A Mash of Mirth

The current issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine kindly carries my story, "The Case of the Kosher Deal." While I am always over the moon to see a story of mine in the pages of Hitchcock, I confess to a bit of surprise to learn that this story would appear in their May/June magazine. 

Kosher Deal is a Hanukkah story.

Someone may need to buy the good people at Hitchcock a calendar, one with the holidays printed in small blue type at the bottom of each day. The end of Ramadan, Earth Day, and Mother's Day all fall within the span of this issue. In no calendar, however, does any Hannukah event occur. 

Can the case of the funny timing be explained? 

First, the story is about corporate gamesmanship. The characters use Hannukah as an excuse for a power grab and a chance to settle scores. That fact likely widened the publication opportunity window outside the November/December issue. 

Second, and more importantly, the magazine's editorial staff thought that the story was funny. 

As written in the editor's note, April/May is the mirthful edition. The current issue leans into the lighter side of crime. "The Case of the Kosher Deal" is one is a series of light-hearted stories. Regardless of the holiday, this humor element helped me wrangle a spot in the current issue. Creating the series has forced me to think about writing funny. 

Two mystery readers walk into a bar...

And from here, the story could go in several different directions. The pair might find a body and set off sleuthing. Alternatively, the familiar trope, "two___ walk into a bar," might unfold inside the saloon. That ambiguity alone could drive the reader into the story. Humor in a mystery can reveal character, hide clues, provide a brief respite from the dark topic of crime, or merely entertain. 

"The Case of the Kosher Deal" is the fifth installment in a series about a private investigator and marketing rep for the Potato Advisory Board. Throughout, the protagonist is known simply as the Spud Stud. 

The challenge with elucidating "The Rules" is that I have very few. But here goes: 

1. Be Yourself (unless yourself is deathly dull, then be someone else.)

I write things that entertain and amuse me and trust that I am close enough to the center of life's bell curve that others will laugh along with me. The Spud Stud grew out of a family joke made while preparing dinner. The idea took hold, a story sold, and a series was born. I hope readers come away thinking he had fun writing this.  I did.

We all laugh. Each of us has things we find funny. Those experiences can be tapped into and twisted. Disguise them, if necessary, to protect the innocent or wring the laughter. If you want to write funny, believe that you have funny potential. 

2. Remember, You're a World Builder

The humorist, David Sedaris, begins his essay "Understanding Owls" with the a priori assumption that we all have too many owls in our lives. He creates an absurd world, and we walk into it. In the Bible, Jonah got swallowed by a whale. He rode around in reasonable comfort until finally belched out onto the land he was initially commanded to visit. And why not? The biblical story teaches through the comic setup. 

The Spud Stud is simultaneously a private eye and a vegetable marketing rep, a position I've never seen posted on LinkedIn. The supporting characters occasionally question his competency, but they never wink. The authenticity of that world is never challenged. 

The writer creates the world for the reader, so she can make it comical if she wishes. She can make the absurd realistic through detail. She must also demonstrate that the characters believe in the sincerity of their world. 

3. But Build the World With Some Restraint

Think about comedy duos. They typically consist of a silly partner and a sounding board, the normal one who reacts to the absurdity produced by the first. Both play essential roles in landing the joke. Humor in a story might come from the main character or one of the surrounding characters. Too many slapstick characters lead to chaos. If that's the goal, then take a seat next to Eugene Ionesco. A narrative thread typically involves a regular character. 

Consider a distinction between humorous and silly. Humor works best when it enriches an already good story. When jokes and silliness serve only to distract the reader's attention, like a magician's props, it's likely time to consider a rewrite. 

4. Short and Specific

Sprinkle the humor throughout the story. Try to avoid a long setup. Think about the stand-up comic performing her monologue. She might spend her entire routine relating one anecdote. When she delivers the punchline at the end, there is the twist. The audience, however, may have already lost interest and gone searching elsewhere on Netflix. So along the way, she sprinkles asides and quick bits of humor to hold them. 

The Spud Stud derives many of these quick bits from specificity. I might say "potato" at the story's beginning to orient the reader. After that, I'll wear out my potato reference manual working in potato types. The specificity adds tiny drops of humor. Among the potato varieties, "Bintje" is reliable when I want a laugh. It sounds funny. 

Forced metaphors are good too. The Spud Stud sees the world through his lens, the tuber industry. His choice of metaphor reflects that--Life is like a Bintje. 

5. Include a Surprise

As mentioned earlier, the twist ending is the punchline of a joke. Like a laugh-worthy clincher, a good twist turns the setup in an unexpected and yet sensical way. Good comedy relies on the surprise. A writer might use the "Rule of Three." Two items in a series establish a pattern. The reader's brain anticipates what comes next and guesses at it. That third item is the punchline or twist. When the last piece breaks from the series, the reader is surprised. The twist might make any Tom, Dick, or Bintje laugh. 

Some people tell jokes better than others. Some writers craft funny stories more quickly than others. The fact that it may not be natural does not mean a writer can't. I invite you to try it. 

Just as soon as you and the other writer walk out of that bar. 

(I'll be away from my computer on the day this posts. Apologies in advance if you comment and I don't reply.)

Until next time. 

Bottoms Up

We’re often asked which politician we’d like to go have a beer with.  But what about writers?  Luckily, I know a lot of writers and they would all gladly have a beer with almost anyone.  Or maybe a bourbon on the rocks or a little white wine. 

If I got my pick from history, I’d definitely avoid Hemingway, who’d challenge me to a boxing match after the 11th Pernod.  Shakespeare might be entertaining if you could understand what the hell he was saying.  Dorothy Parker, for sure, along with the whole Algonquin crowd.  I’d pretend I was mute to avoid saying the one stupid thing ever uttered in the Oak Room.

I’d not only have a beer with PJ O’Rourke, I’d buy.  And keep buying as long as he could still conjure those genius wisecracks.  I actually had a drink with Tom Bodette, and he was as funny as, well, PJ O’Rourke.  I pounded a night of scotches with William Styron, and he wasn’t the least bit funny, from what I remember, which isn’t much.  He did stare into his drink a lot and say things like, “Sometimes my words remind me of little crippled children.”  Speaking of scotch, I witnessed Christopher Hitchens down at least a liter of the stuff and never once lose command of his perfect word choice and enunciation.  He spoke as he wrote, in exquisitely rendered, complete sentences.  Churchill could exhibit the same Olympian capacity and refined eloquence.  Must be something about the English liver. 

I studied early to mid-20^th century American literature.  Some of those folks won the Nobel prize and virtually all of them were alcoholics.  My scholarship revealed that the more they drank, the worst their writing became, career ruin frequently following.  So I’d pass on any of their offers to go have a beer, not wanting to aid in the corruption of American letters.

F. Scott Fitzgerald couldn’t hold his liquor, so no fun at all, despite the reputation.  Not so Zelda, who not only swam in fountains, but could consume their average volume in a single evening.  We don’t know much about the drinking habits of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, though enough booze was consumed in their flat at 27 rue de Fleurus to refloat the Titanic.  She did famously complain that her designated Lost Generation drank themselves to death, and she wasn’t much wrong, though luckily the prophecy took a while to be fully consumated.   

