The case of the vanishing words

Sometimes I think technology is out to get me.

I don't mean in a Skynet, come-with-me-if-you-want-to-live way, but there are occasions when I think there's been a meeting called by my devices in which the agenda is this:

• 1. Minutes of the last meeting on how we can annoy Douglas.

• 2. New ways forward on how we can annoy Douglas.

• 3. Any other competent business (on how we can annoy Douglas).

Take my cell phone - please take my cell phone!

Here in dear old Blighty we call it a mobile, which does often cause confusion when I hear parents talking about their child being fascinated by a mobile. It takes me a beat to realise they are referring to one of those hanging contraptions that rotate and not that their new born is thumbing LOLs on social media. 

On the other hand, cell phone makes me think of tattooed felons making illicit calls from one of Her Majesty's penal establishments.

Anyway, my device has been proving unreliable of late. Calls either don't connect or when I answer an incoming call the other party can't hear me. It's also not alerting me to some texts for some reason. I don't mind when it's the usual spam but there are some people that I do really want to hear from and when I find one has arrived unanounced, and therefore unseen, it does annoy me.

Then there's my PC. It has been as slow as a week in the jail (without a cell phone). I've cleaned and dumped and even polished but it remains sluggish. Facebook in particular takes an age to load. And I often type faster than the technology can handle - at least that's how it seems - and it hangs there as if it's having a meeting on the shop floor to discuss the excess workload. My music apps can suddenly stop. And the built-in disc player is so useless - working only when it feels like it - that it should run for public office.

But more importantly, last weekend, the PC failed to save three thousand words of the book I'm writing.

I was nearing the end of the first complete draft of a new Rebecca Connolly and the words were flowing. I was in the zone, baby!

I did everything I was supposed to do and more. Auto-save was enabled. The text was also manually saved whenever I paused for coffee, functions of a personal nature or just for breath. It was saved to the PC, to an external hard drive and a thumb drive. I did all that because there had been a few minor issues and I wasn't taking chances.

I then took Mickey up the braes for a walk. It was a lovely day and I was thoroughly pleased with myself.

That's Mickey having a rest during the walk. 

Anyway, my plan was to complete the first draft when I got home. I was filled with confidence, unusually for this particular book because it has proved troublesome (Tip: Never move house when in the middle of writing a novel.)

But when I reopened the file I discovered that everything I had done that day was gone. Vanished into the ether. Not present on this plane. Or more importantly, nowhere on my computer.

It was a mystery so I consulted a friend whose knowledge of such matters I rely on with such regularity I'm surprised he doesn't insist on a retainer. But he could neither find the missing words nor explain why this had happened. It might be an issue with my software or my hardware. Or both.

And how did I feel?

Well, let's say I was somewhat vexed and there was some industrial language.

Naturally, much like the angler and the one that got away, I have convinced myself that those 3,000 words were the best I have ever written and even though the next day I churned out 4.5k to complete the draft they were not nearly as good. (Saved, incidentally, as above but also copied and pasted into an email. I was taking no chances.)

Then came the next phase in my writing process - printing it all up. I like to go through the words the old-fashioned way, with a pen, because I firmly believe that you see more on the printed page than you do on screen. Or, at least, I do.

However, that means I have to engage in a struggle with my printer, which does often seem to have a mind of its own. Maybe Skynet was involved after all. 

Before I can print anything, we have to engage in the old wireless set up two step. It resolutely refuses to connect until I make obeisance to it, telling it that it's the best, wisest, most beautiful printer in the whole wide world and if it would just please print up these 300-odd pages I'd be very grateful. It grants me the boon - and then runs out of ink. Having forseen such an eventuality, I produced a brand new cartridge, giving the machine a grin that said "I have you now." 

But my triumph turned to tragedy when I realised that I had somehow engineered to buy a colour ink cartridge and not a black one. Shamefaced, I had to go back to the shop and buy another.

Later, someone told me I could have printed it up anyway using the colour cartridge.

Cue more vexation and industrial language. 

Anyway, the pages were eventually printed - the ink cartidge held out to the very end but only just - and I have been going through them for the past few days with said pen.

The upshot of all this is that I believe I'll have to invest in a new phone and computer, and because I am toying with the idea of buying an Apple Mac I may have to consider a life of actual crime to pay for it.

As to the mystery of the missing words, that must be consigned to my Giant Rat of Sumatra file, not because the world is not ready but because I'll never get to the bottom of it. 

Backtracking

What a strange week. I'm picking up on the rather dismal tone Rick took in his post. My writing (or lack of writing) wasn't effected, but it's been one stumbling block after another. Little things that should have gone smoothly required unnecessary intervention on my part. 

For instance, my pharmacist delayed a prescription because he was sure I would want a 90 day supply rather than 30. Nope. Fill as directed.

Repeated trip to the pharmacy to pick up the medication. Unnecessary.

 The grocery store forgot to pack the Papyrus birthday card I had purchased. It was a fancy one, too. Just right. I had to make a special trip back to the store to pick it up from customer service. Now it will be sent late. 

Repeated trip to the grocery store. Unnecessary. 

UPS misdelivered my order to the wrong house. It was a file cabinet. No small thing. Luckily I have a hand dolly. I hauled it home, grumbling all the way. The house numbers in my little enclave are quite large and legible, so I didn't understand how he could have gotten this wrong.

Repeated trip to the neighbors. Unnecessary.

My favorite conference, Western Writers of America, started Wednesday. It's at Loveland, just 16 miles from my home. Naturally I'm not staying at the hotel, but have ended up running back and forth. I participated in a Sisters In Crime interview the morning the conference began, had a medical appointment in the afternoon, and flew down I-25 to get to the registration desk in time to pick up my material.

The climax will be the Spur banquet Saturday night. My good friends, Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear, will receive the Wister award, in recognition of a lifetime of contributions. 

We had an excellent panel this afternoon, but I had a hard time hearing all the conversations because a number of persons in the audience spoke from the floor and added their comments. The topic was "Who Owns History?" Talk about a heated discussion! I'll go into the issues involved later. 

I intended to make this a super blog with pictures from the conference, but I haven't taken very many. I will get to it tomorrow. We have will have a busy day with a number of panels. 

There were unexpected problems with the food at the hotel. There wasn't any. No internal cafe. None. No dining room and no coffee shop, no room service, and no fast food within walking distance. 

Repeated trips to cafes. Unnecessary.

But oh the joy of seeing old friends! I will put up with any number of strange weeks for the privilege of seeing Irene and Bob Brown year after year. Irene has written many wonderful books for both children and adults. I always come away from this conference inspired to be more productive. 

So here's to conferences and the psychological boost they provide. .  

CCWC 2021 Recap

 

I spent last Saturday attending the California Crime Writers Conference - Pandemic Edition. CCWC is a joint effort of the Los Angeles Chapter of Sisters in Crime and the SoCal chapter of Mystery Writers of America. It’s held every other year and is usually a two day event. The pandemic turned this year’s into a one-day virtual event via Zoom. All of the presentations were recorded except for one. They should be available on the ccwconference.org website sometime in the next few weeks.

Past conferences were two-day events with around 200 attendees. In a normal year, there are 4 panels going at a time. I recapped the 2017 Conference here on Type M. You can read about it here to get a sense of what a normal year looks like.

Even though we couldn’t get together in person, the virtual event was still a lot of fun. There was a variety of things, all interesting in their own ways. We had a fifteen minute break between events.

