Back to The Scene of The Crime

 My holidays began with a visit to a client in Bradenton, Florida. When I arrived at the airport Hyatt, I found out that the hotel restaurant was closed. Upon asking the desk clerk for dining recommendations, she handed me a photo-copied map and said the closest place was Rico's. Off I went on foot. When I read the street sign at the next intersection and saw that it was the North Tamiami Trail, I said to myself, "I've been here before."

The opening chapter for my third novel, The Undead Kama Sutra, took place close to this intersection. My detective-vampire Felix Gomez had been summoned by an alien from the first book. The alien was asking Felix to find "the man who killed me." (The alien was dying from a gruesome blaster wound.) The scene:

"I sat on the alien's bed. We were on the second floor of a cheap motel in Sarasota, Florida. To get up the stairs I had to get past three hookers, their pimp, and a blind man selling pot--for medicinal purposes, of course...

Outside, the second shift of hookers prowled the curb alongside North Tamiami Trail, the main drag in this part of Sarasota. They strutted on stiletto heels around discarded hip flasks and bottles of malt liquor...

None of the hookers showed any interest. Considering the neighborhood, a whale could fall out of the sky and flatten the motel, but no one would admit to seeing a thing."

To Florida's credit, North Tamiami Trail has improved considerably since I wrote that passage. Had I continued straight at the intersection I would've wound up in the John and Mable Ringling Art Museum (of the Ringling Brothers circus fame and fortune). But as I was hungry, I took a left at North Tamiami Trail and continued in search of Rico's. The street was a wide, divided boulevard and in spite of the busy traffic, surprisingly dark. The sidewalk passed stretches of businesses, closed for the night, and gloomy grassy lots, marked with signs prohibiting access. Like similar places in other American cities, empty liquor bottles, discarded clothes, and stolen grocery carts lay abandoned in the weeds. Whereas closer to the airport, you had your pick of chain hotels, here the accommodations were local motels. Most seemed well kept, some retained the sketchy vibe from my book, and others were shuttered and deserted. No hookers anywhere. As I said, it was quite dark and when another person approached from the opposite direction, the chance meeting filled me with a cautionary dread. What if he--they were all men--pulled a knife or a gun and decided to rob me? Step by step we closed the distance and even in the meager light, I could sense they were as apprehensive as I was. I find it hysterical that anyone would be afraid of me, but being Mexican, you get used to this sort of thing. When we passed shoulder to shoulder and realized that we would survive the encounter unscathed, we both breathed a sigh of relief but quickened our pace away from each other, just in case. 

I made it to Rico's, alive. The pizzeria was quasi-divey but friendly and welcoming. My earlier meals had been in over-priced airport restaurants and frankly, Rico's was the cheapest and best place I'd eaten at all day. 

So with this tale of my most recent adventure in Florida, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Holiday ups and downs

 This will be my last post of the year, and good riddance to 2022! We have been hanging on for nearly three years through this pandemic rollercoaster, hopes rising and falling with each successive wave and variant. Every single one of our family get-togethers since the pandemic began have been disrupted in one way or another. A grandchild's runny nose, an unexplained cough, a covid exposure... 

But each time, we have picked ourselves up and made another plan. Maybe at Passover... Oh well, there's always Labour Day weekend. Last year at this time, we thought we were finally going to pull it off. All three children and partners, plus two small grandchildren - all were coming to my little house! I stocked up the fridge and the wine rack, planned menus, even as the Omicron variant  began its relentless rise. Then the morning of the first arrivals, there came the call from my son. The two year-old has a weird rash. 

I remember cheering the end of 2021, thinking surely 2022 has to be better! But it wasn't. In fact. 2022 had some terrible surprises up its sleeve. In Ottawa here, first the "freedom convoy" invaded the capital for three weeks of noisy, up-yours, horn-honking nonsense, soon eclipsed by the war in Ukraine and the crushing assault by the bear, Russia on the small, proud nation led by a man who wouldn't say die. And still the Omicron variant tightened its grip. In the spring came supply shortages in food and just about everything from lumber to vehicles. Shipping containers were backed up in ports, employers couldn't find workers to open their shops and restaurants, prices began to soar.

I could go on, but you already know this. 2022 sucked, and now here I am looking forward to kicking it out the door and welcoming the new year. Thinking surely 2023 has to be better! But I am wary of my optimism. Already there are warning signs. It is three to four days before my family arrives at my house to celebrate the holidays - a mix of Hanukah and Christmas that reflects the mix that we have become. They are all driving from other cities. And Mother Nature has a great big storm planned for exactly that holiday travel time. Rain, freezing rain, flash freezes, snow, blizzard winds possibly up to 120 km an hour. This storm spans the continent and has already been ruining travel plans for families everywhere.

