Predictabilty

Last night I was thinking about the great posts from my colleagues this week about David Bowie, trends, and creativity. I was wondering what I could add to the conversation. And then I turned from the sink and encountered the fixed green-eyed gaze of my cat, Harry. As you know by now, Harry fascinates me. In part because we have become involved in a game of predicting each other's next move. He's more difficult -- one moment he is sitting under the coffee table dozing, the next he is dashing through the house. One moment he is meowing his apparent distress, the next he is cuddling up with his sock filled with catnip as if he hadn't a care. The one thing I can predict about him is that several times during the day or evening -- when the mood strikes him and I am sitting down -- he will come and leap into my lap. If my hands are in his way, he will meow to get my attention. Then he will settle down for a nap, and I will not be able to move without being heartless and disturbing his sleep.

But what is more fascinating, and what I was thinking about last night, is that Harry has adjusted to my unpredictable predictability. I am awful at keeping an eye on the clock. I forget to feed him on schedule. But last night -- as he does every night -- he started to watch me as soon as I got up to wash the dinner dishes that I had left in the sink. I do that every night without fail -- with a scene from the Mary Tyler Moore show playing in my head. Rhoda is staying with Mary because of a problem in her apartment. She has told Mary that she will wash the dishes. But she leaves them in the sink to soak over night. Mary creeps out of bed when she thinks Rhoda is asleep to wash the dishes. I'm not a neat freak, but I wash the dishes every night (a lingering fear of cockroaches in an old house even though I've never seen one). Harry has learned that in spite of my erratic concept of bedtime, I will go to the sink and wash the dishes as a part of my before bed ritual. And then I will pick up his dish, wash it, and serve him the snack he has before lights out. Every night -- whether it is 11 o'clock, 12:15, or after 1 a.m., Harry fixes his stare on me when I begin to wash dishes and as I reach for the sprayer to rinse, he strolls into the kitchen and sits down in front of the refrigerator.

There is a phrase that isn't used any more -- "You can set your clock by him." I've heard a character say it an old movie as the prosperous banker in his three-piece suit walked by, heading to his place of business, or a suburban father waved to his neighbor as he backed out of his driveway for his commute to his office in the city. It was a phrase used to describe characters who were predictable in their habits. But there is also predictability in the chaotic sprint of  Dagwood, the comic strip character, who is always late. The mailman never seems to learn that Dagwood will explode out of his front door, knocking him over as he races to his waiting carpool. But, then again, the detectives on Law and Order never learned that getting creative (e.g., sticking a toothpick in a keyhole to keep a suspect out of his apartment until the search warrant arrived) was likely to produce evidence that would be suppressed by a judge. Just as predictable was the annoyance of the prosecutor, Jack McCoy -- less so that of Lt. Van Buren (who was predictable in that she would stand up for her cops when their strategies seemed to be the only reasonable thing to do).

As writers, one of the aspects of a character's personality that we might consider and exploit in our plotting is his or her predictability. In fact, as we are developing our characters, we might build in those aspects of predictability that other characters depend on. It could be that this character is always punctual -- maybe even arrives early and waits for other people -- is always smug when other people arrive a few minutes late. Maybe at some point in the story, another character (our protagonist), annoyed by this smugness decides to arrive early for their Thursday lunch date. And discovers that her friend is not waiting and becomes increasing alarmed as their meeting time arrives and passes. Or, maybe this friend has been plotting a murder and assumed that our protagonist would be late as usual. But this time she isn't, and she, thereby, becomes a less reliable alibi and maybe even a danger.

In real life, my friends predict that I will be late if I have some place to be before mid-morning. Even with the best of intentions, I have a difficult time getting to where I need to be. When I have a really early flight, I'm afraid to sleep the night before. A few months ago, I almost missed a flight to Seattle (en route to an Alaska cruise) because I -- something I had always feared I would do -- set the clock alarm for p.m. rather than a.m. And then, so tired from being awake during the night, slept through the ringing of the phone as my friend who was leaving for the airport tried to check on me. It was only hearing the end of her voice mail message as she called from the airport that woke me up and sent me scrambling.

I should say that later in the day, I have no problem being on time (or much less of a problem). I try to design my life so that appointments that I have to travel to are after 10 a.m. I teach in the afternoon and early evening. If I were a character, I, the writer, could use that contrast between morning me and afternoon/evening me. Saying I'm not a morning person would be "telling". "Showing" the difference could well be an important plot twist. What if I, the character, had decided after that near-miss of my flight, to change my morning habits. Suppose I decided to start getting up at seven and going for a walk -- which might well put me some place I would not ordinarily have been.

In criminology, there is a theory about "routine activities". Some crimes depend on the routine activities of the would-be victims (e.g., leaving home, walking to the bus, depositing money at the ATM). This is a kind of predictability that we as writers also often rely on in plotting our books. But we might also give occasional thought to how our characters feel about their routine, about their predictability. What would happen if a character decided one day to shake up his or her routine? What might motivate that decision? And what might happen if he or she did?

I think I'll take a different route to the office today. Maybe tomorrow, I'll get up and go to a little diner I noticed for an early breakfast.

Creativity

The passing of David Bowie has made me ponder over the past few days on the nature of creativity. I liked David Bowie, even though I was not a fanatic and actually am unfamiliar with some of his later work. However, the thing that I particularly admired about the man was the way he endlessly recreated himself and his craft, and every iteration of David Bowie was eye-catching and beautifully done. He was brave, and no matter what your art is, you have to be brave, to put yourself out there.

I don't know where creativity comes from. Is there a mystical source? I’m sure it’s something infinitely more prosaic than Muses or an Oversoul, but I like that idea better than the thought that it’s all just a mental exercise. Why are some people born to their art and others struggle or are even incapable? No matter how much you love music, it's hard to become a singer or composer if you have a tin ear, or to create a moving painting or sculpture if you have no eye for form and color. You have to have an "ear" and and "eye" to be able to write effectively, as well.

I usually start the day by reading the paper front to back, and then working all the puzzles. This is not quite the time consuming activity it used to be a few years ago, when the daily paper actually had news in it. But at least the puzzles get my brain revved up for the day. One of my favorite puzzles is the Jumble, which consists of an anagram of a quotation from a well-known person. A while back, I deciphered a quotation from Truman Capote which, as a writer, I found quite insightful. It is as follows:

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music.

Perspective is a sense of depth. It is a way to show things in their true relationship to one another, a way to make them seem real.

I never know what the entire story will be before I begin.* I learned early on that when you start to write a novel or story, or even a poem, you may think you have it all figured out before you set pen to paper. But you don't. Before I start a mystery, I always think I know why the killer did it, but to date, by the time I reach the end I discover I was wrong. The motive seems get modified every time. Not long ago, I told someone she should "trust the process" with her writing. Even if you don't know where the story is going to go, just start writing and trust that all will become clear as you go along. Have faith that the answer will provide itself when the moment comes.

Once the novel is done, it’s interesting to me to see how it all turned out, to remember what I originally had in mind and see how the tale changed as I moved through it. The only thing I can always count on when I write a book is that whether I deserve it or not, the Muses always come to my rescue and I end up with a finished novel that hangs together in an interesting and logical way. I don't know how.
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*in writing or in life

The dreaded middle

Barbara here. So we are two weeks into the new year, or more specifically, two weeks past the overindulgence of December. Overwhelmed by a feeling of sloth, we are frantically making promises – to exercise more, to eat less, to drink less, to cleanse and purify and meditate our way back to balance. And if you're a writer like me, to dig out that long-neglected work in progress and get back into the groove. For me, the deadline for my next novel, once blissfully away, is creeping inexorably closer. During December I laughed off the small niggles of pressure and the sheer blankness of my mind and the paper before me. I assured myself I had all the time in the world to figure out where the novel was going and to pull a brilliant plot out of a hat.