While we’re discussing female novelists, who wouldn’t want to have a drink with Patricia Highsmith?  Or Anaïs Nin?  I would likely have to get to the bar first to fortify myself, since sitting across from that much dark brilliance might make the Algonquin Round Table feel like a cub scout retreat.

Though not if Anaïs brought along Henry Miller, whose loony, irreverent poetics could lift the London fog and polish the streets of the Rive Gauche into bijoux scintillants.  I’d have to buy this time as well, since Henry was always broke, though rarely as broke as Jack Kerouac.  He’s another important American writer who had a few beers too many, but if you caught him in the early days with Neal Cassidy, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gary Snyder it would count as a life transformer, if your head didn’t explode from the gush of frantic, bebop exposition.

I never had a drink with Tom Wolfe, though we once spent a nice long stretch in a green room (I think Diet Coke was the available beverage.)  He was pretty old at this point, but as sweet and kindly a person as could be, the soft Virginia accent still gracing his inflections.  And quite the dresser, if you fancy mostly white with a light blue shirt and white cane (his all-white Cadillac, with white hubcaps, was out in the parking lot.) 

Since writers spend so much time locked up in quiet rooms by themselves, you wouldn’t think they’d be such good company, but they usually are.  They tend to know a lot of things you'd never even think about.  And they spend many of those hours in quiet rooms mulling things over, trying to get something to make sense on the written page.  If you’re lucky, they’ll hash it out over that beer, or vodka on the rocks.   

In fact, I’d rather hang with writers than all the politicians in all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world.

My husband died.

I can’t write flash fiction without thinking of Fran Rizer. She ‘complained’ those ultra-short stories upset her Sunday routine of preparing coffee and then breakfast, whereupon she’d spend a few minutes enjoying SleuthSayers.

On flash fiction days, that’s when (a) she’d find those few minutes were reduced to a few seconds, and (b) it caused her to snort coffee up her nose. Damn, I miss Fran.

Here’s a flash fiction with her in mind.

---

 

 

 

My Husband Died by Leigh Lundin After he died, I couldn’t even look at another man for almost twenty years. But now that I’m out of prison, I can honestly say it was worth it.

Guest Post: Authors Helping Authors

It's been a year and a half since my friend Judy Penz Sheluk posted here at SleuthSayers, to talk about the third book in her Superior Shores Anthology series. I remember that post well--here's a link--and I also recall the enthusiastic response she received from our readers. Judy's been a busy lady since then, with all kinds of writing projects, and today I'm pleased to welcome her once more as a guest columnist. I hope you'll again join me in making her feel at home.

--John Floyd

Authors Helping Authors

by Judy Penz Sheluk

My visit on SleuthSayers today is thanks to John Floyd, who graciously gave up his regular spot so I could talk about my latest book. I've only met John once, at Bouchercon Raleigh in October 2015. It was at a sandwich/diner kind of place, where the food was fast but decent, and members of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, of which we are both members, had arranged to meet for lunch.

I was a debut author in 2015, with two published short mystery stories (2014) and a cozy mystery that had released that July, and to say I was intimidated to be in the presence of so many talented storytellers would be the understatement of the year, and yet all I experienced was kindness. I recall John telling me he worked at IBM and me telling him my good friend and running buddy also worked at IBM, albeit in Toronto. A minor connection, but a connection, nonetheless. And I remember the late B. K. Stevens inviting me to post on her blog. I couldn't believe it. The B. K. Stevens! I'd been reading her short stories forever.

There were many others who reached out to me, and memories of that lunch, and many others along my author journey, have made me acutely aware that the one thing that makes the writing life special is the way authors help one another. If there's jealousy among Derringer, or other, award nominees, I'm unaware of it. Rather, we applaud those whose work we admire, often from afar. It's enough to be able to say, "I'm an author," and be part of the club.

I've come a long way since 2015. Today, I'm the author of two mystery series (seven novels), the editor/publisher of three multi-author anthologies of mystery and suspense (John's stories are in two of them), and a handful of short stories. But while I'm grateful for every day of those seven-plus years as an author. It hasn't always been an easy journey, and I've taken my share of missteps along the way.

I've also been "orphaned" by two publishers, one defunct, the other closed to all work but her own. I've very nearly been orphaned by two other publishers I'd queried with "close, but no cigar" results. Both are now no longer in business.

In February 2018, I started my own publishing imprint: Superior Shores Press, and I've discovered that I love being an indie author (I tend to be a bit of a control freak, which helps). Since then, I've also been published by WWL Mystery (a division of Harlequin, which is a division of HarperCollins), and sold some foreign language rights, most recently Skeletons in the Attic, to a Taiwanese publisher for the Chinese market. 

Fast forward to January 2022, when my local library asked if I'd do a presentation for their patrons on publishing paths. I liked the idea of sharing what I'd learned, and the result was an hour-long webinar, Finding Your Path to Publication, which I followed up with Self-publishing: The Ins & Outs of Going Indie. Both were well received, and that sparked an idea. What if I took my hard-earned knowledge and wrote a book? One that demystified the publishing world, provided statistics, and tips on query letters and types of publishing paths, from traditional to self- to social? Unlike my usual mystery writing pantser ways, I'd actually have an outline. 

The result is Finding Your Path to Publication: A Step-by-Step Guide, which released on May 2 in paperback, hardcover, e-book, and large print. If all goes according to plan, Self-Publishing: The Ins & Outs of Going Indie will release this fall.

Authors helping authors. At the end of the day, that's really what it's all about.

Universal buy link: https://books2read.com/FindingYourPathtoPublication

About the book: The road to publishing is paved with good intentions . . . and horror stories of authors who had to learn the hard way.

For the emerging author, the publishing world can be overwhelming. You've written the book, and you're ready to share it with the world, but don't know where to start. Traditional, independent press, hybrid, self-publishing, and online social platforms--all are valid publishing paths. The question is, which one is right for you?

Finding Your Path to Publication is an introduction to an industry that remains a mystery to those on the outside. Learn how each publishing option works, what to expect from the process start to finish, how to identify red flags, and avoid common pitfalls. With statistics, examples, and helpful resources compiled by an industry insider who's been down a few of these paths, this is your roadmap to decide which path you'd like to explore, and where to begin your author journey.

About the author: A former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk is the bestselling author of two mystery series: The Glass Dolphin Mysteries and Marketville Mysteries, both of which have been published in multiple languages. Her short crime fiction appears in several collections, including the Superior Shores Anthologies, which she also edited. Judy is a member of the Independent Book Publishers Association, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and Crime Writers of Canada, where she served on the Board of Directors for five years, the final two as Chair. She lives in Northern Ontario. Find her at www.judypenzsheluk.com.

Listen

audible.com

One day while I doom scrolled Twitter, a writer declared listening to audio books to be cheating and not really reading. I may have unfollowed him or some other petty overreaction to all things social media. I also told myself he's entitled to his opinion no matter how wrong it is. 