The first panel at 9 a.m. was The Exquisite Joy of Finding Out: How to Research Your Novel. SinC/LA President Anne Louise Bannon moderated. Panelists were Anne Perry, Jeffery Deaver, Naomi Hirahara and S.A. Crosby. Panelists talked about researching for both contemporary and historical stories. YouTube was mentioned, which I admit I’ve gotten a lot of useful information from. Newspapers.com was mentioned for online access to newspapers from the 1700s to 2000s. Jeffery Deaver also mentioned he used Natural Reader to read chapters of his WIP to him. I'm going to check this one out myself.

The next panel was Some Like It Hot: Adding Romance and Sex to Your Mysteries. Paula Bernstein moderated with Victoria Thompson, Deborah Crombie, Toby Neal and Pamela Samuels Young as panelists. I missed about 5 minutes of this one because my laptop decided it wanted to reboot itself during it.

Then came Police Procedurals 2021: Social Justice and the Pandemic. SoCal MWA President Jessica Kaye moderated with panelists Rachel Howzell Hall, Faye Snowden, Ausma Khan and Isabella Maldonado.

Next was the presentation that I was most interested in (and the only one that was not recorded): Identification of the Buckskin Girl: Forensic Genealogy and Cold Case Resolution presented by Elizabeth A. Murray. She is a forensic anthropologist and college professor. You may know her name from several books she’s written or the two Great Courses series she’s done: Trails of Evidence and Forensic History. 

In this presentation she talked about how they identified a body found in 1981 many years later through the use of genetic genealogy. I’m used to hearing about using this method to identify perpetrators of crimes, but this was a nice reminder that it can also be used to identify victims. In 1981, they had fingerprints, a photo of the face of the deceased, dental charts and autopsy results. Over the years, efforts had been made to identify her, even using palynology (analysis of pollen) to see if they could link her to a specific area. It was a very interesting presentation on how they finally identified her 37 years later.

The last presentation was Publishing in a Pandemic: A Glimpse of the Future Opportunities & Challenges with Jane Friedman. Jane Friedman talked about the state of the publishing world. How books sales dramatically increased during the pandemic and so many other things. She also talked about Kindle Vella, a way to publish serialized stories. It’s going live for readers in the summer. They don't take rights for this, but an author can't use Vella to publish a work that has been published as a book. This is one I hadn't heard about.

That’s my very short recap of the conference. The videos should be available for you to view soon. This year’s conference was fun, but I’m looking forward to an in-person conference next time around in 2023.

Trepidation

By Rick Blechta

Well, my wife and I got our second vaccination last week — which is the reason I missed my Tuesday spot here — so life should be all rosy now, shouldn’t it? Pre-pandemic freedom should be beckoning at every turn, right?

Somehow it isn’t.

Maybe something has changed in me due to what we’ve been through over the past year-and-a-half. I don’t feel any less free, and since getting the second vaccination, I’ve been having really bad dreams. You know, the kind where you’re supposed to be someplace and you just can’t get there, or your house is crumbling around you and you can’t do anything to stop it.

As for writing, I had to throw out a whole chapter the other day because I got off on this tangent that seemed too grim, too filled with angst to be included in my story. I don’t want it to go there.

It’s troubling and I’m hoping that this is just temporary. Maybe my subconscious is worried about our new reality or possibly this is all due to my concern about those near and dear to me who haven’t yet been fully vaccinated. 

To all of you out there: are you experiencing the same sort of thing? If you’re an ink-stained wretch like me, are you having issues with your plots unexpectedly taking dark turns?

And if you have experienced this, did you eventually snap out of it?

Writing in Paradise...Usually

 I’ve enjoyed some of the blogs here on Type M that detail locations where our fellow bloggers like to write and some of their writing habits.  As many of you know, I live on the coast of North Carolina.  We have a house on Bogue Banks Island, which is a barrier island south of the Outer Banks.

It sounds exotic—saying I live on an island.  It’s about twenty-one miles long and at its narrowest point, you can see both the ocean on one side of the island and Bogue Sound on the other. It’s a vacation destination with thousands of vacation homes, about ten hotels, and fabulous restaurants, boutique shops, and stores where you can buy anything from swimming suits to fishing tackle. 

In the “off season”, late autumn, winter, and early spring, it’s very quiet here.  There are times you can walk the beach and not see another soul.  That’s when I enjoy this island the most.  

But this is June and while it’s not yet officially summer, we are inundated with tourists.  The restaurants all have long lines, the grocery stores are overcrowded, and the roads are clogged with people trying to find their way around. 

I’m not complaining because this is when businesses here on the coast make their money.  Our county has a year-round population of slightly less than seventy-thousand people.  During the “season”, that grows to over two-hundred and fifty thousand people.  It can put a strain on infrastructure and that includes the internet.

Think of it as a pipeline from one end of the island to the other.  During the “off season” demand isn’t particularly stressful.  But when we have two-hundred thousand people out here, all downloading Netflix or playing World of Warcraft, that internet pipeline clogs up quickly.

Case in point, my publisher has re-released my first book Random Road. Our publicist arranged to have a Zoom interview with me and Barbara Peters from the Poisoned Pen Bookstore.  Full disclosure, Barbara has been one of the editors on all of my Geneva Chase mysteries.  

She told me that the interview would go anywhere from a half-hour to an hour, depending on how well it went.  

It was awful.

The internet kept dropping the Zoom connection.  She’d ask a question or make a commentary to which I’d start to answer and about halfway through, my screen would freeze.  The only way to get back in was to start the process over…every damned time.  Once, when I popped back onto the interview, I held up a glass of wine and said, “I’m turning this into a drinking game.  Every time I drop out, I take a drink.”

Barbara grinned at me, held up her own glass of wine and said, “Way ahead of you, kiddo.”

Unfortunately, the connection did not get any better.  Needless to say, the interview was over at a half hour.  Blessedly.

But all in all, this is a lovely place to work.  My home office has a window overlooking our front lawn. If I feel like a stroll, the ocean is a few minutes from the house.  

And now, I must get back to my WIP.  I have a July first deadline for my fifth adventure with Geneva Chase, and yet again, I’m putting the poor woman through hell. 

Waking Early and Writing More?

 I am normally not a fan of summer mornings. They come too soon and they are too bright. For years, I have been closing the blinds and the curtains and trying to sleep in. But this year, I have been sleeping in a bedroom that receives early morning light because that is the larger of the two bedrooms in my house and that was where I set up his portable enclosure with his bed inside when my new puppy, then not yet three months old, arrived from Maryland. He is now seven months old and a good sleeper. But he likes to know where I am before he goes to bed. So does Penelope, the cat from "down South," who joined us a couple of months ago.

Penelope now strolls in and claims the foot of my bed as soon as she sees where Fergus and I are headed. 

Fergus is an early riser. He wakes up at around 6:30 am most mornings. This means I wake up, too. Having a puppy has forced me to change my sleep patterns. I believe I am still a "night owl" but now I am up and outside when the air is still so fresh that Fergus sits there sniffing. We hear the doves cooing. And despite myself I have found myself enjoying being awake -- even feeling smug and virtuous because I have started the day when some people are hitting their snooze button. Last night, I even anticipated being up early by heading to bed at a little after eleven. 