I don't plot ahead of time, nor do I outline. I provide the publisher with a vague synopsis of "this is what I think the novel is about, these are the characters that will probably be in it, these are a few things that might happen, and somehow it will all work out in the end, even though I don't yet know how." And then I pick up my pen and pad of paper, and I jump into the first scene. This 'by the seat of my pants' approach has served me adequately over the past eleven books, and is as entertaining as it is terrifying. I like not knowing what is coming next. I like the suspense, and the delicious surprises that my subconscious springs on me mid-book.

I guess I like the terror too. Like an actor about to go on stage, a doctoral student facing her thesis defence, a courtroom lawyer about to address the jury, there is a thrill in that adrenaline rush that makes all my senses come alive and my neurons go into overdrive. Some of us do our best creating when we are perched on the edge of the abyss. I was a crammer all through school, and I guess the habit dies hard.

As always, however, there can be too much pressure and too little preparation. A courtroom lawyer who hasn't even read the brief will face disaster, an actor who hasn't memorized her lines will fall on her face. An author who has only a hundred pages written one month before deadline is in big trouble. No amount of brilliantly firing neurons and flooding adrenaline can pull a perfect novel out of a hat in that time. Now I am not one month from my deadline, but I am staring at a very saggy, dismally out of shape novel. The myth of the dreaded middle is very real. Usually at the halfway mark of a first draft, the writer hits a wall. She's no longer sure how the novel will end, or how she's going to get there. She needs a new direction and a new sense of drama. Characters have to make unexpected changes or move in surprising ways. They need to stand on their heads.

Cliches abound about midway twists. Throw in another body, have someone confess, threaten the main character's nearest and dearest... The only thing worse than a flabby middle is a predictable twist. So when you're staring at that blank page and trying to brainstorm that EXCITING NEW TURN, you have to reject the numerous cliches that crowd helpfully into your mind and wait until that little gem pops up. You will know it when it comes to you– that ureka moment that cries out 'brilliant!'.

My flabby middle problem in this novel has some peculiar qualities. First of all, I'm only one third of the way through the book, not halfway. This is disconcerting. Will there be another flabby middle moment at the two-thirds mark? Or God forbid, more than one? Secondly, not all the plots in the novel are flabby. My work in progress is a braided story with three POVs; although Amanda Doucette is my main character, she has two sidekicks who have their own stories to unfurl. I have a lot of ideas about what those two sidekicks will be doing for the next hundred or so pages. They will be digging into the story, uncovering evidence, and pushing the intrigue forward.

Amanda, however, is stuck. Not only is she the main agent of the story, she's also physically right at the centre of the intrigue. She's a passionate, resourceful, independent woman who would jump in at the first sign of trouble or injustice, but right now in the story, I can't think what she should be doing. She, like me, is stalled. I have spent hours daydreaming about it while driving on the 401 and walking the dogs, so far without that ureka moment. I know she and I will eventually figure out what she should do. Maybe during that four-day winter camping excursion I am taking next week. Amanda is winter camping, too; perhaps she will speak to me.

So stay tuned!

Those who are the real trendsetters

by Rick Blechta

I was never a huge fan of the music of David Bowie, but I will readily admit I've always respected that he was a huge influence on the pop world, fashion world and initiated trends and has influence that will continue into the future. He was also completely fearless in how embraced change, something most of us have trouble with. Certainly the world has seen few with such chameleon-like ability. It wasn’t only in Bowie’s image, but also in his music. Even his new, nearly posthumous, album displays many fresh ideas as does the video to his final single release, “Lazarus”.

Wading through the news and commentary about his life and death, I got thinking in other channels. Trendsetters like Bowie are actually quite rare in the world. I’m not going to lump Bowie in with people like Galileo, or more recently, visionaries such as Nikola Tesla to name but two. These giants took their world and set it on its ear with their breakthrough thinking. Their influence has been profoundly felt.

Naturally, I also considered who have been the real trendsetters in crime writing, our small corner of the artistic world.

Now, what I’m really interested in is soliciting loyal Type M readers (Okay, even disloyal ones can join in) to respond with their picks as the trendsetters in crime writing.

I’ll kick it off with two: Arthur Conan Doyle for his contribution of Sherlock Holmes and that character’s far-reaching influence, and Agatha Christie for her panoply of characters, but most especially her Miss Marple series, arguably the first of what are now known as “cozies”.

I could go on, but I will leave that up to all of you. Who gets your nomination as a trendsetter in crime writing — and why?

As for David Bowie, I think the artistic world will really miss him. You owe it to yourself to watch the video for “Lazarus”. It is brilliant, it is unsettling, and like everything else Bowie did, fiercely creative.

I think the world could use a lot more people like David Bowie.

New Year Rant.

I have started the new year raging against technology. Think of King Lear on the blasted heath and transfer that to a small study in Edinburgh with Storm Frank doing its worst, and you get the picture.

My attitude to the machines that work for me is in general cordial, anthropomorphic, even. We have had cars called Tabitha (a skittish Ford Anglia) and Arthur (a rather sober family saloon); our Android tablet is predictably called Marvin and my old computer was dear Jemima. She got tired after about ten years but she ploughed on, solid and predictable, if increasingly slow, long after my family told me she should be scrapped. Eventually the slowness became standstill and I was forced, reluctantly to say goodbye.

Her replacment insists on doing all sorts of things that I can perfectly well do for myself, many of which I don't want done at all – and why anyone should design a system where it takes three stages for switching off instead of one is beyond me. However, I have got used to that and will even admit that there are some features that are better.

However, over the last bit I have had a spectacular proof of  the malevolence of inanimate objects. I am trapped in an abusive relationship here; if I had to give a name to my computer it would be Beelzebub.

It lulled me into a sense of false security, with everything nice as pie. Then suddenly it decided to obliterate half the chapter I had just written. I tried everything, but it was gone – not in the back-up file, not anywhere. I called in my tech guru who checked the whole thing, couldn't find the missing work, couldn't find anything wrong. I ran off hard copy, saved in two places, saved to a stick and sent copies to my husband and deleted the file, deciding it was corrupt.

It was fine for a bit, though it left me with a neurotic twitch about saving everything. I close, open up again and check, and if  everything is all right I close it again.  Then I started working on revisions. I worked for a whole morning, saved to my various places, checked and closed – fine.  Next day, all revisions had gone. All of them.

I'm scared to copy the file on to another machine in case it infects that as well. I'm working exclusively from a stick, removing it from the machine after I've saved, and so far so good. Once I've finished the present book, I'll strip everything back and hope that eliminates the problem. If it doesn't, it's a new machine and I will take pleasure in finding a sledge hammer and smashing Beelzebub into tiny fragments. Then I'll jump on them.

And you think that's the end of my rant against technology? Huh! Try booking a ticket on Virgin trains. It asks me to log in with a password. Why, for heaven's sake? I'm not wanting to withdraw money from a Swiss bank account, I want to buy a return ticket to London.

I can't remember my password. To be honest, I can't remember whether I have an 'account' or not. So I click 'register' instead. I type in my email, and a password; first I'm told that my password won't do. It has to be at least eight characters long and include at least one number, one upper case letter and one lower case letter. The one I'd typed in had just that, but apparently it still didn't like it. Then another message came up; this email is in use for another account, so I can't register a new one.

