HVI2, or Heads, You Lose

 

I subscribe to BritBox and I have worked my way through most of the mystery series I enjoyed (Jonathan Creek, No Offense, MacDonald and Dodds, Cadfael, New Tricks, mostly) so I have been giving lit-er-a-choor a try.

Britbox offers the entire canon of Shakespeare as interpreted by the BBC. I am working my way through the plays I have never seen or read (an embarassingly large number) and watching each one until I get bored or too puzzled by the language. (They make the subtitles too damn small.)

The Trout

For example, I tried watching Henry VI, Part 1, and gave it up quickly. Not even a guest appearance by  Joan of Arc could keep me tuned in.

But I made it through Henry VI, Part 2, no trouble.  I noticed that Wikipedia says Part 2 is usually considered the best of the trilogy.  We will see how I feel about Part 3.

Some random thoughts.  There are few Shakespearean characters I have wanted to give a good punch in the kisser as much as Henry VI.  What a boring, pious, pompous little trout.  No wonder his wife wants nothing to do with him.

But speaking of Queen Margaret, I had a really writerly moment during one of her speeches.  She watches hubby walking away with another fella she dislikes, Warwick, and says: "There's two of you; the devil make a third!"  First I thought: Billy the Bard sure knew his way around a curse, didn't he? Then I thought: What a great title! The Devil Make a Third.

privateproertynotrespassblogspot.com

A quick search taught me that one author had already figured it out.  Douglas Fields Bailey wrote a novel by that name in 1948.  As I understand it, the book is about a rural man who makes it to wealth by any means necessary - a not uncommon theme of the time.   The book was reprinted for the Library of Alabama Classics series in 1989.  There is an entire website dedicated to the book, run, as near as I can tell, by Robert Register.  

There are also many novels called Devil Makes Three and some of the authors might have been thinking of Queen Margaret (as I'm sure we all do from time to time).  

The most interesting part of the play for me was the Jack Cade section, based on the largest rebellion in England in the 15th century.  Shakespeare sees it as a highly anti-intellectual event, with simple literacy being a capital offense.  It is here that Dick the Butcher gives us what I think is the play's most famous, much quoted, line:  "The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers."

Jack Cade, against Woke Education

The play also made me wonder whether the Globe Theatre had a propmaster whose specialty was severed heads.  There are four, count 'em, four, hacked-off noggins in  HVI2.  There are others in Macbeth and Titus Andronicus, among other of Billy's little skits.. I found an interesting article by Michael J. Hirrel discussing the chop-chops in Elizabethan plays and he pointed out something that never occurred to me. Shakespeare's audience would have been quite used to seeing severed heads in real life.  So it is reasonable to assume that someone went to a lot of trouble to make the props realistic and each one unique.

Personally, I'd rather be a writer.  So far, no severed heads adorn my work.

World Builders

The November/December issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine proves good to SleuthSayers. Rob Lopresti graces the cover while Stephen Ross, Michael Bracken, and I help to fill the pages behind him. Simple math tells me we have a third of the titles in this edition. 

My story, "From Above," is the latest in a series about the 16th-century French attorney Bernard de Vallenchin. His challenge in "From Above" is to defend, in an ecclesiastical court, birds charged with disrupting a Catholic mass.

And yes, that was a thing. Animals could be accused of violating laws and punished in both church and secular courts. They could be imprisoned or executed. As I've mentioned in an earlier blog, while researching a different topic, I stumbled into a 1906 book, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals by E.P. Evans. He documents the work of Bartholome Chassenee, a 16th-century French jurist who described his own work in defense of accused animals. The Evans' book explores this forgotten world. 

I think of writing the de Vallenchin stories as akin to creating science fiction. The world of animal prosecution in 16th-century France is an alien place to which readers must be introduced. The age had a top-down cosmology that began with God and continued through the great chain of being to the lowest slugs. There was a patchwork of courts--royal, manorial, and ecclesiastical--that may have been involved, depending on the offense. To tell an understandable tale, a good chunk of information had to be delivered in order for the reader to know why a bird might be on trial. I needed to quickly build a different world from the one the readers inhabit. There stands the challenge. How do writers create an distant environment while avoiding a dreaded information dump. Or, in the alternative, how do writers camouflage an information dump so that it doesn't take the reader out of the story?

