Do character names play a role in whether you will continue reading a book or not?
I once had a middle-aged man in my college fiction writing class, probably my grumpiest student ever. I try hard to reach all students, and always strive to be cheerful. (As I've told students, there is a difference between happy and cheerful. You can be cheerful in the company of others, even when going through down times. All profs know this.)
But this man – there seemed to be nothing I could do to change his opinion of me. He simply didn't like me. Or so it seemed to me. Even though I had treated him fairly and kindly.
And so it seemed, until I found out the reason why. I resembled his ex-wife, and worse, my name was almost the same! (she was a Melanie. Close enough.) As you will imagine, it was an acrimonious separation, following her infidelity. To him, I resembled a scarlet woman.
I can laugh about it now, but it led me to think about how we come to read a book, with our own baggage. How we tend to tie emotions to names.
So I asked myself: what if we didn't have preconceived notions about names. What if - for instance - we had never come across those names before?
I had a chance to test that out this week, while reading Before the Coffee Gets Cold. This is a charming little book, by a Japanese writer. It's not a crime book; in fact, it's what my colleagues sometimes call a 'woo woo' book - meaning, it involved magic. The premise is intriguing: if you sit in a certain seat in a coffee house, you can go back in time for the minutes it takes for your coffee to get cold. Usually about 10 minutes. It will not change the present, but may help you make decisions about the future.
There was nothing wrong with the translation. However, I started to read the book, and found myself so bogged down in Japanese names, that I put it down after two chapters. I simply couldn't tell characters apart.
I read two mystery books in between. Then, while waiting for my holds to come in at the library, I picked up this book again. And encountered the same difficulty as before.
The problem? It came down to, I couldn't recognize the male names from the female names! I couldn't find a way to tell them apart. Many names started with K, so that confused me further.
I was more determined this time, however. So I wrote down a cheat sheet. Wrote the name down and opposite it, and whether the character was male or female. Then I added old or young. I referred to the cheat sheet regularly, to get through the book.
Turns out, the book was charming, and did make me think about our pasts, and what gets left out. By that I mean, the things that never get said. I'm glad I read it.
But it made me realize how much we depend on names to give us a hint as to whom the characters are. Male vs female, even older vs young. Susan and Kathy, I associate with boomer age women, for example. Helen and Mildred, would be their parent's generation. Ditto Bob and Ed vs Matt and… well you get the picture.
It also gave me sympathy for people reading foreign language translations of my own work! Our names could be unfamiliar to them, along with what they suggest.
Without those signposts, reading becomes much more of a challenge. Turns out, there is a lot in a name.
Compared to Agatha Christie by The Toronto Star, Melodie Campbell writes capers and golden age mysteries. The Silent Film Star Murders, book 19, is available at B&N, Chapters/Indigo, Amazon, and all the usual suspects.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Shelley said she was inspired by a nightmare to write her famous novel, Frankenstein, which is considered a foundational work of science fiction.
Elias Howe's Sewing Machine: Howe's dream of being captured by warriors wielding spears with holes near their tips led him to realize the needle should have the eye near the point, a key innovation for his sewing machine design.
Niels Bohr's Atomic Model: Bohr's dream of the solar system with planets connected by strings helped him conceptualize the structure of the atom, with electrons orbiting the nucleus.
Paul McCartney's "Yesterday": McCartney famously composed the melody for the song "Yesterday" entirely in a dream.
Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity: Einstein recounted a dream where he was sledding downhill at increasing speeds, which led him to contemplate how the appearance of stars would change at near light speed, ultimately contributing to his theory.
Srinivasa Ramanujan: The Man Who Knew Infinity:
Ramanujan said that, throughout his life, he repeatedly dreamed of a Hindu goddess known as Namakkal. She presented him with complex mathematical formulas over and over, which he could then test and verify upon waking. Once such example was the infinite series for Pi.
Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Dmitri Mendeleev's Periodic Table of the Elements: Mendeleev, struggling to organize the elements, reportedly saw the periodic table in a dream, where elements fell into place based on their properties.
James Watson's Double Helix: Watson, while working on the structure of DNA, dreamed of two snakes intertwined, which sparked his idea for the double helix structure of DNA.
Otto Loewi: Nerve Impulse Breakthrough:
In 1921, Loewi dreamed of an experiment that would prove once and for all that transmission of nerve impulses was chemical -- not electrical. Twice, because he forgot the dream and couldn't read his midnight writing, so it repeated itself the next night!
Robert Altman: Three Women
I've written about this one before - one of my favorite films.
Now, I haven't had any dreams that are that important - except to me - but I have always dreamed in full color, often with full (if sometimes incoherent) plot, dialog, people, animals, you name it. One dream I've never forgotten happened when I was somewhere around 6 or 7:
I was walking in a jungle, in a cold, cold rain, with seven evil dwarves promising to get me out of the jungle. An elephant came up to us and said, quite clearly in my mind, "They're liars," which I knew instantly was true, and "Come with me." His trunk went around my waist - and I can still remember the feel of it under my hands, rough and wrinkled and firm - and lifted me up on his back and then he pushed through and past the dwarves and on out of the jungle... There were a lot more adventures, which I'm not going to bore you with, but I still remember clearly, and the elephant made sure I stayed safe throughout. Elephants are always good in my dreams...
I also had a dream where I was in a swimming pool, and everyone else could go through this passage down at the bottom and get out - whatever out was. But I couldn't. And then, in a sequence of dreams over a week or two, I was given gills, and then I could breathe underwater, and I finally went through that passage, and came out into a glorious sea, full of color and fish and creatures... Ever since, the sea has been wild in my dreams, but a source of great happiness and freedom.
I've also had precognition dreams, i.e., seeing the future. These are rare, but when they come I know it. Some are so trivial that it's like, WHAT????
Example: I dreamed that I walked into the church we were attending and looked at the cover of the latest new devotional, which had not yet arrived. A week later, it arrived, and the cover was exactly what I had dreamed.
Example: My husband and I were going on our first overseas trip to see his relatives in England and Ireland. One night I dreamed that we were in Victoria Station, and I looked across the lobby and saw my former English professor. Well, we did indeed arrive at Victoria Station, and we were looking for where to catch the bus, and across the room... you guessed it, my former English professor.
Others aren't so trivial.
