wife), etc., etc., etc.?  

Oh, damn - the movie's over. What's up next?  

The Bishop's Wife, or The Man Who Came to Dinner?  

Monty Woolley's in both, 

        and Bette Davis is in The Man Who Came to Dinner, 

               and she starred with Humphrey Bogart in Dark Victory, 

                       and Bogart starred with Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray in We're No Angels...

                             and...

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Ngrams, or How to Be Groovy in 1864.

 Let's get a bit convoluted, shall we? Last month on the Short Mystery Fiction Society* list Judy Penz Sheluk pointed to a blog piece she wrote about a webinar Iona Whishaw gave.  Her subject was Ngrams.  According to Wikipedia "an n-gram (sometimes also called Q-gram) is a contiguous sequence of n items from a given sample of text or speech."

And what the hell does that mean, you may ask. Take a look at the diagram below.  This is an ngram of Google books showing how often the terms crime fiction, detective fiction, mystery fiction, and noir fiction showed up in each year.  More accurately, it indicates what percentage of pairs of words published in a given year consists of the pair you are looking for.  So detective fiction was the most popular term until 2011 when crime fiction surpassed it.  I would have guessed that happened decades earlier.

Pretty cool?  But wait: we are just starting.  Not visible at the bottom of the screen is the fact that you can look up all the books (magazines, law codes, etc.) that contain your phrase in a given year or time period.

If you are writing historical fiction you have just acquired an amazing new tool, thanks to Sheluk and Wishaw.

 I wrote a story earlier this year set in 1967 and I used the word groovy.  So let's see how that word does in the ngram world.  The diagram below shows the word was very popular in 1967, although it peaked in 1970.

But wait - why do we see that huge jump around 2010?  A quick click on the 2009-2011 button reveals a programming language called Groovy. And sure enough, if we make the ngram case sensitive Groovy becomes briefly more popular than its lower case sibling.

But I learned something even weirder. Groovy was being used long before the flower children's parents were even born. I found this quotation from the Saturday Review, January 1864: "For a groovy parent trains a groovy child, and the groovy child must be father of a groovy man."

How hip those Victorian English dudes were, you may be saying. Alas, the anonymous writer did not mean it as a compliment. He was talking about being stuck in a rut, thinking inside the box. Very much not groovy.

I am also writing a story set in 1959 and one of the characters is socially awkward, has certain verbal tics, and can do amazing mathematical feats in his head. Today most of us amateur diagnosticians would say "he's on the autistic spectrum." But would anyone have used that term sixty years ago? We can go to ngrams again, but this reveals a weakness of the tool.

Because when I search for uses before 1960 I find publications that supposedly have that date, but were really published later.  There is a 1992 edition, for example, of a psychiatric manual which was first published in the 1950s, and Google Books can't spot the difference.  There is a similar problem with journals that were founded a long time ago.  (HathiTrust, another great free tool for historical sources, suffers from the same limitation.)

On the other hand... A few weeks ago Leigh wrote a fascinating piece here about words and concepts that started in the 1980s.  His source claimed that "eggs benedict" wasn't given that name until 1984.  Google Books Ngrams quickly found it in a  the Hotel St. Francis Cookbook, 1919 edition.

And now I'm hungry.  But before I head to the fridge, much thanks to Judy Penz Sheluk and Iona Wishaw for pointing out this cool tool.  You can play around with the Google Books ngram viewer here.

*I am the Society's current president and I hereby invite you to join.  It's free but new memberships are not accepted between January 1- May 1, so hop to it here.

One Way or Another: Anthology Types

Although there are some minor variations, editors of anthologies of original fiction find content in three primary ways:

Michael's first
anthology.

Open Call. An open-call anthology is one for which anyone may submit.

Limited Open Call. A limited-open-call anthology is one for which only a limited number of people may submit, and how many writers are included in the limited call can vary from a few dozen to several hundred. For example, various Sisters in Crime chapters produce anthologies that allow submissions only from chapter members.

Invitation Only. An invitation-only anthology is one for which only writers who have been specifically invited may submit.

There are hybrid forms as well:

Invitation Only/Open Call Mix. The Bouchercon anthologies and several anthologies I’ve seen promoted via Kickstarter campaigns combine invitation-only, by which they acquire stories from a handful of well-known authors, and open-call, by which they acquire the balance of the content.

