Information Flows to the Writer

Look what you people have done to me! I am obsessed. Obsessed, I tell you!

The book-to-film conversation that arose a few weeks ago has been buzzing in my brain quite a bit these days. In my last installment, I promised another article in that vein soon. But then I realized that there are a few other rants I have been meaning to get out of my system first. To my mind, they all speak to the same topic—author empowerment.

So here we go.

Almost any writer who’s been doing it long enough will accept as gospel the maxim “Money flows to the writer.” I hereby nominate a sub-clause to be enshrined in our holy tabernacle: “Information does, too.”

But what is the first thing a writer does when they land a literary agent? The writer puts the agent’s contact information on the contact page of their, the writer’s, website. And as the writer accrues more representatives in their careers, they add still more.

Want to hire me for a speaking gig? Talk to my speaker’s agent! Want to inquire about book-to-film rights? Write to my book-to-film agent! And so on…

I understand and sympathize with such writers. They have worked hard to acquire these people. Finally, they are validated! Someone cares enough about their work to help them make as much money as possible from the rightful exploitation of their growing creative empire. If they’re being honest, they will admit that slapping these names on the website gives them a rush. Their contact page looks busy, alive, and ripe with juicy links. They are broadcasting to their family, friends, and other writers: Look! I’ve arrived! 

But what have they really done? They have given strangers license to talk about them and their careers without their knowledge. Now, anyone can write to one of these agents and the writer will never know that the possibility of an offer is in the air.

Believe it or not, our agents have lives that do not revolve around us. Personal lives too. And those demands take precedence over inquiries about your work.

A writer friend told us recently that his agent had taken a step back because of her pregnancy. He didn’t know about it until his gentle email badgering progressed to an Actual Phone Call. In the business world, bullshit is often cloaked in euphemisms. Fred doesn’t have fire in the belly—so we fired him. We’re looking for someone who can hit the ground running, so we cannot offer you the job. Specifics would be nice.

If an agent is taking a step back, presumably they will spell out to their clients what that actually means before they vanish into a pinprick of light. Suppose, during the time your agent was, um, regressing, a publisher in Varna wrote asking about the foreign rights to your book? How would you know? The Bulgarian editor went to your website, clicked the link which you so helpfully provided, and sent your agent a note without you ever knowing.

“Oh, but my agent wants to make money,” I hear you splutter. “They would hop on an inquiry like that because a sale for me is a sale for them, too—wiseass!”

Uh, no. Go back and read Freakonomics. Every human responds to incentives. Every human quickly figures out how little work they have to do to keep their gravy train running. And when humans deem the incentive too low, they don’t hop on a damn thing, especially if they have more lucrative things to do.

I had two nonfiction articles chosen two years in a row for the Best American Science and Nature Writing anthologies. And for some reason, textbook editors later came out of the woodwork asking to reprint portions of those old Discover magazine articles. Each time, I referred the editors to the guy who was my very first agent. By then, the agent and I had become “friends.” This means that we were stupidly young and occasionally hung out together in Village bars talking about famous writers and their exorbitant book deals.

“Are you sure you want me to handle these for you?” he said, referring to my minor contracts. “I’m gonna make like 50 bucks on the whole thing.”

That’s how they think. I now know better.

Your agent will get right on that foreign rights offer to your book. Really.

In that famous 2005 book by Levitt & Dubner, the authors argued that real estate agents really have no desire for protracted negotiations on the sale of your home. If the price goes higher, you make thousands more, but their commission bumps up by a few hundred. Why work? Better to close the deal and move on.

Similarly, in publishing an agent’s cut of (most) foreign sales makes them a pittance compared to you, so they will be tempted to a) pressure you to take the deal as offered, or b) drag their feet on responding to an outside inquiry in the first place.

At the bigger literary agencies, newbie agents are assigned to work the foreign sales desk. Smart. Frees up the senior agents to make the real money. But what do you think every one of those junior agents learns to say when they send you an email with your hot new foreign offer? “It’s a solid deal. I think we should take it.” Translation: Please don’t make me work harder.

Speaker’s bureau agents have set dollar amounts that trigger their handling of your booking. When you sign with them, they’re usually quite transparent about those amounts. At a decent agency, if they’re only interested in handling inquiries involving, say, a $2,500 or higher booking, they’re supposed to refer the low-figure offers back to the speaker. (That’s you.) But in practice, they might let such an offer slip through the cracks. Many nonprofits and library foundations are empowered to offer speakers honoraria in amounts such as $500 to $1,000. Would you accept such payments, even if you had to handle the travel arrangements on your own, without an agent’s assistance? Yeah—I would too, only neither of us found out about them because the org wrote to our speaker’s agent directly and no one bothered to tell us.

Book-to-film agents are trained to ignore rights requests from small production companies they’ve never heard of, without looking further to see if there are mitigating factors that might mean something to you, the author. (In addition to the dramatic rights option, the interested party wants an option to produce an offshoot documentary about a serious social topic or cause you champion in your novel.)

In the real world, talking about someone behind their back is considered rude. Yet that’s exactly what happens when you route business inquiries to others who are supposed to look after your interests. So don’t. The only email address or link on your contact page should be the one leading to your inbox and yours alone.

Every inquiry must come through you first.

Information flows to the writer.

Yes, I understand you are a writer who just wants to write. Wake up. It’s not that hard to take charge. I am not advocating that you negotiate these things. I simply propose a scenario that works like this:

An email containing a rights inquiry or speaking engagement offer hits the writer’s inbox. Fresh intel in hand, the dutiful writer logs the fresh inquiry in a notebook, then forwards the note to the proper agent: “Hey—just got this note about a Japanese translation. Please check into it. We can talk about it next time we Zoom.” Then, said writer shoots a note to the Japanese inquirer, saying, “Thanks for writing. I forwarded your note to my literary agent. If you haven’t heard from NAME at AGENCY in a timely manner, feel free to write me again.” Not hard at all.