Example: About 35 years ago, we were going on vacation to Charleston, SC, with a couple we knew, and I dreamed that I looked up from packing, and saw my husband, outside, with someone attacking him, and the blood running down his face. So I warned him to be careful while we were there. Well, what happened was that my girlfriend and I got about a block ahead of the men, talking, and out of nowhere a car pulled up behind us, two guys jumped out of the car and came running towards us doing the drunk "Hey, baby, you're lookin' hot!" which is not the compliment men think it is. Allan ran forward and got in between them and us, and one of them turned around and told him to piss off, he didn't and the guy punched him. But my husband can take a punch, and they got down to it, until the other guy dragged his pal away. NOTE: We called the cops, they found them, two drunk soldiers on leave, and arrested them.
Now something like that could obviously happen on vacation. But this next one couldn't:
At one of my jobs I had to travel to other offices. The night before heading out, I dreamed that I ran into the wife [who I'd never met] of one of the employees, Joe [name's changed], who'd left Joe and their children for another man, and I was really pissed off about it, as was everyone else. She kept saying, "But I couldn't help it! You don't understand! He was so beautiful!" Well, I woke up, and the next morning, I'm running around the office like a maniac, trying to get ready to go, when I got a call from the secretary. I snapped "I'm on my way!" And the secretary said, "No, no, no. I'm calling because I've got to tell you, Joe's wife died suddenly last night." After I managed to get my breath back, I told her I was on my way, and told the people in my office what had happened, and asked (as casually as I could) what Joe's wife looked like. He described her, and it was indeed the woman I'd seen in my dream. Whew...
NOTE 1: I've had a lot of dreams where the dead have come to me, beginning when I was about six years old and my grandfather died. I was by his graveside, and a big wind came up and swept everything away except a letter in my hand, which I read and learned by heart in that dream. There were messages for my grandmother and mother, so when I woke up, I told them both what my grandfather had written to them. I think it helped my grandmother; my mother freaked out, and I never told her my dreams again. He also had a message for me, which turned out to be very, very true in my future life.
NOTE 2: Two things about precognition dreams. (1) I always know one when I have one because I get what I call "spiritual vertigo" - at some point I realize what I'm watching is separated from where I am by a physically unbridgeable bottomless abyss, which makes me wake up dizzy and nauseated. (2) And they're very frustrating, because I can't change what happens. I see what I see, and it's going to happen. Sigh... In other words, they're not fun to have.
And yes, I've also had dreams that sparked stories, including the Crow Woman & Dark that Rides stories, as well as "The Ghost of Eros" (Black Cat), "Blue Moon" (AHMM), and "Shut In" (BOULD Awards). I'm still trying to write a story based on one dream; someday I'll get it.
A few years ago I read a short story whose protagonist was a high school student. One of the early scenes took place in class and that got me thinking.
It might be cool to write a story which followed a teenager through his day, with different facts about his life coming out in each class. Since no teacher or other student would see all of these actions, only the reader would come to realize what was going on.
Neat idea, I decided. But I write crime fiction so I had to figure out what crime would be involved. The obvious choice, I am sorry to say, is an active shooter situation. That is, somebody bringing a gun to school. But that was not something I wanted to write about.
So I found a different solution. I titled the story "Wednesday on the Thursday Schedule" which, to me, suggested bureaucracy at work, and something being out of whack.
I sent the story off to the usual markets and, in much longer than it takes to tell you, it was rejected. Very sad, but I tucked it into my memory files and waited.
Last year D.M. Barr announced she was looking for stories for an anthology of tales inspired by the songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Hmm...
I realized that with a little revision my story would connect with "The Cage," an obscure song from Elton's first album. Heck, I already had a mention of wild animals!
So revise I did and Barr bought my story. "The Cage" appears in Better Off Dead, Volume 1, which will be published on August 25th..
The moral, I guess, is be patient and the right market may come along. I hope you like it. If not, don't go breaking my heart.
Attempting to predict anything in publishing is a mug’s game, especially trying to predict how long it will take for a short story to find a home.
I’ve been on a roll this summer, with 10 original short story acceptances beginning June 20 and ending as I write this, a few days before it posts. (I placed a pair of reprints and a few originals earlier this year, but I’m only looking at my recent summer sales because there are some interesting things to note.)
Ten acceptances in nine weeks means an average of 1.11 acceptances per week. It’s been quite a while since I’ve had acceptances at a rate averaging more than once a week.
Six were accepted by paying publications; four by non-paying publications.
Three stories were accepted on first submission, five on second submission, and two on third submission.
The two fastest responses came quickly—one the same day as the submission and the other the day after submission. The slowest response took one year and 11 days. Ignoring the three outliers, acceptances ranged from eight days to 120 days.
One story took 10 days from submission to acceptance, but in between the editor requested some small revisions, so I date the acceptance as the day the editor accepted the revised version.
One other story required a revision before it was accepted, but the editor did not request the revision. The original rejection letter was so specific that I knew what I needed to change to fix/improve the story, but the story sat on my computer for more than three years before I figured out how to solve the problem. I submitted the revised story to the same editor with a note about why I was resubmitting it and what I had done to fix the problem. An acceptance followed. So, it sold on second submission, but to the same editor who had previously rejected it.
Eight of the stories are crime fiction. Two are romances.
One story was written to invitation. One was written for an open-call anthology. The two romances were originally written for a specific market that did not accept them. The other stories were of the “write first, market second” variety, which I haven’t been doing much of the past few years. Most of my writing has been “market first, write second”—that is, writing stories by invitation or writing to meet specific open-call anthology guidelines.
Now, here’s where I found some interesting data:
One story was written in 2003, one in 2010, two in 2016, one in 2020, one in 2024, and the last four were written this year, which means the oldest story would be old enough to vote, were it a person, and another would be getting its learner’s permit to drive. Many of the publications where I placed these stories did not exist when I wrote the stories.
What I learned from these acceptances is two-fold: 1) Never throw anything away because 2) the market is in constant flux.
I’ll be surprised if this pace continues, but it might. I’ve been looking through my unsold stories and putting them back out to market. After all, they’ll never be published if I don’t submit them.
* * *
I’ve been having a good streak with publications as well. In addition to the five stories I mentioned in my two previous posts, two more stories are hitting newsstands and mailboxes as you read:
“The Girl in the Shop” appears in the September/October issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and “Blind Pig” appears in the September/October issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
“Curves” was published August 17 on Guilty Crime Story Magazine’s website.
* * *
Like many of you, I’ll be at Bouchercon in New Orleans the first week of September.
Barb Goffman and I will accept the inaugural Derringer Award for Best Anthology for Murder, Neat. I will also be celebrating Tammy Euliano’s Derringer Award for Best Long Story for “Heart of Darkness” (Scattered, Smothered, Covered, and Chunked, which I co-edited with Stacy Woodson), and I’ll be celebrating Stacy Woodson’s Derringer Award for Best Novelette for “The Cadillac Job” (Chop Shop, which I edited).