So I go back to log-in, confess in shame that I've forgotten my password and wait until they send me a code that MI5 would have been proud of. I enter it, then they tell me my credit card details are wrong. They aren't.

Eventually, on my knees and whimpering, I persuade them to accept a debit card and the precious ticket is mine, hedged about with security, just in case a total stranger should enter my email address – common knowledge – and try to buy a ticket under my name with their own money.

Of course, I'm glad I don't have to go out into Storm Frank to buy my ticket at the station. Of course I'm glad I don't have to write everything in longhand and type it up with duplicating paper and Snopak to hand. But every so often, I've just had enough. Me and King Lear.

The Truth About Native American Literature Will Blow Your Mind

 

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Today's guest is Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel the Medicine Woman of the Mohegan Indian Tribe in Uncasville, Connecticut and a young-adult novelist. Her latest book, Wabanaki Blues, is a mystical murder mystery, released this year. It is the first book in the Wabanaki Trilogy. Her non-fiction writings include Medicine Trail: The Life and Lessons of Gladys Tantaquidgeon (University of Arizona: 2000).

 

 

Best-selling Native American literature goes WAY back. I come from Mohegan Indian territory in Connecticut, birthplace of The Reverend Samson Occom. He penned the weirdly-popular A sermon at the execution of Moses Paul, an Indian, published in New London in 1772. Occom was not the first Native American to circulate a religious treatise. Popul Vuh, commonly referred to as "The Mayan Bible," is over two thousand years old. To learn more about ancient American writing, I recommend you check out Queequeg’s Coffin by Birgit Brander Rasmussen. It’s full of mind-bending accounts of Peru’s quipu knot texts, Mexican agave bark scripts and more. Those scripts are akin to old Wabanaki and Ojibwe bark writings in what is now the United States. Award-winning Ojibwe author Louise Erdrich describes the bark and rock writings of her people in Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country, saying "The rock paintings are alive."
 

Am I saying American word forms are animate? Yes, indeed. Because I come from the east coast, I offer painted ash splint basket and woven/carved quahog clam shell writing as examples. In A Key into the Language of Woodsplint Basket Designs, edited by Ann McMullen and Russell G. Handsman, Mohegans Jayne Fawcett and Gladys Tantaquidgeon describe the animacy of tribal painted basket symbols as "… a spiritual force that flows through all things, and if these symbols are true representations of that force, this spirit should be expressed in the designs." Tuscarora wampum expert Rick Hill suggests something similar when he refers to the "inherent intelligence of wampum" as noted in scholar Marge Bruchac’s insightful blog https://wampumtrail.wordpress.com
 

So what happened in the Northeast when colonial English pen and paper literature muscled in on this colorful, lively, three dimensional, Native American literary tradition?" In The Common Pot, author Lisa Brooks claims that "Birchbark messages became letters and petitions, wampum records became treaties, and journey pictographs became written journals." Native space focused on a network of social relations that included a wide range of living beings (including land/sky forms, as well as flora, fauna and fungi). She argues that such broadly engaged space demanded a broadly engaged narrative. In Red Ink, Drew Lopenzina describes this clash between colonial and Native concepts of story-keeping. "If colonial paradigms were generally geared toward the containment of space and knowledge, Native epistemologies seemed to favor a kind of engagement with the experiential world." Thus, I invite you to look deeper into The Story of America by experiencing Native American Literature, old and new.

http://www.melissazobel.com
 

Fried chicken

Remember the chicken? The cartoon I couldn't scan a while back? This had such a sad sad ending. I finally got Windows 10 to upload my contribution to this blog. I was jubilant! I felt like I was one of the truly sophisticated persons who paste images into Type M. I mean, like ALL THE TIME.

None of them even sweat it. They just go plink with their index finger and voila--witty entries appear that are actually illustrated.

I can do this now (well, minus the wit) but now my chicken is dead.

I had my newest entry ready to post on my Poisoned Pen Blog and Michele, the daughter who is editor-in-chief for Vegetarian Times informed me that it was a violation of copyright laws to post a New Yorker cartoon on the internet without getting all kinds of complicated permission.

That doesn't seem fair. But a number of PPP writers who are lawyers jumped in and said she was right. Anyway, I think I assumed that Rick would dash in and save us from doing anything that's inappropiate on Type M. I've posted a number of cartoons here too and now I must stop.

The cartoon was so applicable to what's on my mind: marketing. But I can tell you what the cartoon was about. A guy is walking down a hotel corridor carrying a chicken, knocking on each door, telling each occupant that he would like like for them to join his professional network on LinkedIn.

I thought it was hilarious because it summed up the sheer looniness of much of today's marketing efforts. The number of books being published every year is astonompical. Far too many for the market to absorb. The industry counts as a book a work that has an International Standard Book Number. No doubt there are many more that do not have this number. In fact, a good friend of mine just printed one on her home computer that will appeal to button collectors. It's doing quite well. She's an expert on this subject.

So the challenge is to get our books into the hands of readers. And therein lies the rub. Often, these mysterious readers are already taken.

In the Details

Crime writing is supposed to be exciting, right? A pulse-pounding pace. Fast, fresh prose. Shootouts. Wisecracks. Devastating death scenes. Even Lauren Bacall starring opposite your Humphrey Bogart. That's what crime writing is all about, right?

Not so much.

This week, I rose at 4 a.m. to write the following:

Halifax is one hour ahead of Maine/Toronto. Flight from Istanbul - Toronto is 14 hrs; Toronto - Halifax is 2 hrs. Layover is 3.5 hrs. If you leave at 10 a.m., you arrive at 10 p.m. Turkey is 7 hours ahead of Maine.

I hope it really is all in the details because it took me 45 minutes to write these notes. I also hope you never notice any of this information while reading the 2017 Peyton Cote novel, Everlasting Darkness. The goal for a fiction writer to go unnoticed. These are notes from a "comment" I made in in my Google document: reminders for myself so I don't screw up the book's chronology. (Keeping notes like these is very important to a dyslexic who struggles with numbers: it took me two semesters and a summer to get through Algebra II, after all, but that's for another time.)

Atmosphere may be the most challenging element of fiction to convey, and atmosphere is all about the details. I'm reading Bangkok 8 right now. The novel is one of the richest, most atmospheric books I've read. It stars a devout Buddhist cop and opens with a wonderfully unique and intriguing murder scene. Those are things about the novel I do notice.

What I don't notice is the research author John Burdett must have done to capture Bangkok, Thailand, the things he noticed while living there. There are books writers read that make a fellow author say, I wish I'd have thought of that. The insinuation here is that the writer believes he or she could have created something akin to what she is reading. Then there are books we read that make us say, I wish I could do that. The insinuation here is obvious. Bangkok 8 makes me say the latter – for what I don't notice; not while I'm reading, anyway: I slide into Burdett's world, and am totally lost in it. I'm not turning pages, just following along, adrift in the details that create the rich atmosphere.

And atmosphere is all about the details, even the ones we rise at 4 a.m. to track down.

My Year in Books

As is the case with most writers (though I’ve recently learned not all), I like to read. Unfortunately, I don’t get to read as much as I’d like. Last year, I was curious about just how many books I read in a year so I kept track.

First, the statistics. Grand total of 76 books read. Not bad. My “worst” month was April when I only read 2 books. I had a book deadline at the end of that month so I didn’t have much time. My best month was November when I read 9. Of the books I read, 18 were non-fiction and 58 fiction. Of the fiction books, 46 were mysteries, 2 general fiction, 4 YA, 3 children’s, and 3 science fiction. 24 of the mysteries were historical.