Audiobooks are about a third of the books I consume in any given year. Last year, it was half. And while it's not reading with one's eyes, it is reading. There's even an editing technique having Word play back a manuscript. (Use that only for yourself. Edits for clients should contain track changes, and listening to that would be torture.) So, instead of whatever your inner narrator sounds like as you scan the page, you get an actor. Or several in the case of scifi author Gareth Powell.

I listen to audio books during my commutes to the office (only two a week now as we've gone hybrid.) and when I'm out taking a walk. Sometimes while doing the laundry or yard work. My listening lists range from memoirs to history to fiction off the beaten path (or can't get to with my towering stack of books and Kindle editions) to ancient texts to classics. I'm currently listening to The Iliad, read by Dominic Keating. Keating played Reed on Star Trek: Enterprise, so it's great to hear him perform something besides an overworked security chief on a balky starship. 

And often, it's the reader that makes the difference. Some, like Alice Walker, are authors reading their own work. In the case of Walker, who is also a lecturer, it's perfect. Walker wrote The Color Purple in dialect and could read it properly. Other times, it might have been nice if the author hired, if not an actor, then maybe their teenage niece or nephew who just did the high school musical.

Other times, publishers or authors hire a reader. Wil Wheaton has a thriving second career doing audio books, and he reads with a wicked sense of humor that was perfect for The Martian (after the publisher decided it didn't want original reader RC Bray, himself no slouch.) Other times, like some apocrypha I've been listening to, the reader probably needed some caffeine. I kept making fun of one reader but aping his annoying monotone as a forgotten Bible character asking God why he snored during his prayers. "Oh, Jedediah, my son. I would listen but your monotone has caused me to rest an eighth day, and lo, all the Heavenly host are face down in their lyres."

But is listening reading? Depends on how you define it. Sometimes, I choose by performer. Johnny Depp is hilarious reading Keith Richards's autobiography, Life, even doing a stoner Keith from the 1970s before Keef himself takes over. (And Keith is actually not a bad reader, but I often wonder how many takes he had to do, given his propensity to mumble.) One of my favorites was Jean Smart, she of Designing Women fame, when she did the VI Warshawski novels. She was VI Warshawski.

But if reading is consuming text, then yes, listening to audio books is reading. If you're adamant reading is done with your eyes, and listening is just hearing a dramatic performance (except when Mr. Monotone prompts the Almighty to nod off. Then it's not so dramatic.), then no.

I listen to Audible exclusively right now. I may roll back to the library's offerings if I slow down, and the subscription is no longer worth it. But until then...

I'm not done with the book until I hear that voice say, "Audible hopes you've enjoyed this program."

Who Killed Judas?

Laskin, South Dakota, is both a church-going and hard-drinking town, and sees no dichotomy with that. But it surprised Sheriff Bob Hanson to see Professor John Franklin (who rarely spoke of religion at all)  come to Good Friday services with John Davison, elder of Laskin's most notorious criminal family.  What wasn't surprising was to join up with them afterwards at the Norseman's Bar. They all sat down at a table and Hanson and Davison exchanged local news, gossip, old grievances, tall tales of hunting and fishing - but throughout it all, Franklin stayed mum and glum.  

"All right," Hanson finally said. "Was it the service? Or something else? What's going on in that head of yours?" 

Franklin looked up.  "Huh?  Oh, I was trying to figure out who killed Judas."  

"Judas?" Hanson asked.  Franklin had a Masters in History of Mythology and a Doctorate in Philosophy, and gave lectures on "Landscape and Myth", "The Personification of Death as Imaged in Serial Killers", and "Cross-cultural Cross-chronological Exchanges in Fairytales," and Hanson had learned to expect just about anything to come out of Franklin's mouth, but this sounded a little over the top even for him.  

John Davison, on the other hand, sat up straight and ordered everyone another beer.

"Judas Iscariot," Franklin replied.  "It obviously wasn't suicide."

"Huh?" Davison said.

"There are two different causes of death," Franklin replied. "If he really had committed suicide, there would only be one. It says in Matthew that he hung himself, but in Acts, it says that Peter says he bought a field that was used to bury strangers in, and fell over, all his bowels bursting out."

"I never thought of you as much as a Bible reader," Hanson commented.

"I read all the ancient texts I can," Franklin assured him.

"No, it's real simple," John Davison said. "His body just fell off the tree he hung himself on, and his guts went everywhere." 

"Why would his body fall off the tree?" Franklin asked.

"Bad branch?" Davison asked.

"And why would he 'burst asunder in the midst'?" Franklin asked.  "That sounds like someone stabbed him in the abdomen, killing him, and then hung him up from a tree to make it look like suicide."  The beers arrived, and everyone took a nice deep drink. "Now, who do we know who had a sword on him that night? And had already used it once?"  

"Peter," Hanson replied.  

Franklin nodded.  "And who was at Caiaphas' palace that night?"

"Peter and John," Hanson said. 

"And Judas," Franklin added.  "Because Judas saw Jesus being led away, bound, to Pontius Pilate.  And Judas knew what was coming next, that Jesus had been condemned by the Sanhedrin and next would be condemned by Pilate, and would be executed. And that's when Judas repented and went to the Sanhedrin -"

Davison interrupted, "And tried to give the money back, like that's gonna work.  I've sinned and all that crap.  They told him it was his problem, and he ran off and killed himself." 

"Or perhaps he ran off and was killed by someone else," Franklin offered.  "Someone who was also there as Jesus was being led away. Who was both furious and broken-hearted. Who had betrayed Jesus as well, by denying him. Who couldn't live with the shame, but only the anger. Who had a sword. Who saw someone to take it all out on. Someone who didn't deserve to live, especially if Jesus was going to die. Peter." 

"Well, it's not like Judas didn't have it coming," Davison pointed out. "Why worry about it now?"

Franklin continued, "Peter runs into Judas. I don't know if they have an argument or Peter just was out for blood, but they run into each other. And Peter had the sword, and Judas - who knows? Maybe he let himself be killed."

"Nah," Davison replied. "Snitches always beg for their life."

"We don't need any of your war stories," Hanson said sternly.

"I'm just telling you the way it is," Davison said.

"Anyway," Franklin said firmly, "Peter stabs him in the stomach.  And I would wager that John was there, a witness to it. The story shows neither man around during the Pilate sequence, which makes perfect sense. No Jew in their right mind would have gone to Pilate's courtyard unless they were forced to. So I'm assuming John went with Peter, they run into Judas, and what happens, happens." 

"Like I said, good riddance," Davison said.

"So John has just seen Peter kill Judas," Franklin continued. "He comes across as a sensitive type, but even sensitive types can feel that someone deserves what they get.  That letting Peter be arrested for killing Judas would be even worse.  And either the two of them by themselves - or maybe they rope in John's brother James -" 

"Why would James help with that?" Hanson asked.

"Because, that's what brothers do," Davison said. "You help each other out. No matter what."