I’ll be hanging on tenterhooks awaiting word about M.E. Proctor’s Shamus Award nomination for Best PI Story for “Drop Dead Gorgeous” (Janie’s Got a Gun, which I edited).
And I’ll be hanging on different tenterhooks awaiting the announcement of the Anthony Award for Best Anthology because I co-edited two of the nominees: Murder, Neat, with Barb Goffman, and Scattered, Smothered, Covered, and Chunked, with Stacy Woodson.
I’ll also be participating in two events:
“Killing Your Darlings: Edit that Manuscript,” a panel discussion with me, Luisa Cruz Smith, Donald Maass, Paula Munier, and Otto Penzler, moderated by Sara J. Henry. Friday 2:30–3:25 p.m. in Galarie 5-6, followed by a signing in the Acadia Ballroom.
“Jumpstart Your Story,” which I’ll co-host with Harry Hunsicker and Stacy Woodson. Saturday, 10:00–11:00 a.m., in the Media Room.
The group of young Asian Americans beside me gaze at The Starry Night with its sharp spears of cypress piercing the swirling patterns of the sky.
"Is it real?" one of them asks.
"It is," I say. "Those are the real colors Van Gogh painted and the real brushstrokes. You won't see those in the immersive digitized version. This exhibition from the 1880s to the 1940s is only a fraction of what we got to look at every week when I was a kid. But the art from the 1960s to the 2020s hadn't been painted yet."
On the day of this conversation, I'd just scored a free year's MoMA membership, usually three figures, as a perk of the NYC ID that New York residents are entitled to as photo ID with numerous benefits. When I was in high school, I spent every Saturday afternoon at the Museum of Modern Art. We took the subway from Queens and feasted on art for free. Now, they've curated the hell out of the bits of the collection on display. My very favorite, Pavel Tchelitchew's Hide and Seek, doesn't fit any category so may never make the cut.
The fall of the Ottoman Empire merely increased Western romance of North Africa and the Far East. Suddenly North America found itself fascinated by Ottoman and Eastern Indian arts, their literature, poetry, music, dance, architecture, fabric art, and painting. Americans were shown the beauty of the Taj Mahal and the depth of poet philosophers Omar the Tentmaker and Rumi.
Actual knowledge was imperfect, and artists of the day happily filled in gaps relying more on imagination than edification. By way of example, the humorous 1877 poem ‘Abdul Abulbul Amir’ enjoyed renewed popularity in 1940 and remained a staple in grade school education as late as 1960 or so. The poem, songs, and cartoon films relied on Ottoman and Russian caricatures.
She and her often overlooked sister, Dunyazade, inspired other storytellers, playwrights, and filmmakers. With her stories within a story featuring Aladdin, Sinbad, Ali Baba and his clever sister Morgiana, she’s my candidate for finest storyteller of all time. Certainly she was motivated… her life depended upon her storied skills.
The thrust of the piece, ‘The Power of Storytelling’ (pp.78-79) contends writers (a) live longer and (b) more readily find meaning in life, which they refer to as a ‘why’ mindset, why as opposed to how.
Reading between the lines suggest internalizing ((b), finding purpose in life), reduces stress and increases interest in the world around us, boosts ((a), longevity). Researchers further posit storytelling benefits introverts, building a platform to express themselves and expanding social ties.
Emphasizing why is more important than how, study author Ron Shachar indicates two skills necessary for writers.
Linking events together in a cohesive, coherent manner, i.e, connecting the plot dots.
Seeing the world through the eyes of others, understanding the ‘why’ motives of characters in a story.
First, though . . . rewind eight days. Picture me having an e-conversation last week with a writer friend, about favorite books and movies. What happened was, we both had so many, we were categorizing them by genre. (Can you see that my life is sometimes less than exciting?)
Back to the present. The result of that recent discussion is the following list of my favorite movies, novels, TV series, and short stories in each of several genres of fiction. Note: They go beyond the basic five genres (mystery/crime, SF/fantasy, romance, Western, and horror) to include ten subgenres. If the subgenres aren't familiar to you, that's okay. I made them up.
Another note: While I hope you'll agree with a few of my reading/viewing choices, I'm sure you won't like some--you might not like any--so be aware of one thing: These are not necessarily what I consider to be the BEST movies. They're just the ones I enjoyed the most. I do recognize that Citizen Kane, Schindler's List, Nosferatu, The English Patient, etc., are great achievements, but it'll be a cold day in Jamaica when they show up in my favorites list.
For better or worse, here are my personal choices:
MYSTERY/CRIME
Favorite movie: L. A. Confidential (1997)
Novel: Plum Island, Nelson DeMille
TV/streaming series: The Sopranos (HBO, 1999-2007)
Short story: "Man from the South," Roald Dahl
SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY
Favorite movie: Aliens (1986)
Novel: The Stand, Stephen King
TV/streaming series: Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011-2019)
Short story: "A Sound of Thunder," Ray Bradbury
ROMANCE
Favorite movie: Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
Novel: The Princess Bride, William Goldman
TV/streaming series: The Thorn Birds (ABC, 1983)
Short story: "The Gift of the Magi," O. Henry
WESTERN
Favorite movie: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Novel: Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
TV/streaming series: Deadwood (HBO, 2004-2006)
Short story: "Three-Ten to Yuma," Elmore Leonard
HORROR
Favorite movie: Psycho (1960)
Novel: Magic, William Goldman
TV/streaming series: Stranger Things (Netflix, 2016-2025)
Short story: "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," Richard Matheson
ADVENTURE
Favorite movie: Jurassic Park (1993)
Novel: Sands of the Kalahari, William Mulvihill
TV/streaming series: Lost (ABC, 2004-2010)
Short story: "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut," Stephen King
COMEDY
Favorite movie: Blazing Saddles (1974)
Novel: One for the Money, Janet Evanovich
TV/streaming series: Cheers (NBC, 1982-1993)
Short story: "The Kugelmass Episode," Woody Allen
DRAMA
Favorite movie: Casablanca (1942)
Novel: From Here to Eternity, James Jones
TV/streaming series: Mad Men (AMC, 2007-2015)
Short story: "The Last Rung on the Ladder," Stephen King
HISTORICAL
Favorite movie: Gladiator (2000)
Novel: Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett
TV/streaming series: Rome (HBO, 2005-2006)
Short story: "The Lottery," Shirley Jackson
FAMILY
Favorite movie: It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Novel: The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien
TV/streaming series: Little House on the Prairie (NBC, 1974-1982)
TV/streaming series: Goliath (Amazon Prime Video, 2016-2021)
Short story: "Witness for the Prosecution," Agatha Christie
WAR
Favorite movie: The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Novel: The Hunt for Red October, Tom Clancy
TV/streaming series: Band of Brothers (HBO, 2001)
Short story: "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," Ernest Hemingway
Before you ask . . . Yes, there was a lot of indecision in coming up with these. For example, I almost chose The Godfather for favorite crime movie, Galaxy Quest and Raising Arizona for funniest, Somewhere in Time for romance, Shane for Western novel, the first few seasons of The Walking Dead for TV horror, etc., etc., and if I'd waited until next month to make this list, it'd probably look a lot different. And yes, I also made a list of what I thought were the worst movies, novels, etc., in every category, but decided to keep those to myself. There's already enough acid indigestion in the world.