The standard advice is to feather the facts into the tale. With the limited word count of a short story, however, the slow accretion of details is often impossible. What then might the writer do? 

A few suggestions follow: 

Pare down the information.

In researching Europe's animal prosecutions, I acquired many fascinating pieces of trivia, odd bits that seemed really cool to me. Social historians have used GIS programs to map out the variety and overlapping jurisdictions of courts across France. But I'm not writing a dissertation. My goal was to craft an entertaining tale about fictional characters. To do so, I wanted to keep the information at the minimum level to make the story understandable. I remembered the lesson Barb repeatedly tries to teach me, in a short story, every word matters. I tested my accumulated facts and separated them into what was necessary and what proved merely interesting. The unused facts might one day become central to a future story, but they remained in the nest for this avian tale. 

Consider where to begin.

"From Above" starts in media res. From the first words, the readers find themselves in an ongoing conversation between the lawyer and a barmaid. I trusted that the readers would catch up quickly. By beginning in the middle and then going back, a writer can draw the reader into the conversation and engage their interest in the topic. The goal is to have a shared experience. If the characters were attracted to the subject, hopefully, the readers will also become interested. 

Incorporate the information into the action.

Action doesn't have to be car chases or gunfights. It may be a more subtle personal contest between two people. Bernard de Vallenchin is a libidinous drunkard and a cheap braggart. (I hope you like him in spite of his faults.) His high opinion of himself is sometimes challenged. To accomplish some earthly aim, de Vallenchin boasts about his courtroom mastery and the complexities of the subject matter. He uses his exploits to achieve an end, perhaps bedding a barmaid. In an earlier story, the scheme was to extract free food from the hotelier. The lawyer used an elaborate discussion on courts to serve as a distraction. The information became part of the action. The current story works the necessary details into the process of two characters learning about one another. 

Incorporate the information into character development.

Fans of the Harry Potter books know that Hermione Granger is the brightest witch of her age. She constantly dispenses obscure facts. These nuggets of information often prove necessary later in the story. She is an expository character. She'll tell you the things you need to know. The information dump becomes incorporated into her character development. Similarly, Bernard de Vallenchin's description of the complexities of his legal challenges helps to show readers that he is a self-absorbed trumpeter but perhaps posseses courtroom skills. The technique aids in establishing his character. 

Consider making the expository character a drinker. Who hasn't met an intoxicated person who didn't over-explain, or tell you something you already knew? Adding alcohol can allow a character to state what should be obvious to the people in the room. The writer can educate the reader not only about the necessary details but also demonstrate that the character is a sloppy drunk. 

Conversely, a writer may say something about the recipient's character, the person in the story tasked with receiving the information dump. This character acts as the portal. She is the doorway into this world. If, for instance, the listening character is drunk, she may not object to the bloviating protagonist reciting what should be commonly known information. 

As a circuit-rider, Bernard de Vallenchin travels to new cities and villages in each story. He knows little to nothing about the area's details. He is a fish out of water. Listening as another describes the local jurisdiction or corrects one of his assumptions is a necessary part of his effective advocacy. He needs to learn these details in order to succeed. The fish out of water offers another opportunity to world build and give information to the character and, also to the reader. 

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine published the second story of the de Vallenchin series in November 2022. I can't assume that anyone will remember the details of the world from that story. Every reader, therefore, needs fresh facts to  imagine a place far outside their own experience. Pouring the essential details into a brief short story required a strategy. As I consider future de Vallenchin stories, I face the same question. How might I deliver the necessary information quickly and in a way that will hold the reader's attention? 

As a writer, your issue may not be 16th-century cosmology. Every storyteller, however, needs to craft a setting. That world-building requires dropping information eggs. The challenge is to find new and different ways to open up that fictional realm. 

What strategies do you like to use? 

It's Election Day in the USA. Go vote. 

Until next time. 

True to type.

             I only write in Palatino Linotype, which is a more attractive cousin of Times Roman.  Most people can’t tell the difference, which is good, since publications often require their superannuated relative, which I find cramped, fussy and inelegant, compared to my first love. 