What have you just done? The friendly stranger offering a bagful of cash now knows how to reach you directly, and is less likely to walk away if he doesn’t hear from your agent. And your agent knows that you know about this inquiry and that you are likely to follow up with them down the road. They can’t very well drop the ball. If, after all you have done, they do drop said spheroid, then is that not its own form of information?

Every writer must figure out for themselves how many indignities they are willing to take from all these agents before the writer takes their business elsewhere. What’s your price? Two brush-offs or dropped balls? Three? If you let strangers speak about your work without knowing what’s going on, you may be staying in a relationship that has long ago left you in the dust.

And yes, I know that there are exceptions to this rule. An interested party may go direct to an agent because you thanked the agent in the acknowledgments of your last book. Or the correspondent saw you and your agent speaking on a panel together at a conference. Your point is well taken. But in the real estate you control—your website—the funnel should always be pointed back at you.

* * * 

As always, this is my opinion after years of doing it the conventional way and having it blow up in my face. I'm sure lots of you have had lovely relationships with agents that did not fall along these lines. If so, certainly let me know!

See you in three weeks!

Joe

josephdagnese.com

Pet Peeves: 2025 Writing Edition

Interesting, title, right? Perhaps a little provocative?

Let’s be clear. I’m talking about writing pet peeves.

I mean, come on. This is a blog ostensibly about writing. And while many of my fellow SleuthSayers and yours truly frequently indulge our impulses to discuss other interests, There’s plenty going on in the writing world right now that merits commentary.

In light of this, I offer below a few of my own beefs about current trends in writing, As well as some pithy observations from other writers among my circle of friends. Where the comment is my own, I have left it unattributed. Other contributors are noted alongside their entries.

With that said, let us begin.

GROUND/FLOOR

I’ve noticed lately that a lot of writers (Many of them, Indie) have a tendency to conflate the words “ground” and “floor”.

For example:

“The glass candelabra dropped from her hand, crashing into a hundred pieces when it hit the ground.” 

This when the character is in a second story bedroom. Not outside, and not even in a basement with a dirt floor!

I have seen this literally dozens of times in books I’ve read over the past year. What’s more, said conflation seems to go only one way. And that is using the word “ground” when the word “floor” is appropriate.

I have yet to see something along the lines of: “Milton stood in the middle of the road, watching the wagon retreat into the distance. And when it had gone from sight, he fell to his knees on the dusty floor.”

Weird, huh?

An actual example of something actually being thrown on the actual ground.

NOT JUST THE TITLE OF A TERRIFIC PETER GABRIEL ALBUM

I’m referring, of course, to the word “so.”

Specifically, at the head of a sentence, and solely used in dialogue.

For example: “So I heard you got cancer.”

I suppose seeing something like this once or twice over the course of 80-90k words is one thing. But here’s the thing about “dialogue leading so”: once it crops up one place, pretty soon you’re seeing it as dialogue tag signaling a transition in every conversation in said book. I have seen this time and again. And that is just lazy writing. Why not just go with: “I heard you got cancer.”?

AND DON’T GET ME STARTED ON (OVER)USING A.I.

No question A.I. can come in handy when a writer needs a quick answer to a research question in the middle of a scene. We’ve all been there. It’s like a Google search on steroids.

But (and again, I’m seeing this mostly with Indie writers) I have begun to see bloated passages where paragraphs tend to run together, often repeating the exposition of a certain set of facts over and over, as if to show the importance of said facts, and the intensity of the revelation of their existence by sheer repetition.

Mess around with any form of A.I. long enough and this pattern can seem awfully familiar. And then there’s stuff like this:

Readers Annoyed When Fantasy Novel Accidentally Leaves AI Prompt in Published Version, Showing Request to Copy Another Writer’s Style.

And apparently there are plenty of other examples of this sort of thing.

And when caught out, the authors in question seem to be leaning hard on the notion that what tripped them up and revealed their use of generative AI constituted an “editing mistake.”

Uh-huh.

Laurie Rockenbeck says:

If I see “long moment” I want to scream. (Mainly because a best selling author uses it ten times in every novel….)

David Schlosser (who writes as “dbschlosser”) says:

Hyphenation proliferation. The stupidest example I see everywhere now is 70-percent.

Or seven-out-of-ten.

It's like engineers using Random Capital Letters to tell you How Important This Is.

I (also) have an opinion about "as" from editing non-native English speakers' technical reports.

Because, since, as all *can* mean the same thing ... and so we should choose carefully which word to use in each instance.

Because is explicitly causal. In research on influence and persuasion, it is literally a magic word - people will do things they would not otherwise do when they hear a reason justified by "because."

"Since" and "as" both have temporal implications "because" does not have.

Use "since" to describe time elapsed SINCE something happened - not to describe why what happened since then happened.

Use "as" to describe events occurring simultaneously.

Use "because" to describe cause-and-effect relationships.

Jim Thomsen says:

I would say the growing reliance on histrionic reaction beats in thrillers. From a recently released novel: “Guilt had twisted in my entrails like a knife.”

Other examples:

“Anxiety churns along her skin.”

“Anger, pulsing anger, dripped down her body.”

“Grief hurtled toward me, crashing into me and beating inside my chest like a giant, furious animal.”

“Horror stole over me like a mist, uncurling deep within. And then a fiery knot began to burn in my stomach.”

“Agony was stamped indelibly on his body, weighted across the miserable hunch of his shoulders. He looked smaller somehow, shrunken, the way a grape shrivels into a raisin.”

I collect these.