Which brings us to my question: What are some of your favorite movies, novels, TV series, and shorts? Do we agree on any of them?
Awhile back, I talked about a couple of Shakespeare's plays being noir. Actually, a lot of his plays are noir. The Merchant of Venice, of course, tops the list and was my original reason for posting. At the time, I was reading my way through the plays.
In the comments, someone said Shakespeare was meant to be seen, not read. That was a "Well, duh" moment for me. I've seen Richard III and The Tempest as done by the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival years back, both excellently done. But I thought, I've only seen a handful of these as movies. So I made this my project for the year: See all of Shakespeare's plays on YouTube or as a movie. As of this writing, I have four left: The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, Henry VIII, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. Included was Edward III, which, until the 1990s, was not considered one of his. A handful are still questioned as his, most notably Pericles.
Because some plays aren't as well-known as others, it becomes hard to look for versions online. Some, like the Henry VI trilogy, varied wildly between an RSC television special from the 1960s to a youth Shakespeare camp to a local Shakespeare company doing a table read over Zoom. The last was actually kind of fun to watch.
Of course, there were the classic movies, like Pacino's turn as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. My favorite remains Ian McKellan's take on Richard III. But the biggest surprise to me was Joel Coen's MacBeth, with Denzel Washington in the title role. (Talk about Shakespeare as noir!)
In having to comb YouTube for some of the plays (I didn't want to spend money on a Britbox or Marqee subscription.), I've found the plays filmed on stage to be uneven in quality. Some of this, of course, was the ability of the actors. One, MIT's reality-show take on Timon of Athens. Then acting and editing were...Let's call it an acquired taste. But the concept worked rather well. Some had a lot of heart and some great performances, but were not exactly Wil's best. In particular, it's obvious why Edward III took so long to be included in Shakespeare's canon. It's Shakespearean in style, but the story begins with the titular Edward wooing Joan of Kent while the back half is about the Black Prince, though said Black Prince is offstage for most of it. Shakespeare would likely have focused on Prince Edward.
So, should one read or watch Shakespeare's plays? Oh, watch is definitely preferred. How else can you see Falstaff, the Bard's prototype for Harry Mudd and other rogues? But reading the Henry Trilogy (and The Merry Wives of Windsor) can be fun, especially if you read Sir John's lines aloud? I wish this binge included a turn by Brian Blessed as Falstaff. He's an obnoxious lout, but he's my favorite recurring Shakespeare character.
A few
years ago, I wrote a column about Lara Prescott’s book, The Secrets We Kept, a novel about CIA’s successful efforts in the
late 1950’s to bootleg Boris Pasternak’s Doctor
Zhivago, which Novy Mir had
refused to publish. CIA arranged for the
first Russian-language edition, and snuck back it into the USSR, hoping to
embarrass the Kremlin. They got more
than they hoped for when Pasternak won the Nobel Prize but was discouraged (to
put it mildly) from accepting. For the Soviet Union, it was a public-relations disaster, the
engines of terror fearful of a poet. The story is fiction, but the context, the
history, is genuine. Zhivago
opened a crack in the monolith.
Here’s
another one.An account of a CIA covert
program with the codename HELPFUL, which is about the projection of soft
power.The author is Charlie English,
and the story he tells is called The CIA
Book Club.The idea behind the
operation is that reading unregimented literature, books that question the orthodoxy
or the received wisdom, can unlock the curious mind.Not just Orwell and Solzhenitsyn, but Kurt
Vonnegut, and Agatha Christie, and Albert Camus.
The
focus is Poland
in the 1980’s, and interestingly, the book-smuggling effort parallels the rise
of Solidarity.CIA was not directly involved with Solidarity –
they were careful to maintain deniability – but they channeled money to the
movement, through third parties.The
book thing, though, was more indirect.It was an opposition of ideas, or of culture,
in a generic, popular sense: not Plato’s Republic
so much as current issues of Cosmopolitan.There was, yes, an element of cultural
imperialism, Charlie English admits, but the impulse was to show a life outside
the Iron Curtain, to show that there was
an opportunity for that life, beyond Soviet domination.
It’s a
significant distinction. Not that the
lure of a life in Peoria is a better shopping experience than you’d find in
Warsaw, an unlimited inventory of Air Jordans, but that Warsaw could aspire to a larger life. That through reading, through an act of imagination,
the act of experiencing a forbidden reality, you could internalize it, you
could breathe that intoxicating air.
These people didn’t want to defect, or escape, from Eastern
Europe, they wanted to reinvent a community of hope.
Entertaining
that future of infinite possibilities seems like a peculiarly American
sensibility, Frederick Jackson Turner’s myth of the frontier, and perhaps the
New World re-exported it to the Old, but it’s reductive – and condescending -
to think in exceptionalist terms. The
eager readers of those books, in Poland
and Moldova and Ukraine, didn’t
need to be persuaded. What they were looking for was the light at
the end of the tunnel, and the CIA
book smugglers opened a road map.
It’s a
fascinating window on what appears to be a more innocent age, too. I’ve always been struck by the irony, that
the Soviet Union would ban books, and send writers to mental hospitals, or the
Gulag, and in the U.S., we’d let market forces do the work. Behind the Iron Curtain, you took a Pasternak
or a Milovan Djilas seriously; here,
you’d simply let them die of neglect.
It
speaks to the power of the written word, even in this degraded information
environment, that we can look back at this footnote to the Cold War, and
realize wistfully that books lit the
match. They were refuge, and rescue, and
the last, best hope of the future.
Due to an injury that is making it hard to concentrate, I am rerunning this column from last year rather than writing something new (though I am making small updates). Whether you've read it before or this is the first time, I hope it is helpful.