                I prefer to indent my paragraphs, and dislike putting spaces between them (even though I’ve occasionally done it here, when laziness trumped principle, or the blog app forces it upon me).  Nearly every book you’ve ever read throughout history follows this practice. I don’t think there’s any reason to change it now, despite the insistence of word processors and trendy digital formats. 

           Serifs are like little brush strokes at the end of straight or slightly tapered lines, flourishes that suggest a certain panache, elan, a bit of dash to the characters.  I was once told that medieval scribes saw them as tiny angels.  I’ve found no evidence of this, but the notion is enchanting.

            Times Roman can also look dated, like your grandmother’s Victorian furniture.  If disturbed by this you might select Bodoni, or Century, or my favorite Palatino Linotype, efforts to freshen up the form.  I’m fine with this as well.  All are preferrable to the execrable sans serif.     

I have no affection for any version of san serif, particularly Helvetica, which has no social charm, only narcissistic, declarative impudence.  It doesn’t care what you think, it only wants you to follow its commands.  Bold san serif is even worse:  a lout with a megaphone yelling over polite discourse. 

Or simply boring and commercial. All those straight up and down, and horizontal, lines have no personality.  It’s just a flat, soulless delivery of the words.  Serif faces have lots of smiles, frowns, intelligent observations and witty asides.  These are the Cary Grant and Noel Coward of typefaces.  The Shirley McClain and Katherine Hepburn.   Sans serifs are just pronouncements.  Demands.  Directives.  Humorless and colorless.  Bureaucratic. 
            

        You might note that sans serif faces are defined by what they lack.  Serifs.  It reminds me of Baus Haus or Brutalist architecture, which boldly erases all decorative or artistic detail, stripping everything down to right angles and plain boxes, like the ones that deliver goods to you from Amazon.  I don’t see this as an achievement.  Anyone can build a box.  Few can shape crown moldings, cornices, curvilinear arches and hip roofs. 

Digital content is often in Calibri, the slightly less school-marmish version of Helvetica.  Another cousin is Aptos, which is even worse than the other two.  Helvetica’s sadistic, stunted little sister. 

 Most of the typeface choices in Microsoft Word are novelties and nothing more.  Fun, silly and usually inappropriate comedians only useful to children and unserious designers.  Cheap invitations to the gala event, or hyperventilating car ads given to starbursts and excessive exclamation points.  The typographical equivalent of a drunken huckster screaming over the crowd noise.   

You might think that a type face shouldn’t affect your understanding of the words on the page, but that’s not true.  I spent a long career in partnership with art directors and graphic designers who brilliantly captured the essence of a headline with a deft choice of type face.  They knew the emotion the writer was trying to convey, presenting it in the precisely appropriate visual style.  (Most of the art directors I worked with were also quite capable writers.)

Art at its best conveys feelings.  Typefaces are the rare art form that bring intrinsic emotional interpretation to the meaning of the words they’re representing.  A true integration of purpose.  Digital media has the capacity for delivering an endless assortment of faces, with no sense of the mission these shapes and miniature diagrams are charged with achieving, but we can intercede and pick the face that suits our mood. 

What you are saying, of course, matters the most.  Though how you are saying it can make all the difference in the rendering. 

Día de los Muertos

Día de los Muertos

Friday and Saturday followed Halloween with Día de los Muertos, the popular Mexican version of All Souls Day. Celebrations are colorful and exciting. Like unpretty gargoyles on a church, Halloween and Día de los Muertos may confuse casual observers as to their religious bona fides.

All Souls remembers those who have come before, ephemeral passages our modern world neglects. But on this holiday of remembrance, I stumbled upon a passing you’re unlikely to forget.

Shock and Aww

For those who believe the world fosters no more eternal love stories, meet Carolyn Hamilton. She has such a gift for description, we barely resist falling into the gravitational pull of her words.

The title demonstrates truth-in-publishing still exists. Tik Tok has inured us to sensational headlines where ‘shock’ and ‘disturb’ may mean an influencer is showing off her too-transparent fashion haul so that, oopsie, nobody misses the show, yawn. Audience, please restrain your intense emotions.

Hamilton, if anything, understates shock. The White Queen told Alice she could imagine six impossible things before breakfast. Contrariwise, I found myself believing two antipodal understandings before dinner. I could comprehend a reader shocked and disturbed, and I grasped precisely how and why Carolyn… well…

I couldn’t have done it… I doubt most could. But Like Water for Chocolate, I get it. I get it. Unlike Tita’s story, Carolyn celebrates happiness.