My evergreen sarcastic retort: “That makes my heart pound like a hooker’s headboard in a highway hotel.”

******

And that is about as great a last word as we’re gonna find. So I’ll leave it there. How about you? Pet peeves? Got ‘em? Share ‘em in the Comments section below!

See you in two weeks!

In Pod We Trust

 I enjoy podcasts, a fact that I have written about before.  I want to tell you about some of my recent discoveries, related to our field of study.

Empire City.   Chenjerai Kumanyika takes us on a tour of the history of the New York City Police Department from the days of slave-catchers to the trial of Eric Adams.  Spoiler alert: His thesis is that there aren't just a few bad apples but the whole barrel is rotten.  9 parts.

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wonder. Fantasy writer Katherine Rundell looks at the history and purposes of children's literature.  It's full of fascinating reflections on the writing process and writers. "It's easier to trust a writer who writes good food. They are a person who has  paid attention to the world." Did you know that J.R.R. Tolkien intentionally made his lectures difficult to listen to, in the hopes that his students would drop out and he could go back to writing? 5 parts.

 Underfoot in Show Business.  Helene Hanff is best remembered for 84 Charing Cross Road, her book about a 20-year correspondence with a London bookseller.  It was made into a movie.  But before that she wrote Underfoot in Show Business, about her attempt to become a Broadway playwright. The BBC recently dramatized it and it's all charming but I point it out here mostly because she talks about breaking into television - by writing for The Adventures of Ellery Queen.  

The Blackburn Files.  The BBC created this lighthearted private eye series in the 1980s.  It is northern England at the time that Thatcher is closing down the coal mines.  Stephen Blackburn is a young ex-pitman who lives with his mother and takes over a PI business.  The result is comic, sometimes slipping into farce, usually because of our hero's ability to misunderstand people.  (When his intern/secretary mentions Nietzsche he replies "Gesundheit.") 5 parts.

Main Justice.  This award-winning podcast is hosted  by Andrew Weissmann, and Mary McCord, both former high-ranking DOJ attorneys, now legal commentators for MSNBC.  The show began as Prosecuting Donald Trump but following his re-election the focus shifted to analyzing the actions of the Justice Department.  Fascinating and infuriating stuff.

The Mystery Hour.  Have we mentioned this one on the blog before?  Prize-winning podcaster Rabia Chaudry grew up on Alfred Hitchcock's and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines and each week she reads a story from one of those fine journals aloud. Among those whose works have been honored here are R.T. Lawton, Joseph S. Walker,  and myself. There are probably more SleuthSayers in here but one flaw in this podcast is that Chaudry only lists titles. You have to listen to find out who the author is.  Maybe some kind soul will create an index?

Taxonomy of the Modern Mystery Story.  Big-brained Canadian Malcolm Gladwell is a fan of our genre and  wants to understand it.  He is especially interested in the link between detective stories and our view of real-life cops.

It's Black and White

The Cliburn Competition has Fort Worth feeling artsy.

For those who missed my city's numerous press releases, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is a quadrennial event that showcases the future of classical pianists. The world’s top 18–30-year-old pianists gather in my city and perform before live and worldwide streaming audiences.

One of the unique aspects of the Cliburn competition is that the organizers house the visiting pianists in local homes during the event. Many neighborhoods have a competitor staying in them. While you don't necessarily see them when you're out walking the dog, you know they're there. (Every host family is loaned a Steinway grand piano, the same instrument used in the Cliburn, so that the competitors can practice.) Rover and his companion human might hear some next-level music through the window of a house down the street. The Russian/Israeli pianist becomes our neighborhood competitor. Most of us are homers and we're cheering for our local kid.

I tend to drop the arts into one big bucket, a different bucket from my sports bucket or my business bucket. Although I recognize the differences between the creative arts, I typically see writers, painters, musicians, and filmmakers as kindred spirits. Like fiction writers, these other art practitioners harness their creative energies to make fresh and new things. We all use our talents to entertain and to comment, directly or indirectly, on the world around us. When we are at our best, we unite people across a spectrum of humanity.

I've been forced to rethink my position on concert pianists. I might need to move them to my athletic bucket.

This none-too-deep thought should have occurred to me before. The competitors, after all, are performing another composer's work. But each of them is creating. The Dallas Morning News's review of Vitaly Starikov's performance (our local guy) noted that [i]n addition to fastidious attention to dynamic and coloristic nuances, he demonstrated the magic that can come of stretching and contracting rhythms, lingering over melodic high points and poignant harmonies.”

As a non-musician, I don't pretend to understand everything in that sentence. My takeaway is that Vitaly is doing more than hitting the notes Chopin scribbled down. He is creating.

Painters might scrape away and paint over. Writers can Find and Replace. We get the ability to edit our work. Not so with the piano benches at the Cliburn.

There is a hair-breadths difference between a great and a good performance, between an advancing recital and a return flight home. The immediacy of performance art made it seem more akin to athletes.

The local college baseball team's season ended abruptly in the NCAA tournament. In the moment, the excellent season melted away. Pitchers missed the strike zone or alternately found too much of it. Accomplished hitters missed the ball at critical times. Well-practiced skills that had been honed throughout the season failed under the pressure of the NCAA tournament. Both baseball and piano competitions were co-occurring. It was hard not to see the parallel.

But on the other hand, ball players are competing directly against their opponent. The pianists were playing their best, hoping that their individual efforts would be judged among the best. And that seems comparable to our efforts. When I craft a story for submission to an anthology, I’m not really competing against Rob Lopresti or the other submitters. I’m submitting my best work and hoping it's deemed worthy of inclusion. If Rob's ends up in and mine out, I don't see it as a competition between us.