It's strange how you can
start writing a story intending it to be about one thing, and in the
end, realize it's really about something else. Has that happened to you?
With
my 2024 story "A Matter of Trust" I wanted to portray the
dissolution of a marriage (with a crime thrown in, of course). The story
opens with a happily married couple enjoying dinner. An argument
develops because the wife is worried about her husband's health. His
blood sugar is too high, thanks to his love of jelly. He agrees to start
cycling, a way to get his weight--and his blood sugar--under control.
The argument ends, and the two are happy once more. For a time anyway.
Neither of them foresee that the husband would become addicted to the
jelly donuts sold by a shop in town--a shop he begins to secretly ride
his bicycle to each day. And they certainly don't anticipate the events
that would come from that addiction.
As my writing progressed, I realized that the husband--the main character--was an emotional eater, and jelly (rather than his wife) was the love of his life.
I started working that concept into the story, going back to the
beginning and layering the idea into the husband's thoughts. I'd
expected that doing so would be enough for the man's actions to not only
be believable but also understandable, even if the reader wouldn't
agree with them. He would be a real person, rather than a character who
did things because the plot dictated it. That should have been enough
for a solid story.
But when I reached the end, I realized what I'd written still wasn't enough. (Don't you hate when that happens?) Why had this guy come to associate jelly with love? That was the key question.Once
I figured out the answer and layered it into the story, only then did
the husband become full-blown and the story have real heft. Only then
did I realize that a story about the dissolution of a marriage turned
out to actually be a story about ... Well, I'm not going to say. I don't
want to give everything away. (But I promise, there's a crime in
there!)
This type of
analysis can be useful for most stories. Readers become invested when
characters feel real. So the more an author understands why a character
does what he or she does, the more the character will (hopefully) come
across as a complex human being rather than a cardboard cutout.
I hope I've enticed you to read "A Matter of Trust," maybe with a jelly donut by your side. The story is a current finalist for the Anthony Award and can be read on my website. Just click here.
But if you'd like to read more sports stories, pick up the anthology it was published in, THREE STRIKES--YOU'RE DEAD! Every story in the
book involves crime and sports (baseball--major league, minor league,
and high school--biathlon, boxing, bull riding, figure skating (that Thriller Award-nominated story is by fellow SleuthSayer Joseph S. Walker), marching
band/football, running, swimming, tennis, ultimate Frisbee, zorbing, and
cycling, of course). It can be purchased in trade paperback and ebook formats from the usual online sources. The trade paperback also can be purchased directly from the publisher, Wildside Press.
The thing I like best about short
stories is they’re short.
A novel’s
length can sometimes get a bit unwieldly.
When reviewing the first draft, you stumble on passages you forgot about, or failed to
properly integrate into the story. It’s
sometimes hard to get a clear picture of the full narrative. The manuscript print out is heavy and pages like to slither out of their proper order or turn themselves upside
down.
But all-in-all, I find short stories
much more difficult to write. There’s
little elbow room to blather on when you’re feeling expository. A compelling twist is nearly always called
for, but there’s no room for all the little twists, sub plots and mini
mysteries you can fold into a novel that eat up pages without losing your
reader’s interest. You also probably
need to have the story fairly well worked out ahead of time, not a convivial
format for the pantsers in the audience.
The shorter the page requirements,
the harder it is for me to write. Flash
fiction? Forget about it. As a copywriter, I’d much rather be assigned
a 20-page brochure than a bumper sticker or billboard. I’ve known many in that craft for whom it’s
the exact opposite. One writer virtually
spoke in puns and plays on words. Quick
quips that sparkled at the top of a print ad, but he could never settle down
and compose an actual story, with a narrative arch that wasn’t punctuated by relentless witticisms.
Flannery O'Connor
So it appears that fiction writers
have similar predilections. Some like to
go long, others short. It’s just a
matter of brain wiring.
I prefer short stories that include description, character development and atmosphere that feels like a novel. As if you were plunked down in the middle of
the tale, with all the richness of a thorough backstory implied, suggested,
familiar. I also look for an interior
logic, following all the rules of continuity and deference to plausibility.
Preferences aside, if you’re writing
in the crime fiction genre, something has to happen over the course of the tale. A creative writing teacher once told me to
learn the difference between a story and a mood piece, which apparently I was
mostly writing. He was one of the MFA maharishis
who felt that plots were indispensable in literary fiction, bless his
heart.
If you ask Chubby Checker, there’s nothing better than a good
twist. But there is something about a
bad one that wrecks the vibe. You can
twist yourself into a pretzel trying to force fit a surprise, which often comes
across as contrivance. I find it best
to start out with the twist in mind, and build the whole story around it so the
surprise feels entirely believable. Even
predictable if you’d only been paying attention. Though everybody does it differently.
I‘m often disappointed by a very
good story, no fault of the author. When
I get all wrapped up I want it to last, so I can turn off the bedside light and
know there’s more to come the next day.
Short stories won’t let you stay past closing time, hanging with the
wait staff and watching the band fold up their equipment. When it’s done it’s done and you’re out on
the street.
O. Henry
Given that modern attention spans can be measured in nanoseconds, you’d think short stories would be enjoying a heyday.
There’s no shortage of great writing or the number of publications
dedicated to the art form. But no one’s
making six figure livings off short stories the way Hemingway and Fitzgerald once
managed. That’s unfortunate, especially
for short story writers, but we’ll just go ahead and write them anyway.
This article is a mea culpa. My thoughts (in italics) are as best as I remember them.
It all began in April of this year when this article appeared:
"Police in Hamburg have launched a murder inquiry after bestselling German novelist Alexandra Fröhlich was found dead on a houseboat following a violent attack.
Fröhlich, 58, was found dead last Tuesday morning by her son,” The Guardian reported.
The police said she was likely killed between midnight and 5.30am.
Authorities said on Sunday the case had been assigned to the murder squad, forensic evidence had been collected from the cerise houseboat docked on the Elbe river Holzhafen bank in the eastern Moorfleet district, and the coroner had submitted their report.
Swabs had been taken from at least one family member for possible gunpowder residue, according to Welt. Divers from the police as well as a 3D scanner had also been deployed, amid speculation that the murder weapon might have been disposed of in the river.
German broadcaster NDR reported, citing police sources, that Fröhlich had been shot.
“According to current information, relatives found the 58-year-old woman lifeless on her houseboat and alerted the fire brigade, who were only able to confirm the woman’s death,” The Guardian quoted a police spokesperson as saying.