Invitation Only/Limited Open Call Mix. The Mystery Writers of America anthologies acquire a few stories via invitation and then have a limited open call for the balance of the content. In this case, the call is limited to MWA members.

ADVANTAGES and DISADVANTAGES

Each method has its advantages and disadvantages, and anthology editors must weigh the pros and cons of each when deciding how to approach any particular project.

Open Call. An open-call anthology has the potential to attract contributors unknown to the editor, and those contributors might be talented and have a unique approach to the anthology’s theme that results in great stories.

The downside is that a widely announced anthology with an appealing theme might attract a great number of submissions of wildly variable quality and appropriateness, potentially overwhelming the editor.

Limited Open Call. The advantages and disadvantages of a limited-open-call anthology are quite dependent on which writers are included in the call. Limiting the call to writers with whom the editor has previously worked will likely result in submitted stories that meet or exceed the requirements, and it may prove difficult to narrow the selections.

On the flip side, the quality of submissions to a limited open call where the submission pool is defined by membership in a particular organization may be quite variable depending on the organization and, because the editor may not be able to seek submissions outside the defined pool, may require the editor to do more work bringing all the accepted stories up to snuff.

Invitation Only. From an editor’s standpoint, this may be the best way to assemble an anthology. By inviting only writers with whom the editor has previously worked and/or writers the editor admires, it almost guarantees that every submission will be appropriate. Almost.

The downside is that inevitably one or more of the invitees fails to deliver, and if the editor hasn’t planned ahead, this can lead to some last-minute scrambling to complete and deliver the project to the publisher on time.

REAL-WORLD EXAMPLES

I edited five open-call anthologies for Wildside Press and Betancourt & Company in the early 2000s and then spent several years randomly pitching anthology concepts that, at best, received “We like this, but” responses and, at worst, were completely ignored.

I returned to anthology editing in February 2017 when Down & Out Books greenlit The Eyes of Texas: Private Eyes from the Panhandle to the Piney Woods (2019). I’ve since edited and co-edited nine more (if I include the two due out later this month), and I’m in the process of editing or co-editing four due out in 2022, four tentatively due out in 2023, and one that does not yet have a release date because it does not yet have a publisher.

I have used all three methods (and some hybrid methods) to create these anthologies.

The Eyes of Texas: Private Eyes from the Panhandle to the Piney Woods (Down & Out Books, 2019) was an open-call anthology, though there was one exception. During a conversation at Bouchercon in Toronto I mentioned a specific historical event in Texas that I was surprised no writer had used in a story. That conversation turned into an invitation when the writer I was speaking with said he could use that event in a story.

Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 1 (Down & Out Books, 2020) was an Invitation Only/Open Call Mix. I invited four writers to submit and three of them did; the balance of the content came via open call. Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 2 (Down & Out Books, 2021), which was officially released yesterday, and MF3 (scheduled for 2022) were both open call. I recently released a limited open call for MF4 and have not yet decided if I’m going to switch to an open call.

Jukes & Tonks (Down & Out Books, 2021), co-edited with Gary Phillips, was invitation only. We each wrote a story and invited five other writers, for a total of twelve contributors. I don’t know how Gary chose his five, but my five were all writers with whom I had previously worked, that I knew could deliver what I wanted to see when I wanted to see it, and who I thought had at least a passing familiarity with the anthology’s theme.

Guns + Tacos (Down & Out Books), a serial novella anthology series co-created and co-edited with Trey R. Barker is an anomaly. Each novella is released as a separate e-book. Ultimately, though, all of the the novellas are gathered into three-novella anthologies. Volumes 1 and 2 were published in 2019, volumes 3 and 4 in 2020, volumes 5 and 6 later this month, and volumes 7 and 8 will appear in 2022. Guns + Tacos is invitation only, and Trey and I arm wrestle each year over which writers to invite. If there are additional entries in the G+T series, they will continue to be by invitation only.

Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties (due out April 2022) began as a single open-call anthology. I received more good stories than I could fit into a single volume, so I held back—with contributors’ approval—enough for a second volume with no assurance that there would even be a second volume. By the time Down & Out Books greenlit the second volume—More Groovy Gumshoes (due out in April 2023)—I’d lost a few stories to other publications. So, I invited two writers to come aboard at the last minute, making More Groovy Gumshoes an Invitation Only/Open Call Mix.