Here are some of the books I particularly enjoyed this past year.

First, The Lost Army of Cambyses by Paul Sussman. Sussman wrote 3 books in the Yusuf Khalifa series that mix archaeology with mystery until he passed away suddenly in 2012. I’m interested in archaeology and have been studying Ancient Egyptian and Coptic for over a decade so this was of particular interest for me.

On the non-fiction end, there’s In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson. It’s a portrait of Hitler’s Berlin in the early years of his reign told through the story of the first American ambassador to Hitler’s Germany and his family. I found this particularly interesting because I read it right after visiting the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. A lot of the exhibits dealt with those early years.

On the cozy end, I discovered Kylie Logan this past year. Her League of Literary Ladies Mysteries were some of my favorite reads this past year, particularly The Legend of Sleepy Harlow. And Button Holed, the first in her Button Box Mysteries, was also a favorite read of the year.

On the historical mysteries end, my favorites were the Matthew Shardlake series by C. J. Sansom and the Thomas Treviot series by D. K. Wilson. Both are set in Tudor England, a time period that has interested me since I was in junior high.

I’m looking forward to reading more great books in the coming year. The following are some of those on my TBR pile.

A Skeleton in the Family by Leigh Perry. I couldn’t resist this one. A mystery with a “living” skeleton in the story. Yep, a skeleton's an actual character.

This non-fiction book was recently brought to my attention: Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages.

What about you all? What books did you particularly enjoy in 2015? What books are you looking forward to reading this coming year?

The value of a long car ride

by Rick Blechta

Two or three times a year, we drive 516 miles from Toronto to just north of New York City to visit relatives and renew family ties. My wife and I have been doing this since 1974. At this point, we’re above 100 round trips. I now recognize nearly every rock and tree (two were down, I noticed on our trip back last week), let alone curves in the road. Sitting in the car for 8+ hours seeing the same things got tedious a long time ago. My wife loathes the trip and I’ve contemplating drugging her so she would conk out at the beginning and wake at the end. Me? I don’t mind it all that much and you’re about to find out why.

When our kids were little and took the trip with us, we would have story tapes to while away the hours (and also use as a weapon to keep them from fighting in the back seat!). Our listening was eclectic to say the least. We had favourites (like A Christmas Carol for our holiday trip) to NY. The boys quickly learned to enjoy crime fiction, especially Dick Francis. As they got older, we gravitated to thrillers to please them.

Though they generally don’t travel with us anymore, we do enjoy having a good audio book, but quite often the car is silent (if we’re not conversing) and if I’m not the one who’s driving, a great deal of time is spent looking out the window, but what I’m actually doing is writing.

On this recent trip back home, I spent time thinking about some more research on the novel series I’m currently wrestling with. My main protagonist lives in a very large house, a castle almost, overlooking the glorious, majestic Hudson River. (Oddly enough, there is a house almost like the one I’m imagining and if it’s in the wrong town, what the heck. I’ll just write it above Cold Spring even if that means moving it a few miles north.)

On the drive back to Toronto last Friday, I was mentally reviewing what I’d learned and cogitating on how it could fit in to my novel’s “set design”.

If you’re not familiar with the Eastern shore of the Hudson River above New York City, it has a very particular feel to it. First off, it has been settled for over 300 years and consequently has a very lived in “aura” to it and that’s proving very hard to work into the first story’s fabric. If you’re attempting to write a readable thriller, this kind of detail has to be placed in quick, small bursts or you risk losing the reader. However, if you don’t get it just right, you also risk losing the reader. Leave it out all together and you’ve lost the story’s sense of place.

Solving this proved to be a 300-mile conundrum, but passing Watertown, NY, it suddenly hit me how I might work it effectively given the parameters. It involves leaning on another character to describe the lay of the land because she’s never visited the area before and gets lost.

Arriving back in Toronto, I was faced with a bit of a “detour” since I have to respond to the edit of the novella I have coming out this fall, but I am very eager to put my plan into action and see how it all works.

My plan came from being forced to think for a longer period of time than I normally would, simply because I was trapped in a car taking a journey made over 100 times. I could think of it as an ordeal, but I chose to make it an opportunity.

So you see, having to make the same trip yet again can be worthwhile if you decide to make lemonade out of lemons. Come to think of it, I’ve done some of my best creating driving between New York and Toronto.

Looking Forward with Trepidation

By Vicki Delany

January 1^st is just a date on the calendar, isn’t it? Perhaps the New Year should start on December 21 (or 22) when the sun seems to turn in the sky and head back and we’re saved from endless darkness. Or on December 25^th, as that is celebrated as the birth date of the person for whom our years are numbered.  Or maybe, for some relieved parents, the day the kids go back to school.

But it’s January 1^st in the Western World, and whether or not we see the new year in at a big party or simply by cracking open a new calendar, it’s the start of the year.

And a time for looking back and looking forward.  Perhaps we do need a date at which we can stop and recollect on all that went well, and what didn’t, and hope to see more of the former, and less of the latter.

In 2015, I had four books published. Not bad, if I do say so myself.  Two of those four were first in series, which is promising, and two were written under a brand new pen name.  I’m going to have a slow (comparatively speaking) 2016 with only three books.  The eighth constable Molly Smith book, Unreasonable Doubt, will be out on Feb 2rd, the third Lighthouse Library book, Reading Up A Storm, in April, and the second Year Round Christmas mystery, We Wish You a Murderous Christmas, in November.

So, things are going well for me in my writing career. You’d think I’d be leaning back and practicing being self-satisfied. But the publishing world is a very strange place, and I’m approaching the future with trepidation.  Strange things are happening at Penguin Random House and all the Berkley Prime Crime authors are getting twitchy.  Contracts are not being renewed and new books not being picked up. It’s not that books are being turned down. It’s that NOTHING seems to be happening.

The race to the bottom continues as the plethora of free books becomes almost overwhelming, not to mention books being sold for .99c. Used to be backlist books were reduced in price to attract new readers, which is a fair business motel. Increasingly I see almost new (like a couple of weeks old) titles from small or independent publishers being offered at .99c.

In the US, the UK, and Canada writers’ incomes have dropped by something like 50% in the last twenty years. It’s not hard to see why, is it?

So, as the race to the bottom continues an awful lot of good writers are going to decide it’s not worthwhile to keep writing and give it up.

If you love a book or a series and want to see it continue, you can help the struggling author. Buy a copy of the book (heck a mass market paperback isn’t much more than a large latte these days, and less than the cost of a movie ticket), or take it out of your library if you have a limited budget (libraries pay for books)  and then leave a nice review at Amazon, Goodreads, and other places. It does help. 

And So It Begins

Happy New Year, one and all!

I hope your New Year's Eve was as pleasant as mine (spent quietly with friends, eating and playing board games). I stayed up to see the New Year in and then went off to bed, grateful to have gotten through another year that brought me a bit closer to my goals and hoping that the world will be a better, safer, kinder place for all us in 2016. But my Type M colleagues have already written eloquently about that.

I do want to pick up a thread that Rick began – New Year's resolutions. I used to have a long list, categorized in order of importance (A,B,C) and even broken down into “do-able tasks”.  I still like the idea of thinking about what it is that I really want to achieve. And breaking each goal down into small tasks that I can act on does get me up and moving when I'm overwhelmed by the enormity or complexity of what I want to achieve. As I have been working on my non-fiction book, thinking about the tasks (what I need to know and where to find that information) has kept me on track. Remembering my goal – to finish the book – has kept me from wandering off and spending another year or two reading about topics that intrigue me but that are only marginally relevant to this particular book. Remembering that this book is a top priority (an A rather than a C goal) has kept me from pushing it aside and working on something else that would be easier and less demanding of my time and effort.