“After evaluating traces and evidence, the investigating authorities now believe that the woman died as a result of violence. Given the ongoing investigation, no further information can be provided at this time.”
German media reported the police had requested the public to report any information they might have about the incident, particularly any suspicious activity in the area around the time of the novelist’s death.
Fröhlich started out as a journalist in Ukraine, where she founded a women’s magazine. She later worked as a freelance journalist in Germany before publishing her first novel, My Russian Mother-in-Law and Other Catastrophes, in 2012.
The novel, based on her own experiences, became very popular, selling over 50,000 copies and landing on the Spiegel bestseller list. It was translated to and published in French in 2015.
Fröhlich also published Traveling with Russians in 2014, a sequel to My Russian Mother-in-Law and Other Catastrophes.
She followed with detective novel Death is a Certainty in 2016 and Skeletons in the Closet in 2019, both of which found great success.
She is survived by her three children."
This is so tragic. Her son who found her must feel awful. What a tragedy for all her children. I hope her privacy and that of her family and friends will be respected at such a sad time. These stories often turn into a nightmare of constant lurid and invasive details. Who insists on knowing every detail of a tragic murder, with no respect for privacy? What kind of person does that? Though the murder of mystery writer who wrote a book called 'Death is a Certainty' will raise some eyebrows...
Some other articles were published about this murder but most simply stated the same basic facts and on the 30th of April another article appeared:
"Police have since confirmed that "blunt force trauma" led to her death; they are treating the case as a homicide. No suspects have been publicly named yet… Fröhlich said in an interview with her publisher that family stories were always a fascinating source of inspiration for her — especially those that are "wonderfully dysfunctional." She also noted that she aimed to explore in that novel the so-called transgenerational transmission of trauma, or how "unspoken family secrets are passed down from generation to generation and influence the lives of children and grandchildren."
What on earth? Pick a lane - blunt force trauma or shooting- how did she die? Given her interest in "unspoken family secrets", could a family member be chagrined and murdered her?
Could the murderer be a disgruntled fan? This has always worried me because writers don't have protection and are vulnerable. Along with my other concerns about invasions of privacy that come with fame, there are also security issues that are worrisome.
Or could it be someone she knows? A scorned lover looking for revenge? A family member wanting their inheritance early?
Why aren't they telling us more about her family, her social circle or possible leads???
"German police have arrested the son of bestselling novelist Alexandra Fröhlich on suspicion of murder, after she was found dead on her houseboat in Hamburg.
The 22-year-old is accused of fatally beating his mother during the night of April 22."
That's it? No details? Why not release more details because they are now known? Why keep us all in the dark?
But, as we roll into August, no more details are forthcoming. That's it. No information.
As can easily be seen, I moved quickly from hoping there would be some respect for privacy, to full on stalker mode wanting all the details because the privacy of the family and loved ones was respected. So, in answer to my own question,
Who insists on knowing every detail of a tragic murder, with norespect for privacy? What kind of person does that?
Me. It's me.
Give me all the details and I am appalled at the invasion of privacy. Don't give me all the details and I demand them.
Bob's note: Last month, Part 1 covered Irwin Allen becoming a producer/director of high-concept, plot-holed films and TV shows. His highest highs and lowest lows were still to come…
By the late 1960s, Irwin Allen had done it all in Hollywood. He'd worked his way up from gossip columnist and quiz show host to become a big-name producer. He'd scored hits– and misses– and a reputation for ambitious premises and showbiz spectacle. He'd spent most of the 60s running network series like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-1968) and Lost in Space (1966-1968). But he wanted back into filmmaking, and his timing couldn't have been better.
Hollywood was upping the action in films. Because they could, with better special effects, and because the studios had no choice. This television-acclimated audience expected faster storytelling and a rapid succession of crises. Hollywood needed producers who understood fast plotting and fast-paced action.
Allen's next act had arrived.
THE MASTERSTROKE
Universal had tempered hopes for Airport (1970). Star-studded cast or not, the "this flight is in trouble" thing had been done before. But Airport was a blockbuster hit, grossing $128 million worldwide ($1.1 billion in 2025 terms), a huge sum before modern mega-franchises. Critics were left scratching their heads at what had just happened. They coined a new term, the "disaster movie," and braced for more.
Allen had seen the trend coming. While Airport was still in production, he'd already lined up The Poseidon Adventure, a Paul Gallico novel not even published yet. Allen bought the rights for $225,000 after binge-reading an advance copy. An ocean liner capsizes at sea, and if the characters survive the unfolding wreckage, they have a narrow time window to climb to the ship's bottom and get out somehow. "Hell upside down," Allen called it.
Allen's first decision might've been his best. Sure, he could direct a boat turning upside down, but the audience needed to feel it when the cast died off one-by-one. Emotional resonance wasn't in his wheelhouse. Allen sought out director Ronald Neame based on his reputation for complex shoots and character nuance. Allen sold Neame that this wouldn't be just a disaster flick. This would be the best disaster flick they could pull off.
Next, Allen moved to package his all-star cast. Burt Lancaster--the Airport lead--and George C. Scott turned down the main role of Reverend Scott. Down the list was Gene Hackman, who was cementing his image as an engaging tough guy and terrific actor. Allen arranged for an advance screening of Hackman's The French Connection (1971). Impressed, Allen secured Hackman quickly, also a great decision. Hackman won his second Oscar for the movie, giving Allen a buzzy lead actor.
In all, five Oscar winners signed on to the ensemble: Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Shelley Winters, and Jack Albertson. This was the acting chops Neame demanded. Neame wanted the disaster shown on a human level, a gut level, with monologues and arguments and anguished close-ups. If the performances chewed the scenery now and then, well, this was an upside-down ship.
Allen had packaged a grand vision that no studio would touch. The $5 million projected cost scared off Paramount, Universal, Warner Brothers, everyone. Even Allen's initial backer, Avco Embassy, bailed when the price tag soared. Allen forged ahead on his own dime. By 1969, he was in $600,000 deep on The Poseidon Adventure.
MASTERING DISASTER
Look, Allen told Twentieth Century Fox, clearly he believed in his capsized ship thing or he wouldn't have financed it this far. He proposed to keep financing it. A partnership, he said. Allen would front the first $2.4 million to get the shooting underway. Fox would finance $2.4 million thereafter to finish and distribute the picture, and Fox would have final approval on big decisions. Any risk was Allen's.
It was an easy yes, a project on-trend and with Hackman, the script, the prep, and the director all wrapped up and ready to go. Especially the director. Look, Fox told Allen, you can be, like, way over the top. Fox stipulated that Neame must stay as director. Allen could– and did– help direct the mayhem sequences.