Being up early has also changed my writing habits. Instead of staggering to my desk to write, I am sitting down wide-awake after rising early and taking Fergus to doggie daycare. Since I need to pick him up by 6 pm, I am much more focused. I know that I need to get as much done as possible because when he gets home, he may still be full of energy and zooming through the house. I am falling into the habit of taking him for a walk after daycare. This makes for a calmer evening.  

Having no children, I am experiencing that discipline that writers with children talk about needing if they are to get anything done. This is a new experience for me because I have always been haphazard. I don't set word quotas. I have never written every day. I have thought through my plots and set down to write in long chunks of time. With Harry, my lovely Maine Coon, no animal-related adjustments were necessary. Harry was my night-owl pal, who enjoyed sleeping in as much as I did. 

But dear Harry is gone, and I am now in another animal universe. Not to say that I don't love Fergus and Penelope, but I didn't anticipate how much their sleeping habits would affect mine. Nor did I give a lot of thought to how much my writing habits would change of necessity. 

It is possible that having to structure my summer days in this new way will make me more productive. I'll let you know this September. 

Best laid plans

 A writer's day is always fragmented. Time spent procrastinating on social media and more spent figuring out how to promote on social media, time spent staring into space supposedly thinking where on earth the work in progress should go next, time spent responding to the latest demand from the publisher related to another book in final proofs (this latest a "dear reader" letter to accompany the ARCs), time writing this bi-weekly blog, and time reading another author's manuscript for a blurb. If I'm lucky, I have time to walk the dogs and talk to my friends and family.

Don't you love it when people ask "How's retirement?"

So this week started off with great intentions to get all of the above done, especially the things with deadlines. I had arrived at the cottage in late afternoon, planning to cook two lovely little beef tenderloins for myself and my sister, who was joining me for the week. Then we would sit on the dock to enjoy the sunset over the lake, share some wine, and then I would retire inside to continue reading the blurb book. 

I had the table set and the food all prepped, and was down on the dock having a swim and enjoying a beer while waiting for my sister to arrive, when my dog Kenzie took off up the hill, barking furiously. By the time I got to him, he was in full tussle with a porcupine. Those of you with dogs know that the dog almost never wins. But my dog was determined, and by the time I had got him corralled and leashed, he had probably 100 quills or more in his snout and face.

This can mean a very expensive and time-consuming trip to the Kingston emergency vet hospital an hour away, which I've done with previous dogs and wanted to avoid. So I got him up on the dining table and spent some time trying to pull them out with pliers. It took a while and an increasingly frantic dog to realize this was never going to work. So I phoned the vet to alert them, phoned my sister to tell her to fend for herself when she arrived, and piled the dog into the car. I had to tie him to the back seat to prevent him climbing in front and scratching me.

The sunset, what I could see of it from the car, was spectacular. Possible the most beautiful of the summer so far. I stopped to take this photo, which really doesn't do it justice. The sky was on fire.

An hour and a half later, after some confusion about the hospital's location, I was waiting in my car in line to be seen. Kenzie was apparently the third "quill dog" the vet was seeing that night.  So we had another hour and a half wait and they finally took him in at 11:30 pm. I had meanwhile grabbed a take-out fast food burrito, while thinking fondly of the steak I had planned. 

The vet returned my de-quilled, slightly wobbly dog to me at 12:30 am and we began our return trip to the cottage along the dark and deserted highway. I arrived at 1:30 am, tried to persuade the dog to take his pain med with a little food (he was having none of it) and finally stumbled into bed.

Not quite the day I had planned. And all those things on my to-do list are still there, except this blog, which is thankfully done!

Self promotion, buttock-clenching and shark jumping

Last week, bound proofs of my latest title began to head into the wild. The actual book isn't hitting the stands until August here in the UK but obviously both the publishers and I want to generate what heat we can both ahead of time and around publication. There is so much reading matter out there that I believe we have to scream, scratch and scramble to get even a little attention.

In a display of shameless self-promotion, here is the advance proof alongside its series running mates.

Naturally, I am nervous. I always am when a book leaves the confines of my mind and the fingers of my editors. What readers think really matters - will it be met favourably or will it be dismissed as a waste of paper and ink?

Time will tell.

What I will say is that I am proud of it. I have done the very best I could. I did what I set out to do, told the story I wanted, developed Rebecca Connolly's character the way I wanted.

That doesn't mean everyone will agree.

Nobody can predict how their book will be received. There are authors who are super confident,  so certain that they have written an absolute belter that they don't lose a moment's sleep. There are, naturally, authors who are so successful and beloved that they could release their groceries list and be met with heaps of praise and prizes. And groceries, probably.

Then there are authors like me who still wait for someone to say that it was all a mistake, that they never meant to give you a contract, let alone money, which they want back, by the way. 

When I say this to friends they laugh - oh, how they mock - and say I've never produced a book yet that was really badly received. I've had some bad reviews, obviously, and poor little Janus Run never did find its feet but overall I've been very lucky. 

The fact is, we are all capable of producing a stinker.

In recent months I have read three books by authors whose work I not only respect but also covet. Frankly, I wish I was as good as them. I'm not going to name them but let me say that none of them are Scottish, so any of my friends reading this needn't look at each other and wonder.

As I say, these are three of my favourite writers. One of the books was well up to standard. Tight, pacy, enthralling. It wasn't simply enjoyable, it was a book to look forward to getting back to. Yeah, it was that good.

The other two?

Well...

One, as they say, jumped the shark completely. In fact, had there been a shark in there for characters to hurdle it might have been more interesting. In my view, the first three quarters of it could have been almost completely ditched, the information delivered in two, maybe three, chapters. The final quarter was, frankly, ludicrous.

The other was too long. Way too long. I mean, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. In fact, there were complete sections I skipped because I realised that it had no impact on the plot or characters. Unfortunately, I feel there was an element of self-indulgence in those chapters.

Now, it has to be pointed out that this is all subjective. What I think is not necessarily what other readers think, although we will come to that. It was obviously not what the authors or, indeed their editors, thought. Because I didn't like them does not make them bad books, far from it. All it means is I didn't like them. And it doesn't make me right!

All three of those authors are super successful and rightly so. Their overall output is something to be admired and praised.

But I wondered about the two who had, on this occasion, disappointed me. What happened?

Are they so successful that they can tell an editor to go take a leap in the ocean and maybe find a large predator to leap over? Because there were things in these particular books that I firmly believe my editor would have suggested I reassess. 

But then, what do I know? These authors sell in the millions all over the world while I, well, don't. However I've had a look at the reviews on line and, though it is a mixed bag, there are a number of readers who share my views.

Will this stop me from reading further works by these authors? No, it won't. They are superb writers and one disappointing book doesn't mean they are limbering up for another go at that great white.

But I do worry that if authors of their skill and magnitude can (in my opinion) produce a couple of stinkers, then any of us can do the same without realising it.

Hence the current buttock-clenching as my new one goes out to early readers!

Seeking Dumbo's Feather

 Lately my fellow Type posters have discussed favorite chairs and writing methods. I definitely have a favorite chair. This is where I read, create first drafts, nap, fret, eat popcorn, cry, read endlessly, and pretty much just live.

This chair accompanied a sectional. It's supposed to be some sort of leather, but I doubt it. Vinyl? Perhaps. All of my furniture is purchased with this criteria: how will it look with a cup of coffee spilled on it? Or tea? Or soup? I bought it from JC Penney's decades ago. It's lasted forever without showing a bit of wear. 