But maybe we should. Consider this modest proposal. The next time Michael Bracken assembles an anthology, perhaps rather than submitting our 12-point Times New Roman, double-spaced work, we could read it to a live-streaming audience. As Michael judges, Stacy Woodson might offer hushed-voice commentary and insider analysis.

                "He confused ‘blond’ and ‘blonde.’ That could be a fatal error. Michael feels very strongly about blondes."

                "Clearly, to stay under the word limit, she elected to tell rather than show," Stacy offered disapprovingly.

As we read, submitters might close our eyes, sway back and forth, and occasionally throw our heads back for emphasis, like the piano competitors. The anticipation might build through quarter, semi, and final rounds with eliminations along the way. The downside, of course, is that having heard the selected stories read three times, no one may want to buy the anthology. 

And that's a problem. I might need to keep thinking through this concept. But Vitaly is about to play a Mozart piano concerto backed by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra as part of the semi-finals. I've got a live stream to watch.

Until next time.

Being alone and together.

      Writers are some of my favorite people. Along with tradespeople and musicians. When I was first published, I knew nothing about the mystery subculture, but once introduced, I was very pleasantly surprised that it was rich, supportive, collegial and far-flung. After about twenty years in the mystery writing game, I can attest that hanging out in this community is just as rewarding as publishing the books and short stories that grant me entry.

      You wouldn’t think that people who spend so much time in a room by themselves, and living all day inside their heads, would be very good at social interaction. But it turns out that writers can be the most cordial of companions. They have liberal views regarding a drink or two, which doesn’t hurt. It’s also because writers are thinkers, people who know a lot about a lot of things, and it’s fun for them to exchange deep, wide-ranging and arcane information.

      Of course, there’s also our shared experience. All affinity groups exist because of this. Whether you drive Harleys or run extreme marathons (I do neither, nor ever wanted to). It’s easy to conceive of writers locked up all day in their writing rooms, emerging around cocktail hour to trade bits on how the day went and their expectations for tomorrow’s production.

      But I think more importantly, writers are people who trade in human emotion. They’re by definition empathic and all tangled up in the intrigue and confusion of human existence. It’s only natural that we’d want to hash things out with people engaged in the same endeavor. Woodworkers and musicians are the same way. When we get together, there’s a shorthand in the conversation, since everyone knows what everyone else is talking about. As the stories circle the table, we naturally fill in the unsaid parts.

      My wife often points out that I’m drawn to solitary pursuits. This is certainly true of writing and woodworking. Music is a bit different, since you need a group to really experience the enterprise. Though you also have put in alone time practicing and ruminating over your part in the performance, which only those inclined to spend hours by themselves can achieve. So it’s a bit of both.

      Tradespeople also belong to an ensemble. I might frame and trim out the house, but others have to sheetrock the walls, run the wiring, install HVAC and plumbing, lay the tile and counter tops – and we have to work as an efficient, orchestrated team to pull it all off.

      Advertising, another thing I did, is also a lot like this. You start out a project together, setting goals and blocking out objectives. Then the copywriter (me) and the art director would go off together and make stuff up. This is the equivalent of a writers room on a TV series. We’d both batt around ideas, write headlines, come up with visuals – contriving a bunch of creative options. Then we’d return to our individual work stations and do our solitary thing – writing copy, doing layouts, sampling visuals, etc.

      Then all the other elements of the agency – account managers, media buyers, production, finance, who had also been strategizing together, then laboring alone over their specialties, would join us to pitch the client our ideas.

      I love this ebb and flow between individual and collective effort. For me, it’s life best lived.

      Writing about writing is a little like dancing about architecture. There’s no way you can fully describe the experience. So maybe that’s why writers like to hang around with other writers. You don’t have to explain to them what you’re going through, because they already know.

      Writing is hard and impervious to easy explanation, but that’s okay. You just have to order another round of drinks and relax for a little bit before going back and doing it again.

Prep School

Most of us develop our sense of grammar and vocabulary listening to others, be it good grammar or spellings or not. Our language skills aren’t necessarily based upon intelligence, but a product of our environment. If we’re fortunate, persistent, and surround ourselves with bright people, we correct grammar and expand our vocabulary, presupposing an awareness. John Clayton, the Viscount Greystoke, a student of Mangani comes to mind. Okay, he’s fictional, but you understand.

I needed to up my game. For far too long, I’ve wondered about the difference between toward and towards, while and whilst, amid and amidst. Curiosity often strikes when I’m in the middle of writing and not wanting to interrupt myself at the risk of my ADD losing the narrative thread. By the time I finish, I’ve quite forgotten my mental note until the next time.

amid/amidst

among/amongst

beside/besides

toward/towards

while/whilst

But I finally looked them up, prepositions with optional ’S’s. That led to a myriad of adjectives and adverbs ending in ‘-ward(s)’: inward/inwards, upward/upwards, aft/aftwards, etc. Almost always, -ward(s) implies direction, e.g, looking inward, tossing skyward, sliding downward– any which may bear a discretionary S. Unsurprisingly, a number of terms come from marine navigation and others from biology. A partial list includes:

afterward/s

backward/s

bucalward/s

coastward/s

distalward/s

dorsalward/s

downward/s

earthward/s

eastward/s

elseward/s

forward/s

frontward/s

heavenward/s

henceforward/s

homeward/s

inward/s

landward/s

leeward/s

lingualward/s

mesialward/s

moonward/s

netherward/s

northeastward/s

northward/s

northwestward/s

onward/s

outward/s

polarward/s

rearward/s

rightward/s

seaward/s

starward/s

sunward/s

shoreward/s

sideward/s

skyward/s

stemward/s

southeastward/s

southward/s

southwestward/s

sternward/s

straightforward/s

sunward/s

thenceforward/s

toward/s

upward/s

vanward/s

ventralward/s

westward/s

windward/s

With or without an S, meaning is almost always the same. Variants may have stylistic implications, often in the ear of the beholder. ‘Amongst’ might seem old-fashioned, ‘whilst’ might sound classy, ‘toward’ more North American whereas ‘towards’ more British– or not. Context is important.