My old strategy for making New Year's resolutions has something to be said for it. But what I have realized after many efforts to make and keep a long list of resolutions is that I should give attention to the few that will bring me to the end of the year feeling good about who I am both as a writer and a person. One resolution that I make each year is to treat my body better – more healthy food and less sugar, more exercise and fewer long sessions in front of the computer when the only part of my body moving is my fingers. This resolution – never fully achieved and subject to numerous lapses during each year – is the one that makes me feel hopeful each new year when I get a “start over” and distressed and annoyed with myself when I realize at the end of the year that I'm still human and imperfect. In 2015, I learn to love Brussels sprouts, but I ended the year by munching my way through numerous candy canes.

This year, my top resolution is to be more tolerant of my imperfections. I will continue to work on eating more fruits and veggies and getting up from desk and out the door to walk – or at least getting in my 30 minutes of aerobics before I sit down at my desk. I will walk down the hall at work to fill my environmentally friendly water bottle and I will drink that water even though I don't love it because being semi-dehydrated affects ones ability to think. I will be gentle with myself on those days and nights when I go to bed late, eat poorly, and get no exercise at all.

Under this heading of being more tolerant of my imperfections, I will also remember to treat my envy with respect. Here, I'm referring to the envy that most of us (unless we are saints) feel toward those who seem to have what we want. I will remember that even though I feel twinges of envy when I look on the success of other writers who make the bestsellers lists, receive nominations and awards, have their books made into films and television series, and gets recognized when they stop to admire the display of their books in airport bookstores – I will remember that the best use of my very human envy is to think about how I define success and what I am willing to do or give up to achieve it. After careful consideration, I'm pretty sure I don't want people to recognize me when I'm walking through an airport, but I wouldn't mind spotting my book in an airport bookstore or seeing someone reading my book on a plane. I'd like an Edgar (maybe two, one for fiction and another for nonfiction) and I'd like to make the New York Times bestseller list. And although I intend to market smarter in 2016, I will continue to focus on writing better because I believe quality is important.

My second resolution: I will learn to clip my cat Harry's nails. Or, rather, I will become better at persuading Harry to allow me to clip his nails. I'm up to two or three nails at a time now. I will get to one paw at a time before the year is over. This may seem a low-value resolution, but it is important. Harry likes to sit on my lap, especially when I'm sitting in front of my computer. When his nails grow too long, I am pricked when he jumps from the floor or steps from the desk onto my lap. I am pricked again when he stretches his paw up to touch my neck. This is a sign of feline affection – and Harry's love of stretching (a habit I am trying to emulate) – but it has sent me to my collection of casual, at-home-tops with high collars when I don't have the time to try to clip nails and no visit from his pet sitter or to the vet is upcoming. Besides, clipping his nails myself will save me a bit of money. And, as much as I love him, avoiding being scratched by my cat may keep me healthier. So I will work on my nail clipping technique.

Resolved:  This year, I will be more tolerant of my failures and celebrate even small successes. I will give myself more credit for what I'm trying to achieve and less scorn when I sometimes stumble.

Cheers!

End of the year

Happy New Year from Donis. Christmas is over, Boxing Day is done, and I’ve eaten too much. The end of the year has always been a big time for me, marked not just by Christmas and New Years, but my birthday on December 29. Yes, I was Mama and Daddy’s little tax deduction. Which means that  January 1 is the beginning of my new year in a literal way. December is Big Birthday and Special Event Month in my family.* My mother, sister, and grandfather were born on December 6, 7, and 8, respectively. My parents’ wedding anniversary was December 16, which also was traditionally the day my father took us kids to the lot to pick out our Christmas tree. Then we had Christmas, my birthday, and New Year’s Day, which was the day we ate black-eyed peas and cornbread and took down the tree.

These days my Christmases/Birthdays/New Years are much quieter. My parents are gone, I have no kids of my own, and my siblings and in-laws and their families all live far away. So my husband and I have developed our own little rituals and practices with friends or on our own. We don’t even do much in the way of presents. For the past few years we have gone out together and bought things for ourselves. It really takes the pressure off.

For my 2015 birthday we saw the new Star Wars movie, ate pretzels and chocolate lava cake, and I worked crossword puzzles, which is a great treat for me since I love puzzles but don't generally allow myself to waste so much time on them.

But as of tomorrow, January 1, the end of the year celebrations are over and the time will have come to begin anew. I wish you all a wonderful 2016, and I hope it is a year of good fortune, health, and great productivity.
________
*Interesting factoid: my husband is one of six children, three of whom, including himself, have spouses with December 29 birthdays. I don’t know what that means.

A quote for our times

Barbara here, with my last post of 2015. I notice several of my blog mates have already acknowledged the passing of 2015 and the arrival of 2016, and of course the news is full of retrospectives and predictions... The year's top 10 of just about everything, the year's most important stories, etc. Besides giving journalists something to write about, these thumbnail sketches of the year serve to remind us of all that's happened, and highlight some of the crucial ups and downs of the life we have just barrelled through.

Can you stand another small commentary on the year that was? When I reflect back on 2015, it feels like a rollercoaster of wild extremes. Floods and droughts, heat and cold. Appalling terror and heart-warming inspiration, despair and hope.

All across the world, we seemed to battle one climate anomaly after another. Here in Canada alone, last winter the west coast had flowers in February and the east coast stayed in the deep freeze for months. This winter is starting off the opposite. Last weekend in the east, we were playing golf in shorts on green grass, while the west dug out from snowstorms and flooding. Winter only found its way to Ottawa yesterday, although admittedly she's making up for lost time, dumping over a foot of snow in blizzard conditions.

The world of politics was even more extreme. ISIS beheaded innocent aid workers, and our Canadian Prime Minister welcomed refugees arriving off the plane. Angela Merkel welcomed millions of desperate people to Germany, while Donald Trump proposed walls and bans to keep people out.

I am reminded of one of my favourite quotes of all time; "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness... it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair".

I love this quote because it captures the tension and conflict inherent in all human endeavour and in every piece of good fiction. If we write every character and scene with contradictions in mind, however small and subtle, the story will crackle with energy and power.

On the real stage of life, however, occasionally it's nice to have a little break from all the storm and drama. Dickens has aptly described 2015. Let's hope 2016 brings with it more hope, light, and wisdom. And if you want storm and drama, pick up a good crime novel!

Happy New Year to all!

2015: So how did we do?

by Rick Blechta

Like so many I’m sure, I tend to start looking back at the previous 12 months once Christmas slides into the rear view mirror.

Of course I’m paying the most attention to how my year was. Then the circle expands to include my immediate family, then expanded family, and finally friends and acquaintences.

No, I’m not about to subject anyone to a year-end report of how things went. My reflection is more personal, and besides, I don’t share every twist and turn my life may take via social media anyway. In fact, I don’t share much personal stuff at all.

I’m also a believer in setting goals for myself at the beginning of each new year, and that short time between Christmas and the beginning of a new year is the time to reflect on these. One of them last December concerned Type M. My goal was simple: to not miss a single week’s post. I did pretty well on that one. I missed one Tuesday (simply forgot) and I missed one weekend guest post. (I do not have an explanation for that one. I just lost track of my turn.) I also fudged on two or three and posted a few comics in place of my usual deathless prose and scintillating ideas. (Hah!)

Big things can start really small, and noticing details can eventually total up into something really worthy of notice. So it is with obligations. Fulfill them and they can snowball.