"I said," Hanson growled, "that I don't want to hear any of your war stories." Then he turned back to Franklin. "Don't you think that's an awful lot of running around, isn't it? Hauling a body to some potter's field out in the country, in the dead of night, on foot?"

"No. Not as bad as it sounds. Back then," Franklin explained, "Jerusalem was a small place. The city itself was barely a quarter of a mile across. The whole city fit into a quarter-section. Laskin's at least four times as big. And it was right before Passover, so there would have been a waxing moon, very close to full. Say two miles to a field with a good strong tree in it. And these were brawny fishermen. They could carry a deadweight that far."  

"Hell yeah," Davison said. "Especially if you wrap the body up right, and carry it like it's a sling gurney."

"I do not even want to know how you know that," Hanson said.

"And you never will," Davison assured him.

Franklin continued, "It would also explain why John says the disciples were locked up in the  Upper Room 'afraid of the Jews'.  The Sanhedrin wouldn't have been coming after them after Jesus' execution. Kill the head and the rest will scatter and all that. And Pilate sounds like he'd had enough of the whole mess. But if they were afraid that someone had seen Peter killing Judas, or John and Peter lugging a dead body around - well that would have been another matter.  It might also explain why at one point, according to Luke, that Simon, i.e., Peter, is off alone by himself, and Jesus appears to him, apart from the other disciples. A private chat."  

There was a long pause as they mulled it over.

"That's a hell of a story,"  John Davison said.  

"Well, if it's true, it's easy to see why it never made it into the Gospels," Hanson replied.

"Well," John Davison said. "Whatever. Doesn't change a damn thing what happened, does it?  And like I said, good riddance. Who wants another beer?"

Chatting for Clues

This is going to start out a bit vague but, as you will see, vagueness will actually will be a theme.

Recently I thought of a title for a short mystery story.  It was one of those moments of: "Wow, why hasn't anyone used this before?" A real Eureka sort of thing.

Even better, the title immediately suggested a setting and a plot.  So I was sitting on Easy Street, ready to start writing except that one double-decker bus was racing straight down Easy Street, aimed at me, if I can extend the metaphor way too far.

The dilemma?

A clue.  A freaking clue.

I have said it before: clues are the bane of my writerly existance.  I have a terrible time coming up with them. I have a pile of stories that will never be finished because I couldn't dream up a clue.

This story wasn't going to be a fair play mystery in which the reader had to know everything the detective did, but I still had to figure out some way for my cop to solve the murder. And my dumb cop couldn't figure out a solution.

But then - double Eureka! I realized that the setting itself told me what the clue had to be.  Let's pretend the story was set in a florist shop.  Then the clue would have to involve someone being allergic to certain flowers.  Got it?

So I was ready to start writing.  But something else occurred to me.  Would the clue I dreamed up be as obvious to someone else?  How about something else?

No doubt you have heard about ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence program that people have been playing with.  Even writers, or would-be writers.  At least one science fiction magazine complains that it has been inundated with AI-produced drivel.

I had tinkered with ChatGPT a couple of times, inviting it to outline a story with certain perameters.  The result was a tale so generic it could only have been used as a sleep aid.

But this was a different sort of challenge.  I gave ChatGPT all the information about the story, including the crucial details that led me to my clue. Then I asked it to tell me what clue my cop could use to solve the case.  Could it reach the same conclusion I had? 

The results are below.

As an AI language model, I do not promote violence or crime-solving. However, I can provide you with some methods that could help the investigators in your mystery story to determine the killer:

1. Motive and opportunity: The investigators can analyze each suspect's motive and opportunity to commit the crime. They can examine Tony's financial records, personal relationships, and any conflicts he had with Dan or others at the company. They can also review the CCTV footage to determine if Tony had access to the studio around the time of the murder.

2. Forensic evidence: The investigators can collect forensic evidence from the crime scene, such as blood samples, fingerprints, and DNA, and compare them with samples taken from Tony. They can also analyze any weapon found at the crime scene to determine if it matches any weapons owned by Tony.

3. 
   Eyewitness accounts: If there were any eyewitnesses to the murder, the investigators can interview them to determine if they saw Tony near the crime scene or if they saw him interacting with Dan before the murder. They can also question Tony's colleagues and associates to see if anyone noticed any suspicious behavior or heard anything that could help solve the case.

Generic and vague. As far as I'm concerned, no help at all.

A few years ago I wrote "The Library of Poisonville," a story about an AI program called Zeck which couldn't write a book from scratch but could ring the changes for one that already existed: that is, it could rewrite a  mystery novel so that each suspect turned out to be the killer. I'm happy to say things didn't end well for Zeck or its creator.

So far, ChatGPT doesn't seem like much competition for my fictional program.  But who knows what tomorrow will bring?

 

In Search of the Perfect Office

My office on day one of my return to full-time
freelancing. I didn't even bother to
straighten up.

If you are like several writers I know, your writing space is an afterthought. It’s the kitchen counter, one end of the dining room table, your lap in the living room, a large closet with a desk shoved into it, or the corner of a multipurpose room you share with family members often engaged in distracting activities.

If you’re among the luckier writers, you have a room designated as your office. It’s an attic space, a room in the basement, or a bedroom once used by your now-grown-and-moved-away child.

Regardless of what the actual space is (or was before you laid claim to it), it likely has been furnished on a catch-as-catch-can basis. You found the desk at a yard sale and the filing cabinet at a discount office supply store. The bookcase came from Aunt Marge’s house and the chair with the wobbly wheel had been thrown out by your employer when they redecorated some muckety-muck’s office. In short, you’ve made do.

But what if you could gut your writing space and start over? And what if money were no object? What furniture would you choose, what equipment would you want, and how would you arrange the space for maximum comfort and efficiency?

These are questions Temple and I have been wrestling with ever since we decided I would return to full-time freelancing. We have been poring over office-furniture websites, examining photographs of other writers’ workspaces, and trying to determine exactly what I need and want.

There are limits to what we can do, of course. We can’t change the location of the window, the closet, or the door, and it’s unlikely we could reroute the HVAC vent. And no matter how big we dream, there likely will be a limit to how much we can spend.

In fact, this weekend’s purchase of an office chair may have blown the entire budget. After much research and a test sit, we ordered a Herman Miller Embody chair, an ergonomic chair consistently rated among the best office chairs for those sitting long periods.

For now, though, on day one of my return to full-time freelancing, nothing has changed. I haven’t even taken time to straighten things up before diving into the pile of work on my desk.

So, because we’re still in the planning stage, how about giving us some advice about furniture, fixtures, and office equipment? Or just share your dreams about what your office would look like if you could gut it and start over with an unlimited budget.

I look forward to learning about your experiences and your ideas.

Yorkville—RIP, Colorful New York Neighborhood

My mystery series protagonist Bruce Kohler lives in a railroad flat in an old-law tenement in the Manhattan neighborhood once known as Yorkville. It used to be his parents' apartment. Yorkville was a white working class neighborhood that successive waves of immigrants called home. Ralph and Alice Kramden (look 'em up, kids) would have felt at ease there. My husband grew up there in the 1950s. Each street was a village. The kids played stickball and jump rope in the street, and everyone's mother sat on the brownstone stoops and considered it her right to yell at any kid she saw misbehaving.