What are your thoughts?

In the mortal words recorded on Theodore Cleaver’s birth certificate, JuneWard!

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

  

I'm not a huge fan of network television. Except for the nightly news, our TV's always off unless I'm watching a DVD or streaming a movie, which I admit does happen a lot. But in the old days, when network shows were all we had, I sat there pop-eyed and hypnotized almost every night, mostly watching cowboys or cops, but some comedies, too.

Most of the sitcoms were bad. Badly written and badly acted, although I didn't know it then, and if I did know it, I probably didn't care. I watched 'em anyway, unless I was reading. Now, in hindsight, I wish I'd only been reading.

But a few of the sitcoms were good, years ago, and I now realize they were good because they were well written. A couple of the best were The Bob Newhart Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which I think I remember aired back-to-back on Saturday nights, back in the mid-'70s. What struck me about those two was they weren't just entertaining, they were funny--laugh-out-loud, slap-yo-mama funny sometimes, and yes, part of it was because of the great characters (some of them I'll remember forever). But mostly it was because of the writing. Not just the jokes, but the whole thing, and the dialog was sharp and cool and witty.

The TV version of M*A*S*H was another example. I had already seen the movie and loved it, so when I watched the TV pilot it was with low expectations--but I was pleasantly surprised. Certainly more folks today will remember Hawkeye Pierce as Alan Alda than as Donald Sutherland, right? (Funny story, though, about the movie version: I was a green 2nd lieutenant in the Air Force when the movie came out, and it arrived at one of our two base theaters at the very same time that Patton arrived at the other theater. At first, most of us flocked to see Patton, mostly at the urging of our superior officers. But after the first night, the word got around, and for the rest of that week EVERYone was packing in to see M*A*S*H while the other theater, showing Patton, was almost empty. The base commander was not pleased and told us so, which of course secretly pleased us even more--my little group found Hot Lips Houlihan a lot more interesting than George S. Patton. Ah, those good old days of military service . . .)

Sorry--back to the main point. Around that time and in the years shortly afterward, several other good sitcoms came along as well--All in the Family, WKRP, Taxi, etc., and a little gem no one remembers called Wings. And, much later, Friends, The Simpsons, and Seinfeld. But my all-time favorite TV comedy series was, and always will be, Cheers. Even back then, I had noticed that the very best shows had a well-planned setting--MTM had a TV newsroom, Bob Newhart a psychiatrist's office, M*A*S*H a mobile army hospital--but Cheers had maybe the most promising location of all: a friendly neighborhood bar. That setting ensured that all kinds of crazy characters would be coming in and going out all the time, and with its absolutely top-notch cast, this show couldn't go wrong. I loved it from the get-go. Even after the series had been running awhile, every decision the producers made seemed to turn out right. Who would've thought the beloved character Coach, when he passed away, could ever be replaced?--but Woody turned out to be just as appealing a bartender, if not more so. And I wound up liking Rebecca as much as I liked Diane. Is it any surprise that the Frasier spinoff was funny and successful as well?

My fond memories of Cheers were the reason I felt such sadness a few days ago, when I heard of the passing of George Wendt, who played the lovable Norm Peterson in all 275 episodes of the series. I saw an old interview of him the other day, in which he was asked why his character was so popular. Part of his answer was something like: "I just said the lines the writers gave me to say." Again, the fine writing was a giant part of Cheers's lasting success. Anyone who thinks we fiction writers can't learn something from shows like that--well, they're fooling themselves. If you pay attention, you'll easily see the brilliance there. The timing, the delivery, the way every line of the script deepens the characters and delights the viewer and keeps things moving.

Maybe it's me, but I just don't see that kind of thing often anymore, in our current TV offerings. Even the camera work doesn't seem as professional. Some of the shows are good, sure, but many, many are not.

What are your thoughts, on this? Do you watch much network TV, and specifically the sitcoms? Did you watch them in the past? What were your favorites, back then? Have you now given up on them, like me? Do you agree that the writing is worse, in recent years, for that kind of programming? Has our collective sense of humor changed? All observations are welcome!

Meanwhile, I think I'll go find a YouTube episode of Cheers to cheer me up. As an example, here's an exchange I saw the other day:

Coach: "What's shakin', Norm?"

Norm: "All four cheeks and a couple of chins."

God, I loved that show.

Robbing the Inconvenience Store

Foil Arms and Hog report an alarming rise in crime in Ireland.

The Gods of Power and Money Are Back…

Well, actually, they never went away.  

A lot of people seem to be incredibly surprised by current capers by certain billionaire(s) (especially the guy with the chainsaw), and how/why so many corporations and other billionaires are backing these capers with all their might.  Well, my first response is, "They don't want the chainsaw to come for them."  

So I am going back to the past, about 9 years ago, to an old blog post I wrote called "Gods and Demi-Gods":  about how money and power are the real gods of America. Not only does it currently seem that they still reign, but now it's on steroids. So I've updated it:

• The first thing to understand is the term oligarchy: "a small group of very powerful people that controls a government or society." (Cambridge English Dictionary)  Generally these people are very wealthy and own corporations.  Currently, there are 13 billionaires in our current administration's cabinet, which isn't exactly attuned to the problems of a country in which the majority - 60% - are barely making enough to live on.  
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• Here are some of the rules of an oligarchy: 

• ALL corporations must make constant profits:  the modern economic doctrine - "maximizing shareholder value" - says that a corporation has no purpose but to make profits for its shareholders. This means that employer/employee loyalty and customer service/satisfaction are both irrelevant.  Pensions and/or health benefits can and must be cut whenever it's expedient to the bottom line. Jobs must be outsourced to the lowest bidder, taxes must be avoided by offshoring or secret, perpetual trusts, and whenever possible, lobbying and promoting certain politicians.  
• NOTE:  The fact that unemployed people do not buy much other than food is ignored.  Also ignored is that the United States is no longer the preferred customer of many corporations. Tesla's largest manufacturing plant and latest market is in China.