No, I’m not patting myself on the back for being so dedicated to our blog. My goal with Type M was something personal for me. I wanted to see if I could carry out my goal. Incidentally, one other New Years Resolution for 2015 was to always hang up my clothes. I did not do quite as well with that little one — but I did do better than I had in the past.

So, for my last post of the year (and please be kind when you notice how late this is being posted), I wish you all to find yourself better off in a year’s time, even if it’s just a tiny bit. The world has always been a dangerous place, and it will remain so. Bad things can happen to good people. And sometimes one’s luck just runs dry when it’s most needed. Ending a year slightly better off than you began it is a worthy goal it seems to me.

Whether you’re an old fan or someone who just stumbled across us, thanks for hanging out on Type M for Murder.

Live long and prosper.

An “edible tipple” for Hogmanay

I have to confess that this is being written well before you are reading it.  Tomorrow the entire extended family descends for Christmas; when they leave, I just have time to change the beds before the next lot of house-guests arrives for New Year (or Hogmanay, as we call it in Scotland.)

As you may imagine, my mind has been running on food, the way a hamster runs on its wheel.   I was really taken with Vicki’s Christmas gift of the recipe for Molasses Spiced Cookies and I thought you might like a New Year gift of a recipe to make your New Year party go with a swing.

 This appeared in The Killer Cookbook, a collection of recipes donated by crime writers like Peter James, Kathy Reichs, Tess Gerritsen, Ian Rankin and Val McDermid to raise funds for a state-of-the-art morgue in Dundee, Scotland.  Here is my contribution.

Lethal Bloody Mary Tomatoes

250 g baby plum tomatoes
200 ml vodka
A few drops Tabasco
1Tbsp sherry
Salt and freshly-ground black pepper.

Score a cross in the bottom of each tomato.  Put in a plastic box, cross uppermost.  Whisk other ingredients and pour over.  Put on lid and leave in fridge for 48 hours.

Drain and bring back to room temperature before serving.


Health Warning:  Just make sure no one's planning to drive!

I wish you all a happy New Year and may 2016 bring you health, happiness and lots of success.

Christmas Day

 

 

Christmas Rhythm

John here.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Lots of good cheer in the Corrigan household: I've been on holiday vacation since Dec. 17, and I'm spending the break doing what I love to do – writing and rewriting.

I'm working hard on the 2017 Peyton Cote book. My primary focus at this point, aside from the twin towers (character and plot) is rhythm. It might sound funny to hear a crime writer say that. You might expect to hear it from a musician (or, perhaps, a poet). But I've always written by ear. Scenes need to ebb and flow between narration and dialogue, the narrative tension dancing between slack and taut.

This means I spend a lot of my "writing" time simply listening. Right now, I'm listening to the opening 25 pages over and again, using text-to-speech software or reading them aloud to myself. Where do I need to break a line of dialogue by inserting attribution to create a pause and in turn emphasize what is being said? Similarly, where can I place a sensory detail to allow the reader to breathe and take in plot details? Questions like these are written here by the editor in me. They aren't ones I'm cognizant of while working. While working, I'm simply listening and reacting.

Ebb and flow. Rhythm means everything to me. This means a lot of complete sentences are slashed to fragments to improve pacing. How do I know when I've used too many fragments? It all comes down to the sound check.

Writing by ear isn't the most time-efficient method. Listening to the same paragraph five, six times in a row crashes the text-to-speech software sometimes. And a scene or chapter is never done until I can listen to it the whole way through without making a change.

Family Christmas Card

No, not fast – ebb and flow takes time. But, hopefully, efficient.

Happy holidays!

Paint the Town Launched

ARC here. My full name is Advance Reader Copy, but I prefer ARC. It has a special ring to it, you know. Like Cher and Madonna. Sybil, my writer, is off doing last minute Christmas shopping so she left me in charge. It’s a lot of responsibility, but I can handle it.

Here I am celebrating the release of Paint the Town Dead at Disneyland I’ve got my Micky years, mint julep and Mickey-shaped beignets. Can’t get better than that.

Oh, that’s right. I’m supposed to be posting photos of the Paint the Town Dead book launch party at Mystery Ink in Huntington Beach, CA. Here’s my writer with our hostess, Debbie Mitsch. I didn’t get into this picture. Only the “official” book did. Just because I have two teeny-tiny mistakes.

Here I am with my writer as she reads a portion of the book from me. She’s not very happy about the picture of her, but I look cute, don’t I?

Here’s our spread: mini-quiches, wine, and chocolate cake that was to die for.

Everyone who attended got one of these nifty 3-D Holiday glasses that turn your tree lights into all kinds of things like snowmen, reindeer, stars... Here are the reindeer ones.

People seemed to have fun.

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

But what is it you REALLY do?

I learned a long time ago — and considering my first novel came out in 1992, that is a long time ago — that any artistic endeavour, whether writing, painting, sculpture, music, is treated by many as a hobby or past time, not something you pursue full-time and certainly not something you spend your whole life doing — unless they’ve heard of you. For writers, even consistently making the bestseller list doesn’t ensure that the majority of the population will have heard of you. I have a few friends who are very successful authors who make in the six figures every year, and from the first time I mentioned one to an acquaintance who does read (just not in that genre), their response was to look puzzled and respond, “Who?”

About the only author you can pretty sure that most have heard of (outside of the Dickens’s and Shakespeare’s of the world) is Stephen King, odd as that may sound. And please notice that I used the phrase “heard of”. Probe a little deeper and you’ll find most have never read him or could even name one of his novels. I know because I’ve asked.

When I tell someone I’m a musician or writer, I can almost feel their pat on my hat. “Oh, that’s nice,” said in a rather condescending tone. “Have you had anything published?” or “Do you ever play in public or just with your friends?” Another response is often, “That is just so nice to be able to pursue your dreams.” Another favourite is, “But can you actually make a living at that?”

To hide the bit of hurt I feel at either type of response, I usually make light of it, but I also either mention when my next book is being released or where I’m performing next. The usual rejoinder is either (for music), “I should come out and hear you sometime” (which means never) or (for writing), “Would I like your books?” Both mean they’ll no doubt forget the conversation in the next five minutes.

If it sounds like I’m bitter — I’m not. I accept it now as a fact of life. If someone truly appears interested, I’ll tell them a bit more, but I’ll keep it brief. I have business cards for both endeavours, and I may hand them one. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised when I find out they did go out and buy one of my books, or they show up at a gig. If they like what they read or hear, I’ll often get this question: “How come I’ve never heard of you?”

How do you answer that one in under an hour?

Getting back to my famous friends, I’ve discussed this with two of them. What has me smiling now is that they have the exact same story. Now, when they do tell about themselves, they certainly have the “wow factor” going for them when all is revealed, but you can be sure that a lot of people they meet socially have no idea who they are until they do say something like, “I had a movie made about one of my novels”, or “there’s a series based on my series of books”.

What I’m trying to say is that this is all a fact of life, and if you’re an artist you’d better learn to live with it or you’ll wind up being unhappy, even bitter, and that’s really no good. The best revenge is to take solace in knowing that you’ve accomplished something that few people do. In the case of books, they will outlive you. Imagine how cool it is that someone two hundred years in the future may discover your writing and imagines what it would have been like to do something like this or to have met you.

That’s lasting fame — as well as a nice spot of revenge!

Holiday Reading

by Vicki Delany

I rarely read a book twice.  I keep my favourites on hand, always expecting to want to re-read them some day, but that day never seems to arrive. There’s always something shiny and new to attract my attention.