In the oldest of olden days (or as they're now called, back in the day), the area bounded by 96th Street on the north, 79th Street on the south, Third Avenue on the west, and the FDR Drive with the East River beyond it was known as Germantown. My husband, who grew up there in the 1950s, could remember bitter old men drinking German beer in the dark corners of German bars, muttering in German about who should have won the War. The avenues and 86th Street abounded in shops where you could buy superb sausages and chocolates. My husband still tends to compare any sausage he tastes to the sausages of his youth. Today, that abundance has dwindled to one restaurant, the Heidelberg, and one butcher shop and German market, Schaller and Weber, both on Second Avenue.

By then, though, it was Yorkville, and he belonged to its dominant group, the Irish. The St Patrick's Day parade in all its glory marched up Fifth Avenue, turned right on 86th Street, and marched east with flags flying and bagpipes skirling. His birthday falls on St Patrick's Day. As a child, he believed the parade was just for him. The Ruppert Brewery was the chief source of local employment, and the whole neighborhood was redolent with its fumes.

In 1956, in the wake of the failed Hungarian Revolution, immigrants from Hungary flocked to Yorkville. The Hungarians brought their own cuisine, available in restaurants and pastry shops as well as the kitchens of my husband's friends' mothers. In a story to be published in AHMM in 2023, Bruce says, "Second Avenue in the 80s is where all the Hungarian restaurants were. There’s only one left now, unless it’s closed too. Farewell to goulash and palacsinta, along with the ivory-billed woodpecker and the Xerxes blue butterfly.”

My mother's side of the family were Hungarian Jews. In fact, my mother was born in Hungary. I have a vivid memory of dinner with my Aunt Marta in a Hungarian restaurant on Second Avenue. I was just back from the Peace Corps, so it must have been 1966. We were probably eating goulash or chicken paprikash. We were talking about how my mother, as the oldest sister, had to watch Marta and my Aunt Hilda, the baby, because their mother was a young widow and had to work. Marta was telling me how bossy they thought my mother was and what a hard time my grandmother had.

"After all," she said, "she had to raise four daughters on her own."
"Don't you mean three daughters?" I said.
And that's how I learned the family secret—I had an aunt who'd been a gifted pianist, had a "nervous breakdown," and spent the rest of her life in a mental institution.

European immigrants of various nationalities, including the Polish and Italians, brought their cultures and cuisines to Yorkville. But by 1985, high-rise luxury apartment buildings had begun to threaten the character of the neighborhood to such an extent that some of the side streets had to be protected by a new zoning law. In the long run, it was futile, because eventually working class families and small restaurants and retail businesses could no longer afford the gentrified neighborhood their community of villages had become.

In "Death Will Take the High Line," published in AHMM in 2022, a newcomer to the city asks Bruce, "Are you a real New Yorker?"

“Born and raised,” Bruce says. “In Yorkville, a neighborhood that’s so New York it doesn’t exist any more. The fashionable Upper East Side is planted on its grave."

Don't Ever Get Old

 

As Ben Johnson's character says to another old timer in a John Wayne western just before the big gun fight scene, "Don't ever get old."

I always thought I would go out hot, young and handsome, but advancing old age has informed me otherwise. It would appear I'm screwed on two of the three. Plus, it seems that due to medical stuff, I will now be out of pocket for a few months. Thus, I have decided to inflict at least one of my earlier blogs upon you. 

25 November 2011

Flying Without a Parachute

by R.T. Lawton

There was a time early in my career when we wanted to get into a house, but had no probable cause for a legal entry. Without probable cause, any evidence found inside the residence becomes fruit of the poisonous tree. In short, this means any items found inside get thrown out as inadmissible evidence in court.

So here's how it all went down.

The Setup
A street informant called the office.
"Hey, you guys got a warrant for Bopper, don'tcha?"
"Yes, why?"
"Well at ten o'clock this morning, Bopper's gonna be at James Lewis' house to make a score."
CLICK.
The phone got hurriedly hung up, the troops got hatted up and we all headed out to James Lewis' place where his apartment consisted of the entire third floor. We set up surveillance and waited. Time passed. A blue Cadillac pulled up out front, two men got out and went into the house. Ten o'clock went by. One of the two men, a tall thin guy, came out of the house and returned to the Cadillac, sitting on the passenger side. More time passed. Then it started.
"Bopper's walking down the street," came the radio call.
"Wait," replied the case agent.
"He's headed for the house," said the radio voice.
"Wait," said the case agent.
"He's going up on the front porch."

"Not yet," ordered the case agent.

"He has his hand on the doorknob."
"Hit it now," barked the case agent.
Four government vehicles immediately came alive, screeching up to the front of the house and bouncing over the curb. Car doors opened and agents with drawn guns came screaming out, making as much noise as possible.
"Police!"
"Federal Agents!"

Survival Instincts: Fight or Flight
Bopper morphed into Panic Mode. Bless his heart, he ran into the house we wanted to enter, but hadn't previously been able to acquire probable cause for a legal entry. However, there are exigent circumstances known as Hot Pursuit for situations like these. When law enforcement is in immediate pursuit of a fleeing felon, a search warrant is not needed in order for officers of the law to enter the same building which the pursued felon has just entered during the chase.
Having now found himself inside James Lewis' house, and seeing no good exit, Bopper chose to ascend the stairs to the second floor. The Thundering Herd close behind him, still hollering "Police" and "Federal Agents," shifted into Hot Pursuit Mode.
Having now arrived at the second floor landing and still not finding a good way out, Bopper continued his desperate journey upward toward James Lewis' apartment on the third floor. In full hue and cry, the mob followed at his heels.

Breathe

Now, we take a short intermission to catch our breath and explain that in those days only seasoned agents had the privilige of entering the house. Snot-nose green agents, such as myself fresh out of the academy, were regularly assigned to the perimeter where nothing of consequence ever happened. Special Agent Pat got assigned to the back of the house and I got assigned to the front. We two newbies were designated to miss all the fun.
Bored, I decided to do something. Since the tall, thin Cadillac passenger had previously been inside the house, I thought maybe he'd be holding, so I knocked on the passenger window and flashed him my tin. In no time, I had him out of the car, hands on the roof, legs spread into the proper position and was patting him down. Just as I found contraband in his hip pocket, I heard a great noise behind me.
CRASH.
I glanced back at the house.

The Not (W)Right Brothers
Two bodies came flying out the front third-story windows and landed on top of the front porch roof. They stood up with guns in their hands. Neat.