• Everything must be privatized, i.e., put into the hands of corporations and the wealthy.  At the same time, the corporations are no longer national, they are global, in order to maximize shareholder value (see above).   Government - on any level - is an impediment to profit, so it must be made as small and neutralized as possible, except when needed to bail out the corporations (see below).  (Only profits are privatized, losses are passed on to the public.)
• NOTE:  I am constantly amazed at how, in one of the most successful propaganda campaigns in history, our government (a democracy, where the government is "we, the people") has been presented as a dangerous waste of resources, while the "private sector" would be much more efficient. Sure, the corporations will make a lot more money, but it will hurt the hell out of most of us who are not wealthy.  Once the Postal Service (which is in the US Constitution) is privatized, then the cost of shipping will go sky-high.  They are trying to eliminate the Department of Education:  setting up public schools was one of the first things that every community prior to today did. And who is going to monitor air traffic, build the bridges, provide health alerts, weather alerts, disaster relief... (oh, that's right, these are all being cut even as I'm writing this...)

• Corporate profits must be maintained, at all costs, including military. Eisenhower recognized the beginnings of this in his Military Industrial Complex Speech.  Since the end of the Cold War, there has almost always been an economic rather than political reason why troops are sent where they are, why outrage is expressed over certain international incidents and not over others.  (This is why, for example, the entire international community joined the United States to invade Iraq in 1990-91's First Gulf War, a/k/a the 710 War, but everyone stood on the sidelines and watched as 800,000 people were slaughtered in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.)  And many aspects of war - supplies, security, etc. - are now routinely privatized to corporations which make a hefty profit with almost no oversight, including Bechtel (which was accused of  war profiteering), Halliburton, and Blackwater (which was brought before Congress in 2007 for "employee misdeeds," among other things).  
• NOTE 1: In the run-up to the Iraq war, Halliburton was awarded a $7 billion contract for which 'unusually' only Halliburton was allowed to bid (Wikipedia - Halliburton)  It might not have hurt that Dick Cheney had been Chairman and CEO from 1995-2000.    
• NOTE 2:  The current war, of course, is the war on immigrants.  This has caused an increase in spending on detention facilities, ICE employees, etc.  The current Big Beautiful Budget has $45 billion for immigration detention and related services, which would significantly increase ICE's budget for detention. And the private prison industry (in which Tom Homan, the current border czar, has investments) is salivating over future detainees - who become slave labor for whoever needs them.  

• Weapons industries must also make constant profits, and sales must be constant, and thus the NRA preaches the complete and total ownership of any firearm of any kind by anyone at any time.  No license, no training, and in many places, no age limit.  In some states, blind people can carry guns (looking at you, Iowa!, and sadly, I'm not kidding). That's why each new shooting must be propagandized in whatever way that will increase sales:

1. there are crazy people out there with guns, buy more guns now;
2. the terrorists / immigrants are coming to kill you, buy more guns now;
3. the government is coming to take away your guns, buy more guns now. 

• Also, to ensure constant profits for the weapons industry, (plus keep the complaints down about how life is going for everyone), our entertainment and news media must be saturated with ever-increasing levels of threats and violence. BTW, never forget the very important, very underestimated product placement. Every prop / weapon / outfit / drink you see on any screen is there in order to sell one to you.

• NOTE 1:  If you don't believe that media has any effect on people's behavior, then why do corporations spend billions on advertising?  If the constant barrage of news feeds, hour-long TV show, binge-watching television shows, and movies, or unlimited video games has no effect on our minds and behavior, then why should corporations pay millions for a 30-second ad spot?  Why do politicians and super-PACs do the same?  Are they all stupid?  

• NOTE 2:  If you don't believe that violence in media has increased, watch an episode of Gunsmoke on RetroTV some time, and note how seldom Matt Dillon (or even the bad guys) used a gun.  Some day count the number of weapons on display in previews during the morning news.  (The average child will see 8,000 murders on television before finishing elementary school:  Link).  

• NOTE 3:  The quantity of violence not only has increased, but, as the public becomes more jaded, it has become more and more perverse.  On the news, "When it bleeds, it leads!"  Literally.  As for entertainment, in the 1980s, Law and Order SVU was considered fairly hard-core, with story-lines of children being abused and murdered, women and children being raped, tortured, etc.  Not any more. Criminal Minds, Dexter, Hannibal, and other shows upped the ante with on-screen cannibalism, eye-gougings, etc.  Back on "Game of Thrones" human beings were castrated and flayed alive. Live, to-the-death gladiatorial contests cannot be far behind.  (But it's all in jest, they but do poison in jest, no harm in the world...)

When money and power are gods, and corporations are their high priests, there are real world consequences.  And one of those is that the poor - collectively and individually - are sinners, and must be punished by any means at the disposal of the powerful.  The results are:

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

        The Truth:

• The truth is, 90% of the economy in this country is done by the people called "the working class" and/or the "middle class".  These are the people who do the actual work in factories, schools, restaurants, grocery stores, any store, who are construction workers, electricians, plumbers, landscapers, teachers, janitors, who pick up the garbage, repair everything from lamps to cars to rockets, etc., and who buy most of the goods, pay almost all the taxes, and keep this country actually working.  
• NOTE:  Again, unemployed people don't buy very much except food and the  gasoline needed to try to get a job.