I’ve probably read the Lord of the Rings about twenty times. The last time was when the Fellowship of the Ring movie came out, and I wanted to refresh my memory (and look for similarities and differences, of course).  But now, I think I’m done with LOTR and won’t read it again. 

One of my favourite books is An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears. I’d read it twice, and recommended it to my book club, so read it a third time, again to refresh my memory.  It’s so incredibly nuanced, that it does have to be read several times to get the full meaning, as the layers are slowly peeled away. Same for another one of Pears’ books, Dream of Scipio. Also a novel I’ve enjoyed rereading.

That’s about it. My list of books to read more than once.

Oh, there is another exception.

Every Christmas I try to at least read a few of the stories in Holmes for the Holidays, and More Holmes for the Holidays.  The books are anthologies, all the stories have something to do with Sherlock Holmes and/or Dr. Watson and are set in the holiday season.  What could be better?

Let me wish you and yours a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year. As for me, I have reading to do. The game is afoot!

"Oh, the Places You’ll Go" by Guest Blogger Kate Flora

Hi, everyone. John Here. It's a pleasure to introduce you to Kate Flora, whom I met in May at the Maine Literary Awards banquet (where she beat me!). I think you'll enjoy her post and her work.

A former assistant attorney general for the State of Maine, Kate is a founder of the New England Clam Bake Conference. Her books include seven “strong woman” Thea Kozak mysteries. The gritty police procedurals in her star-reviewed Joe Burgess series have twice won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Her first true crime, Finding Amy, was nominated for an Edgar. Her most recent true crime, Death Dealer, was an Anthony and Agatha finalist and won the Public Safety Writers Association 2015 award for nonfiction. Flora has also published 16 crime stories in various anthologies.

_________________

Oh, the Places You’ll Go

— by Kate Flora

I’m riding on a four-wheeler—my first time on such a vehicle—driving down the streets of Miramichi, New Brunswick and heading into the Canadian woods. This is what I get for asking to see the spot where murder victim Maria Tanasichuk’s body was found by Maine game wardens with trained cadaver dogs. The detective who set this up is granting my request to see the murder site; he is also testing me to see how brave I am. This is not an aspect of writing that I envisioned years ago, on a Bermuda beach, thinking up the plot for my first mystery.

But that’s the thing about crime writing: we write for an audience that is pretty sophisticated. We often go to great lengths to do our research and get the facts right.

I write a police procedural series set in Portland, Maine, and writing police procedurals has led me into the world of true crime. As part of writing “cop world” better, I’ve taken a self-defense class as my local police department, and a citizen’s police academy in a neighboring city. On the night that we, the citizens, got to play cops and the cops played bad guys, I got out of my cruiser to do a traffic stop, caught my nightstick on the door handle, and slammed my nose into the glass with the whole class watching. By the time I got to the bad guys, I was ready to crawl in a hole and die. And that was before the cop who was playing bad guy refused to comply with my order to shut off the car and produce his license, remarking, “Oh, look at the girl policeman. Isn’t she cute?” In those brief moments, I learned a great deal about being a rookie cop.

So far, I’ve resisted asking my husband to put me in the trunk of his car and drive me around, but I have asked my local police chief to arrest me. I’ve gone on a stakeout and spotted the bad guys. I’ve had my amateur female detective head for her basement with a flashlight and spent the better part of a day doing research on just what kind of a flashlight her police officer husband would buy for her. I’ve had the amazing good fortune to attend Lee Lofland’s brainchild, The Writers Police Academy—three great days of training for writers in the world of public safety. http://www.writerspoliceacademy.com

It’s paying off. I’ve had cops write and say I’m doing it well, noting that I’m including the small things that actually happen in their lives. It also makes the writing harder. When I started my fifth Joe Burgess, I wanted to have cops led into a trap and shot by a sniper. Before I was a full paragraph into the book, I was already sending out my first “Author needs help” e-mail, asking what kind of gun and ammunition the shooter would use.

There’s a line in an old song that goes, “Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then,” and sometimes that is true. The more I learn, the more I know what I don’t know. On the bright side, that means I’m off on another research adventure.

Hair Today Gone Tomorrow

A few weeks ago, I was fed up with my hair. When it gets long enough the natural curl falls out and then I have to "do something" with it. Since I happened to be sitting in a hair salon looking in the mirror when I realized I was tired of trying to duplicate what my hair stylist did at home, I said, "Let's cut it really short." He did while I watched my hair falling to the tile floor and wondered if I had made a mistake. This was not the first time I had gone for really short -- as in about an inch back and sides and only a bit more on top. I have done it in the summer, I have done it in the winter. And every time I do it, I think "What am I doing? Good grief, I'll have to put on lipstick and earrings so it looks like I'm at least "trying" (i.e., to be attractive). When I was about twenty years younger, I didn't have to try so hard and my short cut always went over well. Now, it just displays the gray at my temples. So this time, before we cut, I asked if we could add highlights. In theory, this distracts from any gray that is prone to resist coloring and brightens ones appearance. My hairstylist and the woman in the next chair and her hairstylist all assured me that it did. And looking in the mirror, I was pleased at having gotten a little crazy with my color this time around. Next time, I'm going to do purple instead of red. I have decided that if I can't beat the gray which is always back at my temples within days of coloring, that I'm going to have fun. Actually, gray is "in" right now. Young women are dying their hair gray. But if I did, people would just assume it was natural.

So what does this have to do with writing? Well, if you read my last post about feet, you know that I said I'd write about heads next time. I am in the process of doing some research on how mystery writers handle dress and appearance in their books. I've been thinking about those concise descriptions that some writers can do so well. The shoes on the feet, the hat on the head that immediately brings a character to life. Of course, there are the clothes -- or lack of them -- between feet and head. And saying that a character has short hair or no hair or was wearing a baseball cap may leave the reader with the wrong mental image. A reader who wears her hair to her shoulders may think of "short hair" as a chin-length bob. Another reader who is losing his hair may imagine a character with "no hair" has gone bald rather than shaved his head. A baseball cap might declare allegiance to a sports team, been purchased from a street stand to keep the sun off, have a company logo or refer to the wearer's profession or hobby, might be worn pulled down low over the eyes or turned backward. The cap might be turned backward because the wearer, clad in white overalls, is painting a wall in her house. A baseball cap might be accompanied by sagging pants, running togs, or white dress with open collar (really cool CEO). Or it might be worn awkwardly by a politician in a suit and tie.

Men are much less likely to wear hats these days than in the past. We most often see hats on male celebrities who are making a style statement as they walk the red carpet or appearing on a TV show like "The Voice" (e.g., celebrity judge Pharrell Williams who likes hats). But in crime films and mystery/detective novels, hats have been an important accessory. Sherlock Holmes has his deerstalker. Hercule Poirot has his bowler. A hat was indispensable to James Cagney's look as a Prohibition-era gangster in The Public Enemy. Even as he staggers along in the pouring rain after being shot and finally falls down in the street, his hat stays firmly on his head. And no one wore a fedora like Humphrey Bogart. Add trench coat in Casablanca, and we have iconic movie style.

I plucked a couple of books off my shelf as I was writing this post. In Ceremony (1982), featuring Robert B. Parker's Boston PI, Spenser tells us that Hawk, his African American side kick, has attracted attention outside the Copley Plaza Hotel. Hawk is 6'2" and he is "wearing a glistening black leather jacket and skintight leather jeans." Spenser concludes his description of the reactions of those keeping their distance as they pass with this observation, "He wore no hat and his smooth black head was as shiny as his jacket and [black cowboy] boots." Of course, if Hawk had been wearing a hat, he might have looked even more intimidating to passers-by. And one wonders what hat, the always sartorially-aware Hawk, might have worn with a leather jacket, tight jeans, and cowboy boots. In Michael Connelly's Void Moon (2000), his protagonist, Cassie Black, a beautiful ex-con, is introduced to a man  named Lankford at a car dealership. The man, who is looking at "the silver Carrera with the whale tail spoiler," is wearing "a porkpie hat". A few paragraphs later, Cassie "turned her attention to Lankford. He was neat and well dressed in a set of retro clothes that went with the hat."