A Sharp Drop in Business
Unknown to us, James Lewis already had company in attendance trying to conduct a little business. His company's nerves began to unravel as they noticed the Thundering Herd was ascending the stairs and coming their way. By the time Bopper burst into the room, their taut nerves snapped and they departed via the front windows.
At least now I had something to do.
Wheeling the tall, thin Cadillac passenger around in front of me, where I could keep an eye on him, I placed my gun hand on his right shoulder and pointed it at the two miscreants on the porch roof, ordering them to drop their weapons.
They looked at me, looked at their buddy the gun rest, looked at the distance to the ground and then decided, yeh, they'd drop their guns. Good thing. If there'd been a shooting match, I'm fairly certain my gun rest would have ended up hard of hearing in his right ear. Took another half hour before I had enough help to get them two off the porch roof.

One Landing for Every Launch
Back to inside the house. When Bopper made his Mad Hatter entrance into James Lewis' apartment, he was still looking for a rabbit hole. However, since all the front exits, also known as the third-story front windows, were occupied at the time, he opted for the side window. Bad choice as Bopper soon realized.
Left behind, James Lewis sat flabbergasted through it all. He'd never seen a show like this before and therefore sat quietly, readily giving up his two handguns, plus all his contraband to approaching members of the Thundering Herd.
Bopper, outside the house and now in mid-air, suddenly saw that what he had failed to consider during his hasty departure was that there was nothing to deaccelerate his downward flight, except a concrete driveway.
Turns out in all the confusion, none of us saw his exit.
At a descent rate of 32 feet per second per second, his right leg failed to stand up to the pressure of cement bringing an end to his ill advised experiment of flying without a parachute. He then crawled through a bordering hedge and "ran" away from us. Our Probable Cause had literally flown out the window. Took us an hour to catch up with him.

After that, I graduated to the level of door crasher.

So now you have the background. If you want to compare the above telling with the fictionalized published version, you'll have to acquire the Who Died in Here? anthology. All short story submissions to it required a crime in a bathroom. Author compensation was a sum of money, plus an air freshener. I still have the air freshener.

Simultaneous Submissions

  

When I was teaching courses on writing and selling short fiction (my final classes were five years ago this month), there were three questions I usually asked those students who already had some experience:

1. Do you outline your stories, or just start writing and see where it goes?

2. How do you begin your stories? With a character? A setting? A plot? A theme?

3. Do you submit stories simultaneously, or to only one market at a time?

Mostly I asked these questions because I thought the answers were interesting. As for number one, about half the students in any given class always said they outline and half said they don't. The answer to number two was usually "with a character." The third question, like the first, was often a 50/50 split. I never tried to change the way students answered these--but I did try to point out a few things, about question #3.

Definitions

A simultaneous submission, for those of you who don't know, is the sending of the same story manuscript to more than one market at the same time. (This is different from multiple submissions, which involves sending several different manuscripts to the same market, either at once or over a short period.) At first glance, simultaneous submissions seems a sure-fire way to increase your odds of getting a story published in the least amount of time. And actually, it does increase your odds. If more than one editor is considering your story, you have a better chance of selling it soon--and after all, one acceptance is all you need.

Therein, however, lies the problem. One acceptance is not only all you need--it's all you want. What if you've sent your story to three different editors and more than one of them say "yes"?

In real-world terms, it's like asking a young lady to go with you to the school dance and then asking another before you get an answer from the first, just to make sure you don't wind up sitting home alone that night. That approach seems a little foolhardy to me. Writers, and high-school kids as well, have enough troubles and stress already; they don't need to actively look for more.

The Good

There are, of course, writers who love simultaneous submissions, and I understand why. Again, it helps their chances of getting published. As for the risks, those who do it regularly say the risk is small. Getting a story accepted at all isn't easy, so there's fairly little danger that several different editors in several different places at the same time will like a particular story enough to buy it. Besides, some of those markets state in their guidelines that they "allow" simultaneous submissions, so what's the harm?

Think about that for a minute. Let's say you send out a mystery story to two separate markets. If one of those two markets rejects your story, all's well and good--you still have another egg in your basket (or, if you're a hunter, another load in your shotgun). If the second market happens to reject it also, you're back to square one, but all is still peaceful in the world. And if the first market rejects it and the second market accepts it, well, everything's great--you've not only made a sale, you've saved yourself a lot of time. And in fact that's the way simultaneous submissions usually work. Either two rejections, or one rejection and one acceptance, with time saved either way. Nothing wrong here, folks.

 

But let's say that first market says "yes." In that case, you send the editor of the other market a polite note withdrawing your manuscript from consideration there, while still celebrating your good fortune at market #1. Market #2 probably won't take offense at this; you're not telling them the story's been accepted elsewhere, you're just telling them you'd like to withdraw it. But they won't be overjoyed either. Editors are smart, and a withdrawal note like that, polite or not, tells them that another editor has probably been looking at the story also, and decided to buy it. You've still not broken any writing rules--but it's not something you want to do too often.

The Bad (and the Ugly)

Now consider another scenario. Let's say that market #1 accepts your story and, during your celebration, market #2 later says "yes" as well, possibly before your withdrawal note reaches #2, or before you think to send the note, or before they have an opportunity to read it. If that happens, you have stepped in an extremely stinky place in the cowpasture. You will now have to tell one of those two editors that your story--even though they have spent time reading it and possibly discussing it with their staff and have told you they want to buy it--is no longer available to them. And they'll know why.

But why should they mind? you might ask. Their guidelines said they allow simultaneous submissions. My answer to that is, it doesn't matter--they still won't like it. And they'll remember you. They'll most likely put a little black mark beside your name, and those can stay in place a long time. 

One more thing. We're not talking just about stories that might be submitted to several markets on the same day. Simsubs are also stories that are sent to one market and then later sent to another market before you receive a response from the first. The point is, your story is being considered at more than one place at the same time. This kind of delayed-submission situation is where I personally have run into trouble. Twice. In each of those instances I had submitted a story to one market that hadn't responded in so long I assumed it had been rejected, so I submitted that story to a different market, and then--wouldn't you know it?--the first market sent me a note accepting the story. In each case, after a few bad words and some acid reflux and some visions of two-dates-to-the-prom, I sent a carefully-worded withdrawal letter to that second market. As it turned out, the editor who received the withdrawal note seemed to take it well and I don't think any damage was done--but I still remember how bad I felt having to do that, and after the second time it happened, I resolved never to make that kind of mistake again.

Conclusions?

Bottom line is, I think the possible risks of simultaneous submissions outweigh the advantages. I believe that after sending a story to an editor, you shouldn't send that story anyplace else until you've received a response (yea or nay) from that editor. If you feel that's a waste of time, I have two suggestions. One is to send the story first to a market that you know will respond fairly quickly--there are several of those, and that'll cut down the wait time. The other suggestion is to write more stories while you're waiting, and send those to other markets. 

So, to go back to those first three questions to my classes, my own answers would be: (1) I outline my stories (at least mentally) before beginning, (2) I aways start with a plot, not characters or setting or whatever, and (3) I don't do simultaneous submissions. Once again, I would never try to encourage you to do what I do on questions #1 and #2--different strokes, and all that--but I would encourage you to give a lot of thought to #3. That one's a roll of the dice, and when it comes to writing and publishing, I'm not a betting man.