But I am holding steadfast to my hope that we can pull it off. So far there are no positive Covid tests, no runny noses or suspect coughs. We are Canadians. What's a little snow? 

Here's a couple of holiday messages I'd like to share before I go back to my holiday preparations. First, if you still haven't got all your gifts yet, consider a book. Any book, although if you choose to go beyond the big-name bestsellers, you will find lots of unique, varied, and entertaining books by lesser-known authors who could really use your support. Including the authors on this blog, just saying. Writers too have struggled during the pandemic. Buy their book, write them a review, and spread the word.

Secondly, before you spend your last dollar on gifts, consider donating it to your local food bank or toy collection or Christmas hamper program. With inflation and rising interest rates, there is a desperate need this year for extra help to make the holidays happen. Every little dollar counts.

Thirdly, may your holiday season, however you celebrate it, be full of light, laughter, and warmth, and may 2023 bring joy, health, and peace. 

Too much to hope for?

Happy Holidays!

 Today is going to be a very short post. Possibly two or three short paragraphs. We are in tough times yet again and all over the world, we are hunkering down to try to defeat another round of this never-ending plague. I hope everyone is staying safe and sane, hanging in, and trying to connect with friends or family in some fashion over the next ten days.

As my celebration for the holiday, I just finished third rewrites of THERE BUT FOR FORTUNE, the fifth Amanda Doucette novel set in British Columbia. I have sent it off to my trusted Ladies Killing Circle and dusted my hands of the whole thing until I get feedback. 

So to everyone, please take care and stay safe. Get your shots if you can, follow precautions, do the simple things that bring you joy, and have a very MERRY MERRY CHRISTMAS or WINTER SOLSTICE or whatever way you honour this time of the year. And may the NEW YEAR of 2022 be a better year, full of hope, friendship, and freedom from fear.

Christmas Stories

Christmas resonates so deeply within us because of our holiday memories. I thought I'd share three of mine.

The first happened when I was ten. For some reason I decided to do something extra that Christmas morning so I opted to make pancakes. Which I had never done before. My mom stood by to give advice, but not too much as she believed that the best way to learn was from your mistakes. I served a stack, hot and steaming, to my dad and proudly waited for his confirmation of my culinary expertise. As my old man was a real chow hound, I expected him to wolf them all. When he cut into the pancakes, they oozed moist dough. After his initial bite, I asked what he thought of them. "Kinda mushy," he answered diplomatically. In retrospect, the look on his face was that he wanted to spit them out.

The next year, a used car dealer near my house had decided to augment his inventory of wrecks-on-wheels with Fox minibikes. He'd let us kids tool around the lot, hoping to get us so excited that we'd badger our parents into buying us each one. I'd bring home brochures and tell my mom and dad how cool these minibikes were. We didn't have a lot of money, but to my eleven-year-old brain, that mattered little. I never saw a clue that my folks had bought a minibike but that didn't prove a thing. If nothing else, that my parents were going to such lengths to hide the existence of a minibike only meant that they had purchased one. Christmas Eve I went to bed imagining myself the envy of the neighborhood as I puttered about on my brand-new Fox minibike. I'm sure you've guessed the punch line--there was no minibike under the Christmas tree...or anywhere else. My sister keeps the memory alive by reminding me, "Remember that time when you thought you were going to get a minibike for Christmas? You were so disappointed. That was awesome!"

Story three: Christmas 1973. My best friend and I were back home on leave from the army. After months of military restrictions, we rampaged the town like Visigoth vandals. There wasn't a party we didn't crash, a liquor cabinet we didn't raid, an old girlfriend--hell any girl--that we didn't hit on. The soundtrack for our escapades was "Jessica" from the Almond Brothers as we tore about in my friend's used Chevy, one that he had bought with his enlistment bonus for joining the infantry. But I also recall a bit of poignancy in that this was our last hurrah as footloose bachelors. The responsibilities of adulthood awaited within an uncertain future. When you're on furlough, you wait until the last minute to head back to base and as luck would have it, at the moment my friend was to leave on his trek from New Mexico to Georgia, his car wouldn't start. The clock was ticking and Uncle Sam is very unsympathetic if you're late reporting to duty. But my friend couldn't abandon his car, nor could he afford a new starter. So we took turns that frosty afternoon chipping away at the corroded contacts and trying the starter. Finally, late in the evening, he got the engine to turn over. Not wanting to push his luck, he zoomed away without exchanging more that a hasty, "See you later." Months passed and I managed to connect with him over the phone. I asked about the Chevy. He replied, "That lemon broke down on me twice along the way. I ended up donating it to a guy for a demolition derby. After all the trouble that POS caused, it was almost worth those headaches watching it get smashed to pieces."