For some reason most of the authors I know are just fascinated by the methods used by other writers. How long do they write, where do they write, etc. We are all searching for Dumbo's feather. Some magic formula or method that will make the process easier. It ain't going to happen. 

I'm amazed at the variety of paths taken to produce books. My own struggle to come up with material that's marketable or fit to read (not always the same thing) has involved a great deal of stealth. When my children were little I got up at 4:00 in the morning. My husband was driving a truck for National Beef and like a good wife I got up to fix him breakfast. It's a cultural thing. That's what rural wives did back in those days. 

Much to my amazement, I found that I had the energy of a little squirrel at 4:00 and nobody, not my kids, not my community, not even God, wanted a thing from me at 4:00. So I kept this habit for quite a number of years, even after Don had moved on to another job. 

Early on I developed a quota system. Five pages a day, five days a week. To accomplish this I learned to write anytime, anywhere, and under any circumstances. Didn't matter. In between numbers at music festivals, emergency rooms, on a bench at a softball game. Whatever. To save myself and the children embarrassment, and appear "normal" I learned to get at it "my work" very quickly, so I wouldn't have to tote it around to strange places.   

After Don bought the truck line and our children left home, my sleeping/waking hours mirrored his. When I became involved in the business, our hours were identical. Through the years my quota changed to a one page minimum and included a great deal of non-fiction.

Now I get up at 6:00. Since I'm in the first draft phase of my latest mystery, I curl up in my chair and am writing this particular book in longhand. I don't know why I'm using such an old-fashioned method, but I am. 

I have a dedicated office with a fast internet connection and a huge monitor. When I transfer the manuscript to the computer, I love the luxury of being able to edit it instantly. 

A friend was recently invited to contribute a non-fiction book to a series. She's thrilled. She plans to isolate a big chunk of time and get 'er done. This has never worked for me. It's what I want to do. Would love to do. Heaven knows I've tried it often enough. But when I do there's always some crisis. My allergies act up, something happens to my adult children or grandchildren, or a pet, or there's a plumbing problem. You get the drift. 

Now there is the relentless demand of social media and marketing. There's a proliferation of material I should be reading. Zoom calls and oodles of seminars. 

What works best for me is still the method I developed in the beginning: a certain number of pages five days a week whenever, wherever, and any time. Until I enter the hallowed halls of bestsellerdom and people bring me meals and whisper in my presence, I suspect that will always be the case. 

Irons and Fires

Summer is off and running, and I have many irons in different fires this year. Writing, as always, is the fire that attracts all of my irons.

Personally, I’m about 150 pages into a novel I’m writing (and rewriting). That comes with keeping a journal in which I plot out where I’m going and ask questions about the story. The journal is where I solve the puzzle –– not so much as to how the book will end but rather how I’ll get from A to Z. I know the who and the why, but the journal is a great place to think through the road I’ll travel as the book progresses.

Another iron has led me to call on my Type M colleagues: I’m leading a summer program for young writers, and have several Type M authors offering mid-day Artist Talks, which I am thrilled about and grateful for. In addition, as I have for the past 20+ years, I’m heavily involved in the Advanced Placement English Language program this summer, grading the AP English Language and Composition Exam and leading two AP Summer Institutes for English teachers.

Through all of these endeavors, I have stumbled upon a book that I think anyone teaching writing ought to read, Craft in the Real World, by Matthew Salesses. If you’re teaching a writing workshop, it’s a game-changer, especially if you attended an MFA program and lead workshops. If you simply want a new lens through which to view the way Western and non-Western literature is structured, it’ll open your eyes. It certainly has opened mine.

I hope everyone’s summer is off to a great and safe start.

Teaser and Sample Chapters

 

I recently picked up a book I originally had no intention of reading. I’d seen the cover, read the back of the book copy and decided it wasn’t for me. Until it was... 

Here’s what happened:

I picked up a Kindle edition of the latest Eli Marks mystery (The Magic Square by John Gaspard). I really enjoy this series about a professional magician solving murders so was happy to see there was another book for me to read. I enjoyed the book and was ready to close it when I noticed the author had included the first four chapters of his book, The Sword and Mr. Stone, at the end.

Generally, I ignore those teaser chapters at the end of books, mostly because they’re usually the first chapter of the next book in the series. By the time I finish a book, I’ve decided whether or not I intend to read the next one so those sample chapters mean nothing to me. But this time, it was for a different book, one I’d been curious about, but had rejected as not my thing.

For some reason, I decided to read those four chapters. I enjoyed them so much that I bought the book to see how the story ended. So, this time, those teaser chapters did their job and I ended up buying a book I had previously decided not to buy.

I’m pretty sure this is the first time that I’ve bought a book based on teaser chapters at the end of a book. I do occasionally download a sample of the beginning of a book from Amazon when I’m deciding whether or not to buy a book, but that’s pretty rare and usually for non-fiction books so I can see what’s in the TOC. From there I decide if the book is what I was looking for. If I were in a brick and mortar bookstore, I’d be flipping through the book to get a sense if I wanted to buy it. For fiction, I might read the first page to see if I liked the characters or the author’s writing style.

I read a couple interesting blog posts on these teaser chapters that brought up points I hadn’t thought of. In this one by Elizabeth Spann Craig she noted that, when reading an ebook, these teaser chapters can make her think she has more of the book to read than she does. She also notes that a reader could be annoyed that the teaser chapter is for a book that hasn’t been released yet and might not be for many months.

In this one by Jami Gold she noted that there were circumstances when she read the excerpt for the next book in the series, it ruined the satisfied feeling she’d gotten at the end of the book she’d just read. She was all happy about the ending and the teaser chapters indicated that things weren’t as hunky dory as it appeared. This particular book was a paranormal romance. She noted: “However, if the next book unravels the end of the arc of the current book, we’re messing with the reader’s memory of this book.” I don’t think this is a problem with mysteries because they usually include a different crime. Each book is usually self-contained so they can be read out of order.

This got me wondering what other people think of those teaser chapters. For the ones at the end of a book, do you ignore them or read them? Do they annoy you? Has reading them ever resulted in you buying the book that was previewed? Has it ever ruined things for you?

What about those samples you can download from Amazon? Do you ever use that option to see if a book is for you?

Something to brighten your day

By Rick Blechta

I’m pressed for time this week, so I’m going to share a joke that should make everyone smile (or even LOL) and is one all writers will appreciate. I may have told it here before, but it was so long ago now, who cares?

It goes like this…

A writer dies and finds himself (or herself, take your pick!) at the Pearly Gates. It was very busy that day and St. Peter is pressed for time.

When the writer finally reaches the front of the line, St. Peter tells him, “I can’t take time to go through your earthly record right now, so I’ll tell you what. How about you visit heaven for writers and hell for writers, then you come back and tell me where you’d like to spend eternity. Deal?”

Confused, the writer agrees.

Following directions, he goes down a path and finds an elevator. The only choice of floors is down or up, so he presses the down button.

Down, down, down goes the elevator, and when the doors finally open, the writer finds himself in a long hallway with doors on each side. He inquires about hell for writers and is directed to a door on the left. Arriving there, he goes in.

The room is vast and filled with rows and rows of benches. Chained to the benches are writers, each one furiously typing while the heat of a thousand suns burns down on them and demons whip them mercilessly.

There’s someone standing by the door and the writer approaches him. “Tell me, does this go on every day?”

“Yes. Day and night for all eternity.”