I am fascinated by hats and hair and shapes of heads. Some people can wear hats, and others would do better not to try. I grew up wanting to wear hats with the style and flair of church-going women on Sunday morning. I have been in awe of those hat-wearing women at the Kentucky Derby -- or, occasionally, hat wearers at Malice Domestic, the mystery conference. But if I were writing myself as a character in one of my books, I would leave my head hatless. And somehow I would work in the photos of my changing hair over the years that mark both era and mood and sometimes desperation -- from Afro to straight from long to short. Always worn "natural" now. If I were a character walking into the party I once attended after being caught in the rain, my hair would be clinging to my head when I arrived and a puff of curls and waves after I had retreated to the bathroom to try to dry it.

Hats on, hats off, head bald or covered with hair or wig. From "hat honor" (hat removed to show deference) that was a matter of theology for the early Quakers to hat-making that might have affected the "Mad Hatter" to a baseball cap worn in a classroom in defiance of a dress code or while holding up a liquor store, hats have been an accessory worth thinking about. So has the hair or lack of it underneath. Something to think about as we decide if a character will wear a black hat or a white one, throw his "hat into the ring" or depart with "hat in hand."

For the love of books

Barbara here. Chanukah is over (except for the Fradkins, who operate in our own weird universe and will celebrate it together on December 30) but there are still nine days before Christmas, so it's time to talk about the incredible gift of books.

I grew up surrounded by books. My father was a philosophy professor at McGill and an incurable book addict. Being a philosopher, he was inclined to be oblivious to the exigencies of daily life, and so even when the family budget could barely afford oatmeal, he bought books. Not as articles of decor or status to be displayed by the fireplace, but for the richness they contained. Knowledge about the origins of the universe, tales of adventure and peril, insight into the lives of great historical figures...

He was in love with knowledge, as the word philosophy suggests. Our house had bookcases everywhere, and when he ran out of room, he built another one. Usually somewhat rickety and rustic, because he was less handy with a hammer than he was with a pen. His study was lined on all four walls with books, and there was even a bookcase in his clothes cupboard. The minute you walked in the front door, you ran into a wall of books lining the front hall.

As a child, I loved to peruse these shelves, pulling out books at random and leafing through them to see what captured my interest. The great Russian novelists, Marcel Proulx, Faulkner, Shakespeare, Toynbee, Winston Churchill, Bertrand Russell... I could be thrilled, intrigued, informed, entertained, sometimes bored, but there was always enough discovery at my fingertips to keep me coming back. I'm not sure how much I got out of Solzhenitzyn at the age of ten, but the images of the gulag have stuck with me to this day.

Both my parents were committed to books, to words and storytelling. My father told us bedtime stories about his childhood in Newfoundland, and my mother read my sister and me novels that were above our own reading level. The whole Anne of Green Gables series became an ongoing nightly drama that spanned months. On Sunday evenings, I recall we had a poetry hour in which each of us picked a poem from the poetry collections in the house, recited it, and talked about it. I recall loving the musical sound of the words tumbling through the air, and the laughter at some of the sillier poems.

This love of books has carried into our adult lives. I'm happy that after years of trying to select presents for our extended family get-together, we have settled on a book exchange. Each of us buys a book, wraps it without naming a recipient, and puts it under the tree. When we gather to unwrap the presents, each of us in turn selects a book. Others are free to steal it or trade theirs for it instead of selecting a new one, and in this fashion, everyone gets a book that they find intriguing, even if outside their normal reading habit. It fills the gift opening time with laughter, exclamations, and even groans.

All this for roughly $20 a person.

In this frantic lead-up to Christmas, as each of us struggles to figure out what to buy and how to afford it, think of books! They are so much more than an app on a tablet or a little block of paper. They are an invitation into a new world, of fantasy, mystery, history, or scientific discovery... They provoke thought and discussion, enrich the soul as well as the brain, and stimulate the powers of concentration and imagination far more than TV and video games can never do. And they don't break the budget. They are by far the best educational aide you can provide for your children. A lifelong habit of reading books is a life-long habit in learning. And thinking.

Books don't break, don't grow obsolete, don't invoke envy in the schoolyard, and don't clutter up the landfills. If you have too many books (how can you have too many books!), donate them to the local library, thrift store, women's shelter, or fundraising book exchange. It's a gift that punches well above its weight. And cost.

You gotta love it.

This crazy language called English

by Rick Blechta

I ran across an absolutely fascinating article a couple of weeks ago. It deals with (in a preliminary way) why English is such a bizarre language. It’s started off endless discussions between my wife and myself about how someone who doesn’t speak English could possibly learn all the ins and outs of not only how it’s spoken but how things like spelling are absolutely ridiculous — when viewed from “the outside”. Frankly, I don’t know how anyone can cope learning English. Its vagaries would drive me nuts.

Okay. So you need to read the article first. Here’s the link: https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english-so-weirdly-different-from-other-languages.

Pretty fascinating, no? (I do take exception to the author referring to Scandinavians as “Scandies”, though. It seems entirely unnecessary in what is otherwise a scholarly article.)

It certainly answers a number of questions and provides some fascinating clarifications on the origins of things that I’d always considered nonsense, like “hickory, dickory, dock”. Never thought about that much, did you? I certainly didn’t. But now that its meaning has become clear, the context of the nursery rhyme really makes a lot more sense.

Which brings me to the actual topic of this post: the more we know about something and understand context, the more fascinating it becomes.

In my novels, I decided when I began writing that I could use my musical background to make my books more interesting. To many, the music world (in all its permutations) is fascinating. If you happen to be a musician, that background is very relate-able. To those who don’t know much about music, it can be instructive, too, even exotic. (The real trick is to not overuse it or risk having the musical stuff distract readers from the plot of the novel.)

Anyway, to a writer, an article like the one I shared with you today can be very instructive because we deal with English in our work. Every word we write has to be analyzed, every clause must prove its worth and each sentence needs to help tell our story in a graceful and transparent way, or be discarded.

Knowing more about the origins of our language can only help with those things.

Getting back to “hickory, dickory, dock”, I wonder why I never even considered that it might mean something more than nonsense.

Time to become more curious!

There's Nothing Like a Nice Cup of Tea

Our most recent import from America, Black Friday, has proved not to be an unqualified success.  Last year it resulted in near-riots, punch-ups and the police called to stores as everyone embarked on an orgy of greed.

This year, not so much.  I'm happy to say that this year it's the stores who are nursing their wounds, having reduced their prices without increasing their footfall by the hoped-for amount as, revolted by last year's scenes, people stayed at home.  My bet is that next year it will have disappeared.

The response of the Booksellers Association to Black Friday, though, was very well received and let's hope that it does become a fixture in the calendar.  They have instigated Civilised Saturday, when independent bookshops laid on treats for their customers, offering 'a relaxed atmosphere, great books and no panic.'  And afternoon tea with crustless sandwiches and possibly even a glass of fizz.

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It's all very British.  Never mind 'Greed is good.'  We'll settle for 'Nothing like a nice cup of tea' - or even a glass of Prosecco - and a good book