Merry Christmas, everyone! See you next year!

My Christmas Prezzie-Writing Advice Repackaged and Regifted

For this, my last post this year on Type M, I wanted to give you all a present. In going through my archives, I discovered this forgotten little essay that I first posted on Jim Born's blog way back a few years. So I decided to offer it to yuz guys. Enjoy. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. See you in 2018!

Jim has been after me for some time to contribute an article with writing advice to his blog. It’s taken me this long to submit something for a couple of reasons.

First, I have been busy. I mean like work busy, not like watching Narcos on Netflix busy. Second, I couldn’t think of anything to add about writing that hasn’t been written a bazillion times already. If you’re a newbie writer, then you tend to soak up all the writer advice you can and hope it’ll stick. Maybe, you’ll get an A-Ha! moment.

But mostly I get the impression that writers are always on the prowl--like raccoons scrounging through a Dumpster--in search of that one morsel of advice that will carry you over that elusive threshold from unpublished to published, from unwashed to still dirty, but at least with credentials! As for any advice that might help, other than keep writing and stay positive and all that, here are my two centavos:

POV doesn’t matter. 

I can hear a collective sucking of breath on that one. Again, Point-of-View doesn’t matter. I say that because I can’t think of a novel where violating the Commandment Thou Shall Not Head-Hop made one difference (measured in WTF’s) in terms of sales or acclaim. And I can’t think of one reader who ever said, “The story was great. The characters were amazing. The plot, compelling. But I put the book down because of the shifts in Point-of-View.”

What confuses the new writer is to get back a sample chapter and have it redlined up by a teacher or a critique partner with notes admonishing you of POV shifts within a scene. But wait, you protest, here’s my beloved international bestseller, rock-star-rich author and he, she, hops POV like a frog on a hot George Foreman and that hasn’t hurt their career. “But,” the teacher/critique partner replies, “the different are rules because those writers are published.”

Advice like that is enough to make you go from head-hopping to head-lopping.

However, before you go all nutzo with head-hopping, I’ll admit that at first, you have to understand POV. A tight POV helps you develop what’s going on in the character’s head, whether you write First Person or Third Person. Newbie writers who skim from head-to-head miss opportunities for dramatic immersion. But at one point, you’ll figure it out. So why not vary POV?

Old hands will tell you, okay, but if you shift POV, then you must either rely on a chapter break or a paragraph drop-down. You see, they argue, readers are morons with the attention span of bottle flies. You can’t depend on them to keep track of anything. Even though you might have introduced a huge roster of characters and a plot so intricate that readers need index cards and a highlighter to follow the story, if you hop one head, BOOM! you’ve lost them.

So why the writer witch-hunts on POV? Because a POV shift is easy to spot. It’s easy to criticize. It’s easy to say, POV shift! bad writer. 

In my critique group (all old hands at this writer game), anytime one of us introduces an abrupt POV shift, the others act as if the offender has written kiddie porn and killed puppies. Shame on you! Then when we discuss the latest book we’ve read, we’re all: “It was awesome. The prose, so colorful. The characters were magic.” What about POV shifts? “Like a crazy mo-fo, but it didn’t make a difference. I loved the story.”

So here’s my advice to you. Go ahead, remove the shackles. Indulge in head-hopping. Have fun. Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas and Happy Killings!

Season's Greetings to everyone. It's been a busy, yet amazing year. I spent a lot of time on the road with WordFire Press, hawking books at various ComicCons from Miami to Seattle and parts in between. I got to meet old fans and make new ones. And I edited two anthologies and got several short stories published. Plus, I taught writing classes at Regis University and Lighthouse Writers. Like I said, it's been a busy year.

While we push books here at Type M, I can't ignore that many of us indulge in binge-watching. My favorite was the New Detectives on Netflix. The series detailed the use of forensics and old-style sleuthing to solve actual crimes. It was sobering but not surprising to learn that murderers tend to be, in order of most likely: husbands, boyfriends, wives, adult children, neighbors, and strangers. If any of you are contemplating homicide, word to the wise--ditch the murder weapon and destroy the notes or letters where you outline the steps to the crime! Rookie mistakes like that will get you fifty-to-life, if not a date with the needle.

For the New Year I've got an ambitious schedule. More stories to publish. Hopefully edit at least one more anthology. More touring. More teaching. Stay tuned.

Here's hoping 2017 brings good tidings for all of us.