The writer quickly leaves and goes back to the elevator, quickly gets in and presses the up button.

Up, up, up goes the elevator and when the doors open once again he finds himself back in heaven. Stopping someone, the writer asks for directions to heaven for writers. Following them, he soon finds himself at another door.

Going in, he finds himself in another vast room filled with rows and rows of benches. Chained to the benches are writers, each one furiously typing while the heat of a thousand suns burns down on them and demons whip them mercilessly.

Totally confused, the writer beats a hasty retreat and walks back to the Pearly Gates. It’s much less crowded now and he waits in line patiently.

When he again approaches St. Peter’s desk, he asks, “Sir, I am very confused. I visited heaven and hell for writers as you requested, and well, they’re both absolutely identical.”

St. Peter looked down kindly. “No, my son, they are not. Up here you get published!”

______________________

My thanks to John Lawrence Reynolds who told me this joke originally over a post-conference libation or two.

The Rich and Famous

 In my series of mysteries, that villain is most likely rich and famous. Whether it’s surprise, anger, betrayal, or disgust, most of us have strong feelings when someone in that exclusive club of the rich, famous, and powerful commits a crime. 

 To explain why, we need to look at why we’re fascinated with celebrities in the first place.  There are a multitude of theories, but most of them hinge on how we perceive the rich and famous.  To achieve that kind of star status, that kind of success, they must somehow be “better” than us--smarter, faster, more athletic, more talented, better looking. 

 In some cases, they’re role models. They are the people we want to become, the people we wish to be, the friends and lovers we wish we had. 

 We become familiar with celebrities because they entertain us in our cozy living rooms, their faces beaming from our big-screen televisions.  They’re interviewed, talked about, photographed, and caught on video.  We can interact with them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TicTok. Their wealth buys them a life we can only dream about.

 Like the protagonist in a good novel, they’re admired.   They are ‘like us’, but with something ‘more’. They must be smart and talented because they’re star athletes, singers, actors, and writers.  They must be special because they’re rich and famous.  

 Of course, they have flaws.  Robert Downy Jr. was plagued with numerous drug arrests early in his career but ended up the superstar Avengers character, Iron Man. In 1987, Mark Wahlberg was charged with attempted murder, pleaded guilty of assault, and served 45 days in jail, but became an actor, producer, and restauranteur. Tim Allen, star of the hit TV shows Home Improvement and Last Man Standing as well as the voice of Buzz Lightyear in all of the Toy Story movies, was arrested and served time in prison for drug trafficking in the late 70s. 

 We’ve forgiven, if not forgotten, their trespasses. Like the flawed protagonist in a book, they’ve overcome their addiction or anger management issues and have gone on to achieve success.  And moreover, they’re likable. They’ve learned from their mistakes.  At least we want to think so. 

 When Martha Stewart went to jail for insider trading, didn’t part of us think “What’s the big deal?”  We suspect that all successful investors will use insider knowledge to make money. Didn’t we think:  The feds must be making an example out of her because she’s not only a success, but she’s a famous woman? 

 After a firestorm of media coverage and a six-week trial, Ms. Stewart was sentenced to five months in prison and a hefty fine.  And if anyone thought this would be the end of her career, they were sadly mistaken.  She’s jumped back into a limelight that includes magazines, videos, and television She’s as popular now as she’s ever been. 

 While there are some crimes we can overlook, there are some celebrity crimes that we can’t forgive. 

 Starting out as a stand-up comic in the sixties, Bill Cosby released several award-winning comedy albums. Then, from 1965 to 1968, he was the first Black man to appear in a leading role on television, starring in I Spy.  After that, for two seasons, he appeared in his own sitcom called The Bill Cosby Show.  He hit his stride, however, from 1984-1992 as the lead of The Cosby Show. The program was number one in the ratings from 1985 to 1992.  His character, Cliff Huxtable, was named “The Greatest Television Dad” by TV Guide. 

 With even more projects in the works, Cosby was an esteemed, world famous, role model.  

 Throughout his career, there had been dark rumors, but then the hammer finally fell. In the mid-2000s, dozens of women came forward and accused Cosby of rape, drug-facilitated sexual assault, sexual battery, and sexual misconduct.  He was convicted in 2018 of aggravated indecent assault and sentenced to three to ten years in prison and required to pay $25,000 plus court costs. 

 Prior to that, The Cosby Show had gone into syndication and the reruns were ubiquitous across a spectrum of channels.  But as the accusations and trial unfolded, station after station dropped them.  The projects he had in the works, including one with Netflix, disappeared. 

 Collectively, we were not only surprised, but deeply disappointed and betrayed. For Bill Cosby, there is no ‘come back’.

 There are examples of the rich and famous committing awful crimes that we can’t forgive or forget, but take some measure of pleasure from the punishment, the ultimate karma that overtakes them. Schadenfreude.

 As a film producer, Harvey Weinstein had the magic touch, releasing films like Pulp Fiction, The Crying Game, and Shakespeare in Love. He was a star maker, enormously successful, and with that comes power.  He could launch show business careers, but he could also destroy them. His story of sexual assaults, rapes, and harassment are well known, and he may still face more charges of rape in California.  Thus far he’s been convicted of five felonies and sentenced to 23 years in prison.  

 In my first draft of this blog, I’d written that Mr. Weinstein had been a catalyst for the #MeToo movement.  My wife called me to task and reminded me that it was the women that had been bullied and assaulted that had the courage to come forward who had instigated the #MeToo movement.

 Jeffrey Epstein is a much darker story.  Over his career as a financier, Epstein had become wealthy enough to buy several homes, a personal jet, and even his own island.  He built a circle of famous and powerful men.  He was also a sexual predator of the worst kind.  He trafficked underage teenage girls, sharing them with his wealthy friends as if they were party favors.   

 In 2005 in Florida, federal officials identified over thirty underage girls he’d preyed upon, but Epstein was convicted on only two counts of procuring a child for prostitution.  He served 13 months, but most of it was spent on a relaxed work release program.

 Then in 2019, he was arrested yet again for sex trafficking minors and died in prison awaiting trial. The medical examiner ruled that it was suicide, but circumstances around Epstein’s death have sparked widespread suspicion and conspiracy theories.

 So, if the rich and famous are living their dreams, their best lives, why do they commit crimes? In a 2019 article by Ronald E. Riggio PhD for Psychology Today, he claims that famous and wealthy people can become “intoxicated” by the power and prestige that comes with their celebrity status.

 He goes on to say that their power makes them believe that they’re special and the rules don’t apply to them.  They begin to think that they get a free pass that allows them to misbehave. And if they do get caught, that their money and fame will help them escape punishment.

 So, just because they’re rich and famous, celebrities won’t stop being human which means that some of them are going disappoint us.  We won’t stop being surprised, we won’t stop being disgusted, and we won’t stop feeling betrayed. 

 

 

 

My Home, Myself

 I (Donis) am driving myself insane lately by trying to learn new and more effective methods of online self-promotion. I tried an experimental BookBub ad yesterday to no avail. I've signed up for Instagram. Suffice it to say I'm not an influencer yet. I'm doing giveaways. For the rest of this month I’m giving away three copies of my 2014 release, Hell With the Lid Blown Off, which, if someone held a gun to my head, I’d have to say is my favorite Alafair Tucker Mystery (which,  if you’d like to enter the drawing for a paperback copy, go to my website, here, click on “Contact”, and leave your name. I’ll draw the winners’ names from a hat on May 31.)