Carolyn and Jeff Hamilton family

Here is Carolyn Hamilton’s article. Let us know what you think.

When My Husband Died, I Did Something That May Shock and Disturb…

---

For You and Me and I

  

I should probably apologize ahead of time, because this post is a complaint, and I learned long ago that nobody likes complaints. My mom's usual reply to grumbles like "Are we having peas again?" was "There are children starving in India," and when I was stupid enough to say something like "I'm bored," Dad always replied, "Oh, I can find you something to do." Having now grown old, I still complain, but my wife has become so used to it she pays no attention.

My complaint here, though, isn't about aches or pains or the weather. This one involves grammar, and language. Here it is: 

I'm tired of people saying "for you and I" or "of you and I" or "to you and I" or "from you and I," etc. To phrase it as my high-school English teacher would've, you shouldn't use a subject pronoun when it's an object, and specifically a subject pronoun after a preposition. And it happens a lot.

I think I know why. Throughout childhood, we're taught not to say "Susie and me met at the park" or "Bob and me are going fishing" or "Dad and me like movies." It's supposed to be Susie and I, Bob and I, Dad and I. So when we have the need to say or write things like "They were shouting at Jane and me," we're tempted to substitute I for me, and say "They were shouting at Jane and I." Which is wrong.

What really bothers me is when this grammatical crime is committed by people who should know better. If the farmer being interviewed on TV after his barn's blown away says "And a dern tree almost landed on Stella and I," I don't mind that a bit. Not only has the man had a hard day, he's just a regular guy. But if the reporter who's interviewing him makes that kind of mistake, that's another matter. And believe me, I've heard this kind of screwup by politicians, news anchors, teachers, talk-show hosts, pastors, and salesmen, all of whom supposedly received an education and are now paid to get up in front of others and speak. That's their job.

NOTE: As most of you already know, the handy test for which pronoun is correct ("I'm rooting for you and me" or "I'm rooting for you and I") is to change the sentence a bit and say "I'm rooting for you and for ____." The answer's obviously for me, not for I, and if you say it aloud you immediately see that.

It especially irks me to see this mistake--a subject pronoun used instead of an object pronoun--in writing. The most common crime scenes, I think, are Facebook posts and Amazon product reviews. As a fiction writer, I don't mind (mis)using it in dialog because that's my character talking, but I wouldn't want to goof up that way in the rest of my story. Thankfully, we don't see it often in published works.

But it has happened. I can remember the me/I error occurring in both a song and a play. The song was "Hungry Eyes," by Eric Carmen, who at one point feels "the magic between you and I." (I like the song, but I guess me didn't fill the bill, in terms of rhyming.) And the play was The Merchant of Venice, in which one of the characters says something like "All debts are cleared between you and I." Even when the author is Shakespeare his ownself, between is still a preposition and the sentence is still wrong.

I saw a "don't" list long ago, when I first started writing for publication, of the seven worst grammatical mistakes. I can't recall all of them, but it included things like its/it's, lay/lie, less/fewer, etc. And high on the list was for you and I. This was almost thirty years ago, and I suspect that mistake would still be a top contender.

Question: Is this particular misuse irritating to anyone else? Do you tend to shrug it off, instead? As a writer, I make plenty of grammatical errors myself, so I'm not sure why this one bothers me so. (I wasn't even an English major--I graduated in electrical engineering.) But it does.

In closing, and in recognition of the fact that we should all complain less and be more tolerant of things we don't like, here's a piece of particularly elegant poetry:

If you must say "Between you and I,"

I won't stop you--I won't even try.

So just say it; feel free,

But don't say it to me

Or I'll shoot you and leave you to die.

Okay, I'm kidding--I wouldn't do that. But, like the hungry-eyed songwriter, I needed something that rhymed.

See you in two weeks.

Teach What's Hard

 by Steve Liskow

In grad school, I had a humanities professor from Germany. His English had only slightly heavier consonants to give away his roots. The reading list was brutal, from The Confessions of St. Augustine to selected essays of Montagne, with Rabelais, Shakespeare, Chaucer (in the original Middle English) and several others along the way. It was a six-week summer course, and we turned in three papers of five, five, and ten pages. There were only ten of us in the seminar, so there was nowhere to hide.