• The top 10%, which hold most of our country's wealth, spend a lot of money, but for relatively few goods, because what they buy is often maniacally expensive. On purpose. After all, how else are we going to know they're rich if they don't have that $6 million yacht (middle range, actually) or that $499,999 Birkin bag? Or a rocket to take you on a trip to outer space?  And they rarely "shop local".  I remember a very wealthy lady in a small town in South Dakota who wanted to donate art to the library and rather than buy anything from one of the local artists, bought some artwork from New York City and had it installed.  It was not appreciated.  They avoid taxes by offshoring or secret, perpetual trusts, and leave it all to their children, who do the same.  

The most successful and constant propaganda story in history:  "You can't give poor people money or aid of any kind, because they'll waste it on trivial stuff (food, clothing, drink, etc.).  So you have to incentivize the poor by denying them any social services or tax breaks. They just need to work harder. Meanwhile, the rich are incentivized by giving them endless tax breaks, if not eliminate their taxes completely."  

And give them government grants - which they promptly invest in themselves and their trusts.  But of course, this goes back to Victorian times and their version of Catch 22:  "there are the deserving poor (who would never dream of asking for a handout, even if they were starving) and the undeserving poor who ask for handouts, because they are starving, and thus don't deserve it..."  People really need to read more Dickens...

Political restrictions:  Between gerrymandering, voting restrictions, Citizens United, lobbyists, etc., the powerful have done an excellent job of ensuring that the votes/interests/representation of the working class and poor are rendered irrelevant to the political process.  (13 billionaires in one administration...) My own congress people respond to my e-mails and letters with form letters.   

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The consumer society.  When money and power are gods, individual human life has no meaning other than to make money and consume goods and services, and nothing else. Allegiance must be mindless, generated by carefully crafted advertising, propaganda, and sound-bites. Mental processes must be carefully controlled by endless social media and other distractions, so that no one ever considers that there might more to life than making money, shopping, sports, and/or the latest entertainment craze.  Considering that the average video on Tik-Tok is under a minute, it's amazing any of us have any ability to concentrate at all.

But fear counts above all.  No one must ever question why - living in the richest, most privileged, most free society on earth, the "home of the free and the brave" why people are so afraid, all the time, everywhere.  And like the people in Orwell's "1984", they must never notice that the object of fear constantly changes.  In my lifetime I have watched the enemy - THE ONE WHO WILL DESTROY US AT ALL COSTS - change from Communist Russia to the Axis of Evil (some combination of China/Russia/Iran/Iraq/North Korea, it changed with the President at the time) to Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein to Radical Islamic Terrorism, with a pretty constant drumbeat of fear and horror of blacks, the Black Panthers, drugs, hippies, urban thugs, illegal immigrants, illegal immigrant children, immigrants of any kind, legal refugees, anyone wearing a turban, and anyone with dark skin.  Deep breath.  And, of course, LGBQT+, and the ultimate horror, a transgender person using a public bathroom.  

Speaking of how propaganda works, to many politicians and their followers these days, Putin is now a hero, a strong promotor of Christian and family values... This would have been inconceivable up until twenty years ago. And I am stunned and disgusted by how Nazi salutes and catchphrases have been rehabilitated, to the point where Texas Republican Congressman Keith Self quoted Joseph Goebbels - ‘It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion,’ - at a Congressional subcommittee hearing. (LINK)

• NOTE:  So far, America is still here. So far…

Meanwhile, here are the facts:

• Money and power are abstractions, i.e., fictions, a belief system rather than a reality, to which we daily sacrifice real human beings, not to mention real air, real water, real food, real life.  It's really all about greed.

• No matter how much money and power is worshiped, acquired, accumulated, fought for, praised, and sacrificed to, life will never be 100% safe, and 100% of all people will all still die. Including the wealthiest of the 1%.  The gods of money and power, the church of celebrity, sports and entertainment, the priesthood of politicians, lobbyists and televangelists, none of them will save any human being from that fate.  

This is the truth about the gods that America - or at least a certain portion of America - has chosen.  Like any pagan deities, they require regular human sacrifice.  And they are getting it.  

Dennis & Dutch

I read two books recently, back to back, and as dissimilar as they are, what they had in common was voice.  Dennis Lehane’s World Gone By, from 2015, and Elmore Leonard’s The Hot Kid, 2005.  I’d never read either book before, clearly an oversight.  I must have been looking in the other direction.  I’ve also never thought of Lehane and Leonard as being much alike, as writers.  Not that they’re unalike, completely, but they’re very individual. 

Here’s what.  Both novels are period pieces, World Gone By the 1940s of wartime Tampa, The Hot Kid the tail-end of the Roaring 20s, and the rise of celebrity gangsters like Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd.  Lehane’s book is the third in the Coughlin trilogy, and if you know the back story, you won’t be surprised by black comedy or the heartbreak of Fate.  Leonard’s book isn’t exactly a sequel, but his hero is the son of a Marine blown up when the Maine goes down in Havana harbor – witnessed in Cuba Libre, from 1998. 

There’s a natural process of myth-making in both novels, slightly more self-conscious in the Leonard, because some of the boneheads in his story are trying to manufacture themselves as public enemies, and make the front page – Joe Coughlin, in World Gone By, is trying to live down his previous lifetimes.  The Hot Kid is relaxed, and sort of ballad-like, which makes a certain sense, when you’re reminded Woody Guthrie wrote a song about Pretty Boy Floyd, and turned him into a Robin Hood of the Dust Bowl, but Leonard’s book isn’t romantic, even if some of the supporting cast are fueled by romantic delusion.  Lehane’s book is melancholy, but that’s a different thing, nostalgia it ain’t.  Joe Coughlin understands the distinction. 