Why, you ask, am I torturing myself thus? I'm trying to make my publisher happy so they'll deign to keep publishing me. Will it help? Ask me later. 

In the meantime, I loved Rick and Barbara's entries, below, on where they write and how they sit. It made me take a good look at my own surroundings. I write in my living room, sitting in a gliding rocker, with my laptop on a small lap desk, with a big pile of miscellaneous papers on a footstool next to me. I'm a messy writer. I have to have a number of things to hand because I don't want to interrupt what is hopefully a brilliant run of words to get up and look for something I need.

I am a relatively tidy person otherwise, but I haven't had a visitor in my house for over a year, so I've kind of become blind to my surroundings, like an old bear in her cave.You grow used to your environment, and after a while you don’t see what is right before your face, until you go into it in depth, picking up each item, moving things around, digging into corners. It is amazing what you can learn about yourself if you look with new eyes at the space you inhabit. 

Here is what close examination of my domicile taught me about myself:

I live in an atelier.  Every room in my house has to do with writing. Shelves, tables, surfaces, closets, desks, all contain notes and files, reference books and manuscripts, computers, printers, supplies.  I keep a notebook on my bedside table, so that when I wake in the middle of the night bursting with a fabulous idea or the perfect image or combination of words, I can scribble them down before they are lost. It was fascinating to read some of the gems I wrote.  A few of them even made sense, and even the ones that didn’t often had a certain poetic je ne sais quoi.  To wit: “I didn’t remember the word, but I knew there was an ‘N’ in it, because I could feel the spirit of “‘N’-ness .The ‘N’-ness of it.”   And, “ I want to protect her, which makes me want to hurt her.”

I live in a library.  We had books piled on and in every available space in the house.  We were tripping over books.  So we decided to do a major go-through and box up any book that could not be lived without and donate them to the library. We boxed close to 500 books, and yet we still do not have one inch of space on any bookshelf. At least I can see a few of the table tops. I would be embarrassed to admit how many books we have, but I feel sure that most of you reading this post are just as bad as I am, if not worse.

I live in a museum. Our house is filled with artifacts of our lives. I painted the landscape in the den in 1975.  I picked up those grave rubbings in England in the ‘60s.  My parents bought the end table in the living room for their house in the early 1950s.  My sister hand-embroidered that wall-hanging. Most everything my eye falls upon - furniture, decoration, art, even clothing - has a backstory.  In fact, as I look up from this computer, I see four watercolors Don and I did of the views outside our apartment in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, in 1977.

Cagnes-sur-Mer

My sister's embroidery

I live in a shrine.  Don loves Asian religious art, so the house is blessed with dozens of statues of the Buddha, Krishna, Ho Toi, Ganesh, Rama, Kwan Yin.  I also have a peculiar little shrine to myself.  When my mother died a few years ago, we four sibs divided up the hundreds of photographs, mostly claiming pictures of ourselves.  Consequently the entertainment center in the family room contains  Donis' Life Story in Pictures, from the ages of two to forty, when I ceased to be quite so adorable and lost interest in having my portrait made.

Me, age 2

The sounds of inspiration

 Rick's post got me thinking, so although I have nowhere near as storied a chair as he does, I decided to answer his question, but with a little twist. What is my favourite place for writing? Since I write longhand curled up in a comfortable chair, that place is usually the same comfy place that I read in. Even when I'm working on a computer, as I am now, I sit in my comfy chair and perch the computer on my lap. 

For me, writing is all about feeling cosy and relaxed so the muse will feel like visiting. In fact, there's more to that cosy, cocooned feeling than simply the chair. I need the sound of silence or the natural rhythms of nature. Some writers sit on a desk chair, hunched over their laptop at a table or desk. Still others write while standing up at the counter or balancing on a yoga ball. Some like the sound of the radio or TV in the background, and freeze up when there is nothing but silence. 

I can't imagine anything worse than standing up or having the radio chattering in the background. In fact, it would give me a headache in two minutes flat. Even something as soothing as Mozart would drive me to distraction. Those sudden chords and lilting runs would jolt me out of my writing zone.

I think all our brains are wired differently and need different types of stimulation to function optimally. And part of that may be what our brain has become adapted to. If you grew up with the TV or music on all the time in the background, that would be your brain's natural resting level of stimulation, and anything else would be uncomfortable. There are parts of the world that never know silence or stillness - large urban centres, for example, are always overloaded with the sounds of revving engines, construction, competing music, the flow of traffic and people, flashing signs, etc. People who grow up there may actually find silence and emptiness unnerving. Put them in the peace of a Canadian woods, and they want to turn on some music.

My sweet spot for writing and reading varies with the weather and my location. I have a lakeside cottage as well as a city house. The cottage is my favourite place because of the beauty of nature and lack of distractions and noise. In the summer, my perfect place is in my Muskoka chair on the dock, listening to the wind whispering through the trees, the loons calling, and the waves lapping against the dock. 

Yes, the dog is a distraction that has to be managed.

In the evening or in cooler weather, I migrate inside to my poang chair in the sunporch, which overlooks the lake. Even colder, and I curl up inside by the fire. I find peace and inspiration in water, fire, and the soothing green of trees. Primal stuff. In the city, my preferred place is outside on my patio  but it's hard to escape the lawnmowers, weed whackers, and screaming children nearby. In the winter, I have my love seat against the window, with one of my dogs curled up beside me. The love seat is so well-used, the cushion is almost destroyed. 

The quiet bliss of a good book
and a glass of wine.

So now I pick up Rick's question again, with this twist. What gives you inspiration? A comfy chair? Music? Silence? Nature? The chatter of a coffee shop? We all discover our own way to invite the muse.

A you sitting comfortably?

By Rick Blechta Okay, by giving my blog post this particular title I’ve given myself a major ear worm in the form of a song from the late ’60s by the Moody Blues. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDVqQzsJg3s)

However that’s not what I’m getting at with my post today. I’m writing about actual sitting, as in parking one’s posterior in one particular place or other.

In other words, where do you most enjoy sitting while you read?

My question concerns real-life experiences, not the place you most like to be if you were lucky enough to get there — and in our current times, that is a very tempting daydream to entertain. 

To be really specific, where do you generally plant yourself to really enjoy a few hours of turning pages in a good book. 

I generally read sitting up in bed, as I suspect many of us do, but that is not my favourite place. We also have a rather lovely chaise lounge and several bits of shade in our backyard, and on a nice summer day, it can be quite delightful. 

To tell you about that place where I most like to be I must first tell you a brief story. 

My last two years of university were spent at McGill’s Faculty of Music. You see, I met this rather beautiful redheaded young woman who was attending Montreal’s best known post secondary institution, so I had to switch not only schools, but countries to be with her. 

We shared a very lovely apartment in the area near the eastern entrance to the campus called “the student ghetto.” While some of the apartments in this area were indeed appalling, we lucked into a very nice space, a bit down in the heel, but it was cozy and quite spacious. 

One day, we helped a neighbour bring some things up from the basement of our building where he had a locker. We couldn’t afford one and actually had no need for extra storage space because we had very little furniture. Down there we discovered an old upholstered armchair, sitting in a corner of the main room. It was in rather poor shape, but it was sound and when I sat in it, I was instantly comfortable.

“Who owns this?” I asked our neighbour who had lived in the building for several years. 