If you're a writer, what do you think about simultaneous submissions? Do you or don't you? Have you or haven't you? If you haven't done it already, would you or wouldn't you? Any war stories, about this kind of thing? Please let me know, in the comments section below. I'd also love to hear the opinions of editors, if any of you decision-makers are reading this.

By the way, I have submitted this column only to SleuthSayers and to noplace else. (Who else would have me . . . ?)

Upcoming news: Next Saturday, May 6, I'll be featuring a guest post by my friend Judy Penz Sheluk in this space. I hope you'll tune in.

The Mystery at the Heart of “Masquerade”

My notes and case dossier from 41 years ago.

Buried treasures, anagrams, and complex puzzles are all tropes found in mystery fiction. They’re also elements of a delightful children’s book that spawned a sub-genre in kidlit in the 1980s.

It all started with a 1979 picture book called Masquerade, written and illustrated by a British artist and “wizard” named Kit Williams. (The book was published by Jonathan Cape in the UK, by Schocken Books in the U.S., and by publishers elsewhere around the globe. The plot of the book is simple. A sprightly hare is charged with transporting a precious amulet, a gift from Lady Moon to the aloof Sun-God. Jack Hare travels the length and breadth of England to deliver the prize, but loses the amulet along the way. Readers are encouraged to use the clues hidden in the book’s 15 hyperrealistic illustrations to find a very real sculpture, which Williams crafted from gemstones, faience, and 18k gold, and buried somewhere in that blessed plot, England.

Like some kind of latter-day Willy Wonka, Williams promised to send an airplane ticket anywhere in the world to the person who wrote him and convincingly demonstrated that they had cracked the code. He further promised to travel with the winner to the secret site and assist in the dig.

Thus ensued a colorful couple of years that saw (mostly) adult readers of the book going nuts digging up gardens, soccer fields, and other public and private lands all over the nation, in search of Williams’ jewel-encrusted rabbit. One long-suffering woman told British media that people kept digging up her rabbit-shaped topiary in search of the treasure. As the book’s fame spread, its New York publisher proudly bragged to the media that no less an entity than the FBI bought copies for their trainees to test their mettle cracking the code. They couldn’t, but with all the publicity the book sold at least 2 million copies worldwide.

While I never cashed in my childhood savings bonds and booked my ticket to England, I too became obsessed with the book, which arrived in U.S. bookstores about the time I was entering high school. I paged through the book countless times, and even “taught” the book for a time when I was tutoring kids in math and reading at a local elementary school. I was counting on the genius of little kids to help me unravel the case, because I was hopelessly stumped.

Like any good mystery, the book piled red herrings on top of red herrings. The visual clues included atomic numbers, magic squares, and so on, all designed to lead you astray. Williams actually painted a herring gull—a type of seabird—into one image. In another, he painted a goldfish whose scales appeared red where they overlapped with an underlying image of a hare. Each image featured a riddle painted in its borders. Some of the letters were red, others had barbed serifs. The barbed or red-letter clues, once decoded, amounted to a handful of innocuous and often unhelpful anagrams.

While Williams insisted in the book flap copy that no knowledge of British geography was necessary to solve the mystery, the book nevertheless touched on history, mathematics, literary references, British train schedules, astronomy, physics, botany, and the animal kingdom. For example, one clue found in the border of the very first image reads: “One of Six of Eight”—a reference to Catherine of Aragon, the first of six wives of Henry VIII.

In 1982, newspapers around the world revealed that the rabbit amulet had been found by a gentleman who sent what he believed to be the solution to Williams. Williams later published a smaller paperback in which he spelled out the solution in excruciating detail. Obsessive that I was (and still am), I rushed out to get that new version of the book and was astonished by the diabolical complexity of the puzzle.

To summarize this quickly, the key to the puzzle was drawing a line from the eyes of the living figures—humans and animals—in each of the paintings through their fingers (or paws/claws/fins) until those lines crossed and touched letters in the border. But you had to get the hierarchy of beings—men, women, children, hares, and lesser animals—in the proper order if you ever hoped to assemble the letters in the right sequence. One clue to this arrangement is found on the title page: “To find the hidden riddle, you must use your eyes, / And find the hare in every picture that may point you to the prize.” (Italics mine.)

If you do this, the marginalia spelled out the following:

CATHERINE’S
LONG FINGER
OVER
SHADOWS
EARTH
BURIED
YELLOW
AMULET
MIDDAY
POINTS
THE
HOUR
IN
LIGHT OF EQUINOX
LOOK YOU

From here, it becomes a matter of locating a monument in England dedicated to Catherine of Aragon, and waiting for the sun on the day of the vernal equinox to cast a shadow pointing to the location of the treasure. Where was the monument, you ask? An acrostic formed by the bolded letters above reads: Close by Ampthill. That’s Ampthill, Bedfordshire, where Catherine was exiled following the annulment of her sad marriage.

The two most important images in the book was one featuring Sir Isaac Newton and another depicting a woman known as the Penny-Pockets Lady. These two spell out the color-coded hierarchy of beings that solvers were intended to follow. 

In the Isaac Newton image, the barbed letters (circled in blue) spell SIR, and
the red letters (circled in red) spell ISAAC—both of which have nothing to do with
solving the final mystery. However, if you draw lines from the eyes of certain figures
through their hands, toes, paws, fins, etc, the resulting lines point to letters
that spell the secret word HOUR in the above acrostic.
Please do not ask me how to draw the lines;
I knew how when I was 16 years old, but not today.

By now I think we can agree that an American high school kid, aided only by his love of mysteries and a gaggle of second graders as his Baker Street Irregulars, had little hope of cracking the case.

Many years after the treasure’s discovery, The Sunday Times of London alleged that the finder had not played fairly. Instead of decoding the clues properly, he learned of the hare’s approximate location from an ex-girlfriend of Williams, and started digging holes until he struck pay dirt. The prize should have gone to two physics teachers from Manchester who cracked the code exactly as its creator intended, but whose letter reached Williams too late.

Scandalized, Williams apologized to the world at large. By then he had moved on to writing other puzzle books, painting more gorgeous images, and designing fanciful public clocks. As one who struggles constantly to conceive of even one or two clues to embed in my stories, I can only marvel at someone who possessed the creativity to layer such a dizzying array of clues for a book spanning a mere 32 pages. In my eyes, Kit Williams is some kind of a genius.

Masquerade is no longer in print, but you can still find reasonably priced copies online. If you’re buying for a child, you will want the 9-by-11-inch hardcover. If you want to learn how to decipher the code in the author’s own words, look for the 6-by-7.5-inch paperback version of the book “with the answer explained.”

See you in three weeks!

Joe
josephdagnese.com

An Exile in the Realm of Morpheus

"A tired mind become a shape-shifter."

— Rush, "Vital Signs" from the 1981 album Moving Pictures

Morpheus, the troublesome god of sleep

I am in awe of people who can write the opposite of their experiences. Women who convincingly write male Point-of-View characters. Men who do the opposite. People without disabilities writing characters with them. Stephen King inhabiting the character of an axe-wielding maniac snowed in at a Colorado resort hotel. Hillary Mantel bringing Renaissance English politician and royal fixer Thomas Cromwell not only to life, but convincingly and sympathetically so.