The other projects—which will go unnamed—include two invitation-only anthologies and a limited-open-call anthology I am co-editing.

DECIDING WHICH APPROACH

If you’ve worked your way through the above overview of the various anthologies I have edited or am in the process of editing, you’ll note that I’ve slowly moved away from open-call anthologies toward invitation-only anthologies, with a few hybrids along the way.

There are two key reasons for this decision:

Success. It is, perhaps, egotistical to say this, but the first two anthologies I edited since returning to this side of the editorial desk resulted in an Anthony Award nomination for Best Anthology, six stories receiving or nominated for major awards, and two stories included or long-listed for inclusion in a best-of-year anthology. Writers want to submit to editors with this kind of track record, so the number of submissions has increased substantially with each new open-call project.

Other editorial responsibilities. As editor of Black Cat Mystery Magazine, which remains an open-call project, I read a significant number of submissions from writers of all experience levels and across all the crime fiction subgenres. (See “Killing Dreams One Rejection at a Time, the Sequel” for a glimpse at what it’s like evaluating 264 submissions.) Thus, I am exposed to, and have the opportunity to work with, many new and new-to-me writers.

So, to reduce my workload without reducing the number of projects I edit, I’m increasingly relying on limited-invitation calls and personal invitations to acquire content.

MAKING AN EDITOR’S INVITATION LIST

These days, I appreciate it when I’m asked to contribute to an anthology, but early in my career I had no idea how to get on an editor’s invitation list. The first few times I was approached I had no idea how the editor selected me. (See “Pay It Forward” to learn how I was invited to contribute to Max Allan Collins and Jeff Gelb’s Flesh and Blood: Guilty as Sin.) That, combined with the number of times I’ve seen beginning and early career writers asking the same questions I’d once had, leads me to offer a few suggestions.

Write, Submit, and Get Published. If you’ve never been published, it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever be invited to submit to an anthology. So, write, submit what you write, and improve your skills. Once your work is being accepted on a regular basis via open-call projects, create a formal or informal list of all the editors you’ve worked with and would like to work with again. Then cross-reference that list with editors of invitation-only projects to determine where you might have opportunities to step up your game.

Be Professional and Easy to Work With. I wish this didn’t have to be restated, but, unless you’re a creative genius, your work will be edited. Meet deadlines at every step of a project. You must complete ancillary paperwork—contracts, author bios, story blurbs—so be available and easily reached via mail, email, and telephone. Understand how to use Microsoft Word.

If you have proven yourself professional and easy to work with on an open-call project, you increase your odds of being added to that editor’s list of potential writers for future invitation-only projects.

Make Your Desire Known. This last suggestion requires a bit of finesse. Do it wrong and you look like a suck-up. Do it right and your opportunities increase.

If you have worked with an editor, enjoyed the process, and would like to work with that editor again, let the editor know. A simple email stating something like: “I enjoyed working with you on Project X and would appreciate the opportunity to work with you again. Please keep me in mind for future projects.” I regularly work with writers who have sent me similar emails.

If there’s an editor you think you would like to work with, you can send a similar email: “Although we’ve not previously worked together, I have enjoyed reading Project X, Project Y, and Project Z. I write in the same subgenre, my work has appeared in Magazine A and Magazine B, and I would welcome the opportunity to be considered for one of your future projects.” One of the contributors to the Guns + Tacos series approached Trey and I with a similar email.

If you do these three things, you will increase your odds of having your work included in an invitation-only anthology. If you write a great story, act professionally, and let the editor know you’re interested in doing it again, odds are great that your name will be included on that editor’s list of “writers to work with again.”

CONCLUSION

If I receive several hundred emails today from writers who want to be included on my invitation list for future projects, I’m going to put y’all on my suck-up list. You need to wait long enough for me to forget I wrote this so that I’ll think your emails are truly heartfelt.

And if nobody sends me an email about this, I’m going to have to rethink my entire approach to editing.

---

My “Christmas Enchiladas and a Gold-Plated Derringer” was the bonus story for subscribers to Season 3 of Guns + Tacos, and it accompanied Andrew Welsh-Huggins’s “A Smith & Wesson with a Side of Chorizo.”