“I have no idea. It was sitting here when I moved in and hasn’t budged an inch. Since I’m the longest-tenured person living here, I suppose it was left here by someone who moved out long ago. 

Later that day, I asked the superintendent the same question and got the same answer, followed by, “Get it out of there and it’s yours.” 

As I mentioned before, we had very little furniture, actually mostly pillows on the floor and double-stacked twin mattresses pretending to be a sofa, so this orphaned chair was a welcome addition. My girlfriend (now wife of 50 years) bought an India-print throw to cover up the worn, stained, and threadbare covering and we had finally a Real Piece of Furniture — as long as no one lifted the cover. 

We moved twice more while attending school and the chair always came with us. I did a lot of reading and studying sitting in it, and when we moved to Toronto with the band I was in, we naturally brought my favourite chair. It’s moved an additional three more times since then and is still with us. 

Sometime in there, we found ourselves with a few extra dollars so we finally got the chair reupholstered. I remember the old man who did commenting, “They don’t make furniture like this anymore. You’re doing the right thing by getting this old girl fixed up.” 

I felt absurdly proud. 

Since we’ve always had cats, everyone of which has liked to sharpen their claws on My Chair, it’s had to be reupholstered twice now and to be honest, it will shortly need the job done again, but we’re waiting for our final cat to shed her mortal coil before we do that.

And at the end of my tale, that is the place where I most like to read. I believe my body has changed over the years to fit that seat better, and it’s in the place of honour in our living room. Any time I can’t sleep, you’ll find me in it, reading something while trying to get sleepy again.

Now that I’m done with this week’s post, I’m going to repair there and dig into the novel I’m currently reading. 

Tell me about your special and most favourite place to read, if you will. I’m certain we’ll all be fascinated.

Scotland - the land of mist, mountain, midges - and murder

Ah, Scotland.

The land of mist and flood, of mountains and heather, of men in skirts and the mighty midge – a small creature that, like the Glasgow hardman, packs a powerful punch.

But behind the haggis and shortbread image so beloved of biscuit tins and soup cans, there was always another Scotland – and it’s one that has leapt to the fore with all the force of William Wallace despatching an English nobleman.

Tartan Noir, they call it, and it’s not a label I particularly like but it works as a handy marketing tool. According to lore, it was first coined during a conversation between our own (or oor ain) Ian Rankin and US legend James Ellroy. I’m not sure which of them came up with it but it stuck.

You can’t toss a caber these days without hitting some best-selling author delving into the dark side of Scottish life. Some credit William McIlvanney and Laidlaw for beginning this mini-industry. Mr McIlvanney, who knew his literary lore, always denied it.

The truth is that Scotland had a tradition in crime writing going back further than that.

Settle in, folks, because we're going to cover 200 years of history here.

James Hogg was known as The Ettrick Shepherd and his 1824 novel ‘The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner’ is a precursor to serial killer novels like ‘Dexter’. Hogg’s character is a Calvinist who believes he is justified in killing those out of favour with his God.

The novel certainly influenced Robert Louis Stevenson, who was fascinated by the darker side of the psyche, most obviously in a wee book about a certain Dr Jekyll and his chum, Mr Hyde, but also in ‘The Master of Ballantrae’. The sickly boy from Edinburgh also wrote the short story ‘The Bodysnatchers’, inspired by the Burke and Hare case, and what is ‘Treasure Island’ but a story about vicious crooks?

And if you want to talk about a more obvious contribution to the crime canon, I’ve three names for you – Arthur, Conan and Doyle. Sherlock Holmes wasn’t the first fictional sleuth but he is, as sure as God made the little green things, the most famous and his deductive powers were inspired by Dr Joseph Bell, one of Doyle's professors in medical school in Edinburgh. Bell, as a pathologist, was involved in a number of celebrated real-life cases in Scotland's capital.

Which brings us to true crime and I give you William Roughead, a lawyer with a wicked sense of humour and a fine turn of phrase who detailed many famous cases from Scottish legal history. You may not know it from their lack of exposure on TV but Scotland does have a plethora of fascinating historical true crimes over and above the aforementioned Burke and Hare, a shadowy (alleged) serial killer nicknamed Bible John and Glasgow gangsters. But that’s a rant for another day.

Perhaps one of the most famous Scottish crime books is ‘No Mean City’, a blood-spattered tale first published in 1935 and still in print today. The storyline deals with the notorious razor gangs of Glasgow, who turned the dear green spot blood red in the 20s and 30s. Its author was Alexander McArthur, a baker in the Gorbals area of the city, but his rough-hewn wordsmithery had to be smoothed down by journalist H. Kingsley-Long in order to make it more reader-friendly. The City Fathers – then and now – deplored its content but there was no denying its power even though today it is quite a difficult read. It was McArthur’s only success and he died a sad death, a penniless alcoholic.

Perth-born John Buchan - the 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, don't you know - is seen as one of the fathers of the modern thrillers. Alistair MacLean took it to new heights. It could be argued that all modern thrillers writers owe a debt of gratitude to this gruff former school teacher. Yet he set only one in his native land – When Eight Bells Toll, the film version of which is a favourite on afternoon TV.

His niece Shona, under the name SG MacLean, carries on the literary tradition with many fine historical thrillers and I recommend them to you.

And we should not – must not – forget Glasgow-born Helen MacInnes, who wrote many fine thrillers, a number of them filmed. Her early works concentrated on wartime thrills but later she turned her attention to the cold war. She may well have known quite a bit about that, for her husband, classics scholar Gilbert Highet, was an agent for MI6!

Their influence can be seen in other Scottish writers like Campbell Armstrong and the Late Jack Gerson, whose thrillers richly deserve a wider audience. He cut his teeth writing for TV on series such as Z Cars and was in the forefront of creating the three-part TV thriller which was in vogue for a time before these things had to extend to six episodes or even more, which someone had to invent padding. 

Gerson produced a number of cracking novels, including a Kennedy assassination conspiracy thriller 'The Back of the Tiger' and the Ernst Lohmann thrillers set in Nazi Germany.

For TV, he created 'The Omega Factor' which is seen as many as the forerunner to 'The X Files', and his daughter Natasha, who featured in the original show, continues the tradition by penning original audibooks based on the series.

On a personal note, Jack was also very supportive of me when I worked on a local newspaper in the west end of Glasgow, where he lived. He was a funny, decent and knowledgable man.

Ayrshire-born Edward Boyd wrote predominantly for TV but also co-scripted the movie ‘Robbery’, directed by Peter Yates, which helped set the template for British crime series like ‘The Sweeney’.

But, for me, it was Boyd’s ‘The View from Daniel Pike’ that really put Scottish-set crime on the map.

It started off as a one-off drama in the BBC2 compendium series ‘Menace’ and spun off into a series.

Roddy McMillan played Daniel Pike, a down-at-heel Glasgow private eye with a no -nonsense approach to life, a fine line in snappy patter and, under a gruff exterior, a heart as wide as the Clyde. It was a hugely under-rated show but was incredibly influential on one young man living then in a new town near Glasgow.

That young man was, of course, me. Until then I would never have believed that a crime thriller could be set in my home city but Eddie Boyd and Daniel Pike opened my eyes.

Some of the scripts were later adapted by journalist and writer Bill Knox – himself no mean crime scribe with a host of ‘Thane and Moss’ cop procedurals to his name – and released as a book.