Now, I believe it is the obligation of the fiction writer to do right by their characters, and I'm hardly saying that I have spent my writing career writing only those experiences I have had myself, but the more extreme stuff I have hesitated to capture in the written word. Extrapolating my own experiences out into others where a bit of research and a fair amount of imagination can bridge the gap? Sure. And I'm always looking to challenge myself, so there's that, too.

But every once in a while life steps up and hands you a new experience, one so alien to your regular way of being that it can stand in stark contrast to your usual day-to-day existence. For my money, to go through something this unique and memorable and not to put it to use in my fiction? That would be nuts.

And my first step toward incorporating something new into my fiction is usually to write about it in my writing journal. I'm going to make use of my notes from this experience in laying out what it was like to be an out-and-out insomniac for two weeks.

The short answer?

Hell.

Let me start at the beginning.

And it begins in Las Vegas. 

With Sting.

Recently my wonderful wife took me on a vacation culminating with a celebration of my birthday by going to see Sting in concert at Caesar's Palace during the final week of his residency. My parents and brother also went. Great trip. Great time. We were scheduled for an early Sunday flight out on the morning after the concert.

The Sting in Yellow (GREAT concert!)

We got up and out that morning, only to arrive at McCarran Airport and discover that mechanical difficulties had delayed our flight. As it was we waited seven hours hovering around the gate, waiting to board.

And when we made the mad dash to board, I somehow left behind one of my carry-on bags. The one with my CPAP machine. For those of you not aware of the significance of this, let me put it this way: I have severe sleep apnea. Without a CPAP I snore very loudly and have trouble getting into REM sleep (to say nothing of driving to distraction anyone unlucky enough to be caught within earshot while I'm trying to sleep). I have used a CPAP for the better part of a decade. I had an idea how reliant I had become on my CPAP since adopting it (MUCH better and deeper sleep for me as a result), but I was about to find out just exactly how much.

I only realized I'd misplaced my CPAP once we'd landed, gotten home and begun to unpack. Once I realized I'd lost it, I got my original CPAP machine out of storage. I tried using it that first night.

It did not go well.

I kept drifting off and then jerking awake once I began to snore. This must have happened fifty or sixty
times that night. The older CPAP didn't work as well as my current state-of-the-art one, and halfway through the night I gave up even trying to use it.

And my poor wife eventually gave up and spent the wee hours of the night/morning in the guest room.

That next morning and all of the following day I was a zombie. Falling asleep in mid-conversation with my wife (both working from home that day), losing track of what I was I thinking/talking about in mid-sentence. A below the surface widespread itchiness across the breadth of my skin and behind my eyes and in the center of my head. And as long-time readers of this blog (BOTH of you! *rimshot*) will recall, I have tinnitus in my left ear. The lack of REM sleep that first morning turned that ringing up into something very like a roar.

Me getting out of bed in the morning. Would you believe I'm usually a morning person?

All that first day – a Monday – I spent trying to track down the bag which contained my CPAP. I called the airline. I called the airport. McCarran airport in Las Vegas is world renowned for its terrific customer service. It did not disappoint this time either.

The airline was a total bust. At the airport came through and found my CPAP and sent it to me. It would only take three days to get to me which meant by the time they had tracked it down, on Tuesday, I would receive it by Friday. So in the meantime, I was in the position of needing to find a way to compensate for my CPAP. 

My old CPAP was out of the question. It just didn’t push air at a high enough rate to keep me from snoring. That left supplements.

As almost anyone in their 50s, will tell you, to turn 50 it’s to say goodbye, or if you prefer good night, to a straight eight hours of sleep. I do better than most, I’m up, maybe once a night. And I sleep very well.

But as with everyone else my age, I have felt the need to supplement in order to try to get to sleep sometimes. This supplementation has usually taken the form of use of Melatonin.

So… not THESE types of Pink Floyd dreams

But I don’t really like melatonin, in part, because when I take it, I am usually guaranteed to have dreams the likes of which drove Syd Barrett out of Pink Floyd. And they are frequently obstacles to getting a good nights sleep.

However, I was desperate, feeling off after my first day of not really sleeping, so I tried some melatonin.

It did not help.

Imagine the same dreams, the same, psychedelic quality to them, undergirded, and intensified by a whole new color, palette, most of which I would be hard-pressed to describe during my waking hours. On top of that because I didn’t have my CPAP I would drift in and out of sleep, and a sort of Wakeful sleep? Or a sleepy wakefulness? Tomato, tomato I suppose. 

The end result is that I am pretty sure I didn’t get more than two or three hours total sleep that night. And I also didn’t get into rem sleep at all.

The next morning, everything was gray. Color had leaked out of my world. My eyes ached. So did every muscle in my body. My hair follicles. My teeth. My fingers felt like 10 worms attached to my palms, which also ached.

And did I mention that everything was gray? Complete gray scale. I had very little idea what I was doing. I fell asleep multiple times, only to be awakened by my own snoring. 

Over.

And over.

And over.

By Thursday the panic attacks began to set in. I would go from a fugue state to a waking state to a dream state. I would try to catch up with naps during the day, only the jerk awake moments after falling asleep with my heart racing, and no idea where I was.

On the supplement side of things I graduated from melatonin to THC laced gummies. I live in Washington state and weed is legal here, but to be honest, it’s never really been my thing.

But I was desperately in need of an extended period of sleep, and I wasn’t yet ready to try Ambien. So THC gummies it was.

The end result? Now I was not only sleep deprived.

The opposite of "enjoyably high."

I was also stoned. 

I did not enjoy it.

Thankfully, my CPAP arrived on Friday. And yet even death, my regular sleep patterns did not immediately return to me. I still woke up several times a night, usually panicked, had a hard time getting comfortable in any bed, or on a couch the Sunday night after I got my CPAP back I slept in a chair.

That was the beginning of the return for me though. I slept a solid five hours straight that night. I have rarely had as much energy on a Monday as I did that Monday. Over the next several days, in conjunction with several daytime naps, I manage to put my regular sleep schedule back together.

The grayscale receded. I was no longer stoned because I took no more gummies. I skipped the melatonin (except for one night mid week. It help me sleep 10 hours.). The fugue state receded. The waking dream ended. I felt like Edgar, Allan Poe, coming out on the other end of a bender.

The color leeching back into my nights.

And now, on my regular sleep schedule again, I am ready to use this experience in my fiction. I have always had a rational understanding of the effectiveness of sleep deprivation as a torture method. But now I can attest to how devastating a too tired mind can truly be.

In fact, one of my favorite rock bands (Rush) put it best:  “A tired mind become a Shapeshifter.”

Truer words have really been spoken.

How about you? Have you had an experience with this kind of sleep deprivation? Had another experience that was so alien to your normal way of being that you felt the need to memorialize it in your fiction? Tell us all about your experiences in the comment section below.

And on that note:

See you in two weeks!