The word I want to avoid here is elegaic.  Neither of these guys is composing a swan song.  And whatever’s going on is very much of the moment.  All the same, the voice they’re using is what you might call the Epic Familiar.  I know I’ve tried to explain this previously, as a narrative method.  It’s the voice Jim Harrison uses, in Legends of the Fall, or Larry McMurtry, in Lonesome Dove.  Maybe, to a degree, T.H. White, in The Once and Future King.  I think it imposes itself – or you can’t avoid it – because of the largeness of story.  You scale up; you fall into cadences that evoke the Homeric.  Interestingly, you don’t hear those echoes in Don Winslow’s current City trilogy, which is drawn directly from the Iliad and the Aeneid.  He keeps it intimate.  It’s an intentional choice, and I think in Winslow’s case, more a matter of dialing it down.  Dialing it up, is what Lehane and Leonard are doing.

Lehane has done it before.  Mystic River has that quality, of seeing the characters against a horizon line.  But in Leonard’s case, less characteristically.  Even going back to his earlier Western stories, you see him not glamorize the bad guys, and even less so the good guys.  “3:10 to Yuma,” or Valdez Is Coming.  Not that Leonard’s characters, or Lehane’s, don’t rise to the occasion, and bring the Furies home to roost, but they don’t posture, or turn to see how they look in profile.  Their lack of self-consciousness is in part why they appear heroic.  But in Classic times, if we look at Hector or Achilles, they’re actually defined by submitting to Fate.  The heroes in Homer are too well aware of destiny, and fated meetings.

Achilles is offered the choice, also.  To die young, and have undying glory, or to live into old age, and sit by the hearth, to be forgotten by the sons of men.  We know which fate he chooses.  You could contrast Joe Coughlin, in World Gone By, and Carl Webster, in The Hot Kid, by pointing out that Carl is young, and tempted by fame, while Joe’s been there, and done that, and knows better.  They’re not overly familiar, or generic, but like Homer, on the windy plains of Troy, we know the landscape, we see the figures, thrown into relief along the horizon, the contesting wills, the naked warriors.  And the sisters, spinning out the threads, as pitiless as bronze. 

Fashion

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose," said Tallyrand, an old pol cynical about progress and change. Still, there's more than a kernel of truth in his observation, which is maybe why at a certain stage, every society seems obsessed by fashion. 

Politics and human nature may resist improvement, but fashion's mysterious currents  provide novelty. William Boyd's new historical spy novel, Gabriel's Moon, got me thinking about literary fashions. However creative or imaginative we are, our work seems inescapably set in our own time and in the style of the moment.

Gabriel's Moon, literate and well done, is in a very British style. Indeed, the plot owes a lot to my own absolute favorite in the genre, Eric Ambler's Journey into Fear, which itself owes big debts to John Buchan.

Even if you have not read Journey into Fear, you will recognize the outline: an innocent civilian, in this case, a well-educated engineer, is pressed into service in a dangerous foreign country.  The little job he is assigned, getting a roll of film back to the UK, does not seem too dangerous, but precautions are taken, and the would-be courier is booked onto an aging freighter with a small group of passengers. 

What could possibly go wrong on this small ship, surely too obscure to have attracted malign notice? Plenty, of course, and our hero soon moves from semi-complacency to a desperate search for friends, to an awareness that he is alone and must rely on his own resources absolutely.

Such a good plot! In Boyd's variant, set not in Amblers pre WW2 but in the early 1960's, Gabriel Dax, successful travel writer, is asked to buy a drawing from a reputable if not exactly famous, Spanish artist. Dax has occasionally done such little favors for his older brother, who is something in the British foreign services. He makes the purchase without trouble and returns home, because this novel is rather more expansive than Ambler's. 

The modern thriller must take time to flesh out its characters and give them back stories and complexities that earlier works indicated with a few well chosen lines. Dax has a history of childhood trauma – a doozy it must be admitted; a florid literary style, and eventually an analyst, one of the more interesting characters in the novel.

He also has a girlfriend, Loretta, who works at a Wimpy Burger and whom he sees as exotic because she's working class. Loretta, in turn, introduces him as her "posh boyfriend" which gives her a certain style and very modern, too. 

There was, to my memory, only one female character in Journey. Dax has not only a girlfriend and a female analyst, but his spy control is Faith Green, a chilly woman whom he rather perversely finds seductive. Both are very much 21st century women, although in 1960-62, the attitudes of male thriller writers skewed traditional.

There are other stylistic differences, too. While Ambler's novel cut straight to the chase, Boyd's has time to consider the mystery of Dax's childhood (the novel is a spy story wrapped around a mystery); the costs of secrecy and deception; and the restraints of the class system. 

He explores the psychology of double agents, a reflection of his fascination with Kim Philby, the notorious British agent, and manages to first extricate Dax and then trap him in a most satisfactory manner, eventually like Ambler's hero, on shipboard. 

Boyd's well done Gabriel's Moon is interesting stylistically because it presents an era that itself provided plenty of spy thrillers. Moon reads convincingly today but the novel's attitudes, timing, and style are resolutely of our time and to our taste, as a glance at any equivalent novel from the early 1960's will show. 

So was Tallyrand wrong? Not entirely. At least in the literary world, some things don't change entirely but morph one way and another in fashionable variations.

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The Falling Men, a novel with strong mystery elements, has been issued as an ebook on Amazon Kindle. Also on kindle: The Complete Madame Selina Stories.

The Man Who Met the Elf Queen, with two other fanciful short stories and 4 illustrations, is available from Apple Books at:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-man-who-met-the-elf-queen/id1072859654?ls=1&mt=11

The Dictator's Double, 3 short mysteries and 4 illustrations is available at: 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-dictators-double/id1607321864?ls=1&mt=11