Boyd was so highly regarded that many of his scripts and plays are now part of the library at the University of Glasgow. He, like Pike, is waiting to be rediscovered and venerated.

While we're talking scriptwriting - Greenock's Alan Sharp wrote a number of notable scripts for Hollywood, including the crime thrillers 'The Last Run', which starred George C Scott, and the classic private eye movie 'Night Movies,' with Gene Hackman.

And Gordon Williams, born in Paisley, may have been of a literary bent but his potboiler 'The Siege of Trencher's Farm' was filmed as - wait for it - 'Straw Dogs' and he also created London private eye Hazell with footballer Terry Venables.

Earlier, Hugh C. Rae issued a number of crime stories from his typewriter, beginning with ‘Skinner’, loosely based on the real-life serial killer Peter Manuel. The Glasgow author later abandoned the grit of the streets to pen, under a host of historical romances under a variety of pseudonyms (notably Jessica Stirling, originally with Peggy Coghlan). When Jessica was revealed to be a Hugh, he quipped 'a tall, dark, handsome fellow, suave as a yard og shantung - and a born liar to boot.'

And then along came ‘Laidlaw’ and, hot on its trail, TVs ‘Taggart’.

Like Boyd, William McIlvanney was from Ayrshire, in his case Kilmarnock. His book generated a great deal of heat and there were always rumours it would be filmed. One report said an American company wanted to shoot it – in New York. McIlvanney refused. To date, it’s not been adapted for the screen.

But a show called ‘Taggart’ did hit the tube and anyone who’d read McIlvanney’s book spotted similar themes. However, to be fair, it is a pretty universal theme – tough, street-wise, seen-it-all cop is partnered with a bright-eyed and enthusiastic young detective to investigate murder.

However, in Glasgow at the time there were two very large motor dealers in competition. One was Laidlaw’s. The other was Taggart’s.

File it under ‘Life’s full of coincidences.’

So from there it was straight to Rankin’s Rebus, right?

Wrong.

First there was Peter Turnbull. Okay, he’s a not a Scot but we won’t hold that against him. In 1981 he produced the first in his P Division thrillers, ‘Deep and Crisp and Even’. Police procedurals, with an ensemble of characters, set in Glasgow, they followed a direct line from Ed McBain’s 87^th Precinct novels, which is fitting as Glasgow is deemed the most American of British cities – and is even known as the 51^st State. He produced 10 novels in the series, ending in 1998.

Turnbull has returned to his native Yorkshire and left P Division behind but the series is well due for rediscovery.

And then, in 1987, along came Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, both Fife born. That their fine work took Tartan Noir (there’s that label again) to new heights is a given and hot on their heels marched an army of writers who have littered the streets, alleys, fields, rivers, lochs and mountains with more bodies than any small country deserves.

Missed Opportuniies

 We are slowly emerging from the Great Ordeal. Human groundhogs are finally poking their heads above ground and beginning to peer around. Restaurants are loosening restrictions. Masks are "suggested" rather than required in my favorite branch of the Fort Collins library. 

I have four Zoom presentations scheduled for June. Additionally, the Western Writers of America conference will be held in Loveland which is just sixteen miles from Fort Collins. For me, the highlight of the event will be when Kathleen O' Neal Gear and Michael Gear receive the Wister Award.

The Gears have been my friends for years and have inspired countless other writers. Their spectacular rise to the ranks of best-selling authors has come from innate talent and incredible persistence. They are both dedicated archeologists. Kathleen has produced over two academic articles and has been awarded medals from the Department of the Interior for her work in conservation.

A number of friends will attend this conference. Some I have known many years. Others are relatively new. 

There are a number of conferences I will skip. In fact, since I write both historical novels and mysteries, I could attend a conference every single week. 

Yet, I'm struck by the missed opportunities by organizers of in-person conferences. Women Writing the West had a spectacular Zoom conference last fall. It was dazzling. I'm still amazed at the organizational work done by Pamela Nowak, the conference chair. 

Every single event, panel, and presentation that would have been included in a live conference was scheduled for the Zoom event. Keynotes speeches, breakout rooms, everything. The formatting depended  on logistical training, clear instructions to participants, dedicated moderators, and most of all Nowak's inspirational flexibility. 

The registration fee was lowered. There were no expensive hotel fees. The end result was a surge of  registrations by people who normally could not attend. Membership increased. Best of all, this convention resulted in a profit rather than the usual projected loss. 

Sadly, too many organizations are rejoicing over "returning to normal" without integrating the new approaches that worked during the shutdown. Conferences are very expensive. Hotel and travel fees alone are prohibitive to the bulk of the membership. 

We should not ignore the opportunity to integrate the lessons learned during the Great Ordeal. Try combining a Zoom approach to events with in-person participation. 

Squirrels and Notebooks

Most weeks in the Corrigan household are a little nutty –– part of that comes from living in a dorm with 50 teenagers; part of that comes from the Corrigan DNA. This week, though, took things to a different level.

My twelve-year-old Keeley found a baby squirrel, and it added to the craziness by joining the family for a few weeks as we got it ready to go off into the world on its own.

Between building squirrel houses and figuring out what 5-week-old squirrels eat (puppy formula, if you’re wondering), keeping the dog from doing what dogs want to do to squirrels, and getting Keeley prepared for it to leave . . . my post is late.

Aside from squirrels, I’m plotting a scene or two ahead in my journal and “writing” at the keyboard, nearing the midway (fingers crossed) point in the book I’m working on, which is also about a squirrely family at a boarding school.

Musings on Writing in Present Tense

 

I settle down in my chair and open the book. A smile spreads across my face as I read the words on the page. A sound outside causes me to look up moments before the bullet breaks the glass in a nearby window, narrowly missing me. I... 

Hmmm. that was easier than I thought it would be. It seems very odd and unnatural for me to write a story in present tense. I noticed that, when I wrote the few lines at the start of this post, that I opted for first person, not third, which is my normal comfort zone. Somehow, first person seems more natural when it comes to present tense.

I’ve never written a story in present tense. I have no problem reading books or short stories written in it. I know there are people out there who are adamantly opposed to reading anything written in present tense. That’s not me. As long as it’s a good story, it doesn’t matter to me what tense or person it’s written in as long as it’s well done and captures my interest. Okay, maybe I’d have an issue with something written in second person.

What got me started on these musings about present tense? I recently picked up the first book in the Oxford Key mystery series by Lynn Morrison, Murder at St. Margaret. It’s a cozy mystery series set at, you guessed it, Oxford University. The main character is an event planner who also happens to be one of the caretakers of magic at the university. It’s a fun read with interesting characters and a good mystery. It took me about a chapter before I realized it was written in present tense. The same was true when I picked up Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella. In both cases, I noted it, then pretty much ignored it and kept reading.

I’ve read a lot of cozy mysteries over the years. This is the first time I’ve found one written in present tense. Maybe there are others out there, but I haven’t run across them.

That got me wondering if I could write a decent story in present tense and what kind of story would best be told that way. I’ve heard that present tense creates a sense of immediacy you don’t find in past tense. The events seem to play out in real time. Honestly, I’m not sure it makes that much difference to me.

Maybe those of you who teach writing could enlighten me on writing in present tense. The few YA novels I’ve read, like The Hunger Games, seem to be written in that tense. Is that a rule for YA these days? 

I’m also curious about everyone’s opinion on reading books written in present tense. Do you like it, hate, don’t care? How long did it take you to notice the book was written in present tense?