After he returned the first set of essays, the professor scolded us for our "pedestrian" writing styles. "For you, it is your native language, so you do not think about it. It is my fifth language, so I do have to think about it."

After my career as a teacher and another fifteen years or so of conducting writing workshops, I still remember that comment. I grew up in a family of voracious readers and entered kindergarten reading at the fifth-grade level. I also had a solid feel for the rhythm and sound of Midwest American English.

My fourth-grade teacher assigned us to write a poem, and then we read each other's work aloud. I read someone else's poem and changed it as I read it because I could tell that one line had the wrong rhythm. The classmate came up to me after we all read and said, "You changed my poem."

"Yeah," I said. "I made it better."

Hubris at nine years old. Even though I couldn't explain to him why it was better, I knew I was right.

I used to play golf pretty well (nine handicap before I broke my wrist), and I often helped other players fix a flaw in their game so they ended up beating me. I was an adequate actor but a better director because it was like teaching: you prepare the lesson (production) and help the cast convey the play's ideas. I was always a better teacher than a doer, and I think it's because I was basically a kinesthetic learner. I got the feel of the activity into my body and could explain what it felt like to other people. I still do.

How does that relate to the professor's comment above? Well, if you don't have to think about something you can do well, it's difficult to explain how you do it because you've never really observed the "process." I know some very good musicians who can't read music, and they have a hard time explaining how they play something. I'll bet Aaron Judge would have trouble explaining how he hits home runs. He's 6' 7", well-proportioned and athletic, so after all the practice, it's muscle memory rather than consicous thought. The ptch comes in...right...THERE, and he swings.

When I taught composition, I used the textbooks, but occasionally disagreed with some advice because it didn't work for me. I seldom mentioned it unless many students had trouble with the concept, too, and then we'd work it out together. I'll bet those kids know that concept especially well now because they had to work harder at it. One of my warnings in fiction workshops is DON'T rely on Strunk and White's The Elements of Style too much because it's geared specifically to expository writing (essays for college). It's a good start, but it makes everyone's voice/style the same. It won't help with plotting, dialogue, pacing, irony or humor. That means that when I retired from teaching and turned to writing fiction, I knew how to write a sentence and a paragraph, but I knew NOTHING about how to plot a story or control the pace and rhythm. 

I had to learn those techniques, and I attended workshops and read dozens of books to master them.

Because I had to work so hard, I can explain them clearly and still be flexible for people whose rhythm and strengths are different from mine. I can write humor, but it's difficult to plan in advance because my sense of humor is built around the rhythms my family instilled when they read to me decades ago. It's instinctual and hard for me to explain. I've only found a couple of books on writing humor, and neither of them helped me.

Dialogue, which also relies on rhythm and a host of other factors, has never been hard for me, either. But it was hard to explain how I did it until I found two books that showed me what I was actually doing and broke it into a process. I rely on those books now, and people have told me my dialogue workshop is one of the best craft workshops they've attended.

I've wanted to play piano most of my life. A few years ago, after trying and failing with several different books, I found a set of DVDs with a booklet that uses graphics to show fingerings and techniques. It speaks to my kinesthetic learning style and I get everything more clearly. I will never be a good, or even adequate keyboard player because I'm starting 65 years too late and I have small hands and minor arthritis. But this approach makes me play the music because the recorded rhythm section carries me along. Rhythm again.

It's the same way I learned to walk and to tie my shoes. Now I do both of those fairly well.

How about you? How do YOU learn?

Necropants for Halloween

by Eve Fisher

So how badly do you want a lot of money?  What are you willing to do to get it?  And I'm not talking about the standard stuff:  trying to win the lottery, or marrying money or just finding a sugardaddy / sugarmamma, or starting a Ponzi scheme, or other financial shenanigans.*  I mean strange stuff...

Welcome to the world of the Nábrók , a/k/a "necropants" or "corpse britches", i.e., a pair of pants made from the skin of a dead human, which are believed in Icelandic witchcraft/folklore to be capable of producing an endless supply of money.  