Allen had to console himself with a producer's fee paid from Fox's half and 10% of the backend participation. And a cut of the merch sales. And on the soundtrack, which produced Maureen McGovern's Oscar-winning "The Morning After."
EVERYTHING UPSIDE DOWN
Allen had been right about the whole project. The Poseidon Adventure raked in $125 million ($1 billion in 2025 dollars). The movie finished second in that year's box office gross, after The Godfather, and leaped among Fox's best-ever performers.
Needless to say, Fox was listening when Allen pitched his next project. True to form, Allen was thinking big, real big, but now so was Fox. Every studio was scrambling to get disaster epics into production. Universal was rushing out not one but two Charlton Heston films, a sequel to Airport and the standalone Earthquake. The field was so crowded that Fox was outbid for the rights to Allen's target novel, Richard Martin Stern's The Tower.
Plan B dropped in Allen's lap two months later. Fox was sent another skyscraper disaster novel, The Glass Inferno, with a near plug-and-play story for Allen's screenplay. Fox snatched up the rights. The problem was that two studios were making essentially the same tower fire movie on essentially the same release schedule.
Look, Allen told Fox and Warner Brothers, we can either team up on one major idea, or we can both flop separately. He was making sense. Multi-million-dollar sense. Fox and Warner Brothers partnered for their first-ever joint production, Allen's The Towering Inferno. As part of the deal, Allen again had to keep out of the director's chair.
The Towering Inferno's production budget was three times that of The Poseidon Adventure, much of it invested in star power. Steve McQueen and Paul Newman co-headlined at $1 million salaries. William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Jennifer Jones, Richard Chamberlain, and Robert Wagner also didn't come cheap.
The bet paid off. The Towering Inferno grossed over $200 million worldwide (over $1 billion in 2025 dollars).
SHARK IN THE WATER
Fox had a man on a hot streak. Hey, they said to Allen, you should think about creative cross-promotion, and they had just the project. Fox was sitting on the underperforming Marineland of the Pacific outside Los Angeles. Allen was to rebuild it as Fox World, a theme park based around his disaster films and TV shows. If that sounds like Disneyland but short on magic, you're not alone. The park flopped and was sold off to SeaWorld.
Fox saw it. They watched late-to-trend disaster films cannibalize each other while different takes like Star Wars (1977) grabbed the cultural reins. Fox canceled the remainder of Allen's production deal.
Allen pressed on. The Master of Disaster still had no shortage of ideas. Warner Brothers hired him on, banking that his instincts were still right. The proof they'd gone wrong came quickly: The Swarm (1978). Allen's usual package of script and Oscar winners tanked. More had changed than the times. Allen hadn't packaged a director this time. He took the chair himself, and as Fox had guarded against, the movie indulged Allen's love of cheese. Beyond The Poseidon Adventure (1979) and When Time When Ran Out (1980) did no better financially or critically.
The disaster era was done.
IT'S A WRAP
For another decade, Allen continued to craft small-budget films and television projects until health forced him into retirement. He'd had the run of runs, a player who'd cut big deals and worked with the finest actors of his time. When Allen's stuff was good, it was good. Even when he wasn’t, everything turned out okay. His work never lacked zeal, a rare talent that earned him both an Oscar and a Golden Raspberry Worst Career Achievement Award.
More importantly, Allen did what he set out to do. He'd put on one hell of a show.
In the morning I head outside with the dog to sit on the back patio and enjoy the garden before it gets too hot. I almost alway screw around on my phone to check emails. The dog checks the news too, but he doesn’t need a device to do it. He just lifts his nose to the air and sniffs.
He probably knows which dogs on the block are already out in their yards, and which females are in heat. He knows if a black bear invaded our territory in the night. He knows if rabbit marauders have menaced the tomatoes since his last patrol, even if he doesn’t feel compelled to let me in on the secret. He knows if a local possum is returning to her den after a night of munching ticks.
In the words of a beloved dog psychologist, when a dog sniffs anything—the air or another dog’s butt—he is reading the local paper.
In one of his books, that shrink, Stanley Coren, who has for decades written the "Canine Corner" column for Psychology Today, delights in telling us that dogs know all the embarrassing things about our lives: when we have used the bathroom, when we have last made love, and what we have most recently eaten. Oh—you thought your dog was kissing you when she licked your face?
When humans sniff, we are breathing—actually taking air into our noses and into our lungs. With dogs, breathing is optional. They can choose to route some of the air they’re inhaling to their lungs, and the rest to their snouts. They can move each nostril independently, to better detect the direction a scent is coming from.
Once they know the direction, they can turn their heads and begin their process of evidence collection. Long snouts mean more real estate for sensors. Scent-containing particles are inhaled and travel down long bony plates that are covered with spongy membranes containing olfactory receptors. Molecules stick to those receptors, Prof. Coren says, like Velcro.
When we exhale, everything we’ve just sniffed exits our nostrils and we have to sniff again if we want to know what’s going on stinkwise.
By contrast, dogs can “lock” their noses to keep what they’ve just inhaled inside, while they sniff up some more. In this way, the more particles they collect, the more they can build a mental picture of what they are smelling.
Scientists insist that dogs can smell in 3-D, but that is one of those fatuous human statements that make me laugh. I have also heard, for example, that blue whales have so much brain power than they are probably composing symphonies as they swim the deep. They might well be, but how would we dunces know?
Dog brains are smaller than human brains, but the amount of their gray matter that is devoted to the sense of smell so far outclasses us that we are forced to admit that the dog was designed by nature (and humans) to be a smelling machine, 10,000 times better than us.
Oh, you scoff, but humans are great sniffers too! What about those perfume testers and wine experts? Well, sure, those high-paid “noses” have trained themselves to pay close attention to what they are smelling. They might even be genetically blessed with a better-than-average human nose. But in the end, biology fails them.
You know how you can tell when sugar has been stirred into your eight or twelve-ounce cup of coffee? One sniff is all it takes. Yay you, human!
Dogs can smell that teaspoon of sugar too—even when it is dissolved in a million gallons of water. That is the equivalent two Olympic swimming pools.
But go ahead, wine snobs. Tell me how you can smell notes of chocolate and tobacco in your cab.
Humans have between 5 and 6 million scent receptors in their noses. Dogs have hundreds of millions, depending on the breed: dachshunds (127 million), fox terriers (147 million), German shepherds (225 million). The king sniffer of the canine kingdom is probably the bloodhound, with 300 million receptors. Is it any wonder they are the preferred breed for tracking criminal suspects over long distances? As bloodhounds run, their long floppy ears twirl like rotors, stirring up human skin cells that have dropped to the forest floor, contributing to their olfactory inventory.