A replica of a pair of nábrók at The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft. At the right is the magical symbol that is part of the ritual and at its feet are coins. Bernard McManus from Victoria, BC, Canada - Necropants

Now you can't make a pair of these by turning into Hannibal Lecter or Buffalo Bill. No, it's both less criminal and weirder than that:

"The nábrók is obtained by first making a (mutual) pact with a friend that if either of them die, the other can use his corpse to make a pair of necropants. The deal is that, once one of them dies, after a decent burial, the survivor digs up the body, and flays the skin from the waist down so has not to puncture any holes. The freshly skinned pants must be worn right away, and it's said to grow on/into the person, until such times as he appoints to remove the pair in order to give to someone else." 

MY NOTES:  

This may be the worst tontine I've ever heard of.  So you're making a bet, with a friend, that you're going to live the longest.  So what stops you from offing your friend, or your friend from offing you?  Other than a distaste for graverobbing and flaying, of course. 

Where do you practice skinning a corpse? Is skinning a human like skinning a pig? (And no, I don't want to know how you know this unless you went to med school.)  Also, what does it smell like?  Is there a corpse smell or does it morph into you? 

Finally, the prurient among us obviously want to know if the winner's body is entirely in working order, and will Lilja casually mention to her neighbor Gudrun that 

"You know, it's strange, but ever since Einar died, Bjarni's thing has changed.  It's gotten... bigger.  Kind of.  And he's making this strange clinking noise when he walks...." 

Back to the facts: 

"There is no wealth-giving magic in the necropants yet, because in order to activate the charm, the person must steal a coin from a wretchedly poor widow, and this theft must be performed between the readings of the Epistle and Gospel during one of the three major festivals of the year (or "between the First and Second Lesson on... Yule, Easter, or Whitsuntide"). Then the person must deposit the coin into the pungur (translated politely as "pockets" but actually denoting "scrotum") of the necropants. Some say the wearer can also choose the time of theft to be carried out on the very next day after the pants are first worn. Afterwards the breeches will start collecting coins from the living, which the wearer is free to dispense with. However, he must be careful not to remove the original coin if he wishes to keep the magic effect intact."  

MY NOTE:  Robbing widows in church and scrotum pouches...  this is getting ridiculous.

"According to recent literature, a piece of paper inscribed with a magical symbol must be placed with the coin in the scrotum sack; this particular symbol being given the name "Nábrókarstafur".

"These pairs cannot be removed by its wearer until he is at his life's end, when he has to remove his pair and pass it onto another, otherwise, his corpse will be smothered by vermin and his soul will be damned."

MY NOTE:  You mean robbing a widow in a church doesn't damn your soul enough? 

"And a particular sequence must be followed. The wearer cannot simply remove and hand over the pants, but must do it one leg at a time. That is to say, he must first "doff" the pants off his right leg, and make his successor wear the right pant leg. At that point, his successor is committed to his fate; even if he tries to change his mind and take off the right pant leg, he will wind up wearing the left leg, regardless of his will."  (Wikipedia)

MY NOTE:  So basically, once you've made all the money and you're ready to die, you have to find a greedy schmuck and make them do the leg dance, but how the hell do you get that right leg off?  Is "doff" a secret code for flay yourself alive?  And think about the position you'd be in, with your successor has his right leg in your right leg's skin, which means... how is he going to get into your left?  

I'm sticking with lottery tickets.  

*Note that I did not mention robbing banks.  They don't have the cash they used to, there are cameras everywhere, and you're gonna get caught.  

BSP:

The latest Michael Bracken anthology, Janie Got A Gun, releases November 9 at the publishers HERE and, of course on Amazon.  In my "Round and Round", lifer Cool Papa Bell tells how Mildred, the penitentiary ghost, showed up for the holidays and took care of a lot of people's business... including a particularly nasty corrections officer.  

Happy to share space with Steve Liskow, Joseph S. Walker, John M. Floyd, Jim Winter and many more!

Also, coming soon, my "Lady With a Past" in Black Cat Mystery Weekly Issue #167!

"We’re back in Laskin, South Dakota, where police officer Grant Tripp is involved with the sexiest, most beautiful woman he’s ever known. But Megan’s a Davison, an ex-con is stalking her, and her ex-boyfriend wants Grant out of the picture. And then there’s the question of where she got so much money…"

Money.  It's always a problem, isn't it?