Because of the way humans walk, placing our heels down before the balls of our feet, and because we ooze six milliliters of sweat an hour from the bottoms of our feet, a trained canine can determine the direction the suspect was heading based on the freshness of the scent left behind. Despite what you’ve seen in the movies, the only thing that destroys that scent trail is UV light and time.
But even there, dog time is not human time. In one study, scientists pressed their fingers all over a set of lab slides, then left those slides (along with control sets) exposed to the elements on the roof of their academic facility. After six months, dogs in their study could still tell which rained-upon slides were manhandled by humans, and which were not.
When dogs are working, they use other organs to feed their Schnozzola command centers. You may have become disgusted, for example, to spy your dog licking some sidewalk ooze on your daily walk. They’re actually doing the same thing the human wine expert is doing, trying to get some of that road stink into their mouths, mixing with their saliva, and sliding the resulting mix past the bulb of sensitivity located in their mouths known as the vomeronasal organ. It’s the pipeline from the mouth to the nose to the brain. In most humans, the VNO is vestigial.
In the dog, slobber and wet noses help perform critical work. All that wetness keep molecules and pheromones slip-sliding around the dog’s nose and palate, permitting careful analysis of damning eau de squirrel.
Dogs were the first animals early humans domesticated, long before cows, sheep, goats, horses and chickens. But scientists still argue about the details of our inter-species meet-cute. For a long time, we thought dogs were descended of modern gray wolves; now we know that’s not correct. Dogs probably descended of a now-extinct creature known as the Pleistocene Wolf.
One theory is that wolves followed nomadic humans from place to place, feasting on the remains of animals humans hunted and killed. When humans invented agriculture and planted themselves in one spot for a longer period of time, wolves would have regularly visited still larger human dump sites. At some point, humans adopted some wolves and begun breeding them selectively for traits that mattered to the humans.
It’s a testament to human sentimentality that we bred dogs to have traits not otherwise found in nature. Seriously—wolves do not have facial muscles that allow them to do this:
Mopey, upturned eyebrows.
Seeming to smile.
Approached by early humans, wolves would have either attacked or fled, as most animals do. Then how did these predators come to trust humans enough to live and breed in their camps?
Theories abound. Maybe the humans adopted defenseless wolf puppies. Maybe there was an offshoot clave of Pleistocene wolves that were less aggressive and thus willing to accept humans as their providers. (Even today an isolated Arctic wolf colony on a remote Canadian island appear unafraid of humans because they see us so infrequently.)
In captivity, many species lose attributes that they had in the wild. (This accounts for the drop in the dorsal fins of orcas who perform in aquariums.) When wolves became dogs, their ears became floppy, their tails curled, their faces became cuter, and they became incorrigibly playful for life.
Wolves, by contrast, are stone cold killers. After puppyhood, a wolf is all business. And except for a few chuffs and whines, they are silent as they sight and attack prey. But if you’re an early human, it’s very useful to have your designer wolf sound an alarm when invaders approached. Savvy bipeds bred only the most vocal camp companions.
Alone, humans could only run so fast. It was tough work to chase and kill game with stick, stone, horn, and bone weapons. But if your hunting partners can run fast, sink their teeth into the ungulate or ursine you are chasing and run them to ground, the battle is half won. It helped, too, that these new furry companions heard well, saw in the dark, were willing to accept direction, and would even forgo feasting on the kill until humans had had their fill.
Millennia have passed, and they are still at our sides. The perfect partnership, you might say, between two meat-eating predators. It’s only when you count the number of breeds that you realize how many ways humans have shaped this animal’s body to perform a specific task we needed done.
We’ve got hunting dogs, herding dogs, and working dogs bred to perform beast-of-burden labor when horses were beyond the means of simple folk. The original dogs raised by the St. Bernard Hospice monks learned their skills so well that they could teach the next generation of puppies to perform search-and-rescue work without human intervention and training.
Island-dwelling Norwegians bred a dog to scale treeless slopes and invade the tunnels of puffins to carry back eggs and birds for meat and their valuable down feathers. Lundehunds have six toes to help them do that climbing. The small, foxlike dog is so flexible that it can flip itself over in a tight tunnel and reverse its tracks.
There are nearly four hundred breeds on the planet, maybe more. You look at a Great Dane and a Corgi and a Chihuahua, and they look nothing alike. But under the skin, they are descendants of that same wolf.
And yes, cats do have a strong sense of smell, perhaps as good as some breeds of dogs. In academic studies, cats have proved remarkably good at detecting human cancers. But cats will never be the people pleasers that dogs are, and fleeing suspects have never frozen at the thought of being mauled by a law enforcement feline, unless of course they were Maine Coons.
We must also consider that cats are solitary hunters while dogs and humans are pack animals.
One of my favorite dog books is Dogland, by journalist Tommy Tomlinson, who spent three years attending more than 100 dog shows to understand the canine-human bond. He’s a Southern writer, so I’ve seen him speak more than once at various local book events.
There was a time in history, he says, when homo sapiens were not the dominant hominids. But in time, we outbred, outhunted, and outnumbered Neanderthals. How did that happen? Homo sapiens domesticated dogs. Neanderthals didn’t.
Sure, Mr. Tomlinson says, we made dogs...but they made us back.
Here’s how we know your dog loves you...
* * *
I had hoped to get into some military and law enforcement aspects, but I’ll do it some other time, hopefully before the dog days of summer elapse.
Some resources:
By Stanley Coren:
How to Speak Dog: Mastering the Art of Dog-Human Communication
How Dogs Think: What the World Looks Like to Them and Why They Act the Way They Do
By Alexandra Horowitz:
The Year of the Puppy: How Dogs Become Themselves
Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know
By Kevin Behan:
Your Dog Is Your Mirror: The Emotional Capacity of Our Dogs and Ourselves
By Tommy Tomlinson
Dogland: Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show
Personal interviews in my neighborhood:
Dogs: All were very obliging, so long as I rubbed behind the ears on their widdle, widdle heads.
Charley the Great Dane
Eddie the Jack Russell mix
Skyolet the Doodle
Jamie the Mutt
Reyna the Golden Retriever
El Señor the Doberman
Kit the Corgi
Cats:My slinky neighbors declined to comment before press time, although after rousing itself from a nap, one subject hissed a single word—“Liver!”—then plopped back to sleep. I tried.
